Designing e-Government for the Poor - Tanzania Development ...

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Citizen-centric e-government: empowering the poor
through innovative technology
Mr. Kushner said that e-government can also be a tool for trade
facilitation, and presented a case study on the Poland Ministry of Finance.
In order to gain membership into the European Union, Poland had to
enhance its customs processes. The Government of Poland had to ensure
control, detect fraud, and facilitate free movement of goods. The solution
was to build one integrated Customs and Tax system through an XML
based customs gateway. The results were positive and beneficial. This
electronic system improved cross border security while facilitating legitimate
trade, eliminated paper based processes, reduced processing time from
15 to 2 minutes, with 20 per cent fewer errors by eliminating multiple data
entry. A second example of an e-government system that facilitates trade is
UNeDocs (United Nations electronic trade documents), an electronic trading
system. According to projections by the World Bank, UneDocs are expected
to increase intra-APEC (Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation) trade
by US$ 250 billion, and on average, APEC countries can expect a 4.3 per
cent increase in per capita gross domestic product (GDP).
The Australian tax office system is a third example in which ICT
provided a solution to facilitate trade and business among small and
medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). In Australia, SMEs had a heavy administrative
burden because they had to deal with multiple agencies at all levels
of government. The solution was to implement an XML system in which
the Australian Business Registry (ABR) could interoperate with all federal,
state, and local agencies that serve and regulate the business community. In
Spain, ICT played a significant role in bolstering economic growth in the
tourism sector, and facilitating business procedures for SMEs. The government
of Spain created a single Spanish tourism portal in which ‘Content
Factory’ aggregates information and services from public and private sectors
using XML Web services. It quantified, coordinated, and personalised
tourist information in nine languages and multi-media formats. Lastly,
Mr.Kushner referred to the Bhoomi project in India. In this successful
project, information kiosks deployed in the state’s 177 subdistricts provided
6.7 million farmers with instant access to 20 million land records spread
over 27,000 villages. The benefits of this system were numerous and
included: exploitation of the farmer was prevented, land records were
accurate and instantly accessible, time waiting for change requests was
decreased, and private sector received data for marketing farm products.
Mr. Kushner then introduced the various programmes that Microsoft
provides to bridge the digital divide, which include Partners in Learning,
Unlimited Potential, and Technology Innovation. Partners in Learning and
Unlimited Potential aim to improve technology access and training in the
community and classroom. Mr. Kushner emphasized that education and
training is about making e-government citizen-centric. Technology Innovation
refers to the various technologies that Microsoft is developing at the