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

Public key infrastructure initiatives for e-Asia
At first, he discussed the fundamentals of e-government. A defining
feature of e-government is its contribution to the national innovation
system. He explained that e-government can be analyzed in terms of
supplier and consumer. When the supplier and the consumer meet in
cyberspace, it impacts government innovation. From the viewpoint of the
supplier we need to enhance private public partnerships, and from the
consumer’s viewpoint we need to create an uncomplicated interface for the
citizen. E-government is multifaceted and entails the following: Government-to-Business
transactions (G2B), Government-to-Citizen (G2C), Government-to-Government
(G2G), as well as, Business-to-Business (B2B), and
Business-to-Citizen (B2C). Mr. Hwangbo emphasized the significance of the
OECD’s 10 Guiding Principles for Successful E-government, and stated that
these principles should be followed when designing e-government
programmes. Mr. Hwangbo said that although e-government offers many
benefits, it also poses many challenges for the users and providers. A
leading challenge is the infringement of privacy and security. The United
States, European countries and the Republic of Korea have addressed this
challenge and have already been operating government public key infrastructure
to ensure confidentiality, authentication, and integrity. The PKI is
a fundamental to e-government because it provides a security infrastructure
that enables government, citizens, and the private sector to conduct transactions
online. Mr. Hwangbo gave the example of the Korean e-government.
He said that the Korean government had successfully accomplished 11 egovernment
projects and 31 projects of participatory e-government. Services
are effectively provided by the Korean e-government system because it is
comprised of ubiquitous computing which allows the consumer to access
the computer system at any time and from any place.
Mr. Hwangbo introduced the topic of PKI initiatives by indicating
that although e-commerce offers numerous advantages, payment by credit
card presents a dilemma. He said that credit card payments are risky
because the customer’s private financial information is not kept confidential,
and can easily lead to crime. Therefore, identification, authentication,
and authorization are critical issues. Identification can be defined as identifying
who you are. Authentication means whether your identification is
true, and authorization allows the transactions to be performed. Mr.
Hwangbo stated that it is easy to identify and authenticate the person who
conducts transactions in a store. However, over the Internet, the person
behind the transaction is not directly identifiable. In the process of identification
and authentication, several methods can be employed. However, each
method has obstacles or limitations (figure 7).
Mr. Hwangbo explained that identification and authentication methods
range from simple methods such as user names and password, to PKI
which allows the agency to verify user identity. PKI can be said to be the
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