E-Government 2.0
McKinsey Quarterly has an excellent article on how the government needs to adapt to meet users’ needs online.
The article identifies areas which have stunted the growth of government online initiatives:
In our experience, three obstacles have, however, limited the impact of e-government efforts: ineffective governance, lack of Web-related capabilities, and reluctance to allow user participation in the creation of applications and content.
And solutions on how e-government initiatives should be carried out:
First, they must move to a governance model in which e-government initiatives are owned by “line of business” executives and supported by a dedicated, cross-functional team. Second, they must develop capabilities in critical areas such as marketing, usability, Web analytics, and customer insights. Finally, government agencies must shift mind-sets to proactively get citizens, businesses, and other agencies involved in contributing or creating applications and content.
In Korea, many of the government’s initiatives are focused on making the interface with the government more effective. Not in the grand schemes of building policy awareness or public participation in government, but in the mundane, such as getting records, filing taxes or getting a license renewed. They were pretty smart in tackling these mind-numbingly boring tasks. When front line tasks such as these are made easy, one’s perception of the effectiveness of government does indeed increase. At least I felt so at the time.
