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May 14, 2004
Doing More E-Government with Less
Dr. Ali Abbasov, ICT Minister for the Republic of Azerbaijan, began the plenary session on e-government. "There are two billion poor people in the world, two billion that do not have access to electricity," he said. "Poverty is the reason of the ill development of ICT and other infrastructures." He discussed the potential of ICTs as a tool for reducing corruption and increasing good government. "People need to know what governments do with their money and their national resources," he continued, and e-government can be a strategy for doing this. "Now the main challenge is how to accelerate ICT for development in poor countries and address regional digital divides."
Diana Voicu of Romania's ICT ministry discussed the challenge of achieving high-performance e-government with scarce resources. "Technology doesn't replace good management, but good government management requires technology," she began. "We had a vision that ICT is the driver of economic growth. ICT could not only contribute, but could also help achieve the best results for the common citizen."
"By using the new technologies government will better fulfill its obligations towards the citizens: provide better education, social protection, promote economic growth," she continued. The government first launched its digital reform program in 2001, starting with 40 e-government projects, four of which were deployed at the national level. This implementation was done in conjunction with legislation reform addressing privacy protection, digital signatures, copyright and e-commerce. After contracting with vendors like Microsoft, the Romanian government successfully deployed a national e-government portal that was honored as one of the best e-gov sites in last year's World Summit Awards program.
Posted by acarvin at May 14, 2004 12:13 AM
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