Efficiency in public service -- the long road ahead

By Allan Tan | Mar 29, 2010

A common theme among business leaders today is the need to control expenses given the near constant underpinnings of weak markets and the speed with which economies can fall. The impact of such global events on governments is less visible beyond the issues around fiscal budgets and monetary spending policies.

The Internet and employee empowerment are beginning to show their effects on the general public. The post Baby Boomer populations are more vocal and are not afraid to engage their governments on healthy debate around efficiency and accountability.

In 2009, EMC sponsored a research survey of three Southeast Asian governments around the topic of operational efficiency and the metrics used to determine the extent to which government organizations are meeting their service pledges.

I spoke to Ron Goh, president of EMC Southeast Asia, to discuss his interpretations of the results of that survey. What follows are excerpts of the discussion.

In a recession, do government IT organizations face similar pressures as their private sector counterpart?

Ron Goh

Ron Goh: The pressures and challenges in government IT organizations are distinct from the private sector.

For the private sector, the challenge is that IT budgets are usually frozen or cut during a recession. The mantra of “doing more with less” still resonates in the minds of many business decision makers even as the economy was bottoming out. Justifying return-on-investment has become increasingly difficult, and companies are finding it harder to build a business case for additional technology spending.

For IT executives in the public sector, they’re still required to deliver efficient and effective processes that are aligned with business priorities. We’ve noticed that governments are still spending on IT – albeit still cautiously and slowly – because they need to continue delivering high level of services to citizens even in a downturn.

Q: How extensive/pervasive is the use of the Internet to collaborate either internally or externally? What are the intentions for collaborating?

Ron Goh: The report revealed differing patterns among the three countries surveyed when it comes to delivering services online. Malaysian government executives delivered fewer of their services online, while Thai officials did the most and those from Singapore were in between. Overall, the predominant response was that 0-25% of business systems were delivered through online or eCommerce channels.

The report noted that government organizations with more than 1,000 staff reported that a higher proportion of their business systems are delivered online.  Also, organizations with the smallest budgets of US$1 million or less per year have the least percentage of their business systems delivered online.

What this means is that there is much greater potential in South East Asia for public sector officials to deliver more government services via the Internet. Today, more and more citizens are going online as they see the benefit of being able to undertake more transactions in one sitting. For government organizations, it helps them reduce the need for brick and mortar centers to serve the public and the associated resources to support them.