E- Government : A Sure way to Reduce Corruption and Improve Efficiency In Public Service Delivery In Ghana

INTRODUCTION

The traditional role of government services is basically to be able to deliver public services to its citizens by way of interaction with the private sector for effective development. The advent of the digital economy with the internet as its main enabler has had an effect on the way government should interact with citizens (individual and corporate) as well as between its various agencies. Once the citizens are moving into the new electronic platform (online), government must do well to “get involved” or “be left behind”. It is more of a strategic necessity for government to find the best way to still deliver these public services in this digital revolution and “borderless environment”.

OFFLINE PUBLIC SERVICE DELIVERY (PSD)

The offline PSD is through channels such as office visits (face-to-face or facilitation counter), postal (letters) and citizen grievance redress forums. Government is organised by way of Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) with a bureaucratic model where each MDA seem to have its own structures and processes even though operationally there seem to exist common shared work practices and information requirement. Though the MDAs together hold vast important and useful information there seem to be data redundancy with little or no connectivity between them with respect to sharing this rich information to collectively and seamlessly as government’s machinery deliver a par excellence public service to its citizens whilst achieving the needed efficiency and effectiveness in their operations. Clearing a car from the Tema port and registering it may require visits to may be three of such MDAs who require basically the same personal and vehicle information. This requires personal visits to each of these agencies with countless offices not forgetting tables within the offices. You may be lucky to find whoever is to do you the “favour” of working on your documents and if you do the person is artificially busy with so many files that you see him/her walking past you going for lunch. When he/she will be back you never know. At this point no one is really asking for “facilitation fees” but you are also an employee somewhere and just asked for 2 days off to clear and register your car. What is the way forward at this point? “Won telle wua”. The offline arrangement you will agree with me is noted to be fraught with:

• Administrative corruption (deliberate denial of service, collusion for personal gains)

• Low productivity and resource mismanagement
• High cost of delivery to the rural poor

E-GOVERNMENT  AND PUBLIC SERVICE DELIVERY (PSD)

Is there a way to be more efficient and effective as well as improve service quality?. Yes there is and it requires putting in place a virtual system with no offices, no tables, no physical files and elimination of “facilitation fees”. E-Government is basically “the use of information and communication technology in public administrations combined with organisational change and new skills in order to improve public services and democratic processes and strengthen support to public policies” (Europe’s Information Society 2004).  E-government has the transformational effect of mitigating corrupt practices noted in traditional offline public service delivery.

Can you imagine a situation where you do not have to fill any form since your personal and vehicle information has already been uploaded into a system from the shipping details which can be accessed by port authorities, CEPS, DVLA and yourself for which you can make online tax payments by any form of e-card, e-money or digital money. You then print your collection note from your home, move to a section of Tema port, sign a few pre-printed forms to collect your car which has also been registered and drive off. Well off course you will be faced with a last table for someone to do you a “favour” with may be a little “facilitation fee” but not as before and you would still be productive at work. E-government is therefore expected to amongst others improve upon PSD by way of:

·         Improved transparency with respect information availability and sharing leading to less corruption.

·         Faster processing of requests leading to efficiency in both the operations of government and the private sector.

·         Less corruption by way of removal of unnecessary middlemen/management layers in delivery of public service

·         Administrative cost reduction in terms of delays in delivery and processing time

·         More accountability by way of information being readily available to the general public

SOME CASE STUDIES

There have been enormous benefits by governments that have been able to adopt and diffuse e-government. A few examples are:

·         In Canada an online transaction costs less than Can$1 whereas an in-person transaction costs Can$44. The online return of tax forms has allowed 1,350 staff to be redeployed. Also, 300-450 online forms can be issued in the 15 minutes it takes to create 1 paper form.

·         In Ireland, registration of a birth automatically triggers registration for a public service number and child benefits.

·         In Australia, the time it takes for a company to reconcile its tax return has fallen from 2 weeks to 3 hours due to the availability of online information and reports.

·         In Singapore, it is possible to gain all of the necessary licenses for a new business from one site after filling in one form.

In Ghana, the most successful acclaimed project I can think of is the Ghana Trade-Net and Customs Management System (GCNET) for processing all trade and customs operations electronically. The system networks all the parties that facilitate or report on trade and customs such as the banks, internal revenue service, shipping lines, freight forwarders, traders and regulatory agencies. Among the benefits of GCNET is said to be:

·         Increase in custom revenues by 49% in the first 18 months

·         Reduction in customs clearance from 6 days to 4 hours at the Accra airport

·         Accurate and real-time reporting of various reports and statistics

·         Systematic monitoring and tracking of consignments from port to destination

CHANGE MANAGEMENT ISSUES

For E-government to have any impact on PSD as shown in some examples above, it needs to be approached from a consumer/customer-centric point of view for full acceptance and participation by the public. As indicated in a UK report :

“…there is no use in having functions that no one uses. That is comparable to buying an exercise bike that is never taken out of the box: you might feel better for buying it but you do not get any fitter unless you actually use it. And this is the key problem: e-government is full of potential benefits, but they will not be realized until government and the public at large begin to participate more fully”. (Rewiring Democracy: Better e-government for the UK)

Can you imagine the “wahala” it will cause in removing all the middlemen who hitherto were involved in the clearing and registration of your car? Do you know the hardship it will bring to the direct family beneficiaries of the “facilitation fees”? Do you know the unemployment pressures it will bring on governments who want to be re-elected? It needs political will.

The resistance to change must not be underestimated by the mere fact of the benefits it may bring to us as a people. This is a collective effort by all of us to have an e-attitude and a complete organisation development approach is needed for this complete paradigm shift of the way we are going to live. The consumer must be able and willing to take the “exercise bike out of the box to use it”

CONCLUSION

E-government is therefore an attempt by government to develop what I will call an e-relationship and e-management/governance model to effectively and efficiently continue to still provide those offline services in this new market place that exist on the internet.  The next generation will be e-citizens who would only want to do business with government electronically once the private sector is offering especially financial services and commerce on a digital platform. This will not be negotiable and will require a seamless crossover between the private sector and government on the digital platform

There is the tendency for government cost of doing business to reduce taking the analogy that it cost USD8.00 to process an airline ticket through a travel agent but USD1.00 if an e-ticket is booked directly with the airline. It has also been estimated that paper documentation and handling cost which is about 10% of total cost of goods can be reduced by 50% when this is handled electronically. This cannot be ignored by any government wishing to take advantage of such efficiency in operations. The future e-citizen will require a two way communication process with possibility of one-to-one personalised G2C(Government-to-Citizen) relationship where citizens can be an integral part of the government policy and decision making

The oil find for which we seem to be over concentrating our attention is just a resource but the digital platform will be a way of life that if not taken serious by government will bring public sector delivery  to a halt. The future generation will not forgive us.