E-Government

In Tuesday’s Montreal Gazette, an interesting article discusses the topic of e-government; they termed it as ‘e-democracy’ and go on to explain how the Internet can play a large part in a citizen’s participation in government. Integrated service delivery (ISD) is an interface through which citizens can conduct transactions on the Internet. BizPal is a Canadian ISD developed to help small and medium businesses complete forms and submit documents via the Internet.

So what does this mean to citizens and businesses? Three key benefits can clearly be identified: time, money, and accuracy. If the service time of completing a process for the government can be greatly reduced, it translates into a happier customer (or in this case – citizen). Secondly it is shown that costs incurred by the government are greatly reduced – face-to-face transactions are about $44, mail/fax are $38, telephone are $8, and online just over $1! Finally it is also shown that human errors are greatly reduced when submitting online. A vital element that wasn’t discussed is the user friendliness of these services. ISDs must offer an incredibly easy interface; if not, time, costs, and errors could once again increase causing an unhappy citizen.

The important issue of security was overlooked by the article – and should not be taken lightly. As traffic increases with these services, there will be millions of documents being transmitted electronically. This poses a huge opportunity for hackers. Sensitive material such as birth certificates, marriage licenses, social insurance numbers, and more are at risk of being stolen. Before governments get ahead of themselves with offering services to better facilitate processes, they must have a firm grip on security issues.