E-government Master plan - 2005...

The e-government Master plan has been developed by Korean Industry Promotion Agency – KIPA of South Korea in agreement with the ICTA. An extensive survey on current situation of the ICT in governmental organizations has been conducted, followed by the development of the vision and strategy for e-government Master plan. As part of this initiative, the plan for implementation of the E-government program was developed outlining the timeframe and activities to be carried out.
The E-government Master plan has been developed with the vision to “Establish state policy and regulatory regime that provides favorable environment for development of government-legislation, economy-business, and citizen-society frameworks based on consideration of information and communication technology as a major accelerator to develop Mongolia in 21st century. ”
It has three major frameworks:
1) government-legislation framework,
2) business-economy framework and
3) human development framework.
Within each of these frameworks, 18 projects and 4 policies are required to be developed. Among those policies, there were government-to-citizens, government-to-business, government-to-government and infrastructure.
As part of the government-to-citizens policy, the strategies of providing on-line public service to citizens and diversification on service channel has been identified and the projects such as
1) government representative portal,
2) passport management system,
3) real estate registration system and
4) social insurance system have been identified to develop as separate projects.
Each of these projects along with the projects to be developed within framework of the other three policies have been described and specified in terms of objectives, scope, services, expected effects and considerations.
Of all above-mentioned projects and initiatives, the project on providing online public services through government representative portal based has been selected for detailed review and discussion.
The main reasons for selecting this particular project are that
1) it has some historic background to it and some lessons have been learnt and experiences gained from the previously implemented projects, such as public management information system and open-government website;
2) it is an opportunity for citizens to have easy access to government administration and receive government services using ICT;
3) in order to provide citizens with access to government administration and provide services to them using ICT, the project has to consider challenges for providing access to citizens and be able to serve any citizen, from any location, not depending on religion, gender or age as it is outlined in the Constitution of Mongolia. (Constitution of Mongolia, p.1)
All these reasons will be described later on, but special focus will be on the third reason – access to government administration and services using ICT by citizens. The government organizations are putting extensive efforts and hard work to make their information and services on-line. The example of this kind of initiative is the website of the Mongolian Taxation Authority . The website does not only have information about the taxation authority, but also have extensive list of services provided to citizens and organizations. Among this list is the downloadable soft copies of all taxation forms, which were available before only at the tax agents in printed form and which were requested to purchase from them. Now any business entity or individual can download those forms from this website, fill it out and bring it to the “one point of service” and submit it to the tax agent. It’s an extensive advancement in the use of the information and communications technology in government administration. However, only those who have access to Internet and its services can have access to this website and benefit from such services. According to survey conducted in 2003, there are only 50,000 users of Internet in Mongolia, which counts to around 4% of total population of Mongolia. The remaining part of population, who does not have this access, is left behind. One of the ways of addressing issue of access for this remaining part of the population is the Internet and information centers.
As it was described earlier, the citizens’ information and service centers were established in some aimag centers years ago and only few are operational currently. Moreover, even in existing centers, there is a limited use of those centers in accessing government information and services using ICT. The potential for development of government representative portal provides broader opportunities for citizens to have this access.
The government representative portal can be based on the experiences and knowledge gained from public management information system and open-government website initiatives. The open-government website has been an initiative of the Prime Minister in 2001 and has been setup with the purpose to “strengthen linkage between the private sector and public and to facilitate public contribution of opinions to state policies and laws” http://www.open-government.mn. The initial beneficiaries of the current initiative were private sector, so that they would have an opportunity to speak directly with the government officials and Prime Minister himself. Over the 5 years of its operation, the number of users has been steadily increasing, however, the majority of the users have became citizens, not business people as it was initially targeted to. The content of the website is managed by the office of the Prime Minister. The contact page has email of Prime Minister and staff, who are responsible for maintenance of the website, i.e. website manager and webmaster. All government organizations, agencies and institutions are involved in the activities of the website, especially those related to the forums, discussions and submissions to the draft laws. There is a working schedule of line Ministers, who are responsible for providing an overview of the website and reporting about it at the meeting of the Government, which is approved by the Prime Minister of Mongolia (please see Annex 3. Schedule of work at “open-government” website) As it can be seen, the working schedule is developed for 6 months. Since the open-government website is closely linked with the activities of line ministries, government agencies and institutions, it has an extensive list of linkages to websites of the government organizations, projects and initiatives. In turn, the link to the open-government website is available on each of the websites of the governmental organizations, including ministries, agencies, institutions and governor’s offices at aimag levels as well as on the websites of the non-governmental organizations, such as Open forum, MIDAS/MONITA NGO, Mongolian development gateway, etc. According to information available at the website of the Cabinet Secretariat of the Prime Minister’s office, at each of the government meeting, the line Ministers are expected to provide updates and information about their works at the open-government website, which is include in the agenda of the Government meeting. http://www.pmis.gov.mn/cabinet/index.php?news5
The public management information system in turn has also been expanding, since its startup in 1996. The website of the governmental organizations are now extended to include websites not only of the central government organizations and agencies, but also websites of the governor’s offices of 21 aimags along with information about the governor’s offices of 340 soums. The Cabinet secretariat as the main implementing agency for maintaining and regularly updating information on this website has been coordinating and cooperating with other government organizations, ministries, agencies, institutions and with donor and international organizations.
For about 10 years of its existence and operation, it has been visited by over 540,000 people, which counts down to over 4500 visitors per month, the number which is competing with the popular non-governmental sites such as http://www.olloo.mn, http://www.forum.mn, http://www.gateway.mn, etc. The easy access to websites of other government and state organizations, provide broader opportunities for searching necessary information, along with opportunity to receive on-line services from government organizations, which are troublesome to get otherwise. For example, the links to state and governmental organizations, such as Parliament http://www.parl.gov.mn, Presidency http://www.president.mn and Government facilitates the searching process and dismisses need of remembering addresses of every government organization. The fact that it is frequently visited, its content viewed and feedbacks are provided on regular basis indicates its popularity and attractiveness among different stakeholders. Still, there are few people who have access to Internet and these websites, could benefit from this information and services.