Why is government unable to reap the same benefits as business, which uses technology to lower costs? Selling new technology to governments has brought private contractors a bonanza of many tens of billions of dollars.
Although putting information on the web (call it “i-government”) has worked, “e-government” — using the interactivity and speed of the internet to provide public services — has so far mostly meant high costs and poor returns.
Governments have few direct rivals. Amazon.com must outdo other online booksellers to win readers' money. Google must beat Yahoo!. But if your country's tax-collection online offering is slow, or just plain dull, then tough.
Globalisation provides some substitute. In India, where things too often are still done in triplicate, Andhra Pradesh's pioneering eSeva system lets people pay their utility bills, transfer money, buy railway tickets and so on.
Bureaucrats plead that just a bit more time and money will fix the clunky monsters they have created. That kind of thinking has led to the botched computerisation in Britain's National Health Service, where billions of pounds and millions of precious hours are spent on a system that at best will be substandard.
Via Economist
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