Electronic Government as a guided evolution in Singapore: Vision for the world in the 21st century

Abstract

Most of the e-Government initiatives around the world have often been sporadic and unsystematic. "Technological thrust" rather than a "citizen orientation" has been the driving force for most of these initiatives. Singapore is one of the few nations where the e-Government was recognized as a strategy for growth very early. Continuous planning and monitoring of the nation's e-Government initiative has yielded rich dividends and today, Singapore is one of the most advanced countries in the world in terms of e-Government. Tracing the e-Government evolution in Singapore, through its three phases, reveals the inadequacy of the 'sequential evolutionary models' in explaining the e-Government evolutionary process. The e-Government initiatives in Singapore were taken as an opportunity to reengineer the government processes, procedures and systems so as to provide enhanced value to the citizens. Singapore's effective resource management strategy is the key to its e-Government success. Unlike many other nations, Singapore did not focus only on exploiting its scarce 'tangible' resources but went about in an organized way to develop complementary 'tangible and intangible' resources. This strategy, guided by the vision of developing Singapore into a world class Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) exploiter, helped Singapore develop a successful e-Government. This case study provides insights to the other nations for planning their e-Government efforts through the lessons learned from the Singapore experience. An extensible and flexible infrastructure, leadership vision and support, stress on handling change management and bridging the digital divide, an effort towards developing trust in e-Government and having a sound legal framework have enabled Singapore to have one of the most advanced e-Government systems in the world. To overcome the problem of allocating limited ICT and financial resources, the study proposes a value-grid for prioritizing the e-Government activities for a greater impact. The Singapore e-Government case study helps researchers and practitioners better understand the evolution of a successful e-Government system. Such an understanding serves as a vision for the countries around the world to formulate better strategies and policies for facilitating their evolution towards to an integrated e-Government in the 21st century.