Africa: How e-governance breaks bureaucracy

For many African governments, moves towards embracing e-governance have gone little beyond the opening of websites for state ministries and departments. But even where such websites exist, in many cases they contain little information of value to the public, and they do not in any fundamental way connect governments and citizens, as e-government aims to do. While information on the “who is who” in the ministry, its organisational structure and mission will often be abundantly available (though not necessarily updated), the average website will not have public service information, for instance on how to go about applying for a particular service, who the right office/ person to approach is, and where on the website to download and even electronically submit these application forms. For many African governments, moves towards embracing e-governance have gone little beyond the opening of websites for state ministries and departments. But even where such websites exist, in many cases they contain little information of value to the public, and they do not in any fundamental way connect governments and citizens, as e-government aims to do. While information on the “who is who” in the ministry, its organisational structure and mission will often be abundantly available (though not necessarily updated), the average website will not have public service information, for instance on how to go about applying for a particular service, who the right office/ person to approach is, and where on the website to download and even electronically submit these application forms. The reality in many African countries makes e-governance unattainable in the immediate term, and the main reasons have little to do with the lack of money to fund the roll-out of e-government programmes, or the need to fund other pressing priorities like providing access to safe drinking water or funding universal primary education. E-governance breaks bureaucracy and that is not desirable to many government workers. To many of them, bureaucracy means power and is also a source of side income for them. A person applying for a trading license may have to pay the person who dishes out the application forms, bribe the clerk to have their application stamped, and pay a string of other people just to get the application considered, let alone granted. This is an eating chain that e-governance would minimize. And the e-illiterate public servants seem best placed to recognise this. An article by Vincent Bagiire, published at Sunday Times (Kenya) on May 28, 2006.

http://www.timesnews.co.ke/28may06/editorials/comm2.html