E-government construction has become a hot cake on China's IT
market on the heels of e-business, for it brings incomes to IT
enterprises and improved efficiency to government departments, as
learned from a seminar on e-administration strategy recently held
in Beijing.
Currently 95 percent of China's IT service suppliers are losing
money and almost all of them are eager to grab a share out of the
expectable over hundred million yuan budget for e-government across
the country, analysts said.
A rising market
Now the Chinese government is bending on three measures for online
administration, according to Yang Xueshan, an information official
with the State Council.
The first is to construct two unified platforms: the internal
network to handle government affairs at all levels and the external
web to handle businesses in connection with enterprises, public
services and affairs between governments.
The second is to promote 12 key services involving customs,
taxation, finance, public security, social security, and
agriculture and water resources. The third is to accelerate
establishment of important databank such as on population and
agricultural information.
The flourishing of e-business put transaction costs under control
and expanded the huge market of online consumption, while the
following e-government will not only increase government efficiency
and transparency but also help control prices and prevent
embezzlement and deals behind the scenes, said Yang. Through
information technology governments will be able to handle affairs
coordinately and share resources, and promote open, high-efficiency
administration in accordance with law as well as speed up
informationization of the society as a whole.
As
reported, the US finished its e-government plan in 2001, demanding
federal departments to entirely realize online administration in
2003 at the latest. In Britain 60 percent government departments
have opened or are constructing their websites. Japan planned to
deal with various government businesses by the year 2003 and
Singapore could provide over 200 items of services by last July
whereas Hong Kong aimed at offering online choice for 90 percent
public service items suitable for being logged on the Internet.
The core business pattern of e-business was transformed into online
government purchasing. Departments involving trade, finance, public
health, medicine supervision and logistics all promoted online
purchasing in the year 2001, and large state-owned enterprises on
steel and automobile, as well as medical system of certain
provinces and cities as Shandong, Guangzhou, Hunan and Shanghai are
all on the track of online purchasing.
Fierce competition
The fund for e-administration construction will be mainly covered
by governments both at central and provincial levels and
enterprises are not shun out. The investment by central government
alone is reportedly standing at least over 1 billion-yuan, the
figure being unimaginably huge if extended to provinces, cities, or
even communities.
On
the market of government purchasing, fierce competition is staged
among excellent software producers from both home and abroad. When
the Beijing Municipal Government purchased copyright software
through public bidding, including operation system and those for
office use and anti-virus, almost all bid-winners were domestic
companies. Some competitive domestic software producers have come
to know the good of the e-government and they will stick to it more
closely along with the deepening of the construction.
Whether a developing country could make good use of the
technological gap with developed countries to speed up its economy
depends on its correct strategy, as experts pointed out. On the
China e-government technology and application seminar scheduled on
December 10, experts from government, academic and business circles
will gather in Beijing to discuss strategy on the nation's
e-government construction and development and seek as well for new
business opportunities.
( September 24, 2002)