A somewhat insightful post from one who should know comes to us from Singapore via Oklahoma. Mei Lin Fung blogs on evidence-based Customer Experience Management, employing her learning in Asia and the USA. I last considered Singapore in June 2010 as the Island of Dreams.
Mei Lin proposes, from her knowledge, that transformational government only succeeds if many things, including the practices of previous decades, are changed at the same time in order for the new technologies to make a positive difference for the citizen. She also describes Singapore’s approach as having moved on from “Government knows best” to a new “Gov-with-you” one. However, when she promotes the amount spent by Singapore on its initiatives, whilst stating how much it would be per citizen in the U.S. she fails to give the actual figure spent, I suspect a federated government, as in the USA, may make it more difficult to calculate and deliver compared with Singapore’s central control.
Mei Lin also states that a key strategy is to employ the social media channels like Twitter, YouTube and Facebook to engage with citizens, which again may be easier with Singapore’s smaller population, compactness and ‘hybrid’ democracy unlike the many-layered democracies of the west.
The key message from Mei Lin is that e-government requires a shared vision with all the stakeholders and that whilst developing it is a challenge, it can be rewarding.
The Great E-mancipator 