Mahmood & Shafique -Part 3
Electronic government - continued
The EGD project assesses the needs of departments and ministries. It started with only the electronic workings of the departments but it will later be extended to provide online services to the public such as government forms, tax filing processes, healthcare applications, training and education 1Yaseen, 2006).
In April 2005, the"E-Government Strategy and 5 Year Plan" document prepared by EGD was approved by the National E-Government Council and then later in June 2005 was endorsed by the Federal Cabinet. The strategy proposed for the first five years has the following salient features that are to be run in parallel wherever possible for an accelerated implementation:
- Basic Infrastructure& mdash; Deploy the basic infrastructure to all government agencies. This includes PCs, an intra-ministry network, office automation software, and intra-ministerial communication. All government agencies are to be connected to the Federal Government Data Center for inter-ministerial communications and Internet and intranet services.
- Common Applications — A portfolio of applications that are common to many or all divisions has been identified. These are internal communication, human resources, budget, project management, document/file management, and collaboration. These are to be implemented first by the Ministry of IT, stabilized there and then rolled out to all other divisions.
- Agency — Specific Applications & E-Services for Citizens - Every division is to identify high-impact processes for the agency and to provide services to citizens electronically. This is then to be implemented through the support of the Electronic Government Directorate but with ownership lying with the respective agency.
- Standards - An EGD Framework is under development and will be made accessible for all E-Government projects so that reference architectures, standard methodology, best practices and lessons learned are leveraged at all projects.
- Enabling Environment
- Federal Government — Top-level leadership is to be provided by the National Electronic Government Council (NEGC), chaired by the Prime Minister. The NEGC will meet quarterly to review the progress of the implementation of E-Government. Necessary changes in legislation, rules and regulations need to be identified and made.
- Agencies — These will take on ownership and implement their - Government program with the support of EGD. Training will be made mandatory for all employees of Grade BPS- 5 and above. An awareness campaign will be started for all employees and citizens.
- Electronic Government Directorate — The EGD should be made an attached department of the Ministry of IT to grant it organizational and financial autonomy to remove unnecessary procedural delays (Pakistan, Ministry of Information Technology. Electronic Government Directorate, 2005).