Introduction
This paper analyzes the e-governance strategy employed by Thailand in the late 90s and presents the e-governance strategy of the United States of America. The purpose of the paper, however, is to contrast and compares these strategies to identify the differences and similarities between the two highlighted e-governance strategies employed by the countries of diverse characteristics, different macro, and micro-level environments, and government conditions/ regulation.
Lessons Learnt from Thailand’s e-governance Strategy
The lessons that were learned from the e-governance strategy of Thailand as depicted in the case pertaining to the approach taken by the government to establish e-governance as well as the formation of the IT projects. The lessons depict that in a diverse state like Thailand where individuals, as well as freelance parties, tend to create IT-based systems and take on IT projects, there tend to be discrepancies in the procedures and the quality standards. No standards for operation are established which leads to a messy approach towards establishing e-governance due to the incompatibility of systems and procedures. As a result, it is important to nationalize or centralize the e-governance initiative where the individual IT project managers and the project undertaking authorities are combines under one roof of the national organization/ authority which regulates are the IT projects and e-governance initiatives. This makes way for the establishment of standards, mandating equipment, power as well as hardware and software requirement which decreases the compatibility issues and allows the different initiatives to be integrated to form a platform for successful e-government.
The case also provides the centralized structure of the e-governance implementing and regulating approach allows for better standardization as well as better management of the IT-based projects enabling for a problem-free integration at the later stages. However, the independent parties are encouraged to take on IT projects which can support and strengthen e-governance as they provide extensive avenues for innovation and research which are not normally considered under the centralized e-governance strategy.
United States e-governance Strategy
The e-governance initiative was taken in the United States in the 1980s with the commencement of rules and regulations as per the government and the legal bodies being posted on the internet. In the 90s however, the top 500 forms used by the citizens were made available on the internet as part of the US e-governance strategy. The strategy and vision behind the establishment of the e-governance strategy for the US pertained to the provision for a citizen-centered government that is result-oriented, the base does the market promoting innovation as well as making things easy and accessible for the citizens of the US.
The lessons that have been learned from the US e-governance strategy are that the government of the federal government in the US is able to improve its customer service by focusing on high payoff projects which tend to integrate the operations of the agency as well as those of the IT investment bodies by reducing the inefficiencies, the redundancies and the spending on corrective action “The E-Government Task Force identified significant federal performance problems that could be addressed by E-Government and E-Business concepts. The Task Force’s analysis found that redundant and overlapping agency activities have been major impediments to creating a citizen-centred electronic government.” (‘E-Government Strategy: Implementing the President’s Management Agenda for E-Government Simplified Delivery of Services to Citizens’, 2002) The barriers that needed to be mitigated pertained to culture, architecture as well as the resistance put forward by the stakeholders. The initiative for the US e-governance strategy focused on providing new opportunities for the further development of the e-governance based projects and their extension to the homeland security the social services sector in the US, the banking industry as well as to support the economy.
Criticism and Contrast
Through the analysis of the e-governance initiatives taken on by the two countries Thailand and the United States, it has been observed that the initiative by the United States is broader in scope and more technologically advanced in terms of its application as compared to that of Thailand e-governance initiative. This is mainly because of the mature nation of the initiative and the availability of technical expertise in the region as well as the establishment of an already extensively documented economy and government. The approach taken for establishing the e-governance in the two regions depicted that the strategy for Thailand focused on implementing IT infrastructure and projects to support the government, while in the United States the It projects and technology was being used to make the government more efficient, reduce its costs and expenses as well as make it more accessible to the customers. The diffusion of the beauracratic governments is the target of the United States e-governance initiative while the one in Thailand supports bureaucracy with the centralization approach and the management of the projects and independent initiative for the development of IT and e-governance projects.
The United States takes a keen interest in taking on the support and the contribution provided by the private sector for their e-governance strategy however the e-governance strategy for Thailand depicts the country as more centralized with a nationalized e-governance approach where government-based initiatives are more focused upon. This difference is primarily due to the different characteristics of the two countries and the availability of technological resources and the scope of their initiatives.
References
(2002), E-Government Strategy: Implementing the President’s Management Agenda for E-Government Simplified Delivery of Services to Citizens, Executive Office of the President Office Of Management and Budget, 2008. Web.
(2005), State and Federal E-Government in the United States, Princeton University Press, 2008. Web.
Seifert, J. W. and Chung, J., (2005), Comparing E-Government in the United States and China: Mobilizing Democracy or Empowering Government, 2008. Web.
Wanchai, V., Vatcharaporn E., The Development of Electronic Government: A Case Study of Thailand, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg, EGOV 2003, LNCS 2739, pp. 464–467.