Government leaders across the world are focusing on expanding public-private partnerships and adopting `e-government' technologies as they negotiate strategies to redefine government roles and responsibilities, says a KPMG International study of governments across the world.
"Government leaders are at a pivotal point in determining their governments' future as they make strategic decisions on technology, responsibilities and core services. Technology is playing a driving role in enabling governments worldwide to develop new options and facilitate coordination of agencies and private providers to make service delivery more user-friendly," said Patricia Faulkner, leader of KPMG Australia's Public Sector Practice and a member of the firm's Global Government Expert Group.
"Governments are now entering a brave new phase, from pre-invention and re-invention of the past decade to `e-invention' with technology at the forefront. Governments are responding to more demanding expectations from customers - citizens, employees, businesses and other levels of government - and they are achieving this through innovative public management," Amit Pandurangi, executive director and head of infrastructure & government advisory practice, KPMG India said.
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"What we are now seeing are alliances or joint ventures, such as private financial initiatives, that reflect a greater level of sophistication. Although core services and roles vary, the government officials are searching for new and better ways to develop public-private partnerships," he added.
Many national governments have set specific targets to have all appropriate services on line by a certain date. In Australia, the national government target is the year 2001. The Blair government has set a target of 25 per cent of all services online by 2002, the study says.
The state and local government leaders clearly reported a stronger commitment to technology investments and performing functions electronically than did national leaders. "Arguably, this reflects a difference in mission-with state and local governments focused on delivering services and interfacing directly with citizens, while national governments are concerned with policy and security issues," Faulkner said.
The local government agencies made marginally higher investments than their provincial or state colleagues and a substantially higher investment national counterparts in payment and access technologies to deal with their citizens.