Central Government, Policy

Building e-government in Macao

By Alice Kok | 30 September 2008

A major e-governance initiative undertaken by the Macao Government (MSARG) in collaboration with the United Nations University International Institute for Software Technology (UNU-IIST) through its Centre for Electronic Governance, and major local institutions, the e-Macao initiative aims to build a sustainable foundation for the effective use of ICT by government agencies. This will be reflected in the production and delivery of public services, and the modernisation of the Macao SAR Public Administration.

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• FEATURE

Relying on the outcome of its first phase (May 2004 – June 2006) which focused on integrated human and institutional capability building, the second phase (January 2007 – December 2009) executes specific e-government projects with individual agencies to develop specific capabilities, produce tools, develop processes for strengthening ICT coordination across the whole-of-government, and build technical infrastructure.

MSARG has since 2000 continued to prioritise the modernisation and reform of its internal government management and transformation of its public service delivery machinery, as stated in the Public Sector Reform in Macao after Handover.

As part of this effort, the e-Macao Project was proposed and jointly developed between MSARG, UNU-IIST and local institutions initially involving University of Macao (UM) and Instituto de Engenharia de Sistemas e Computadores de Macau (INESC-Macau) and later, Macao University of Science and Technology (MUST) and Macao Polytechnic Institute (MPI). In both phases of the e-Macao initiative, UNU-IIST played leadership roles in terms of coordination as well as technical direction on training, technical development and research activities.

UNU-IIST Centre for Electronic Governance (UNU-IIST-EGOV) has contributed 11 projects to the e-Macao Programme and plays a strategic role in the management of the overall programme. The organisation works in partnership with institutions from developing countries, as well international and UN organisations.

The first phase of the initiative, known as e-Macao Project, focused on survey and assessment to establish the state of e-government readiness of the government as a whole, and extensive training of public officers in technical and managerial aspects of e-government. Outputs from the first phase of the project include policy recommendations to guide the development of e-government in Macao and the design of the next phase of the e-Macao initiative.

The second phase of the project, which is ongoing, focuses on both agency-centric and government-wide projects managed as a single programme termed e-Macao Programme to provide mature electronic public services which delivers concrete benefits to the public as well as to government agencies themselves.

The e-Macao project The objectives of the first phase of the e-Macao initiative first focused on the readiness assessment of the state of electronic government in Macao.

The basis of this assessment is the need to determine urgent areas of intervention. Towards this objective, 44 government agencies were survey and studied in terms of their mission, programmes, services, administrative and business processes, available human, technical and financial resources, and present challenges and perceptions towards e-government.

A major outcome of the survey activity from the first phase is a comprehensive report on the state of readiness of the surveyed agencies, identification of common needs and recommendations of specific policies to address such needs.

Macao however, has a lack of requisite skills and experience in e-government. Hence the project aimed to develop a pool of self-motivated and highly skilled public personnel in both managerial and technical aspects of e-government to champion the implementation of projects at the different agencies.

We trained over 200 personnel including IT managers and technical staff over 13 months in several batches. A major outcome of the training activity is the availability of a set of IT personnel across 44 public agencies with a common set of skills for specifying, designing and implementing electronic public services and their supporting software infrastructure.

A major goal of the first phase of the project was learning, particularly in terms of how e-services could be developed in a highly scalable way, noting the commonalities and the peculiarities of public services. The technical focus of the project was largely on middleware support for e-services whether G2C G2B or G2G.

Software development activity produced three prototype e-services and a software infrastructure consisting of e-service development framework, business process management service, messaging service and infrastructure management service.

A feature of the initiative in general is integration between research and other activities. Research provides problem solving and innovation capability to other projects and the opportunity to share results and experiences from the initiative with local and global e-government communities.

The first phase of the project produced many publications and presentations at major international e-government conferences. The initiative sought major international experts (through international meetings and conferences) from leading e-government nations to share their experience with MSARG personnel.

A continuous drive to raise the awareness of both agency leadership and staff was considered critical for the success of the initiative. Towards this, several seminars were organised on various aspects of e-government—from general introduction to specialized aspects. About 15 seminars and six workshops were organised to discuss project results and implications for agencies.

The e-Macao Programme The Second Phase, building on the foundation established by the e-Macao Project, aims to raise the maturity of e-Government in Macao through a well-planned framework of projects to further improve the application of IT by MSARG and its agencies. The programme focuses on cross-agency, government-wide initiatives spanning technical, managerial, organisational and human aspects of technology use in the public sector.

The implementation of the Macao e-Government Programme (2005-2009) needed support by prioritising projects which directly support the policies and initiatives specified in the programme. Also, cross–agency collaboration raises the level of collaboration among government agencies in Macao on the development and application of technology in the joint delivery of services.

This facilitates the adoption of uniform, government-wide standards to guide the planning, development, application and management of technology in government. Two projects to develop standard processes for strategic IT planning and recommend suitable e-government standards have already been completed as part of the current phase of the initiative.

This phase of the initiative will continue to build software infrastructure for e-government in Macao. As part of this phase, a project to develop a Message gateway service for government agencies has also been completed.

The programme will provide specialised training and mentoring to relevant public officers to meet their specific project requirements. And following from the experience of the first phase of the initiative, a continued learning environment on technology will be facilitated use in government through seminars, workshops and conferences. UNU-IIST-EGOV will also assist the programme in establishing a Community of Practice or Interest on Electronic Government in Macao, for peer learning among agencies.

As is the case in the first phase, the programme will include research and development initiatives to explore and advance the frontiers of technology in government, and apply research results in practice. About 20 publications have been published in the second phase of the initiative by UNU-IIST-EGOV.

Lastly, the programme aims to promote Macao as one of regional leaders in research and practice on Electronic Government and technology in government in general. One of the projects of the programme – the Events project developed by UNU-IIST-EGOV, successfully organised the first edition of the International Conference on the Theory and Practice of Electronic Governance (ICEGOV2007) in Macao in December 2007 with over 200 attendees.

Deliverables and outcomes The initiative till date has produced several deliverables. Survey reports have been published—including the report on the state of e-Government in Macao, global survey of e-government and the survey of managerial and technical standards in Macao SAR. Several research papers have also been published in conference proceedings and as journal articles.

Policy recommendations have also been made based on survey or study results. For instance, recommendations based on local and global e-government surveys (first phase), survey of technical and managerial standards (second phase), and survey on adoption of e-government in Macao (second phase).

The project as a whole as provided us with detailed manuals specifying processes for specific activities such as strategic IT planning or strategic alignment. Toolkit and templates for strategic IT planning has been developed. Based on these toolkits and templates, IT Strategies for agencies have been developed. So far, three agencies have successfully developed their IT strategies. The IT strategy for MSARG as a whole is under development while the “e-Government – Public Administration Reform strategic alignment report” is under preparation.

Technical reports containing requirement specifications, architecture and design, implementation and deployment artifacts of the three prototype e-services, and the five software infrastructure elements developed in the first phase of the initiative are available. The development reports for the Strategy Management System and the Message Gateway service developed in the second phase of the initiative are also available.

We have developed software like source codes and demos of the e-services and infrastructure elements. These are freely available through our e-Macao programme portal.

Over 15 courses have been developed in the area of enterprise application development, foundations of e-government, and implementation of e-government. Some of these courses are already available as open courseware. In addition, there are several seminar and workshop presentations that are available as Open Educational Resources (OER).

Funding and Partners The first phase of the e-Macao initiative (e-Macao Project) was wholly funded by the Macao SARG government. The second phase of the e-Macao programme is funded by MSARG and partly by some partners. For instance UNU-IIST-EGOV’s contributions to the programme are jointly funded by the government and UNU-IIST.

The major partners of the initiative include Public Administration and Civil Services Bureau (SAFP), UNU-IIST-EGOV, University of Macao, Macao University of Science and Technology (MUST), Macao Polytechnic Institute (IPM), and INESC-Macau. Government agencies with project contributions to the programme are also the major partners in the programme.

Over time, it is envisaged that private sector organisations can directly contribute to the programme. Presently, private sector organisations and vendors work directly with government agencies.

Impact and Conclusions The e-Macao programme is in its second year of implementation with about 20 projects in its portfolio. Over 30 projects would have been implemented within the framework of the e-Macao programme by the end of 2009. Overall, the impact of the initiatives has continued to be felt by government agencies themselves in terms of their significantly increased technical capability in implementing e-government initiatives and understanding of the major organisational and management issues involved in e-government implementation.

Traditional barriers to communication and exchange between agencies have been lowered due to the long interaction between public officers from different agencies cooperating on the same projects in a learning environment created as part of the initiative.

In line with the vision of the initiative, trainees are now serving as champions and focal points at their agencies for e-government projects, and assisting in interfacing with other agencies on e-government issues. Yet another striking impact of the initiative is the emergence of self learning culture in government. After the first phase of the initiative, government agencies have initiated a number of seminars and other events.

Since most of the deliverables of the projects are in the open domain, the initiative as a whole is strongly contributing to global knowledge base in e-government, accessible to other countries or regions that require such valuable experience. This directly addresses the paucity of useful knowledge and resources from leading e-government nations with most of their e-government resources in the closed domain.

With emphasis in the past four years on strengthening the foundation and internal capacity of government agencies, the focus of the initiative is gradually shifting to generating direct benefits to the public by accelerating the provisioning of electronic public services through various channels.