In this century, information and communication technologies are playing an increasingly important role in the daily lives of people. Public expectations on governments grow with the development in information and communication technologies. Thus, governments are under pressure from globalization and public expectations. Governments are expected to be more responsive to public needs and to address public interest effectively with the usage of technology. Thus, Electronic Government initiative was launched to lead the country into the Information Age.
E-government refers to the use of ICTs that have the ability to transform relations with citizens, businesses, and other arms of government by government agencies (World bank). Therefore, there are four types of e-government services which are Government-to-Citizen (G2C), Government-to-Business (G2B), Government-to-Employee (G2E) and Government-to-Government (G2G). It involves the computerization of existing paper-based procedures where uses the free movement of information to overcome the physical bounds of traditional paper and physical based systems. Technologies like internets, telephone, fax, PDA, SMS text messaging, MMS, wireless networks and services, CCTV, smart cards are using in e-government to improve internal efficiency of government.
The objective of e-government is to a greater customer orientation in the delivery of service. E-government is focus on customer and it is citizen-centric. Besides that, e-government implemented to make structural changes in public administration to improve efficiency in government processes, effective decision making and more responsive to public needs. Besides that, e-government also aims for enhance accountability and discipline in public administration. E-government can improve the transparency and reduces the corruption in government.
E-Government seeks to improve the convenience, accessibility and quality of interaction with citizens and businesses; simultaneously, it will improve information flows and processes within government to improve the speed and quality of policy development, coordination and enforcement. Therefore, e-government has the capacity to transform public administration through the use of information and communication technologies into new ways of transacting business, new ways of listening to citizens and fulfilling public interest, new ways of delivering information and services.
Case study
You pay the taxes already? The topic is so hot at this moment where the deadlines of the report for taxes are around the corner which is 30 April 2010. The tax is the main revenue of government for every country and the Inland Revenue Board of Malaysia (IRBM) is one of the main revenue collecting agencies of the Ministry of Finance. The function of the board of IRBM is to act as agent of the Government and to provide services in administering, assessing, collecting and enforcing payment of income tax, petroleum income tax, real property gains tax, estate duty, stamp duties and such other taxes as may be agreed between the Government and the Board. Besides advise the Government on matters relating to taxation and to liaise with the appropriate Ministries and statutory bodies on such matters, it also participate in or outside Malaysia in respect of matters relating to taxation. The mission of IRBM is to provide taxation services with quality and integrity towards promoting voluntary compliance. Create and implement a fair and effective tax management system is the objective of the IRBM.
IRBM as the government agencies has taken initiatives to introduced online services, e-Hasil, a projects of Citizen-to-Government Project List aims to increase the ease and efficiency of public service to the people. It ready to handle high volumes of data, this online system can be accessed by taxpayers anytime, anywhere. Moreover, the user interface lets users quickly key in their details and get a summary of tax payable at the end of the process. Users also get immediate feedback once their submission has been delivered to IRB´s main system. There are many service that we can obtain from the e-Hasil, that is e-Filling, e-Bayaran, e-Daftar, kakulator PCB, e-data PCB, e-PCB, SMS, STAMPS, TAcF and e-Kemaskini.
What we are going to discuss now is how the e-Hasil helps public administration in delivering its primary function. Now, we are going to dedicate the function of public administration and analysis how it linked each others.
The functions of public administration
Public administration can be broadly described as the development, implementation and study of branches of government policy. Public administration is an administrative tool of executive power; and the tool comprises public administration institutions, which are subordinated to the Cabinet of Ministers or to an individual member of the Cabinet of Ministers and through which the Cabinet of Ministers performs the functions stipulated in the Constitution and laws. [1] In addition, public administration service (product) is an outcome derived from operational process (performance of functions, tasks) of a direct administration institution. [2] Therefore, public administration plays an important role either in government, business or society. How the e-government helps the public administration? Before I proceed further, I would like to discuss the primary function of public administration of public administration.
The first function of the public administration is to represent and respond to the public interest where as [3] a guide to check on public officials who are faced with decisions regarding public policy but have no unequivocal instructions from the electorate or their superiors regarding what action to take. Public administration going to fulfill public needs and demands, tackle public problems, they try to solve the problem that faced by public. The public administration of IRBM need to solve the problem that faced by public when doing transaction with IRBM. For example, many users are complaint that the bureaucracy of the organization which are many procedures and rules. What is the impress of the public to IRBM always is need to waiting very long time to do a transaction. This problem is needed to cope by them. Besides, they also need to ensure the equity among the citizen. For example, they need to reduce the gap between the rural and urban areas, the income disparity and others. The board of IRBM plays a role to advise the Government on matters relating to taxation and to liaise with the appropriate Ministries and statutory bodies on such matters. They need to make sure that there is equitable distribution to decrease the gap between the rich and poor that are fulfill the New Economy Policy. In addition, public administration also need to provide "pure" and "semi (or quasi)" public goods. For example: clean air, national defense, street lights (pure public goods), public phones, toilets, drainage systems, health care, public education (semi, or quasi public goods). However the public goods that supplied by government needed the cost and the main revenue that government gain is from the taxes. Therefore, public administration of IRBM plays an important role to make sure that the citizen are paying the taxes and did not try to do tax evasion. At the same time, it also needs to protect society from negative externalities and information asymmetry. In example, tax evaders are banned to travel to overseas. They need to make sure the public are acknowledgement about the tax regulations, the correct tax rate, tax bite and the real taxation that they need to pay.
Public administration also involved in the policy process. They play a role in information gathering (Public administrators have expertise and have specific information on their field of expertise). The public administration of IRBM help government by giving the information of the income of citizen, total revenue that gain from the taxes, make the expectation. Budget is planning through the expectation of revenue. As I mention before, public administration need to make sure the equitable distribution. They are going to give the recommendation for policy making. For example, formulate policies and strategies for socio-economic development, prepare medium and long-term plans such as Rancangan Malaysia (Malaysia Plan). The main purpose are try to minimize the gap between the rich and poor through taxes besides obtain the revenue. Next, they are going to implement the policies that make by legislatures. They going to collect taxes and list out what the items are tax bite where the elements of tax bite always according to the policy of government. For example, government want to decrease the digital divide between the urban and rural, citizen allowed to deduct their tax when buying a computer.
As the same time, public administration also has the responsibilities to correct the market. Sometimes, market failed to allocate resources efficiently for certain goods and services. Rich people get more resources than the poor people. Therefore, IRBM collect the taxes from the company, higher income groups to get the source of money to supply the public goods to citizen.
Analysis
There are many roles that bear by the public administration of IRBM, many complaints received by the public that IRBM are inefficiency, ineffectiveness and uneconomic. Therefore, IRBM has taken initiatives to introduced online services, e-Hasil, aims to increase the ease and efficiency of public service to the people. How the e-Hasil helps public administration of IRBM in delivering their primary functions?
The main advantage of e-Hasil will be to improve the efficiency of the current system. By moving from a heavily paper based system to an electronic system reduces the need for man power; thus allowing the process to be handled by less employees and therefore to reduce operations cost. It is important to note that it is not only individuals who need to interact with the government; businesses, on occasion, have to deal with various sections of the government. The introduction of e-government services allows for a more efficient means of communication between governments and businesses, and citizen. It will fulfill the higher interest of the public. I use the e-Filling as the example. E-Filing is fast and convenient where taxpayers can submit their return forms via the internet at any time and any place where it is 24/7.. It's much easier to use e-filing as you no need to refer to the explanatory notes. You just need to select the options from the drop down menu. All the additional details are also just a click away.
There is no need to send income tax form to the IRB office. Sure, they no need queue up anymore. Taxpayers will save their fuel, precious time and parking fees. Besides, taxpayers also did not going to apply a leave to submit the form especially who from rural area because the office usually allocate at town. Also, they no need to worry it gets lost in the post and didn't arrived at the IRB office. Anything related to e-ways or electronic ways will save a lot of paperwork and plain papers as well. So, we are saving the planet by using e-filing besides saving the cost for the paperwork.
Across the board, Web sites designed to help the public are made to host valuable information. It will correct the information asymmetry. The form from e-Hasil is the most accurate where any announcement are up to date. Public can get the first news through the web portal. Besides, data and tax computation for e-Filling which are verified automatically is more accurate compared to the manual procedure. Besides, the employees can use the kakulator-PCB to count the PCB that needed to pay monthly. It will avoid the employees from facing the compound because of less payment for monthly PCB via the own software. It also acknowledgement guaranteed. Upon successful submission of return forms via the Internet, an acknowledgement letter would be received on- line immediately.
E-Hasil improving the productivity and efficiency of government agencies. It reengineering processes and procedures to cut red tape, facilitate delivery of services, increase productivity of the bureaucracy, and increase savings are benefits inherent in e-Hasil. More specifically, e-Hasil can help increase government staff productivity, reduce overhead from fewer offices and less paper management, improve capacity for planning management by government. It induce cost savings in the medium to the long term. In the short term, however, staffing and costs tend to increase as government must offer multiple delivery platforms (both the traditional and e-government) during the initial transition. It need to streamline the operations of government. Most government processes have evolved over many years, and usually involve many steps, tasks, and activities. Streamlining government processes through ICT eliminates redundant procedures and helps to reduce red tape. It's much more efficient to process the form submitted through e-filing compare to the traditional hardcopy way. Data entry error can be avoided. With this, e-filing is reducing a lot of headache of IRB. In the same time, the time is saved and the public administration can use the saving time to upgrade their service.
They can upgrade themselves through the responds from the users. Thus, it strengthening good governance and broadening public participation. It promoting transparency and accountability in government through the proliferation of ICT in management and operations also opens opportunities for citizens to be more actively involved in the policy- and decision-making processes of government. The taxpayers can make the complaints via e-Hasil anytime anywhere also. Citizens act as a watchdog to guard the public administration of IRBM do their function well. The public also can lodge an e-complaint if they experience any difficulty in dealing with the public administration of IBRM. The transactions are safe where Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) ensures safety of data. Password chosen by the taxpayer themselves that can be changed from time to time ensures the security of data. It will avoid the information leakage when the public administration sell the information of citizens to other agencies.
E-Hasil also help the public administration of IBRM to play a role in information gathering. As I mentioned before, e-Hasil help them to save the time in data entry. In addition, e-government brings improvement in mass processing tasks and public administration operations. Data collection and transmission in public administration become easier with ICTs. Data sharing between government agencies also become easier and convenient. The IRBM can give the information to government just on the finger tips. It provider different government ministries access to government initiatives and employ best practices in multimedia information, collection and dissemination. For example, the system will listed out the citizen who do not pay the taxes automatically and it will linked to the immigration department to banned them from travel to overseas. As the same time, it will encourage more citizens to do their responsibilities as a citizen of Malaysia to pay the taxes. No more excuse that they can pleading where no have enough time, need to wait long time to do the transaction. With the revenue that IRBM get, government have enough money to upgrade the services and goods to citizen and upgrade the development of country.
Problems arise when implementing e-government service
Everything must have its positive and negative side. The same situation happened on e-Government services. Besides that, e-government creates an easy excuse like the server has gone down for the mistakes or problems with the service.
"E-government creates ways in which government officials could use technology to avoid taking responsibility for their duties. As anything available on an e-government site can be taken down or altered with little evidence that corrections were made, there may be a reduced effort to perform duties correctly. Furthermore, the technology of e-government has the potential to become a standardized excuse for government officials as an explanation for all problems."
(Government Information Quarterly 20 (2003) page389-394)
It never has system down problem if you're using hardcopy. For e-filing, sometimes, the systems do have problem. Bottleneck problem arise where traffic congestions. For example, when many people would be rushing home to use the Internet for paying tax after 6pm, they always will get stuck in traffic jams.
Besides that, E-government would isolate citizens who do not know how to use computer or illiterate. One must be IT-Literate or at least with basic computer skills to file in their income tax through e-fling. For those with computer phobia, it's rather hard to file their income tax form the e-ways. Or for those older generations, they really have no idea how to operate with the computer. And it's hard for them to learn the computer skills.
Next, the problem of security is one of the disadvantages of e-government. Public are concerned over the privacy of the personal information and security of the online transactions especially the online payment. When we pay the taxes through e-payment that provided at e-Hasil, account number is needed and this will let the users in the risk of information leakage.
Conclusion
The implementation of e-government is a very vital factor to determine the success to achieve Vision 2020. With the implementation of e-government, public administration will be reform and the delivery of public goods and services become more effective, efficient and convenient. As for the public, saving time and money are the primary reasons to use the e-Government services. It will help the public administration in delivering their primary functions.
However, e-government would bring some problems. The citizen must be IT-Literate or basis computer skills to file in their form. Security problem and the traffic congestions is the problems let citizens less confident with the system. besides, implementation of e-government is loses the person to person interaction which is valued by a lot of people because services are delivery though the technology like internet rather than public administrators.
In order to ensure the success of e-Government implementation, government have to add more load balancers to increase the numbers of web servers to cope the bottleneck problem. Information Privacy and Security should be tightened where the Key Infrastructure (PKI) play a role to ensures safety of data. Password chosen by the taxpayer themselves that can be changed from time to time ensures the security of data. The digital divide problem should be settled where make sure the all citizen either who from urban or rural can enjoy the benefits come from this service to make sure the equality. Government should market their offers, improve citizen's awareness of the benefits and increase take-up online services.
