egovernment across South-East Asia - towards seamless integration

The Economist Intelligence Unit has published a special research report, Towards Seamless Administration (PDF), on the status and challenges of egovernment across South-East Asia, including commments on a number of Australia's nearest neighbours such as New Guinea, East Timor, Singapore and Malaysia.

While Australia and New Zealand are not included in the review, the maturity of egovernment across the region should be a consideration in our planning and thinking.

Just as Australia has provided an example of stable democratic governance and has assisted in the development and security of our neighbours, I believe we have an opportunity and a responsibility to support them in their progress towards more transparent, low-corruption and democratic regimes through the medium of egovernment.

Why Australia should take on a regional egovernment leadership
In my view there are sound economic, social and political reasons for Australia to take on a leadership and supportive role for regional egovernment.

By helping other nations along the road we will facilitate the participation of Australian companies and individuals in the region, both in business and IT spaces, rather than seeing another nation or group, such as the US, Singapore or the European Union take on such a role and diminish Australia's potential economic benefit.

A similar rationale holds for the political front. Australia has a national interest in having strong regional ties and a level of political influence and this could be weakened should other nations become the egovernment leaders, particularly as regional governments could be influenced towards structures and models less attuned to Australian interests. This could also impact on our regional security and agreements.

Finally, and most important to me personally, is the social rationale. Economic development and progress towards an open and fair democracy has been generally demonstrated to be more effective at reducing poverty, increasing freedoms and encouraging more respect for human rights than providing aid or political pressure.

eGovernment as an approach leads to more open and transparent government, lower corruption and more equitable participation, as well as being an underlying driver of economic development by cutting red tape for businesses and individuals.

Therefore by encouraging and supporting egovernment and the enablers for egovernment across the region, Australia will have a positive and non-invasive impact on the wellbeing of our nearest neighbour states.

How should Australia support regional egovernment initiatives?

I've considered three ways in which Australia could make an immediate impact.

1) Model development - showing the way through our local egovernment initiatives

2) Thought leadership - sharing our expertise (technical and business) to assist other nations in developing their egovernment capacity.

3) Regional integration - developing underlying egovernment systems and technologies that can be given or sold to other nations to be deployed to kickstart their egovernment programs. This could include regional epayment, ehealth and online forms capacities (expansions of the efforts by the Reserve Bank, Medicare Australia and AGOSP), or specialised systems developed for customs and border management, led by Customs or Immigration with the involvement of regional stakeholders. Other systems that could be explored for regional applications could include online consultation, collaboration and procurement (such as via GovDex or AusTenders), our online Copyright and Patents systems and many other systems at both state and federal level.

Even with a minimal investment, Australia could enable our neighbours to make significant steps forward in effective governance. 

All it requires is some political and public sector leadership in the area.

I'd be interested in other views on this, or any information on egovernment initiatives already underway with our neighbours.