Govts urged to engage citizens in cyberspace

Government organisations in the region should transform public service delivery to citizens by leveraging emerging technologies and social media platforms.

At the 9th FutureGov Summit held in Chiang Mai from October 17 to 19, more than 150 chief information officers (CIOs) and senior decision-makers from government, education, and healthcare organisations from Asia, Europe and North America gathered to share their experiences and insights about their modernisation efforts and development goals.

The summit featured a unique interactive discussion table format which allowed delegates and speakers to have deeper conversations about issues that mattered most to them and their agency. Key discussions topics included mobile government service delivery, cloud computing-based education, protecting citizen privacy, and the impact of a new generation of e-services.

“It is important for governments to engage their people in cyberspace so that decision-makers can effectively respond to the ever-changing needs of citizens,” said James Kang, assistant chief executive and government CIO from the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore.

According to him, economic prosperity alone is not enough, governments should also look into achieving “national happiness” and this can only be achieved if the government is engaged with its people.

James emphasised the important role of today’s socially engaged generation – the Generation Y – in facilitating innovation in the country and helping the government provide more agile services to the public.

“We are now seeing a generation with deep enthusiasm for technology. They recognise the value of leveraging technology such as social media platforms to make a difference in their communities. They want to be heard, and if the government is not engaged then it would be a disadvantage to them as citizens are a critical starting point for innovation,” he remarked.

He revealed that Singapore’s e-government master plan was deeply rooted in engaging people, crowd-sourcing and open data.

“The government has no monopoly on great ideas, as such, citizen engagement is a crucial factor for innovation,” he said, quoting Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong about how social media have changed the way people  live, work, and play, especially the way they connect with one another.

“The future is now,” says Deepak Bhatia, global lead and sectoral and e-government applications practice at the World Bank Group.

According to him, technologies such as cloud computing and social media have given citizens an opportunity to be part of major development initiatives in their respective countries, whether it is using crowd-sourcing to monitor election irregularities or identifying crucial hotspots during times of disasters.

“This proves that the government cannot do things alone,” he added.

Since technology gives citizens a deeper involvement, citizen-generated data allows decision-makers to arrive at well-informed decisions concerning issues that matter most to their constituents, added Deepak.

Laurence Millar, FutureGov Magazine editor-at-large and former government CIO from New Zealand explained how emerging social media platforms present opportunities for public sector organisations to explore what can be done to turn citizen-generated data into even more actionable information, one that can be visually translated into something relevant and is easy for users to understand.

According to him, these emerging social media platforms – combined with citizen-generated data – breeds useful conversation and interaction, which can help policy-makers, arrive at well-informed decisions on critical development projects.

“Governments should focus on outcomes by breaking down silos and shifting their efforts towards better collaboration,” Millar said.

Apart from the focus on a citizen-centric approach, the event also welcomed Tomas Soderstrom from Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratories in the US who talked about a glimpse into the cutting-edge technology that goes into space exploration and the IT infrastructure associated with it.

His presentation included a demonstration of augmented reality applications for mobile devices that are able to condense large volumes of data into practical audio-visual information. He also talked about having to deal with legacy systems and the mechanics of delivering the Curiosity Mars Rover videos online using the cloud to a worldwide audience via the Internet. 

Organised by FutureGov Magazine, the FutureGov Summit is Asia’s longest-running and most prestigious, by invitation only, public sector modernisation event. For nine years, the summit has brought together senior-level decision-makers from across Asia Pacific to discuss shared challenges and cutting edge, innovative solutions for modernising government service delivery.