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Successful E-Government in Singapore

Article in Communications of the ACM June 2004

DOI: 10.1145/990680.990687 Source: DBLP

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 By Weiling Ke and Kwok Kee Wei

SUCCESSFUL E-GOVERNMENT
IN SINGAPORE
How did Singapore manage to get most of its
public services deliverable online?

Rapid advances in technology and the advent of the Internet

have redefined public expectations of the government and its ser-
vices. Prompted by demands for a more responsive government,
leaders in the public sector have been grappling with how to best
use new technologies to deliver services to the people. Govern-
ment use of technology, particularly Web-based Internet applica-
tions, to enhance citizen access to government services and to
enable citizens to make online transactions is called e-govern-
ment [9]. By migrating traditionally paper-based and face-to-face
services to the Internet, e-government has the potential to pro-
vide citizens with the fastest and most convenient way of obtain-
ing government services.
But e-government is not a simple matter. Although cles in e-government development, we explore the suc-
governments have eagerly looked forward to a digital cess story of e-government in Singapore. As a nation-
future since the mid-1990s, their efforts to turn vision state, Singapore has the ability to capitalize on the
into reality have been obstructed by various challenges. benefits offered by a reasonably small, well-informed,
In a detailed study of 2,288 national governmental and well-wired public. It has a stable government with
Web sites in 196 countries, World Markets Research a long-term commitment to ensure the benefits of
Center found that only 8% of the Web sites offered technology are maximized. E-citizen, Singapores e-
services executable online, and only 6% provided inte- government portal, is the most developed example of
grated services at their portals [10]. Hence, e-govern- integrated service delivery in the world [2]. It gener-
ment is falling short of its true potential and is still in ates approximately $14.5 million in savings for the
infancy. Moreover, reports of e-government develop- Singapore government annually and was rated second
ment experience describe its efforts as loose-knit mixes in Accentures 2001 e-government survey [1].
of ideas, projects, and affiliations. Successful e-govern- A city-state with a population of four million and a
ment implementation has become a great challenge to landmass of 640 square kilometers, the Republic of
public sectors around the world. Singapore is one of the first countries in the world to
To shed some light on how to overcome the obsta- develop an integrated and coherent approach to com-

COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM June 2004/Vol. 47, No. 6 95

puterizing the government. Conceived with the clear statutory boards. But these web sites were developed
objective of turning the government into a world-class and owned by individual agencies, so they were local-
exploiter of IT, the Civil Service Computerization Pro- ized and fragmented. An integrated public service
gram (CSCP) was launched in 1981. Singapores move interface for citizens was first conceived in 1997 and
toward e-government was built on the solid founda- the one-stop E-citizen portal was launched in April
tion of CSCP through four main waves of progress: 1999. Although at that time it provided a single point
of access and organized services on
IT 2000 (19921999) Infocomm 21 (20002005)
according to citizen life events
Initiation Infusion Customization rather than departments and agen-
cies, many services on E-citizen did
Single Point of
Access to
All Government is
Electronic
One-to-One
Relationship
not go beyond information dissem-
Government Government Between Government ination and few e-services offered
and Citizens
online transactions.
Informed citizens Mass Citizens have personal
presentment, profiles for all online
Enabling Web- review and transactions Infusion Stage
based transactions transaction online E-government developed speedily
in Singapore since 2000, entering
the infusion stage a year later. The
- Published - Unveiled Action Plan - Called for the agencies to major problems encountered dur-
information online
by agencies
- Earmarked $1.5bn
- Set up e-Govt Policy
become One Government
- Leveraged agencies
ing this phase included the need to
individually Committee, Pro-enterprise knowledge transform the mindset of civil ser-
Panel and POWER - Collaborated across vants, the ambiguity of e-govern-
- Set up e-Citizen - MOF centrally monitored and agencies boundary
portal managed e-govt development - Incorporated CRM in ment goals to agencies, a lack of
- Bridged digital divide e-services
technical capabilities and financial
resources, and the issue of the digi-
tal divide. Singapores success in tackling these prob-
Stages and actions taken the Civil Service Computeriza- lems may be attributed to strong leadership that
to develop e-government
in Singapore. (The dotted
tion Plan from 1981 to 1985, formulated a strategic action plan, provided strong
boxed section is adapted the National IT Plan from support, took a centralized approach to funding and
from [9].) 1986 to 1991, the IT2000 infrastructure, and made efforts to bridge the divide.
Master Plan from 1992 to Action plan. Right after the launch of Infocomm
1999, and Infocomm 21, 21, the Singapore government spent six months on a
launched in 2000. With the computerization of the study involving public servants at various levels. The
government and the development of electronic con- ensuing E-government Action Plan was conceptual-
nection between government and industry under the ized to set out the broad directions of information
first two plans, government services were first put on communication technologies (ICT) deployment
the Internet in the mid-1990s and e-government pro- (20002002) [6]. In June 2000, Deputy Prime Minis-
gressed steadily but slowly from that time. It was only ter and Defense Minister Tony Tan unveiled the
in 2000 that e-government, as one of the key programs action plan and the vision: to be a leading e-govern-
of Infocomm 21, saw an accelerated development. It is ment to better serve the nation in the Digital Econ-
currently in the process of traversing from what is omy. The plan charted five strategic thrusts:
known as the infusion stage to the customization reinventing the government, delivering integrated
stage. Following Watson and Mundys e-government electronic services, being proactive and responsive,
framework [9], we identified the stages of Singapores using ICT to build new capabilities and capacities, and
e-government developmentinitiation, infusion, and innovating with ICT. The plan also provided govern-
customizationand the major actions taken at each ment agencies with specific guiding principles to fol-
stage shown in the figure on this page. low in e-government development.
Strong support. To ensure the program objectives
Initiation Stage of the E-government Action Plan became a reality, the
The government started to develop official Web sites government earmarked $932 million for the years
at the late stage of IT2000, which aimed to develop 2000 to 2003. This investment focused on the five
Singapore into an intelligent island. By June 1996, strategic thrusts listed earlier. Projects that did not sup-
there were more than 60 individual information dis- port the five thrusts were accorded lower priority. In
semination Web sites hosted by the civil service and addition to the funding support, administrative struc-

96 June 2004/Vol. 47, No. 6 COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM

tures were put in place to give greater impetus to the e-
government vision. An e-government policy commit-
tee chaired by the head of the civil service was formed.
This committee provided strategic directions and led
the work on changes in policies, processes, and man-
agement issues. Three other committees were also
formed to review existing laws and regulations to
ensure they continued to be relevant and applicable.
To sustain the processes, two initiatives were put in
place: the Pro-Enterprise Panel and Public Officers
Working on Eliminating Red Tape (POWER).
Centralized funding and common infrastruc-
ture. To better monitor and manage its e-government
development, the Singapore government chose a cen-
tralized approach. The Ministry of Finance (MOF)
was designated as the sole authority in providing and
approving the funding of all e-government projects
(except those that were self-funding). It also owns all
While striving to put almost all public services online, the Singapore
government realized the importance of encouraging citizens to use them.
Citizens lacking access to the Internet at home were provided access to
e-government services through community self-service terminals.
central ICT infrastructure, services, and policies
within the public service. The Infocomm Develop-
ment Authority (IDA)the government agency
responsible for promoting and regulating telecommu-
nications in the countrywas designated the chief
technology officer and chief information officer to the
Singapore government. It provides technical advice to
MOF; manages the central ICT infrastructure; and
defines ICT policies, standards and procedures. In
keeping with the centralized infrastructure, all e-ser-
vices from the government follow the same security,
electronic payment, and data exchange mechanisms.
Bridging the digital divide. To accelerate the e-
government drive, all government agencies were
required to follow the same guiding principles [4]: that
every service that can be delivered electronically shall
be electronically available, and that all services shall be
designed on a customer-centric and not an agency-
centric basis.
While striving to put almost all public services
online, the Singapore government realized the impor-
tance of encouraging citizens to use these e-services,
and bridging the digital divide within the population.
Citizens lacking access to the Internet at home were
provided access to e-government services through
community self-service terminals. Also, in the mid-
1990s, the Singapore government launched Singapore
Onethe first broadband infrastructure made avail-
able nationwide. It covers 99% of the island republic,
bringing the capabilities of broadband technology to
schools, businesses, homes, libraries, and community
centers. In terms of Internet host density, Singapore
at 353 Internet hosts per 10,000 inhabitantsranks
first among Asian countries [6].
In addition to developing infrastructure, the govern-
ment took a series of measures to make the Internet
accessible to every citizen. To help citizens on the dis-
advantaged side of the digital divide, the Singapore gov-
ernment partnered with private industry to implement
the PC Reuse Scheme to deploy secondhand PCs to
needy parties. Singapore has one of the highest rates of
PC ownership worldwide, with a penetration of 61%
in 2000 [7]. At the same time, the government also
endeavored to raise public awareness of e-government
and its benefits. A month-long multisector campaign
was held annually; a series of thematic online fairs were
organized to boost public confidence in online services;
and the National IT Literacy program was launched to
raise the ICT standard in the population.
Customization Stage
When all the ministries in Singapore had adopted the
principle of e-government, the government embarked
on the program of customization. The aim was to
maximize the value of e-government to citizens by pro-
viding electronically maintained personal profiles of
their interactions with the government. To attain the
goal, the government focused on tackling the problems
of integrating its portal with the information systems
of various agencies, reengineering the process of deliv-
ering public services, and implementing customer rela-
tionship management (CRM) techniques.
E-services across agency silos. With the vision of
Many Agencies, One Government unveiled in June
2001, the Singapore government urged agencies to
move beyond seeing themselves as separate and dis-
tinct entities, and to consider themselves as One Gov-
ernment that collaborates, shares information, and
leverages on its collective knowledge to provide the
public with integrated servicesconveniently, contin-
uously, and speedily.
To facilitate interagency collaboration and leverag-
COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM June 2004/Vol. 47, No. 6 97
ing of knowledge, the government encouraged public
officers to make collaborative learning and knowledge
sharing part of their work environment and culture.
To that end, the government organized a number of
forums, meetings, and gatherings so the best practices
and knowledge could be shared across agencies. For
example, the directors and IT managers of all agencies
meet quarterly to share policy information and pro-
vide one another with updates on the best practices
and technologies at their respective workplaces.
Through interagency collaboration, the Singapore
government can present citizens with a single point of
contact, and the seamless integration of front-end
applications and back-end systems. For example, at the
E-citizen portal, any citizen can have his or her new
address updated with all government agencies by filling
out just one form. Also, users of e-Citizen can reach
their desired Web pages with fewer clicks. Further, they
can carry out online transactions integrated with
Strong leadership with vision is crucial for e-government success.
The government should clearly articulate its vision and motivate all
stakeholders to share that vision.
authentication and payment services at the portal.
Experimenting with CRM techniques. With the
Singapore government adopting the Start Small and
Scale Fast strategy [8], CRM was incorporated into a
few e-services, such as the e-library services provided
by the National Library Board and the e-services pro-
vided by the Ministry of Defense (MINDEF). Based
on CRM techniques, e-library allows users to cus-
tomize their personal profiles, so they can decide what
they want to view on the site based on their personal
preferences. Users can also view their library transac-
tions records, renew books, and pay their library fines
with e-library. MINDEF e-services rely on member-
ship log-in consoles to capture user activities and
retrieve citizens personal profiles. The government has
also set up online forums where citizens can post
queries and interact with one another. As these CRM
techniques have proven successful and applicable,
more and more government e-services are expected to
incorporate the techniques.
With the enhanced ease of use and usefulness of e-
services, the online transaction volume of E-citizen has
seen a threefold increase since it was piloted in April
1999. We expect e-government usage among Singa-
poreans to increase tremendously after a system of
secured payment is implemented, and every citizen is
98 June 2004/Vol. 47, No. 6 COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM
equipped with a universal identification and personal-
ized profile. Given the governments determination in
accelerating, integrating, and transforming the deliv-
ery of its services to the public, Singapore should con-
tinue to experience rapid growth in e-government. We
envisage that, as promised by Lim Siong Guan, the
head of the Singapore Civil Service, public services in
Singapore in 2005 will be drastically different from
those that exist today.
Lessons Learned
Singapore provides great variety and dynamically inte-
grated public services online. By the end of 2001, Sin-
gapore managed to get 92% of all public services
deliverable online. In contrast, Hong Kong, another
developed Asian economy, had only 80% of its public
services online by the end of 2002. Hong Kong joined
the bandwagon later, even though its IT infrastructure
is as advanced as Singapores, and its government as
highly computerized. Singapores success can be attrib-
uted to the commitment and persistence of its govern-
ment to fully turn a promising vision into reality, and
perhaps more importantly, to the strategies that it has
adopted. From the experience of Singapore, we may
derive multiple lessons:
Firstly, strong leadership with vision is crucial for e-
government success. The government should clearly
articulate its e-government vision and motivate all
stakeholders to share that vision. The clearly articu-
lated vision of the Singapore government has inspired
mindset changes and enabled government agencies to
understand the move toward e-government in the
country. It has also enabled these agencies to appreci-
ate the importance of e-government, and to under-
stand their roles and expectations in e-government
development.
Besides promoting a shared understanding among
agencies, it is also imperative to formulate a strategic
action plan that provides clear guidelines for agencies
to follow in implementing e-government initiatives.
Singapores action plan examined all aspects of the
governments interactions with citizens along the lines
of a business model, and identified the areas where
more value could be created for all stakeholders by
moving public services online. In addition, high-level
 structures should be set up to spearhead e-government
development and entities should be designated to be
accountable for the progress. In the Singapore experi-
ence, the efforts of high-level structures have elicited
value-added e-services from intra- or interagency sys-
tem integration. At the same time, the designated
entity accountable for e-government development, in
the form of MOF, ensured that policies were carried
out effectively. In addition to giving the agencies the
incentives to comply with the governments blueprint,
the central funding scheme pre-empted conflicts that
could be triggered by protectionism from individual
agencies; it thus averted one of the greatest obstacles in
e-government development.
Secondly, the government must pursue e-govern-
ment through the development of an information
infrastructure and by bridging the digital divide. His-
torically, public administration has been centrally con-
cerned with issues of universalism and distributive
justice [5]. Consistent with the norms of public
administration, e-government should be accessible to
every citizen. In Singapore, the government allocated
resources for needy groups and launched education
programs to enhance computer literacy and e-govern-
ment awareness among all citizens.
Thirdly, the strong political will to provide inte-
grated services to the citizen should be matched with
coordinating measures. Providing services from various
parts of the government requires business process inte-
gration among agencies. Unfortunately, the bureau-
cratic ethos does not encourage interagency
collaboration [3]. Hence, the government must adopt
certain coordinating mechanisms to ease the transition
from the existing way of doing agency business to a
new and more collaborative way. In Singapore, in
addition to forming various coordinating committees,
the government regularly organized policy forums and
various gatherings to foster the culture of knowledge
sharing and to facilitate open communications among
agencies. At the same time, the government used a
common e-service infrastructure. In addition to
achieving economies of scale, this infrastructure
enabled tighter business process integration among
agencies, their suppliers, and business partners. The
integration of E-citizen front-end applications with
back-end agency systems is seamless, and users need
not worry about the detailed technical procedures by
which security and electronic payments are executed
by the agencies. Such user-friendliness has made it pos-
sible to deploy e-services expediently.
While the lessons learned from the Singapore expe-
rience may provide some guidelines, they cannot be
generalized to all other governments. Singapore is a
small country with a one-level government; the best
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practices of Singapore cannot be of use in solving the
complicated problems entailed in vertically integrating
services provided by agencies at the federal, state,
county, and township levels. Secondly, with a culture
of high collectivism and royal civil servants, it is easier
for Singapore to call on agencies to comply with the e-
government blueprint and carry out policies set by the
top leadership. Lessons learned from Singapore in
coordinating agencies and pushing for seamless e-gov-
ernment may not be applicable to countries with an
entrenched culture of high individualism. Thirdly, the
issue of the digital divide can be much more compli-
cated in countries with large populations and an
underdeveloped IT infrastructure. Furthermore, the
lessons drawn from Singapores success story do not
caution governments about the pitfalls in e-govern-
ment development. To conclude, we appeal for more
research to provide insights into the various issues in e-
government developmentdrawing insights from ini-
tiatives that have succeeded as well as those that have
turned out otherwise. c
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Weiling Ke (wke@clarkson.edu) is an instructor in the School of
Business at Clarkson University, Potsdam, New York.
Kwok Kee Wei (isweikk@cityu.edu.hk) is a chair professor and
head in the Department of Information Systems at the City University
of Hong Kong.
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