RIYADH, 3 June — “The world is changing and the big difference today is the pace of the change. The Agrarian Revolution took 10,000 years. The Industrial Revolution took a couple of hundred years. And the Information Age Revolution is taking just tens of years. So we have to understand that either we become a part of it or we are left behind.
This is an opportunity and a challenge, particularly for countries such as Saudi Arabia. Think about it. Currently there is this scenario where the Saudi economy is based on one source of income, one source of wealth creation, and in the Information Age that can so readily be bypassed. Just imagine — tomorrow somebody could invent a way of running the engine on water — we don’t know — and with all of the wealth of the nation tied up in oil and oil production then what would happen?”
These comments were made by Richard Barrington, Director, Industry, UK’s Office of the e-Envoy. Barrington was speaking after consultations with several ministries in Riyadh during his visit to the Kingdom last month to participate in E-Commerce Saudi Arabia 2001.
The British government is a recognized leader in the implementation of e-government. Barrington reports to Andrew Pinder who heads the Office of the e-Envoy, which was established in September 1999. The Office is part of the Cabinet Office.
According to the website e-envoy.gov.uk, the role of the e-Envoy is to lead the drive to get the UK online, to ensure that the country, its citizens and its businesses derive maximum benefit from the knowledge economy. To support this aim, the Office of the e-Envoy has three core objectives: to make the UK the best environment in the world for e-commerce by 2002; to ensure that everyone who wants it has access to the Internet by 2005; and to make all government services available online by 2005. The Office has responsibilities across the entire e-agenda, notably in e-commerce and e-government. To achieve its goals, the Office is organized into three main groups handling e-commerce, e-government and e-communications.
“E-government means different things to different people,” explained Barrington. “In the United Kingdom’s case we have very low unemployment, coupled with low inflation and we have reasonable GDP growth, so for us it’s about refocusing people from process into frontline services. If you look at our health service we need 15,000-20,000 more nurses and yet we have thousands of health care workers who are stamping bits of paper and looking at slides — things that people aren’t very good at and that computers are perfect for. So we recognize that we will be taking people out of process and putting them back where they belong — with people in frontline service. The civil service may well shrink for us and that is essential in that the nation is about wealth creation and in a time of low unemployment we cannot afford a large civil service.”
Barrington continued, “For Saudi Arabia, which has a high level of unemployment, there are a different set of issues. But at the same time you have to take advantage of the opportunities that are there. From the meetings that I’ve had in Saudi Arabia, it’s clear that there is a need to invest in health care and in education, the Saudi government recognizes that. Obviously though if they are spending a lot of money on pieces of paper being moved around and other organizational costs, then that money would be better spent on frontline services.”
According to Barrington, the UK Government is making an investment of several billion pounds in the e-government project. The aim is to present citizens in the UK with a completely new range of services. Many of these will be combinations of existing ones but they will be put together in such a way that they add value. One small but important part of the project is the “Gateway” which is worth about 15 million pounds. It’s a site that provides authentication of the recipients and users of government services.
“The Gateway works on a model that if someone is paying us money we don’t need to authenticate who they are,” said Barrington. “If on the other hand we as government are making a payment then we need to be sure that we are disbursing funds to the correct individual. So we are mapping all the transactions that government does against a set of criteria. This is an end-to-end process. At one end are the transactions that don’t require strong authentication because it doesn’t really matter. At the other end are those transactions where we have to know exactly who you are. The ‘Gateway’ helps us manage this process.”
In addition to the “Gateway,” there is the premier government portal, UK Online, which allows users quick access to government information and services.
“We already have 3,000 citizen facing websites in the government,” pointed out Barrington. “It is very difficult to navigate such a large number and get proper information. The World Wide Web is not a mass-market medium. It was originally created for use by scientists. So we needed to find ways to make it more user-friendly for the average individual. There were other considerations in determining how to offer services online. In the UK, 14 percent of the male population is either partially or completely color blind. That has a big impact on how you design a website. In the UK again, government websites use a very large vocabulary of 50,000-60,000 words.
“The average citizen uses 4,000-5,000 words. How do you make this thing accessible? So that is why we’ve done the portal approach. You just remember one address — ukonline.gov.uk and you can find everything.”
To prepare for this effort, the UK government did a major census where everybody in the country filled out a form, the information on which was analyzed by computers. This helped the government determine the kind of services that were needed and the details concerning the populations that must be served.
“Our services have to be focused on the customers not on the structure of government,” said Barrington. “The process of re-engineering should generate new efficiencies. It is necessary to look at all the processes of government and think if this is the best way to accomplish them or are we doing it that way because it has been done that way for 400 years? Government departments came to us with their business plans and said, ‘We’re going to keep everything the way it is, but we’re going to put up a website.’ We said, ‘No you’re not. There is no benefit there for the citizens.’
“As we are re-examining the functions of every government department we are certain that some of our departments will disappear. They will not continue to exist because they are not adding any value. The work that they do is a duplication of the effort of what other people are doing. To provide quality service in some cases two departments need to come together because at the moment perhaps they are fighting against each other instead of working together for the citizen. So there are a whole series of challenges. The critical thing for us is leadership. Our Prime Minister Tony Blair is totally behind this. It is his agenda and if he says — you do. We then have the people at the Office of the e-Envoy. This is an organization outside of the government machine that actually has the budget and controls the money. They have the carrot and the stick too.”
Originally the UK government focused on simply having every service available electronically by 2005. But recently there was awareness that having the services wasn’t enough. Online services were of no value if they weren’t being used. After the elections it is expected that a series of targets will be announced for each department. It will be required that a certain percentage of interactions be accomplished online and those targets will be raised yearly. In addition, the government will be working to get every citizen online by 2005. This means finding methodologies to enable about 68 million people to reach out over the Internet. It is estimated that 40 percent of the UK’s population will use the Internet through their televisions. Half of all UK households already have digital televisions and the government will be stopping analog transmission of television broadcasts in a few years time to force more people to go digital. In addition, every school is already connected to the Internet, every library will be connected by the end of 2002 and every post office will be connected by 2003. The government is also funding community access points. These are going into all sorts of public buildings and community centers. There are already 2,000 of these UK Online Centers and there will be a total of 7,000 across the country by 2005. Anyone can set up a UK Online Center as long as they guarantee that there is assistance available to help people to get online.
What did Barrington think was the potential for Saudi Arabia to start doing e-government? “In the meetings I have had with various government officials during my short stay in the Kingdom, it is apparent that the political will is there to do e-government,” he said. “The challenge is how. We have been asked for help and advice and we have agreed in principle to provide that assistance. But without a proper budget, strong promotion of the new services, and methodologies to help the less advantaged access the services, the effort will be useless. At the moment the Saudi government is quite rightly focused on the infrastructure pieces. But you also have to work out the strategy and the strategy requires a vision.”
Barrington emphasized that part of the vision must encompass the diversification of Saudi industry. He suggested that the Kingdom strive to become known as a world leader in fields like solar power or water resource management where Saudi Arabia already has considerable experience. He also stressed the importance of bringing basic IT literacy in as a core competency in the education system. For the Kingdom to take its place on the world stage there can be no compromise to putting in the necessary resources in the areas of infrastructure and education.
“If you want to manage e-commerce and e-government then ignore the consultants and take the advice of someone whose government is already working on it,” said Barrington. “Management consultants always say that if you want to eat an elephant you should eat it one piece at a time. I actually say that this is incorrect. The best methodology is to get a group of your friends together and have a barbecue. Turn that spit. Carve off bits. Yes there are reasons not to do e-commerce and e-government. A nation could sit back and not do it but in the end where does that leave you? Educate your people. Raise their expectations. Have the vision. Get the strategy right. Make the strategy inclusive. There will be challenges but with the right vision they will be overcome. This is a great opportunity for the Kingdom to reach out to the world — to use the web to bring capital into the economy and to take products and services out to the world. It’s about KSA plc selling and working with the world.”
