Singapore will dramatically expand its use of technology tobuild closer ties with citizens, part of a S$2 billion (CDN$1.4billion) plan to take e-government to the next level, officialsannounced Tuesday.
The five-year plan, called iGov2010, will extend Singapore’sexisting e-government programs, which have made most services andinformation accessible over the Internet. These programs havechanged how the government and citizens interact. Over the lastyear, 86 percent of Singaporeans who dealt with the government didso electronically, the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore(IDA) and Ministry of Finance said.
The iGov2010 plan will expand Singapore’s progress in this area.Over the next five years, the government plans to integrate itsback-end systems as part of an effort to make e-government serviceseasier to use.
“We have to move beyond bundling information and services at thefront end, to re-engineering processes at the back end,” saidRaymond Lim, the minister for the prime minister’s office andsecond minister for finance and foreign affairs, in a transcript ofhis remarks.
This will break down the barriers that exist between differentgovernment agencies, allowing users to find all of the informationthey require and complete all necessary transactions for a servicewithout having to visit different Web sites, IDA said.
As part of the iGov2010 plan, the Singaporean government plansto improve online access for citizens that don’t have Internetaccess or require assistance using e-government services. Officialswill expand the number of CitizenConnect centers, which offer freeInternet access and assistance for users, from five to 25 over thenext five years, Lim said.
