Jordan Times
Monday, November 20, 2006
Ministry launches
e-government project
The programme is slated to cost JD45 million until its scheduled completion in
2009
By Hugh Naylor
AMMAN — The government formally inaugurated its
long-awaited e-government programme yesterday with the intention of streamlining
bureaucracy and enhancing access to the Internet in rural areas.
In front of an audience at the Royal Scientific Society, Minister of Information
and Communications Technology Omar Kurdi said the e-government website would
eventually act as a one-stop gateway to the government.
“We will soon be able to provide citizens and businesses will all
government-related information without having to switch from one website to
another.”
The programme, which is slated to cost JD45 million until its scheduled
completion in 2009, seeks to improve communication between ministries, citizens,
and businesses by offering Internet browsers quick access to information.
“People won’t have to go to two or three ministries in a single day to get their
passports renewed — they can just go online, fill out a form, and the ministries
will do the rest. e-government will be citizen-centric and will save all of us
time and money,” he said.
“At the end of the day,” explained Kurdi, “we’re looking for e-government to act
as a mechanism for public sector reform.”
The ministry is pushing for e-government to serve as a tool to expand greater
Internet access to rural communities. As part of the ambitious programme, the
ministry plans to install 5,000km of fibre optic cables, expand broadband
Internet access to 3,200 public schools, 23 community colleges, and roughly 120
Internet knowledge stations by the end of this year.
Hasan Hourani, director of the e-government programme, said the ministry has
begun training 8,000 government employees and managers of the country’s
knowledge stations in how to navigate the e-government project’s website.
“Internet technology has only modestly penetrated Jordan,” he told The Jordan
Times, “but our training courses and programmes will help change mindsets and
get more people familiar with this technology.”
Internet penetration in Jordan currently stands at around 7.5 per cent out of
which three per cent are paying subscribers.
But trimming down bureaucracy and increasing greater Internet usage, according
to observers, will require more than just a transition to a stronger reliance on
Internet technology.
“There is no substitute for good management,” said economist Yusuf Mansour,
adding that dependence on Internet technology alone won’t fix deeper structural
problems in the government.
“Changing the country’s mindset is the most important thing – not hardware and
software. This can be done with good and consistent management,” he said.
“But there is a need for the government to push for information technology
adoption,” he added.
Mansour also said that a constant reshuffling of Cabinets and changes in
ministerial posts could derail the e-government’s management progress, setting
back its full implementation.
Mohammad Masri of the University of Jordan’s Centre for Strategic Studies,
however, said there are serious flaws in the way the ministry went about
preparing Jordan for its impending transition to e-government.
“If you ask people in the street about it, they simply don’t know what
e-government is,” he said. “The government should have had a better strategy
that informed and prepared people of the programme, which would have made it
more effective from the start.”
He commented that the ministry should have implemented a gradual, grass- roots
and community-based approach to further awareness of information technology to
rural areas.
“People in rural areas are used to seeing their documents and papers stamped in
front of them. Making transactions over the Internet is a completely foreign
concept for them, and changing their ideas will take a lot of work.”
If Internet penetration doesn’t proceed fast enough, Masri said he believed
“e-government could become just a tool of elites.”
But Musa Shteiwi, a sociologist at the University of Jordan, believes that if
Jordan wants to enter the information technology age, a considerable effort must
be made by the government.
“How do you become an Internet culture without rapidly promoting Internet
technology?” he said. “Jordan has a lot of potential to develop an Internet
culture.”
Shteiwi said, however, that the government must be committed to keep positive
momentum going. “It would be a waste if they [the government] got sidetracked;
they must continue promoting these changes in a progressive way.”