Electronic Government and the Construction of Chinese Public Service(公共管理国际会议论文).doc

The Electronic Government and the Construction of Chinese Public ServiceLI PingThe Institute of Local Government Development Shantou University, Shantou, P.R.China, 515063Abstract Electronic government based on the internet interacts with the Construction of Chinese Public Service. On the basis of these association, this paper tries to analyze the impacts of electronic government on the construction of Chinese public service from three aspects as follows: (1) the relation between electronic government and the transformation of governmental functions; (2) the relation between electronic government and the reform of public service procedures; (3) the relation between electronic government and the establishment of community public service system, and proposes 6 basic strategies for the construction of the electronic government based on service administration.Key words Electronic government, Public Service construction, Governmental functions1 Introduction As one of the greatest inventions of the 20th Century, the Internet, with its features of openness, equality, global sharing, interactivity and quick communication, offers powerful technical support for service administration. E-Government, based on the Internet and the construction of service administration of China, suggests an interactive developing trend.E-Government is not just a fashionable concept. After all, it has entered into the administrative activities of every level of Chinese government and affects the establishment of a service administration pattern.2 The correlation between E-Government and Construction of Service Administration PatternGenerally speaking, E-Government refers to government affairs, which are based on a variety of information and communication technologies. Its aim is to provide governmental agencies, enterprises, community organizations, and citizens with information and other services in a more effective and low-cost way so as to build a responsive, efficient, accountable administrative system and working style. Apparently, the key point of E-Government construction is to rebuild the government and enhance the service quality of government through the information technology, which will affect the construction of its service administration pattern.Service administration is opposite to managing administration. According to Max Webbers Bureaucracy Theory, the ideal bureaucratic organization is based on the rationality and legitimacy, which is order-and-efficiency-oriented, corresponding to managing administration pattern and the behaviors of officials are standardized and non-personalized, and the proposed goals can be fulfilled by relatively fixed administrative procedures. Managing administration has gradually established in modern society and revealed various weaknesses after its development and therefore bring about High Cost and Low Efficiency. Confronted with the challenges from New Public Management, a brand new administrative pattern, Service Administration, is on shape now.There are 3 different explanations to service administration pattern among Chinese scholars: (1) service administration pattern performs it functions and fulfill public administrative goals through infirming government functions, protecting the rights of citizens and social organizations, and provide the society with service; (2) service administration provide society, enterprises and the public with high quality management service through efficient administrative activities; (3) Socialist countries take management and service as the means and aim respectively in the social management. Administrative management in socialist countries, essentially, is not the managing administration but a new type of service administration. Although they have different statements, they have the same connotation which is mainly refers to government taking service as the core in the administrative implementation. Therefore, we can give the following definition to Service administration: The government performs its function with service as its purpose, providing society, enterprises, and the public with high quality management service and public property service. Chinese service administration pattern mainly comprises of governmental function, governmental service procedures, community service systems, etc.E-Government has a very close relationship with service administration. The core of E-Government is based on government affairs, and electronic communication is the means to fulfill government affairs. The government is the implementer of E-Government construction, yet enterprises and citizens are the objects of its service. The foundation of the network government is to form a kind of transparent, efficient and open office environment, yet the premise is to transform the government function, to reorganize government initiative process, and to construct a brand new service administration pattern. Although it is one of the main Chinese administrative reforms, E-government strikes hierarchical system and the government-management-centered managing administration, and impacts the construction of service administration pattern.3 Impact of the E-Government on the construction of Chinese service administration patternChina formally started the Government On Line Project in 1999 and has made great achievements in the development of information government. OA has been popularized and the total number of new-building websites built by government and departments of various levels goes up 3000. 70% of municipal governments have implemented Government On Line Project and these websites became the interactive platform between government and the public. However, there are two major problems in the development of E-Government: (1)Rather than providing high quality services of government affairs, there is too much importance attached to the application of electronic technology, thus leading to the separation of electronic technology and government affairs. (2)The public lack the necessary passion in involvement, which results in a low efficiency of E-Government. So what are the reasons?Chinese government of various levels has launched a great deal of resources into E-government. Fund, hence, is not the reason. Because of the unfulfilled reform in administrative system, departments of existing administrative system do things in their own way for their own benefits and thus leading to the unsmooth information communication, no information sharing and repeating construction and resources wasting as well. Meanwhile, the government fails to combine the construction of E-Government with system innovation, functions transformation, structure reorganization, process optimization, and working style improvement. The essence of innovation has been ignored. Public involvement has an impact on the development of E-government, too. The core of e-government is citizen-centered; devices are no more than means by which the government will be able to improve its services. If the citizens have no interest in involvement, it will be a “sole-part play” of the government, and the essence of the E-Government construction will be lost. In addition, the websites are still fairly static and have little interactivity, so it is unattractive to the people. The facts are as follows: Many information projects of government affairs have not seen any development but have already absorbed large amount of investments and maintenance work. The websites cannot provide helpful information and are seldom renovated. Online transactions are too few, even none. Services remain at general and surface level instead of deep-seated and significant services, not mentioning one-stop services, which naturally cause a low access rate and websites that have become deserted information islands or isolated information islands. In such a situation, it is really difficult to push the e-government forward.The focus of E-Government is on the development of governmental service rather than the adoption of electronic or digital technologies, the latter no more than the means to realize the former. Therefore, China still fumbles in the E-government technology. Because of the obstacles such as technological and managing pattern and traditional culture, we have to develop it with both rapidity and prudence.However, E-government has stepped in the administrative management of Chinese governments in different levels. E-Government has facilitated the improvement of service administration. Therefore, we can evaluate the impacts of E-Government on the construction of Chinese service administration pattern considering the following three aspects: government function, government service procedures, and enterprise supporting electronic procedure system.3.1 E-Government and transformation of the governmental functions The relationship between the government and enterprises has met with many difficulties in practice. However, E-Government will quicken the transformation of governmental functions. Since the issue of government function was proposed in 1988s system reform, and transformation of governmental functions was put forth in 1993, ten years has passed. During this period, the governmental functions evolved from “rowing” to “steering”. However, according to the new public service theory, the governmental functions should be “service” instead of “steering”. Governance and service are still the key aspects of our research.The 3rd Session of CPC Congress passed Act on Improving the Socialist Market Economy System, which put forward that the government should transform the governmental functions on economic management to serve the market and create good developing environment, and deepen the reform of administrative examining and approving system. Therefore, the current transformation of governmental functions should convert from serving for economy to serving for socialist market economy and from microeconomic management to economic adjustment, market inspection, social management and public service. We have to note that the 4 functions of economic adjustment, market inspection, social management and public service are the inter-affiliated entity. Transformation of governmental functions, not simply putting the emphasis on infirming or strengthening any of the functions, is the transformation of the content and means of functions via electronic information technology considering the governments systemic goal and structure, and then forms the functional system with the service as its core.Therefore, our research stress still lies on government affairs and service. Because governmental functions are the reification of government capacity in public power domain, all influences are decided by functions and only these entities that perform certain function have certain power. Traditional government management was busy with production and dealing of enterprises, which binds them up and gradually leads to the reliance to the government. All these facts do great harm to the development of enterprises and the economic and social development of the district. The general administrative efficiency, hence, declined. Considering market economy, the government should retreat from production and dealing of enterprises. The government should be the public vindicator to dealing orders instead of interfering directly. Meanwhile, the enterprises, the entity of dealing and production, should take on the legal rights for their own dealing and development. The transformation of government functions, therefore, converts from managing administration to service administration with the policy of the separation of government and enterprises. And taking the key point of serving for enterprises, E-government, the research emphases of which are how to improve the service to the enterprises, provide high quality service in accordance with enterprises development, design e-service flow to enterprises and optimize the investing and dealing environment for enterprises, etc. So E-government is impacting on the construction of governments serving administration pattern.The E-Government movement will promote the function extension of public administration and service. The government will carry out information exchange and transaction delivery by modern information technologies so that it can fulfill its function of social administration and management to provide equal information resources and improve the quality of governmental services. E-Government has opened a channel between government and society. It has ensured the implementation of the transformation of governmental functions and structural reform. It has supplied a large amount of information on administration policies and on the relationship between government and society. In particular, as the political leaders of every level are more and more information-conscious and the government staff is more and more skilled in operating computers, we have a firm ground to hope that E-Government will experience further development, the transformation governmental functions will speed up, which is the premise for the construction of government service administration. 3.2 E-Government and reform of service procedureProcedures reflect the inherent rule of something and the entire activity is consisted of these independent and inter-affiliated procedures. The key point of government service lies in service procedure reform. The service procedure combines theory and practice to make government service standardized and orderly. In order to avoid subjectivity and randomness of individual policy makers and improve efficiency and service quality, we have to transform the service process into a logically theoretical process, which can be operated easily and simply. E-Government can provide firm support for this type of procedure, for it can provide a knowledge foundation, abundant information, network, and it can make information flow smoothly and be shared easily. It allows an expanding possibility of the government information system for the purpose of supplying the most free and direct communication, distinguishing itself from the former government system, which was slow moving and often provided inaccurate information. In addition, the display of the governmental plane frame cuts down many middle levels to form a smaller but more efficient government. The government provides enterprises and citizens with service. Chinese traditional government management was centered by it and substituted market with administrative methods instead of supplying public production in accordance with the demand of market and serving objects. Taking administrative examining and approving procedure for example, it refers that the government, responding to the serving objects request, goes through the auditing procedures according to the legal standards and process. However, enterprises and