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Government transformation
The advancement of InfoCommunication and Media Technologies today has brought people closer. Cloud computing, smart phone, social media network and IoT have re-shaped the consumer landscape and lifestyle. This digital society transformation trend has created both opportunities and challenges for the government. The government needs a digital strategy to transform the government, delivering government services that meet with the ever increasing service expectation from the citizens. Offering ease-of-use one-stop public services to the citizens and enterprises securely, anywhere, anytime and on any devices, as well as achieving citizen-centric service delivery helps to enhance and enrich citizens’ living standards and lifestyle.
Many developed countries today have established comprehensive ICT blue print and taking steps to realize the digital government transformation. In Asia Pacific, we have seen countries like Japan, South Korean, Australia and Singapore leading the way in this effort. In the blue print, there are many scenarios that allow citizens experience convenient and instant services provided by the government.
Scenario 1 - Government services
Face-to-face government services are being replaced by intelligent, online e-Government services. The public need not rush to different offices to apply for the services. Instead, daily services are being provided online, on unified e-Government portal, which is conveniently accessible from mobile phones and tablets.
When different IT systems from different government departments are connected together, the data will be shared. The complexity of using public services will be dramatically reduced. The days where citizens were required to produce a pile of documents to apply for government services such as applying a new ID for a new born baby, reimbursing medical insurance claims, and applying for social benefits are gone. With the digital Government transformation, the only personal information citizens need to provide is the ID and password. All other information including basic civilian information, address, is now automatically extracted from the centralized repository of the e-Government systems.
Scenario 2 - Safe city
Social security is a hot topic for every country. With the latest ICT technology, security could be enhanced by technologies such as IoT, cloud computing, big data analysis, video and image processing, and data analysis.
At the moment, most of the city’s surveillance system is constructed in silo ways; police department, transportation department and other government agencies have their own surveillance system setup. Different cities’ surveillance systems from the same department are also not integrated. Silo systems cause several problems:
- Concentration of cameras at the same location like birds on the same pole;
- Data is not shared between different systems, thus, the analysis of the event is not comprehensive and smart enough.
The new digital transformation for Safe city is focused on creation of a common smart city IoT platform to allow sharing of streaming video both in real-time and in batch. Unstructured-to-Structure (U2S) video analytics and big data analysis lead to improvement in overall social security for the cities.
Scenario 3 - Tourism
Tourism is the leading industry for most of the countries in South Pacific region. South Pacific is a region featuring indigenous cultures; it has long been a favorite corner of the world for tourists with its tropical climate, world’s best coral reefs, perfect beaches, tasty cuisine, low prices, and good flight connections. Through the use of ICT solutions, it is easy to advertise precise and personal information to the right audience group. Travelers can easily book flight and accommodation. More importantly, they can share the great experiences with friends through social media, thus helping to reduce advertisement cost in attracting more travelers.
The scenarios mentioned above are just a glimpse of the changes brought about by the ICT technologies. The ICT (Information Technology & Communication Technology converged) technologies is the key for the digital government and digital society transformation. With the government digital transformation from Gov 2.0 (Government-centric) to Gov 3.0 (Citizen-centric) and to Gov 4.0 (Individual/Personal-centric), it will improve the citizens’ satisfaction and enable Government to build an agile, highly efficient and safe society.
The basic difference between the x.0 governments is coming from the intimacy between the technology and the government.
In Gov 2.0, the government mainly uses the technology to publish information to the public, which is a form of Government-centric services design. In Gov 3.0, technology is used to serve their citizens automatically. I.e. moving towards Citizen-centric services design. However, the different IT systems from the Government work in silo. While in Gov 4.0, Cloud is used to centralize and consolidate all IT systems and data sets to achieve Individual/Personal-centric services design.
In the Gov 4.0, the Government IT system is transformed from Datacenter to Data Center.
Introduction of E-Government ICT
In Gov 4.0, the ICT systems shall be consolidated, centralize, and Big Data enabled.
Note:
Datacenter means a location to host the IT infrastructure.
“Data Center” means 1. Datacenter; 2. Data are really centralized, consolidated and connected.
Consolidation of IT systems will help the infrastructure to physically consolidated into limited number of data centers. IT systems shall be consolidated into common hardwares which is cloud enabled. Through the consolidation of IT systems, government will greatly reduce capex for ICT infrastructure. Meanwhile, because of the shared resources between different organizations, especially enabled by the cloud technologies, the operation cost and complexity will be dramatically reduced.
Intelligence comes from data analysis from all ICT systems, thus centralizing data centers enable the data from different IT systems to be interconnected and shared. Data interconnection and sharing are the foundation of big data analysis, which will make the Government services smarter.
One typical example of data analysis used in Safe City is that once a centralized analysis system is deployed, data from all cameras’ will be analyzed. And in the case where the analysis system is enabled with. potential risk identification algorithm for example, the potential security events can be instantly discovered, alerted and prevented.
Another typical example is in the traffic monitoring system, where it helps to detect violation of traffic rules such as breaking traffic light signal and reckless driving. Unlawful driving behavior will be smartly detected and drivers be fined to improve the overall civilians’ traffic behavior.
Data analysis after data centralization will greatly improve Government intelligence, thus creating possibility for new applications and services. When integrated with public’s mobile system, it allows close collaboration and instant feedback between the Government and the public. As a result, the communication and public’s image of the Government will be enhanced.
With the Digital Government transformation, Government ICT systems will not only be utilized by the Government internally. It will also open up a new platform for other industries to provide better information sharing such as social, insurance, and healthcare. This can be implemented via Government open data sharing services. The chemical reactions will bring upon smarter Government services and smarter Government information sharing, achieving better Government transparency and always on public services.
Carrier becoming government trusted IT consultant and infrastructure provider
The future of Digital Society and Digital Government is exciting, effective, and convenient, yet filled with challenges and complexity in implementation. To build such a complex system, there must be a powerful platform to host all of the applications and systems together. Cloud computing and data technology are the key drivers and enablers of the future Digital Society and Digital Government blueprint.
To achieve the goal of a digital society, Government needs reliable partners to help in building the ICT infrastructure. The potential partners shall have good geographical coverage close to every Government organization, in case there is any service failure, service recovery response can be immediate to minimise disruptions.
When all data are centralized, security will be of utmost concern. That is the reason why Government should find trusted partners like the Operators, which have close connection to the Government and have great capability to tackle potential IT and security issues.
The following criteria can be referenced when a Government searches for trusted partners:
- Local and instant support services capabilities: Government usually has different branches across the whole nation, thus, the potential partner should have similar support structure to provide swift responses to the government’s needs.
- Security capability: As data are being centered in limited number of the datacenters, the potential data security issue will be a concern. Partners should have the competence and capability to help the Government IT departments to mitigate risks from their potential internal and external data security threats.
- End-to-end ICT capability: the partners must own strong ICT infrastructures with readily available National high speed backdones and world-class Data centers to support the Government.
In addition, carriers have rich experience to help Enterprises to migrate their IT infrastructure into Cloud. The experience is valuable to Government. It will ensure the success of the government’s digital transformation. The world is connected including Enterprises and Government, the connection between them will open a wider door to the future of digital society and digital Government.
Huawei helped T-Systems (Subsidy of Deutsche Telekom) build the Open Telekom Cloud (OTC) which was launched in Hannover CeBIT on 14 March 2016. Open Telekcom Cloud is an Open, Secure and Affordable Cloud services compliant to strict German data security regulations. Helping T-Systems ushering into the next phase of digitalization.
For more information, visit www.huawei.com