PNG needs to adapt well to changes, especially those in information technology, so that the country does not fall behind global standards.
Research fellow at the National Research Institute, Otto Wangillen, said at the Final Financial Information Forum last Wednesday in Port Moresby, that PNG must change to the electronic system.
He said the paperless system of governance, or e-governance, is good because it would connect all government departments.
Wangillen said once the key departments such as Finance, Treasury and Planning take on board e-governance; this would affect all the other departments because they ‘feed off’ the key departments and would have to follow suit.
“Progress and development can only happen by embracing e-governance,” Wangillen said.
PNG has been ranked 174 out of 184 by the United Nations E-Government Development Database. Fiji ranks 113, Vanuatu ranks 155 while the Solomon Islands ranks 156.
Chief executive officer of the Port Moresby Chamber of Commerce and Industry, David Conn, said while many departments have websites, the chamber still receives complaints from overseas users who go through the chamber website, that the links to government either do not work or are seriously out of date.
“This is an administrative fix. If you are going to have a website at all, you need to commit recurrent funds for updating on a daily or weekly basis and if need be, employ someone to do the job,” Conn said.
Conn said e-governance would benefit PNG citizens by allowing increased access to information by giving some sort of transparency into the workings of these public entities.
“E-Government is about making government more open to the public and will encompass such things as freedom of information legislation. The levels of e-government in societies such as the United Kingdom and the United States are to be aspired to,” he said, adding that this was a long way off when most departments allocate insufficient funds even just to pay the phone bill.
Conn suggested that although there might be fears that jobs would be lost as a result of e-governance, he said it could have the opposite effect.
“In actual fact high levels of e-government mean the mundane matters, and those that can allow a corrupt human input, are handled electronically, and the public servant is freed up to become more productive in areas that really matter,” he said.
