E-Government in Malaysia:Its implementation so far and citizen's adoption strategies

The internet is a very powerful communication tool in trade. The business transactions conducted through the internet for example such as e-commerce is a faster and more efficient because traders can reduce operational cost as well as transaction and delivery time. E-government is a form of e-commerce where the “service provider” is e-government and the “clients” are the citizens and the private operators. The implementation of e-government started since the initiation of Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC)

The best four directions that it could go for its implementation is:

• Securing APEC-wide commitment
  
• Enhancing Government IT infrastructure and implementing proper IT
  Management practices
  
• Enhancing training and culture management
  
• Implementing e-Government projects

E-government is being used as a tool for better government. The implementations so far in Malaysia are:

• Electronic Labor Exchange (elx), the domain is http://www.elx.gov.my/
• Project Monitoring System (PMS)
• Electronic Services Directory (eservices)
• E-syariah
• Electronic Procurement (eP) project
• Human Resource Management Information System(HRMIS)
• Electronic filing of income tax return
• Voter information
• SMS alert on e-gov services
• Online renewal of driving license

The benefits of implementing e-government are:

• Improves efficiency since the use f information technology enables improvement in mass processing tasks and public administration operations.
  
• Generate saving in on data collection and transmission
  
• Help to achieve specific outcomes
  
• Create a better communication between government and citizens
  

E-government Malaysia is now at ranked at 25th out of 32 countries in terms of e-government usage growth. In addition, a survey done by the market information group has proved that e-government usage has increased into 15% in 2003 compared to 12% in year 2002. In my opinion, even though the e-government has spread well and use by many organizations for their purpose but still there is low percentage of usage rate among the citizens in Malaysia. These could be due to less usage of internet application among the nations especially in the not developed area such as Sabah and Sarawak. Another possible reason that it is hardly applied by organizations is the difficulties of automating manual office systems while also facing the same challenges on online security and system integration which all other economies are wrestling with now.

However, the problems faced with e-government implementation are:

• Concern more on security if doing transactions over the internet and thus resulted in low usage of e-government services.
  
• Most of them are not aware of it yet
  
• Also because of language barrier. Most of them still prefer Malay Language.

http://www.intanbk.intan.my/psimr/articles/Article1%20-%20Full.pdf
http://www.apec.org/apec/documents_reports/senior_officials_meetings/2002.MedialibDownload.v1.html?url=/etc/medialib/apec_media_library/downloads/som/mtg/2002/word.Par.0083.File.v1.1