• Civil service reform

Civil service reform

This article discusses the concept of e-civil service and the role it plays in the development of e-government. It  says that there are two primary drivers of e-government: technology vendors and civil service. Technology vendors are limited in their promotion of e-government by their own technology, while civil service is limited in that it works under a rule-bound environment. The article notes that among the two, civil service has a greater stake in e-government, as it is required to serve the government in power as well as citizens.

The paper suggests that e-government is the latest measure in administrative reforms, which makes a powerful assault on the weaknesses of existing governments, particularly in their relation with their citizens. It argues that the realisation of the full potential of e-government can be achieved only if the emergence of e-civil service is formally recognised and is supported to enable it to discharge its new role.The author adds that if e-government is to succeed, e-civil service must be strengthened to enable it to face the new challenge of e-government competently. The article defines e-civil service in two ways:

• e- civil service - use of ICT by the civil service in the conduct of its internal work and external public service delivery
• ai-civil service - artificial intelligence (AI) agents performing civil service jobs
  

It suggests ten guiding principles for the development of e-civil service, which are:

• recognise the emergence of e-civil service
• encourage civil service to work online
• encourage e-civil service to use web 2.0 technologies
• recognise new demands of citizens on civil service
• treat e-civil service as an instrument of administrative reforms
• set up an exclusive portal for e-civil service
• introduce e-recruitment to civil service
• deal with disciplinary cases online
• sort out ethical issues of e-civil service
• train e-civil service in government 2.0

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