Promoting E-Government in the Context of New Public Management: The Case of the Local Government of Cebu, Philippines

Abstract

e-Government — the application of ICTs to improve the activities of public sector organizations — is widely seen as a means to promote efficiency in public administration. As various studies have shown, e-Government goes beyond the introduction of technology. It calls for a paradigm shift — reforms in organizations, new forms of leadership, and transformation of public-private partnership — to make its impact effective (Allen et al, 2001 cited in Ndou, 2004). e-Government entails changing process, which means changing policy. A change in policy results in changing the way people do things, which in turn changes culture. A major challenge, therefore, is for e-Government projects to consider the context in which they will be implemented.The main aim of e-Government is to improve the overall performance of the public sector. As such, it can be seen as a product of the reforms being advanced by the New Public Management — an output-oriented, demand-driven approach that gives premium to providing high quality service to citizens (Schedler, K. & Scharf, C., 2001). Inevitably, e-Government will affect economic, legal, and democratic values in the realm of public administration (Snijkers, 2005). It also supports good governance, which upholds transparency, accountability, and participation by various stakeholders in society.Analyzing e-Government as a means to achieve the goals of New Public Management, this paper looks at the case of the local government of Cebu City in the Philippines, one of the pioneer users of ICT in introducing reforms in the public sector. First, it examines the different factors that contributed to the early adoption of e-Government by Cebu City, the initial hurdles encountered, and the challenges that remain in the implementation of e-Government projects. It then analyzes Cebu City’s e-government projects using the New Public Management approach. The paper also features the latest (and possibly most innovative) e-Government project of Cebu City, to date--the introduction of “digital land-titling” to secure property rights. The study found a unique feature in the Cebu City digital land titling project, one which saw two government offices sharing information for a reform project. The Cebu City Local Government, which produces tax declarations for real property, and the Cebu City Register of Deeds, a decentralized office of the national government’s Land Registration Authority and the repository of land titles, shared information to create a database of digital copies of land titles that matched with their respective technical description and tax declaration. This cooperation was possible because of the identified common interests between the two government offices in pursuing the e-government project. A local ICT champion--influential both politically and administratively--also played a key role in moving things forward. However, as in many e-government projects in developing countries, the project faces funding problems during the early stage of its pilot life. The paper concludes with both recommendations and questions about making strategic investments for the continuity of promising e-Government projects.