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Inspired
by examples like this, the World Bank is actively encouraging the increased
rollout of broadband connectivity worldwide. The organization is also
accelerating the number of projects aimed at transforming service provision to
low-income populations using ICT. To this end, it recently introduced the
Government Transformation Initiative (GTI).
GTI came into being following a roundtable discussion between the World Bank’s President, Robert Zoellick, and the chief executives of 11 private sector companies, including Gemalto. Laurent Besançon, GTI coordinator at the World Bank, explains the rationale. “We wanted GTI to be a partnership between the World Bank and industry, and we designed it together,” he says. “We feel that much of the knowledge in this area is located in the private sector and so, rather than invent something ourselves, we felt it would be more productive to leverage the expertise that’s already out there.”
Instead of embarking on a wide range of efforts, the GTI team decided to focus on two key areas, eGovernment and ICT skills development, which they then subdivided into three main categories: eProcurement, eIdentity (eID) and cloud computing. The latter was felt to be important as a means of helping governments to reduce ICT costs by enabling public authorities to either share services or access third-party ones.
Because eProcurement makes the purchase of goods and services more automated and transparent, it is also considered valuable in terms of cutting public expenditure (by 20-30%, on average) and reducing opportunities for corruption. It can also open up the market to bids from small to medium-sized enterprises. For example, after investing US$1.6 million in an eProcurement system in 2004, Brazil’s central government generated savings of US$107 million in the first year alone, while its suppliers saved a further US$35 million.*
Meanwhile, eID is seen as a crucial means of facilitating eGovernment, which in itself is viewed as critical to economic development. Electronically delivered public services are proven not only to reduce transaction costs and processing time, but also to boost government revenues.
One of the key issues for eGovernment is how to authenticate the identities of individuals. This is particularly important when delivering state benefits that involve a transfer of cash, in order to ensure that the money goes to the intended recipients. Being able to trace cash transfer flows makes it easier to prevent fraud. According to Besançon, this can “suddenly make governments more self-sufficient, as funds are not being leaked. Instead, they reach the intended recipients and flow into the economy when they’re spent. It also means that scarce resources can be allocated to other sectors that need them”.
A fundamental prerequisite for authenticating citizens’ identities, however, is establishing a registry of those citizens. Such data banks haven’t always been established in the past, particularly in war-torn countries. Here again, the World Bank believes that commercial companies have a role to play. “Some governments have found private-sector partners that were able to help them with this kind of thing,” says Besançon. For example, Gemalto helped Gabon to establish the identities of its citizens when it introduced a health card there."
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The new eHealth project in Gabon illustrates the government’s desire to spread healthcare cover to the whole population and to modernize the country’s health insurance system. Gemalto is proud to run the first West African nation’s eHealthcare card project.
