Cross-Boundary Collaboration of E-Governance in Taiwan

Background

Taiwan has been well known for its e-Government achievements over the past two decades. Taiwan is also well-regarded as a leading e-Government benchmark in international reports and studies. For example, Brown University of the United States has ranked Taiwan at first place three times in the global-e-Government surveys from 2001 to 2008 (West, 2008). The idea and process of building e-Government in Taiwan can be traced back to 1997. E-government projects in Taiwan were initiated by the Research, Development and Evaluation Commission (RDEC) under the Executive Yuan (the Cabinet). Taiwan government had set four stages as a roadmap for developing e-Government (details described in the Figure 1), which include: infrastructure development and penetration (1998~2000), on-line services development (2001~2004), integrated/ubiquitous government (2005~2007), and intelligent government (starting 2008). Through successful implementation of e-Government projects, Taiwan has achieved fruitful results. With above-mentioned processes as infrastructure, individual application, service online of e-Government, it has already marched into the phase of integration and innovations in Internet applications so that there have been milestone breakthroughs and developments in terms of service convenience, reduction in the volume of documents and transcripts, enhancement of administrative efficiency for public business, and active disclosure and transparency of government as well as the stimulation of networking service. Consequently, those e-services that were found dispersed in various government agencies in the past have been combined to simplify service workflow and integrate systems, and the efforts have, aside from helping to continuously enhance the efficiency of government service, also focused on effectiveness as the government heads towards integrated internet service to meet citizen’s need (Sung, 2007).

Figure 1.

The road map of e-government of Taiwan (Source: Sung, Y. H. (2007))

The Development Of E-Government Has Reached A Certain Limit

Taiwan has had more than 10 years experiences in developing e-Government projects since it was first introduced in 1997. To continue the ongoing implementation of e-Government, Taiwan government enacted a series of e-Government projects since 1997. Various government websites had been set up and almost all government application forms and services are available on-line. Moreover, a new master plan has been planned starting from shaping a new vision of integrated e-services after 2011. However, are those on-line services really meeting the citizen’s demand?