Overview
The Chinese government is promoting construction of network infrastructure, preparing for the realization of e-government in 2005. Since the initiation of first e-government program 'Digital Beijing', which Beijing Municipal Government used on computerization of administration procedure and e-education in 1994, Chinese government has made much progress on e-government. The purpose of of e-government construction falls into three categories: building the internal network to handle government affairs at all levels and the external web to handle business in connection with enterprises; public services and affairs between government; promoting 12 key services involving customs, taxation, finance, public security, social security, and agriculture and water resource; and accelerating establishing of important databank such as population and agricultural information.
The e-government framwork 13
By 1998, China has set up
145 gov.cn domain names in China. At that time, the government realized that
it must utilize the network resource to build a efficient workflow over the
net. So China Telecom brings forward a proposal of constructing a
e-government. January 1999, “government online project” has officially
started. One year after, the gov.cn domain names has increased to 1470
sites; 720 governmental department has their own www websites. Today,
according to the CNNIC annual report, the number of gov.cn domain names has
grown up to 5864.
The “government online project” includes 8 topics as below:
1. online electronic information exchange
2. online government procurement bidding
3. online welfare payment
4. electronic delivery
5. information centre
6. electronic document manage and publish
7. electronic tax
8. digital ID
All these topics will act as main components to combine into a Chinese
e-government.
.
Main services offered by the government
websites
Services offered by government websites mainly include function/vocation
introduction, government announcement/ laws and regulations, government
news, trade/ regional information, work guide, etc. For details, see the
following chart.
Source: Semiannual Survey Report on the Development of China's
Internet at January. 2002,
China Internet Network Center
Government Online Purchasing
The Chinese government intends to conduct all government purchasing online to enhance transparency of business transaction. Departments involving trade, finance, public health, medicine supervision and logistics all promoted online purchasing in the year 2001, as well large state-owned enterprise.
Fund for E-government 14
The fund for e-administration construction will be mainly covered by governments both at central and provincial levels. The investment by central government alone is reportedly standing at least over 120 million US$.