1.2 - I. Implementation and private sector participation

In his presentation, Mr. Ardaman Singh Kohli, Business Segment Manager, Asia-Pacific Axalto, discussed the private sector contribution to the implementation of e-government. Mr. Kohli explained that GIXEL was the smart card industry association. Its combined membership shipped more than 70 per cent of the world’s smart card volume in 2003. The smart card provided security and savings for e-government services. Smart cards were a nonforgeable, physical and logical way to identify citizens offline and online. They simplified access to e-government services and reduced the total cost by providing multiple functions in one card.

Mr. Kohli stated that the potential role of the private sector in egovernment included providing information, contributing to the establishment of a standardization framework and elaborating on technical answers to legal and social issues. The greatest contribution the private sector could make was at the pre-implementation stage, when government was not always certain about what path to take and of the available options. The private sector could work with the government through consultants, system integrators or specific technology vendors. Industry associations could advise the government on its options, as they were vendor neutral, with technical capacity and in-depth expertise. When reaching the implementation stage, the involvement of the private sector was also necessary and there were various business and funding models for at approach. Involvement of the private sector allowed the government to focus on governance issues, while operations were managed by the private sector. At that stage, privacy and reliability became critical, as did long-term support for such initiatives.

The role of smart cards in e-government was fundamentally to cover the last mile in the security chain, up to the citizen. Smart cards enabled secure and efficient e-government services. Typical smart card applications included:

• National health cards
• Driver's licence
• Electronic identification cards

Smart card solutions gave Governments the ability to apply offline and remote e-government applications so that a network connection or Internet point at every border or every village was not necessary. They also helped to address some of the connectivity challenges faced by countries in the region. Smart cards could enhance privacy protection of personal data in the card, and reduced outsider and insider fraud.

Mr. Kohli provided a case study of one of the oldest and most successful smart card projects, the French Sesame Vitale health and social security scheme. In the previous paper-based system, the Government took up to two months to reimburse citizens their health care costs. The French Government was the second largest health care spender in the world at the time, but citizens were frustrated and unhappy with long waits for returns. Even though the Government was spending a great deal on the health care system it was not popular with the public. They needed to change their approach and develop a more efficient, cost-effective system. The resulting smart card system was developed with a public-private partnership. The results were striking: more than one billion euros per year in savings, transactions became largely digital, confidence in the system and its privacy increased, and faster claims were able to be made (money back in five days). In addition, the Government was able to build up statistics on pathologies, now that the data were signed at the source.

The goals of identification smart cards were to empower citizens and to provide a non-contestable identity document to limit fraud. Further, once a direct link to each citizen existed, the cost of delivering services was dramatically reduced owing to the elimination of the need for an employee to verify identity – a major cost component of traditional systems. It also increased national security and created a "feedback" loop with citizens.

Mr. Kohli concluded that the launch of new e-government applications often went through a long and uncertain decision process, which did little to motivate industrials in the early phases. However, in those non-competitive phases, an industry or an association of industrials with large coverage could provide valuable guidance to the administration with the proper level of challenge.