The government will distribute a new round of electronic consumer coupons to the public. However, after the announcement of the relevant arrangements this week, the Mong Kok Temporary Service Center still has a large number of elderly citizens queuing up as in the previous round. Forced to re-register, some people pointed out that the telephone hotline could not be connected for a long time, and some even criticized the staff present at the center for asking them to go online or call for help, which could not effectively solve the problems they faced.
At the beginning of this year, the state announced the "14th Five-Year Plan for Digital Economy Development", one of the key tasks is "continuously improving the level of digital public services". And the SAR government will set up a "Digital Economy Development Committee" and conduct a comprehensive e-government audit in the next three years to review the progress of various departments in using technology.
On February 23, Financial Secretary Chen Maobo released the latest budget. Due to the severe epidemic, the video was used instead.
(Photo by Yu Junliang)
Insufficient digital level of service
However, the current level of digitization or electronicization of many public services of the Hong Kong government is obviously insufficient.
For example, some government departments have insisted on printing paper copies in response to public requests for information under the Code on Access to Information, refusing to send scanned documents by email.
This not only causes both parties to waste time and money in postal delivery, but also obviously violates the principle of environmental protection.
The level of digitalization of some public services is “half a bucket of water”, such as the ongoing 2022 Home Ownership Scheme flats and applications for subsidized sale flats by the Hong Kong Housing Society, among which the green form applications of public housing tenants are accepted at the same time. Online, mail or in-person submission methods, but online applicants still have to go to the estate office to sign the form in person afterwards. The efficiency of such a mixed approach is always lower than that of manual processing.
"HOS 2022" involves 7 new projects with prices ranging from HKD 1.24 million to HKD 5.31 million.
(Screenshot of HA document)
At the same time, the design of some electronic systems for services is overly complicated and cumbersome, which adds to the inconvenience of the public.
For example, a few days ago, the Department of Health launched a system for reporting persons with positive results of rapid antigen test. Its interface is actually the same as the original form for reporting positive nucleic acid tests or preliminary positive results on the infectious disease public platform, which is easy to cause misunderstandings by patients; then uploading documents and downloading quarantine orders are handled separately. , and does not meet the "one-stop" service principle.
Aiming at high quality and convenience
In fact, the main goal of any improvement in public services must be to facilitate citizens to use them. However, as shown by the above examples and the implementation of the two rounds of coupon distribution, the authorities often only know how to simply provide another virtual window for physical human services. , or submit paper forms online without any consideration for improving service quality or convenience, but may create more misunderstandings and delays.
Moreover, in the long run, the ideal performance of digital public services should be based on monitoring and collecting daily data, using big data and artificial intelligence for analysis and arranging automatic processing, thereby further optimizing government decision-making and increasing service efficiency; at the same time, the authorities also We should try our best to open up and update relevant statistical data in real time, so that we can complement each other with private innovation and technology forces and jointly improve the quality of life of citizens.
During the epidemic, many public services have been suspended due to civil servants working from home, which itself has shown that the digitalization level of the Hong Kong government is lagging behind.
On top of this, officials must also see the use of technology to improve public services, and must not stop at formal changes, let alone reduce the efficiency of services or increase the difficulty for citizens to use the cart before the horse.
In the future, the government needs to consider introducing more external evaluation indicators when reviewing the digitization and electronic level of the department. In particular, if the service commitment is improper, only the response time should be used as the criterion, and the calculation should be based on the resolution of public problems and the satisfaction of the other party.
Epidemic prevention cannot be done on its own. The government must improve its leadership Budget | It is better to plan the future digitalization than to pile up the numbers in the accounts.