Governments, all around the world, deliver services to its citizens. Services provided could be basic necessities or otherwise.
Public sector is gauged by the effectiveness and efficiency of the public services delivered by it.
To improve the quality and quantity of services delivered to the citizens, governments resort to continuous improvements.
Such innovation is one way to improve the services delivered.
Governmental innovation may mean new products, approaches, processes, policies and programmes that may result in significant improvements in efficiency, effectiveness of the services delivered.
In most cases, innovation in public service focuses on process re-engineering.
This involves trying to minimise the number of steps required to meet government requirements and make use of information already collected, in other word, administrative simplification.
Administrative simplification aimed at streamlining administrative procedures, and reducing the bureaucratic burdens for citizens and business should be an identifiable policy integrated within the broader governance agenda, to promote transparency and accountability in the public sector, which can contribute, at the same time, to improve competitiveness and economic growth.
The most common form of process re-engineering is reducing the number of licences or permits required to undertake various activities.
The better use of technology is also an important element of the process.
The objectives incorporated within e-government plans are strongly aligned with, and support, administrative simplification.
Indeed, much e-government activity is, in effect, pursuing an administrative simplification agenda and increasingly administrative simplification policies are becoming explicitly integrated and important parts of governments’ e-government plans.
