Good Management of IT Leads To Efficiency in Public Institutions

It is strictly required for public institutions to go over the decisions they take in the management of information technologies. Projects that are planned poorly and not conducted elaborately are doomed to fail.

The use of information and communications technologies has been developing in the public sector along with all the other sectors. Public services have finally gained a new face thanks to new technologies used and the recent e-state applications. Rapid improvement in technologies have also increased the demand by the public. This has further been supported by the launch of Web 2.0 of the state, which aims to interact with citizens much more efficiently. In fact, it is not a very good idea to underestimate this process of advancement solely with reference to e-state and mobile-state applications. Right now, public institutions are moving rapidly towards electronic and mobile media, where the WEb 2.0 is only one of the constituents.

The above-mentioned vision is inevitably making it necessary for the public institutions and managers to reconsider their work habits and the processes they have applied so far in information technologies. At this point, new laws are urgently needed to improve the rules and regulations that may have had a binding effect on the use of information technologies by citizens. Public managers seriously need to take immediate action to catch up with new trends and developments. The only way to release the tension deriving from this urgent need to catch up with the fast pace of information technologies is to add one’s own value to the process going on around the whole globe.

When the issue of finding urgent solutions to such complicated problems becomes inevitable, companies begin to develop interdisciplinary methods. The advice given by IT companies to public companies also show variations. In the past, public institutions used to utilize their own infrastructures and systems to fulfill their own needs. Nowadays, they focus on the ability to work with other public institutions, to have more citizen-oriented systems, and to present more profit to their shareholders.

The essential issues introduced by the sector at this point will be the necessary solutions to create more collaborative systems, citizen-oriented approaches, data management and the creation of added value. While achieving these aims, it is vitally important to utilize IT resources in parallelism with the strategical aims of the institution, and to plan the IT infrastructures in accordance with institutional strategies.

What distinguishes IT Management in public sector from the private sector is that the private sector is able to adapt to new technologies at a faster pace. Undoubtedly, what lies beneath this difference is the factors of customer contentment and competition in the private sector. However, in recent years, the rising globalization has also included the public sector into this new area of competition. The competition is primarily based on the demands of the citizens. You may think of this as a domino effect. The public sector optimizes its work, which leads to the optimization of the citizens, which result in the government’s inevitable involvement into what’s going on in this sector. The fact that the government also gives importance to optimization is a must in today’s world. Cutting down on public expenditure, and completely closing the already narrowing circle may only be possible through the right use of IT.

For example, the number of car sales via ASBIS (Vehicle and Driver Information Systems), presented by Security General Directorate in Turkey is over 3,300,000. The citizens are now able to fulfill the necessary procedure when buying an automobile in Turkey in 5 minutes, while they did that in 3 days in the past, thanks to the Vehicle and Driver Information Systems. In order to calculate the time saved, you may simply multiply the minutes saved by 3,300,000. Another example is that thanks to the e-tender project, the government is expecting a saving of 5 billion Turkish Liras.
These numbers prove the fact that Management of IT in the public sector is gradually gaining more and more importance. The public projects that lack the necessary planning and policies are doomed to fail.

Article from ICT News