COMMENTS BY DR. CLOETE

Dr. Fanie Cloete
Professor of Public Policy Analysis and Management
School of Public Management and Planning
University of StellenboschSouth Africa

Thank you Clippers, I would just like to make a few comments. It will be in the form
basically of commenting generally on issues that I found relevant in these three papers
that I have read as well as incorporating some of my own experiences and observations
elsewhere. The comments would be in the form of two sections. First section is few
general comments that you see on the screen there that are applicable not only to NGO’son what afford in my country, not many CSO’s but CBO’s especially community basedorganization more than civil society organization. So, few comments and generalcomments relevant to government, to these volunteer organizations and as well as
business and then a few NGO specific comments.
Let’s start off in terms of general comment.
Current public delivery process is inadequate to meet needs of new knowledge society.
We have seen some mini intermediate change through the information revolution andglobalization that we are increasingly realizing that situations have changed,environments have changed. We dramatically need new approaches to be more effective,efficient and due to meet our needs and we have to distinguish internal management
issues as well as our external service delivery objectives.
Those objectives that we strive to achieve and these issues are irrelevant in the all
aspects for new organizations that want to be relevant in the new information age. A set
point is that technological change is deterministic. Whether we like it or not, we look at
an era of globalization. We live in an era where change is forced upon us. It is sometime possible to delay the stages of changes, but we can’t really get away from that in
the local village. We can’t isolate ourselves because then we will not be able tore-flourish and develop. The adoption of new technologies is already international
standard. In many cases especially developing countries where I come from where nochoice but to follow suit and re-engineer, both our internal management process andexternal government delivery and interaction processes. And this obviously is relevant
not only for governments, but I would say for other organization that we are talking
about here this afternoon. The question then for is not whether we should proceed tochange our approach. We must do so. The only question is how we should proceed to inthat, not whether wee should do so or when we should migrate to new approaches.
This sets a little stricter approach to the application of technology than it is taken byother people, but I make an apology by taking this deterministic view point.

There is a paradox in the existence of a circle digital divide. The digital divide ordivides as I would prefer to call them because they exist not only between information
wealthy and information poor countries on societies but also with inner societies as wenow between information rich groups or individuals or classes in one hand, information
poor groups and classes in the other hand and volunteer organizations like NGO’s andCSO’s and others are normally classified or have been classified up to now as basicallyinformation poor and resources are poor. Therefore their potential to compete with otherorganizations are not so good. These digital divides are caused or aggravated bytechnology. But simultaneously, one can use technology to reduce the digital divides, if
we apply the technology, instruments that we have appropriately.
Success and failure in our attempts to transfer our operations are also relative concepts
we have to take that into account. What might in the short-term look like failures but inthe longer terms prove to be more successful and vise versa? What might be short termis successful but longer term proved to be not so successful. And we have to take thisinto account in assessing the impact of technology on volunteer organizations. We mightstruggle at the moment, in implementing it might be expensive and soon but in thelonger term once the management committees, the executive of those bodies make theinvestment, it might prove in the longer term to be beneficial and more sustainable thanin the short term.
There are various conditions for successful e-development. We need in any organization
definite socio, what I call sociopolitical conditions will exist. We need among theleaderships of the organization, the will, the organizational will, the vision, thecommitment, leadership, the allocation of sufficient resources and sufficiently adequate
management procedures in order to do what is to be done. Whether it is basically
implementation of technologies or not, but specially when comes to reach that changes
in the investment. There are several technological conditions that need to be complying
with and I have mentioned them there that they are basically hardware and software,
infrastructure. You have seen some of the data coming out from our Hong Kong
example and from the Korean example. So we are never talking about that.
We need certain educational conditions. We need prioritization of the availability ofthese systems where they are needed. If the smaller NGOs in Hong Kong and in otherplaces are in the most need for these systems, from the government’s perspective if they
really want to do assist with these organizations’ development, they need to intervene
and to assist in providing the necessary conditions. For government, obviously to placethese systems in community locations and to do training are important. Similarly forNGOs and for other volunteer organizations the same conditions are applied. And ifthey want to be relevant, they have to do the same things that will governments do tocontinue to be successful, also in terms of financial and economic resources,prioritization of financial allocations for those above purposes.
What I am concluding therefore here, is that the conditions, the promises andexpectations that exists for e-government are very similar in the arena of volunteerorganizations. They are very similar and need to comply with these conditions if you
want to succeed that extend.
Let us look now some in-general procedures. Like this happened in the area ofgovernments and private sector organizations. There is an inevitable new role definition
that we must adopt for NGOs, in the knowledge society, if NGOs want to be relevant in
the knowledge society, we have seen from the case studies that have been represented tous that the immediate impact in the short term is that there is less of intermediary needfor NGOs now that governments can directly over the heads of these organizations
address the citizens directly. Volunteer organizations are autonomous that needs tochange in strategy, in strategic positioning to achieve the objectives. Secondly the sameneed exists in voluntary organizations for not only the traditional narrow definition ofliteracy but a new definition of literacy. This is why educating your own members in theorganizations is important. Where a standard content, a standard definition of literacy isimportant and this means again an elaborate decision, a strategic decision to change theoperations, to do a business process reengineer exercise, do a thorough assessment of
the future needs of the organization and they have to follow that up with sufficient
strategic operational management initiatives to achieve their objectives. In the meantime there is an ambivalent transitional relationship between NGOs and government,
because in the short term NGOs are severely dependant on governments of general
education initiatives and the establishment of electronic infrastructures where they donot exist. In the Asian regions you are fortunate, more fortunate than other regions
where these infrastructures and the e-literacy among citizens do not exist in sufficiently
to the extend they do in Asia. And you should hold on those conditions that you haveavailable. We are way behind in Africa for example, and even in countries like Latin
America where different strategies are needed to be adopted. There is a new paradigm
that is developing e-development as electronic empowerment, in short term I have said
access resource problems still abound. You are better than other regions. But one can’ttalk about in capitalist terms if you want to follow capitalist assessment. Asset creationmeans investment in ICT can be in the long term create value or improve value in theform of intellectual economic and other forms of asset development, capitalist asset
developments, in the redistributive terms not necessarily capitalist terms. We can talkabout capacity building.
It’s something improving the ability to achieve your set objectives by performing
appropriate tasks more effectively and ambitiously. So, along these lines one can seethat empowerment is very important. I think I am getting to leave this here, may be justconclude with few suggestions for potential empowerment or capacity building. In theform of direct access to revenue sources, we should look at the implications of theUnited States election campaign that you have seen last few months. How the lobbies
succeeded especially how do these lobbies in achieving more revenue for this purposes
and also another point I am going to discuss detail would be the impact of the Seattle,
Debrarko during the World Trade Organization meetings where internationally coalitionof volunteer organizations came together and proved to be very effective by organizing
their activities via e-mail and via internet. Let us discuss these issues during question
time.