A guide to understanding the importance of e-Government accounting July 28, 2017

What is E Government?

E Government is the use of electronic communications devices, computers and the internet to provide public services to citizens and other persons in a country. The term is the digital interaction between a citizen and his or her government, between two governments and government and employees.

E government systems can be broken down into different categories such as the interaction communicating with all levels of the government, facilitating citizen involvement in the government using information and communication technology.

E government accounting system represents an information society which is soon going to depend on more computer than human in the next 50 years. This is a system that is measured, recorded, summarised and report on the different governments different activities. This will present the results of the state budget implementation by comparing the estimated figures of expenditures and public resources with actual resources. This is a system that will provide accounting information for decision makers that would facilitate the evaluation of performance, achievements and expenses. In general, in simple terms it assists to achieve control over the management of public money. The shift towards e government will result in consequences necessarily to develop government accounting information systems.

The government will need to carry out re engineering operations to provide government services especially economic accounting operations. The goal is to improve the performance of governmental units and to build information on economy and society in government units through multiple integrated systems.

Benefits of E Government accounting

E Government improves the efficiency, ICT improve the efficiency in mass processing of tasks and public administration tasks. The applications that use the internet can generate savings on data collections.

E Government improves services by adopting a customer focus which is a core element to the current reform agenda. Successful services are usually built on a great understanding of the user.

ICT can help stakeholders share information and ideas so that they can reach a specific policy outcome. For example online information can boost use of an educational or training programme. This can also be used for information sharing between central and sub national governments.

Government spending can be reduced through the use of more effective programs and efficiencies and improvements in business productivity through ICT enabled administrative simplification and enhanced government information.