Information Integration to Create an Infrastructure: Facilitating Public Service Provisioning in Taiwan

Abstract

Any e‑Government exists to create and capture convenient public services, and much of these services are created through the integration of resource databases and information flows. The key question in this study is, "how does e‑Government appropriately integrate information across organisations to facilitate an infrastructure for public services in Taiwan " In order to answer this question, this research uses the participant observation method from 2004 to 2006 to explore the effects of the integration of databases across organisations on public service delivery, with Taipei County selected as a research subject. The results showed that information integration has influenced online public services because of its convenience and efficiency. Meanwhile, automatised services are able to decrease civil servants' administrative loading. In the case study the following three steps were taken to integrate information and provide added values of public services: first, the use of directory services to centralise user account management and to authorise database use; secondly to thoroughly audit contemporary databases to check and consolidate operating programs, and to establish a core database and standardised operating database and the related rules; finally to rebuild operating systems and query frames to save information among databases in order to efficiently access information across databases and conveniently print out necessary forms.