With infocomm literacy rates on the rise, more and more Singaporeans are turning to Government e-Services to transact with public sector agencies.

Mr Terence Chiem, a Senior Associate Manager with Great Eastern Life Assurance Co, said the availability of online services is especially useful to his team of planners and advisers. “These services make it convenient for their clients to get relevant information on their CPF statements when doing financial planning,” he said.

Another frequent user of Government e-Services, telecommunications analyst Mr Kenneth Liew, prefers to file his tax returns online, instead of having to deal with all the different hard copy forms. "The online process is much smoother, and we can have instant confirmation when the forms have been successfully submitted," he said.

According to the annual e-Government Perception Survey, about 95 per cent of businesses that obtained information from the Government in the past 12 months did so electronically via channels such as the Internet, automated kiosks, e-mail, telephone via the Interactive Voice Recognition System and SMS. For end-users, 89 per cent who transacted with Government did so electronically.

The Government is also tracking the customer experience to assess users’ response to its online services. The e-Government Perception Survey, which comprises a customer component and a business component, measures how open individuals and businesses are towards adopting e-Government services.

Results of the latest survey show a high level of satisfaction and confidence in dealing with e-Government services, with 86 per cent of users giving a rating of 4 and above (out of a 6-point scale) for the quality of the services. Over 93 per cent of users will also recommend others to transact with the Government using e-services.

The latest e-Government Perception Survey found 89 per cent transacted with Government electronically.

The latest customer survey, which was conducted by the Ministry of Finance and the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA), covered over 1,200 respondents above the age of 15 while the business survey, conducted by the Ministry of Trade and Industry and IDA, covered over 1,600 organisations from various industry sectors.

One aspect of e-Government services which was closely tracked was the delivery of mobile services. With Singapore’s mobile penetration rate hitting 112.8 per cent (as of September 2007), the Government has been looking at this e-channel to allow the public to transact on the move and offer them greater convenience.

Currently, there are some 200 Government services available through mobile devices such as Central Provident Fund account enquiries, Certificate of Entitlement results and updates on traffic conditions. The survey found that users were satisfied with the Government’s mobile services, with 84 per cent of users giving them a rating of 4 and above for service quality.

This year’s survey was also the first in which business satisfaction with support for e-Government services was tracked. The results has been heartening, with 79 per cent of businesses giving a satisfaction rating of 4 and above for customer support.

Despite the high ratings given to e-services, the Government remains mindful of the needs of the segment of Singapore’s population that is still not comfortable with electronic channels of transaction. These users, who make up about 11 per cent of survey respondents, comprise mainly senior citizens and blue-collar workers.

To address the needs of these users, CitizenConnect Centres have been set up to bridge the digital divide and serve the citizens who either do not have computer or Internet access, and/or need help with using government e-Services. There are currently 28 such centres which offer free Internet connect to access government online services, as well as customer service officers to assist users who need guidance and assistance in going online. In a baseline measurement taken in the latest survey, 19 per cent of this group of users had read about, or heard of, the CitizenConnect Centres.

Survey of users who completed their transactions at the CitizenConnect Centres found that a consistently high proportion (over 90 per cent) were satisfied with the facilities and the help they received at the Centres, and would use the Internet to transact with the Government in the future.