Lawmaker Ella Lei asks gov’t to further digitize procedures

Complimenting the government’s move to digitize certain services, lawmaker Ella Lei has asked the government to make further progress on this, including allowing the full electronic submission of applications.
The E-governance Law was enacted late last month, meaning that the government now has legal grounds to make progress on e-governance. However, the lawmaker thought the law would be useless if so-called e-governance only meant scanning and uploading hard copies of submissions to computer systems.
The process should be electronic from start to finish, Lei told local Chinese paper Macao Daily News. Members of the public still need to physically visit government offices to obtain certain documents, which she saw had room to improve as well.
In addition, Lei pointed out that a unified e-platform should be made for smoother communication and procedures. It will also help improve administrative efficiency, the lawmaker said.
E-governance should create a one-stop-shop for services on a unified e-platform. As a lawmaker that represents labor interests, Lei used new employee registrations to illustrate this.
She pointed out that employers need to visit two separate bureaus to perform the registration process when they hire a new employee, namely tax registration at the Financial Services Bureau and social security instalment at the Social Security Fund.
She hoped that in the future an employer would be able to perform the whole process with one set of documents only.
E-governance has also taken on a role in the Centralized Mask Supply platform, receiving praise from the public. The platform was made to inform members of the public on the amount of facemasks in stock at each participating pharmacy. It runs in real-time and is part of the Centralized Mask Supply Scheme, which started late January.
According to the government, the first step for e-governance is to integrate all government apps into one. Residents should be able to access most public services through one app. However, it was not guaranteed that there would be English on all the pages of the integrated app.
When integration is achieved, most public services should be completed over the Internet. However, this will mean that residents must provide their personal data to facilitate the process. The government also noted that facial authentication will be introduced for verification.
For now, few banks in Macau facilitate electronic inter-bank fund transfers. However, some public service entities, such as CEM and Macao Water, have been offering the option of e-bills which is directly emailed to clients.