News - No change in e-billing

No change in e-billing

September 2002

It has been about a year since the E-government Unit commissioned the NZ Institute of Economic Research (NZIER) to review the potential for an all-of-government approach to e-billing and e-payments. The 2001 report concluded that individuals and businesses were more likely to accept e-billing if all their government bills were ‘consolidated’ into one place, rather than receiving separate bills from each agency.

The 'consolidator' approach is not an easy one to follow. Quite apart from the technical and legal hurdles, the organisation consolidating and delivering the e-billing solution could monopolise the transaction business of government, which collects up to NZ$39 billion of revenue annually. With only one candidate at that time, the NZIER report recommended we wait and see how the market matured.

Some 12 months later, a second report just published finds little has changed. What has become clear this time around is that intermediaries like accountants and lawyers handle a good deal of our financial transactions with central government agencies. Here, economies of scale already operate to support existing online billing at an agency level, and therefore the consolidated all-of-government approach for the general public does not warrant the development of a centralised solution.