E-Government, the Citizen and Equity

Every nation, organizations, business houses are trying to find the ways that will reduce their resource consumption meanwhile maximize the benefits to their citizens, clients, customers and others stakeholders. Use of information and technology has helped us to make our personal and professional life comfortable. Many countries, having accepted the capacity of IT in transforming the systems of governance and have adopted e-governance as the preferred model for delivering services to their citizens. Information Technology (IT) has become an obligatory part of our daily lives and we continue to rely on it increasingly as it takes a central space in both our personal and public sphere.

International Review of Administrative Sciences, 2005

The Internet is becoming more integral to governments and their modes of doing business and delivering services. This is creating a new imperative to address the digital divide. In Australia, as shown in this article, citizens who are the biggest users of government services are the least likely to be connected to the internet. What can be done to connect the unconnected? The article explores what has been learned from some of the Australian initiatives for connecting the unconnected to online government services. It concludes that greater attention to community-based human capital development is needed. It gives examples of factors needed for success in building socially marginalized communities' interest, enthusiasm and capacity to interact and communicate via online technologies, thereby contributing to how successful e-government can be in delivering gains in efficiency and improved services.

Leela Damodoran observes that fundamental to the success of e-Government is the active engagement of citizens in the planning, design, implementation and evaluation of the entire process. There are many prerequisites for active citizen engagement -the essential ones include: the opportunity to influence the agenda-setting process; awareness and understanding of existing/proposed e-government processes; recognition of the relevance of these to the quality of life of the individual citizen; knowledge of the potential benefits offered by e-Government. There are a multiplicity of creative techniques and methods for engaging citizens but these have not become accepted practices in IS development processes. Utilising citizen engagement techniques as established good practices is a further prerequisite for the success of e-Government since they are key to promoting social inclusion.

Research Report about E-Government in Least-Developed Countries, 2019

The growth of e-commerce-based services coupled with improvements in ICT have revolutionized the way private and public companies have been delivering goods and services to consumers and citizens in advanced and highly developed countries. In this respect, countries which are grouped as the least developed countries by the United Nations (UN) have lagged as far as the electronic delivery of goods and services is concerned. Of importance is the proliferation of electronic-based or E-government services in developed nations. This growth has happened in parallel with developments in other economic sectors. In case of least developed countries, some sectors, for instance, telecommunications have seen tremendous growth (increase in the use of hand-held devices such as smart phones) in no time. Often such growth has been pioneered through huge investments by national and multinational companies. However, when it comes to digitization of service deliveries in least developed countries, this growth has been slow due to many factors. Nonetheless, least developed countries have great potential and demand for e-government initiatives. Opportunities for investments in development of electronic delivery of services/goods exist both in public and private sectors. The least developed countries often require simplification of business processes not only in paper form, but also need digitization of such processes to provide quality, fast, transparent, and improved government services to their citizens. In this respect, research was conducted about the status of E-government in Least-Developed Countries (LDCs) and how it can be compared with the developing world where E-government has become one of the effective tools for online delivery of public services and promotion of people’s participation in online forums as a means to improve government policies and increase their trust on government thereby using e-government initiatives as tools for improving service delivery, reducing corruption, increasing trust between governments and their citizens, removing digital barriers and creating an enabling environment for domestic and foreign investments.

Digital Literacy, 2012

Electronic government, or e-Government, is the practice of providing public services to citizens, businesses, and other government agencies where government services can be accessed through the Internet, mobile phone, fax, mail, telephone, and personal visits (MGAHA, 2005). Developing countries, utilizing the late comer advantage, are mimicking trends of paperless governments with the expectations to reap the same benefits enjoyed by developed countries. However, e-Government initiatives have not always been successful in developing countries. According to the study conducted by Heeks (2003), the rate of e-Government success in developing countries was only 15 percent. The authors believe that such failures are mainly due to certain unique social, economic, technological, and environmental challenges faced by e-Government in developing countries. For example, some major issues include digital divide, political instability, and skills-related issues. However, the research dealing with these problems is limited. Therefore, in this chapter, the authors discuss these challenges.

Emerging Issues and Prospects in African E-Government, 2014

Governments are faced with a number of challenges that are due to the increase in the size of the population and the increase in demands from the population for efficient and effective access to services. While the needs of the citizens have evolved, government structures still reflect industrial-age organisational thinking based on a command-and-control model (Tapscott, 2010). In order to deliver services, substantial funding is required; at the same time, there has been a feeling that government has consumed too large a portion of the national income and that in general the payments made by the citizens have got to be curtailed. In this dilemma of being able to balance the supply and demand for services, government has looked at using ICT to modernise the service-delivery process. The South African government is using ICT to modernise its process; this chapter is an overview of the South African context.

Low-level citizens’ education and adoption of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is a common problem in both the developed and developing countries. E-government, which is defined as the application of ICTs to improve the activities of government, is widely seen as a means to promote efficiency of the government activities and services. In e-government context the citizens are playing a vital role in success of e-government services, initiatives, plans, strategies, and overall activities. Though, this can be achieved if citizens are well ICT educated, and have wider access to ICTs. Furthermore, ICT as a new and supporting tool to improve e-government should be accessible in social places aside from home and work. The goal is to increase and widen the citizens’ access to ICTs regardless of any citizens’ age, gender, professions, income levels, education, ethnic minorities, and religion. On the other hand, proper and adequate ICT education in schools, universities, public ...

The emergence of Information Super Highway has provided means for communication at the speed of light, retrieval of data and utilization of information to its users. E-Governance is basically the application of ICT to provide government services to the citizens through internet. In developing countries like India, where literacy level is very low and even most of the people are living below poverty line, people are not even aware about the benefits of E-Gov. activities and people do not use Computer and Communication technologies to a much extent, there exist a number of issues to implement e-Gov activities. This paper highlights the challenges related to the implementation of E-Gov. Projects in the State of Madhya Pradesh in India. E-Gov. is basically an application of ICTs (Information & Communication Technologies) that uses ICTs in Government Organizations, (NGOs) for delivery of services to citizens. MP Government had implemented a number of projects at district, tehsil and sub-tehsil levels to serve its citizens. But due to some reasons or another, rural citizens are not aware about these projects and their services. That is the reason why, these projects are suffering from their poor implementation.

The challenging era of online serviceshas moved its forces towards government sector just the way it has forced commercial and business sectors to move into online businesses. In this piece of work I have tried to explain whether the advent of e-government helps the governments to get closer to the citizens.This article is based on literature review that highlights the impacts and factors of egovernment which affects efficiency, citizen participation, trust and transparency in services the government takes online.

Theory, Applications and Benchmarking, 2007

The use of information communication technologies (ICT) in governance is growing rapidly in many parts of the world. Developing countries in Africa are also making efforts to harness the new technology. In this chapter, we review the problems, progress, and prospects of e-government in Nigeria, a sub-Saharan African (SSA) country. Governments in the developing countries of SSA can benefit from e-government initiatives, as do their counterparts in advanced nations, when the concept of e-governments in SSA is understood, and concerted efforts are committed towards institutionalizing it in the region. This chapter provided useful insights in this regard. We discussed the contribution of the chapter to information systems (IS) research, and we highlighted the lessons from Nigeria for comparable nations in the SSA region as they prepare for e-government.