e-Governance Concepts, Prospects and Challenges

1. e-Governance: Concept and Case
Studies
Guest Lecture
Krishna Pandey
IT Consultant, Government of Nepal
IT Expert, CSC (P) Ltd
kris.pandey@hotmail.com
Academia International College
Gwarko, Lalitpur

2. Contents
 Trends for better e-society
 Electronic Government
Stages of e-government
Legal and Institutional Arrangements
Types & Modes of service delivery
Advantages and disadvantages
How to measure?
Collaborative e-government research
 Issues
Digital divide
 Technological issues
 Social issues
 How to overcome it?

5. What is e-government?

6. What is E-government
 Several definitions
 Electronic government or e-government (from consumer’s
point of view) is defined as the practice of public service
provisioning to citizens, businesses, and other government
agencies where government services can be accessed
through:
 The internet
 Mobile
 Fax
 Mail
 Telephone and
 Personal, or any other electronic means
Khan et al., (2011)

7. E-government defined (2)
 Use of information technologies and new business
processes to transform how Governments interact with
citizens, businesses, and other government agencies.
 Transformation of..
 Information about services
 Access channels
 Levels of service
 Business processes (front and back office)
 Organizational structures

8. E-govt. V.S Traditional Governance

9. End Goals

10. Legal and Institutional Arrangements
How does e-Government develop over
time?

11. Initiatives from Government
 E-Governance Master Plan- 2006
 IT Policy 2011 (Revised), ETA 2007
 Institutional Arrangements
MOSTE
DOIT
NITC/ GIDC/ DRC
OCC
MOIC
NTA
 Website Development and Operational Guidelines
 GEA and Ne-GIF, etc

12. E-government models
To understand E-government
developmental process different models
are proposed

13. Layne and Lee (2001) Four stage Model
<Figure 1> Dimensions and stages of e-government development (Layne and Lee, 2001)

14. Six stage model by Silcock (2001)
Stage 1: Information publishing and
dissemination,
Stage 2: Official two-way transaction,
Stage 3: Multi-purpose portals,
Stage 4: Portal personalization,
Stage 5: Clustering of common services,
Stage 6: Finally full integration and
enterprise transformation

15. UN (2002) five stage model
Emerging
Enhancing
Interactive
Transactional, and
Full integration

16. Example of one stop service Portal

20. Types of Services
 Different e-governments’ services have been identified
and organized into various categories:
 online payments, registration and permits, customer
service, communication, license, images, audio/video,
documents, applications, and procurement, among
others.
 These services are mainly provided to the users in the
G2C, G2B, G2E, and G2G e-government relationships

21. Modes of Services
Government to Citizens (G2C)
e.g. Birth certificates, Passports, Citizenship, etc
Government to Business (G2B)
E.g. E-customs, Company Registration, e-Tax,
etc
Government to Employees (G2E)
E.g. Payroll, paying tax, and e-learning
Government to Government (G2G)
E.g. information sharing, data sharing,
validation

22. Can you name some of the advantages of
E-government?

23. Advantages
 Transparency:
 what the government is working on as well as the policies they are trying to
implement
 Due to governments web presence citizens can easily know about projects,
plans, and outcomes. (through e-Portal)
 Democratization (Web 2.0)
 Greater citizen participation in governments policy and decision making
(Forums for constitution draft)
 E.g. through e-voting, blogging, chat rooms, emails etc
 Convenience
 Any where any time services
 Reduction in physical contacts no need to travel to govt. office
 Speed and efficiency
 Improved accounting and record keeping through computerization, and
information and forms can be easily accessed, updated, and modified resulting
greater speed and efficiency.

24. Disadvantages?

25. Disadvantages
Reliability & Trust
 Reliability of information on the
web, and Security
Hidden agendas of government
that could influence and bias public
opinions.

26. Disadvantages (2)
 Surveillance & Privacy
More and more information with governments about
citizens
When the government has easy access to countless
information on its citizens, personal privacy is lost
 False sense of transparency and accountability
E-government system maintained by the governments
themselves.
 Information can be added or removed from the public eye
Very few organizations monitor and provide accountability
for these modifications

27. Can we measure e-government?
How?

28. E-government readiness index
Measures the status of e-governments
around the world
Several International rankings of e-
government maturity are available.
UN e-Government Readiness Index are
among the most frequently cited

29. What they measure?
 E-government readiness index
Web measure index
Infrastructure index
Human capital index
 Digital Opportunity Index (DOI)
 Internet and PCs index
 Telephone and cellular index
 TV and online population index
 Education index
 Service deliver per stages
 E-participation index

30. World and Regional e-Government
Leaders
UN e-Gov Survey 2014

31. The three components of the E-Government
Development Index (EGDI)
OSI—Online Service Index
TII—Telecommunication Infrastructure
Index
HCI—Human Capital Index

32. E-Governance Development Index
Calculation

33. E-government development index UN
2010

35. Challenges in reviewing a country’s
online presence
Selecting the appropriate site/URL at the
national level
Integrated portal and multi-portal
approaches
Accessing websites in national official
languages
Data quality checks
Towards a more citizen-centric approach

36. UN E-participation Index
 A country’s strength in e-participation is
measured against three benchmarks:
Does the national government publish information on
items under consideration?
Are there ways for the public to engage in consultations
with policy makers, government officials and one
another?
Can citizens directly influence decisions, for example by
voting online or using a mobile telephone or polling?

37. Summary of features assessed related to
e-participation:
 Existence of archived information (policies, budget, legal documents etc.)
related to education, health, finance, social welfare, labour information and
environment
 Existence of datasets on education, health, finance such as government
spending, social welfare, labour information and environment
 Access to government website in more than one official national language
 Availability of social networking features
 Presence of e-consultation mechanisms for the six sectors: education, health,
finance, social welfare, labour information and environment
 Availability of tools in order to obtain raw (non-deliberative) public opinion for
public policy deliberation such as online forums, media tools, polls, voting
tolls and petition tools
 Presence of e-decision-making tools for the six sectors: education, health,
finance, social welfare, labour information and environment

38. Digital Participation
Increasing the reach, breadth and depth
of digital technology use across all
sections of society, to maximize digital
participation and the economic and
social benefits it can bring. (The Digital Britain
report of June 2009 )
 www.culture.gov.uk/images/publications/digitalbritain-finalreport-jun09.pdf

39. How can digital participation be
measured?
1) Reach
Access: number of households
online, and numbers using the
Internet outside the home;
2) Breadth of engagement
Modes of usage and consumption
(communication, retail, content
consumed, public services used);

40. How can digital participation be
measured?
 3) Depth of engagement: user contributions,
comments, joining networks, user generated
content, self publishing, content creation, photos
uploaded and shared, etc; and
 4) Social and economic impact: particularly the
impact on economic recovery and benefits for
disadvantaged groups and communities

42. Issues
Digital Divide

43. What is Digital Divide?

44. “Haves" and "Have-Nots"
V.S

46. Digital Divide
 Digital divide can be classified as access divide and
social digital divide.
 Access digital divide is the gap between people who have access to
digital infrastructure and information and those who have no or
limited access.
 Social digital divide exist due to perception, culture, and
interpersonal relationships

47. Digital Divide (2)
 Access Divide:
 E-service access
 Resource availability and convenience of access to service
 E-service access quality
 Timeliness (speed), Trust, and Stability of the service
 E-service access Skills
 Technical and applied e-skills for using the service
 Social Divide:
 E-service Awareness
 Knowledge of the services availability
 E-service Social Support
 Technical assistance and emotional reinforcement from friends and family
 E-service Culturability
 National colors, pictures, and local language
Source: Khan et al., 2010

48. Why we have DD?

49. Digital Divide: Problems
 Irrelevance of the Internet
• To expensive, no electricity, no skills, etc
• Better things to spend money on:
•Health, water, food, roads, education
• Problem of government control and corruption

50. Problems
 Access & Resources
 No internet, time, money, experience, etc
 Literacy and Skills
• Basic literacy
• Information age literacy
 Motivation
• Social and individual issues
• Life-stage
• We can remove barriers, but not create motivations

51. Result-> ‘Digital’ exclusion
Poor Jobs
Limited Government services (e-government)
Limited Information (jobs, consumer, politics)
Few Consumer benefits (cost of not shopping online)
Isolation from new culture
 New excluded groups - older men
Digital exclusion intensifies as society and
the economy become increasingly based
on the Internet

52. Never Catch up
 Many interlocking issues.
 Always new technologies
 Increased commercialisation
 Are the forerunner opening up the gap?

53. Global Digital Divide May be due to..
Economic division,
Geographical Division, or
Social division
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjfAFsET28c&NR=1

54. Second level DD
E.g. Inequality in the Internet use (Hargittai, 2002)

55. How can we overcome DD?

56. We need…
Economic incentives
e.g. to buy computers (laptops)
To have internet connection at home
Public access to computers
User friendly spaces - cybercafes, telecentres,
E.g. public libraries, free internet access points

57.  Provide skills (Technical & Applied)
 e.g. The European Computer Driving License (ECDL)
 Free computers+ for whole
communities
 Government-industry partnerships
 E.g. One laptop per child project
We need…

58. We need..
 Donors
• Provide Education, tele-centres, etc.
• Donate old computers to less developed countries
 Liberalization
• Foreign investment
• Infrastructure - Mobile phones
• New markets
• Industry (outsourcing)

59. References
 Khan, G. F., Moon, J., Rhee, C., and Rho, J.J. (2010). E-government skills Identification and Development: Toward a
Staged-Based User-Centric Approach for Developing Countries, Asia Pacific Journal of Information Systems, Vol.20,
No.1, March 2010.
http://apjis.or.kr/issue/Past_sub.asp?uid=3493
 -Khan, G. F., Moon, J., Park, H. W., Swar, B., and Rho, J.J.(2011). A Socio-Technical Perspective on E-government Issues
in Developing Countries: A Scientometrics Approach, Scientometrics, Vol. 87, Issue 2, p-267–286.
DOI:10.1007/s11192-010-0322-5
 Khan, G. F. & Park, H. W.(2011). International collaboration within e-government domain: A scientometrics analysis,
presented at 2011 KAPA-ASPA International Conference, October 28-29, 2011, Seoul Korea.
 http://www.kapa21.or.kr/english/2011conference.htm
 www.culture.gov.uk/images/publications/digitalbritain-finalreport-jun09.pdf
 Layne, K., & Lee, J. (2001). Developing fully function e-government: A four stage model. Government Information Quarterly,
18(1), 122-136.
 Deshazo, R.C. Kaylor, and D.V. Eck, Gauging e-government: A report on implementing services among small American
cities, Foundations of Electronic Government in America’s Cities: A Multi-Disciplinary Workshop, Chicago, IL, 2001
 Silcock, R., "What is e-Government?," Parliamentary Affairs, Vol. 54, 2001, pp. 88-101.
 UN, E-government index: http://unpan1.un.org/in tradoc/groups/public/documents/un/ unpan021888.pdf, 2005.
 UN 2008, e-Government Survey: From e Government to Connected Governance, New York, ST/ESA/PAD/SER.E/112, URL:
http://unpan1.un.org/intradoc/groups/public/documents/un/unpan028607.pdf
 http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/942/864


60. Thank You
Questions