THE LINK BETWEEN E-GOVERNMENT AND RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT IN THE FIELD OF ICT

Abstract

The research presented in this article had as objectives carrying out a review of the specialized literature in the field of E-government and the research and development in the field of ICT. To highlight the relationship between E-government and the ICT upsurge opportunities offered by frequent technological breakthroughs, correlation analyzes were carried out using the secondary data made available by the Eurostat databases. Three research hypotheses were formulated and the second research hypothesis, the one regarding the readiness of public sector to upgrade to Digital Transformation (DX) in terms of monetization of digital assets, a weak positive or strongly negative relationship between e-governance activities and companies’ IT research and development expenditures is validated in the case of most European countries. At the opposite pole it was revealed that there are also countries where investments in the development of IT infrastructure led to the upsurge of e-government infrastructure, as a starting point in promoting the increase in expenses with acquiring new IT terminals and services upgrading, as a leading example for countries with lower expenditures on ICT sector development. The other two research hypotheses regarding leveraging the strategic advantages of digitization in terms of state of knowledge and research staff, have been revealed that most European countries, including Romania, have a strongly negative relationship to present e-government services development, requiring future analysis of upstream and downstream use of advanced ICT techniques implemented in e-government development feedback based on reliable data.