Abstract
During the last three decades, many governments have incorporated Information and Communication Technologies in their internal and external processes, a phenomenon widely known as electronic government (e-Government). Rationales for e-Government include increasing public services’ efficiency, speed, transparency, accountability, etc., and enhancing relations between government and stakeholders (citizens, businesses, third sector organisations). e-Government programmes are large-scale innovation projects; and Future-oriented Technology Analysis, FTA, is often used in the design of public policies in science, technology and innovation. FTA tools allow for systematic appraisal of potential challenges, opportunities, and threats, and thus informing the design of long-term strategies. The aim of this paper is to examine what a systematic literature review tells us about the application of FTA to support e-Government planning, implementation or evaluation. The review confirms that FTA played a role in supporting some e-Government initiatives, especially in their planning stages. However, few relevant exercises of this sort are reported in the English language, though the e-Government literature itself in that language- is voluminous. Previous researchers often attribute weaknesses in e-Government efforts to deficiencies in vision and strategic planning. Hopefully, this review can encourage both FTA and e-Government practitioners to apply FTA to e-Government development. This suggests that there is both opportunity and need to take greater advantage of FTA in this field.
Highlights
The application of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) has been radically transforming many social and economic activities, including those of the public sector
The search strategy rested on the use of a set of keywords in the English language related both to e-Government and Future-oriented Technology Analysis (FTA) [53] to examine the Scopus database [54]. e-Government keywords such as Belectronic government^, Bopen government^, egovernment, e-gov, Belectronic administration^, eadministration, and FTA keywords such as foresight, Btechnology futures analysis^, TFA, BFuture-Oriented Technology Analysis^, FTA, Bfuture studies^, Bstrategic planning^, Bcompetitive intelligence^, Bscenario planning^, Delphi, roadmap
We move to the outputs and results of these FTA-based e-Government initiatives, and discuss the relationship between FTA methods and the type of stakeholders
Summary
The application of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) has been radically transforming many social and economic activities, including those of the public sector. Heeks & Stanforth [9] reported that the rate of failure of ICT public projects is close to 60%. This is not just a matter of delays, cost overruns, and the like: systems are quite often rejected by their intended users as not fit for purpose. Researchers have attributed these problems to several factors, including failure to take end-user requirements into sufficient account - and to lack of vision and strategy [7, 10].
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