E-government Programs Research Articles

GEOSPATIAL DATA FOR COMPUTERISATION OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION IN THE CZECH REPUBLIC

Abstract. The main aim of the eGovernment programme in the Czech Republic is to enhance the efficiency of public administration. The Digital Map of Public Administration (DMVS) should be composed of digital orthophotographs of the Czech Republic, digital and digitised cadastral maps, digital purpose cadastral map (ÚKM) and a technical map of municipality, if available. The DMVS project is a part of computerisation of public administration in the Czech Republic. The project enhances the productivity of government administration and also simplifies the processes between citizens and public administration. The DMVS project, that should be compliant with the INSPIRE (Infrastructure for Spatial Information in the European Community) initiative, generates definite demand for geodata on the level of detail of land data model. The user needs that are clearly specified and required are not met due to inconsistencies in terminology, data management and level of detail.

Using institutional theory and dynamic simulation to understand complex e-Government phenomena

Governments around the world have developed e-Government programs expecting to obtain important benefits such as improved efficiency or greater transparency. However, many e-Government projects fail to deliver their promises in terms of specific outcomes. Some of such failures are the result of a lack of understanding about the relationships among technologies, information use, organizational factors, institutional arrangements, and socio-economic contexts involved in the selection, implementation, and use of information and communication technologies (ICT), producing mismatches and unintended consequences. This paper proposes the use of institutional theory and dynamic simulation, particularly system dynamics, as an integrated and comprehensive approach to understand e-Government phenomena. Combining a sound theory and a sophisticated analytical technique will help to improve our understanding about ICT in government settings. The paper draws on the case of the e-Mexico program, particularly on the strategy to create web-based content portals for citizens in the areas of education, health, economy, and government. Using the same technological infrastructure and under the leadership of the same Federal Ministry, four different networks of government and non-government organizations engaged in the creation of internet portals and their content. The results provide evidence to demonstrate important bidirectional relationships between formal processes (institutions), agency networks (organizational forms), and the resulting characteristics of the four thematic portals (enacted technology).

E-Government Readiness Assessment for Government Organizations in Developing Countries

ICT has become an increasingly important factor in the development process of nations. Major barriers can be met in the adoption and diffusion of e-government services depending on the readiness of a country in terms of ICT infrastructure and deployment. This study aims to define organizational requirements that will be necessary for the adoption of e-government to resolve the delay of ICT readiness in public sector organizations in developing countries. Thus, this study contributes an integrated e-government framework for assessing the ICT readiness of government agencies. Unlike the existing e-government literature that focuses predominantly on technical issues and relies on generic e-readiness tools, this study contributes a comprehensive understanding of the main factors in the assessment of e-government organizational ICT readiness. The proposed e-government framework comprises seven dimensions of ICT readiness assessment for government organizations including e-government organizational ICT strategy, user access, e-government program, ICT architecture, business process and information systems, ICT infrastructure, and human resource. This study is critical to management in assessing organizational ICT readiness to improve the effectiveness of e-government initiatives.

A lost opportunity to foster E-Democracy and service delivery: E-Government in Sub Saharan Africa

Electronic government (e-government) is an innovative attempt to take advantage of information and communication technologies (ICTs) to facilitate the citizens’ access to government information and services in order to support social, economic and political development and provide an avenue for the public to interact with government institutions and processes in a democratic, transparent and equitable way. E-government has the possibility of improving service delivery and enhancing the relationship between the government and the public. It may also help to foster electronic democracy (e-democracy). However, Sub Saharan Africa (SSA) faces a lot of challenges when it comes to implementing e-government programmes. The ICT infrastructure is weak and is not widely available to rural populations. In most cases, both government officials and the people who may want to use government services online lack basic skills. Government information is not properly organized as records management systems in many countries are collapsing. E-government projects are deficient in many countries in SSA, and they are grossly under resourced. Consequently, SSA may lose the opportunities offered by ICTs to improve government service delivery and foster democracy and accountability.

Conception, development and implementation of an e-Government maturity model in public agencies

Governments worldwide are encouraging public agencies to join e-Government initiatives in order to provide better services to their citizens and businesses; hence, methods of evaluating the readiness of individual public agencies to execute specific e-Government programs and directives are a key ingredient in the successful expansion of e-Government. To satisfy this need, a model called the eGovernment Maturity Model (eGov-MM) was developed, integrating the assessment of technological, organizational, operational, and human capital capabilities, under a multi-dimensional, holistic, and evolutionary approach. The model is strongly supported by international best practices, and provides tuning mechanisms to enable its alignment with nation-wide directives on e-Government. This article describes how the model was conceived, designed, developed, field tested by expert public officials from several government agencies, and finally applied to a selection of 30 public agencies in Chile, generating the first formal measurements, assessments, and rankings of their readiness for e-Government. The implementation of the model also provided several recommendations to policymakers at the national and agency levels.

E-government principles: implementation, advantages and challenges

The objective of this paper is to review the available literature about e-government implementation stages, its challenges and benefits. It gathers and consolidates several relevant issues regarding e-government such as the definitions of e-government, implementation stages, advantages and particularly focuses on the challenges of e-government. Analysing a brief study of Saudi Arabia's developing e-government program indicates that most of the issues raised in the literature are relevant. It is expected that this review will form a conceptual basis for a new wave of research into effective e-government acceptance and adoption.

City E-Government

In this paper, the authors identify and explore the optimal scope of a generic city-level e-Government program. In order to corroborate theoretical research, a comprehensive feature comparison of different e-Government elements/services, of select city web sites from various countries in the world is conducted.The research finds that despite the manifest common features, the inherent scope of service provision by the websites studied is unique. This finding gives rise to the understanding that customizing e-Government initiatives is ideally conducive to the local needs of the constituents.

E-Government services for faith-based organizations: Bridging the organizational divide

Abstract In this paper, we examine the challenges faced by faith-based institutions in a low-income, predominantly Black community seeking to take advantage of grants provided through the White House Office of Community and Faith-Based Initiatives (FBCI). FBCI is an e-Government program that assists nonprofit organizations in competing for Federal dollars with fewer bureaucratic barriers. Informed by the design-actuality framework, we interviewed clergy at seven faith-based organizations. The intent of this analysis is to juxtapose the design intentions of the government officials with the actualities expressed by the intended benefactors of the initiative. Our findings suggest that this e-Government initiative may unwittingly exacerbate existing disparities in the strategic use of information and communication technologies (ICT).

EVALUASI BUDAYA ORGANISASI DALAM MENDUKUNG OPERASIONAL SISTEM E-GOVERNMENT PEMERINTAH PROVINS! SUMATERA SELATAN

Assessment of Organizational Culture on Supporting Operational Systems in £-government program of South Sumatra provincial government, aims to find out how the e-government implementation process, the factors supporting and inhibiting as well as to identify policy measures and what needs to be done to overcome barriers to develop and implementing egovernment in South Sumatra provincial government. Studies conducted in the Communications and Information Agency of South Sumatra province by using qualitative descriptive analysis technique with evaluative method. Summative evaluation is chosen because the evaluation is done after the development and implementation of the egovernment program. Meanwhile, according to Bogdan and Taylor (2000:3) that qualitative methodology is a research procedure that produces descriptive data in the form of words written or spoken of the people and observed behavior. By using the measurement of qualitative data, researchers are expected to study the deep social phenomena that occur, in terms of e-government it is expected to give an idea about development and implementation in the Government of South Sumatra Province. From the research we can found that: (1) The development of e-government program in South Sumatra provincial government does not meet the goals and objectives that have been planned. (2) Rejection of the new work culture, job transition from manual to digital. (3). Lacking in human resources in the area of Information Technology, training should be done continuously. (4) The need to make a policy that urges the application of e-government from senior levels down to the regular employee.

Designing a national eGovernment programme

The effectiveness of eGovernment depends on its ability to efficiently deal with the needs of citizens or companies. This effectiveness inevitably depends on the capacity of state services to share and coordinate resources for the benefit of the user. Frederic Trojani, senior vice president of the Government Programs Solution Group at Gemalto reports.

Critical issues pertaining to the planning and implementation of E-Government initiatives

E-Government initiatives of varying scope and complexity have been implemented at the municipal and other levels of government throughout the world. These projects have been chronicled in both academic and practitioner journals and the proceedings of various E-Government conferences. As a consequence of this growing body of data, it is now possible to look across the experiences of numerous governments to understand if there are common issues that may impact the probability of success of E-Government programs. This paper examines the literature to search for critical planning and implementation issues that have had significant effects upon the success of E-Government initiatives. A conceptual framework is proposed which contributes to the theoretical understanding of E-Government initiative planning and implementation, and may inform practitioner success with new E-Government initiatives.

E-Government in Kazakhstan: Challenges and Its Role to Development

This paper critically examines the progress made in introducing and implementing e-government programs and policies in Kazakhstan. It argues that in order to achieve the articulated development goals, the Kazakh government has moved toward e-government paradigm to ascertain a people-centered, accountable and transparent government. Available data substantiates that the initiative faces several challenges such as political support and relationship between political institutions, bureaucracy and citizens, digital divide, widespread corruption, lack of human resources, and inadequate infrastructural development, which needs to be amputated to improve public service delivery. This study illustrates some international development experiences to understand the benefit of e-government. Such experiences may serve as policy guidelines to the successful implementation of e-government to ensure overall development in Kazakhstan.

Multilingual Data Management In Database Environment

Global E-Commerce and E-Governance programs have brought into sharp focus for the need of database systems to store and manipulate data efficiently in a suite of multiple languages. While existing database systems provide some means of storing and querying multilingual data, they suffer from redundancy proportional to the number of language support. In this paper, we propose a system for multilingual data management in distributed environment that stores data in information theoretic way in encoded form with minimum redundancy. Query operation can be performed from the encoded data only and the result is obtained by decompressing it using the corresponding language dictionaries for text data or without dictionary for other data. The system has been evaluated by both syntactic data and real data obtained from a real life schema. We have compared the performance of our system with existing systems. Our system outperformed the existing systems in terms of both space and time.

Selling to the U.S. Government: A Primer for Small-to-Medium-Size Enterprises

Until recently, business- to-government (B2G) marketing has received relatively little attention in academic journals and proceedings (Reid and Plank, 2000). Times are changing, however, and businesses of all sizes today are encouraged to pay renewed attention to the government market as they develop their marketing strategies (Dickover, 2006; Kennedy and Cannon, 2004). Government investment in information systems is leading the way by creating efficiencies in both the procurement and marketing processes. The major economic powers, such as the G7, as well as rapidly developing economies, such as India, are in the forefront of developing e-government programs that are impacting the buyer-seller interface. The model for them all, however, is the United States Federal Government. With spending for goods and services exceeding $341.4 billion per year (2004), the United States Federal Government is easily the world's largest consumer. Web sales of $3.6 billion, principally in bonds and treasury notes, also makes the federal government the country's largest electronic retailer, surpassing even Amazon (Stone, 2000). And, with the growth of e-commerce, it is has been reported that 15 percent of all federal procurement is now electronic and rapidly expanding (Frook, 2003). The aim of this article, together with the references provided, is to assist marketing executives, especially in small or minority-owned businesses, to become more fully informed in order to develop successful strategies to compete in the government market.

Managing e-government implementation in China: A process perspective

Launching a municipality-wide e-government program is an extensive, meticulously planned initiative involving ambitious goals and large-scale operational transformation. This has been particularly true in Shanghai, an urban area, occupying approximately the same area as New York or London. Here we report on our study of a social security smart card project developed and now operating in Shanghai. From the perspectives of modularity and societal learning, this case study demonstrates how localized e-government efforts may be implemented throughout the tiers of the municipal government, to present an e-government model that can be diffused to other parts of the country.

Questioning the pace and pathway of e-government development in Africa: A case study of South Africa's Cape Gateway project

The paper examines e-government development in Africa. This study is based on the Cape Gateway project in South Africa, a leading e-government initiative on the continent. We observe that African countries have jumped on the e-government band wagon by looking mostly at the benefits without a clear risk assessment. We argue that African countries should question the pace and pathway for their e-government programs. We caution that e-government models from developed countries do not necessarily work in Africa. E-government programs in Africa should be balanced with the provision of basic needs and infrastructure. We conclude that e-government in South Africa should adopt multi-cultural approaches, and must be underpinned by national development priorities. We recommend that the Cape Gateway must address the socio-economic context and needs of the country. The pace and pathway of its e-government must depend on the availability of both financial and human resources and also user satisfaction.

Urban regeneration and democratization of information access: CitiStat experience in Baltimore

This article explores the potential of a GIS-based approach to city management – Baltimore's CitiStat e-government program – for meeting the goals of sustainable urban regeneration. The argument advocated here builds on the widely held recognition that the application of ICTs in general can lead to both new forms of inclusion and exclusion of citizens. Therefore attending to the ‘digital divide’ is a relevant issue because cities are complex environments where outcomes of interventions are uncertain and widening participative arenas to different actors can increase the possibilities to regenerate declining urban areas in a more democratic way.

E-Government and Innovations in Service Delivery: The Malaysian Experience

As part of its public sector reform the government of Malaysia has embarked upon a massive e-government program seeking to introduce innovations in service delivery and enhance the quality and performance of public services. Started with the establishment of the Multimedia Super Corridor in 1996 the governmental initiatives have already resulted in significant progress towards ICT application in the public sector at national, state and local levels. A number of e-government schemes are currently underway that seek to make services accessible to the public at any time from anywhere without being constrained by agency working hours and distance. The present article focuses on Malaysia's experience with e-government and innovations in service delivery. In specific terms, it examines and analyses the e-government experiments in Malaysia and comments on their impacts on governance and service provision. It shows that although the e-government initiatives have produced, generally speaking favorable impacts on delivery of public services, their overall impact has remained limited due to a plethora of constraints and slow pace of their implementation. Not only the range of services offered is limited but also those expected to benefit from such services lack adequate access to information and sources as manifested in the country's poor e-maturity and e-readiness levels.

E-Government in Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia is in the process of transitioning to e-government. Many of the Saudi government agencies have their own web sites; however, most are ineffective. Based on the findings of this study, the Saudis should consider several reforms, chief among which include the following: Increasing the awareness of its e-government program among its employees and the public at-large; making Internet access more available across the full spectrum of society; equipping public facilities for Internet usage; developing a legal framework for secure e-transactions; adopting a flexible approach to technological change and the IT environment more generally; providing IT training to government employees; partnering with the private sector to establish electronic fund transfers; and, finally, fostering 2-way communication between government agencies and between the government and the public.

ICT based service innovation – A challenge for project management

In this paper we investigate to what extent ICT based service innovation can be successfully facilitated by traditional project management thinking. Should service innovation initiatives be organized the same way as high-tech product innovation, i.e. with expert teams in well structured projects? Or should they be organized in some looser fashion, with more interaction with users and other stakeholders? Our empirical evidence is a survey of 130 public sector projects in Norway, run within a national e-government program. We find that ICT based service innovation is not associated with a tightly run project (focused on cost, time and quality) or a professional project manager. Rather, successful service innovation is found in projects with a strong integration with the service providing organization and the external users of the services. We discuss three alternative models as an agenda for further research.