challenges and barriers of e-government
Introduction
The Internet has had a profound effect at so many different levels including individuals, society, business, governments, education, and many others. In the UK around 60% of adults actively use the Internet (Oxis), (Laudon&Laudon, 2010). Electronic Government or in short e-government here refers to the conveyance of government information and services via the Internet or other digital means toward citizens or businesses or any other government agencies.
The World Bank Group defined e-government as, “The use by government agencies of information technologies (such as Wide Area Networks, the Internet, and mobile computing) that have the ability to transform relations with citizens, businesses, and other arms of government. These technologies can serve a variety of different ends: better delivery of government services to citizens, improved interactions with business and industry, citizen empowerment through access to information, or more efficient government management. The resulting benefits can be less corruption, increased transparency, greater convenience, revenue growth, and/or cost reductions”.
E-government covers a wide range of activities; therefore we can identify it in three (3) distinct areas. These include government-to-government (G to G) an inter-agency relationships to make government more friendly, convenient, transparent, and inexpensive; government-to-citizens (G to C) where it aims to make the interaction between government and citizens and lastly government to business (G to B) where there is an interaction between government and business enterprises.
Furthermore, e-government is beneficial in whole lot of ways such as cost reduction and efficiency, gains quality of service delivery to businesses and customers, transparency, anticorruption, accountability, increase the capacity of government, network and community creation, improve the quality of decision making, promote the use of ICT in other sectors of the society.
The Internet has had a profound effect at so many different levels including individuals, society, business, governments, education, and many others. In the UK around 60% of adults actively use the Internet (Oxis), (Laudon&Laudon, 2010). Electronic Government or in short e-government here refers to the conveyance of government information and services via the Internet or other digital means toward citizens or businesses or any other government agencies.
The World Bank Group defined e-government as, “The use by government agencies of information technologies (such as Wide Area Networks, the Internet, and mobile computing) that have the ability to transform relations with citizens, businesses, and other arms of government. These technologies can serve a variety of different ends: better delivery of government services to citizens, improved interactions with business and industry, citizen empowerment through access to information, or more efficient government management. The resulting benefits can be less corruption, increased transparency, greater convenience, revenue growth, and/or cost reductions”.
E-government covers a wide range of activities; therefore we can identify it in three (3) distinct areas. These include government-to-government (G to G) an inter-agency relationships to make government more friendly, convenient, transparent, and inexpensive; government-to-citizens (G to C) where it aims to make the interaction between government and citizens and lastly government to business (G to B) where there is an interaction between government and business enterprises.
Furthermore, e-government is beneficial in whole lot of ways such as cost reduction and efficiency, gains quality of service delivery to businesses and customers, transparency, anticorruption, accountability, increase the capacity of government, network and community creation, improve the quality of decision making, promote the use of ICT in other sectors of the society.
References: Eldis (2014). Challenges for e-government, Retrieved from http://www.eldis.org Gronlund, A. & Thomas, A. H. (2005) "Introducing e-Gov: History, Definitions, and Issues," Communications of the Association for Information Systems: 15, (39). Pg.714. Retrieved from http://aisel.aisnet.org Heeks, R. (2008). E-Government for Development: Success and Failure in e-Government Projects. Retrieved from http://www.egov4dev.org Laudon, C.K, &Laudon, J.P. (2010). Management Information Systems. Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, New Jersey. Njuru, J.W (2011). Implications of E-Government on Public Policy and Challenges of Adopting Technology: The case of Kenya. Journal of Global Affairs and Public Policy:1(1).Retrieved from http://jghcs.info/index.php Schwester, R. W. (2009). “Examining the Barriers to e-Government Adoption.” Electronic Journal of e-Government:7(1), pp. 113 – 122, retrieved from https://www.google.com.bn Technology and Government (2008). The good, the bad and the inevitable: The pros and cons of e-government. Retrieved from http://www.economist.com The World Bank Group (2011). Definition of e-government. Retrieved on the 21st February 2014 from http://web.worldbank.org