Project Overview and background: This project aims to explore eGovernment's role in development and in developing and transitional countries. eGovernment is the 'delivery of public sector information and online services though the internet. It has been heralded as a way to improve transparency, efficiency and save costs. However, some research shows that of the total global eGov projects implemented, only 15% have been successes, versus the 50% which are/have been total failures and the 35% which were total failures. eGovernment tends to be broken into different sectors, such as eTransparency, eEducation, eHealth, eBusiness etc. etc.
At this point I am thinking of looking only at Central/Eastern Europe, though in conducting some preliminary research I have noticed that India has a huge number of eGovernment projects happening right now, as well as Mexico which has recently implemented an eGovernment system and strategy--I am looking to narrow my region focus as soon as possible.
Research Question (my main problem!!! any help and feedback is welcome):
- How are different countries implementing different models of eGovernment and to what purposes?
- What are the differences in these models and how are they related to country for which they aim to serve?
- Why do so many of these e-government initiatives in developing/transitional countries fail? (How do you define success and failure?)
Methodology: At this point the only methodology I can imagine would work is an overall comparison of case studies and reports from other organizations and people. Ideally I would love to conduct some sort of survey with people to measure their eGovernment use and understanding.
Facts/Findings:
- 2 types of benefits: process benefits (e.g. reducing costs for transparency, access to transparency info, better decisions etc) AND government benefits (less corruption, empowering citizens)
- citizen perspective--can save poor communities money in dealing with gov't, improve treatment and participation of all members of community--improving planning and implementation of development projects
- HOWEVER implementing eGov is costly (implementing tech, training people etc)
- 3 different design-reality gap archetypes for eGov failures:
- "Hard-Soft gaps": thinking of ICTs as as machinery and engineering (rational/objective aka 'hard') but often results are dominated by 'soft' factors like people, politics, emotions and culture
- "Public-Private Gaps": cannot use design used or intended for private for public sector or governments
- "Country Context": cities, countries and their populations are different cannot use country X's model for country Y--won't work
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