Ebook: E-Governance, A Global Journey

Three e-government applications, e-democracy, e-participation and e-voting are discussed and an analysis of the impact that these inclusive applications have had on the general population, where they have been used is given. As the terms are closely linked, they are further elaborated upon as they have impact on each other. E-voting implies e-participation which would further imply e-democracy. The impact of these applications at various levels of society mainly government, civil society and non-governmental organisations as well as on the general population is considered, and whether these applications have led to governments being able to reach a bigger part of the population through an increase in participation in civic activities and achieved greater turnout, for example, in elections. The criteria for assessing the impact of the applications are: (1) Demand for the applications and the need to access them; (2) Accessibility of the applications; (3) Availability of national e-strategies; (4) Quality of the content being provided and (5) Cost of providing and accessing the applications available. The discussion ends with what the expected or preferred impact would be as well as specific proposals and strategies that may be used for effective impact of these specific applications.

Turkmenistan's government has witnessed numerous profound changes since early 2007. President Berdimukhamedov has pledged to build a harmonious, inspired, humane and developed society in Turkmenistan and to strengthen national capacity to cope with a fast-changing global environment, resulting in tangible improvements to people's lives. Ultimately, the goal is to raise the living standards of people in Turkmenistan to the level of developed countries. Turkmenistan has made significant progress in social and economic reforms last years. In May 2010 the government adopted the National Program for Social and Economic Development of Turkmenistan for 2011-30. In April 2010 President Berdimukhamedov signed order to improve document management system of state agencies and develop e-Government in Turkmenistan. Use of ICTs for achieving positive results on social and economic reforms in Turkmenistan is one of the priorities of National program. Therefore, Turkmenistan needs to set up correct e-Government development strategy and plan of implementation e-Government applications into state agencies. The aim of this work is to explore of e-Government initiatives in Turkmenistan and its impact on social and economic development of the country.

Digital divides within and between countries is not merely about technology deprivation, but is also about many inter-related social, educational, cultural, political and economic issues. Understanding this in the context of different parts of the developing world is extremely important to address the problem in a meaningful way. This chapter is about an action research done in the district of Barkha in the Sultanate of Oman, through a pilot IT literacy campaign. The study reveals that, for evolving a digital society in an Arab region, issues such as linguistic literacy and information literacy are far more challenging than the much publicized computer literacy. The study also concludes that Oman is at the threshold of access to technology but has challenges with regard to cognitive access, content access and an enabling environment.

The East African Community (EAC) Partner States have a shared vision and have agreed in principle to develop a regional strategy to market and promote the region as “a single tourist destination.” The EAC tourism destination has a comparative advantage of inherited natural resources, core resources and attractors ranging from game parks; cultural and historical sites; mountains; coastal zones and waterfalls; game viewing and gorilla tracking. E-Tourism plays a critical role for the competiveness of tourism organizations and destinations and for the entire tourism industry as a whole. However, application of e-tourism that would enable global visibility of the EAC destination is yet to be fully utilized. There is minimal online information about the EAC tourist destinations and attractions, and online booking is still a challenge. The chapter discusses the global and EAC trends in tourism, the tourist destinations and attractions in East Africa. E-tourism application and its catalystic role in promoting and enhancing the competitiveness of the EAC as a single tourist destination is examined and analysed and challenges and prospects of adopting e-tourism discussed. E-tourism strategic and operational recommendations for promoting EAC as a single competitive tourist destination are put forward.

Rwanda was characterized by divisionism, where one part of Rwandan (Tutsi) was excluded. In 1994 tutsi genocide more than 1 million people were killed, mutilated and injured. Based on the analysis of field data collected through interviews, this research provided to decision makers a web portal solution to address the reconciliation challenges in Rwanda. The findings show that one of the benefits of implementing e-reconciliation web portal will be to get easily the information related to reconciliation there will be other benefits, like avoiding history distortion, it will show negative impact of genocide, and it will be the best way to help Rwandans and international community to learn about the genocide. Although a number of challenges have been found, the main challenge would be the lack of internet access; other challenges include: the authenticity of information and the collection of information to be posted on the web portal. To address those challenges e-reconciliation can be accessible via mobile phone as the majority of Rwandan has access to mobile phone. The information posted on e-reconciliation web portal must have references recognized and the decision makers have to delegate who will manage the posted information.

The purpose of this chapter is to provide an insight into the various challenges faced by a fragile post-conflict nation like Afghanistan and suggest implementation of e-Governance. It explores various ICT tools and techniques that can help and assist government officials, leaders, stakeholders and decision-makers adopt appropriate governance systems and state building mechanisms as part of post-conflict reconstruction efforts. The chapter helps to identify the various ways in which post-conflict reconstruction issues can be dealt by using the best practices linked with ICT functional feasibility and implementation; and identify the specific challenges that a fragile state has to overcome with regard to e-Governance project formulation and implementation. Despite the specificity of each country, lessons highlighted in this chapter show that a sound mix of policies based on universally shared values, experience and the proper use of management systems and tools are crucial for every country emerging from conflict.

In managing the transformation of states in e-governance, an essential aspect is that of organizational design. In academic works there are three approaches addressing the relationship between technology and organization. After briefly discussing these three viewpoints, this paper looks into possible ways of evolving organizational forms and elaborates ways of approaching organizational design for e-governance. Case studies are presented relating: (a) to the emergence of the organizational paradigm of “one-stop-shops” as part of broader e-governance policies, highlighting the ‘shop-floor’ organizational aspects of the new organizations and (b) e-governance for taxation systems. The first element of organizational design to be deeply affected by e-governance is ‘fragmentation’ or ‘departmentalization’ of the organizations. An immediate consequence of that –at the level of work organization– is job design, which is discussed in the paper. A new model of roles and functions for public administration is proposed. The potential for new uses of technology and possible multiplicative effects is being recognized as the future challenge for the new organizations and the paper concludes in supporting the thesis that –with maturing technologies– e-governance is turning to be more of an organizational and political challenge at the micro-level, rather than a technological one.

A patchwork adoption is a technology diffusion pattern introduced by Garcia-Murillo. It is based on the observation of many developing countries which are facing high and growing income disparities, which determine ICTs market dynamics. A patchwork adoption happens when only limited group of wealthy consumers can afford state-of-the-art technologies while less privileged majority is stuck with obsolete ones. Market evolution differs from S-curve adoption pattern, which is typical for developed countries, as price decrease accompanying technology maturity is not sufficient to reach affordability level of majority of customers. Original research by Garcia-Murillo brings a recommendation that Regulators should stimulate deployment of affordable technologies, even if they are imperfect or obsolete. Recent analysis of a case study from the Armenian mobile Internet market and a computer simulation imitating consumer purchase decisions bring a conclusion that patchwork adoption doesn't need to be a long lasting trend. Decreasing costs of technology deployment can bring end-user service prices to the level, which is affordable for majority of customers, still keeping telecom business profitable. In light of the above, actions of the Regulator should rather focus on stimulating private sector investment in state-of-the-art technology solutions and encouraging competition.

This paper provides insight to trends on the subject of Enterprise architecture (EA) for e-Government, a proposes an EA model based on the research findings that address the existing gaps in post conflict countries to offer services effectively and efficiently leading to e-Governance. While there is much hype about EA success stories in developed countries, post conflict and developing countries are still struggling to understand and implement EA start-up model that could identify the main components of the Government, its information systems, and the ways in which these architectural components work together in order to achieve defined business objectives, and the way in which the information systems support the business processes of the Government given the global phenomena, such as globalization, cultural and ethnic challenges, liberalization and constant pressure to the State to face and react to pertinent changes. This paper surveys a number of such challenges and issues in Post conflict context and recommends a hybrid-model for EA that could appropriately respond to internal as well as external challenges.

As soon as Internet penetrated the public area, it became a whole new world of freedom and thanks to its extraterritoriality mostly escaped existing legal rules. It is still a huge and little explored territory, providing to some pioneers immensely profitable opportunities. Therefore, it is not surprising that the Private Sector is actively striving to enclose this newfound land in order to preserve existing and future benefits. Considering Internet's tremendous impact on all aspects of the social life, governments try by different means to govern it, with little effectiveness. The concept of Internet Access Commons introduces a new participant in the game: the Third Sector, and a renewed governance model, the Commons which together allow for a complete paradigm change. Technically, the FTTH based Internet access Commons relies on a pure horizontal topology where each of the multiple points of the network form its centre; it does not know any owner, meaning it cannot be controlled by third parties nor can it be sold. On the contrary, being open and respectful of standards, it allows each of the interested value added service providers (i.e. infrastructure builder, service, maintenance of the physical network, acquisition, distribution and management of applications and services, customers management, local communities, etc.) to stand out against in an open market not dominated by giants protected in their vertical and enclosed structures.

The chapter presents an overview of the evolution of e-Governance with an emphasis on the multidimensional role played by Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) for governance. The aim is to learn from the past and put current policy developments in future perspective. The chapter builds on an analysis of the policy landscape and academic debate on e-Government and e-Governance and, in this connection it proposes to re-define the theory and practice of e-Governance. In order to do so, an original theoretical and interpretative framework to assess the public values underpinning the abstract construct of ICT-enabled governance is presented. Going further, the chapter set the basis for the future of e-Governance discussing the debate generated around the emerging field of ICT for governance and policy modelling, which can be considered as an umbrella term indicating the interplay between collaborative ICTs that are applied in order to achieve the target of participative, evidence-based governance and the related organisational and social processes associated with them. In this respect, the theoretical framework proposed is set out to help interpreting changes and developments towards the open model of governance enabled by ICTs. The chapter concludes outlining policy and research challenges for the future of e-Governance.

Over ten years of e-Government and foresight companionship have produced interesting views, proposals and debates. In a first chapter, we will claim that key stakes, however, are no so much how we can head to better e-Gov formulas for the future, but how to think about it. Conventional tools may do the work, but provided they are inserted into a dynamic open-ended perspective where foresight is not just servicing mainstream thinking. In the second chapter, we will examine how past studies have contributed to configure a stimulating learning pathway, gradually enhancing the way e-Gov foresight is envisaged and tied with concrete choice-making and policy relevance. In the third chapter, we sort out the key pending issues that need to be absolutely addressed as part of the e-Gov debate in the coming years, with blueprint provisions to go ahead in this domain, and we conclude by emphasizing the challenges to be coped with, small and large, technical and political, that will eventually make a difference.