Public Service Delivery: Role of Information and Communication Technology in Improving Governance and Development Impact

The focus of this paper is on improving governance through the use of information and communication technology (ICT) in the delivery of services to the poor, i.e., improving efficiency, accountability, and transparency, and reducing bribery. A number of papers recognize the potential benefits but they also point out that it has not been easy to harness this potential. This paper presents an analysis of effective case studies from developing countries where the benefits have reached a large number of poor citizens. It also identifies the critical success factors for wide-scale deployment. The paper includes cases on the use of ICTs in the management of delivery of public services in health, education, and provision of subsidized food. Cases on electronic delivery of government services, such as providing certificates and licenses to rural populations, which in turn provide entitlements to the poor for subsidized food, fertilizer, and health services are also included. ICT-enabled provision of information to enhance rural income is also covered

Towards understanding the difficulties and concerns of deep rural communities in South Africa and the effect they have on community engagement in ICT4D

The contextualisation of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in development attracts ample research interest in the field of ICT for Development (ICT4D). This study focuses on exploring the perspectives from which deep rural communities define development. In addition, this study seeks to understand the issues facing deep rural communities, as well as the effect that these issues have on community engagement in ICT4D initiatives. The core problem being considered is the differing views about the meaning of development as understood by the intended beneficiaries of development initiatives, compared to that which those working to develop deep rural communities hold. Furthermore, the role of ICT in development is also examined, with primary criticisms levelled against its use considered. In an attempt to understand these ideas, interpretive case study research is used and qualitative techniques applied to analyse data from the field work that was completed. The results confirm the dominance of basic human needs and economic growth ideas as the basis from which the majority of poor people define development. Moreover, the study reveals that, deep rural communities share the same sentiments as with the so-called development ‘experts’ regarding the importance of ICT in facilitating development goals.Dissertation (MIT)--University of Pretoria, 2010.Informaticsunrestricte

An Intelligent Citizen-Centric Oriented Model for Egovernance: A Uae Case Study

Tremendous advancements in information and communication technology, coupled with the usability of smart mobile devices, have brought enormous growth in the appeal of high-quality government services. This appeal has, in turn, encouraged governments to deploy services to citizens using electronic channels. Worldwide, governments have recognized the need to deliver better-integrated services to the public to meet their expectations. Therefore, the transition from the conventional modes of delivering government services to an electronic format involves substantial considerations in the operational aspects of services delivery and drastic changes in existing core business systems across governmental public institutions. The concepts of eGovernance and smart services have emerged as new ways to deliver such services to meet citizens’ demands by developing tools and setting practical standards for services delivery. These tools comprise process reengineering and the setting of guidelines, establishment of policies, delegating of authority, and continued monitoring of performance and control. From a research perspective, there is a need to identify the several factors that constitute online and mobile services delivery in the UAE and measure the adoption of these services by the public. Extant literature includes very few studies that evaluate the delivery of online and mobile services in the context of eGovernance. This study highlights these gaps in the field and conducted research in the UAE to address them. The major aim of this research is to develop and validate a citizen-centric oriented model, which examines factors that affect people’s acceptance of eGovernance services within governmental public sector organizations such as health and education. This research adopted mixed methods for data collection, including a quantitative survey and qualitative semi-structured interviews.     To test the proposed model, the research adopted structural equation modelling (SEM), which is a powerful tool that considers a confirmatory approach rather than an exploratory approach with regard to the data analysis. Second, the validated and evaluated model was used as a roadmap for eGovernance services adoption and implementation, in which new initiatives can be evaluated. Third, this research provides an intelligent system for evaluating eGovernance implementation across government entities. The proposed novel system features an intelligent login module as a service that enables users to access multiple public government services using secured unified entry access (UEA) through a single account. The users are only required to log in once to access many eGovernance services. In addition, the proposed system applied the model view controller (MVC), which is an exceedingly secure model, to leverage the system’s quality, efficiency, security, flexibility and reusability. The system applied a collaborative filtering technique to improve the delivery of eGovernance services, measuring entities’ performance and ranking government organizations. Finally, this research provides recommendations for future works, including the validation of the developed model in other countries, consideration of G2B and G2E digital services and approaches to solving world systems’ technical challenges pertinent to big data, data sparsity, cold start and scalability

Assessing the web-portal type of eGovernment structures and measuring their socio-economic impact on the French Metropolitan Park

The use of eGovernment structures is becoming increasingly popular among public agencies due to the democratization of the Internet Communication Technologies (ICTs). Its application and impact at the public metropolitan level are however not widely studied, especially in France where the concept of the metropolis is relatively new. This research aims at assessing the degree of eGovernment development in the French Metropolitan Park, by developing an eGovernment Development Score (eGDS) focused on web-portal analysis while contributing to the comprehension of the relation between the quality of eGovernment structures and the economic development based upon a set of pre-selected economic indicators. The development of the eGDS illustrated disparities in term of eGovernment development between the metropolises studied, some group of cases performed better than others, indicating room for improvement. To better understand the impact of eGovernment on the economic indicators selected, a statistical analysis has been conducted. While the application of the statistical analysis pointed at several degrees of correlation and some causal relationships between the variables and eGDS, it weakly supports the claims of the existing literature, indicating that further investigations shall be conducted. The embryonic stage of the eGovernment structure of French metropolises, explains the mild causality between the development of the eGovernment structure and the economic variables selected. Preliminary relationships have however been observed between the eGDS and the youth unemployment rate, the dynamism for employment and the entrepreneurship satisfaction. This work provides a theoretical and empirical basis for future research willing to understand the evolution of the electronic government structure of the French Metropolitan Park.http://www.ester.ee/record=b5145104*es

Review on Impact of ICTs on Improving Agricultural Productivity and Rural Incomes in Ethiopia

The experience in Ethiopia rapid development of Information and Communication Technologies, which facilitates the flow of data and information, has tremendously enhanced the knowledge management practice in agriculture. The objective of this paper is to review the impact of information and communication technologies to improve agricultural productivity and rural income in Ethiopian and review the recently developed agricultural knowledge and information systems in Ethiopia and others related documents. The study is based on a systematic review of existing literature of agricultural information communication and knowledge management system work in the country and supported documents of others countries. The review paper is organized in four sections. Section I focuses on importance of Information and Communication Technologies to the Ethiopian agricultural extension system. The second section discusses types of Information and Communication Technologies used by the farmers in Ethiopia. The third section to review the challenges and opportunities of Information and Communication Technologies ICT in provision of information services for the developments of agricultural production and generates rural income in Ethiopia. The findings of this study reveal that the various forms of Information and Communication technology have been used in agricultural service delivery and were more in tune with the circumstances and requirements of smallholder farmers. Therefore, the emergence of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in this era has opened new opportunities in agricultural knowledge management that could play an important role in meeting the prevailing challenges related to innovation, sharing, exchanging and disseminating agricultural information, knowledge and technologies to the intended smallholder farmers. Keywords: Information communication technology; Agricultural Information; productivity; Rural Income; knowledge management system; Ethiopia DOI: 10.7176/IKM/10-5-01 Publication date:August 31st 202

E-Government and public service delivery in Nigeria

The innovation in ICTs and the resulting emergence of the internet were strong drivers for shifting to an information era from the industrial age. In this movement, nations found succour in using information technologies for service delivery and this becomes the most significant epoch in the history of governance transformation. Despite the huge commitment of the government towards the e-government project in Nigeria, significant growth is not yet recorded on the use of ICT in governance as evidenced in the 2018 recent ranking by the United Nations on e-Government global ranking and assessment, Nigeria was positioned on 143rd of the 193 United Nation Member States. This paper therefore sought to investigate the reasons for the poor performance in the sector. This was done through secondary data collected with a structured interview from ICT directors of eight (8) purposively selected Federal Agencies in Nigeria. With due use of thematic analysis of the interview data, the study found that the challenges confronting e-government implementation in Nigeria were national challenges such as infrastructural deficiency, ICT illiteracy in addition to peculiar challenges like data privacy, security concerns. The paper thus concluded that unless these problems are tacked, the likelihood of having a successful e-government implementation outing in Nigeria would remain a mirage

E-health and M-health in Bangladesh: Opportunities and Challenges

There is growing enthusiasm amongst analysts of global health for the possibilities opened up by the rapid spread of mobile phone coverage. This includes substantially increasing access to health-related information and advice and to expert medical consultations. Some argue we are reaching a tipping point in the organisation of health systems in which new technology will drive new organisational arrangements (Christensen, Grossman and Hwang 2009; Bloom and Standing 2008). This is encouraging investment by foundations and bilateral aid agencies in the development of e-health and m-health as a way to improve access to health services in low- and middle-income countries. As with the introduction and spread of any new technology, there are a number of possible outcomes – or pathways – with different implications for the types of service provided and the distribution of benefits in the short and longer term. A recent STEPS Centre publication (2010) proposes the following characteristics of the way a technological innovation is spread: the direction of development and the way organisations incorporate the new technology into their operations; the distribution of benefits from the technology and the diversity of ways the technology is applied. It argues that the actual pathway of development is strongly influenced by political processes, involving a number of stakeholders with differing interests and understandings. A number of analysts argue that health systems are particularly path-dependent because of the importance that people give to arrangements they believe protect them from serious health problems (Bloom and Standing 2008). Lee and Lansky (2008), for example, suggest that resistance by stakeholders and complex regulatory barriers are substantially diminishing the impact of new technologies on the organisation of the American health system. Because of the path-dependent nature of the health sector, decisions made early in the emergence of a new technology are likely to have a strong and lasting influence (Bloom and Wolcott 2013). This report presents a snapshot of how information and communication technologies (ICTs) are influencing health system development in Bangladesh.UK Department for International Developmen