E-GOVERNMENT IMPLEMENTATION IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES: A NEOINSTITUIONAL APPROACH TO EXPLAIN FAILURE. An example from Lebanon

This paper presents the results of an ongoing study of e-government implementation in Lebanon. Following suggestions by various scholars that students of e-government employ theory to strengthen our knowledge about ICT for development, we apply a neoinstitutional theoretical lens to understand the principal explanatory factors that led the Lebanese public authorities, since 2000, to invest in e-services despite the country’s serious economic difficulties and heavy debt. We take an historical view that situates the implementation of an e-government infrastructure in the context of external pressures that Lebanese public administrators confronted. We focus on the social embeddedness, environment, and processes of Lebanese public administration to understand why Lebanese public officials responded when faced with pressures to modernize government. This analysis is based on the triangulation of evidence from semi-structured interviews with senior officials in government agencies who led the implementation effort, official government documents, and newspaper reports on the progress of this project. We find that the response by Lebanese public officials can be explained by the three isomorphic processes of coercion, mimesis, and transmission of norms. This case study suggests that implementing e-administration by developing countries is not necessarily motivated by a search for efficiency; under certain conditions, adoption results from external institutional pressures. Nonetheless, this implementation needs to be understood as only a very small part of a larger story of the history and politics of Lebanon which contributed to what has been called the “still born” implementation of e-government in Lebanon

ANTECEDENTS OF THE DIGITAL DIVIDE AT THE MACRO LEVEL

This paper reports the results of two studies that investigated factors that influence the digital divide at the macro level. We propose a telecommunications infrastructure index as a measure of the country-level digital divide that is composed of five primary indices that define a country\u27s ICT infrastructure capacity. The first part of the analysis identifies economic, socio-demographic, political, and cultural factors that differentiate 86 developed and developing countries. The second part of the analysis examines factors that differentiate ICT penetration rates for 21 Arab nations. Overall, results show that for the 86 countries political variables are the most important factor that influences the digital divide. Cultural differences, specifically gender disparities in literacy, influence the digital divide in the 21 Arab countries. The availability of secondary data published by official government sources is a serious limitation. Nonetheless, this research has practical and managerial implications for public management and for policy makers, including information about how to segment citizens into more refined groups to facilitate better resource allocation; development of policies designed to raise the literacy level, particularly ones that are specifically targeted at educating women; and training programs to educate the underserved about technology and to provide subsidized access to disadvantaged people

ANTECEDENTS OF THE DIGITAL DIVIDE IN LEBANON

This paper reports the results of a study to investigate the digital divide in Lebanon based on data collected in August 2008 from 330 potential users of Lebanese public e-services. The study investigated factors that make a difference for e-access and e-skills and how socio-economic, demographic, and cultural factors explain the digital divide. Overall, results show that gender, age, religion, and geographic disparities related to income, to educational attainment, and to occupation influence the e-skills and e-access divides. Income and education have effects on e-skills but no effect on the e-access divide. When educational attainment increases, the e-skills divide decreases. Gender and religion have an impact on the e-skills divide but no significant impact on the e-access divide: men and Christians have more e-skills than women and Muslims. The impact of urban-rural disparities is unambiguous. Age is the only factor that impacts both the e-access and e-skills divide. Young urban males with high income and high educational attainment levels have more advanced eskills than their less advantaged counterparts; thus, these elite members of the Lebanese society are expected to benefit from the advantages of public online services. That will, however, not be the case of those in the less advantaged segments of the population. Inequalities in Lebanese society will continue

THE ROLE OF CULTURAL VALUES IN THE INDIVIDUAL INTENTION TO ACCEPT ADMINISTRATION E-SERVICES (ITA E-AD): A TWO COUNTRY STUDY

E-services, if accepted by users, have the potential to improve the relation of the Administration with the citizen (Heeks 2002). In France, Accenture Institute Study1 found that, by the end of 2006, 74 percent of French Citizens were seduced by the Administration e-services. But it is not the case of all countries. In Maghreb countries, for example, despite incentives and media campaigns that encourage them to go online for government and private transactions, most Tunisians, Moroccans and Algerians still hesitate to use the Internet services2. So it seems that in some countries, citizens are unwilling to use e-administration services. In Lebanon, despite the country growing debt, Administration continues investing in Information Technology (IT), and e-administration has become the government priority. However, Lebanese do not often use Internet. Studies found that only 28 percent of Lebanese use the Internet services. Will the Lebanese citizens use the Administration’s e-services? What are the external and internal variables that influence the acceptance and use of these e-services at the first stages of the acceptance process? Is there any individual’s cultural value that influences the evaluation of the IT and the e-services acceptance? This work-in-progress develops an integral model of users’ intention to accept e-administration services (ITA e-ad Model). It captures the influence of different external and internal variables on eservices acceptance and use at the first stages of the acceptance process. The ITA e-ad Model focuses on the association between (1) Administration e-services perceived outcomes (2) individual’s cultural variables, specifically Hofstede (1980) cultural values (masculinity/femininity, individualism/collectivism, power distance, and uncertainty avoidance), (3) environmental variables, and (4) their evaluations in the first stages of the acceptance process. The innovation of this model is that it focuses on the association between cultural values and the evaluations of the Administration eservices acceptance. This model can help Administrations better deploy and manage their IT investments by better understanding their citizens. Administration’s communication can incorporate these cultural values that influence the evaluation of e-services acceptance

Challenges To Increase Government e-Services Take-Up In Lebanon

Governments around the world are introducing the virtual channel of public service delivery system (UNDESA 2008). This channel allows for integrated public e-services that are available 24/7. However, citizens who do not have access to ICTs, who do not have the ability to use ICTs, and/or who do not accept to use government e-services cannot benefit from these advantages. Therefore, introducing e-services will create three types of divide: access, e-skills, and acceptance divides. This e-service divide will lead to an inferior quality public service translated in a low e-services’ Take-Up. In Lebanon for example, the government is heavily investing in public online services. However, only 26.28 per cent of the Lebanese population has Internet access, 11.45 per cent have PC at home, and only 30.53 per cent have a mobile telephone (OMSAR 2008). It means that e-government will lead to a system where only privileged segments of the population may have access to the government e-services. Therefore the e-government implementation will create a public online service divide constituted of three types of inequalities: (1) inequality in the access to e-services between citizens, (2) inequality in the ability to use e-services among those who have access, and (3) inequality in e-services acceptance among those who have the access and the ability to use ICTs and e-services. Reducing this e-services divide can enhance the value of services to the citizens and that can dramatically increase e-services Take-Up

eGovernment Implementation and Acceptance: Challenges to Increase Public eServices Take-Up in Lebanon

Governments continue investing in Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), and e-services have become governments’ priority. But research shows that e-services implementation accentuate inequalities. Using a study of egovernment implementation in Lebanon as a background, this paper shows that e-government will lead to a system where only privileged segments of the population may have access to the government e-services. Thus, government online services implementation will create three types of inequalities: (1) inequality in access to ICTs and e-services, (2) inequality in the ability to use ICT and e-services among those who have access, and (3) inequality between those who will accept to use eservices and those who will not. What are the reasons of this e-services divide? The aim of this study is to explore the reasons of these three inequalities. Results show that reducing the gap can enhance the value of services to the citizen which dramatically increase e-services Take-Up

Artificial intelligence, blockchain, and extended reality: emerging digital technologies to turn the tide on illegal logging and illegal wood trade

Illegal logging which often results in forest degradation and sometimes in deforestation remains ubiquitous in many places around the globe. Managing illegal logging and illegal wood trade constitutes a global priority over the next few decades. Scientific, technological, and research communities are committed to respond rapidly, evaluating the opportunities to capitalize on emerging digital technologies for treating this formidable challenge. The innovative potentials of these emerging digital technologies at tackling illegal logging-related challenges are here investigated. We propose a novel system, WoodchAInX, combining explainable artificial intelligence (X-AI), next-generation blockchain, and extended reality (XR). Our findings on the most effective means of leveraging each technology’s potential and the convergence of the three technologies infer a vast promise for digital technology in this field. Yet, we argue that, overall, digital transformations will not deliver fundamental, responsible, and sustainable benefits without revolutionary realignment

Under the “publish or perish” mantra and the race for grants, insights to catalyze research into wood science

The quality of research is the lifeline to get a good wood science, as science generally; embracing a ‘publish but don’t perish’ stance might be a valuable insight to stride this science forward. A focus on quality rather than quantity of published material would greatly reinvigorate our science and entrepreneurial capabilities, ensure continued public trust in the academic enterprise, address the needs and expectations of the 21st-century society, and help to secure a truly sustainable future, one that responsibly maintains the well-being of nature and people. Stimulating wood-based innovation certainly develops a fundamental niche in such sustainable future fitting the main goals of the sustainable development

A Systematic Review on Using Hacker Forums on the Dark Web for Cyber Threat Intelligence

Urgent warnings for private businesses and public organizations to monitor and predict disruptive cyberattacks have been on the rise. The annual cost of cyber-attacks in the worldwide economy is expected to be more than $10.5 trillion in 2025. To that end, new methods are being developed to fight cyberattacks. One such method builds upon leveraging cybercriminal/hacker forums on the dark web to design ‘cyberthreat intelligence’ solutions. The dark web, which is not accessible by the conventional browsers that are normally used to access the surface web, is the part of the web where most of the illegal and illicit content is hosted. It is a major market resource for cybercriminal-hackers for trading and developing cyberthreat content (e.g., malware; novel hacking methods; malicious source code). Therefore, the study of designing cyber threat intelligence solutions (i.e., methods; artifacts) based upon analyzing hacker forums has been undertaken in the literature. To enhance this structured inquiry and to formulate new research directions, we conduct a systematic literature review on leveraging hacker forums and designing ‘threat intelligence’ solutions. In our systematic review, we report our findings based on the PRISMA - Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses - checklist. We conducted our search on Scopus and Ebscohost, and our search query was the following: (“dark web” OR “dark net” OR “darknet” OR “hacker* forum” OR “underground forum ) AND ( security OR threat intelligence ). Our search included abstracts and English-language documents published in peer-reviewed journals and conferences. We extracted a total of 295 papers and retained 69 papers. Our findings indicate the proposed threat intelligence solutions have been built upon the analysis of different forms of unstructured data, including text, videos, and images. Different solutions had different objectives, including: (1) key actor (hacker) identification (i.e., identifying the key active hackers on the forum who actively engage in and lead discussions and posts), (2) hacker ranking according to expertise (i.e., ranking the forum participant hackers based on their hacking domain-knowledge expertise reflected in their posts), (3) malware identification (i.e., identifying novel malware from hackers’ posts on the forums), and (4) organizational information security risk management and mitigation (i.e., identifying organizational vulnerabilities and developing strategies to mitigate them based on the knowledge retrieved from hacker forums). We found that as of now, the proposed solutions do not consider the factor of temporality, or temporal-based dynamism, in the forums. Key hackers may change, expertise may change, and vulnerabilities may evolve in organizations. We hope that our review catalyzes future research in this area

Artificial Intelligence-Based Digital Transformation for Sustainable Societies: The Prevailing Effect of COVID-19 Crises

Digital transformation (DT) is becoming a necessity for enterprises in different industries all over the world. The necessity for DT turned out to be inevitable with the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak. On March 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced the COIVD-19 as global pandemic that caused thousands of deaths and brought the world to a standstill with huge economic burden (World Health Organization, 2020). This pandemic accelerated the need for organizations to transform using extensive digitization in response to the unprecedented change (Morgan, 2020). However, significant obstacles still encounter these organizations when it comes to recommending the necessary changes to make the digital leap. In today’s artificial intelligence age, digital transformation has enormous impact across societies (Nambisan, 2019; George & Paul, 2020; Majchrzak, Markus, Wareham, 2016); organizations need to realize that both digital transformation and artificial intelligence have to go hand in hand to help achieve prosperous digital transformation (Wuest et al., 2020). Therefore, becoming a digital enterprise is much more than investing in latest digital technologies. It is about adopting artificial intelligence to support the business strategy (Joda et al. 2020), searching for new business models (Kotarba, 2018), and considering afresh how to embed the social impact in the measure of the success of the business