Public value of e-Government investments in the developing countries: empirical exploration of the public sector in Kenya

In private and public sectors, Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) have become a phenomenal asset of resource in strategic management. In developed countries, ICTs are critical tools in the public sector strategy. In specific, Electronic Government has been identified as one of the major competencies required to re-invigorate governance, enhance performance and reduce red-tape bureaucracies in the public sector, e-Government being the use of ICTs in the transformation of public organizations towards efficient service delivery. Though information systems as a discipline has offered some research outputs on the value and the effects of ICTs in the private sector, similar focus on the public sector or e-Government is relatively thin. While the few existing researches have had a relatively weightier focus on developed countries, the evidence-based empirical studies in information systems that have focused on developing countries have produced contradictory results, hence the need for further research to attempt a re-alignment in this sub domain of e-Government. Therefore, this pursuit departs from most past researches by delving into the effects of e- Government investments using theoretical lenses drawn upon disciplines that are outside the mainstream information systems domain. These include public administration, political sciences and public economics. Using a mixed methods approach, a balanced panel data of Kenya's key ministries for a 10-year period of 2004 to 2014 following the launch of e-Government strategy of 2004, audited national government ministries' expenditures, census data, e-Government spending, consumer price indices, gross domestic products, parameters on governance and other data on public services, this research sought to examine the nature and dimensions of public values that the developing countries derive as a consequence of investment in e-Government

Examining the antecedents of public value in e-government services

This thesis was submitted for the award of Doctor of Philosophy and was awarded by Brunel University LondonOver the last two decades, public sector organisations in the UK have invested heavily on electronic government (E-Government) projects to transform the services offered to citizens. E-government is seen as an enabler that helps public services to become more efficient, transparent, cost effective and accountable. In this respect the implementation of e-government projects have been influenced by private sector thinking borrowed from New Public Management (NPM) principles. However, the evaluation of e-government under the influence of NPM has been primarily focused on economic and technical outputs whereas its value to citizens has been largely ignored. Furthermore, research shows that many e-government projects have failed to deliver the desired outcomes when influenced by NPM principles. Recent studies have emerged that highlights the significance of public value to understand the broader outcomes of e-government services. The aim of this study is to explore the concept of public value and identify the antecedents that affect value and the consequences of value on e-government. To do so, this study develops a conceptual model grounded on Public Value Theory, DeLone and McLean IS Success Model and Means End Chain Theory combining the disciplines of Public Administration, Information Systems and Marketing. The conceptual model was validated through Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) based on online surveys of 705 users of egovernment services in the UK. The findings have highlighted significant theoretical and practical implications for researchers and policy makers. This research highlights that the key dimensions (services, outcome and trust) of public value theory cannot be validated on their own as they are far too abstract in current literature. Therefore, this study verifies that public value can only be validated by drawing from the multiple fields of Public Administration, Information System and Marketing. From a practical perspective, the study offers policy makers a frame of reference to understand the influence of value on the adoption and re-use of e-government services.Brunel Business School Graduate Research Assistant (GRA) scholarship programm

Assessment of the Conditions for a European Union Location Framework Report EUR

The European Union Location Framework (EULF) is a set of good practices and actions to promote more effective and efficient use of location information in e-government services. The EULF is part of the Interoperability Solutions for Public Administrations (ISA) Programme, which supports interoperability solutions, sharing and re-use among European Public Administrations. This report assesses the conditions for an EULF, based on a survey of Member States and an examination of EU policies and work programmes. Five focus areas are being considered initially: policy and strategy alignment, e government integration, standardisation and interoperbility, costs and benefits and committed partnerships. The assessment confirmed their importance in realising and maximising the benefits of location-related information and services. There are various good practices demonstrating that these issues can be addressed and that benefits for governments, citizens and businesses can be delivered. However these good pratices are not universally deployed and there are some significant gaps. The assessment also identified other important issues, including the need for effective leadership and governance, a user-driven approach, an open and balanced data policy, training and awareness raising and appropriately targeted funding. There is, therefore, a need for an EULF, to build on the good practices and interest from Member States and to develop a framework of guidance and actions that will foster interoperable cross-sector and cross-border sharing and use of location information.JRC.H.6-Digital Earth and Reference Dat

The impact of e-government strategy on economic growth and social development

The digital revolution significantly re-organizes the daily lifestyle of people and habitual ways and means of doing business. The public sector cannot disregard the new trends of postindustrial information economy. If public administrations are to remain responsive, accountable and efficient in the XXI century, they need to transform the way they function by making more and better use of information and communication technology. Implementation of e-government aims to support modernization of the public sector enabling its openness, transparency and effectiveness. The evidence from existing literature shows that besides the reduction of administrative burdens, improvement of information and service quality and cost reduction, e-government is able to streamline economic and social development of the nations. However, due to the lack of arguments that prove the importance of e-government adoption at the same level as resolution of other economic and social problems that occur on the national levels, some critical opinions were expressed against the need of investment in the digital government. This research applying correlation and regression analysis using the panel data of 34 European countries during the period of 2003 until 2014, aims to evaluate the impact of e-government strategy on economic and social development and its ability to enhance wealth creation and to improve exciting social policies. Results provide an evidence of the positive significant effect of e-government implementation on GDP growth and several social indices, such as Rule of law, Political stability and Health index with significant decrease of Mortality rate at the same time.A revolução digital reorganizou significativamente, tanto o estilo de vida diário das pessoas, como as formas habituais e meios de fazer negócios. O setor público não pode ignorar as novas tendências da economia da informação pós-industrial. Se as administrações públicas são para continuar a ser responsivas, responsáveis e eficientes no século XXI, precisam de transformar a forma como funcionam, fazendo mais e melhor uso da tecnologia da informação e da comunicação. A implementação de governo eletrónico tem como objetivo apoiar a modernização do setor público, possibilitando a sua abertura, transparência e eficácia. A evidência da literatura existente mostra que, além das reduções dos encargos administrativos, melhoria da informação, qualidade de serviço e redução de custos, governo eletrónico é capaz de agilizar o desenvolvimento económico e social das nações. No entanto, devido à falta de argumentos que demonstrem a importância da adoção do governo eletrónico ao mesmo nível que a resolução de outros problemas socioeconómicos que ocorrem aos níveis nacionais, algumas opiniões críticas foram expressas contra a necessidade de investimento no governo digital. Esta pesquisa, que aplicou uma análise de correlação e regressão, usando dados de um painel de 34 países europeus durante o período de 2003 a 2014, tem como objectivo avaliar o impacto da estratégia de implementação do governo eletrónico no desenvolvimento económico e social e a sua capacidade de potenciar a criação de riqueza e de melhorar políticas sociais estimulantes. Os resultados mostram sinais do efeito positive e significativo da implementação do governo eletrónico sobre o crescimento do PIB e em diversos indicadores sociais, tais como, no Estado de Direito, na estabilidade política e em índice de saúde com uma diminuição significativa da taxa de mortalidade ao mesmo tempo

E-government iImplementation and adoption: the case study of Botswana Government

ABSTRACT The advancements in the ICT and internet technologies challenge governments to engage in the electronic transformation of public services and information provision to citizens. The capability to reach citizens in the physical world via e-government platform and render a citizen-centric public sector has increasingly become vital. Thus, spending more resources to promote and ensure that all members of society are included in the entire spectrum of information society and more actively access government online is a critical aspect in establishing a successful e-government project. Every e-government programme requires a clear idea of the proposed benefits to citizens, the challenges to overcome and the level of institutional reform that has to take place for e- government to be a success in a given context. E-government strategy is fundamental to transforming and modernising the public sector through identification of key influential elements or strategy factors and ways of interacting with citizens. It is therefore apparent that governments must first understand variables that influence citizens’ adoption of e-government in order to take them into account when developing and delivering services online. Botswana has recently embarked on e-government implementation initiatives that started with the e-readiness assessment conducted in 2004, followed by enactment of the National ICT policy of 2007 and the approval of the e-government strategy approved in 2012 for dedicated implementation in the 2014 financial year. Significant developments have taken place around national and international connectivity including initiatives that offer connectivity to citizens such as the I- partnership, community run Nteletsa projects, post office run tele-centres and Sesigo projects that have been deployed on a wider Botswana. In spite of these remarkable initiatives there is no change management strategy in place and evidence to suggest that citizens cluster groups, government employees, key influential citizens’ stakeholders and other local government administrative governing structures at district levels have been appropriately informed, consulted, engaged and participated in the design, development and implementation initiatives. This position has contributed largely to low e-readiness indices for Botswana, low PC, Internet and broadband penetration levels, which do not commensurate with levels of connectivity initiatives already in place and operational. The strategy development, which is the viability business plan for the entire project has been initiated and concluded without the appropriate input of citizens, employees and local government structures at the districts. Considering that that e-government is new and narrowly researched in Botswana. There is non existing research on both the impact of strategy factors to e-government implementation success and citizens’ involvement and participation in the e-government design and implementation through to adoption and continual use. This study therefore explores and investigates empirically the key e-government strategy influential success elements and the how citizens’ involvement and participation in e-government development can be secured, supported and facilitated towards adoption and continual future use. This culminates in the proposal of both theoretically supported and empirically validated e-government strategy framework and citizen centric conceptual model. The study is crucial as it aims understand how can influences upon success in e-government project be better understood and citizens’ stakeholder adoption of e-government enhanced to facilitate successful development of e-government in Botswana and is also timely as it comes at the time when Botswana has not yet implemented her e-government strategy, hence factors identified are critical to both strategy re-alignment and design of the citizens’ involvement and participation change management strategy to support both implementation and citizens’ adoption of e-government in Botswana. The study utilises the mixed methods research, employing both qualitative and quantitative methods to address the research question and triangulated data collection approaches used to select survey sample for two questionnaire sets carried on opinion holders within government and non government structures and ordinary citizens, use of observations on operating tele-centres, interviews with key e-government strategic stakeholders and document analysis which included e-government policies and related documentations as well as extensive review of e-government published literature including applied implementation and citizens adoption experiences of developing and developed countries. In the analysis of data the multiple regression analysis has been utilised and multivariate analysis performed to ensure linearity, normality and collinearity. The linear regression has been used to test the hypothesis through the Analysis of variance (ANOVA) technique. Keywords E-government, strategy critical success factors, key influential elements, citizen centric conceptual model, strategy framework, Botswana.Botswana International University of Science and Technology (BIUST)Botswana Embass

E-social work : a preliminary examination of social services contact centres

The use of technology has been a feature of public sector managerialism since its introduction by the Conservative government in the 1990s. Subsequently, New Labour's modernisation agenda embraced and promoted the use of information and communication technology (ICT) through its drive towards 'electronic government' ('e-government'). The target set for all services to be 'e-accessible' by 2005 put pressure on local authorities for their services to be 'open all hours' and encouraged them to utilise call centre technology to achieve this. As a result, 'contact centres' (as they were re-designated) are now in use by local authorities to deliver a diverse range of services including social services. Call centres emerged as one of the most widely adopted organisational forms in the private sector in the last two decades of the twentieth century, and have been utilised in a number of ways, primarily in the communications and service industries. The working conditions in call centres gained a reputation for being harsh and exploitative of employees in the pursuit of efficiency and economy and the labour process in them has attracted a considerable amount of academic interest and research. The principal approach underpinning this research has been Braverman's (1974) labour process perspective. The use of call centre environments and technology for social services was pioneered by Liverpool City Council in 2001 in partnership with British Telecom. The introduction of contact centres in this context epitomised 'new public management'. The use of contact centres to deliver social services is now widespread and the thesis presents an in-depth case study of one such contact centre, 'Northshire Care Direct' (NCD) in the North East of England. It identifies how social work practice has been affected by an organisational form, which, until recently, had not been utilised in this context. In addition to its being used to underpin call centre research, Braverman's (1974) labour process perspective has also been used to analyse the social work labour process and, in this sense, was apposite as a means of shedding light on a setting that conjoined social work and call centre technology. The thesis therefore uses Braverman's labour process perspective as an overarching conceptual framework to shed light on the labour process at NCD and how it impacted on social workers from professional and personal perspectives. The findings challenge the dominant view of call centre environments, which represents them as highly controlled and inherently stressful settings that inevitably damage employees' well-being. The thesis argues that contact centre social work represents a new (and, thus far, neglected) development that further extends the incursion of ICT into the organisation and management of social work practice. The emergence of the twin phenomena of 'e-social work' and 'e-management' is identified. The thesis argues that the contact centre context takes the role of ICT in social work further than before. In acknowledging that it is a snapshot of only one such centre, and that different practices may exist elsewhere, it argues that the findings can only be indicative of the direction of travel. It concludes that the social work profession needs to engage with further developments in order to mitigate potentially negative effects for service users

Self-governmental units and public libraries in Poland : clients or interoperational partners?

Wprowadzenie w problematykę relacji między jednostkami samorządu terytorialnego (JST) i bibliotekami publicznymi (BP), przy braku w Polsce strategii rozwoju infrastruktury informacyjnej terenów wiejskich i małomiasteczkowych w warunkach budowy e-państwa oraz społeczeństwa informacyjnego. Transformacja ustrojowa a brak ładu informacyjnego na poziomie gmin i powiatów; potrzeba badawczych i edukacyjnych podstaw współdziałania JST i BP w zakresie upowszechnienia idei oraz praktyki udostępniania informacji publicznej i obywatelskiej. Dane z raportów FRSI (Fundacja Rozwoju Społeczeństwa Informacyjnego) a dylematy płatności za usługi informacyjne na wsi i w powiatach. Badania procesu działania użytkowników informacji w JST i BP – wspólna praca w sieci i wspólne doskonalenie warsztatu. Europejski wymiar zasad płatności – klient a partner (użytkownik informacji publicznej dla sektora biznesu i wtórne wykorzystywanie informacji publicznej a partnerzy– czytelnicy i użytkownicy informacji obywatelskiej w strefie edukacji i przestrzeni integrowania wspólnot lokalnych i regionalnych).The article is an introduction to the issues of reciprocal relationship between self-government units (SGU) and public libraries (PL), in the context of inexistent national Polish strategy of information infrastructure development in rural and peripheral areas and in the circumstances of building the e-administration and the information society. The author confronts the aftermaths of Polish political transition with the lack of information order at the level of gminas and poviats, and stresses the need of creating research and educational basis for cooperation between SGU and PL. This cooperation should be aimed at propagating the idea and practice of granting access to public and civic information resources. The other points treated in the article are: data collected in the reports of the Foundation for the Development of Information Society (Fundacja Rozwoju Społeczeństwa Informacyjnego) versus the dilemmas of choosing free or fee formula in the access to the information services in gminas and poviats. Exploring the actions taken up by information users in the assets of SGU and PL – collaborative work and perfecting of information skills. European dimension of payment rules – client versus partner (user of public information designed for business sector, re-use of public information versus partners – readers and users of the civic information pertaining to the education and integration of local and regional communities)

Public sector information and re-use – where is the UK now?

Information produced by government does of course serve a number of purposes. First it should inform government so as to generate sound policy decisions and effective strategies. Second, through a variety of media, it should provide the general public with information to enable individuals to engage with government services and to deliver personal data that they are obliged to provide. Access to a wide variety of public sector information (PSI) is also important to enable individuals to manage their lives, operate their businesses or help make political decisions about which party to support at an election. But in the midst of such uses is the asset itself i.e. PSI and the policy for its creation, storage, management, exploitation and distribution. As a national resource one issue is whether it is a commodity to be shared freely or, in those circumstances where income can be derived from it, a product to be licensed and sold to offset public sector costs? In the UK this has been under debate for many years through analysis of Crown copyright regulation. Current policy, as interpreted by HM Treasury, continues to argue that those wishing to exploit or add value to PSI for commercial purposes should at least contribute something to the cost of its supply. Joint ventures with the private sector have also been entered into for the preparation and distribution of some PSI where the private sector service provider is permitted to recoup subscriptions in return for the investment. Until recently this has been a relatively sterile debate lacking data to fuel the arguments. That has changed as a result of recent investigations which this paper now explores. At issue is whether present policy is vindicated or alternatively whether pressure is growing for further modernisation of conventional approaches? This paper traces the process of development of the policy through to the present

Unlocking the potential of public sector information with Semantic Web technology

Governments often hold very rich data and whilst much of this information is published and available for re-use by others, it is often trapped by poor data structures, locked up in legacy data formats or in fragmented databases. One of the great benefits that Semantic Web (SW) technology offers is facilitating the large scale integration and sharing of distributed data sources. At the heart of information policy in the UK, the Office of Public Sector Information (OPSI) is the part of the UK government charged with enabling the greater re-use of public sector information. This paper describes the actions, findings, and lessons learnt from a pilot study, involving several parts of government and the public sector. The aim was to show to government how they can adopt SW technology for the dissemination, sharing and use of its data