Geospatial and e-Governance readiness assessment : a case study from India and South Africa

Abstract

E-governance and Geospatial technology adoption in the context of service delivery of municipalities is meant to have transparent, efficient and responsive government. In this globalised world, the technology adoption and its application is emerging at a very rapid pace. However, world over municipalities are facing enormous challenges to have effective municipal service delivery with changing scale of cities and changing socio economic background state of its citizens. The prime objective to implement E-governance and Geospatial Technology is usually cost cutting and also minimizing the complexities of procedure by possible business process reengineering. Municipalities are entrusted to provide efficient service delivery to its citizens and subsequent technology adoption however they still have issues like digital divide, affordability etc. The municipalities are keeping abreast of latest technologies and implementing them to enable greater facilitation of its services and at the same time increasing the accessibility of its services to the citizens. The concomitant advantage could be empowering people through so called “disintermediation” or eliminating middleman between government and its citizen. Just to mention a small example, implementing online property tax assessment and collection system could eliminate element of corruption in form of “middleman” and also improve on service delivery or consumer convenience especially in developing countries. The paper discusses and evaluates the dimensions of e-Governance and Geospatial adoption at select municipalities in India and South Africa and their readiness level for further change. The scope of this Geospatial and e-Governance Adoption is kept within the context of GIS and web enabled services, which further leverage transparency, responsiveness and accountability. Based on this overview of Geospatial and e-Governance Adoption level study, the paper identifies the lessons learned from the qualitative analysis of the Geospatial and e-Governance adoption levels for strengthening the areas of planning, governance and service delivery services to the citizens