A Community Facilitation Model for E-Government

This chapter introduces a community facilitation model for e-government. The central tenet of this approach is the empowerment of a segment of the population to act, by providing the tools and information necessary to tackle issues that have been difficult to address with traditional approaches to government. Under this model, government provides an initial spark and then plays a supporting role in the growth of the community. By doing so, the costs of the program are minimized while the impact of the program is maximized. We examine the viability of the model by looking at a case study in water quality monitoring. The case illustrates the power of a government facilitated community of action to address an important problem, and it suggests that such a model can be applied globally and may be relevant to government initiatives beyond water monitoring.

Electronic Surveillance for the Public Good

The central government in the UK is determined to employ new surveillance technology to combat the threat of terrorist activities. This chapter contributes to the important debate on the relationship between citizens and the government, by discussing not whether electronic surveillance should be used, but rather, when it is acceptable to the populace. From our analysis, we conclude that a reconciliation of state-interest and self-interest is critical for the success of e-governance; as such, electronic surveillance’s mission has to be about serving the law-abiding majority and their needs, and its scope and benefits must be clearly understood by the visionaries, implementers and the citizenry.

Healthcare Network Centric Operations

Healthcare has yet to realize the true potential afforded by e-health. To date, technology-based healthcare operations are conducted chaotically, at a wide variety of non-integrated fronts, with little or no long-term strategy, and at a tremendous and ever increasing cost. This chapter proposes that in order for healthcare to ever reap the full benefits from e-health it is imperative for the development of a doctrine of healthcare network centric operations. Otherwise, millions if not billions of dollars will be spent on a futile chase of the definitions of how and when will the computer, healthcare provider, and healthcare administrator interact most efficiently and at the least expense. The concept of a doctrine - “conceptual platform” that outlines the consequent, goal-oriented way forward, and integrates all constituent elements into a smoothly operating whole, is utilized to great effect in the military. Drawing upon the strategies and techniques employed by the military to develop a network centric doctrine, the chapter outlines the essential components necessary for the establishment of the doctrine for healthcare network centric operations (HNCO), and in so doing not only highlights the integral role played by information computer and communication technologies (IC2T) but also the pivotal role of policy makers and governments. In fact, HNCO underscores the important yet rarely acknowledged confluence of e-health and e-government

E-Government Concepts, Measures, and Best Practicies

This chapter introduces e-government theory according to the development of information communication technology (ICT), in which the importance of national informatization has been emphasized and the goal of government has been converted to a new concept: that of e-government. First, we define several national concepts based on the study of those countries and international agencies with the most advanced structures of information society, and from these concepts, we establish the general concept from the viewpoints of supply, demand, and policy. Second, we explain how international agencies (UN, Brown University, Accenture, etc.) measure e-government according to the standards and performance. Third, we explain e-government projects that have been accepted as national policies under the national informatization plans and which have been executed in each country for better public service and efficient administration. Thus we expect that the countries needing a benchmark model while developing their own e-government may adopt the concepts we propose in this paper and may benefit from our experience to quickly embody e-government and evolve into the new paradigm that is mobile-Gov, TV-Gov, or ubiquitous-Gov.

User Involvement in E-Government Development Projects

User involvement in E-Government projects is presented and discussed. Different methods and practices are analyzed in relation to a differentiation between traditional government participatory practices and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). Some of the user involvement practices are exemplified through two Norwegian case studies: (1) An electronic patient journal for hospital based health care and (2) an electronic post journal, where the Norwegian public (via the Norwegian press) is provided insight in public sector correspondence. User involvement methods and practices are in particular discussed with regard to the challenges of the wide range of users and stakeholders, legal limitations, and evolving goal hierarchies of E-Government projects. Future trends and research opportunities within the field of user involvement in E-Government development are identified.

E-Governement Emerging Trends

This chapter demonstrates the importance and challenges considering technology adoption in general and e-government adoption in particular in the context of a key strategic process for the Egyptian Government. Thus our empirical findings are based on the foreign financing decision making process of Egypt extending previous work on e-business technologies and e-government adoption in general and G2G in particular. Although that new trends in Government support appear such as u–government, g-government and Me-government, none of the leading countries has reached the full integration. Among some of the possible reasons is that technology adoption relies to a great extent, not only to the factors being presented in TAM model, but also solving one of the most important challenges from our point of view, namely organizational problems, which will be highlighted through our case studies. This includes identifying and documenting the decision making processes crossing different ministries, which is a challenging task by itself. Although adopting technologies needs infrastructure such as the process being IT ready, inter and intra-organizational integration technologies in the form of G2G or some of the new trends such as g-government, can help in resolving some of those organizational challenges existing at those strategic processes.

Digital Public Sphere

In the information age, simultaneous citizen-government interaction through information and communication technologies (ICTs) such as e-mails, digital policy forums through bulletin boards, and real-time digital chat already has been happened. Digital deliberation is one of examples for improving citizen-government interaction through ICTs. In this context, it is important to evaluate current practice of digital deliberation. That is, can we consider current practice of digital deliberation as authentic citizen participation in governance process? Based on the analysis of the current practice of digital deliberation through ICTs, unlike the expectation, this paper argues that there was a lack of active participation by citizens as well as public servants. The policies should be made by the will of citizens in democratic governance but current practice of digital deliberation did not support this statement. Citizens’ unawareness of digital deliberation, citizens’ lack of active participation, and public officials’ less positive perspective on the digital deliberation make current digital deliberation unconstructive. These practices have violated the principle of democracy, which is government by the people. The citizens’ strong will of active digital deliberation is a key to the success of digital deliberation in the democratic governance. In addition, public officials’ positive view and strong support on the digital deliberation are important to make digital deliberation effective.

The Development of Urban E-Governement in China

The chapter assesses and cognizes the development of urban e-government in China from two main aspects: functionality and complexity. To functionality, nine websites of urban governments in China at three levels were selected for this assessment. Data needed for the study was tracked and recorded continuously for six weeks from these websites. To complexity, the influence of e-government to urban modality and evolution are explored, which shows that e-government has a leading role to the gathering and decentralization of urban space, the organization of material (people) flows and the informal exchange in internal cities.

Moving Towards E-Government in a Developing Society

The use of information communication technologies (ICT) in governance is growing rapidly in many parts of the world. Developing countries in Africa are also making efforts to harness the new technology. In this chapter, we review the problems, progress, and prospects of e-government in Nigeria, a sub-Saharan African (SSA) country. Governments in the developing countries of SSA can benefit from e-government initiatives, as do their counterparts in advanced nations, when the concept of e-governments in SSA is understood, and concerted efforts are committed towards institutionalizing it in the region. This chapter provided useful insights in this regard. We discussed the contribution of the chapter to information systems (IS) research, and we highlighted the lessons from Nigeria for comparable nations in the SSA region as they prepare for e-government.

Semantic Web mining for Personalized Public Services

As citizens are confronted with increasing volumes of information, boundless choices and endless opportunities in the Web environment, the need for personalized public e-services is more compulsory than ever. This chapter explores the way Semantic Web Mining technologies can be incorporated into public e-services domain in order to better meet citizens and authorities requirements. It describes the various steps of personalization process and examines techniques in use today to support it. In sequence, it introduces a recommendation scenario for an e-city portal. Finally, the chapter illustrates current trends in the field suggesting directions that may lead to new scientific results in the area.