E-Government Development in Serbia

Attaining highly efficient e-Government in developing countries is a true challenge. These countries are struggling with many internal issues that are preventing them from providing budgetary resources for investing in ICT infrastructure, staff education, developing strategies, and enacting laws and policies. However, realizing the benefits that e-Government can bring, both to citizens and administration, these countries are working hard towards implementing e-Government and are achieving great results. As one of the developing countries, Serbia has been struggling for years with e-Government ideas. It started with humble implementations nearly ten years ago by publishing only a few informational services, but quickly made significant progress. The efforts made are worthy of recognition while experience gained is of considerable importance not only for Serbia’s further advances in this area but also for all other developing countries as an example and guidance to solving similar problems. This chapter provides an overview of the current state and history of e-Government development in Serbia and presents important issues and challenges influencing Serbian adoption of e-Government, which can be recognized in other developing countries as well. The chapter also addresses other issues and challenges that are now facing developed Governments, but which are on the way to developing nations as well. Even though these countries are not currently setting their focus on them, they should not be ignored nor neglected—indeed these should be included in developmental plans and strategies in order to successfully overcome them when the time comes.

Mining Electoral Data for Effective Campaigns and E-Participation

E-Democracy and E-Participation are sub-areas of E-Government that utilize Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) to empower democracy and allow the participation of ordinary people during the definition of policies that affect their lives. Particularly, general elections as well as the selection of presidential candidates are types of electoral events where ICT can facilitate the constituency participation, providing a resource to influence the implementation of such events. The authors propose data mining and ranking techniques to analyze voting historical data and identify regions where electoral campaigns need to be intensified. Based on citizens’ participation patterns in previous elections, they illustrate the quality of their approach on Venezuelan electoral data and compare it with respect to the results produced by a baseline independent study. Experimental results suggest that the authors’ techniques are able to predict the classification given for the baseline study, while they are simpler and easily reproducible.

Enabling Democratic Local Governance through Rural E-Municipalities in Kyrgyzstan

This chapter presents a case study on rural e-municipalities in Kyrgyzstan as an enabling tool for facilitating and supporting democratic local governance. The authors examine the case based on their action research and discuss key findings in terms of challenges of implementing and sustaining ICT-enabled local governance observed throughout the life cycle of the real life project. The case presentation is guided by the conceptual framework built on an extensive literature review. Key findings and lessons drawn from this case study can guide policy makers and practitioners in other developing countries in designing and implementing similar initiatives with careful consideration of national development context, enabling political, administrative, and legal environment, governance structure and decentralization policies, institutional framework, and strength of rural municipalities and local communities. This chapter’s possible contribution to research includes improving understanding of the implementation and sustainability issues of rural e-municipality as one of the critical e-governance initiatives at the grassroots level.

E-Democracy and Trust

In developed countries, large numbers of citizens are benefiting from e-government services and information that is ubiquitously accessible. However, citizen’s democracy and trust play a crucial role in the advancement of e-government implementation and further progress. E-democracy is strongly linked to trust. Trust is established when one person can rely on the decision and action that another person takes. In Iran, government still struggles with injecting e-government content and value to both government employees and citizens. What is actually lacking is the establishment of Government Social Networking System (GSNS) to influence e-government expansion. In this chapter, GSNS and its contribution to e-government expansion in Iran is presented. Moreover, the author deliberates if government technological support and ICT can enhance e-democracy and trust in Iran. 800 Iranian citizens were examined through a self-administrative questionnaire containing seven structured questions. The results revealed that very few respondents were fully familiar with e-government efforts and GSNS. In case of democracy and trust issues, respondents appear to be positively resistive. They make a variety of dissimilar statements while supporting their statements with interesting but disappointing reasons. This chapter presents the outcome of this study.

Mobile Government in Egypt

Modern governmental agencies aim to present their services to citizens in an efficient manner. The methods employed for delivering these services are usually based on traditional computer applications. However, the computer applications suffer from limitations related to the services themselves as well as time and place. To overcome these limitations, governments are keen to use non-traditional and innovative forms for services delivery. In this context, mobile devices and applications built for such technologies can be efficiently used for delivering governmental services to citizens. This way of Government to Citizen (G2C) interaction is often referred to as m-Government. The Egyptian government has implemented many IT-based projects in the last decade. Currently, it aims to transform these projects to mobile platform. In this chapter, the authors discuss m-Government in Egypt and its related issues. The chapter begins by a survey for the available e-Government services in Egypt. So, the current Egyptian mobile situation is stated. Consequently, the chapter analyzes the possible opportunities for the government presenting m-Government services. Finally, the challenges facing the mobile applications industry in Egypt are discussed. At the same time, this chapter introduces some possible solutions for these challenges. The analysis of the Egyptian situation shows that the Egyptian society has many opportunities for developing m-Government applications. These opportunities should be exploited. Moreover, the existing challenges facing m-Government in Egypt can be avoided by good governance. The cooperation between all authorities in the republic is a must for the effectiveness and efficiency of m-Government projects.

Explaining the Underdevelopment of Rural E-Government

The advent of information and communications technology led the public administration of many countries to step into a new era. During the last decade, an increasing number of researchers analysed the e-government performance of national governments, regions, and large cities. However, far less attention has been paid to villages and rural areas, probably because their e-government was not a prioritised target for national policies and, consequently, was not developing at the same pace. In fact, rural e-government is nothing but a part of e-government and should be included in e-government policies. However, from a practical point of view, rural e-government raises specific issues, especially in those society where the divide between cities and villages still clearly exists. E-government could significantly improve rural services, support economic development, and encourage citizen engagement. The goal of this research is to assess the rural e-government level in Romania by evaluating five core components: 1) security and personal data protection; 2) usability; 3) content; 4) type of services; and 5) digital democracy. The low scores obtained by the only two measurable components—usability and content—allow one to conclude that Romanian rural e-government is in its early stages. Based on some unexpected collateral conclusions, the authors offer suggestions for future researches and policy makers.

ICT for Social Inclusion and Equal Opportunities

In this chapter, the authors discuss a Knowledge Economy-based approach to the inclusion of Persons with Disabilities (PwD). The approach, different from the traditional assistance model, considers PwD as active and valuable members of the present Knowledge Society, to be included in the active workforce. This is discussed with reference to a specific operational case study concerning the establishment of the Center of Excellence for Technology and Innovation in Favor of Persons with Disabilities (CETI-D) conceived by Fondazione Rosselli Americas and being implemented by the State of Sao Paulo in Brazil. At the beginning of the chapter, the authors discuss the problem of the inclusion of PwD as a further aspect of the digital divide phenomenon. Then, the principles of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities are presented—some international best practices concerning the social inclusion of PwD are also introduced. Later, the authors discuss the CETI-D initiative, with the aim of showing how ICT can represent a powerful tool for social and economic inclusion. Finally, the authors discuss the conditions under which the experience of the CETI-D can be replicated in other countries, with a specific focus on less developed countries.

Social Media in State Governments

More than other information technology, social media has the potential to improve communication, participation, and collaboration between governments and citizens. The widespread use of Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and blogs among citizens has forced government officials to use these technologies to reach citizens, interact with them, and legitimate policies and public decisions. Despite this great potential and the relevance of social media in today’s society, there is still a relatively limited number of empirical studies that attempt to understand how governments are using these tools, particularly at the state and local levels. The main objective of this research is to understand how state governments are using Web 2.0 technologies and to provide some conceptual elements for future research in this area. Based on a longitudinal review of the 32 state Websites in Mexico and a more in-depth analysis of two cases, this chapter provides preliminary results on how state governments are using two of the most well known social media tools: Facebook and Twitter. The chapter highlights some differences and similarities among state governments. It also provides some initial ideas about how to develop a more comprehensive strategy for using social media tools and applications in state governments.

E-Government Initiatives in Kurdistan Region of Iraq

In the past decade, most countries have embraced new technologies in an effort to improve the way they offer public services to citizens. Some do so in order to improve the channels through which they communicate and interact with their citizens, while others do so to improve the efficiency of delivery of services; and as a result, introduce savings in the utilization of resources that could also be used in creating new value adding initiatives. This chapter looks at the opportunities provided by e-government initiatives, and also discusses the importance of citizens’ involvement in e-government system development, with particular emphasis on Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI). Here, the authors investigate how citizen’s participation affects the success or failure of e-government systems. They attempt to identify factors that could impact the use of such systems and look at ways to encourage stakeholders’ engagement in the development process as a means to improve the services provision. In the end, the chapter also looks at the potential for initiating a program to deliver enhanced government services and social inclusion that embraces electronic communication media within regional governments in developing countries such as KRI.

Thailand’s Transformation to C-Government

With the commitment to ASEAN Community integration by 2015 and the continuing advances in information and communication technologies, Thailand has been provided a golden opportunity to not only catch up on current trends and technologies, but also to leap over e-Government and go directly towards Connected Government, or c-Government. In so doing, the government needs to focus on strategic implementation rather than simply developing a conceptual framework of e-Government. This chapter presents the core challenges and co-cultivated roadmap to accelerate connected government and a connected ASEAN. Firstly, there is the Management Challenge in enabling the progression and accelerating the adoption of transformational services; secondly, the Governance Challenge in establishing the comprehensive guiding principles to shape the vision, enterprise structure, committed leadership, coordinated efforts, and strategic action plans; and thirdly, the Foundation Challenge for leveraging the interoperability and establishing a standardized evaluation system with human resources development and joint key performance indices. To overcome these challenges, this chapter proposes proactive strategies and a sustainable roadmap, starting with a SWOT analysis of the lessons learnt in order to understand the current state of e-Government, followed by a clear vision of the future and an action plan for proactively and sustainably implementing c-Government. Input has been gathered not only from the public by e-survey and an IT group of 200 who attended a workshop, but the collective perception of directly concerned CIOs through discussion at a seminar.