E-Governance and Natural Hazards in Mozambique

Strategic planning is a decisive process toward sustainable development for any organization. Mozambique has developed many tools toward good governance, among which Poverty Alleviation Strategy Paper (PARPA) is an umbrella. PARPA includes different key decisive segments of society, particularly the Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) as the pool for development. This chapter investigates to what extent e-Governance, particularly the development of strategies based on ICTs, can contribute to minimize the impact of floods at local governments by addressing best practice and decision-making process. The authors address backcasting methodology as an approach to consider in a participatory strategic planning for long-term decision-making processes. They use Chókwe District as a showcase where e-governance has an impact in mitigating and preventing the impact of floods.

E-Government in Namibia

This chapter discusses e-government initiatives in Namibia. A literature review shows that worldwide most e-government initiatives at national and local government are associated with the creation of websites with the aim of enhancing access to information. Whilst most governments are at this stage, a few have moved on to the stage of providing personalised e-services. The chapter provides the physical context, e-government readiness status, including the legal framework, and the implementation of e-government in Namibia. It also looks at the public or citizens' awareness of e-government. Using desk research, the chapter presents indicators used in e-government readiness assessments from various studies to show the level of Namibia's e-government adoption. A number of the indicators reflect some of the factors that hinder Namibia's progress in e-government implementation. In Namibia's case, some of these include the low usage of ICTs and affordability. The study concludes that Namibia is still at level one of its four-phase e-government implementation strategy.

Steering E-Government Projects from Failure to Success

There are many e-government failures in developing countries. Most studies look at these after the event (post hoc), but this chapter takes an original approach to look mid-implementation (durante hoc) in order to provide recommendations for improvement. The authors chose a partial failure/partial success land management information system being implemented in one Ethiopian city. The project has made retrieval of land information quicker and simpler but is only partly implemented, and is still—on occasion—circumvented by public servants for personal gain. They used design-reality gap framework to understand why the project had partly failed. The authors used the design-reality gap analysis to propose an action plan that would help institutionalise the system, steering it from partial failure to success. They demonstrate the value of this framework as a tool for mid-implementation analysis of e-government projects. The authors recommend its usage on other ongoing e-government projects in developing countries.

M-Powering

A mobile government affords, for instance, a powerful and transformational capacity to extend access to existing services, to expand the delivery of new services, to increase active citizen participation in government operations, and to change the way of working within the public sector. With the advancement of wireless and mobile technology, more people have been enabled to connect to local and regional resources that might have been unreachable in the absence of these telecommunication networks. The ability to perform both private and government transactions using mobile phones has enhanced and promoted the awareness of a digital government, reducing the level of digital divide in marginalized, poor, and developing nations. M-PESA is a mobile money service in Kenya transforming the citizens' lives and the government's operations. This chapter shows how Mobile Money transfers (M-Pesa) transactions have been a driver to realize an e-Government in Kenya through the monetary controls.

E-Government in Public Administration in Africa

This chapter is motivated by the need to escape the illusory perception of an incongruous implementation of information and communication technology policies in public administration processes in Africa. The problem is brought to light through an analytical distinction between e-government and e-governance. The analysis deals primarily with the impact of the new techno-economic regime, fostered by the development of information and communication technologies, on business and administrative structures, and shows that the conditions of implementation have varied from one political and policy environment to another. An inquiry into African ICT policies reveals a problem translated into the scantiness of African public administration structures in incorporating the conditions of technological change. The approach to solving the problem derives from the underlying distinction between e-government and e-governance. It shows that the efforts that produced thriving outcomes have tended to instill principled behaviors and actions in the restructuring of public administration structures.

E-Government for Health Facilities in Africa

Low and Middle Income Countries (LMICs) face healthcare worker shortages, skill mix imbalances, and maldistributions; there is concern in their quality and productivity. Africa's infrastructural developments also are way behind the rest of the world, and this gap is widening. Scalable, cost-effective, and long-term strategies in healthcare services are greatly needed. This chapter explores how Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) could play an important role in improving healthcare. Components of e-health, an emerging field in medicine, clinical care, and public health are discussed. The role of m-health is explored, identifying the benefits of integrating mobile phone technologies in healthcare. To meet the health financing deficiencies, the chapter also explores how Bring-Your-Own-Device (BYOD) could drive healthcare professionals' productivity through increased workplace flexibility.

The Issues and Prospects for E-Governance in Eastern Africa

This chapter discusses the issues, prospects, and challenges of e-governance in Africa with a focus on the progress of universal primary education in east Africa. It uses Uganda to showcase the need for e-governance of primary school education. The objectives are to describe the current status of the universal primary education, the key issues encountered in an effort to achieve MDG 2, and highlight the prospects of e-governance in achieving education. In this chapter, the authors collate published evidence on the performance of Uganda in implementing the MDG 2. There is a wide rural-urban digital gap, weak ICT infrastructures, and low awareness at the expense of quality UPE. There is limited access to ICT, ICT illiteracy, poor quality education, lack of e-books or ICT instructional materials to cut the costs of school administration like communication. E-governance has yet to achieve full deployment in education service delivery.

An Empirical Application of the DeLone and McLean Model to Examine Factors for E-Government Adoption in the Selected Districts of Tanzania

This study tests the model of information system success proposed by DeLone and McLean using data that was collected in three selected districts of Tanzania. A survey was administered to elicit factors for e-government adoption in Tanzania using the DeLone and McLean model of information system success. The results of multiple linear regressions indicate that system quality significantly influences e-government adoption in Tanzania. In light of these findings, researchers should conduct a similar study using other different models of e-government adoption in order to identify more factors that influence e-government adoption in Tanzania. Policy makers and e-government project teams should consider system quality as a barrier to e-government adoption and hence find ways of ensuring easy-to-use and easy-to-learn systems in order to facilitate e-government adoption within the country.

E-Government in East Africa

Today, many governments have embraced e-governance through automation in order to enhance service delivery thereby overcoming the challenges of traditional governance. Potentially, ICT can transform the generation and delivery of public services with the object of increasing the frequency and recurrence of online services interaction and participation between the governed and the governors. Since 2004, the Kenya government has made a shift towards automation and electronic service delivery. This chapter addresses the policies, strategies, and institutional structures through which e-participation is taking place. Evidence was gleaned through the use of extant secondary and primary data. Findings show that good will from the governors through an enabling environmental policy is an opportunity to be seized for e-participation to blossom amidst a few challenges that are surmountable. To enjoy the dividends of e-participation, more training and substantial investment in the architecture for e-governance in Kenya remain urgent priorities.

E-Government for Rural Development in Tanzania

This chapter presents the importance of developing rural areas with an emphasis on good governance and poverty alleviation through the use of electronic government in Tanzania. With such concern, the authors show that rural areas are as significant as the economy of most of the developing countries, including Tanzania. As such, putting sufficient efforts on rural development is unavoidable for rapid development. Further, the authors note how Tanzania improves its rural areas through the use of e-government, but efforts are constrained by the existence of poor Information Communication Technology service providers, ineffective policy, and unreliability of rural electricity. In order to address such shortfalls, the authors propose several solutions that could motivate the increase in the use of rural e-government and revise rural development policy.