E-Government Strategies in Sub-Saharan Africa

E-government if well implemented has the potential to reduce administrative bureaucracy and enhance development and service delivery. This chapter discusses strategies of e-government implementation in Sub-Saharan Africa and the implications for good governance, democracy, respect for human rights, accountability, integrity, and transparency. E-government in Sub-Saharan Africa is being undertaken in different administrative contexts and rationalities such as the need for reform, efficiency, and citizen-focus. An e-government implementation approach that facilitates and engenders the sharing of best practices, experiences, methods, and standards while reducing turnaround times and cost in project delivery would be desirable. This chapter is underpinned by UN e-government framework.

The Reasons of Low E-Government Take-Up in Europe

Despite the efforts in terms of policies and investments, take-up of e-government services is slow, obscuring the overall benefits of e-government itself and still far from satisfactory today. Differences in uptake of e-government services across European countries seem to be independent from the quality and quantity of the supply. The data show a gap between the supply and use of e-government services in general; in other words, suggesting a limited correlation between the provisions of sophisticated e-government services on the one hand and the take-up of e-government services on the other. This signals a broader and diversified situation. To explore the determinants of low e-government take-up in European context, this chapter examines the aggregate data of 29 countries by conducting T-tests and Mann-Whitney U analyses.

Adoption of E-Government in Africa

Increasingly, the importance of e-government is growing owing to higher quality delivery of government services, improved citizen empowerment through access to e-information, and better interactions between governments and their stakeholders. Despite all this recognition and appreciation of e-government, there is slow uptake and high failure of e-government in developing countries. A huge imbalance still remains between developed and developing countries, specifically in Africa because of numerous impediments. Africa lags far behind all other regions in the world. Some African countries have initiated e-government, such as Ghana, Nigeria, and South Africa, yet others have not taken any initiative or are very slow in realizing its full take off, for instance, Tanzania, Botswana, and Zambia. In light of the above background, the main purpose of this chapter is to determine the challenges and based on the findings make recommendations for adoption of E-Government in Arica. The chapter reviews the theoretical underpinning of E-Government as a tool for modernizing public administration; examines the present state of e-government in Africa; highlights the challenges and barriers African countries encounter in their quest to develop E-Government; reviews the role of public libraries in E-Government, and finally, makes recommendations for E-Government adoption in Africa and other developing countries.

Towards a Regional Ontology for E-Participation

This chapter shows the need to enhance global understanding of how the transformational government artifact is unfolding as the concept of e-Government continues to gain greater visibility in developing countries of Africa. The interest in this chapter is not to question the global commitments to the notion of transformational government but to bring to the fore inadequacies of universal conceptualization and interpretation of e-government, evidenced through the various evolutionary models and frameworks, and argue that a focus on regional ontologies is inevitable in realizing transformational government. The authors see the quest for a regional ontology as urgent, since most African governments are currently involved in e-Government initiatives as part of a broader set of governance reforms that date back to the 1980s. Therefore, the aim of the chapter is to provide a rationale for a transformational government vision for developing nations, rooted in an ecological perspective, particularly taking into account the socio-cultural context.

Digital Television Transition in South Africa

This chapter examines possible obstacles to the adoption of digital television in South Africa. A qualitative approach was followed by conducting in-depth interviews with key informants. The data was analyzed using open coding, where dominant themes from the discussions were identified and discussed in detail. This chapter intends to outline the importance of digital readiness from digital television perspective as a platform for universal disposal of digital information to both the citizenry and business entities. In order to do that, the chapter discusses digital migration with a focus to improving e-Government development of promoting global access to government information.The findings show that there are a few challenges in migrating from analogue to digital television in South Africa. From this study, it is evidently shown that the emerging digital television platforms have a lot of potential to be used as a vehicle for e-Government applications.

ICT Adoption by Virtual Organizations in the Developing Countries

This chapter empirically explores ICT adoption by virtual organizations in developing countries, taking the case of small and medium enterprise clusters in Pakistan. Virtual organizations consist of internally independent parties linked by ICTs to collaborate for the accomplishment of common objectives. Effective communication is a key to develop social relationships, ultimately leading to the improvement of trust and collaboration among parties in a virtual organization. ICT is considered as a vital element for communication, collaboration and trust building in virtual organizations. However, this research explains that ICT adoption by virtual organizations in the developing countries would be different mainly due to the lack of advanced ICTs, strong inclination of organizations toward face-to-face communication, strength of social system, and the weakness of the legal system in these societies.

Enabling Instruments for Digital Access and e-Government in Zimbabwe

The concept of e-Government sub-assumes that of digital access to activities of public and private sector organisations. Explicitly, digital access includes improving government processes, connecting citizens, and building external interactions. Following the formation of the inclusive government as determined by the Global Political Agreement (GPA), Zimbabwe established the Ministry of Information Communication Technology whose mission is to promote the deployment and use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) to intensify national competitiveness and growth. Driving the digital access and e-Government agenda in Zimbabwe is a Modernisation Unit within the Office of the President and Cabinet and the Ministry of Information Communication Technology guided by “Zimconnect,” the e-Government framework, and other enabling instruments. Particular attention is paid to instruments that enable digital access and e-Government in Zimbabwe. The chapter attempts to contextualise digital access and e-Government, outlines e-Government policy objectives and constraints, explains the e-Government framework, including “Zimconnect” and others, and concludes with a section on strategies for enabling digital access and e-Government with a special focus on the possible role of library and information services.

E-Government Development in Botswana

Botswana is in the process of developing and implementing e-Government for its population in an effort to enhance and improve service delivery. In order to achieve that, a significant number of interventions have been put in place on both the supply and demand sides of e-Government. Using literature and document review, this conceptual chapter highlights the major interventions in place to encourage development of e-Government. Specifically, the chapter explores the role of libraries in cementing the use and growth of e-Government in Botswana. The chapter posits that libraries have a cardinal role to play in successful implementation of e-Government, and must therefore be taken into serious account.

E-Inclusion Strategies in Public Administrations

The implementation of e-Government could reduce administrative costs and the time devoted to repetitive tasks by civil servants, offering greater transparency to public administration, improving the current performance of public sector services, and expanding access to services. However, previous research indicates that there are significant barriers for citizens, assuming major obstacles. In this sense, the EU and, in particular, the Spanish government has formulated policies and legal frameworks to introduce in the field of the provision of public sector services in order to customize and to access these services. Therefore, the purpose of this chapter is to obtain a vision of government strategies adopted by Spanish regional governments to reduce the digital divide.

Information Access, the Digital Divide, and Knowledge-Based Economies

The conceptual understanding of the digital divide has been brought to the fore of scholarly research and practice for decades now. The contemporary understanding has been that there is a closer link between information access, the digital divide and knowledge economies. This chapter aims to unpack the ‘digital divide' especially as espoused in the developing world context and provide a departure from looking at the digital divide only from the ‘information access' perspective. A thorough review of the literature is employed to ascertain the common positions that have been and are being advanced by various renowned researchers in the field and present a comparative study on the effects of the digital divide on the socio-economic setting of South Korea and Zambia. The thesis of this chapter is that the digital divide has contributed to information asymmetry amongst different information-needy individuals and organizations. This is a profound disadvantage, especially in knowledge-based economies. The exponential penetration of technology in people's lives entails that we can no longer passively address the issue of the digital divide but rather must have robust and responsive strategies towards addressing the divide.