A Citizen-Centric Platform to Support Networking in the Area of E-Democracy

This chapter describes experiences acquired during the research work conducted as part of the European Project Tell Me (www.tellmeproject.eu). The project envisaged to support the pan-European creation of Living Labs as new forms of cooperation between government, enterprises, citizens and academia for a successful transfer of e-Government, e-Democracy and e-Services state-of-the art applications, solutions, know-how and best practices. In this chapter the authors explore the potential of providing an existing system (DEMOS) allowing moderated and goal-oriented discourses between citizens and policy makers to become parts of open-ended ventures on the creation of collaborative networks for Electronic Democracy. This work would also recommend that this form of support network elevates e-Democracy of a country and thus improves e-governance systems at the grass roots.

Promoting E-Governance Through Capacity Development for the Global Environment

Solving the world’s great crises and taking advantage of the world’s greatest opportunities requires innovation and capacity. E-governance uses Information & Communication Technologies (ICT) to broaden participation and make problem solving more effective. Environmental issues represent some of the world’s greatest crises and most significant opportunities. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) is a global leader in tackling such issues. UNEP’s Global Environmental Outlook (GEO) relies on contributions from many experts from all regions of the world. Because capacity development is critical to UNEP’s ability to fulfill its mandate, UNEP collaborated with the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) to commission more than 50 experts to develop training resources for integrated environmental assessment and reporting at the sub-global level. These resources were adapted to an eLearning format, significantly broadening their utility and reach. All materials are organized onto the Moodle Learning Management System and use a facilitated interaction model. The eLearning curriculum and approach has been peer reviewed and pilot tested. This research has further developed a blended learning, Train-the-Multipliers program to train facilitators. This eLearning implementation has clearly demonstrated potential and is advancing e-governance at global, regional, national and sub-national levels in the area of environmental assessment and reporting. Although UNEP’s position as a strong proponent of global environmental governance is unique, the detailed approach described for the eLearning programme is generic and therefore, would be a useful model for others who wish to develop eLearning curricula.

Conceiving Community Knowledge Records as e-Governance Concerns in Wired Healthcare Provision

This chapter investigates the potential of community knowledge records (CKRs) in the electronic transformation for healthcare provision in Macau by examining various ICTs for personalized healthcare support, such as the electronic health (or e-health) records (EHR).

Methods for Software Complexity and Development Effort Estimation and its Importance in the Area of ICT Governance

The area of applications development for government purposes can be characterized to be task specific. In this context, development projects are usually more complex and there are some differences in comparison with commercial projects. The mission of the proposed chapter is an explanation of methods of project complexity evaluation based on analogy, crisp and fuzzy expert estimation and measure models. The selected methods for aggregation of expert’s estimations are also presented. Further the chapter introduces selected methods designed for complexity estimation. All the introduced methods are widely known except one that was designed by the lead author of the chapter. The method is called BORM Points and is developed for an IS project designed in BORM method (Business Object Relation Modeling). Each method is introduced first, then its step-by-step computation procedure is described and finally suggestion of software, which is supported method computation procedure. The results of the methods are in non-dimensional numbers and it is necessary to set up the relationship between complexity and effort, and introduces COCOMO model and its variants. Efforts are given about the implementation of this form of estimation approach in the area of ICT governance, especially at the grass roots e-governance.

Vision Impairment and Electronic Government

Vision impaired are in a distinctive disadvantage when using computer screens based on visual presentation of data. Their situation becomes increasingly critical, as most society services, including issues such as eCommerce, eBusiness, eHealth, and eGovernment go on-line. Yet modern technologies can too offer solutions to their problems, both at hardware and software level, and often with reasonable cost. Effective ICT can open up new communication channels and functionalities for say totally blind people, that would not have been available for them otherwise. General sensitivity for this issue, and especially sensitivity among designers of governmental e-services must be developed. eGovernment is an especially demanding activity area as it comes to all sorts of imparities (not just vision impairment), as governmental services are often in a monopoly service delivery situation: citizen have to use them and there is often no other alternative. The issue binds it to the wider discussion on digital divide, where vision impairment is one cause for digital divide, and often very devastating, especially if still combined with other sources of digital divide.

Şi̇kayet Çöz

This study aims to discuss how an NGO should have its place in e-governance model. Particularly, instead of structuring a complaint office in each state unit, process of a non-governmental organization’s handling complaints have been evaluated. The aim is to demonstrate technological and administrative changes occurred in an NGO on its path from public to state in e-governance understanding by good will of a person and the activities of an NGO as public voice have been studied within the e-governance understanding. Actually this NGO shows the move from society to state and forms an example of total quality management by the technological and managerial changes occurred in its structure. This chapter is focused on a project, ‘Sikayetimiz.com’, which is an e-complaint on-line model providing various support services to the people at large in Turkey, discussed about its transformation stages leading to this format, put forward some important managerial and organizational issues including operational challenges.

Using Web Sites to Improve Fiscal Transparency

Fiscal transparency today is considered as an essential element of both good governance and e-governance. Therefore, in the new public management and budgeting reforms made by governments, it is clearly observed that fiscal transparency is one of the key elements. E-government technologies and especially the internet are supportive to the efforts on the part of governments offering unprecedented opportunities to public administrations enabling the dissemination of fiscal information and improving the e-governance system. In Turkey, where there is the tradition of Continental Europe, the reforms made through new laws in early 2000 contain various legal and institutional regulations to improve fiscal transparency and encourage the public administrators to use websites in an attempt to enhance fiscal transparency. This chapter, within the context of evaluating the endeavors in question, examines the websites of municipalities in Turkey in terms of fiscal transparency and eventually presents some suggestions for the improvement of the e-governance system.-

E-Government Policy

One must admit that the emerging of faster delivery service required a faster mechanism of transaction between government and its people. But such transaction is not without issues that have to be addressed by the governments of the public sectors. The primary issues addresses by this chapter are the relationships between the perceived: security tightening, facilitating conditions, usefulness, eases of using e-filing system and users’ retention. The second issue addresses by the chapter is differences in gender of the users with respect to factors that influence their state of retention. The findings of the study show a strong relationship between the predicting factors and user’s intention to continuing using the system. The findings also show that the retention of users is highly affected by the differences in the gender of the users. This research would like to recommend that faster transaction mechanism between the government and the people enhances the e-governance system and in this context, this chapter is focusing on some potential implications of e-filing system of Malaysia.

The Characteristics, Responsibilities and Future of Chief Information Officers in the Public Sector

This chapter presents a model which depicts the critical factors and assists in understanding the demands and effectiveness of Chief Information Officers (CIO) in public sector organisations. The chapter explores the literature on public sector CIO addressing personal and professional characteristics. It also reviews the literature pertaining to the responsibilities and career advancement and future directions in Government departments. The authors adopt a qualitative methodology by which semi-structured interviews are conducted with CIO representatives from a State Government in Australia. From collation of the interview results, utilising a ‘mind mapping’ strategy, the chapter identifies a model that adequately reflects the critical factors required for a public sector CIO. The chapter concludes that there are certain unique characteristics and responsibilities that a public sector CIO must possess yet a private sector CIO does not require. The chapter also acknowledges the importance of outlining a future direction of the role; something which is neglected by the literature.

Capacity Development Initiatives for Grass Roots Communities

The world has seen the unprecedented development of information and communications technologies (ICTs) and adoption of their diversified methods in elevating all forms of human endeavors. Even a few years back, it was fashionable to speak about the global village. In recent years, many countries have taken leading role in implementing innovative ICT products to accelerate their national developments, enhance their livelihoods, strengthened their national economies and improve their governance systems. This has been observed that those countries could reap the most benefits out of ICT strategies, which could penetrate at the lowest tier of their governance system. In this context, human development is an element of importance. This research emphasizes that cumulative human development through community approach would be the next level of knowledge dynamics across the world. It also argues that as much the country provides thrust on capacity development initiatives at the grass roots, it has more opportunity to reach at greater context of governance system. This chapter would like to focus on two cases, which penetrated the grass roots reaching out to the community level, act as catalyst to strengthen their national economy and government. Some features and perspectives of e-Sri Lanka and e-Korea are being discussed here to provide insight into these cases, so that researchers in developing and transitional economies could gain knowledge.