Telecentres

Information communications technologies (ICTs) are one of the major areas of research and investment in developing countries because they seem to serve the cause of democratisation and empowering citizens by extending the public sphere. ICTs and especially Internet are regarded as the new public sphere for they seem to lie outside the market and the State, nurtured by civil society serving the cause of good governance and democratisation and empowering grassroots initiatives, giving them access to critical information, organising political actions, influencing public opinion and policy-making. This chapter examines the ‘publicness’ of the telecentres in the framework of public sphere as defined by Habermas. The chapter uses telecentres as representative of ‘technology mediated public space’ created by ICTs and Internet and examines two approaches to the Telecentre movement, analysing whether Telecentres can meet the requirements of the rational-critical discussions and if and what factors influence the extension of the public sphere. The chapter concludes that while the telecentres create opportunities to improve communication and reconnect citizens to the State, offering greater access to information and support for group based discussion, they are likely to support only incremental modifications to the democratic system because the current use of information communication technologies (ICTs) concentrates primarily on information provision, and not linkages that improve the quality of democratic discourse.

Application of Natural Language Processing (NLP) Techniques in E–Governance

E-governance is the public sector’s use of information and communication technologies (ICT) with the aim of improving information and service delivery, encouraging citizen participation in the decision-making process and making government more accountable, transparent, and effective. Effective and efficient e-governments deploy information and communication technology systems to deliver services through multiple channels that are accessible, fast, secure, reliable, seamless, and coherent. To implement better government-to-government (G2G), government-to-business (G2B), government-to-enterprise (G2E) and government-to-citizen (G2C) services a good governance should not only utilize ICT, it has to be also serious about implementing natural language processing (NLP) Techniques to reach up to the masses and make e-governance successful one. This chapter shows the need of applying NLP technologies in the field of e-governance and also tries to focus on the issues, which can be resolved very easily with the help of these modern technologies. It also shows the advantages of applying NLP in e-governance.

E-Government Interoperability

The mobilization of electronic information across government organizations has the potential of modernizing and transforming information exchanges. The current information exchanges are, however, often inefficient and error-prone, causing interoperability problems for electronic government. Based on a literature review, this chapter presents some of the many frameworks for aligned development to improve e-government interoperability.

A Bibliometric Analysis of Electronic Government Research

The main purpose of this chapter is to provide readers an exhaustive list of references focused upon electronic government related issues.The chapter also presents information on a series of variables which were extracted after conducting a bibliometric analysis of 1,037 articles on various aspects of electronic government research, published in 19 peer reviewed journals between 1986 and 2008. Results of this research may have implications for authors/researchers, journal and book editors, reviewers and universities.

Technology Acceptance of Free Wireless Internet Park Initiatives

This chapter examines the adoption of free wireless internet parks (iPark) by Qatari citizens as means of accessing electronic services from public parks. The Qatari government has launched free wireless internet parks concept under their national electronic government (e-government) initiative with a view of providing free internet access for all citizens while enjoying the outdoors. By offering free wireless internet access, the Qatari government hopes to increase accessibility of e-government services and encourage their citizens to actively participate in the global information society with a view of bridging the digital divide. The adoption and diffusion of iPark services will depend on user acceptance and availability of wireless technology. This chapter examines an extended technology acceptance model (TAM) that proposes individual differences and technology complexity to determine perceived usefulness and perceived ease of the iPark initiative by using a survey based study. The chapter provides a discussion on the key findings, research implications, limitations, and future directions for the iPark initiative in Qatar.

E-Governance

The chapter introduces information communication technology and its importance with respect to digital divide. Digital divides is the connotation of three terms global divide, social divide, democratic divide. Further, it discusses the role of United Nations and United Nation’s Millennium Development Goals for bridging digital divide amongst the under develop and developing nations. It also relates e-democracy with citizen empowerment. Some projects related to e-governance in developing society in India, Nepal, and Bangladesh have been discussed. The Library and Information Centres have been given utmost priority to maintain the e-governance projects so that these projects can better be maintained with proper information and become more citizen-centric.

Making ICT more Meaningful for Governance in the Rural Areas

The speed and outreach enabled by information and communication technologies (ICT) have improved mechanisms of delivery of information, services and products to the public. ICT as an enabler of governance, christened as e-governance, is seen as means of attaining good governance. The millennium development goals (MDG) of targeting the poor, listening to the poor and learning from the poor seem to be more within the reach through the use of ICT. However the sustainability of majority of rural ICT interventions has not been very encouraging. The study of literature attributes this negligible success rate to several factors including neglect of traditional indigenous knowledge in the projects designed for rural masses. Authors of this study propose that by defining a proper framework and by use of proper methodologies, community knowledge systems (CKS) of a rural region, when incorporated in an e-governance initiative can assist various actors and processes of governance to attain good governance. Projects based on the proposed CKS based G2C2G framework are expected to be more sustainable and effective for ushering development in the rural areas. However, implementation of such projects would however require synergistic efforts between the government functionaries, aid agencies, non-profit organizations and the rural citizens. The prime hypothesis is that the assimilation, improvisation and dissemination of the traditional community knowledge systems (CKS) using ICT initiatives for rural governance, would help to liberate local ingenuity to catalyse sustainable rural development.

The Success Model of Evolution from Government to E-Governance

As the world is streaming into an electronic world there are still huge communities that don’t understand the evolution government into the era of e-government. Many still do not understand what is meant by e-government and e–governance. At the same time they don’t understand how the actual transmission between the old government and the new e-government framework model works. This chapter develops a model to understand e-governance better and at the same time to help avoid possible problems during the period of transition from traditional government to e-government. Towards introducing the new model, we will also identify a few unique cases of e-government. As the heat of the business to consumer e-commerce (B2C) sector grows, public services are entering the frame whereby government-to-business (G2B) and government-to-citizen (G2C) services are becoming popular at local, regional, national, or even supranational level, albeit at a comparatively slower rate. Further, the concept of the traditional government model is a more conservative entity, slower to change into new initiatives, than operators in the commercial field.

Tracking the Digital Divide

The chapter is based on a study of global municipal Web portals conducted through a collaboration between the E-Governance Institute at Rutgers-Newark, USA, and the Global e-Policy e-Government Institute at Sungkyunkwan University in Seoul, South Korea. The joint study ranked municipalities worldwide based on their scores in five e-governance categories of security and privacy, usability, content, services and citizen participation. Crucial trends in the development of the municipal Web portal indicate a growing digital divide between cities belonging to the OECD and non-OECD nations. This chapter attempts to understand the correlates of this divide, by exploring the association of this digital divide to other divides - social, political, economic and literacy divides among nations, particularly those between OECD and non-OECD nations.

An Explorative Study of Dynamic Influences on ICT-Led Developmental Impact at Community Level

While there is hope that ICT interventions will lead to socio-economic development in developing countries, there is a dearth of research concerning ICT-led impact studies aiming to identify either potential or actual development at the community (individual/family/group) level in rural areas. This chapter presents an exploratory and interpretive study that investigates the human development perspective at the centre of the research. The authors present data gathered from a village in rural Bangladesh where an ICT intervention; namely Gonokendra (multi-purpose community access centre), has been incepted. From a thematic analysis of the data, issues such as access to technology/information; skills building; income opportunity; health/legal awareness; and gender implications, have emerged. This chapter concludes that development at the community level is a dynamic process emerging from the complex social interaction of actors’ (for eg individual, family/group and society) interests. The authors uncover that the interactions are further influenced by other dominant forces, including social constraints over individuals or family interests and decision making.