The Use of Internet by Diasporic Communities for Political Mobilization

This chapter analyzes how the Internet enables social and political mobilization of diasporic communities. Two diasporic communities—the Eritreans and the Iranians—form the empirical basis. The Eritrean diasporic community has used the Internet in their fight against Ethiopia and in their efforts to establish Eritrea as an independent country. The Iranian diasporic community used social networking, blogging, and other methods to politically mobilize amongst themselves in the host society and to mobilize their fellow countrymen in their homeland in the recent 2009 elections. The case studies illustrate how the Internet enables political mobilization that transcends time and space. Yet, the success of political mobilization depends on the diaspora’s relationship with the homeland’s government, their ability to create linkages, and their power relations.

Municipal E-Government Services in Emerging Economies

This chapter examines and discusses the approach taken by local governments in developing countries to using the Web as a means of providing e-services. In particular, we focus on the capital cities of Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) countries to discover whether their public administrations are using the Internet to transform how they interact with citizens through the delivery of online public sector services, thus advancing a benchmarking process. An empirical study was carried out of e-government services in these cities, focusing on the content of e-services by applying the CapGemini (2009) methodology, which has been widely used in prior research. Our findings confirm the existence of a wide variety of e-services among the cities examined, with many of these local administrations remaining unaware of the possibility of using Internet to facilitate the delivery of public sector services. Therefore, there is great scope for improvement in the field of e-government. Reforms in public administration are needed in order to make government more participative and open. Likewise, setting effective policies to ensure e-inclusion is the key to the future of LAC’s new empowered societies, with a more visible voice and more chances to express their concerns.

E-Government Implementation in Belgium and its Link with the European Dimension

Information and communication technologies have become the core element of managerial reform, and electronic government (e-government) has played an extremely important part in public governance. With respect to availability of e-services for businesses and citizens, Belgium has considerably improved its position in international benchmarks. Belgium has increasingly focused on reducing administrative burden, developing cross-boundary collaboration, and achieving many important user-related goals. This chapter describes the development of The Federal Public Service for ICT (FEDICT), and its various modules and functions in details. In addition, it discusses how FEDICT helps to reach the goal of a user-centric and cross-boundary e-government in Belgium, and its relationship with other European countries.

Government Information Sharing

Information sharing (IS) is a key capability required for one-stop and networked government, responding to a variety of intra-organizational, inter-organizational, or cross-national needs like sharing service-related information between parties involved in the delivery of seamless services, sharing information on available resources to enable whole-of-government response to emergencies, etc. Despite its importance, the IS capability is not common for governments due to various technical, organizational, cultural, and other barriers which are generally difficult to address by individual agencies. However, developing such capabilities is a challenging task which requires government-wide coordination, explicit policies and strategies, and concrete implementation frameworks. At the same time, reconciling existing theoretical frameworks with the IS practice can be difficult due to the differences in conceptions and abstraction levels. In order to address such difficulties, this chapter proposes a conceptual framework to guide the development of Government Information Sharing (GIS) policies, strategies, and implementations. By integrating theoretical frameworks and the GIS practice, the framework adopts a holistic view on the GIS problem, highlights the main areas for policy intervention, and provides policy makers and government managers with conceptual clarity on the GIS problem.

To Cross or not to Cross the Boundaries?

To explore the reasons why certain services could not be digitally integrated and fully provided online, some focus-group interviews were conducted with key officials of the municipal departments mentioned above. Governmental insiders were able to offer some compelling factors which critically influence the integration of e-services. Surprisingly, some officials raised challenges: Is it merely rhetoric or is it imperative to integrate full services across departmental boundaries under e-governance? Research results and implications for electronic cross-boundary governance will be discussed in this chapter.

Vision 2020

The chapter introduces a novel website model adopted in Vision 2020. An evaluation framework is presented for assessing the extent to which a website facilitates electronic participation via Web 2.0 technologies. Then, the Vision 2020 website is thoroughly examined in terms of the evaluation framework. Recommendations for the design and implementation strategies of government websites aimed to increase e-participation are offered.

Internet Use and Governance in China

As Internet use increases rapidly in China, its governance implications have been debated among researchers. This chapter provides a brief discussion of the complex relationship between Chinese Internet use and Chinese governance regarding the development of the Internet infrastructure, the level and form of Internet use, the “dark” side of the Internet and its control, and the provision of electronic government services. We argue that Internet use in China has been shaped by China’s governance structure, but at the same time it is changing, albeit slowly, that structure.

Institutions of Information Access and Constraint

This chapter examines institutions of information access and the potential for information asymmetry in China and India, both of which have recently adopted access-to-information regulations and legislation, respectively. An examination of these two countries largely is a study of most-different cases. The chapter uses the framework of institutionalism to follow the history of government information policy in both nations and to examine measurements of the political, cultural, and economic environments in which access-to-information legislation is adopted, implemented, enforced, and used by the public.

Thailand Citizen Centric e-Government Service

The current ICT master plan has put more attention on the governance factor since there have been lessons learnt during the first master plan implementation: a lack of properly conducted governance caused most project misconducts and less citizen engagement. Therefore e-governance has been underlined both in terms of front and back-end services. Likewise, challenges toward success for the next phase of e-government are to define clearly the governance elements in both vertical and horizontal dimensions. Most importantly, “citizen centricity” is crucial in all those angles to keep the online activities in high record of citizen community attention. Above all, the e-government development efforts must lead the country toward a smarter and more sustainable condition and environment.

Cross-Boundary Collaboration of E-Governance in Taiwan

To bolster e-government’s chronic promotion of seamless services to all citizens, the Taiwan government will continue to focus on developing from the e-government to e-governance, which reflects the value of citizen-centric innovative service for better governance through information and communication technologies. With efforts over the past score years, the development of e-government has reached a certain limit, general public aspiration of one-stop services and swift services is still invariable. The integration and cross-boundary collaboration become the most momentous countermeasures to fulfill services from e-government to e-governance.