|
There is little disagreement with the doctrine that we live in extremely changing and innovative societies. Nowadays, information technology is getting more and more accessible, complex and secure, changing the well-established traditions of modern societies. In many democratic states, electronic-government represents an answer to the request of reducing the cost of the decisional process. However, the new administration requires not only an innovative solution, but “intelligent citizens” to make use of it. Recent studies show that e-government has developed five stages, each of them reflecting the degree of technical sophistication and of interaction with the users: simple information dissemination (one-way communication), two-way communication, service and financial transactions, integration (horizontal and vertical), and political participation. Starting from this model, the present research evaluates the stage of urban e-government within Romania, and identifies its influencing variables. All existing sites of urban local administration – 165 cities - are analyzed through the perspective of both digital government (public services through internet) and digital democracy (citizens' participation to the governing process through internet). The assessing of the cities' websites includes five dimensions: security and personal data protection, usability, contents, type of provided services, and digital democracy. Despite the fact that literature regarding e-government is continuously developing, the number of empirical researches worldwide is a relatively small one. The evaluation of Romanian local e-government is a national premiere and enlists Romania among those where a comprehensive evaluation has been made. Taking into consideration all five dimensions, we are entitled to affirm that Romanian urban e-government is at the first stage, the one of disseminating information, while characteristics from the other four stages are either missing or poorly represented.
Keywords:
Romanian e-government, digital services, digital democracy, information technology
Download FULL PAPER
Back to Contents
|
