This edition of EJEG contains seven articles covering a variety of aspects of e‑government. The papers are quite diverse, although two of them deal with e‑government in African countries.
Parker, Downie and Manville’s article discusses the development of a community e‑portal constellation. I have to admit that the use of the word “constellation” in this context was new to me and may be new to many readers. A constellation is a form of collaborative network and Parker et al explore a novel method of creating public value via such networks. The findings they report are part of a longitudinal study which started back in 2005. Amongst the many findings is that the range of experiences being built up have not yet coalesced into an accepted body of knowledge. This is something that from which wider e‑government may also suffer.
We receive a large number of submissions from Africa into the journal office and Bwalya et al’s is one of two in this issue looking at e‑government in African states, in this case Zambia. Their article looks at the practical problems faced by three towns and suggests that in these towns at least there is an interest in and willingness to use e‑government when it is eventually rolled out. There is also considerable optimism about the potential beneficial impact of e‑government, particularly in reducing bureaucracy and corruption (the reduction of corruption by using technology being a topic which is attracting an increasing amount of attention in the developing world). Studies like this offer an opportunity to examine e‑government at an early, even pre‑rollout, stage and, if the researchers can do it, revisit the same community later and compare before and after expectations and experiences.
Nabafu and Maiga look at local e‑government in another part of Africa somewhat further north, Uganda, using another lens, in this case examining the preconditions that are likely to lead to the success of local e‑government in that country. Like Bwalya et al, they studied the anticipated benefits of e‑government in this case, e‑government websites. The main benefits perceived are in communication, though respondents to their survey express little confidence that it is having any impact on corruption. Uganda faces many challenges to website implementation and take‑up ranging from the inevitable shortage of funds to high illiteracy rates. Taken as a pair, and together with a number of other articles in the journal in recent years, these two articles contribute to our understanding of the state of e‑government in sub‑Saharan Africa. It would be good to have papers from other sub‑Saharan African countries which might help build up a knowledge based for e‑government in that part of the world.
On a rather different note and in a different part of the world, Wen et al report on a study into the use of data mining to identify smuggling by fishing vessels in Taiwan. This is a fascinating study of how criminals operate and how technology can be used to increase the authorities’ effectiveness in indentifying vessels which are likely to be carrying contraband goods. The technology used is artificial neural networks or ANNs and the study compares this tool to traditional linear regression and old fashioned human inspection. The paper is presented in non technical terms and is quite accessible to the ordinary reader. For any academics involved in teaching data mining or analytics, it might make a useful and engaging case study. The results are impressive with a seven fold improvement in what is delightfully called the “seizing performance” of the customs authorities. There is a wealth of interesting detail in the article which I will not try to summarise; it is best to read it for yourself.
The fashion for tagging on numbers (usually with one digit to the right of the decimal point) seems to be a particular feature of e‑government. e‑Government has had versions 1.0, 1.5, 2.0, 2.5 and 3.0. I have not seen any higher bids than this yet, but e‑government 4.0 cannot be far away. Government, on the other hand, has been largely immune to anterior digitisation, however in their article Meijer et al propose the concept of Government 2.0. Government 2.0 is about, as the abstract says, reinforcing the relationship between state and citizens in an information age. The authors suggest that there is no easy route to this and discuss three challenges that need to be addressed: transformational leadership, getting citizens interested, and developing mutual trust. En route a variety of other questions and issues are discussed including identity and the decline in communication effectiveness (a subject that merits more attention than it currently gets). Amongst the more interesting suggestions is that government should consider more ‘playful’ interactions with citizens in order to both engage them and build trust. There are many other creative ideas in the paper which are well worth thinking about.
Returning to the theme of e‑government development countries, Nurdin, Stockdale and Scheepers examine the problem of IT implementation failures in such countries. Government IT failures are not by any means exclusive to developing countries of course, but, having identified a whole list of contributory factors, the authors focus in on organizational adaptation as the basis for IT sustainability. This is a meta study of two other studies, Kumar and Best’s study or the Sustainable Access in Rural India (SARI) project and Hwang & Syamsuddin’s study of local government in the Indonesia city of Makassar. From this comparison the authors build a framework for organisational change and change management including structures, culture, vision, training and skill, process change and employee involvement. The propose a model for organizational adaption which is a modified version of a model originally developed by Cooper and Zmud and put forward several ideas for further research into what is a critical subject in any circumstances, but particular where resources are scarce and precious.
Gustav Lidén’s article is examines the state of e‑democracy in Sweden by comparing and contrasting three municipalities in that country each of which is at a different stage of e‑democratic development. He does so through the lens of social sustainability. In Ockelbo, the municipality which exhibits the lowest use of e‑democracy, possible reasons include the closeness of politicians to the community they serve. The municipality of Älvkarleby is an example of mid level e‑democracy where there is a higher consciousness of the inequality of access though there is some unevenness in attitudes. The most developed use of e‑democracy is to be found in the third case, Ovanåker which has a more ‘mature’ understanding of the nature of political participation. Comparing the three cases, Lidén argues that there are clear differences in the awareness of social sustainability and based on this argues for the inclusion of social sustainability as a feature of effective e‑democracy.
Frank Bannister
October 2012
