EGovernment

eGovernment (from "electronic government," also known as e-gov, digital government, online government or transformational government) is the application of information and communications technology to enhance the effectiveness of a legislature, judiciary, or administration, either to improve efficiency or to change the relationship between citizen and government, or both. The primary delivery models are Government-to-Consumer (G2C), Government-to-Business (G2B) and government to government (G2G).

While eGovernment is often thought of as "online government" or "Internet-based government"—many non-Internet based "electronic government" technologies can be used, including telephone, fax, PDA), SMS text messaging, MMS, and 3G, GPRS, WiFi, WiMAX and Bluetooth. Other technologies can include CCTV, tracking systems, RFID, biometric identification, road traffic management and regulatory enforcement, identity cards, smart cards and other NFC applications; polling station technology (where non-online e-voting is being considered), TV and radio-based delivery of government services, email, online community facilities, newsgroups and electronic mailing lists, online chat, and instant messaging technologies.

There are many considerations and potential implications of implementing and designing eGovernment, including disintermediation of the government and its citizens, impacts on economic, social, and political factors, and disturbances to the status quo in these areas.

In countries such as the United Kingdom, there is interest in using electronic government to re-engage citizens with the political process. In particular, this has taken the form of experiments with electronic voting, aiming to increase voter turnout by making voting easy. The UK Electoral Commission has undertaken several pilots, though concern has been expressed about the potential for fraud with some electronic voting methods.

Development and implementation issues

The development and implementation of eGovernment involves consideration of its effects including environmental, social, cultural, educational, and consumer issues, among others.

Governments may need to consider the impact by gender, age, language skills, and cultural diversity, as well as the effect on literacy, numeracy, education standards and IT literacy. Economic concerns include the "Digital divide," or the effect of non-use, non-availability or inaccessibility of eGovernment, or of other digital resources, upon the structure of society, and the potential impact on income and economics.

Economic and revenue-related concerns include eGovernment's effect on taxation, debt, Gross Domestic Product (GDP), commerce and trade, corporate governance, and its effect on non-eGovernment business practices, industry and trade, especially Internet Service Providers and Internet infrastructure.

From a technological standpoint, the implementation of eGovernment has effects on e-enablement, interoperability (e.g., e-GIF) and semantic web issues, "legacy technology" (making "pre-eGovernment IT" work together with or be replaced by eGovernment systems), and implications for software choices (between open source and proprietary software, and between programming languages) as well as political blogging especially by legislators.

There are also management issues related to service integration, local eGovernment, and Internet governance including ICANN, IETF and W3C, and financial considerations, such as the cost of implementation / effect on existing budgets, effect on government procurement, and funding.

Legal implications include freedom of information and privacy (e.g. UK Data Protection Act) concerns.

References

External links

eGovernment news websites

eGov monitor — Daily news covering developments in UK and Europe, plus comprehensive weekly newsletter.
Federal Computer Week — FCW eGovernment coverage is comprehensive, US based.
Government Computer News — GCN eGovernment coverage is comprehensive, US based.
UNPAN eGovernment News — news from UN Division for Public Administration on eGovernment worldwide.
Journal of E-Government — Journal of E-Government is a new professional journal.

Official eGovernment sites

Good Practice Framework — eGovernment-Community of the European Union
eGovernment Unit — Part of the United Kingdom Civil Service. See also the UK Government's Chief Information Officer site. ^*
Irish eGovernment: state information search
Local e-Gov — The United Kingdom's ambitions for eGovernment at a local level.
^* — EU eGovernment Observatory / eGovernment News
eGovernment of the Republic of Kazakhstan —
eGovernment Resource Centre — Victorian Government Resource Centre for egovernment initiatives and international research

Research and education

Section for Information Technology and Administrative Systems at the University of Oslo — Research and education (bachelor and master degrees) on eGovernment. Focuses on privacy issues, information security and regulations.

Unofficial eGovernment sites

Action Network BBC's website for discussion and collaboration relating to UK government.
E-Government in Belarus
European LoG-IN project Website of the LoG-IN project (European Interreg IIIB North Sea project) where 32 local governments from 3 European countries work together to improve public sector support services to help them do more for local socio-economic development. To achieve this, the project plans not only to provide innovative ICT tools and strategies to public authorities but also to improve communications between public authorities at local and regional levels – G2G information exchange, and to develop ways of improving government-to-business, or G2B, information exchange.
E-Government in Asia Website of the book "E-Government in Asia: Enabling Public Service Innovation in the 21st Century" (James SL Yong, Marshall Cavendish, 2005). This book reviews E-Government strategies and initiatives in ten different Asian economies: Brunei, China, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand. It describes the successful projects as well as others which faced challenges.

Miscellaneous

Government Computerization in the Open Directory Project
European Commission's IDABC website providing eGovernment news, summarised histories of eGovernment in member states, and further documents and information.
Demosphere Project — The wiki & global project to develop a community based administration framework using open source and interactive software. (Wikinews article)

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