eGovernment for Development
Basic Definitions
Page
Richard
Heeks, IDPM, University of Manchester,
UK, 2004
A.
What is eGovernment?
eGovernment
is the use of information and communication
technologies (ICTs) to improve the activities
of public sector organisations.
Some
definitions restrict e-government to Internet-enabled
applications only, or only to interactions
between government and outside groups.
Here, we do not - all digital ICTs are
included; all public sector activities
are included.
In
our definition, then, governments have
been practising e-government for more
than 50 years: using that first mainframe
in the Statistics Office was "e-government".
We just didn't give it that name 50 years
ago.
B.
What Does eGovernment Cover?
There
are three main domains of e-government,
illustrated in Figure 1 (adapted from: Ntiro,
S. (2000) eGovernment in Eastern Africa,
KPMG, Dar-es-Salaam):
·
Improving
government processes: eAdministration
·
Connecting
citizens: eCitizens and eServices
·
Building
external interactions: eSociety
Respectively,
these particularly address the problems
that government is too costly, too inefficient
and too ineffective (e-admininstration);
too self-serving and too inconvenient
(e-citizens and e-services); and too insular
(e-society).
Figure
1: Focal Domains for eGovernment Initiatives
In
a little more detail, the domains of e-government
are as follows.
B1.
Improving Government Processes: eAdministration
eGovernment
initiatives within this domain deal particularly
with improving the internal workings of
the public sector. They include:
·
Cutting
process costs:
improving the input:output ratio by cutting
financial costs and/or time costs.
·
Managing
process performance:
planning, monitoring and controlling the
performance of process resources (human,
financial and other).
·
Making
strategic connections in government: connecting arms, agencies, levels and data stores of government to strengthen
capacity to investigate, develop and implement
the strategy and policy that guides government
processes.
·
Creating
empowerment: transferring power, authority and
resources for processes from their existing
locus to new locations.
B2.
Connecting Citizens: eCitizens and eServices
Such
initiatives deal particularly with the
relationship between government and citizens:
either as voters/stakeholders from whom
the public sector should derive its legitimacy,
or as customers who consume public services.
These initiatives may well incorporate
the process improvements identified in
section B1. However, they also include
a broader remit:
·
Talking
to citizens: providing citizens with details of
public sector activities. This mainly
relates to certain types of accountability:
making public servants more accountable
for their decisions and actions.
·
Listening
to citizens:
increasing the input of citizens into
public sector decisions and actions.
This could be flagged as either democratisation
or participation.
·
Improving
public services:
improving the services delivered to members
of the public along dimensions such as
quality, convenience and cost.
B3.
Building External Interactions: eSociety
Such
initiatives deal particularly with the
relationship between public agencies and
other institutions - other public agencies,
private sector companies, non-profit and
community organisations. As with
citizen connections, these initiatives
may well incorporate the process improvements
identified in section B1. However,
they also include a broader remit:
·
Working
better with business:
improving the interaction between government
and business. This includes digitising
regulation of, procurement from, and services
to, business to improve quality, convenience
and cost.
·
Developing
communities:
building the social and economic capacities
and capital of local communities.
·
Building
partnerships: creating organisational groupings
to achieve economic and social objectives.
The public sector is almost always one
of the partners, though occasionally it
acts only as a facilitator for others.
C.
How Do I Spell "eGovernment"?
There
are many variations. The forms we
try to stick to here are:
·
CAPITALS:
"eGOVERNMENT"
·
Titles/Start
of Sentences: "eGovernment"
·
lower
case: "e-government"
The "eGovernment for Development Information Exchange" project
is coordinated by the University of Manchester's
Institute for Development Policy and Management.
The project is funded and managed by the
Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation as
part of the UK Department
for International Development's "Building
Digital Opportunities" programme.
© 2004 Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation and University of Manchester
Institute for Development Policy &
Management.
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http://www.e-devexchange.org/eGov/egovdefn.htm March 2004
