Giovanni Navarria

‘A New Technology of Control: E-Government',

2008, chapter in by Vishakha Munshi (ed.) E-Government in Developed Nations: An Insight . ICFAI Press.

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About the book:

E-Government in Developed Nations: An Insight by Vishakha Munshi

ISBN: 978-81-314-1960-1 Pages: 236

Rel.Date: April 2008 Series: IT; Link to ICFAI Press.

In today’s dynamically automated and constantly progressing world, there is cutthroat competition among companies and business houses in the world. This book explores how advanced IT tools can enhance the level of Government services. Electronic Government has the powerful ability to change the Government’s interaction with its citizens and businesses in a new style. The book deals with E-government as an upcoming trend in Government automation processes. The book content concentrates on building an efficient E-government, thus making it more competitive, efficient and productive. The book focuses on implementation of E-government in developed nations. The book, which is spread across three sections, captures the essence of modern Information Technologies such as World Wide Webs, Internet and Mobile Computing to reach out to citizens with its relevance in the internal functioning of the Government. The articles in these sections also throw light on the difference between E-Governance and E-government. The last section concludes by offering future visions for E-government applications around the globe. The book consists of several excellent articles touching upon different aspects in E-government adaptation processes. The articles highlight the need for an effective framework for building efficient E-government applications. It provides a list of developed nations who have successfully implemented E-government. The book observes the conditions that give rise to the efficient implementation of E-government in different developed nations across the globe. This book is an effort to discuss the main aspects of the implementation of E-government in various developed nations in a comprehensive manner for the readers. The book will form an interesting read for academicians, bureaucrats, software professionals, research laboratories, politicians & decision makers and Government organizations and institutions.

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Content of the Book

1. E-Governance in Developed Nations: An Introduction to E-Government
2. A Framework for E-Governance Solutions
3. Comparing E-Government vs. E-Governance
4. A New Technology of Control: E-Government
5. The 2007 Waseda University E-Government Ranking
6. Online Dispute Resolution, E-Government and Overcoming the Digital Divide
7. Democracy, Ideology and Process Re-Engineering: Realising the Benefits of E-Government in Singapore
8. Position Paper for the W3C and WSRI Workshop on eGovernment and the Web
9. Customer Focus in UK e-Government: Or, Putting the Politics Back into e-Government
10. Moving Toward E-Government - Effective Strategies for Increasing Access and Use of the Internet Among Non-Internet Users in the US and UK
11. E-Governance: Effects on Civil Society, Transparency and Democracy
12. E-Government Applications in Future
13. Index

 

 

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Overview

E-Government or Online Government refers to a process, according to which the Government works to improve internal efficiency, and delivery of public services to both internal and external clients. The most anticipated benefits of E-government are transparency, convenience, better access to public services and improved efficiency. Effective implementation of E-Government can make Information Technology available to the common man and help the Government align their services with the changing needs of citizens and stakeholders, which will ultimately lead to the economic development of the whole country. Many developed countries have already made huge investments in I T and have successfully integrated it with the development process, giving their societies multiple benefits. The book focuses on opportunities & challenges faced by developed countries. E-Government is also thought of as “Online Government or Internet-based Government” which uses information technology such as World Wide Web, Internet, and Mobile Computing to reach out to citizens and facilitates the internal functioning of the Government. The book addresses the basic problem that hinders the adoption of E-government practices in developed countries, namely, privacy and security issues. Although with better security software and security policies, it has become more convenient to rely on online systems, lack of awareness retards the growth of E-government. The book is divided into three sections, which provide an introduction about the uses of E-government in developed nations. It also covers some examples of the best practices of E-government in developed nations like Singapore, US, Canada, Japan, Korea, Australia, Finland, Taiwan, UK and Sweden. This book will provide helpful E-government implementation guidelines for developing countries. Different sections in the book will deal with the basic concepts of E-government, and highlight its successful implementation in developed countries like the UK and US. The book has a number of excellent articles, written by well-known authors in this domain. They will focus on the benefits associated with the successful implementation of E-governance in developed countries. It will highlight the existing factors, which are delaying the process of implementation. The book envisions the future of E-government. Incidentally, India is actively participating in E-government implementation by initiating different projects like BHOOMI, eSeva and e-Justice projects. Different State Governments are executing different projects to enhance the quality of their service delivery. These projects primarily implement E-government applications with two basic aims, i.e., to increase transparency and combat corruption. The attributes of these E-government applications can be described as follows: • Computerization of land records (BHOOMIKarnataka), • Computerized check posts on interstate highway (Gujarat), • The online payment of utility bills and the issuing of certificates and licences (eSevaAndhra Pradesh), • Providing expert medical advice in remote hospitals (Telemedicine projectAndhra Pradesh). • Connecting rural cybercafés catering to the daily needs of the masses (Gyandoot, Madhya Pradesh) • Provision of agricultural, medical and education information to villagers by establishing networked ‘facilitation booths’ in the villages (Warana, Maharashtra) • Focus on IT-enabled services & E-governance, which would include medical transcription, call centres, data processing, back office operations and GIS (Himachal Pradesh) • Package for Effective Administration of Registration Laws (PEARL), Kerala • Effectively monitoring information technology in the state (E-governance Centre at Haryana Secretariat). These initiatives have brought about a drastic change in the volume of corruption elimination and the time gap involved in different operations in Government transactions. The State Governments are more concerned about citizens’ active engagement in its procedures. The book is essentially spread across three sections. Section I: Introduction; Section II: Implementation; and Section III: Future Vision. The articles in every section provide a brief description and information about the main concept of the book. Section I: Introduction In this section, there are four articles. These articles provide details about the concept of E-government with its relation to E-governance, framework for E-governance solutions. It helps differentiate between the terms E-governance and E-governments. The first article in this section is titled “E-Governance in Developed Nations: An Introduction to E-Government”. The article is co-authored by Vishakha Munshi and Maithili Hardikar. The article explains the basic concepts of E-governance with the help of examples of successful implementations. It includes examples of some countries who have extensively applied E-government in different spheres. It elaborates that although the terms e-governance and E-government are utilized interchangeably, they define two distinctive governing processes. It mentions how E-governance & E-government are different, but complementary and related to each other. The article also deals with the challenges faced by developed nations, and converses about the ways and methods adopted by them to overcome these issues. The benefits obtained by the successful implementation of E-government are also provided in the article. The article gives information about E-government initiatives in India. It mentions how different organizations and state governments have taken different steps to improve the efficiency in its procedures. It states as to how, this effective implementation has helped in reducing corruption and avoiding delays in the completion of procedures in various Government transactions. It includes details of different projects in India for initiating E-government implementation. Some of them are BHOOMI, eSeva, and e-Justice projects. It ends with the future trends of E-government in developed nations. The second article in this section is titled “A Framework for E-Governance Solutions”. It is authored by P A Mittal, M Kumar, M K Mohania, M Nair, N Batra, P Roy, A Saronwala and L Yagnik. IBM Journal of Research & Development has published this article. The article highlights E-governance through a framework, which aims at effective solutions. This framework provides solutions to commonly used services by citizens, and helps get an insight into how e-governance works for citizen benefit. The framework operates at a higher semantic level, independent of technicalities in terms of the programming environment used. It provides a broader view of workflows and their effective management. The article illustrates how E-government solutions are supposed to perform. The next article is “Comparing E-Government vs. E-Governance ”. It is written by William Sheridan and Thomas B Riley. It has been published by Commonwealth Centre for E-governance, UK. The Commonwealth Centre for E-governance (CCEG) is a think tank operating under the auspices of an E-governance program of the Commonwealth Secretariat in London, UK. This article points out differences between E-governance and e-government. It defines e-government’s approach as institutional, jurisdictional, political and operational, and E-governance’s approach as procedural to cooperative administrative relations. The article states about high public exceptional by this new technology led innovation. It highlights lower costs and higher convenience as major benefits. It mentions transparency as major policy that would be supported by government networks. The last article in this section is “A New Technology of Control: E-Government”, authored by Giovanni Navarria. It explains as to what E-government is. It describes how terrorist attacks like that on 11th September have forced developed nations to conduct technological restyling for crime prevention and control. It highlights the role of technology in some of the major responsibilities of government for instance, to maintain peace and prevent crime. It mentions E-government as a long-term project, which does not require mere financial investment or technology penetration but needs strong political will and commitment. The article describes e-Government as a complex and compelling process in the present scenario, which involves interconnected and overlapping development stages. It also gives a detailed account of major e-government milestones in various developed economies all over world. Section II: Implementation This section talks about the implementation of E-government in developed nations. It covers some good examples without which E-government study will not be complete. The first article “The 2007 Waseda University E-Government Ranking ” presents World E-government ranking for the year 2007. This survey was conducted by Waseda University, Japan, as a sample of 32 countries and a team of researchers from 14 nations. The survey focused on the effective degree of commitment in this process. It talks about the promotion of E-government. It highlights the main trends of e-government in the world as network preparedness, required interface functioning applications, management optimization, homepage situation, Chief Information Officer (CIO). The next article “Online Dispute Resolution, E-Government and Overcoming the Digital Divide” is contributed by Susan Schiavetta. It describes the use of E-government in legal procedures. It explains as to how it is helpful in avoiding delays in the process. It provides a deep insight into the use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) into administration of justice. The next article “Democracy, Ideology and Process Re-Engineering: Realising the Benefits of E-Government in Singapore” is a case study of E-government implementation and benefits in Singapore. This case study is prepared by Kieron O’Hara and David Stevens. It talks about how information processing thrives on transparency and amalgamation of data and how results are beneficial for all citizens. It explains the cultural, social and economic aspect of Singapore and how E-governance is implemented. The last article in this section is “Position Paper for the W3C and WSRI Workshop on eGovernment and the Web”. John Sheridan and Carol Tullo are the authors of this article. It highlights the role of the UK Government in developing a richer and deeper understanding of IT. The article introduces advanced knowledge technologies (ADT), a research project led by the University of Southampton, along with ADT’s relation with public sector information. Section III: Future Vision The first article in this last section is “Customer Focus in UK e-Government: Or, Putting the Politics Back into e-Government”. It is written by James Cornford and Paul Richter. It confers insight into future customer focus in UK e-government. It points out citizen acceptance and services via new channels as important challenges in future. It presents a detailed case analysis of UK with reference to the democratization of e-government. The second article is “Moving Toward E-Government – Effective Strategies for Increasing Access and Use of the Internet Among Non-Internet Users in the US and UK”. Doria Pilling and Heike Boeltzig are the authors of this article. It provides effective strategies for increasing access and use of internet among non-internet users in the UK and US. The article is based on multiple case study researches conducted in the UK and US. The third article “E-Governance: Effects on Civil Society, Transparency and Democracy” is contributed by Olli Mäenpää. It emphasizes on E-governance as a new qualitative mode of governance, giving due weightage to preconditions and constraints. It underlines the relation between e-government and civil society. The last article in this section “E-Government Applications in Future” is a final addition to the book given by Vishakha Munshi and Maithili Hardikar. It incorporates concepts about future models of e-government and their progress. It concludes with future projections of E-governance for developed nations.