Global E-Government - Global Geographies of the Internet - page 115

phenomenon varies geographically: Svensson and Leenes ( 2003 :4) note that even in
the rather homogenous context of democracies in Western Europe, different coun-
tries take very different positions with respect to e-voting. Estonia held the world's
first elections that allowed internet voting, including local ones in 2005 and a
national parliamentary one on March 4, 2007, but saw only 30,275 people—3.5 % of
the electorate—participate on-line; in 2009 it extended this process to the local
European Parliament elections there (EurActive 2009 ).
While there is no simple means to guarantee that e-government implementation
will be successful, key ingredients to implementation include decisive leadership,
cooperation by senior bureaucrats, centralized funding and control of e-govern-
ment initiatives, clear lines of responsibility and accountability, explicit metrics of
success or failure, involvement of all stakeholders, and effective mechanisms for
feedback and change (Rose and Grant 2010 ). In short, e-government is every bit as
much an administrative process as a technological one. Such issues demonstrate
that the adoption of e-government is not some linear, teleological process with a
predetermined outcome, but contingent and susceptible to a variety of cultural,
legal, and political forces, including visions, competencies, and strategic agendas,
within different institutional environments. The highly political and contingent
nature of e-government implementation and use imply that its usage will reflect the
nature of different national and institutional environments, that the degree of social
inclusivity or exclusivity it exhibits will change over time and space, and that its
consequences will be geographically variable.
5.2 E-Government and Digital Divides
A central concern about the adoption of e-government is the digital divide, the
social and spatial inequalities in internet access that are common among and
within countries around the world (Cooper and Compaine 2001 ; Crang et al. 2006 ;
Norris 2001 ). Often discussions of e-government emphasize its egalitarian nature,
a view that overlooks how social and spatial inequalities are reinscribed in
cyberspace. For a significant share of the population—typically including the poor,
the elderly, the undereducated, and many ethnic minorities—the digital domain is
a foreign and inaccessible realm. As Fountain ( 2001 , p. 48) notes, ''An increas-
ingly digital government favors those with access to a computer and the Internet
and the skills to use these sophisticated tools competently.'' For countries in which
many people lack the requisite technical skills, the income to acquire a personal
computer at home, jobs that provide reliable internet access, large portions of the
population are excluded from the benefits of e-government. In societies such as the
United States, in which levels of inequality are higher than other OECD states, the
digital divide tends to be markedly worse than in Europe or Japan. In many
developing states, characterized by high income inequalities, it is markedly worse.
The digital divide is a major obstacle to the successful adoption and imple-
mentation of e-government (Yigitcanlar and Baum 2006 ). Offering convenient