Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
In Israel, by far the best-connected and most high tech society in the Middle
East, the government's Merkava Project, which started in 1999, forms the core of a
sustained effort to improve delivery of government services. Government offices
rely heavily on the gov.net intranet. The government's gov.il web portal serves as
an important conduit with its citizens, with a wide variety of online forms and
payment options. Such sites attract 3.2 million visits each month, and are
responsible for 21 % of all government transactions. Such sites are often the object
of attacks by hackers. In contradistinction, Palestinians have begun widespread use
of blogging to shore up attempts to gain national sovereignty (Martin and El-
Toukhy 2012 ).
5.3.8 Sub-Saharan Africa
This part of the world tends to score very low on e-government readiness indices
(Fig. 5.1 ). Numerous African countries have static, one-way web interfaces
between governments and their citizens (Ngulube 2007 ). Others, such as Egypt,
Morocco, and Tunisia, have launched interactive government portals that offer free
e-mail accounts and some electronic bills payments. Yet other countries have
specialized internet services dedicated to specific ends; for example, Zambia
launched Zamlii, a legal information portal, Ethiopia has devinet.org to coordinate
actions of non-governmental organizations, and Mozambique has SISTAFE for the
electronic disbursement of government salaries. East African e-government is still
relatively primitive (Kaaya 2004). Unfortunately, most African e-government
initiatives have ended in partial or total failure, victims of the gap between project
design and political reality (Heeks 2002 ); for example, an internet based municipal
land licensing system in South Africa was thwarted by powerful interests who
appropriated it for their own purposes. Thus, e-government adoption must be
viewed in light of local institutional and administrative contexts rather than a
simplistic ''one-size-fits-all'' strategy (Schuppan 2009 ).
5.3.9 Latin America
Latin American e-governance exhibits numerous manifestations. Brazil, for
example, became the first country in the Americas to introduce electronic voting
(Finquelievich et al. 2004 ). Mexico launched Mexico On-Line in 1996, which
allows electronic submission of tax returns. The Brazilian government launched in
2000 an electronic procurement auction, Electronic Pregão, to expedite bids on
government contracts (Joia and Zamot 2002 ). Some, such as Peru's InfoDes
project in Cajamarca, a World Bank project, allow rural citizens to access local
libraries digitally Wagner et al. ( 2003 ). In 1998, Argentina's Ministry of Com-
munications launched the Argentina@Internet.todos program aimed at enhancing
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