Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
to be rectified in future versions of the index there still remain questions as to how
the index should be interpreted. It is not necessarily the case that an 'absolute value'
of e-government development, which the UN metric provides, is particularly
helpful if one's objective is to understand how well a country performs relative to
its ability to do so; in such cases a metric that takes into account economic and
sociocultural factors would be more appropriate.
With these thoughts in mind, this chapter examines the EGDI, and in particular
its correlation with economic and sociocultural factors. We note that past literature
in e-government has focused primarily on the supply side of e-government, includ-
ing models of e-government evaluation and practices (Reddick
2004
; West
2004
);
effectiveness of implementation and challenges of e-government services (Jaeger
and Thompson
2003
); success factors and implementation of E-government
initiatives (Jaeger
2003
; Traunm¨ ller and Wimmer
2003
). Very little attention
has been paid to demand aspects of e-government. This chapter avoids this weak-
ness by looking at both supply and demand sides. First, the following section
examines macroeconomic issues that affect a country's ability to effectively deploy
e-government services in the first place. Second, the chapter will examine some of
the sociocultural factors that influence the population's willingness to use those
services, and thus examines the demand side. Finally, the chapter concludes with
some recommendations for practice and research.
7.1.1 The United Nations E-Government Development Index
The EGDI is calculated from data collected in the UN E-Government Survey. The
most recent version of this EGDI was published in 2012 and is described in the UN
documentation as “measuring the willingness and capacity of national
administrations to use information and communication technology to deliver public
services”. The overall metric is based on three individual components. First, the
Online Service Index measures the maturity of a country's e-government websites,
such as their national website and related portals, and related websites from
ministries such as education, labour, social services, health, finance and environ-
ment. Second, the Telecommunication Infrastructure Index derives a score for
a country's telecommunications infrastructure based on five indicators: the propor-
tion of Internet users, fixed telephone lines, mobile subscribers, fixed Internet
subscriptions, and fixed broadband facilities. Finally, the Human Capital Index is
calculated based on measures of a country's adult literacy and education enrolments.
Thus, the EGDI purports to take into account not only the maturity of
e-government services in individual countries, but the capacity of those countries
to deliver e-government services both in terms of the telecommunications infra-
structure and the skills of the population to provide and exploit them.
Although the EGDI is statistically flawed, a more statistically valid ranking
technique has not been widely adopted. Although other ranking methods have
been proposed, the EGDI is the current standard ranking technique and - for better
