Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
and Qatar
4
all cite the EGDI as flattering evidence of the state of e-government in
those countries, yet when GDP is taken into account they fared worse than implied
by their websites, and in some cases much worse.
Clearly, although in many cases the raw UN rankings may give a misleading
indication of a country's performance in e-government development, these
rankings are a staple of discussion in official, academic and public discourse.
This creates a risk that the wrong exemplars will be put forward in policy and
related debates. Given the clear correlation with a nation's level of wealth and its
level of e-government development, there is no reason that a more accurate ranking
that takes this into account cannot and should not be devised given the simplicity of
doing so.
This section has incorporated GDP into EGDI to better assess countries'
E-government Development Performance, resulting in a metric termed EGDGDP.
However, in addition to economic factors, sociocultural factors are also an impor-
tant aspect that must be considered when considering a country's e-government
development. In the following section these sociocultural factors will be explored in
more detail.
7.3 Sociocultural Factors
Over the past two decades or so many countries around the world started to utilize
the power of ICT to deliver public services. Despite the obvious benefits of online
services; the uptake of these services is still limited in many countries (Van Deursen
et al.
2006
; Kunstelj
2007
; Bertot and Jaeger
2006
; Ebbers et al.
2008
). Further, user
participation in online services is a key success factor in enabling e-government to
reach its full potential (Moon and Norris
2005
; Jaeger
2003
).
The limited e-government user uptake has been attributed to two main factors.
First, e-government activities have been predominantly driven by supply side
factors (Bertot and Jaeger
2006
; Kunstelj et al.
2007
; Reddick
2005
; Schedler and
Summermatter
2007
; Gareis et al.
2004
; Ebbers et al.
2008
). Many governments'
decision to offer e-services was predominantly influenced by supply side factors
such as cost and time cutting (Anthopoulos Siozos and Tsoukalas
2007
). During the
early e-government initiatives it seems that a number of governments decided to
deliver their traditional offline services online. ICT was mainly used to automate
existing services following the same existing business process (Asgarkhani
2005
)
rather than using ICT to radically redesign their services. Governments failed to use
the power of ICT to invent new possibilities.
Second, e-government initiatives are technology driven rather than needs driven
(Bertot and Jaeger
2008
). Governments are motivated by what new technology can
