Chapter 24
Managing E-Government
M. Jae Moon and Eric W. Welch
E-government and e-governance are compelling technology-based platforms that have been introduced in government to improve administrative processes, provision of public services, and engagement with citizens. E-government is the application and use of information and communications technologies (ICT) in the public sector for any type of activity, including back-office administrative work and front-office service activities. It is usually associated with one-way transactions with citizens, businesses, and other governments (Norris, 2010). Newer ICT technologies that enable richer and more reliable two-way communication have increased the potential for improved interaction, collaboration, and coordination within government and between government and external stakeholders. E-governance, which is often linked to democratic values and the increasing importance of civil society organizations in service provision, extends the concept of e-government to include the application and use of ICTs to increase citizen participation, improve transparency, and facilitate networked service provision.1
Four characteristics of ICTs offer both promise and challenges for e-government: accessibility, adaptability, durability, and resource intensiveness. ICTs are general-purpose technologies that are broadly accessible such that the use by one person or organization does not reduce its availability to others. Managers can select and develop ICTs to collect, process, transfer, and integrate data and information in ways that conform to managerial practices, public norms, and local contexts. This characteristic allows local adaptation that can improve processes and outcomes while also cutting transaction costs. The durability of ICTs is related to their pervasiveness and embeddedness in systems of government and governance. Durability likely reduces the vulnerability of government systems to political change, a major reason that international organizations (e.g., the United Nations, World Bank) and private information systems companies consider e-government an important instrument for public sector reform across the globe (United Nations, 2010 2012).
ICTs and the application environment within which public managers and employees operate are knowledge and capital intensive. The potential benefits that new database, infrastructure sensor, public safety monitoring, and broadband systems offer also carry high investments in human and capital resources and require substantial operational budgets. New technologies appear on a continuous basis, requiring governments to adequately plan, finance, and carry out new initiatives. Such efforts require substantial managerial and financial capacity, and not all governments are able to or can afford to keep up with the ICT frontier. Moreover, accessibility and adaptability can lead to rapid development, and dissemination of new technologies and applications can be ineffective, inefficient, inappropriate, or dysfunctional. Similarly, the characteristic of durability can create system-level dependencies that resist continuous improvement. Hence, rather than an easy road to e-government and e-governance implementation, these characteristics establish the need for high-quality management that can effectively and efficiently integrate technology into the practices and values of the organization.
This chapter presents key observations and insights related to e-government with the goal of contributing to better management of technology in the public sector. It provides an organized overview of the key theoretical approaches for e-government research, as well as the state of the practice. It explores research and practice on open government, participation, and transparency and ends by identifying critical success factors for effective management of e-government.
Advances in Theories and E-Government Studies
E-government scholars and practitioners have sought to understand and organize the diversity of technologies, initiatives, and commentary about the use of ICTs in government and for governance. This section provides a brief synopsis of the theoretical approaches that scholars have taken and provides an overview of these studies as they have appeared in the literature. It also explores rarely used theoretical approaches that, if applied, could stimulate new contributions.
Theoretical Approaches in E-Government Studies
Theoretical approaches to e-government can be categorized into three relatively distinct dimensions: input, process, and result focused. Input theories are applied when research questions aim to understand whether new technology shapes social outcomes. Process theories examine factors related to the accessibility, dissemination, adaptation, and uptake of technology. The third approach is output oriented. It aims to understand and explain the results, outcomes, and implications of e-government. Examples of theories in each respective category include technological determinism theory and sociotechnical systems theory; adoption, diffusion, and network theories; and mobilization and reinforcement theories. This section summarizes key points of these selected theories that are used in research to understand human, organizational, and social phenomena related to e-government. Table 24.1 summarizes the theories considered within each of the three different approaches.
Table 24.1 Selected Theoretical Perspectives on E-Government
| Focus | Input Theories | Process Theories | Output Theories |
| Key questions in e-government studies | What explains the expression and operationalization of technology in government? How do ICTs matter to the public sector? How do technology, individuals, and institutions interact in the course of e-government development? |
How is e-government adopted and diffused? What are constraining and facilitating factors to e-government adoption and diffusion? What are critical success factors to e-government implementation? |
What are the outputs and impacts of e-government?
How are the benefits distributed? Is there any issue like digital divide and accessibility? What are the prospects of ICT for development? |
| Theories | Technological-determinism theory Social-technical systems theory |
Adoption and diffusion theories Technological acceptance model Unified theory of acceptance and use of technology Social capital theory Network structure |
IT productivity paradox perspective; Mobilization, reinforcement, and normalization perspectives |
Input-Focused Theories
Scholars and opinion leaders have debated how technology interacts with and changes individuals, organizations, and society. Technological determinism (Smith & Marx, 1994) theory captures a wide range of perspectives on how technology affects social change, ranging from strong determinism in which technology is a prime predictor of social outcomes to weak determinism in which technology has only limited influence. At its core, determinism recognizes technology as a fundamental force for structural, cultural, and behavioral change. For public organizations and public management, determinism implies that new innovations, comprising the development, introduction, and use of ICTs, cause changes in the structure and function of government and governance.
Sociotechnical system theory (Kling & Scacchi, 1982; Bostrom & Heinen, 1977; Trist & Bamforth, 1951) considers three elements—technology, task, and social context—and how they interact in ways that establish patterns of use and outcomes. Sociotechnical theory stresses the significance of social properties and their interaction with technological factors in explaining how technology is expressed in a particular setting or for a particular purpose. For public managers, this perspective means that the impact of technology on public organizations is contingent on the work task as well as other organizational and social factors that moderate or mediate technological characteristics. Substantial prior research has been undertaken applying a sociotechnical framework (de Oliveira & Welch, 2013; Luna-Reyes, Zhang, Gil-García, & Cresswell, 2005; Sawyer, Allen, & Lee 2003).
Fountain (2001) proposes a technology enactment framework where objective technology, organizational forms (bureaucracy and network), institutional arrangements (cognitive, cultural, sociostructural, and legal), and enacted technology interact within organizations.
These input theories help both practitioners and scholars understand and predict whether and how the development and deployment of new ICTs change behaviors, structures, and cultures of public organizations and society in general.
Process-Focused Theories
Process-oriented approaches include adoption, diffusion, and social network theories. Traditional adoption and diffusion theories (Rogers, 2003) have been applied in the e-government literature to explain how technologies spread through social systems. The S-shaped diffusion curve is a widely recognized and empirically supported graphic that visualizes the diffusion process. The technological acceptance model (TAM), developed in the information systems literature, provides another widely recognized set of rationales to explain why individuals and organizations adopt ICTs. Rationales usually include the usefulness and ease of use of the technology (Davis, 1989). Scholars have extended TAM into a unified theory of acceptance and use of technology that predicts IT use intentions and subsequent use behavior based on four key theoretical constructs: performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, and facilitating conditions (Venkatesh, Morris, Davis, & Davis, 2003).
Social capital theory and social network analysis provide another approach to understanding the uptake and diffusion of new technologies in government. Social capital theory describes the actual and potential resources that exist within a network of relationships that connect individuals, organizations, or some other entity (Bourdieu, 1985; Coleman, 1988; Lin, 2002). The structure of social relationships can determine knowledge about and access to new technologies and thereby affect adoption and diffusion rates (Monge & Contractor, 2003). Relationships among organizations that facilitate resource sharing and demonstrate high joint capacity may also enable access to and development of technology. Although some e-government research has taken a network approach, most only develop a network framework for e-government or consider networks as a metaphor for understanding process. Few studies have collected or analyzed network data. Numerous network studies investigating electronic communication more broadly (Onnela et al., 2007) and some on information sharing in government (Yang & Maxwell, 2011) could form the basis for more advanced network studies.
In sum, process-based theoretical approaches offer important explanations for understanding the patterns of adoption and diffusion of e-government systems and ICTs across organizations, levels of government, time, and geography. Knowledge about the factors that matter for adoption and diffusion provides important inputs for managers who need to consider integrating technology into government work.
Output-Focused Theories
Output-based theories are used to improve understanding about the characteristics and distribution of e-government impacts. One example, the IT productivity paradox (Brynjolfsson, 1993 1994), suggests that IT spending can be negatively or marginally associated with the productivity of individuals, organizations, and the economy due to either a low level of IT capital or a low level of office productivity. This view is closely related to early skeptical views about the effectiveness of e-government (Moon, 2002) that showed slower-than-expected diffusion and lower-than-expected effectiveness of e-government initiatives.
An increasing amount of evidence shows that IT investment results in positive outcomes for government. For example, Lee and Perry (2002) found that IT investments by state government have a positive impact on gross state product, one measure of productivity. A more recent review of the literature on IT and e-government focusing on how information technologies create value in the public sector (Pang, Lee, & DeLeon, 2014) suggests that information technologies promote stability, predictability, and performance (Williams, 1994); job performance and cost reduction (Norris & Kraemer, 1996); process efficiency and cost reduction (Norris & Moon, 2005); tax revenue increase and administrative change (Norris & Moon, 2005); satisfaction and trust (Welch, Hinnant, & Moon, 2005); and transparency and trust (Kim & Lee, 2012; Lim, Tan, Cyr, Pan, & Xiao, 2012). The review identifies five kinds of IT-enabled capabilities—public service delivery capability, public engagement capability, coproduction capability, resource-building capability, and public sector innovation capacity—that are directly and indirectly related to outputs of public organizations.
There are two contrasting approaches to explaining the distribution of ICTs between advantaged and disadvantaged populations (Kraut et al., 1998; Nie, 2001; Putnam, 2000; Shah, Kwak, & Holbert, 2001; Cummings, Butler, & Kraut, 2002; Foot & Schneider, 2006; Park & Perry, 2008): reinforcement theory and mobilization theory. Reinforcement theory posits that new technology maintains or reinforces the current status by offering more benefits and opportunities to advantaged populations. It argues that new technology enhances the political participation of traditionally underrepresented populations by offering new communication and participation channels (Foot & Schneider, 2006). By contrast, mobilization theory expects that new technology will offer more benefits and opportunities to disadvantaged groups. It asserts that new media do not necessarily contribute to political inclusion but rather reinforce traditional modes of political participation (Cummings, Butler, & Kraut, 2002). While there is no consensus on how new technologies influence behaviors with respect to political participation (Andolina, Jenkins, Zukin, & Keeter, 2003; Michelsen, Zaff, & Hair, 2002; Wellman, Hasse, Witte, & Hampton, 2001), a significant literature demonstrates the persistence of the digital divide (Mossberger, Tolbert, & Franko, 2013). In addition to the mobilization and reinforcement perspective on the impact of the Internet on political participation, Park and Perry (2008) added a skeptical perspective that takes a cautious stance and asserts that the impact of IT on political participation is not necessarily clear and is marginal at best.
State of E-Government Studies in Public Administration
E-government studies have become an increasingly important part of public administration research. Moon, Lee, and Roh (2014) examined articles published in six academic journals in the upblic administration discipline between 1965 and 2010 to determine the size and share of scholarship on information technology and government. They identified several interesting findings that indicate trends in e-government studies in terms of volume, approaches, and research methods. Just less than 2 percent of all articles appearing in public administration journals between 1965 and 1979 were written on topics related to information technology. The number of these articles began to increase when a new initiative for computerization in governments began in the late 1980s (Kraemer & King, 1980 1986; Perry & Kraemer, 1979). Information technology articles increased to about 4 percent between 1980 and 1995. But the total number of IT-related articles increased about threefold from 28 in the first period to 101 in the second because the total number of articles increased by over 60 percent. Prior to the mid-1990s when the Internet began to be widely used, most articles on IT in government were on topics related to managerial efficiency and effectiveness rather than on political and legal dimensions. The number of IT and e-government studies continued to increase between 1996 and 2010 though the proportion decreased slightly due to the emergence of alternative publication outlets (Moon et al., 2014).
It is also worth noting that the research focus of IT and e-government articles gradually shifted from managerial to political. For example, between 1965 and 1995, about 80 percent of these articles focused on IT management topics. Then management-focused publications dropped to 60 percent between 1996 and 2010, while about 35 percent addressed political topics such as responsiveness, responsibility, and accountability during the same period. All articles published between 1996 and 2010 that focused on front-office use of ICTs paid more attention to political topics, while those focused on back-office uses of ICT focused mostly on management dimensions (Moon et al., 2014).
Earlier information technology and e-government studies adopted a nonempirical approach. For example, about 60 percent of IT studies published between 1965 and 1979 were nonempirical, while about a third analyzed data collected from surveys. The relative proportion of empirical to nonempirical studies has continued to rise, such that between 1996 and 2010, well over 75 percent of all studies used either qualitative or quantitative data. Most quantitative papers use survey data, though other methods—experimental design, content analysis, legal analysis—are widely used (Moon et al., 2014).
The ongoing production of empirically based research applying a range of theoretical approaches provides a strong knowledge base for public managers who seek to enhance e-government and e-governance capacities. As the literature continues to expand, further work examining back office technology applications such as the use of social media for internal government work purposes is called for. While the scholarly literature provides a systematic academic approach to understanding effective and efficient integration of technology in government, it should continue to be accessible and relevant to practice.
Advances in E-Government Practice
Technological innovation and dissemination continue to produce rapid change in public organizations. New technologies and technological systems enable faster communication, richer exchange of data, and the mobility and flexibility of service provision. Nevertheless, not all governments recognize the same stage of development due to differences in capacities and needs. This section summarizes the stages of e-government development and examines one of its most recent trajectories: mobile government.
Developmental Stages and Evolution of E-Government
The cumulative results of research by several scholars suggest that e-government usually develops in five stages (figure 24.1): one-way communication, interactive, transaction, integration, and seamlessness (Coursey & Norris, 2008; Hiller & Bélanger, 2001; Layne, 2001; Moon, 2002 2013; United Nations, 2003 2010, 2012). The initial stage describes a relatively underdeveloped environment in which the maturity levels of ICT and government are low. In this stage, basic web presence allows the government to provide public information to citizens and related stakeholders. The interactive stage extends one-way information provision to include e-mail and other types of communication between public administrators and citizens, politicians, nonprofit organizations, businesses, and others. The transaction stage allows citizens and organizations to undertake online financial transactions such as tax or fee payments or service transactions. The integration stage is characterized by combinations and linkages among various e-government systems vertically, across levels of government, and horizontally, across units of government. This stage promotes collaboration and coordination for efficient and effective operation and service delivery. The seamless stage describes an e-government system that is fully integrated and interoperable within a more encompassing information and communication system.
Figure 24.1 Model of E-Government Development
Sources: Modified from Coursey and Norris (2008), Hiller and Bélanger (2001), Layne (2001), Moon (2013), and United Nations (2003).
The stage model is often applied to examine the development and advancement of e-government of a particular government at local (Moon, 2002; Coursey & Norris, 2008), state or province, and national levels (United Nations, 2003). Despite strong e-government rhetoric among local governments, Moon (2002) found that most local governments were in the first two stages or early third stage of development. Not many local governments were fully advanced to the third or higher stages of e-government. Moon (2002) also found that government form, size, and other institutional factors are often associated with its e-government performance. At the national level, the United Nations (2003) found that national income is the most important predictor of e-government performance and that most low-income countries were in the first three stages.2
Many countries in different stages of e-government have been promoting their e-government initiatives and making progress over the past decade or more. The stages of development are evident in different parts of the world and at different levels of government. For example, the Korean government, which ranked first in the 2012 United Nations e-Government Survey, established the Social Welfare Integrated Management Network System to improve the efficiency and quality of social security administration by seamlessly integrating sixteen social welfare service institutions and seventeen other public agencies. This system allows the government to prevent duplicate benefit payments, fraud, and incorrect payments, as well as to effectively manage eligibility and benefit history information by integrating thirty-one kinds of public information, including residency, land, finance, tax, and welfare. Although developing countries are frequently in the early stages of e-government (Dada, 2006; Ndou, 2004), many are making efforts to upgrade their e-government services.
E-government data compiled by the United Nations (2012) suggest that the e-government development index increased substantially (figure 24.2).3 It is encouraging that the index has continued to increase, though there is still variation among different regions of different income levels. For example, European countries improved their e-government development index the most, and African countries improved the least. This suggests that income is still an important factor to the effective implementation of e-government.
Figure 24.2 Advances in Regional E-Government Development, 2003–2012
Source: United Nations (2012, p. 14).The United Nations e-government development index (EGDI) is a composite indicator measuring the willingness and capacity of national administrations to use information and communication technology to deliver public services. 1 is the highest number.
Another approach, shown in table 24.2, demonstrates how e-government has evolved along with the development of web and Internet technologies. The early stage of e-government established basic functions on the Internet, including posting and communicating public information with citizens and businesses, providing public services, and supporting financial transactions using e-government portals. Responding to the surge of web 2.0 technologies (e.g., mash-up, tagging) and social networking (e.g., blogging, YouTube), governments have incorporated interactive and participative technologies as features of e-government, a phenomenon that responds to the growing perceived social demand for openness, transparency, interactivity, participation, and information sharing.
Table 24.2 Evolution of E-Government
| Stage | E-Government 1.0 | E-Government 2.0 | E-Government 3.0 |
| Focus | Government centered | Citizen centered | Individual centered |
| Technology common name | The web | The social web | The semantic web |
| Application | Communication focused Connecting information One-way communication Information sharing Limited public information disclosure Supply oriented |
Interaction focused Connecting people Two-way and multiway communication Expansion of public information disclosure and online public services Application of mobile ICTs Linking public and private sectors |
Service focused Connecting knowledge Immersion Provision of customized public information Customized personal e-government services Simultaneous provision of public information) Smart public service |
| Channel | Wired Internet connection | Wireless Internet connection | Combined wired and wireless connection/smartphone |
| Integration | Task integration | Process integration | Service integration |
| Major technology | Web 1.0 Web technologies |
Web 2.0 Wireless/broadband |
Web 3.0 Social media Cloud computing Crowd sourcing |
Source: The table is modified from tables and information from Lee (2007), Chang and Kannan (2008), and Naik and Shivalingaiah (2008).
E-government 2.0 can be characterized as citizen driven, employee-centric, continuously evolving, transformational, and interactive in its use of IT for government operations and public services (Di Maio, 2009). E-government 2.0 enables front-office (e-service and e-participation) and back-office (e-administration) applications. Front-office applications encourage transparency, participation, public service, and law enforcement, while back-office applications tend to promote regulation, interagency collaboration, and knowledge management (Osimo, 2008).
Approaches to E-Government: Market, Government, and Collaborative
There are at least three approaches for the pursuit of higher attainment of e-government: market driven, government driven, and collaborative. The market-driven approach emphasizes the role of the private sector in planning, designing, developing, and implementing e-government. This is commonly found in countries where the private sector is heavily involved in developing information systems and actively marketing them to governments while governments are somehow reactive and rely on the market mechanism. In the case of the United States, many private information systems companies develop technological solutions and approach governments for sales. In the adoption and diffusion of e-procurement systems among state governments, private actors played primary roles in developing and marketing them (Moon, 2005).
By contrast, government can play a leading role in planning and developing e-government systems in the government-driven model, as found in Korea and Singapore where government was involved in developing an early comprehensive master plan for the establishment of a national information infrastructure and e-government. Singapore and Korea began to seriously discuss computerization and the information society in the 1980s. Singapore introduced a five-year national plan (1980–1985) for an initial computerization initiative, and Korea launched a national computerization initiative in 1987. To implement these long-term national plans, governments tend to prepare strategic plans that lay out a vision, strategies, goals, and road maps for action that consider promotion of ICT infrastructure, use and access, e-government, and the digital divide, among other topics. A cabinet-level government unit such as a ministry of information technology or special committee on e-government often takes responsibility for initiating and implementing e-government projects.
The collaborative partnership model stresses collaborative relationships among governments, private actors, and international actors such as international nongovernmental organizations. This model is widely applied in developing countries where governments undertake e-government initiatives with substantive technical and financial assistance from private or international actors, such as the World Bank, or from donor countries.
Emergence of Mobile Technologies for E-Government
E-government has continued to evolve, and many governments are pursuing mobile government (m-government) by incorporating mobile components into conventional e-government, which typically relies on hardwired desktop personal computers and wired network systems (Moon, 2010). Using wireless communication networks and various mobile devices such as mobile phones, personal digital assistants, and other supporting systems, m-government aims to enhance the quality of e-government and extend the scope of government-government, government-business, and government-citizen interactions beyond limited access to wired digital services. Wireless communication networks allow field-based government officials in health and safety, police, emergency management officers, and others to use, collect, process, and submit information through mobile systems. This eventually improves coordinated communication between street-level bureaucrats and home offices and ensures timely and appropriate action. This can also enable citizens to have access to public information and services via mobile platforms.
M-government has been widely adopted in both developed and developing countries. In fact, it is considered to be an important option for developing countries where traditional wired ICT infrastructure is relatively poor but the penetration of mobile phones is substantial. As shown in figure 24.3, the difference between the mobile phone penetration rates of developing and developed countries has narrowed, although many people in developing countries still have older mobile technologies. According to 2013 estimates released by the International Telecommunication Union (2013a), total mobile phone subscriptions were almost 6.8 billion in a global population of 7.1 billion. While some have multiple phones, this still points to nearly complete global penetration. Mobile phone subscriptions in countries with developing economies almost doubled from 2.7 billion in 2008 to 5.2 billion in 2013; the penetration rates for developing economies is estimated to have reached about 90 percent in 2013 (International Telecommunication Union, 2013b).
Figure 24.3 Mobile Penetration in Developed and Developing Countries
Source: International Telecommunication Union (2013b).The numbers in this chart represent the number of mobile cellular subscriptions per 100 people.
The rapid penetration of mobile phones in developing countries has provided multiple opportunities to use technology to effectively access and use various social, public, and economic systems. For example, mobile technologies have been pursued in various areas, including mobile-based emergency management and law enforcement (Moon, 2010), mobile transportation systems (by collecting and providing information on transportation safety and traffic condition via mobile applications), mobile health care systems (enabling medical professionals to have access to medical information as well as patients to have medical information and services), and mobile-based education systems (enhancing timely and effective communication among students, parents, and schools on academic performance and educational activities). After the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, in the United States, for example, governments actively sought out mobile and security applications for emergency and law enforcement operations, which often require timely and appropriate identification and assessment of high-risk activities through wireless access to critical databases and geographical information systems (Moon, 2010). Various platforms for m-government will continue to evolve for the provision of timely public information and better services to citizens as well as more effective field operations of street-level bureaucrats. In particular, governments will pay closer attention to m-government platforms for crowdsourcing activities and citizen participation as essential parts of e-government.
Moving toward E-Governance for Open, Collaborative, and Integrative Government
E-government has been emphasized as an increasingly significant instrument to promote open, collaborative, and integrative government (see also chapter 25, in this volume).
While researchers and practitioners still use the terms e-government and e-governance interchangeably, some argue that the two terms stress different dimensions. Proponents say that e-government has evolved into e-governance as governments have promoted interaction and communication with citizens and civil societies in policymaking and decision-making processes through e-government systems. While e-government tends to focus on the ICT-enabled provision of public information and services in addition to back-office applications of ICTs, e-governance often stresses e-participation, which supports participative, deliberative, and interactive relationships with citizens and civil societies in order to make governments more inclusive, accountable, and transparent. The interaction with citizens and other nongovernmental actors emphasized is often integrated horizontally with other agencies and vertically with other levels of government. E-governance often places more emphasis on intersectoral interactions that involve governments, nonprofit (professional) organizations, and businesses. Interaction between government and citizens through online civic engagement is another feature of the interactivity inherent in e-governance.
The Obama administration's Open Government Plan also promotes openness and transparency by highlighting the significance of transparency, online public information revisions, citizen participation in policymaking processes, and collaboration with other agencies. In addition, it has conducted an experimental crowdsourcing initiative for public policy problems. On the website Challenge.gov, various departments identify policy problems and ask citizens to offer solutions. For example, the Office for the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology announced the Reporting Patient Safety Events Challenge, which offered $70,000 in cash awards for multidisciplinary solutions for patient safety. This crowdsourcing experiment is designed to invite citizen participation to help solve public policy problems and demonstrates an evolution from traditional approaches where government develops solutions through insourcing with the help of contracted organizations toward outsourcing in which multiple actors provide solicited input. This experiment is not yet considered to be an effective means of solving problems, and it is not clear that the government is becoming more open and transparent. However, the example shows that crowdsourcing is a potential future means of providing citizen access for input into government decision making.
The Korean government has also promoted citizen participation in policymaking processes and policy ideas. The number of policy proposals submitted by citizens and public officials has increased, particularly since about 2005. Policy proposals are often made using an official online proposal website (www.epeople.go.kr). According to the Statistical Yearbook of the Ministry of Public Administration and Security (Ministry of Public Administration and Security, 2011), the number of policy proposals by citizens increased from 316 in 2001 to 154,168 in 2010, and the government has adopted more than 3,209 of those proposals. Nevertheless, the quality of policy proposals varies substantially, and government follow-up on the proposals remains limited. This system is an early incarnation of the crowdsourcing approach. But given this first effort, the Korean government is now in a position to introduce a more sophisticated crowdsourcing approach through a conventional e-government website or social media.
To measure the level of participation and interaction of e-government, the UN Global E-Government Survey 2012 (United Nations, 2012) developed an index based on three subindicators: e-information sharing (facilitating the provision of information to citizens using the Internet), e-consultation (interacting with stakeholders for public affairs using the Internet), and e-decision making (engaging citizens in policymaking processes over the Internet).
These initial efforts are in need of theorizing about what constitutes participation, interaction, and transparency and what relationships they have to each other. For example, the relationship between transparency and participation is not well understood. Transparency is the disclosure of information that enables external actors to monitor and assess its internal workings, decisions, and performance (Grimmelikhuijsen & Welch, 2012). Participation is the engagement and involvement of citizens and stakeholders in government decision making processes (Bickerstaff & Walker, 2001; Roberts, 1997, 2004; Rowe & Frewer, 2000). Research has shown that participation and transparency are separate but linked; participation leads to transparency, but the reverse is not true (Welch, 2012a). Hence, a greater ability to see into the organization does not necessarily result in a greater likelihood that external observers will take part in deliberations and decision making. But once a public agency decides to include external participants, more information disclosure is needed for awareness and effective contribution.
Social media tools, which include social networking applications, microblogging, and wikis, can facilitate stakeholder-government communication, collaboration, and governance. Nevertheless, establishing a social media presence, such as a Facebook page, is an indicator of latent capability rather than an indicator of actual government-stakeholder engagement. In a recent study of local government agencies in the United States, most have a social media presence (88 percent say they use social media), and most use it for dissemination of information (91 percent). However, only half of those use it to get feedback on service quality (45 percent), while equal percentages use it for internal collaboration on work tasks (60 percent) and facilitating participation by external stakeholders (66 percent) (de Oliveira & Welch, 2013; Welch, 2012b). The variability indicates both the malleability of these technologies and the untapped potential for their use, but it also indicates the difficulty of generalizing about the use of these technologies by government. Few studies have examined the use of social media for back-office tasks, and there has not been much work examining citizen perspectives on social media in government.
Recent work by Evans and Campos (2013) recognizes an important disconnect between government collection and provision of data and knowledge about what external constituencies actually want or need. Open data and open government initiatives have increased the impetus for greater transparency, disclosure, and participation, but these expectations are difficult to meet. Given the range of technologies available and the limitations of technology-driven strategies for e-government, researchers and practitioners should address the disconnect through more systematic study of the demand context for e-government and e-governance.
In sum, the conceptual extension of e-government to e-governance embraces open government initiatives and appeals to democratic principles. But the characteristics of ICTs and organizations, combined with limited experience and knowledge, mean that there is a substantial need for improved understanding. At a minimum, the experiences of public managers who have initiated early e-governance measures need to be better collated and communicated such that others can integrate technologies into the practices and values of their organizations.
Critical Success Factors for the Management of E-Government
Is e-government more about “e” or more about “government”? While both “e” in technological aspects and “government” in managerial aspects are equally important, public administration as a discipline tends to pay more attention to the “government” and management side in the study of e-government. In particular, the success of e-government initiatives requires a good quality of managerial capacity of governments from planning through implementation and monitoring.
A number of factors are considered critical to the successful implementation of e-government. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has summarized the critical success factors to e-government. Its checklist has four major dimensions: (1) vision and political will (leadership and commitment and integration), (2) common framework and cooperation (interagency collaboration and financing), (3) customer focus (access, citizen engagement, and privacy), and (4) responsibility (accountability, and monitoring and evaluation). This checklist can be elaborated to offer following critical success factors for effective management of e-government:
- 1. Vision and commitment. Governments and their agencies need to articulate a clear vision that includes a set of long-term goals and principles by which e-government initiatives will be designed. The vision necessarily requires a key proponent or leader who is well regarded, is able to acquire the necessary political and financial commitment, and has sufficient authority to carry out the vision. Principles include the extent to which the government intends to foster innovative approaches, continuous improvement, transparent processes, and external engagement with citizens and stakeholders.
- 2. Needs assessment. Before developing specific plans and mechanisms that define the vision, the government or the agency must investigate its needs as they align with the vision. The assessment should be broad enough to capture front- and back-office contexts, unique services, opportunities to coordinate vertically and horizontally, citizen and stakeholder demands, institutional constraints (e.g., laws, rules, regulations, and norms), and technical and financial capacities.
- 3. Institutional embeddedness. The short-term success and long-term sustainability of any e-government initiative require legal, administrative, financial, and technical certainty. It is therefore necessary for government to establish a legal framework for local e-government and integrate e-government into all relevant administrative, policy, budget, and infrastructure decisions. The legal framework should stipulate specific aspects of e-government development such as major actors, financial resources, and decision guidelines. Financial resources can come from multiple sources: national, local, and private funding. Financing levels should be realistic and should recognize the need for e-government stages to evolve.
- 4. Strategy for implementation. The vision provides the conceptual model for e-government while other types of instruments, such as the road map and strategic plan, provide greater detail about how the vision can be implemented, the steps required, prioritization of effort and resources, and consideration of key values such as privacy, security, transparency, and participation. Governments should develop a formal plan for e-government development that involves key stakeholders so that implementation is encouraged and barriers are minimized. The strategy should make use of the empirical results from the needs assessment. The strategy is not static. Governments and agencies must revisit the strategy frequently to revise, improve, and align it with the ever-changing context of government.
- 5. Synergies and integration. E-government carries with it the promise of increased efficiencies, improved effectiveness, and greater access. However, when agencies and levels of government operate in silos to solve similar problems, the e-government efforts can mimic the duplication, waste, and poor coordination that often plague nonelectronic government. Therefore, a key factor for success is to develop horizontal and vertical mechanisms to communicate opportunities for improving the synergies across levels of government and across agencies. These synergistic mechanisms should be envisioned early, identified in the needs assessment, incentivized in institutions, and specified in the strategic approach.
- 6. Human and capital resources. Actualization of successful of e-government initiatives requires government to recognize the technological context within which it operates. It should seek a comprehensive approach to establishing e-government architecture that considers traditional online service provision as well as new mobile government. In addition, success depends on the existence of quality human resources in government. A purely contract-oriented approach will not provide a sufficient interface for innovating and adapting technology to government's evolving needs. Government should have sufficient internal technical human resources and recognize the need for continued training. Finally, it should provide sufficient compensation for trained technical staff, given their value in the marketplace.
- 7. Management and operations. The success of any e-government enterprise requires a strong focus on management. Governments need to establish who is in charge, the scope of their responsibilities, their level of authority and discretion, structures of accountability, feedback, monitoring and evaluation processes, and reporting priorities and audiences. Governments should also consider the question of innovation and risk management. In a dynamic technical and social environment, governments that interact and receive input from citizens and other stakeholders will have to try new initiatives. Some will succeed, and some will fail. All will use taxpayer funds. Hence, government should consider how it will enable innovation by e-government managers within the context of political accountability.
Summary
There is no easy road to successful e-government and e-governance. Numerous challenges, including the cost of technology and speed of innovation, establish the need for high-quality management and strong institutions that effectively and efficiently integrate technology into the practices and values of the government. The ability of government to meet these challenges relies on several components: an active research community that continues to investigate the use of technology in government, improved e-government training of public managers, and recognition that e-government success depends on high-quality management to navigate a complex and evolving political context. Success relies also on the integration of the technical dimension with well-established management success factors important for any public enterprise: a clear vision and commitment, empirically justified needs, a strategic approach, and sufficient financial and human resources.