icegov2012 proceedings

Hypothesis Variables
Endogenous Exogenous
H3 Social Development Sustainable
Economic Development
Environmental
Sustainability
Development
(MDG_Ready)
The model considered H3 as an important contributor to assess
successful E-Governance services adoption for achieving MDGs.
Figure 5. The Observed Model (Path Diagram using LISREL 8.8)
It is posited that sustainable development needs to be pursued
notwithstanding the adoption of MDGs listed in national agenda.
Sustainable development is argued to have three major
dimensions and rural India needs careful interventions to achieve
them. In this research work, hypothesis H3 therefore, considers it
important to include empowerment of citizens through economic,
social and environmental dimensions.
Table 9: Testing of Hypotheses proposed through the Model
Hypothesis Path
Coefficient
T-
Statistics*
Remarks
H21 0.35 16.27 Path coefficient is positive
and t-statistics is
0.35 16.37
significant, Hypothesis
H21 is validated
H22 0.22 9.02 Path coefficient is positive
and t-statistics is
0.24 10.34 significant, Hypothesis
H22 is validated
0.31 11.94
0.25 10.25
H23 0.13 2.62 Path coefficient is positive
and t-statistics is
0.19 2.83 significant, Hypothesis
H23 is validated
H3 0.92 0.38 Path coefficient is positive
-0.25 0.22
except in the case of
Environment where the
0.36 1.61
coefficient is negative and
t-statistics is significant,
0.48 13.91 Hypothesis H3 is not
validated
0.46 19.06
361
Hypothesis Path
* p < 0.05
Coefficient
T-
Statistics*
0.48 20.82
Remarks
It may be noted here that H3 has been negatively influenced by
the environmental factors. It means that e-readiness is not
encouraging in the areas of environmental empowerment in the
levels of households, communities and government agencies.
Other hypotheses in Tier-II have shown positive contributors for
attaining overall sustainable development. The overall model
fitness exercise has generated following structural equation:
MDG_Ready = 0.36*ErSoc -0.25*ErEnv+0.92*ErEco,
Errorvariance = 0.033, R² = 0.97 ----------------------------(1)
This equation (1) explains the relationship between Dependent
Exogenous Variable “MDG_Ready” (Overall e-Readiness of
MDG) and the Endogenous Variables “ErSoc”(contributions of
e-Readiness to Social empowerment), “ErEco”(contributions of
e-Readiness to Economic empowerment) and
“ErEnv”(contributions of e-Readiness to support Environmental
empowerment). This structural equation with R 2 of 0.97 has
indicated a “good fit” [16],[34] and with less error variance of
0.033. It implies that MDG readiness with E-Governance as a
component is influenced by the E-Governance services aimed at
social, economic and environmental issues. It is important to note
that the structural equation showed a negative contributions of E-
Governance services for ensuring environmental sustainability.
This denotes that there is enough scope for policy makers to
prioritize E-Governance efforts in this direction. As regards
contributions of E-Governance services in other two dimensions
of sustainable development, most of the contributions are towards
economic empowerment (0.92) followed by social empowerment
(0.36).
Further analysis on overall readiness of MDG driven sustainable
development “MDG_Ready” indicates that respondents have
indicated almost equal concerns for e-Readiness across all the
three sustainable development dimensions (Economic 0.48, Social
0.46 and environmnet0.48). This implies there is scope for
establishing ever increasing role of E-Governance services in
attaining MDGs for sustainable development.
4. CONCLUSION AND FURTHER
RESEARCH
MDGs are expected to achieve its targets with active
collaborations of the citizens, government agencies and other
stakeholders. E-Governance services are aimed at providing the
basis of networking among stakeholders, and providing desired
information and services to the citizens. This scenario, particularly
in the rural environment and in developing countries, is a
necessity in which E-Governance services are made available with
optimized cost, time, and latency. In this research, it is posited and
proved that collaborative efforts are possible through ICT enabled
E-Governance services. It is also shown that E-Readiness needs to
be assessed at the local level to achieve MDGs in a nation like
India. Besides, MDGs need to extend its purviews to support
sustainable development and thus overall effort is to be made to
empower local level entities including citizens to contribute to this
cause.