icegov2012 proceedings

percentage of online availability of 20 specific public services, the
number has risen from 20% in 2001 to 90% in 2010. [16] Around
the world, according to the 2012 UN report, only three countries
did not have a government website: Central African Republic,
Guinea and Libya.
However, e-government also extends beyond delivery of services
and is key to the broader efficiency and effectiveness of public
sector operations through joined-up governance, as well as to
societal development issues generally and the information society
specifically. “Reliable and relevant e-government measurement
can offer crucial signposts to point policy makers and
practitioners in the right direction,” said the 2010 UN report.
4.1 A Lack of Usage
Despite an increase in online and mobile users, one of the greatest
challenges to more effective e-government is for people to use it.
If nobody uses them, it doesn’t matter how many services are put
online or how good they are.
Currently there is a gap between the availability of government
information, i.e. the supply of services, and the demand for them.
In the EU15, the percentage of people who used the Internet for
interaction with public authorities increased from 26% in 2005,
the first year of measurement, to 35% in 2010; far below the
growth in the availability of online services. [17] Even in South
Korea, the number one country in the 2010 UN survey, only 47%
of constituents use e-government according to a 2010 report,
though 73% of them are aware of it. [18]
In part in order to highlight lack of demand, many benchmarking
reports have added, or enhanced, a measure of usage. The
Economist Intelligence Unit, for example, called its 2009 report
The usage imperative and added three “usage” indicators, scored
by the company’s country analysts, including the use of online
public services by both businesses and citizens for which it looked
at the extent to which they use services such as tax filings and
online procurement. [19]
4.2 Opening up Government
Open government initiatives are meant to enhance transparency,
improve accountability while providing public sector data, such as
budgets, to users in formats that permit data mashing, i.e. finding
new ways to use and correlate data with other factors and in the
process stimulate innovation.
Such initiatives are increasingly common at all levels and across
the world. In the European Union (EU), the 2010 European
eGovernment Action Plan to 2015, for example, looked to
enhance online transparency in order to promote both
accountability and trust in government. [20] In the United States
(U.S) president Barack Obama has promised “an unprecedented
level of openness in government” to increase transparency,
participation and collaboration through portals such as data.gov.
[21]
In Kenya, President Mwai Kibaki announced the Kenya Open
Government Data Portal in 2011, the first of its kind in sub
Saharan Africa. Recognizing the need to make information
publicly available, President Kibaki said he hoped that
constituents will use the government website as a way to hold
government accountable for its use of public resources. [22]
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Open government is being looked at in various ways but perhaps
the most important is transparency in assessment and allowing
users to use the data collected. The World Economic Forum
(WEF), which continues to measure digital progress primarily
through its Networked Readiness Index (NRI) as presented in The
Global Information Technology Report, announced in 2010 a new
data sharing platform to “provide users with a set of tools to
explore the impact of information and data technology on a range
of socio-economic areas.”
4.3 The Need for Trust and Security
An unintended consequence of reliance on e-government,
increased online participation and enhanced transparency is the
greater need for trust and security. If a distributed denial of
service (DDoS) attack shuts down government websites or
malicious software (malware) is installed to steal users identity
when using online services, trust will erode, as will the full
potential of e-government.
This is already a problem: only 12% of European users feel
completely safe in making transactions online, making trust and
security one of seven key initiatives in the Digital Agenda,
Europe’s strategy for a successful digital economy by 2020. [23]
To date, cyber security has been largely neglected in international
benchmarks but this may be changing. The European Commission
has identified trust and security as a priority area.
4.4 Delivering on its Promise
Fundamentally, e-government is about improving public sector
efficiency and performance, potentially saving time, effort and
money for government and constituents alike.
It starts in the (back) office. Government needs to transform itself
and enhance horizontal (across agencies) and vertical (higher or
lower levels of government) integration across a host of issues in
order to meet the demands of the digital era. Constituents should
not need to know what government entity is providing the services
they are looking for but rather they should just be able to go to a
single website, such as a national portal, from which they should
find all services from multiple government agencies on any topic,
hence the national portal concept. Many countries, such as the
U.S. with its usa.gov domain, have established a central
government portal which would supposedly make it a one-stopshop
for constituents to find information online.
But there is also a greater need to better link e-government
evaluation and investment to e-government policy and
development outcomes, i.e. performance. In fact, the 2010 UN
report acknowledges that “Ultimately, the challenge is to assess
impact. A few studies exist about the utility citizens derive from
e-government, mostly relating to the performance of government
in developed countries, but even less is known about the impact of
e-government programmes on national development goals.”
However, efforts to better link investment to outcomes are gaining
traction. In 2009, the European Commission presented the i2010
High Level Group: Benchmarking Digital Europe 2011-2015 a
conceptual framework, which suggested that a measure of ICT
impact be added to the current framework of supply while
acknowledging that “Linking surveys to measure ICT impacts is
one of the main statistical challenges ahead.” [24]