icegov2012 proceedings

3. REGIONAL DRIVERS OF THE E-
GOVERNMENT AGENDA
This section pinpoints the common efforts to develop e-
Government from a regional perspective, notably coming from
international, intergovernmental, or transnational organizations
devoted to formulate, design, fund, and implement projects,
initiatives, or regulations in this field. In doing so, we look at the
priorities, areas, and the type of projects enhanced by these
regional actors and organizations during the last years. This
analysis facilitates the understanding of how the e-Government
development within a region with very different administrative
realities has tended to share some common policy frames. In this
endeavor, some institutions like the CEPAL (United Nations
Economic Commission for Latin America), CLAD (Latin
American Center for Developing Administration), IDB (Inter-
American Development Bank), OAS (Organization of American
States), among others, have played a prominent role in fulfilling
regional approaches to build up e-Government.
One of the first regional definitions of e-Government derived
from the Ibero-American Chart for Electronic Government (Carta
Iberoamericana de Gobierno Electrónico) (ICEG) [3]. The
definition of e-Government refers to the ‘use of ICTs in public
administration to enhance the information and services offered to
the citizens, to support public management efficacy and efficiency,
and to improve the transparency of public sector and the
participation of the citizens’ [3:7]. This is important while
different country definitions and approaches to e-Government
have been rooted in similar principles. Other recent efforts have
emerged from the CLAD group of countries, i.e., the Ibero-
American Interoperability Framework, the Ibero-American Model
of Pubic Software for e-Government, or the Ibero-American
Framework for Social Electronic Identification. Undoubtedly,
these official documents have been cited and used in national
strategies and blueprints, and they still provide shared guidelines
fostering e-Government in the region.
Other sources of regional influence and vision for the
development of e-Government in LatAm have derived from the
eLAC strategies. eLAC is a regional strategy for the development
of Information Society (IS) from a harmonized perspective, with
the support of CEPAL, using ICTs as instruments for economic
development and social inclusion. Initially, it was endorsed in
2005 in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) as a long-term vision (until 2015)
with short terms milestones (eLac 2007 and eLac 2010), in line
with the Millenimum Development goals and those of the IS
World Summit, which adopted concrete qualitative and
quantitative goals to be achieved, also in the field of e-
Government [1]. In general, the e-Government section of eLAC
2015 fosters the diffusion of governmental agencies on the web
and the sophistication of electronic services on-line [2]. This set
of goals gives a sense of common ideas, values, and priorities
within the diversity of the region. Another key aspect is the eLAC
2015 focus on integration, interoperability, common standards,
and collaborative work in the region.
An archetype instrument derived from eLAC 2015 is the creation
of the Network of e-Government Leaders of Latin America and
the Caribbean (REDGEALC). REDGEALC has promoted the
collaboration of LatAm governments from a technical point of
view. This network of national experts acts as a forum to boost e-
Government in the region, but also as an institutional mechanism
to enforce, even informally, the policy transfer process in the
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field. REDGEALC actions, meetings, and projects are funded by
international organizations like the IDB or OAS, and it is intended
to deepen the technical collaboration among the units devoted to
manage national e-Government policies and strategies within the
countries of the region. At the same, REDGEALC has expanded a
network of key players, less political and more administrative,
putting together a pool of middle-level managers involved in
fostering e-Government in the region. One of the most remarkable
projects of REDGEALC is eGobex, a common tool for sharing e-
Government knowledge and applications at national, regional, and
local layers (see: http://www.egobex.net/home/en/). This platform
of solutions is based on different topics, among others, electronic
citizen services, document management, e-justice, m-government,
human resources management, e-procurement, or e-health.
eGobex also facilitates other tools by facilitating the exchange of
experiences among the public administrations of the region,
providing a pool of experts in different aspects of e-Government,
or offering virtual training for practitioners. Also, news and
comments about developments of e-Government in the LatAm
region are also provided by this shared digital platform.
In sum, eLAC 2015 guidelines, REDGEALC network, as well as
CEPAL, and other abovementioned international and
intergovernmental institutions (CLAD, OAS, etc.), and the
instruments behind them, play the role of framing this policy field,
targeting the type of e-Government actions that need to be
enhanced, adopted, funded, and implemented by national public
administrations of the region. This group of instruments operates
as policy carriers, or policy transfer instruments. In some cases
they proceed as coercive mechanisms, while they can impose
views about what type of projects will be funded. In other cases,
they frame with ideas and rationales behind the strategies to foster
e-Government nationally. Whatever the case, it is clear that this
process has been, and it is, promoted within the LatAm region.
4. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION
This paper has explored the most salient aspects of the e-
Government policy transfer process within the countries of
LatAm. The question motivating this study is whether or not Latin
American countries are building their national e-Government
policies with a regional perspective. The preliminary assumption
of this paper is that some international, intergovernmental, and
transnational organizations are shaping, at least in some extent,
the ideas, priorities, and initiatives implemented by the
governments of this region of the World. The analysis of previous
sections suggests the verification of this hypothesis.
Consequently, one may support the idea that e-Government in
LatAm may exemplify a policy transfer process.
Overall, one may say that e-Government policy ideas and frames
in LatAm countries derive from the abovementioned international,
inter-governmental, and transnational organizations. These actors
have played a growing role within an emergent policy field (e-
Government), in which a number of developing countries have put
their expectations to modernize their public sectors. What is more,
in developing countries e-Government projects are funded by
these organizations. This facilitates defining priorities, objectives,
and even in some cases, applications, platforms, and vendors
involved in the design, and implementation processes at national
level. Nonetheless, further investigation will be needed in the
future to identify in detail how the regional diffusion of ideas is
implemented in specific countries, and to what extent