How Does the E-government Development Benefit Itself and Society - Essay Example

How Does the E-government development benefit itself and society? Name Unit Date Introduction Electronic government (e-Govt) started in the late 1990’s. Since then, the evolvement of IT has led to led to more use of the e-government platforms globally. E-government was a product of internet boom and was enacted as a practitioner field in a bid to achieve their needs on the internet by carrying out new systems in a creative way. Many governments have invested a lot in enhancing the ICT capabilities in the government to enhance e-government. E-commerce has been a reinvention of the government through technology. Governments have put a lot of initiatives to ensure that their departments and other agencies utilize the platform for good governance and also make the process more accountable. The use of the e-government has been in most cases used to imply a form of customer dedicated, efficient and transparent government. E-government has been credited with improving the democracy process and enhancing service delivery to the public. There has been a common belief among the experts that e-government has the capability to change the public sectors and the political environment worldwide. Despite these views, diverse views exist on the outcomes of implementation of e-government (West, 2004). This essay will establish how e-government development benefits the society and itself. Both good governance and e government have common objectives. Though the two have different focus they share very important goals. These objectives are efficiency, quality service delivery and upholding democracy. The main advantage of the e-governance is the ability to help in understanding the integral reforms. E-governance has acted as a tool to enhance good governance. This is through sharing the knowledge and experiences based on the best practices that are collected throughout the world. E-government also promotes practices of good public policy and administration. In promotion of good governance, e-government offers a dualistic approach. This approach lies on the fact that it focuses on the state and the reforms in administration. E-government increases the efficiency in the public administration, improvements on the service delivery and transparency on the political procedures (Claudio, 2005). Use of e-government helps in improving the efficiency of the public sector. This helps the society by making sure that the taxpayers get the real value for their money. To achieve high efficiency, there are two main methods used. One is through making the labor productivity high through administrative processes automation. The process involves simplification of the administrative processes which reduces the number of employees and increases the output. The other method involves cutting the costs of expenditure through lowering the costs that are used in public procurement. This method relies on being more informed on the prices and products’ promotion on the market. Having a transparent procurement enables the use of e-government to lower the expenditure for the taxpayers good (Christian, 2004). The use of information technology in the government helps a lot in making the procedures simple in government institutions. Different administrative entities are put together through the use of information technology. Using e-government, it becomes easier to enable the information to flow bypassing the normal bureaucracies that lead to poor flow. Different public department are connected together through e-government leading to excellent flow of information and cooperation. This requires the government to invest in the required infrastructure in all the departments. For example, the registration of persons is made more users friendly if it is done online. There is a need for the government to invest in the maintaining the systems to avoid breakdowns (Akesson, Skalen & Edvardsson, 2008). Reduction of costs in procurement through government is effected through e-procurement. This reform has been adopted worldwide by different governments. This has enabled transparency and competition in the market. Governments that have utilized e-procurement have been able to save a lot of the taxpayers’ revenue (Ciborra, 2005). Use of e-government has enabled the public institution in improving their service delivery. Use of allocative efficiency has the capability of informing whether the services have matched the needs for the consumers. Irrespective of the amount of the expenditure that has been used to deliver the services to the public, the efficiency that has been gained by the public determines the allocative efficiency. For example, for a business to obtain permit from the government using the traditional means, it can take a long time and expenditure. If the same procedure is carried out using e-government platform, it can take a short time and be delivered more efficiently. This is due to the aspect of time, accessibility and cost. Using e-government, the public actors are supported in three different ways. These are gathering information, ease of interacting with the private sector and transaction organization (Claudio, 2005). The information gathered by the actors forms a very important part in decision making. Using e-government, it becomes possible to gather data from different areas such as internet and departments. E-government has the capability to utilize a software in analyzing data. This helps in generating knowledge from a big data source. Though a great advantage, the utilization of data have to be done based on the public perspective. This is due to issues related to the privacy concerns (Fang, 2012). Ease of provision of information is another aspect of information technology. This helps in improving the government public relation through ease of accessing the information. The government creates several websites through which the public can gain access to important information. These sites have the capability to allow the users to connect with other organizations and services (Fang, 2012). E-government has the capability to offer the government eases of transacting with department on administrative processes. There should be cooperation between the different departments for transaction to be effective. Through use of e-government, the transaction becomes more integrated and efficient which helps in creating a good public relation (Lee,Tan &Trimi, 2005). Use of ICT in e-government helps in openness and transparency. This is due to frequent information flow between the government and the public. This helps also the government in having an improved mode of governance. The state of open and transparent government leads also to the civil societies being able to uphold the public interests and hold the responsible public agents. The performance of the government is enhanced through openness and accountability (Atkinson, 2003). Using e-government, it becomes possible to reorganize the government administration, communications and flow of information with an aim of enhancing the government capacity. The use of internet enables different government departments to share their databases. This becomes handy when handling common customers. The shared database helps also in pooling information and skills which in turn increases the capacity. The integrated databases help the government in saving costs and also handling more clients (Atkinson, 2003). The use of e-government leads to community building through network creation. This is due to the creation of interrelationship among the employees, public, government and its agencies. This is through putting together the skills and knowledge that is collected from different government agencies. There is partnership between different agencies in the government which encourage partnership. E-government depends on integrated services. This means that there is required cooperation between different government departments. This is in most cases done through vertical and horizontal integration. The result is a complex network made of relationships. This has the capability to allow the public to take part in dialogues with government and among themselves (Warkentin, Gefen, Pavlou & Rose, 2002). As governments implements the e-government platforms, the results are in most cases advantage to the citizens. The system enables the politicians to have a closer contact with their constituents. This helps in making sure that the citizens are involved in policy making. The public can give their opinions more easily than in the past through the e-government website. This is achieved easily if the e-government platform is easy to use and assessable to the public. Initially, the government departments utilized separate websites without linking to each other. This led to confusion and a lot of websites in the government. The public could not visit these sites due to complexity (West, 2004). The implementation of e-government have removed the mass of websites and integrated them into one. This has changed the public perception and the e-government websites have a high accessibility. To find the information about a country is easier through the use of e-government (Zhao, 2011). There has been a common view among governments and commentators that e-government is directly related to democracy. This is due to a great participation of the public in implementing the development agenda. Though e-government and e-democracy are two different entities, they are intertwined due to several factors. These factors are accountability and transparency that they advocate (Grant & Chau, 2005). Despite the numerous benefits that e-governance poses for the public and itself, e-readiness is a major challenge. This is the readiness of the country to adopt information technology through e-government. It also refers to the county’s infrastructure in relation to information technology. To successfully adopt the e government, the country is supposed to have the necessary IT infrastructure in place as well as skills. Lacks of the right ICT infrastructure have been cited as the main challenge facing implementation of e-government. These have led to developing countries being unable to enjoy e-governance (De, 2004). Digital divide have been wide between the developed and developing worlds. There are also policy issues before implementing e-governance. The e-governance platform requires the government to look at all the set rules before establishing it. This involves looking at the data protection, cyber crime, properly rights and signatures. This involves taking part in signing a digital an agreement (Weiss, 2000). In conclusion, the implementation of e-governance by the governments has led to numerous benefits to people and the government. E-governance has helped in good governance through efficiency, upholding democracy and quality service delivery. Through efficiency, the government has reduced their expenditure through reduced costs in procurement and running of its functions. The reduced expenditure has led to the public who are the taxpayers benefiting. The public have also been accorded an easy method in which they can access the government services. The availability of the IT infrastructure especially in the developed countries has made it possible for the public to access services at comfort of their homes. E-government has also brought about cooperation of different government departments in service delivery. This is through departments combining their databases and creating a common system. Democracy has also been enhanced through openness and accountability. The capability in service delivery has been improved making it possible to handle public efficiently. The main challenge facing e-government is poor IT infrastructure in the developing world. From this essay, it’s clear that implementation of e governance has led to mutual benefit between the government and public. References Akesson, M., Skalen, P. & Edvardsson, B. (2008). E-government and service orientation: gaps between theory and practice, The International Journal of Public Sector Management, 21(1),74-92. Atkinson, R. (2003). Network Government for the Digital Age. Washington: Progressive Policy Institute. Christian Von H. (2004). Electronic Government (E-Government) and Development. 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