CHAPTER 6
The Challenges of E-Governance in Public Administration
In an age of increasing use of the Internet and communication technology associated with globalization, public administrators are facing the challenge of how to make the public services accessible electronically. People live in a highly interconnected world in which information can be transmitted within seconds from one side of the world to the other. The use of ICT to deliver the services is known as electronic government or electronic governance. Recent decades have witnessed the proliferation in the use of technology, which also brought about serious challenges for public administrators. Friedman (2006), in his The World is Flat, argues that technology has made the world both smaller and flatter by eliminating the political and geographic boundaries as a result of information flows, trade, and collaboration across nations. The proliferation of social media, for example, the Internet, cellular phones, text messages, Facebook and Twitter, has changed the relations between the government and the public. The proliferation of media has led to an emergence of virtual networks of communities, which have an influence on politics and governance (Klijn 2008). The chapter analyzes the challenges of efficiency, privacy, human connections, security, participation, capacity building, transparency, and accountability in e-governance. E-governance has become part and parcel of modern public administration, and is increasingly dependent upon information and communication technology (ICT): “Issues of departmental self-regulation and contract
© The Author(s) 2018 H.A. Khan, Globalization and the Challenges of Public Administration, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69587-7_6
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