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6 The Challenges of E-Governance in Public Administration
CHAPTER 6
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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
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management, financial management, information management, networking, and decentralization have come about, in part, because of enhanced ICT capacities” (Korac-Kakabadse et al. 2002, p. 51; Kouzmin et al. 1999). The Internet is a global phenomenon, but the ways in which government deals with it varies according to the political, social and economic context of a country (Rose 2005a, b).
E-governance can be defined as “a new form of administrative management through the practical use of communication methods such as the Internet or other virtual spaces” or “an alternative administrative pattern that includes management, systems and policies” (Kim 2014, p. 20). E-government is defined as “utilizing the Internet and the World-WideWeb for delivering government information and services to citizens” (UN 2002, p. 42). The term e-government itself has been traced back to 1993 (Hu et al. 2009). E-government “may also include using other information and communication technologies (ICTs) in addition to the Internet and the Web, such as “database, networking, discussion support, multimedia, automation, tracking and tracing, and personal identification technologies” (Jaeger 2003, p. 24). The rise of e-governance has become a necessity because of the advent of technology and the spread of online activities (Allen et al. 2001). Governance includes the new form of the political process of government building a horizontal network for a specific purpose to cooperate and coordinate with autonomy (Rhodes 1997). E-governance is a mechanism to deal with government failures, as indicated in various examples of inefficient bureaucracy, corruption, and administrative opportunism (Osborne and Gaebler 1992). E-governance is considered to be a mechanism to accomplish good governance by reforming governing systems (Perry 2007, p. 6).
There are conceptual differences between e-government and e-governance. E-governance includes a more fundamental sharing and reorganizing of power across all sectors, while e-government includes all the existing state processes to improve performance in services (Peristeras et al. 2002). Roy (2005) asserts that the concepts of government and governance are interrelated because government operates in an environment influenced by non-state actors. Governments are developing a collaborative and contractual relationship with non-state actors (Castells 1996). Governance covers every institution and organization from family to the state (Charag and Mufeed 2013). The government can use e-governance to improve administrative efficiency and reduce administrative corruption. Charag and Mufeed (2013) explain the three types of
