eGovernment for Development - Basic Definitions

eGovernment for Development - Basic Definitions: Richard Heeks, IDPM, University of Manchester, UK, 2004

"A. What is eGovernment? eGovernment is the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) to improve the activities of public sector organisations. Some definitions restrict e-government to Internet-enabled applications only, or only to interactions between government and outside groups. Here, we do not – all digital ICTs are included; all public sector activities are included. In our definition, then, governments have been practising e-government for more than 50 years: using that first mainframe in the Statistics Office was 'e-government'. We just didn't give it that name 50 years ago.

B. What Does eGovernment Cover? There are three main domains of e-government, illustrated in Figure 1 (adapted from: Ntiro, S. (2000) eGovernment in Eastern Africa, KPMG, Dar-es-Salaam): · Improving government processes: eAdministration · Connecting citizens: eCitizens and eServices · Building external interactions: eSociety Respectively, these particularly address the problems that government is too costly, too inefficient and too ineffective (e-admininstration); too self-serving and too inconvenient (e-citizens and e-services); and too insular (e-society)."

Course Updates

Good evening. Both sections of the course should be updated and ready with new assignments by Monday evening. You'll see a lot of new information, including the unit topics, dates, assignments, grading policies and several other items.

The new unit deals with the history, background and context of e-government. Watch this blog for postings and resources that should help you learn more about it.