Challenges to e-Government

Adopting the e-government is not very easy, there are lots of challenges Implementation of e-government can face number of challenges depending upon the status of countries. The most challenging is a culture its self. It is very hard to make people to believe in machine.

The following have to be addressed on a whole-of-government basis in order to be overcome:

Legislative barriers

One of the challenges is its legalities. E-Government should have very clear legal structure to work on. Governments must ensure that a proper legal framework exists before e-government initiatives and processes can take up.

What is needed:

• All the online activities and services should consider equal to physical activities and service done by traditional system. It means recognition of electronic processes and services as equivalent with paper based processes and services. Legal recognition of digital signatures!

• Clarification of requirements on the agencies implementing e-government: what they can and cannot do. This means agencies should have clear authority to function.

• Overcoming collaboration barriers:

• accountability rules designed to ensure responsible use of public resources by clearly identifying who does what. Who is responsible for the shared project?
• performance management also follows clear distinction of who does what How to evaluate shared project?

• Legislations designed to protect the privacy and security of data, to balance free access with society’s expectations.

Financial barriers

funding arrangements should account for the agencies working together on e-government projects e-government projects is like long-term funding and collaboration across agencies, so it may not work on the principle of Traditional one.

There are some barriers and factors acting against e-government funding:

• Comparing e-government with other basic needs like education, health, security e.t.c. So it is hard to win the competition with those public policy objectives.

• e-Government is not separate one, It is difficult to measure it’s costs and the potential benefits and outputs of e-government, so to develop funding cases for projects.

• If not treated as capital investment, e-government has to compete with other pressing recurrent funding proposals, and will seem to involve comparatively large expenditure

• governments are reluctant to commit expenditure beyond budgeting horizons, and yet many e-government projects are of multi-annual nature

Measures to assist e-government funding:

• classifying major e-government projects as capital investment with upfront capital outlays and subsequent benefits.

• Separate approval by the e-government coordination office to ensure no duplication of inconsistency with broader strategies.

• public-private partnerships to overcome: capital limitations, budget-time horizons, disincentives for collaboration

• central funding for innovation for high-risk demonstration project that wouldn’t receive funding otherwise

• ability for agencies to retain savings created by e-government

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Technology Barrier

One of the largest cost invested in infrastructure while implementing technology, beside this the rapid development of new technology added the economic demand day by day. Aadoption of whole-of-government standards, software integration and middleware technologies can help to handle this barrier someway.

• legacy systems

Legacy System is a computer system or program which continues to be used because of the cost of replacing or redesigning it. They may be old, large, monolithic and difficult to modify. They meet the basic needs of organizations, which neither can afford to stop, nor to update them. This is one of the barriers in e-government. So we can adopt some solution, like promotion of government-wide frameworks, standards and data definitions by coordinators.

• lack of shared infrastructure

Infrastructure development is too expensive for a single agency, Due to lack of shared standards and lack of compatible infrastructure between agencies, it seems technological barrier plays vital role. So better electronic service, government should adopt following things:

• common technical standards
• common technical infrastructure
• whole-of-government approach to lower the legal and technical barriers for inter-agency cooperation
• whole-of-government approach to reduce redundancy.

• too rapid technological changes, etc.

Changing trends of new technology is really unbelievable, it seems imaginary. In this situation it is very challenges to adopt new technology every times. Then what can be a way?

Public-private partnership is one solution, provided they are in the areas where established standards already exist in the market.

Beside this there are some other approaches:

• technology neutrality in legislation and regulation
• flexibility within broad regulatory frameworks
• adaptation of current laws to a digital world
• involvement of all stakeholders in the regulatory process
• international cooperation to harmonize approaches

• performance requirements rather than technical specifications when procuring new technologies

digital divide

Digital Divide is one of the most talked issues in these days, technological discrimination in society tends to lack the objective of e-government itself. But still e-Government can indirectly improve services to citizens with no Internet access through back-office improvements, however:

• Advantages of on-line services cannot be replicated off-line, so people without Internet access will be unable to benefit.
• The groups in society with lower level of access are already disengaged -the target of government intervention.

Such groups have higher level of interaction with government:

• establishing identity
• entitlement for assistance
• complex medical or social intervention

Some, but not all, suited for on-line provision.

Many governments pursue policies to reduce digital divide.

Reference of Introduction to Electronic Government[Tomasz Janowski]