Rabu, 05 Desember 2012

E-government Research: Riviewing the Literature, Limitations, and Ways Forward


Introductions
This article discuss about the limitation in the government literature as definition vagueness of the e-government construct with emphasis political and institutional environments, and various methodical limitations, and to much focus on process-oriented e-government studies. Technology in government as peripheral concern rather than as a core management function. But, until now technology in government organizations to be one of the core management, such as the automation of mass transactions like as financial transactions. the purpose’s using internet and personal computer in government was to enhance the managerial effectiveness of public administrators while increasing government productivity, but in practice, that make dependent between administrator and computer system. In addition, IT were isolated functional and executive oversight. Since information technology was used automation operation and efficiency administrator activities, government IT professionals were isolated from functional and executive oversight. That can make abuse of power.

Definitions and Model e-Government
According UN & ASPA, E-government is defined as utilizing the internet and the world-wide-web for delivering government information and services to citizens. Means and Schneider define e-government as the relationship between governments, their customers (business, other governments, and citizens), and their suppliers (again, business, other governments, and citizens) by the use of electronic means. Brown and Brudney define e-government as the use of technology, especially web-based applications to enhance access to and efficiently deliver government information and services. They categorize e-government efforts into three broad categories of Government to Government (G2G), Government to Citizen (G2C), and Government to Business (G2B). One may include two additional categories in this list: Government-to-Civil Societal Organizations (G2CS) and Citizen-to-Citizen (C2C).

Subcategories of e-government
Parties of communication
Content
Dominant characteristic
Definition
Example
Government to Government
Government information and services
Communication, coordination, standardization of information and services
e-administration
Establishing and using a common data warehouse
Government to Citizen

Communication, transparency, accountability, effectiveness, efficiency, standardization of information and services, productivity
e-government
Government organization web sites, e-mail communication between the citizens and government officials
Government to Business

Communication, collaboration, commerce
e-government, e-commerce, e-collaboration
Posting government bids on the web, e-procurement, e-partnerships
Government to Civil society Organizations

Communication, coordination, transparency, accountability
e-governance
Electronic communication and coordination efforts after disaster
Citizen to Citizen

Communication, coordination, transparency, accountability, grass roots organization
e-governance
Electronic discussion groups on civic issues

The first model argues that e-government projects evolve through four stages of development. The first stage is cataloguing, providing government information by creating government agency Web sites. The second stage is transaction, agencies at this stage can provide online transactions with government agencies. The third stage is the integration of government operations within functional areas. Agencies working in the same functional area integrate their online operations. The fourth stage is horizontal integration.
The second model of e-government development was it proposed a five-stage model of development. The first, emerging stage. Second, the number of government sites increase in number and become more dynamic in this ‘enhanced’ stage. The third ‘interactive’ stage enables the users to download forms and interact with officials through the Web. In the fourth ‘transactional’ stage, users have the ability to make online payments for transactions. The final ‘seamless’ stage makes the integration of electronic services across government agencies possible.
Moreover, Fountain introduced the technology enactment framework that has three elements. That is First, application of IT to an organization changes the objective form of that technology due to its adjustment to the organizational form. Second, there is a two-way interaction between the existing institutional arrangements and organizational forms. Third, the first two elements, that is, adoption and implementation processes, transform the objective form of technology to its enacted form. But, the Fountain idea was criticized by other scientist for three reasons. First, the framework is so abstract and generalized that it is difficult to use it for prediction. Second, Fountain's research agenda is not well-linked to the previous literature in both public administration and IT. Third, Fountain's limited focus, as the book uses examples only from the U.S. federal government.

Limitations of The e-Government Concept
The e-government concept is limited in four ways. First, e-government don’t has standard definition of concept, because e-government is a concept defined by the objective of the activity (transfer of government information and services among governments, their customers and suppliers), rather than by the specific technology used, provider of the service/ information, or clear-cut activities of the related actors. Second, e-government is one of those concepts that mean a lot of different things to a lot of different groups. For example, identifies different parts of e-government as e-service delivery, e-democracy, and e-governance. Third, as if it is not enough for the real substance of the concept to be ambiguous, poorly defined and/or context-dependent, e-government contains much hype and promotional efforts/literature as well, similar to the concepts of “knowledge management” or “management by objectives”. Fourth, one might ask how substantial a change is required to meet the criteria for a government technology project to be titled as an e-government project. For example, are static Web sites or e-mail addresses of public managers enough? Or is some level of interactions required? Lyne and Lee answer this question with their stages of e-government growth model.

Suggestions
In the part of policy process and political nature of government has four suggestion. The first suggestion is to examine and better explain the processes of, and participation patterns in, e-government projects. The second suggestion is to address the problem of underspecification in the e-government literature. The third suggestion is to explain the policy-making processes in e-government projects in a complex political environment. Fourth, The final suggestion is to tie the subject of e-government strongly to mainstream public administration research.
In the part of methodological suggestion is the change the view to see e-government from output to process. examine and explain the non-technical and political nature and processes of e-government may help to protect the public interest when spending large amounts of government money on e-government projects. Only when we understand the processes of e-government policy making, we can evaluate the true merits of e-government initiatives. Moreover, this new understanding may enable public administrators to be ready to make the technical, managerial, and political adjustments to the policy-making processes.

A new categorization of e-government research
Dimension
Orientation
Output
Outcome
Process
Focus
Web sites, online government services, front office
How does an e-government application affect a certain variable such as trust, accountability, transparency, corruption, government effectiveness, users perceptions of service quality
Process of decision making, planning, implementation, back office
Method
Content analysis, determining best practices, benchmarking, surveys, case studies
Content analysis, determining best practices, benchmarking, surveys, case studies
Interview, archival analysis, discourse analysis, case studies
Data
Primary and secondary
Primary and secondary
Primary
Mode of analysis
Outside-in, deductive
Outside-in, deductive
Inside-out, inductive
Outcome
Descriptive, Exploratory
Descriptive, Exploratory
Theory generation, explanatory
Examples
Bauer and Scharl (2000; Cohen and Emicke (2001); Hernon (1998); Stowers (1998); West, 2003a, 2003b
Cullen and Houghton (2000); Gant and Gant (2002); La Porte, at al. (1999); Mahmood (2004); Torres et al. (2005)
Bellamy and Taylor (1998); Fountain (2011); Jonas (2000); Yildiz (2004)


Summary of Mete Yıldız paper in Government Information Quarterly Journal (2007)

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