Electronic Government (part 1) Session twelve

Session Overview The potential for electronic government or e-government to transform public administration has been hailed as a remarkable development in the history of government administration. Since the 1990s, the internet, computers, and other information systems has become widespread in the public service. Yet there are real challenges regarding particular access to ICT by most public organizations.

Session outline Topics to be covered are the following: Topic one: What is Electronic Government? Topic two: Theoretical Relationship between ICT and Public Administration

What is Electronic Government? Topic One

definition Electronic or E-government also known as digital government, online government or transformational government refers to the use of information and communication technology (ICT) to provide and improve government services, transactions and interactions with citizens, businesses, and other agencies of government. E-government is regarded as the pursuit of a paperless public service.

Definition ICT is an acronym that stands for Information and Communications Technology. The concepts, methods and applications involved in ICT are constantly evolving on almost daily basis, and it is difficult to keep up with the changes. ICT is used to describe digital technologies including methods for communication and techniques for storing and processing information. ICT is concerned with the storage, retrieval, manipulation, transmission or receipt of digital data, and the way these different uses can work with each other.

Theoretical Relationship between ICT and Public Administration Topic two

Modernization and ICT ICT is viewed as facilitating the modernization process to a logical conclusion. ICT is transformative in the sense that it changes the face of old government buildings and employees and turns them into the house of technology. Work previously executed manually is done through the aid of computer and other digital technology. The observation made by Frissen is right when he noted that ‘informatization in public administration is a process of continued modernization’.

Hypermodernists Theory They believe that the rise of ICT marks the end of the bureaucracy. The ICT is perceived as a new civilization that comes to displace Weberian hierarchies. Toffler predicted that the third wave would bring a new civilization called the electronics revolution based on technologies. Public servants will become ‘information workers’ and will operate in ‘intelligent buildings’ because government offices will eventually become ‘electronic offices’.

Hypermodernists Theory In their view, the offices will be organized in the form of networks which eventually bring to an end Max Weber’s formal hierarchies. As a consequence, government will be forced to bypasss the bureaucratic hierarchies, a development that amounts to subverting bureaucratic power.

Hypermodernists Theory The protagonists employed new titles such as ‘intelligent enterprise’, ‘intelligence organization’ to signal the end of the public bureaucracy. They further indicated that public and private organizations will atrophy or wither (disappear) if they fail to adapt to the internet age. The push for the ICT revolution manifested in the call for all citizens to be given laptop computers

Anti-Modernist School This school regards ICT as having an equally transformative but malign effect on public administration. ICT, they argued, encourages ‘single infrastructure of control because information is collected, stored and processed. it has led to the ‘computer state’ where massive data-banks are used as instruments of control.

Anti-Modernist School They claim that integrating the state through the backdoor of information management has brought about the new Leviathan. This way, the information technological age is equated with a military revolution that assumes total control of society and systems.

Anti-Modernist School This school fears that the ICT will dominate society in the same way that Weber warned about unbridled bureaucracy dominance. Some members of the school went to the extent of saying that ‘a rule of impersonal officialdom disastrously strengthened by ICT can emerge. In organizations, humans would be replaced by automated machines’.