A Prospective Survey on Future e‐Governance Research Directions
Pin‐yu Chu and Yueh‐yun Sun National Chengchi University, Taipei, Taiwan vchu @ nccu. edu. tw 100256004 @ nccu. edu. tw
Abstract: Although many e‐Government policies, programs, and services such as e‐tax, e‐procurement, e‐voting have been implemented in various countries, the priorities of future e‐Government policy and research emphases and their relationship with resource allocation need to be well studied and justified. The objective of this paper is to identify forward‐looking e‐governance research topics. In this paper, we utilize studies on e‐Government performance rankings such as UN’ s e‐Government survey and Waseda University’ s e‐Government ranking, and reports released by influential international e‐governance centers to summarize a list of promising e‐governance research topics. To gain insight from e‐governance experts in various countries and sectors, we conduct in‐depth interviews and perform an online survey of domestic and international e‐governance scholars and practitioners to rank these topics. We present the focus of intensive literature review and summarize the results of the online survey. The lessons from this study will help pave the way for future e‐governance research initiatives.
Keywords: e‐governance, e‐government, public value of information technology, research initiatives
1. Introduction
“ Electronic government”( e‐Government), one of the most interesting concepts introduced in the field of public administration in the late 1990, has been the emerging issue with great attention. Governments worldwide have put a lot of efforts not only in information and communication technologies( ICTs) infrastructure but also in public administration process design for better relationships with its multi‐stakeholders. Public sector organizations need now more than ever to manage increased speed of reflexivity in their relationship with the citizenry. It is not just a question of e‐Government; it is also a question of e‐governance( Marche and McNiven, 2003). Many international organizations such as UN, OECD, and APEC all emphasize the importance of e‐governance and the aim of e‐Government has moved from pure services to create public values for citizens and the society in a country.
Although many e‐Government policies, programs, and services such as e‐tax, e‐procurement, and e‐voting, have been implemented in various countries, the priorities of e‐Government policy emphases and their relationship with resource allocation demand to be justified. For example, the necessity of cloud services and the application and integration of national big data are increasingly popular, but need to be carefully studied. The objective of this paper is to identify forward‐looking e‐governance policy and research topics. Specifically, these topics need to be consistent with the emerging e‐governance topics of global significance.
The paper is organized as follows. In section 2, we utilize studies on e‐Government performance rankings to summarize a list of shared e‐Government indicators. We also gather research reports released by influential international e‐governance centers to highlight e‐governance research topics of global significance. To gain insight from e‐governance experts in various countries and sectors, we interview leaders of various e‐governance research centers and conduct an online survey of domestic and international e‐governance experts to rank e‐governance research arenas and topics. We summarize the methodological approach in section 3, present the online survey results in section 4, and discuss how lessons we learn from this study will help pave the way for future e‐governance research initiatives in the last section.
2. Literature review
2.1 International e‐governance / e‐Government indicators
Several important international organizations, e. g., UN, OECD, World Bank, World Economic Forum( WEF), International Telecommunication Union( ITU), and Economic Intelligence Unit( EIU) investigate either the global trends of ICTs or challenges of e‐Government, develop economic competitiveness and e‐governance performance indices, select best practices, and provide countries with strategic suggestion. These organizations identify a wide variety of indicators and these indicators often highlight e‐governance research directions of global significance.
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