Ninoslava Savić and Zoran Radojičić
The second sub‐index EGPI2, in comparison to values of sub‐index EGPI1 shows lower values. That means that the gap in using of e‐Government between enterprises located in the parts of the country with different level of development is smaller than the gap caused by different size of enterprises. However, it is alarming that this kind of digital divide, decreasing from value of 0,344 in year 2009, to 0,190 in year 2010 and 0,116 in 2011, at the end shows the increasing value of 0,141 in year 2012. That points to deepening of the gap in using of e‐ Government between the enterprises in different developed regions in Serbia( Figure 10).
Figure 10: Values of sub‐index EGPI2 for years 2009 ‐ 2012
As shown in Figure 11, the total electronic government polarization index EGPI for years 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012 has the following values: 0,386, 0,212, 0,172, and 0,158. According to them we conclude about the falling trend of polarization among enterprises in Serbia in using e‐Government services.
Figure 11: EGPI values for years 2009 ‐ 2012
8. Conclusion
The proposed model quantitatively expresses the level of digital divide in the field of e‐Government, by using the compound indices. It provides an opportunity for better monitoring the state of digital polarization in different groups of entities within country, and its trends. Although compound indices usually hide characteristics expressed by single indicators, analyzing only a list of single indicators could be too difficult for drawing conclusions about the complex phenomenon. From analytical data, which are often mutually correlated, without any transformation, is difficult to conclude about the level of internal digital divide. In this fact lie the power and the applicability of the proposed model. Digital Agenda for Europe( European Commission, 2010), and i2010 eGovernment Action Plan( 2006) among other issues, propose e‐inclusion as one of policy actions for minimizing all kinds of digital divide. This model is especially significant for the definition of development policy that could help improvement in critical groups of entities, which could lead to the achievement of an inclusive information society. The proposed model has been implemented thru the research conducted on Serbian enterprises, monitoring the usage of some e‐Government services. The research has showed that there is a certain degree of digital divide in relation to acceptance of e‐Government in economy of Serbia. We found the biggest polarization in year 2009, caused by different sizes of enterprises. After all, this gap shows the falling trend in the following years. For the second calculated sub‐index, we found smaller values, so smaller gap among enterprises from different localities in Serbia. Nevertheless, alarming is that this kind of polarization in year 2012 increases. The total EGPI significant decreases in 2010, but shows almost stagnation in the following years. The scope of research was limited by the availability of the actual data for Serbia to only few aspects of the digital divide( only some proposed causes, and only some of‘ e‐Government’ indicators that were available for the whole research period). Hence, its results are more an illustration of the implementation of suggested
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