The Adoption of Cloud Computing for e‐Government Initiative in Regional Governments in Developing Countries
Shareef Shareef Software Engineering Department, College of Engineering, Slahaddin University‐Hawler‐ Iraq s. shareef @ yahoo. com
Abstract: Electronic government initiatives continues in looking opportunities to identify the way they manage to provide services to citizen effectively and efficiently. E‐Government require a developed Informations and Communication Technology( ICT) infrastructure in order to establish a coherent system. Most of the developing countries are facing various challenges due to the lack of ICT infrastructure. Cloud computing is an innovative and emerging technology to overcome these challenges. This technology relies mainly on the internet and other approaches such as; virtualisation, grid computing, web services and others. The provision of the services is an on‐demand via the common medium of the internet gives this services a new uniqueness. This paper aims to highlight the opportunities to adopt cloud computing in e‐ Government initiatives in developing countries. Also sheds light on the challenges that might influence the adoption of cloud computing in the e‐Government system.
Keywords: cloud computing, regional governments, sustainability, KRG, KRI
1. Introduction
In the last decade, the internet and the World Wide Web changed our lives dramatically in terms of the way we work. Government authorities have been influenced by these changes in the way government function and service provision to the stakeholders. Also, the widespread use of technology access by stakeholders brings expectations and demands of government. Concurrently, governments are also proactive in this regard and are planning new ways of communication, interacting, and enhancing services. In addition, optimizing processes and reforming the service provision and more interactive services and businesses via e‐Government to fulfil citizen’ s desires by spending more money on IT. The use of ICT is a significant approach to reduce the time required to process citizen’ s transactions, aspiring at enhancing the relationships with citizens by offering more seamless and efficient services( Layne and Lee, 2001). In this regards, about 77.4 % of people looking for government information or services, first used online resources such as Google, Yahoo, or other search engines( Burroughs, 2009). Globally, the development of online web based applications has improved the facility to offer e‐services for stakeholders in both public and e‐business( Wojciech and Sergiusz, 2009).
Therefore, cloud computing can play a significant role as a tool to deliver infrastructure, software and services on demand through the internet by providing effective solutions to both public and private sectors. Cloud computing initiatives reduce costs and speed up cost reduction benefit, which offers new service consumption( Kshetri, 2010). This assists government authorities going green, reducing pollution and operative waste management.
However, developing states are steps behind in this competition by providing e‐Government services to convince their citizens( Shareef and Arreymbi, 2012). The key challenges they face, are the lack of strategic plan, ICT infrastructure, resistance from government officials, and shortages of technical staff and lack of interactions between government departments( Sagheb‐Tehrani, 2007). Implementing e‐Government applications is not an easy task; it might be expensive and inefficient if done by local government departments only. Despite the fact that, some vital elements of e‐Government solutions such as operations consistency and efficiency make adopting cloud services in the context of e‐Government inevitable( Borko and Armando, 2010). Using cloud computing in the e‐Government services offers several opportunities to improve effectiveness, and efficiency of both the public and private sectors. Thus, reduced delays in processes enhances citizen’ s satisfaction and ultimately facilitate the growth of the economy.
This paper therefore aims to find the opportunities of using cloud computing as a tool for e‐Government implementation to provide services seamlessly and effectively. It also identifies the main issues that might affect the adoption of cloud computing in the e‐Government system in developing countries. This paper is of interest due to the importance of such technology for the Kurdistan Region of Iraq( KRI) that suffers from the lack of ICT infrastructure. The other contribution of this paper, it might encourage government authorities to
453