Virgil Stoica and Andrei Ilas
its launch. According to the Administrative and Regulatory National Authority for Communications( ARNAC), Romania has 3.26 million fixed‐line broadband connections with 2.58 million in cities and the remaining 0.68 million in villages( ARNAC). The 2002 census organized by the National Institute of Statistics( NIS), shows that in Romania 45.1 % out of a total of 21.5 million are living in villages( NIS, 2003). These data indicate that in the rural areas there are 6.98 fixed‐line broadband connections per 100 inhabitants compared to 21.77 per 100 city inhabitants. The digit al gap has seemed to close over the last six years, but the rural areas are still lagging b ehind the urban ones.
It is interesting to note that the last two governing programmes( February and May 2012) are indirectly acknowledging this situation: the Romanian Government( RG) should support better broadband connections for disadvantaged areas( RG, 2012). However, there is no specification as to whether these areas are rural areas or c ertain geographical regions of the country.
The Romanian government has been rather shy in directly addressing the rural‐urban digital divide issue and in supporting e‐Government development in rural areas. However, the government was involved in projects, supported by USAID and the World Bank that indirectly touched on these issues. Even these projects, where external organisations have been or are involved, are enjoying limited success( World Bank, 2012). It appears that both at national and local level the public officia ls are not able to contribute to the development of rural e‐Government. Our research will try to explain why.
4. Research methodology
In order to assess Romania’ s rural e‐Government level, we have evaluated the official websites of Romanian villages, closely following Mark Holzer and Seang‐Tae Kim’ s model described in their study Digital Governance in Municipalities Worldwide( 2005). The Rutgers‐SKKU E‐Government Performance Index used by Holzer in his surveys is a set of scales that highlight the performance throughout the world and foster high expectations for improved web‐based municipal service delivery in the near future, in all countries. In order to have better c omparability, we decided to follow the same methodology.
Our research examines rural e‐Government following a five‐level incremental model of e‐Government evolution: the first level is that of providing information, the second one adds information exchange, followed by providing services, service integration and, in the end, political participation( Moon, 2002). The criteria used for assessing the villages’ websites have five components: security and personal data protection, usability, contents, type of services provided, and digital democracy. The study used 98 measures, the same measures used by Holzer and Kim in their study, forty‐three of them being dichotomous. For non‐dichotomous questions( mostly 0 / 2 and few 0 / 3), a scale of 3 or 4 steps has been utilised( 0,1, 2 or 0, 1, 2, 3), where 0 indicates that the site provides no information regarding the asked question; 1 simply indicates that the information exists; 2 indicates that the information can be downloaded( files or folders, audio or video documents); and 3 indicates the possibility of on‐line transactions( payments for goods or services, demands for licences, existence of certain data bases, use of electronic signature). The final score is the sum of all items, the maximum raw score being 219, and a maximum weighted score being 100. Weighting was necessary, because each of the five dimensions had a different number of questions( 18 in the case of security and 20 for all other dimensions), as well as different scores( 25, 32, 48, 59, 55). The five dimensions were given equal weight, not taking into account the number of que stions used when assessing it. Thus, after weighting, each dimension was able to take o n scores from 0 to 20.
The " security and personal data protection " has been operationalised through several concepts: public statements concerning personal data protection, authentification, encryption, and the management of collected data and the use of cookies. Easy‐to‐understand and easy‐to‐use design, length of access page, structure, the extent to which it addresses particular target audiences and the ability to search for information on the site were the concepts behind“ usability’ s” operationalisation. As for“ contents”, the accent was placed on the possibility of accessing recent information, official documents, reports, publications and audio / video materials. In the " services " category were included the transactions that might occur between local administration and citizens, or between local administration and business owners, as well as lodging requests for various authorisations( e. g. permits, licences). The " digital democracy " category was operationalised as it follows: instruments for citizens to provide feedback to local officials, debates on the village webpage concerning local p ublic policies, and the existence of a system for measuring citizen satisfaction and governmental performance.
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