6. Conclusions
Virgil Stoica and Andrei Ilas
Despite the declared national interest for a rural e‐Government, the Romanian reality is not satisfying: the results of our research allow us to conclude that Romanian rural e‐Government is in an initial development stage. In fact, there are very few laws and regulations aimed at local e‐Government. Furthermore, there is a significant digital divide between urban and rural communities with the last lagging behind. There is no national strategy designed to close this gap and the rural authorities lack the necessary resources for improving their e‐Government capabilities.
Our empirical research showed that only the dimension of“ usability”( 7.50 out of 20 points) is registering a significant score. There is practically no concern for“ security and personal data protection”( the mean score is 0.34). It is almost impossible to identify electronic services for rural communities( 0.77), and citizens do not have online opportunities to express their opinion regarding the way the community is run( 0.55). The“ content” is also extremely poor( 2.42 out of 20 points). This suggests how local officials are seeing e‐Government: using the community webpage in order to attract citizens and to promote the mayor. This is why“ usability”, which is also the easiest dimension, obtained the highest score. In the same vein,“ contents” obtained a reasonable score because some information has to be provided in order to maintain users’ interest. This philosophy is conducive to a lack of attention for e‐services, for the citizens’ feedback or for protecting personal data.
In a wider perspective, the size does matter for Romanian e‐Government performance: a big city is more likely to score better that a medium city which in turn is more likely to score better than a small one. In the same way, a small city is more likely to have better e‐Government than a village. This last observation could lead to new practical approaches. In the absence of a national action plan on rural e‐Government, the villages could pool their resources and build a single webpage for several communities.
Romanian rural e‐Government is much more homogeneous than urban e‐Government. We were unable to identify elements that determine a better performance, despite the fact that we tested such independent variables as size, geographical region, distance from a major city, or online presence of mayor. This is probably the main limitation of our study, and further research should use a qualitative investigation in order to identify the performance determinants of rural e‐Government.
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the strategic grant POSDRU / 89 / 1.5 / S / 62259, Project” Applied social, human and political sciences. Postdostoral training and postdoctoral fellowships in social, human and political sciences” co‐financed by the European Social Fund within the Sectorial Operational Program Human Resources Development 2007 – 2013.
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