E-GOVERNMENT

An Empirical Analysis of Current Literature

Muhammad Haider (Author)
Department of Management Sciences
COMSATS Institute of Information and Technology
Lahore, Pakistan
muhammad.haider72@gmail.com

Muhammad Umer Khan (Author)

Hailey College of Banking and Finance
University of the Punjab
Lahore, Pakistan
mukhan367@gmail.com

Sumbal Farooq (Author)

Department of Management Sciences
COMSATS Institute of Information and Technology
Lahore, Pakistan
tappu_94@hotmail.com
Abstract Current study is intended to examine, explore and
review the current literature on e-government, and different
aspects of e-Government. The role of constantly evolving
technology is very important. It is categorically significant and
has been proved as an excellent way of improvising the
traditional and manual systems of any organization. EGovernment is becoming a more popular way of administrating
and looking at the state affairs. The current literature on the
topic suggests that there is a significant role of e-government in
many countries; however a few researchers also argue that this
mode of government is vaguely present and is ineffective among
the developing countries, despite having a considerable potential
and scope in these countries. This paper examines the current
literature on E-Government, including; theories and concepts of
e-governments in various countries.
Keywords E-Government, Developing Countries, Literature
review, Government, ICT, Technology adoption

I.

INTRODUCTION

Current Literature indicates that the term e-government

refers to the use of ICT to facilitate the interaction between,
public authority, and individual citizens, businesses, or nongovernmental organization Barthwal (2003). Stephen H.
Holden (2003) says about e-government that it is The
delivery of govt. services and information electronically 24
hours per day, seven days per week. Muhammad (2013) says
the expansion of internet and advancement of information and
communication technologies of far new channels for
governments to reach and serve their citizens. With the
emergence of E-government concept, public organizations
around the world are moving away from the conventional
form of govt., because they realize the importance of making
services more efficient and accessible. According to United
Nations survey, 190 governments around the world have
websites and use contemporary ICT for the delivery of
services to their citizens. As people have become more
internet savvy, they are expecting higher standards of Eservices from government agencies. This concept is a
relatively new concept and requires brisk actions and work of
researchers. Moon (2002) says E government is a concept

that was introduced into public administration in 1990s, but it

has yet to be clearly defined and grasped by practioners.
According to David (2008)the research in e-government is
relatively new. Nevertheless, much contemporary thinking and
writing about e-government is driven by normative models
that appeared less than a decade ago.
II.

LITERATURE REVIEW

A. Adoption and Change

David (2008) says E-government adoption is predicted to
be related to various changes mostly presumed positive, in
local governments. Hence, we would expect that local
governments adopting more services would report greater
change. Furthermore, we would expect the level in type of
change to vary with adopted services. Overall adoption of Egovt. services is low in many countries such as in Ireland,
Poland and Kuwait at less than 30% and in Australia, Canada,
and Finland at around 50%. On the other hand, in the USA,
Singapore, and Korea the proportion of citizens adopting Egovt. services is slightly higher as compared to other
developed countries. According to Shah (2011) Importance
of E-governance has been realized in the most of the countries
of the world and most of the countries are in the process of
implementation of E-government practices.
B. Barriers to E-Government
Stephen H. Holden (2003) conducted a survey which
resulted in following proportion of barriers to E-Government.
Table 1: Barriers to E-Government Source: Stephen H.
Holden (2003)
Barriers to E-Government
Reason

Percent

Lack of technology and /or web staff members

54.80%

Lack of financial resources

44.70%

Lack of technology and/or web expertise

38.4%

Issues regarding security

34.70%

Need to upgrade technology

27.90%

Lack of Information about E-govt. application

23.30%

Issues regarding privacy

22.80%

Issues relating fees and online transaction

21.70%

Lack of support from elected officials

10.20%

According to David (2008) Local Govt. that report more

barriers to E-govt. should also report the adoption of fewer
services. Additionally, those that have adopted more
sophisticated services (such as financial transactions) should
report a different pattern of barriers. Political and legal issues
should be more germane to transactional vs. informational
services.

degree of integration in terms of data and service delivery.

When examined against these two dimensions.
Layne (2001) were able to describe the following four
stages of e-government maturity: 1) Catalogue 2) Transaction
3) Vertical integration 4) Horizontal integration.

C. Components of E-government
The system of e-governance is supported by 5 pillars :( 1)
Computer, (2) Connectivity (3) Content (4) Consumer and (5)
confidence building. Parinder (2001). "Computer" in this
context refers to all the hardware and software requirements of
government. "Connectivity" refers to all the information
carriers system, bandwidth etc. "Content" refers to the
information that is exchange between the 'consumers' of the
system. "Consumer" refers to the entire human and human
substitutes system that access and uses the' Content' in the e
governance system. "Confidence building" refers to such of
these measures that helps the citizens develop a confidence in
the egovernance and encourage them to take to etransformation.
This is represented in the following diagram by Sumanjeet
(2006)
Figure 2: Stages of E-Government, Source: Layne (2001)
E. Global E-Government
According to West (2011) it is difficult to compare
countries around the world because to their sheer
heterogeneity in terms of economic development, regime type,
cultural patterns, telecommunication infrastructure and
internet usage. Some countries are extremely rich while other
may lack basic resources.
Toni (2014) says that governments around the world have
been pressured to implement e-government programs in order
to improve the government citizen dialogue.

Figure 1: Components of E-Government, Source:

Sumanjeet (2006)
D. E-Government Transformation
According to West (2011)In thinking about the stages of
E-govt. transformation it is helpful to outline how to measure
the extent of exchange. He says there are four stages of Egovt. 1) the billboard stage 2) Partial service delivery stage 3)
Portal Stage 4) Interactive Democracy with accountability
features.
Layne (2001) provide a useful model that stresses the
evolutionary nature of e-government and that is grounded in
the literature of public administration
The Layne and Lee model examines e-government maturity
along two dimensions and provides four stages of maturity
(see Figure 2). The two dimensions capture the increasing
sophistication of e-government offerings as measured by the
degree of organizational and technological complexity and the

F. Functions of E-Government
According to West (2011) E-govt. is based on promise of
better service delivery at lower cost to the tax payer. Through
economies of scale, that become possible through the use of
new technologies, digital delivery systems, and safe money
and in the long run produce substantial savings in the public
sector operations. Citizens can access information and services
from their homes or offices and do so in a way that saves the
govt. money. Not only will this technological revolution
increase the personal convenience to members of the public
and the private sector, it will also provide a means for more
efficient and effective govt. operations.
Stephen H. Holden (2003) sums it up this way While Egovt. clearly holds great potential to improve government
performance and possibly help and restore public confidence
in public institutions, there are virtually no research results to
help guide this rapid transition. According to Caroline (2006)
E-govt. has the potential to reduce the cost of service
delivery, although the front end costs of development may
mean the cost savings are not immediately realized.

Carrizales (2008) defines functions of e-government as

follows:
E-Organization: internal government efficiency and
effectiveness
E-Services: External efficiency and effectiveness in
providing services
E-Partnering: external efficiency and effectiveness in
working with public and private organizations.
E-Democracy: citizens participation in government
decision making.
G. Uses of E-government
According to Barthwal (2003) today e-government is
useful in many ways
Table 2: Uses of E-government, source: Barthwal (2003)

III. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

The research method of this paper is the review of
literature regarding E-Government. Goth (2009) states that a
literature review usually provides a picture of the state of the
art research in any discipline together with a critical analysis
of the extant research in that discipline. The research on egovernment is very abundant; however it is ironic that there is
a very less research on e-government in developing countries.
The main purpose of this literature review paper is to provide
a detailed view of such research
IV.

We focused mainly on online research, and therefore

scanned journal articles and conference papers through
popular databases and books as physical and printed resources.
As far as databases are concerned we focused mainly on
JSTOR, Google scholar and Asian Business and reference.

Uses of E-government; different areas

Areas

In Relation to
Public

In Relation to
business

Descript
ion

Tax Payments
Paying Bills
Voter Information
Death & Birth
Certificates
Reservations and
status information
Complaint tracking
Video on demand
Public Information

Supplies
Procurement
Proposals and
bids
Data sales
Permitting and
licensing
Inventory
management

In relation
to
Employees
Intranet
Document
Management
Executive
info system
ERP
Geographic
Information
System
CRM

H. Development of E-Govenrnment
We can define five stages of E- Government Development
Emerging Web Presence
Enhanced web presence
Interactive web presence
Transactional web presence
Seamless or fully integrated web presence
Source: Barthwal (2003)
Toni (2014) says that e-democracy is the last stage of egovernment, he also emphasize a lot on the role of egovernment in the transparency of the issues and argues that a
common definition of transparency defines the term as the
ability to look through the windows of an institution. he also
says as such transparency refers to the extent of a
governments online information provision regarding internal
work, decision making process, and procedures. The concept
of transparency is a critical tool but it is also an end in itself.
he quoted that government should use online transparency
features in their e-government practices to enhance their
legitimacy and citizens trust. As transparency generates
accountability, transparency relates to the notion of power (i.e.
information is power)

LITERATURE SEARCH

In relation
to Govt.
Information
Exchange
Reporting
Regional
Planning
Transfer of
funds
Joint Power
agreements

V.

FILTERATION AND CLASSIFICATION

At first the term E-Government was used

which resulted in several hundred articles on
the databases, from these results further key
words were used like Developing countries
and Technology Adoption which reduced
the result numbers to less than a hundred
results. A brief review of abstracts found that
a few articles give a detailed overview of egovernment development, components and
functions.
VI.

LITERATURE REVIEW

A. Significance and Reseaarch Outcome

According to David (2008)the research in e-government is
relatively new. Nevertheless, much contemporary thinking and
writing about e-government is driven by normative models
that appeared less than a decade ago. E government is an
emerging concept, dispersing widely in the buds of both
developing and developed countries and evolving in the form
of some great systems, benefiting all the stake holders.
E-government studies included in this paper have made an
introductory role for the researchers to particularly invest their
resources in developing advance techniques of expanding this
concepts. Dr Abdul Kalam(president of India) said It is not
easy to develop an e-government system for a nation of 100
crores, no other country have been successful in doing so.
This shows that there is a significant chance of developing
such systems and to make advancements in the field of egovernment.
Publications reported several implementations of projects
of E-government in different parts of the worlds, they argued
on its significance and effective use and outcomes and
suggested further projects as well..
B. Characteristics Considered
Different researchers considered different characteristics to
look upon and different views to consider while doing their
work. While there was a different aspect of every one,

however some characteristics like uses of e-government,

stages, models, and functions were discussed by many of the
researchers. Some researcher focused on e-democracy, other
studied transparency. There were global and contrast nation
views on e-government and as well as localized and root level
studies on e-government too. E-Government was found
largely in practice in developed nations where access to
technology and internet specially is easily available, whereas
lack of awareness and lack of facilities were one the main
reasons found in the developing or underdeveloped countries.
E-government facilitates both government and public, it
ensures transparency and reduce corruption.
C. Research Method Used by the Researchers
The research on e-government is extensive in developed
nations however a little amount of work is found in
developing countries, most of the researchers developed
hypotheses and explained their point of view by statistically
examining the facts and presenting them in a systemized
manner. Most of the studies used multiple research methods
such as case studies, coupled with surveys and interviews.
Many researcher interviewed the public about the egovernment and its uses, however a few of them also
interrogated other stakeholders like govt. employees and
clients etc.
VII. CONCLUSION
E-government is an important domain for the governments
of every country. Providing basic knowledge to the citizens
has never been so easy before. People now days are getting
aware and the access to internet in almost every corner of
world have revolutionized the existing system. Governments
are also digitalizing many records and are introducing new
systems continuously to increase their efficiency and
effectiveness and to control corruption and to ensure
transparency.
Largely, the contents of e-government are computer,
consumers and government. Other than these there are many
other stake holders in the systems which are directly or
indirectly affected by the e-government practices of the
government. Many researchers argue that e-government has
many functions and cannot be listed under a certain domain,
however you can link the functions of the e-government
system with the internal and external efficiency and
effectiveness of governments, working on state level as well
as working with public and private organizations. Another
important function of e-government is e-democracy which is
the participation of people in the decisions of government.
However there have been certain barriers to e-government
in the general observation, among which lack of technology

and financial resources, issues regarding security and privacy

and lack of information are the main barriers to the adoption
of this system.
VIII. FUTURE RESEARCH
The current literature on E-Government talks about the
components, the structure, the functions and the uses of the egovernment systems. However there is a very little research
present on the planning and effective implementation of the
above discussed system. A significant amount of work can be
done in the field of planning the e-government systems and
their effective implementation. Among many statistics we
have on the implementation of this system, there is a limited
information available on the success and failure rate of the
implementation of e-government, yet alone its cause. This
would help researchers and stakeholders understand many
aspects of this excellent system of governance, which
otherwise they would be deprived of.

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