Nixon Muganda
ABSTRACT
E-Government has increasingly become an alternative for enabling public governance at various. The situation is especially poignant in developing countries where there are increasing calls to improve governance for improved national development. This study sought to investigate managerial processes in the alignment of e-government within Local Authorities in Kenya. A case study research design underpinned by critical realism assumptions was used. The analysis was grounded on empirical results of the study, and employed theoretical thematic analysis. Under the alienating conditions of social exclusion, the alignment of the e-government artifact espoused strong managerialist orientations of augmenting and reinforcing central governments control over its polity. A consequence of this alignment is a tendency towards technocratic evolution of the public service delivery system in local authorities in Kenya. However, it was also recognised that the form of e-government projects are constantly in flux, and that relying on a single case was therefore a limitation of the study. Categories and Subject Descriptors
- Borgmann, A. (1984). Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life: A Philosophical Inquiry. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
- Braun, V.,&Clarke, V. (2006). Using Thematic Analysis in Psychology. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 33: 77--101Google ScholarCross Ref
- Brown, I., Maleka, B., Morrison, D., Muganda, N.&Speight, H. (2007). Global diffusion of the Internet XI: Internet diffusion and its determinants in South Africa: The first decade of democracy (1994--2004) and beyond. Communications of the Association for Information Systems, 19(9): 142--182Google Scholar
- Castells, M. (2004). The Network society: a cross-cultural perspective. Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Ciborra, C. (2004). The Labyrinths of Information - challenging the wisdom of systems, Oxford University Press, 2004.Google Scholar
- Danermark, B., Ekstrom, M., Jakobsen, L.,&Karlsson, J. C. (2002). Explaining Society: Critical Realism in the Social Sciences. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
- DFID. (2006). DFID: Reducing poverty in Africa, DFID, 2007Google Scholar
- Estevez, J., Rhoda, J.,&Joseph, C. (2008). A Comprehensive framework for the assessment of E-government Projects. Government Information Quarterly, 25:118--132.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Fuchs, C.&Horak, E. (2008). Africa and the Digital Divide. Telematics and Informatics, 25: p. 99--116. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Fujimura, J. H. (1996). Crafting Science: a Sociohistory of the Quest for the Genetics of Cancer. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
- Garson, G. D. (2006). Public Information Technology and E-Governance: Managing the Virtual State. Sudbury, MA: Jones and Bartlett.Google Scholar
- Heeks, R. (2002). 'E-Government in Africa: Promise and Practice'. Information Polity, 97: 97--114. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Homburg, V. (2004). E-government and NPM: A perfect marriage? In the Proceedings of the 6th International conference on Electronic Commerce (547--555), Delft, Netherlands. Google ScholarDigital Library
- JICA (2007). Local Level Service Delivery, Decentralization and Governance: A Comparative Study of Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania Education, Health and Agriculture Sectors. Final Kenya Case Report.Google Scholar
- Johnston, K., Muganda, N. O.,&Theys, C. (2007). Key Issues for CIOs in South Africa. Electronic Journal of Information Systems in Developing Countries, 30:1--11. Retrieved from http://www.ejisdc.org/ojs2/index.php/ejisdc/article/viewFile/390/204Google ScholarCross Ref
- Kelly, R. (2003). Mobilizing local revenue from the business sector. Unpublished manuscriptGoogle Scholar
- Ladner, R., Petry, F.,&McGreedy, F. (2008). E-Government capabilities for the 21st century. International Journal of Electronic Government Research, 4(1).Google Scholar
- Muganda-Ochara, N (2008). Emergence of the E-Government Artifact in an Environment of Social Exclusion in Kenya. The African Journal of Information Systems. 1(1): 18--43Google Scholar
- Monteiro, E. (1998). Scaling information infrastructure: the case of the next generation IP in Internet. The Information Society, 14(3).Google Scholar
- Mawhood, Phillip (ed.). 1983. Local Government in the Third World: The Experience of Tropical Africa. Chichester: John Wiley and Sons.Google Scholar
- Nassimbeni, M.&Underwood, P. G. (2007). Two Societies: Duality, Contradictions and integration: A Progress Report on South Africa. The International Information&Library Review, 39: 166--173.Google Scholar
- Nielsen, P.&Aanestad, M. (2006). Control Devolution as Information Infrastructure Design Strategy: A case study of a content service platform for mobile phones in Norway, Journal of Information Technology, 21:185--194Google ScholarCross Ref
- Norris, P. (2001). Digital Divide: Civic Engagement, Information Poverty, and the Internet Worldwide. New York: Cambridge University Press. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Odhiambo, O. S. (2002). Productivity Improvement in the Public Service in Kenya: The Status of Reforms White Paper. Retrieved from http://www.productivitycentreofkenya.org/downloads/service.PDFGoogle Scholar
- Orlikowski, W. (2000). Using Technology and Constituting Structures: A Practice Lens for Studying Technology in Organizations. Organization Science, 11(4), 404--428. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Sayer, R. A. (1992). Method in social science: a realist approach. London: RoutledgeGoogle Scholar
- Stamp, P. (1986). Local government in Kenya: Ideology and political practice, 1895--1974. African Studies Review, 29(4), 17--42.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Waema, T. (2007, 10--13 December). E-local governance: A case study of an assessment of the effects of IFMIS on good governance. Paper presented at the 2007 ICEGOV 2007, Macao, China.Google Scholar
Index Terms
- Assessing alignment of an e-government project in the context of a developing country: a Heideggerian perspective
Recommendations
e-Government Adoptions in Developing Countries: A Sri Lankan Case Study
This paper presents a set of lessons learned from the adoption of an e-Government initiative in Sri Lanka. The case study presented in the paper is the e-Pensions project of the e-government initiative of the Government of Sri Lanka called "e-SriLanka". ...
Investigating Factors Inhibiting e-Government Adoption in Developing Countries: The Context of Pakistan
Researchers in the discipline of electronic government e-Government have historically presented several factors impeding the adoption and implementation of these systems. This paper is uniquely aimed at investigating the factors inhibiting e-Government ...
Open government and e-government: democratic challenges from a public value perspective
dg.o '11: Proceedings of the 12th Annual International Digital Government Research Conference: Digital Government Innovation in Challenging TimesWe consider open government (OG) within the context of e-government and its broader implications for the future of public administration. We argue that the current US Administration's Open Government Initiative blurs traditional distinctions between e-...
Comments