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Explaining the eGovernment paradox: an analysis of two decades of evidence from scientific literature and practice on barriers to eGovernment

Published: 22 October 2012 Publication History

Abstract

Despite the plethora of research, policy analysis and practice works produced in the last two decades for explaining the potential of eGovernment and its impact on society, there is still very limited evidence that the promised productivity gains have been achieved. To date, its potential remains hypothetical. This eGovernment paradox contrasts the level of investments with the little impact produced and/or demonstrated so far. In this paper we attempt to provide an interpretation of this paradox, looking specifically at the sharp mismatch between the supply of online public services (deployment) and their usage (adoption), which we define as the "Adoption paradox". The paper on the bases of a systematic review of the adoption barriers uncovered by almost twenty years of scientific and practitioner-generated analysis and evidence, rises the conclusions that, in most mature governments, the key barriers to real take up of eGovernment are those related to the lack of both a structured policy evaluation process and an effective stakeholders' engagement. The paper suggests that the critical success factor for eGovernment adoption is a transparent and trustworthy policy decision making process and that its key prerequisite is the definition and implementation of a well organized and fully participatory evaluation framework.

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  1. Explaining the eGovernment paradox: an analysis of two decades of evidence from scientific literature and practice on barriers to eGovernment

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        cover image ACM Other conferences
        ICEGOV '12: Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Theory and Practice of Electronic Governance
        October 2012
        547 pages
        ISBN:9781450312004
        DOI:10.1145/2463728
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        Published: 22 October 2012

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        Author Tags

        1. barriers
        2. digital society
        3. drivers
        4. eGovernment adoption
        5. evaluation
        6. participation
        7. policy making
        8. public value
        9. trust

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        • Macao Foundation, Macao SAR Govt
        • University at Albany - State University of New York

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        ICEGOV '12 Paper Acceptance Rate 23 of 98 submissions, 23%;
        Overall Acceptance Rate 350 of 865 submissions, 40%

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        • (2021)Pros and Cons of Artificial Intelligence—Lessons From E-Government Services in the COVID-19 Pandemic2021 2nd International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Education (ICAIE)10.1109/ICAIE53562.2021.00042(167-173)Online publication date: Jun-2021
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        • (2016)The e-government paradox: Is it real and how can it be resolved?2016 IST-Africa Week Conference10.1109/ISTAFRICA.2016.7530579(1-9)Online publication date: May-2016
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