Further development of the domain of electronic (digital) democracy, which represents the result of implementation of electronic government and electronic governance, and implies the smart use of digital tools, substantially depends on how correctly is defined their conceptual dimensions and determined their functional purposes. E-government and E-governance (as terms and concepts), known as multidimensional, multifaceted and multidisciplinary phenomenon, are often treated as synonymous and used interchangeably in the academic literature or formal documents. Therefore it is becoming increasingly difficult to set a common definition (Roy, 2003) or clear existing conceptual ambiguity between them. There is no universally accepted definition of both abstractions. Such conceptual uncertainty has a negative impact on the development of digital democracy. The research objective of this article is to provide a deeper understanding of e-government and e-governance concepts through empirical studies and scatter the existing ambiguity in differences between these two concepts as this variety is not just questions of academic nuance. Based on a comparative analysis of e-government and e-governance definitions and conceptual meanings, this article offers an approach according to which e-government and e-governance represents two various but closely related and co-existing concepts. Furthermore, in the concluding section of the article, there are suggested recommendations regarding development a new grand term or concept in which both multidimensional conceptual visions will be combined.
Critical infrastructures (include the body of systems, networks, and assets that are so essential that their continued operation is required to ensure the security of a given nation, its economy, and the public's health and/or safety) are significant for the growth and development of our society, drastically affecting most of the everyday activities as the components of the critical infrastructures are increasingly vulnerable to a dangerous mix of traditional and nontraditional types of threats. Taking into account a significant role of Critical Infrastructure in national and international security maintenance, the article analyses and interprets the policy pillars of Critical Infrastructure concepts in the European Union, NATO as well as in G7 Countries. Particular attention is paid to determining the functional purpose, approaches to the classification of the main components of critical infrastructure (structural content) and characteristics of them. At the end of this article there is suggested a generalized view regarding to the essence of Critical Infrastructure, as well as attention is drawn to the fact that the adopted approaches generally take into account that Critical Infrastructure now rarely exist or function in isolation, rather, they are becoming more tightly coupled, interconnected and interacted that creates a complex multisystem - a system-of-systems.
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