Conceptualizing Electronic Governance Education

Abstract

Responding to the issues of complexity, relevance, cost and risk of Electronic Governance (EGOV), we witness a specialization of the roles responsible for EGOV development and operation, professionalization of the personnel playing such roles, and utilization of the EGOV services and information to fulfill citizen needs. In order to build competencies required by such (managerial, professional, technician and user) roles, education becomes a key success factor, and a growing variety of EGOV learning opportunities emerges. However, lacking conceptual underpinnings for EGOV education, the discovery, analysis and integration of such opportunities is difficult. To address this need, the paper develops a theoretical construct for EGOV education; applies six measures to this construct: who -learners, why -roles, what -competencies, howprograms, where -schools, and when -prerequisites; and validates it through a landscaping exercise focusing on EGOV university programs.

Competency Requirements for Transformational E-Government

“…Only a few academic articles addressing e-government-related competencies or skills exist (e.g. [31], [32], [33], [17]), and even these often lack the focus of this article. Other contributions elaborate on organizational capabilities [34] in contrast to individual competencies; do not explicitly address e-government but rather ICT in general [35], [36]; or focus on specific competencies or attitudinal aspects [37] without integrating these into a holistic approach to e-government competencies [11].…”

“…In a conceptual model for e-government education, [31] address inter alia the issue of what egovernment competencies actually are. They relate this question to the eight different stakeholder groups which they identify, of which the role of the project manager is the focus in this article.…”

“…Besides improving the detail of the competency model, it also needs to be broadened to cover other roles involved in e-government. The conceptual model developed by [31] can serve as a framework for this undertaking. Accordingly, research questions which remain open include not only which competencies are relevant for the different roles involved in e-government (what and who questions).…”

E-government education at the public administration departments in Turkey

“…A number of reasons lie behind this withdrawal from such activities: service providers may see education and training services as extra costs that should be avoided, due to the complex and multidimensional nature of egovernment topics, difficulties arise when designing teaching programs, training programs for public employees may have limited time and reach a limited number of staff, or governments may be unwilling to pay for educational costs of large populations [6]. However as Janowski argues, especially the political leaders, government leaders, project managers, management staff, technical staff, service staff, businesses, citizens should have some training on e-government [9]. Thus, the role of higher education institutions as well as offering courses to the public becomes more important, since they have an opportunity to reach various types of recipients.…”

Exit the E-government Ivory Tower: A Training Strategy -- A Case Study from Austria

“…Knowledgeable civil servants are the key to successful e-government, so implementing an e-government strategy requires a training plan that takes their skills, their needs and their working environment into consideration [2][3] [4], but also reaches all the employees of public administrations. The e-government strategy therefore needs to be accompanied not only by the dissemination of the egovernment tools and knowledge to public authorities and their staff, but a nation-wide training programme that enables them to use them.…”