E-government implementation in Zambia: contributing factors

Abstract

Most developing countries in Africa are at the emerging stage of e-government development and lag far behind developed nations despite having had national e-government strategies in place for a considerable period of time. This research argues that although Zambia has recognised the importance of e-government through their national ICT policy as a means to increase opportunities for wealth and create active participation in poverty reduction, the benefits of e-government are yet to be realised. The research explores the reality of egovernment implementation in Zambia from the government's perspective by identifying the challenges of e-government using survey research that combines both qualitative and quantitative data. The authors found that whilst challenges such as environmental issues, leadership, change management, human capital, funding and infrastructure are critical to the successful implementation of e-government in Zambia, there is little evidence to suggest that effort is being applied to counteract these challenges. The lack of context specific egovernment programs since the approval of the national ICT policy in 2005 and the absence of marketing to promote e-government amongst policy-makers and government workers have rendered minimal awareness on the importance and value of e-government to Zambia.

What Facilitates the Delivery of Citizen-Centric EGovernment Services in Developing Countries: Model Development and Validation Through Structural Equation Modeling

“…The supply-side includes factors related to the source of public services (government and its partners) at all levels local, state or national [20]. In practice, the supply-side includes factors that affect the government institutions to deliver information and egovernment services [5] [21]. Among these factors highlight the IT infrastructure, financial resources, human resources and change management.…”

A Critical Analysis of e-Government in Zambia

“…This suggests that the key issue around the adoption and success of e-government in Zambia is not a lack of policy or priority per se, but rather a lack of effective and coordinated implementation of existing policies. The model proposed by Weerakkody et al (2007) (Figure 1) offers an implementation framework for e-government, which addresses many of the issues that emerged from the review. However, to achieve effective and coordinated policy implementation, the process must be supported by two essential elements: policy re-formulation and policy harmonisation.…”

“…To succeed, e-government must become a key performance area (KPA) for all three spheres of government and should not be relegated to being donor-funded projects. In particular, leadership should guide the process of selecting low-risk, high-value and high-risk, high-value projects (Weerakkody et al, 2007) and ensuring their success based on an understanding of internal and external success factors.…”

“…Weerakkody, Dwivedi, Brooks, Williams & Mwange (2007) studied the extent of implementation of e-government in Zambia. Their survey explored the perceptions of government officials with respect to e-government implementation challenges in eight categories (Weerakkody et al, 2007): technological infrastructure; partnership and collaboration; strategy; institutional and environmental issues; human capital development; change management; leadership roles; and legal frameworks. Based on their analysis, they propose a framework for e-government implementation that emphasises the relationship between risk and value ( Figure 1).…”

A Replicated Assessment of the Critical Success Factors for the Adoption of Mobile Government Services : The Case of Jordan

“…Hence, the reduction of operational costs and physical infrastructure [2], increase the internal efficiency of the government [12], gain the loyalty and satisfaction of stakeholders [11], and most importantly, improve the quality of public services [9], all of these among the main advantages of e-government services that are delivered via mobile devices. These services may also have enabled governments around the world to serve, as well as to reach faster and on time to a greater number of stakeholders (citizens and others) without any additional cost, or in most cases, the cost may be neglected, since the penetration of mobile devices has become higher than the Internet penetration in most developed and developing countries [4,7,9,15].…”