Enhancing E‐government in Developing Countries: Managing Knowledge through Virtual Communities

Abstract

The article reviews the role of virtual communities as a knowledge management mechanism to support e‐government in developing countries. It explores the need for knowledge management in e‐government, identifies knowledge management technologies, and highlights the challenges for developing countries in the implementation of e‐government and especially knowledge management solutions. It further assesses the feasibility of this and other knowledge management mechanisms in light of the financial and technological limitations of developing countries. The article suggests that knowledge management is needed to facilitate information exchange and transaction processing with citizens, as well as to enable inter‐government knowledge sharing and integration. It concludes that simple knowledge management solutions, and especially virtual communities, will be the most appropriate for developing countries, while enterprise solutions are not suitable.

Developing Countries and ICT Initiatives: Lessons Learnt from Jordan's Experience

“…Countries' investment in IT based projects is becoming a big part of their budget expenditure. It is reported that the USA dedicated 13% (around billion $ 52) of its country's budget for IT spending compared with 3% for India and 2.4% for the UK in (Wagner, et al, 2003. More recent estimates indicate that eGovernment specifically is becoming a big business in the twenty-first century, amounting to over 1% of GDP in most industrialised nations, e.g.…”

Adoption of e-Government in Pakistan: Demand Perspective

“…The levels of e-Government in the Pakistan presents a systematic collection of experiences in which information technologies are used in support of governmental activities that are currently running in the group of countries that have been included in the guide: Bolivia, Chile, Colombia , Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Mexico, Guatemala and Costa Rica [50]. These models of experiences can serve as a basis for developing solutions in other countries, taking into account the importance of the use of ICTs to increase efficiency and effectiveness of public functions, facilitate government-citizen relationship and strengthen national strategies towards promotion of transparency and integrity [14].…”

Challenges in developing a cost-effective data warehouse for a tertiary institution in a developing country

“…According to a survey by Wagner et al [4] it was concluded that enterprise solutions are not suitable for developing countries. For these reasons it was decided to develop only the Student Data Mart for a start.…”

“…Wagner et al [4] stated that the budgets of developing countries are not even sufficient to pay for the Knowledge Management (KM) enabling IT architecture.…”