What is e-governance? Discuss the issues in e-governance applications and the digital divide.
E-Governance
- It is a part of e-Government. E-Governance is dealing with all regulations and policies to control the services provided by the e-Government. However, the E-Government is an electronic government, which should be regulated by the E-Governance.
- Moreover, e-Governance refers to the utilization of information and communication technology (ICT) for providing government services, disseminating information, communication operations with the general public.
Issues in the e-governance application
1)Technology Issues
- Three basic elements
b) application layer
c) integration technology
- The application layer is made up of software and services that either extend the site's performance or make it easier to manage.
- The integration layer is to use the Internet to tie together practically all the traditional disciplines associated with various services provided by the website.
a) Infrastructure layer
a) Carrier
- Basic element by which site is connected to the internet.
- ISPs provide internet connection and bandwidth required for the sites.
b)Hosting center
- "specially designed rooms for equipment. E-governance also looking for specially designed rooms that are cost-effective and efficient.
c) Three more layers of infrastructure are needed for the better performance of the web sites load balancing, security layer, and caching.
b) Basic Application Layer
- Content management system makes it easy to create and organize web content.
- The personalization system stores the visitor/ citizen profile while they visit the site.
- The transaction engine allows the visitor to configure his/her request and facilitates to pay by credit card or other means.
- Site analysis system stores information such as how many visitors came in every month.
- The campaign management system goes beyond the site analysis and helps to launch certain marketing efforts.
- The customer support system gives a helping hand to a visitor who has trouble using a site.
c) Integration technology
- Application integration enables the user to talk with the "legacy" system.
- Sales integration collects all sales data in various government centers in real-time and provides remarkable opportunities to forecast and track the visitors.
- Once the transactions are completed over the web, the transaction details are to be plugged into the accounting system. This is facilitated by the financial system
2) Application software
- The three-step method is proposed
- Where are we
- Where we want to go
- How do we get there
3) Management of Change-related Issues
- Important to investigate how the business of government and the nature of governance itself changes in the digital networking economy.
- Funding issues
Digital Divide
The digital divide refers to the gap in the opportunity between those who have access to the Internet and those who do not. Those who do not have access to the Internet will be unable to benefit from e-government services.
Thus, the digital divide is "the gap between those with access to computers and the internet and those without". Therefore not all people have suitable access to computers and the Internet, whether due to a lack of income, necessary skills, or internet access. It recommended that making computers available in public locations, such as libraries, post offices, and shopping centers could help in addressing the digital divide. IT points out that the lack of Internet access among the society was considered the most important barrier to e-government development.
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