Authors:
Tony Dwi Susanto
and
Robert Goodwin
Affiliation:
School of Informatics and Engineering, The Flinders University, Australia
Keyword(s):
eGovernment, SMS, model, developing countries.
Related
Ontology
Subjects/Areas/Topics:
Enterprise Information Systems
;
Public Sector Applications of E-Commerce
;
Software Agents and Internet Computing
Abstract:
More than one-third of e-government initiatives in developing countries are total failures, half are partial failures and just one sixth are successful, showing that e-government development in developing countries has many problems. According to Heeks (2003), one of the failure factors of e-government in developing countries is unrealistic design. This paper will focus on this factor, particularly the mismatch of the technological design for accessing e-government systems and the skills and access to the technology of the citizens. Many developing countries face problems of lack of internet infrastructure, internet illiteracy and high internet costs. When governments implement web-based e-government models which require citizens to access the system by the Internet/web medium, the failure rate is high as few citizens can participate. There is technology gap between design and reality. In the same countries, mobile phones are widely used, are low in cost, and citizens are more famili
ar with the short message service application (SMS) than the Internet and Web. This paper proposes an SMS-based e-government system as a first step toward a future Internet/web-based e-government system in order to increase public (citizens and businesses) participation.
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