e-Government in Asia:Origins, Politics, Impacts, Geographies

Barney Warf

• Publisher: Chandos Publishing
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9780081008737
• eBook ISBN: 9780081008997
• Topic: Computer Science
• Subtopic: Development Economics
• Index: Computer Science

E-Government in Asia offers a thorough examination of e-governance in Asia, including the uses of the Internet to mediate interactions between Asian governments and their citizens. The book examines how the Internet is reshaping these interactions in the region and summarizes the nature of e-government, the growth of the Internet in Asia, issues of the digital divide, and how the Internet is affecting the ways in which public services are provided, how Asians acquire information, and other issues. - Offers essential reading for many social science courses on Asia, including geography, political science, public administration, as well as courses on the social impacts of technology, notably the Internet - Examines issues of e-governance, which loom large in significant Asian economies, including China - Examines how e-governance in Asia is shaped by regional geographies - Explores how the Internet is affecting the ways in which public services are provided and how Asians acquire information

1

Introduction

Abstract

This chapter offers and overview of electronic government, or e-government, the various forms it assumes, and its impacts. Second, it introduces several major theoretical perspectives on this issue, including approaches that emphasize stages and the technology acceptance model. It notes the relations between e-government and digital divides, then points to some major obstacles to the adoption of e-government. It unveils the relations between e-government and internet censorship. Finally, it contextualizes e-government in Asia by noting the region's considerable diversity, rapid economic growth, and varying rates of internet use, using several maps.

Keywords

Asia; e-government; technology acceptance model; censorship; digital divides

Today, more people are more connected technologically to one another than at any other time in human existence. For the bulk of the world’s people, the Internet, mobile phones, text messaging, and various other forms of digital social media such as Facebook have become thoroughly woven into the routines and rhythms of daily life (Kellerman, 2002; Zook, 2005). The extremely rapid growth of the Internet—now used by 49% of the world’s population—has unleashed enormous changes in how the planet’s netizens (Internet users) communicate, are entertained, shop, obtain information, and interact. For many users these uses extend well beyond e-mail to include bill payments, stock trading, “e-tail” shopping, digital gambling, video games, telephony (e.g., Voice over Internet Protocol), hotel and airline reservations, chat rooms, downloading television programs, digital music, and pornography, as well as popular sites and services such as YouTube, Facebook, and Google. In all these ways, and more, cyberspace offers profound real and potential effects on social relations, everyday life, culture, politics, and other social activities. Indeed, for rapidly rising numbers of people around the world, the “real” and the virtual have become so deeply shot through with one another that simple dichotomies like online/offline fail to do justice to the degree to which these worlds are interpenetrated. In this light, access to cyberspace is no longer a luxury, but a necessity. As its applications have multiplied, the Internet is having enormous impacts across the globe, including interpersonal interactions and everyday life, identity formation, retail trade and commerce, and the structure and form of cities, in the process generating round upon round of non-Euclidean geometries in the context of a massive global wave of time–space compression.

The Internet has also changed how governments interact with their citizens. Indeed, it would be astonishing if, given how widespread the Internet has become, states did not utilize it in some form or another. Electronic government, or e-government, may be defined simply as the use of web-based applications, to enhance access government services and deliver them more efficiently. Definitions of e-government vary (Yildiz, 2007), but all involve the use of the Internet to deliver government information and services, change administrative procedures, and improve citizen input and participation. Web 2.0, which allows users to interact with government bureaucracies rather than just passively receive information, has expedited this process considerably. Burn and Robins (2003, p. 26) argue “eGovernment is not just about putting forms and services online. It provides the opportunity to rethink how the government provides services and how it links them in a way that is tailored to the users’ needs.” Good e-government is citizen-centric and enhances transparency and accountability, although not all e-government is good. The topic has been extensively scrutinized by scholars (for a review, see Rocheleau, 2007). However, the bulk of such work concentrates on e-government in economically developed countries, while developing ones have been largely overlooked (Basu, 2004). This silence is important, as e-government has become increasingly widespread not only in the economically developed world but also in developing countries as well.

This book examines e-government in Asia (here defined to exclude the Middle East), including its Central, South, East, and Southeast components. It has two primary goals: first, it seeks to illustrate that e-government has made steady gains throughout the region and is reshaping societies and everyday lives. Second, it demonstrates that social and spatial contexts matter: e-government preparedness, implementation, policies, and effects are highly uneven among (and often within) Asian countries. In short, e-government cannot be understood without geography. The volume seeks to achieve these goals through a series of reasonably detailed case studies of every country on the Asian continent, examining the origins of e-government (often legislative in nature), the telecommunications infrastructure involved (notably Internet penetration and broadband), and the major e-government programs initiated and their effects. It also examines the digital divide in each nation and steps taken to rectify it. Finally, it also summarizes Internet censorship in each state, for that too is part of how governments and their citizens interact.

1.1. E-government forms and consequences: an overview

E-government reshapes both how state agencies interact with one another and how they interact with the public at large, and is thus common to many “reinventing government” discourses. There are many types and levels of e-government, ranging from simple one-way delivery of information, in which citizens are passive consumers, to integration that allows user input and citizen feedback. Typically, e-government is divided into three forms: government-to-business (G2B), government-to-government (G2G), and government-to-citizens (G2C) (Fountain, 2001a,b). G2B e-government includes digital calls for contract proposals; submissions of bids, bills, and payments; and Internet management of supply chains. Among other things, G2G e-government enhances interactions among different government offices and agencies such as through paperless flows of information. These changes are frequently alleged to increase citizen accessibility, improve efficiency, create synergies, and generate economies of scale in the delivery of government services. E-government may also encourage a democratization of public bureaucracies by moving them from classic hierarchical forms of control to more horizontal, collaborative models (Ho, 2002; Ndou, 2004). The most common type is G2C e-government, which is used, inter alia, for the digital collection of taxes; electronic voting; payment of utility bills, fines, and dues; applications for public assistance, permits, and licenses; online registration of companies and automobiles; and access to census and other public data; it may include e-voting. Online access facilitates acquisition of information, reduces uncertainty, and reduces trips to and waiting times in government offices. In very remote rural areas, e-government such as distance education or telemedicine offers advantages to people who may not receive these services at all. Local governments often use the Internet to entice tourists and foreign investors; interactive municipal sites give residents access to information about schools, libraries, bus schedules, and hospitals. By making public records more open, e-government improves transparency and helps to galvanize objections to arbitrary state actions.

There are many alleged benefits of e-government. If it improves the delivery of public services, it may raise satisfaction with existing administrations; conversely, in countries plagued by chronic corruption, the increased efficiency resulting from e-government may minimize the growth of public employment and increase trust in government. Electronic payment of dues and fines limits the opportunities for graft, while digital hotlines allow citizens a voice in the circles of governance. Concerns over e-government include the potential invasions of privacy that it invites, local and national security (i.e., hacking of government files), and the inequality of access generated by digital divides (about which we see later) (Belanger and Carter, 2008).

A common view of e-governance, typically rooted in a technologically determinist perspective, naively implies that its impacts are so similar among countries that there is a generic, universal model of e-government that can be applied everywhere identically (e.g., Grant and Chau, 2005). Such a view divorces the Internet and its consequences from local political, cultural, and economic contexts. More sophisticated understandings focus on the different institutional and political environments in which e-government is adopted, thus acknowledging that there are bound to be significant differences in impacts. As noted, one goal of this project is to emphasize that even in the ostensibly placeless world of the Internet, place still matters; i.e., that profound geographical variations exist in the levels of adoption of e-government among (and within) countries and their consequences.

E-government consists of a series of diverse practices that vary over time and space in response to varying political climates and institutional contexts. Chadwick and May (2003) describe three models of e-government—managerial, consultative, and participatory—drawn from the experiences of the US and the European Union. Managerial e-government maximizes the speed and efficiency of delivery of government services to citizens. The consultative model incorporates citizen input in various ways, so that information technologies are seen as inherently democratizing (e.g., Internet voting, polling, referenda, and electronic conferences with officials). Finally, the participatory model includes input from nonstate actors, including corporations and nongovernmental organizations. These views constitute a continuum of social access in which the consultative and participatory models are the most socially inclusive forms.

In similar fashion, Layne and Lee (2001) offered a well-received conception of developmental stages of e-government, ranging from simple online presence (i.e., a webpage); interfaces that allow citizen access to data and services; vertical integration in which citizens can actively participate (e.g., for license applications); and horizontal integration, in which one or a few centralized websites offer a broad range of government functions. Empirical assessments of e-government initiatives typically focus on the quality of websites, including criteria such as user-friendliness, missing links, readability, the publications and data displayed, contact information for public officials, number of languages in which content is provided, sound and video clips, ability to use credit cards and digital signatures, security and privacy policies, and opportunities for citizen feedback.

Important components to the successful implementation of e-government include decisive leadership, cooperation by bureaucrats, sufficient funding of e-government initiatives, clear lines of responsibility and accountability, explicit metrics of success or failure, and effective mechanisms for feedback (Rose and Grant, 2010). Some authors conceptualize this in terms of multiple stakeholders and their interests. Thus, e-government is as much an administrative process as a technological one. These comments serve to illustrate that the adoption of e-government is highly contingent and path-dependent, and is shaped by a variety of cultural, legal, and political forces. The highly political nature of e-government implementation and its effects imply that its usage changes over time and space, and that its consequences are inevitably geographically differentiated.

1.1.1. Theorizing e-government

Understanding e-government conceptually involves a journey into the immense thicket of literature concerning the changing nature of the state in late capitalism. An enormous body of work has traced the rise of neoliberalism, mounting global competitiveness, the emasculation of the welfare state, and their linkages to contemporary globalization and international trade, and needs not be recapitulated here. The influential perspective of Castells (1996, 1997) distinguished earlier information societies, in which productivity was derived from access to energy and the manipulation of materials, from later informational societies that emerged in the late 20th century, in which productivity is derived primarily from knowledge and information. In his reading, the time–space compression of postmodernism was manifested in the global “space of flows,” including the three “layers” of transportation and communication infrastructure, the cities or nodes that occupy strategic locations within these, and the social spaces occupied by the global managerial class. Suffice it to say that it is no accident or coincidence that e-government arose on the heels of the microelectronics revolution of the late 20th century, and that it represents part of a broader process by which capitalism has brought the state to heel, including enormous pressures to deregulate, downsize, reduce employment, and improve efficiency.

In the developing world, international donors and actors such as the World Bank, IMF, and USAID have increasingly turned to e-government as a means to promote “good governance.” Combatting corruption is high on the list of expectations for its adoption and implementation. Jane Fountain’s (2001a) Building the Virtual State: Information Technology and Institutional Change has been widely acclaimed for its neoinstitutional analysis of the use of information technology, including virtual agencies and single portals through which citizens can access numerous public services. This last model has been widely adopted in Asia, as shall soon ...

Table of contents

• Cover image
• Title page
• Table of Contents
• Series Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Acknowledgment
• List of Figures and Tables
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Japan and Korea
• 3. China
• 4. Southeast Asia
• 5. South Asia
• 6. Central Asia
• 7. Conclusions
• References
• Index