Content area
Full Text
ABSTRACT
E-government systems world are employed all over the world in an attempt to utilize information and communications technology (ICT) to improve government services provided to a range of stakeholders. In employing these systems, governments aim to become more accessible, effective, efficient, and accountable to their citizens. To improve the quality of service delivery to the public, government institutions have to cooperate and manage the shared resources and information flows. The aim of this paper is to analyse one of the established e-government stage models, such as the United Kingdom, and to identify possible opportunities to adopt them for use in the regional governments of developing countries. The study revealed that the analysed model cannot be adopted for use in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) due to various critical issues relating to ICT infrastructure, e-readiness, legal framework, cultural attitude, education level, political process, and others.
Keywords: E-Government, Stage Model, KRI, KRG, Critical Issues, Regional Government
1. INTRODUCTION
In the last decade of the 20th century, the world observed rapid development in ICT that exceeded all expectations, and hence vast change in political freedom, economic and global social change. The globalization concept appeared and enlarged dominance of the Internet which exploded due to the advent of the World Wide Web. Within a short period of time, the concept of globalization intersected with the facilities of the Internet, altered the world and brought it into small, global village. The rapid development of Internet and other digital media encouraged practitioners, consultants, and government authorities to employ ICT in public service provision to their citizens. Consequently, a new notion called electronic government (e-government) emerged, referring to the use of Internet and other digital media to deliver information and services to citizens1. E-government system should change the form to focus on both technology and more on the citizen-centred based approach and perhaps the processes involved in decision making. The technology alone cannot help to develop e-government system, and requires citizen's contribution to reduce the gap between design and reality2. E-government is predicted to play a significant role in the delivery of government services and governance in the future, particularly in developing countries. These developments engendered numerous and complex technological, political, societal, economical, and cultural challenges3. These challenges should...