A tale of two continents: Contents of African and Asian e-government websites

Abebe Rorissa Department of Information

Studies, University at Albany, State University of New York,

Draper 113, 135 Western Avenue, Albany, NY 12222

arorissa@albany.edu

Mohammed Gharawi Department of Informatics, University

at Albany, State University of New York, 7A Harriman Campus, Suite

220, 1400 Washington Avenue, Albany, NY 12222

gharawima@yahoo.com

Dawit Demissie Department of Informatics, University

at Albany, State University of New York, 7A Harriman Campus, Suite

220, 1400 Washington Avenue, Albany, NY 12222

dd536519@albany.edu

Abstract The digital divide is often discussed from the

perspective of North and South and haves and have-nots. This is true of comparative studies on information and communication technologies (ICTs) and e-government. As a result, there is less research on the South-South digital divide and/or cross-national comparative studies that focus mainly on developing countries. This paper addresses this gap by comparing contents of African and Asian e-government service websites. Based on analyses of 582 African and 939 Asian e-government service websites, we present comparisons of the contents of websites from the two continents with respect to the type of site, type of service, features, online executable services, level/stage of development of e-government service, and e-government index. Overall, e-government service websites from the two continents have similar contents, save a few differences. 1. Introduction

Asia and Africa are the first and second largest and most populous continents, respectively, with about half of the world’s total land area and a combined population of over 70% of the world’s population. Both have come a long way with respect to the adoption and use of information and communication technologies (ICTs), especially Africa, more specifically Sub-Saharan Africa, which was once called a ‘technological desert’ [18].

Even though the rate of adoption and use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in both Asia and Africa is not as high as that of North America or Europe, there are more Internet users (about 657 million) in Asia alone than anywhere else. However, in both continents, the Internet penetration rates (as a percentage of the total population) remain among the lowest even though, over the last eight years, the number of Internet users grew by 1030.2% and 475% in Africa and Asia, respectively (See Table 1). This is impressive given the fact that most countries in Africa, and some in Asia, face a number of obstacles, such as lack of infrastructure, low literacy

rates, slow and low economic development, culture, and non-democratic forms of government.

Table 1: A profile of the two continents

Africa Asia World Population 975,330,899 3,780,819,792 6,710,029,070 Land area 11.7 million

sq mi (20.41%)

17.2 million sq mi (30%)

57.31 million sq mi

E-Readiness Index 0.2740 0.4467 0.4514

Web Measures index 0.1875 0.3725 0.3540

Human Capital index 0.5909 0.7916 0.7825

Infrastructure index 0.0529 0.1670 0.2104

E-Participation index 0.0952 0.2084 0.1909

Telecom infrastructure index

0.03211 0.179332 0.570928

Sources: (United Nations, 2007; Internet World Stats, 2009) [22, 11].

When it comes to information and communication technologies (ICTs) and e-government services, developing countries, such as those in Africa and Asia, face more than a mere dilemma. Their decisions whether to adopt ICTs and implement e-government services have economic, social, educational, and political implications and consequences, to mention a few. The reason why it is more than a mere dilemma is that if they decide to adopt and implement these ICTs and e-government services, to the extent that they invest their scarce resources, they will do so at the expense of other essential services and functions. If they decide not to do so, they miss the opportunity of becoming members of, and will be left behind by, the global information society (a society which makes extensive use of ICTs) and economy driven by technology more than ever. All signs point to the fact that all African and Asian countries have, in one form

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978-0-7695-3869-3/10 $26.00  © 2010 IEEE

or another, adopted the necessary ICTs and implemented e-government services.

While, for the last decade or so, e-government has been a global phenomenon, with the developed nations taking the lead and advancing the necessary technologies, procedures, and processes, developing countries are also making slow but steady progress. Developing countries have adopted and implemented e-government strategies and projects, mainly with the help of donor organizations, such as the World Bank and other donor organizations [20].

African and Asian governments are creating e-government websites, and some of them are going through the various stages of development of e-government services. However, the research community is not adequately studying the full state of the art of e-government services. Specifically, there is a shortage of baseline data. And the quest being undertaken by both local and national/federal governments to become full members of the information society, as well as to serve their citizens and businesses through e-government services, is not well documented. Detailed, comprehensive cross-national comparative studies are also lacking. As governments formulate policies for more effective and efficient e-government services, an understanding of the current situation, supported by baseline data, is crucial to success. Through this work, we hope to provide such baseline data and bridge the gap in the literature. 2. Comparative Research

Comparative research is a broad term that refers to the use of qualitative and quantitative research methods to compare a particular issue within two different contexts (e.g., countries or regions). It is one of the goals of comparative studies to seek universal theories and transferable practices by studying a defined topic in a variety of cultural settings, using consistent designs and methods, with explicit points of comparison and evaluation [10].

Cross-national comparative research may have many different aims [19, 21] that are not always easy to delimit, since there are many unique and salient pitfalls with which researchers must deal [6, 12]. However, cross-national comparative research can lead to a deeper understanding of critical issues of concern in different countries. It can open new and useful avenues for future research not previously pursued, help to sharpen the focus of analysis of the subject, and lead to the identification of gaps in knowledge [8].

In recent years, conducting cross-national comparative research has become one of the major directions of academic research in the e-government domain. A recent study, conducted by the Center of

Technology for Government (CTG) at the University at Albany, reveals that most of the international research on e-government falls into this category of comparative research [10].

The expectation when conducting comparative research in the area of e-government is to first gather data about an object, phenomena, or main government organizational process within different contexts. Then, comparative methods are used to test a theory across diverse settings, examine transnational processes across different contexts, learn from the policy initiatives of others, improve international understanding, identify marginalized cultural forms, challenge claims of universality, evaluate the scope and value of certain phenomena, or to achieve any goal among those discussed by many different researchers [15]. Hence, cross-national comparative research is rich in terms of its capabilities to add and generate new information and knowledge and to enrich the e-government literature.

In comparative research, the selection process of the countries or the regions considered has major implications on the findings, which will revolve around the similarities and/or differences of the entities being compared [15]. Accordingly, researchers have to seek an adequate level of similarities and differences among entities being considered for comparative research. We believe that both African and Asian countries have enough similar and different characteristics, both within the individual continents and between them.

Kohn [13] identifies four approaches to cross-national comparative research. Based on these approaches, researchers can deal with nations as objects of study, as contexts of study, as units of analysis, or as components of a larger international or transnational system. One of the four approaches to cross-national comparison is the nation as a component of a larger international or transnational system [13]. In this work, we chose this approach because of the nature of the continents as heterogeneous collections of nations/countries.

When it comes to analytical strategies, we also chose the aggregate level strategy because, once again, data on individual countries were aggregated to compare the two continents. Aggregate level strategies are based on either aggregate data or individual level data that have been aggregated at the country, regional, or continental level [7].

This work, in part, is motivated by the urgent need for cross-national comparative research that focuses on developing countries, regions, and continents. There is a lack of comparative studies that are detailed and comprehensive and that consider the South-South digital divide, rather than the North-South, as their main concern.

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3. Methods 3.1. Websites

Our work was based on content analyses of 582 African and 939 Asian e-government service websites. An initial list of e-government websites for each country in Africa and Asia was first compiled based on a list by Anzinger [3]. Additional relevant websites were searched by the authors until the searches produced no new websites. However, a comprehensive list of relevant website is elusive.

The search, review, and coding of the contents of the e-government websites were conducted during the period December 2008 to May 2009. Despite our efforts to have a comprehensive list, we can not claim to have included every possible relevant website in our list, due to the fact that some websites had dead URLs or the links were broken. In any case, a complete and comprehensive list would be difficult to compile.

3.2. Data analysis

A review of the comparative research literature indicates that four factors are related to the quality of the primary data being collected. These include: language, samples, timing of data collection, and the research instruments. The language factor was dealt with by relying on native speakers of the languages used on the websites. The native speakers assisted the authors during the search for relevant websites and coding. All the websites in French were translated to English using the Google translation facility (http://translate.google.com/translate_t?hl=en) before their contents were coded. In order to have balanced and relatively comprehensive samples of websites for each country, the authors utilized a number of access points, such as the entire web (using search engines and web directories) and individual countries’ portals.

We understand that the timing of data collection might affect the results of the comparative study [16]. Hence, the search for the relevant African and Asian websites was conducted between December 2008 and May 2009, while their contents were analyzed during the months of February to May 2009. Another factor considered was the consistency between research instruments and data analysis tools. The same procedures and coding dictionaries were utilized to conduct the analyses of contents of the e-government websites. In order to ascertain coding consistency/reliability, two graduate students (one for each continent), who were blind to the purposes of the study, were asked to code a random sample of about 20% (from each list) of the websites. The content analysis was conducted to identify the type of site or

body/institution responsible for its contents and services, type of services, features available on the website, number of executable services available through the website, the level of development of e-government services, as well as to compute e-government indexes for all the countries.

Percent agreement and Cohen’s Kappa [4], two popular measures of intercoder agreement, were used to measure the consistency or reliability of the coding between two of the authors, who coded all the websites, and the graduate students. The computed percent agreement and Cohen’s Kappa [4] values, presented in Table 2, were all above the often recommended minimum of 0.70 [17].

Table 2: Measures of the consistency or reliability of the coding Africa Asia

What was coded A B A B Type of website 0.87 0.74 0.88 0.83 Type of services available through the website 0.75 0.70 0.81 0.75

Type of features available on the website 0.75 0.70 0.74 0.71

Number of executable services available through the website

0.86 0.72 0.80 0.71

Level of development of e-government services 0.89 0.75 0.83 0.71

A. Percent agreement; B. Kappa

As part of our analysis of contents of the e-government websites, we used two frameworks, one each for determining the level of development of e-government services [1, 2, 14] and computing e-government indexes [23] (because they are widely cited) and, specifically, West’s [23] framework, which uses an objective set of procedures and is entirely based on contents of the websites. The four stages/levels of development of e-government services are: (1) publishing (web presence), (2) interacting, (3) transacting, and (4) transforming (integration). A website at the publishing level presents static information about the government agency; one at the interacting level allows the downloading of forms and provides search functions; a website at the transacting level allows the completion of an entire task online; and one at the transforming level is often a single-point portal and integrates all e-government services by a number of branches of government at all levels.

West’s [23] two-stage process of computing an e-government index first computes the index for each website and then averages them across all websites to compute a single index for each country. The computed e-government index value for both the

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website and the country is a number between 0 and 100. According to the framework, for each of the 18 features (publications, databases, audio clips, video clips, foreign language access, not having ads, not having premium fees, not having user fees, disability access, having privacy policies, security policies, allowing digital signatures on transactions, an option to pay via credit cards, email contact information, areas to post comments, option for email updates, option for website personalization, PDA accessibility), a website is assigned four points, which add up to a maximum total of 72 points. This total is added to the total number of online executable services (up to a maximum of 28 points). Equations (1) & (2) below describe West’s [23] framework. E-government index for site i, ei = 4fi + xi (1) Where,

fi = The number of features present on website i, 0 ≤ fi ≤ 18 xi = The number of online executable services on website i, 0 ≤ xi ≤ 28

E-government index for country j, n

eE

n

ii

j

∑== 1 (2)

Where, ei = E-government index for website i, 0 ≤ ei ≤ 100

n = Total number of websites for country j, n ≥ 1

For all comparisons of the two continents, with respect to the type of site, or body/institution

responsible for contents and services of the e-government websites, type of services, level of development of e-government services, and features available on the website, we used the chi-square test of independence. For all other comparisons, number of executable services available through the website and e-government index, and the other characteristics, whenever appropriate, two sample (unequal variance - heteroscedastic) t-tests were conducted.

4. Results 4.1. Type of Website

Overall, for both African and Asian countries, more federal/national government and federal/national government departments were responsible for contents of the e-government websites (58.93% and 63.84%, respectively), followed by embassies (16.15% and 8.2%, respectively), and local governments/local government departments (2.75% and 13.85%, respectively). The figure for local governments is not surprising given that this is a common trend in most countries around the world, even though the situation is different in some countries (e.g., the UK). The top-down approach to e-government service implementation, where more e-government services are first made available by national governments than local ones, seems to be the norm.

Figure 1: Percentage of African and Asian e-government service websites by the various bodies/institutions

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4.2 Type of service Part of the reason why governments at all levels

implement e-government services is to dispense their public duties and responsibilities and, at the same time, provide automated services that are effective and efficient. Hence, it should also be the goal of an e-government website to make the right mix of number, variety, and quality of services available to targeted groups of users. A large number of African

and Asian e-government service websites (57.19% and 53.91%, respectively) provide forms and other documents download services (Table 3). The fact that the other 13 different services are available on less than half of the websites could be one of the reasons why African and Asian countries are among the lowest ranked in terms of e-government services.

Table 3: The different types of services delivered through African and Asian e-government service

websites Type of service Africa (n=53) Asia (n=52)

% Mean SD % Mean SD Tax filing 2.94 0.491 1.23 2.25 0.558 1.26 Voter registration 1.13 0.189 0.65 1.08 0.269 0.66 Application and renewal of passport 0.68 0.113 0.58 1.01 0.250 0.76 Job listing and/or application 9.51 1.585 4.55 8.21 2.038 4.82 Visa application 0.45 0.075 0.33 1.86 0.462 1.24 Complaint submission 1.13 0.189 0.62 3.10 0.769 1.39 Application and renewal of driver’s license 0.23 0.038 0.19 1.47 0.365 0.95 Application and renewal of business licenses 0.45 0.075 0.27 2.40 0.596 1.21 Order reports and other documents 1.70 0.283 1.03 2.63 0.654 1.25 Grant application 0.00 0.000 0.00 0.31 0.077 0.44 Application for benefits 0.34 0.057 0.41 1.08 0.269 0.82 Document and trademark filing 0.00 0.000 0.00 3.18 0.788 2.02 Download forms and other documents 57.19 9.528 9.52 53.91 13.385 24.88 Others (e.g. webmail) 24.24 4.038 7.25 17.51 4.346 5.01

Total 100 16.660 22.82 100 24.827 40.96

Overall, results of a chi-square test of independence indicated that the two continents do differ significantly when it comes to the type of e-government service available on their e-government websites (χ2 = 89.606, df=13, p = 0.00). Two sample (unequal variance - heteroscedastic) t-test results also showed that the two continents differ significantly with respect to the mean number of websites that provide the following services: visa application (t(103)= 2.142, p= 0.035), complaint submission (t(103)= 2.720, p= 0.008), application and renewal of driver’s license (t(103)= 2.403, p= 0.018), application and renewal of business licenses (t(103)=2.975, p=0.004), and document and trademark filing (t(103)= 2.752, p= 0.007). In all cases, more Asian e-government service websites provide the services than African e-government service websites.

4.3. Features available

In addition to the number of online executable services available on e-government service websites, the number of features present on the websites is often used in some of the frameworks and procedures

for computing e-government indexes. For African and Asian e-government websites, ‘not having premium fees’, ‘not having user fees’, and ‘not having ads’ account for 52.51% and 52.63%, respectively, of the total number of features. The fact that audio and video clips do not feature prominently on African and Asian e-government service websites is surprising and a disadvantage to the users because of the low literacy rates in most countries on the continents. Audio and video clips could also aid the countries in their efforts to promote their tourism potential and industry, upon which the economies of some of the countries rely.

The number of the various types of features available on African and Asian e-government service websites did differ significantly (χ2 = 346.749, df=17, p=0.00). We conducted two sample (unequal variance) t-tests to see if websites from the two continents differed with respect to individual features. Results of the t-tests showed that African and Asian e-government websites are significantly different with respect to the availability of databases (t(103)= 3.636, p=0.000), foreign language access (t(103)= 2.925, p=0.004), security policies (t(103)=

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2.862, p=0.005), and option for email updates (t(103)= 2.145, p=0.034). While databases, foreign language access, and security policies were made

available on more Asian websites, African e-government service websites provided more options for email updates.

Table 4: Number of the different types of features available on African and Asian e-government

service websites Features Africa (n=53) Asia (n=52)

% Mean SD % Mean SD Publications 13.08 7.34 9.03 8.90 8.88 15.32 Databases 1.04 0.60 1.13 6.66 6.65 11.55 Audio clips 0.92 0.51 1.38 0.69 0.69 0.83 Video clips 1.10 0.62 1.51 0.83 0.83 1.35 Foreign language access 7.54 4.19 5.60 9.30 9.29 11.16 Not having ads 17.34 9.72 11.14 17.41 17.38 25.66 Not having premium fees 17.65 9.91 11.43 17.80 17.77 26.47 Not having user fees 17.52 9.83 11.41 17.51 17.48 26.65 Disability access 0.06 0.04 0.19 0.44 0.44 2.24 Having privacy policies 0.98 0.53 2.40 1.10 1.10 2.67 Security policies 0.03 0.02 0.14 1.10 1.10 2.65 Allowing digital signatures on transactions 0.03 0.02 0.14 0.10 0.10 0.36 An option to pay via credit cards 1.35 0.72 1.06 0.56 0.56 0.80 Email contact information 15.13 8.58 10.91 14.93 14.90 26.63 Areas to post comments 3.52 1.96 5.08 1.89 1.88 3.99 Option for email updates 2.57 1.40 3.29 0.40 0.40 0.50 Option for website personalization 0.06 0.04 0.19 0.08 0.08 0.34 PDA accessibility 0.06 0.04 0.19 0.31 0.31 1.42

Total 100 56.06 69.27 100 99.83 147.34 4.4. Online executable services

On top of being one of the features that determines the level of development of e-government services, the number of online executable services present on an e-government website is one of two components used in computing a country’s e-government index [23]. Hence, it is obviously better for both the government and users of e-government service websites to have services that do not require a trip to the various government offices. Online executable services provide such a convenience and save time and resources for both the service providers (governments at all levels) and users (citizens). E-government service websites for Asian governments seem to have a superior number of such services than those for African governments. Overall, Asian e-government service websites had an average of 1.80 online executable services per website compared to just 0.62 online executable services per website for African e-government service websites.

T-test results also revealed that the average number of online executable services (per country) present on African e-government websites were significantly lower (M = 6.79, SD = 21.09) than the

average number of online executable services present on African e-government websites (M = 32.42, SD = 50.78), t(103) = 3.317, p = 0.001. African countries were more variable when it comes to the number of online executable services available through their e-government service websites (coefficient of variation, CV=310.6 %) than Asian countries (CV= 156.63). 4.5. Level/Stage of development of e-government services

A number of researchers agree that there are about four stages/levels of development of e-government services [1, 2, 14]. E-government websites at the lowest level (publishing) do not provide the same level of services, efficiency, and effectiveness as those at the highest level (transforming/integration), which are usually portals that serve as one-stop shops for e-government services by a number of branches of government at all levels. A portal combines horizontal integration (of different functions and services) and vertical integration (of local systems to higher-level systems and local governments to state and federal governments), as well as saving the user’s time, energy, effort, and other resources.

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Figure 2: Percentage of African and Asian e-government websites at the four levels of e-

government development

Surprisingly enough, the proportions of African and Asian e-government service websites at the four stages/levels of development did not differ significantly (χ2 = 2.466, df=3, p=0.482). Follow up t-tests also showed that the average number of African and Asian e-government service websites at the four stages/levels of development did not differ significantly (1.Publishing: t(103) = 1.656, p=0.101; 2.Interacting: t(103) = 1.437, p=0.154; 3.Transacting: t(103) = 1.275, p=0.205; 4.Transforming/Integrating: t(103) = 1.724, p=0.088). Moreover, roughly half of African (52.92%) and Asian (49.63%) e-government service websites are at the first stage/level while almost all of them (Africa: 95.53%; Asia: 94.36%) are either at the first (publishing or web presence) or second (interacting) stages/levels. This could be due to the fact that a significant number of African and Asian e-government service websites have been implemented fairly recently.

4.6. E-government index

Benchmarking and ranking of countries on the basis of a number of variables/characteristics are common. One of these is the e-government index and ranking by international institutions, such as the United Nations (UN), and other researchers. We used one of the widely used frameworks [23] and computed the e-government index for each African and Asian country, then averaged over all countries to produce a single index for the two continents. (Table 5).

Table 5: E-government index values for Africa and Asia

Continent Min. Max M SD Africa 14.00 32.00 22.34 3.35

Asia 14.00 34.73 23.40 4.39

West’s [23] framework for computing e-

government index for a country first computes the index for each e-government website based on the numbers of features and online executable services (please see equations 1 and 2 above). The e-government indexes for all websites for a country are then averaged to obtain the country’s index. In order to conduct a t-test to see if the average e-government indexes for the two continents differ significantly, we computed the mean index for each continent (Table 5). T-test results revealed that the two continents did not differ significantly with respect to their average e-government index (t(103)= 1.379, p=0.171). 5. Summary and future work

5.1. Summary of results

Our goal for this work was to conduct a cross-national comparison of the two continents, Africa and Asia, with respect to their e-government profiles, based on analyses of contents of each country’s e-government service websites, and to fill the gap in the literature of comparative studies of e-government services, which often focus on the North-North divide rather than the South-South divide. We conducted a comprehensive online search for e-government service websites of 53 African and 52 Asian countries and found 582 and 939 relevant sites, respectively. Content analysis of the contents of the websites, chi-square analysis of independence, and unpaired (two sample, heteroscedastic) t-tests were conducted to aid our comparison of the continents.

The general picture that was revealed by our results is that while the two continents have made some progress in terms of building the necessary

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infrastructure, as well as developing and implementing e-government services, they have a long way to go before they realize and utilize the full potential of e-government. While African and Asian e-government service websites differ with respect to the type of body/institution responsible for their contents, type of service available, features present, and number of online executable services, they were not significantly different when it came to their level/stage of development of e-government services and average e-government index. What is more, follow up t-tests showed that the two continents are more alike with respect to contents of their e-government service websites.

There seems to be homogeneity among the countries, both within and between the two continents, with regards to most of the contents of their e-government service websites. This could be explained using institutional theory, also suggested by [9], with its three types of pressures, namely coercive, normative, and mimetic pressure [5]. Coercive pressures are often exercised on institutions by other institutions on which they are dependent. We believe that when it comes to e-government services, the various rankings by the United Nations and the World Bank may have some influence, especially on developing countries that have to comply with, and maintain certain levels of progress, in order to obtain grants for their e-government related initiatives.

On the other hand, mimetic pressures emanate from operating under a high level of uncertainty and, according to [5], when institutions have goals that are unclear and technologies are poorly understood, the institutions under pressure tend to mimic other institutions. It may be that this type of pressure applies more to developing countries because they tend to lack well-trained personnel, who are crucial to the long-term success of the implementation of ICTs and e-government services. Reliance on the best practices to implement ICTs and e-government’s services could also be a direct result of mimetic pressures. Finally, normative pressures are the results of the actors’ knowledge of the way organizations organize themselves [5]. This type of pressure may lead to a high level of similarities between contents of e-government service websites' contents, because professionals and decision makers tend to implement ideas they came across at conferences and other events.

Most governments around the world have launched e-government initiatives and dedicated huge amounts of resources to ensure the success of these initiatives. However, the similarities that exist between contents of e-government websites for

different countries, regions, and even continents, in the services provided through these websites, could be a result of all three types of pressures, albeit at various levels/degrees. Therefore, it is not clear whether efforts of individual countries toward improving the efficiency, effectiveness, transparency, and accountability of governments are partial outcomes of conforming to isomorphic tendencies, such as keeping up with other governments and conforming with global e-government standards and rankings, such as those by the United Nations and the World Bank, or not.

Information and communication technologies (ICTs), specifically e-government, seem to be equal opportunity technologies, which all kinds of institutions, such as governments, can take advantage of. As West [24] noted: “nondemocratic systems are as likely as democracies to perform well on new technology initiatives. Some authoritarian countries have been successful with digital government because they have top-down political structures and are able to overcome bureaucratic and political intransigence” (p. 21). There is a mix of countries on both continents that are democracies and others that are not. There are also authoritarian governments in both Africa and Asia. Despite all that, African and Asian countries, for the most part, made strides, albeit uneven ones, with respect to e-government service adoption and implementation. 5.2. Future work

Our work, at the very least, provides a baseline data and grounding upon which future comparative and e-government benchmarking studies could build on. Curtin (2006) emphasized the importance of creating rich e-government profiles for individual nations. We believe that in order to make those profiles richer, data and analyses on cross-national comparisons, such as ours, are essential. E-government researchers need to keep this in mind, because a deeper insight into why, how, and the process by which individual countries are implementing their e-government initiatives, is crucial to understanding the nature of adoption and implementation of e-government services. This will provide the foundations for valid cross-national comparative studies.

Finally, we understand that our work is not without limitations. For instance, although a single run of analysis of e-government websites, whose contents are dynamic rather than static, provides a picture, a longitudinal analysis conducted over a longer period of time will present a better picture. Hence, future researchers need to consider undertaking such longitudinal studies.

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[9] Hassan, S., & Gil-García, J. R. (2008). Institutional theory and e-government research. In Handbook of Research on Public Information Technology. Hershey, PA: Idea Group Inc.

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Proceedings of the 43rd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences - 2010