Pierre Bakunzibake, Åke Grönlund, Gunnar O. Klein
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Abstract
One‑stop e‑government holds potential benefits in all contexts and especially in the context of developing countries and in the Least Developed Countries (LDCs). Implementation of one‑stop e‑government can be challenging as it normally requires addressing a number of organisational issues including those related to the integration of the individual government information systems of different departments which traditionally function as silos; tackling organisational issues can be difficult due to the nature of the public sector. However, the contemporary literature paints a picture of scarce research on the organisational issues that impede the implementation of one‑stop e‑government initiatives in LDCs. This paper explores the organisational issues underlying the implementation of ‘one‑stop’ e‑government initiatives in Rwanda, an LDC. The study explores the status of these elements as of and up to March 2017. The qualitative case study methodology used for this study involved data collection by means of documents and interviews with key managers from central government organisations, from a private company, and from local government service clerks. Template analysis was used as a method for data analysis. Even though the number of online services for citizens, businesses, and other agencies is growing rapidly and easy payment of service fees is available, a number of organisational issues were identified. These include the lack of a clear plan of ‘to‑be’ service processes and a corresponding change management strategy. Service re‑design was taking place very much ad hoc. There were also unclear systematic organisational learning mechanisms and unclear operational goals in the local government. Addressing these issues would contribute towards improving the implementation of one‑stop e‑government and its corresponding services in such a context. The paper contributes to research by providing insights into organisational issues in a country currently in an early stage of e‑government development. For Rwandan e‑government professionals, the paper suggests a way forward. It also helps decision makers in Rwanda and similar countries undertaking one‑stop initiatives to understand the problem context of actions taken towards IT‑driven institutional reform.
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Christian Østergaard Madsen, Sara Hofmann
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The multichannel management field (MCM) of e‑government focuses on how government organizations select, prioritize and integrate public service channels in a multichannel environment as well as migrate citizens and other stakeholders from one channel to another to increase efficiency and user satisfaction. MCM scholars collaborate with practitioners, conduct field experiments and study government‑to‑citizen interaction in real‑life settings. MCM studies have led to important empirical findings, theory building and field‑tested practical recommendations. Despite such valuable contributions to both scholars and practitioners, there are no up‑to‑date, comprehensive literature reviews which synthesize the knowledge from the MCM literature.
We therefore present a systematic and comprehensive literature review of MCM in e‑government. Our review follows established guidelines and covers three main areas. (1) We identify lead scholars and outlets, concepts analyzed and the main methods and theoretical lenses applied. (2) We synthesize results and suggestions for future studies from the papers. (3) Finally, we identify knowledge gaps and propose research approaches to addressing these gaps.
Keywords: Multichannel management, multi-channel management, literature review, channel strategy, government organizations
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Mark Weber, Thomas E. Backer, William Trefzger
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A large US government agency undertook a multi‑year systems change effort to re‑imagine its digital communications activities, which are led by communications staff in its numerous sub‑agencies and offices, along with a central coordinating office within this agency. The systems change strategy used draws from the literature on systems change in the private and government sectors, from two previous systems change efforts within the agency, and from input provided by actively engaging and listening to staff at all levels of the agency. The systems change effort resulted in a business model for the coordinating office to use in advancing the agency’s digital activities. It provides a framework for implementing activities more quickly ‑ encouraging experimentation and emerging best practices. A significant result of the systems change effort to date is transformation of the agency’s main website. At the beginning of this process, fewer than 20 percent of users were finding what they were looking for on the site. Currently over 80 percent of users consistently say they found or partially found what they were looking for. Page load times also improved. The coordinating digital communications office also has received a significant budget increase since these improvements took place. Despite limitations on generalizability from this case study, it may be useful for other government agencies when designing similar systems change activities
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Although providing accessible online services to people with disabilities is a legal requirement in the U.S for the federal government and highly recommended for other government agencies, severe accessibility issues persist on E‑government portals. One potential cause of this problem is that the government lacks strong incentives to adopt a higher accessibility standard because people with disabilities constitute a small proportion of E‑government users. By demonstrating that website accessibility is positively associated with usability, this study provides a potential solution to incentivize the government to adopt a higher accessibility standard. To test the relationship between accessibility and usability, 342 county government online portals were selected by a stratified sampling method. The conformance of the homepage of the websites to the WCAG 2.0 accessibility standard was evaluated using an automated tool. Then, an 18‑item heuristic checklist was assembled based on prior works and used to assess the usability of the websites. After controlling for the potential confounding factors such as broadband availability and county budget, the correlation between the usability and accessibility scores was tested. The analysis shows a significant positive relationship exists between the usability and accessibility scores. This positive relationship suggests that improving the accessibility could also enhance the usability of websites. As a result, the online experience of non‑disabled users could also be improved. The finding of the study implies that web accessibility could be approached and framed from a different perspective: it does not only benefits users with disabilities but also general users. This positive relationship could be leveraged to give the government more incentives to make E‑government portals more accessible to people with disabilities.
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