What is it about?
This article suggests that e-government and e-governance initiatives can potentially have major organisational impacts through three major mechanisms: improved decision-making, more intensive and productive use of data bases, and better communications. These mechanisms impact on both the internal organisation of public agencies, their configuration of networks and partnerships. E-enablement therefore makes obsolete many existing organisational structures and processes and offers the prospect of transformation in both service delivery and public governance arrangements. However, the organisational changes which can be effected through the e-revolution are only just beginning to become evident. While it seems likely that existing organisational configurations in the public sector will not be sustainable, the most appropriate ways forward will only be uncovered through much experimentation within e-government and e-governance programmes. In the nature of experimentation, many of these initiatives will turn out to be unproductive or cost-ineffective - but that is perhaps the necessary price to pay for the level of public sector transformation which now appears to be in prospect.
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Why is it important?
This paper examines a paradox: in a period when politicians, senior public officials and management consultants appear to be competing in exaggeration about the rate of change which they will soon effect, the claims made on behalf of e-government and e-governance have been particularly grandiose. At the same time, governments in countries such as the UK continue to declare themselves dissatisfied with the rates of change actually achieved in recent times. Yet the internet and web-enabled operations have already been around for years. Could i tbe that e- government and e-governance are not actually delivering on their promises? This article sets out to examine the extent to which e-government and e- governance have already impacted upon organisational structures and processes in the public sector, to explore the potential for further change and to examine the extent to which the promise has so far been unfulfilled. Its focus is largely, but not exclusively, on local government, with particular reference to the UK.
Perspectives
If the digitial divide is not to undermine the social gains which e- enablement may bring to both service delivery and to public governance processes, then it seems clear that it will have to be tackled more directly than has so far been the case in most countries, and certainly in the UK. This will entail a concerted effort to find ways in which to migrate disadvantaged groups from existing access channels to new, e-enabled channels - and to do this early in the change process, not as an afterthought. The challenge to this is clear but has perhaps been overstated- after all, the history of social policy research has emphasised that the existing access channels have systematically discriminated against or provided only limited preference to disadvantaged service users (Le Grand, 1983; Bramley et al, 1998). It therefore seems rather defeatist suddenly to defend these as an essential bastion of an 'equalities' strategy for public services. However, it will be hard to convince the groups concerned that such a migration to new channels will be in their interest. As Bellamy (2003) suggests, services for older and poorer people - such as benefit claims and advice services - will probably continue to be offered from call centres or face-to-face in ofices, as well as on the internet. However, this should probably be seen less as a victory on behalf of the disadvantaged and more as an indicator of the continued growth of the digital divide, and therefore of the failure to implement a successful equalities policy.
Professor Tony Bovaird
University of Birmingham
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This page is a summary of: E-Government and e-Governance: Organisational Implications, Options and Dilemmas, Public Policy and Administration, April 2003, SAGE Publications,
DOI: 10.1177/095207670301800204.
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