Lessons in eGovernment Blogging
Before engagin in this news options, Arab Governmnet should educate their employees about the legal risks inherent in blogging, such as the possibility that they might inadvertently disclose sensitive or regulated information.
Blogging is very different from the kinds of communication activities that employees routinely engage in . Anything that goes up on the Internet is immediately available to a worldwide audience of billions—and it becomes a permanent part of the public record.
E-government: The State of Art Today,
Misra, D.C. (2006a): E-government: The State of Art Today, Keynote
Presentation at Seminar on Using the Internet for Electronic Delivery
of Government Services, Internet Fiesta 2006, March 20,
http://www.gov.mu/portal/goc/internetfiesta/file/misra.ppt#2
(accessed July 15, 2006)
Misra, D.C. (2006b): E-government: The State of Art Today-2, A
Presentation at the Official Launching of the Government-to-
Government System and CIO Workshop,
Thursday, May 25, 2006, Ebene Cyber Tower, Rose Hill, Mauritius,
http://www.gov.mu/portal/goc/ncb/file/E-government.ppt (accessed:
July 15, 2006)
Dr D.C.Misra
July 15, 2006
eGovernment in Developing Countries: 80% of the world's population, 20% of its e-government users.
I've just been doing some calculations which estimate that, worldwide, roughly 400m people have ever used e-government (defined as accessing Web-based government information or services). Of these, 320m come from middle- and high-income countries (Europe including Russia plus Japan, Israel, Canada, USA, Australia, New Zealand): that's 25% of the population of those countries. The remaining 80m come from developing countries - 1.6% of the population of those countries. So developing countries represent 80% of the world's population but only 20% of its e-government users.
A note that these are estimates for those who have EVER used e-government - rough estimates from Accenture data are that around 40% of these numbers would, if asked, have used e-government in the past one year.
Want to know how I arrived at this estimate?:
a) ITU provides statistics on the number of Internet users in each country and region.
b) Surveys by Pew, Accenture and Taylor-Nelson-
Sofres provide us with estimates of the percentage of Internet users who have ever made use of e-government. This figure is roughly 60% for middle- and high-income economies. It is much less than that for poorer economies because of the lower availability of e-government - estimates for these rely on much scantier data with a big range: running from 10% of Internet users ever having used e-gov as the lowest to around 40% as the highest for countries like Malaysia. Taking an average of these plus other figures within the range, leads to a rough estimate that 25% of Internet users in developing countries have ever used e-government.
c) Multiply the a) figures by the b) figures to get an estimate of all those who have ever accessed e-government.
I'd like to know if anyone else has other methods or figures for actual numbers of people using e-government in developing countries or globally.
Richard Heeks
Development Informatics Group
University of Manchester, UK
Study our MSc in ICTs for Development:
http://www.sed.manchester.ac.uk/idpm/postgraduate/masters/mscict.htm
