The operationalisation of e-governance

This paper will address changes in understanding governance processes thanks to new ICTs. Electronic governance, or the facilitation of governance through ICT and related tools, provides a unique opportunity for reassessment of the traditional methods, processes, and outputs of the public sector. This paper addresses some of these key opportunities and the challenges that accompany them. Practically and concretely, this paper intends to provide support to policy makers by addressing the challenges of developing a strategy for implementation of change towards governance structures that recognise the need to improve participatory methods in policy making whilst also assuring that exclusion - of a digital nature or otherwise - does not render the process counter-productive. It will raise questions of representativeness, meaningfulness, the role of existing institutional elements in current governmental structures, and the question of political will for moving towards a governance that makes use of ICT-based means. First, we shall address the results and implications of the electronic government debate and outline the challenges that still remain. This will include a stock-taking exercise in the domain of e-government, which builds upon exiting literature in the field, notably the UN Global E-government Readiness Reports as well as thinking towards future research agendas for e-governance, which shall enable us, in Part 3, to move on to discuss innovations in governance, through an analysis of the concept in a liberal democratic context. The fourth part of the paper will address new tools and applications and how they can encourage change in public sector governance.