e-governance

E-Governance

'E-Governance' is a network of organizations to include government, nonprofit, and private-sector entities; in e-governance there are no distinct boundaries.^[1]

The model for e-governance is a one-stop portal, such as firtgov.gov, where citizens have access to a variety of information and services. An ideal portal would be one for employment where a citizen creates a profile and is presented with employment opportunities at the federal, state, local, non-profit, and private-sectors;^[1] currently websites like monster.com over these services but more often than not users are required to reenter their information for the specific job. However, not all stakeholders have the same desired end-state which inhibits the possibility of a one-stop portal.

E-Governance

E-governance is the use of ICT by different actors of the society with the aim to improve their access to information and to build their capacities.

E-Governance is the public sector’s use of information and communication technologies with the aim of improving information and service delivery, encouraging citizen participation in the decision-making process and making government more accountable, transparent and effective.

The principal on-going UNESCO activity in the field of e-governance is a cross-cutting project on E-Governance Capacity-Building. This project aims at promoting the use of ICT tools in municipalities to enhance good governance through the development of training modules for local decision-makers in Africa and Latin America.

Past UNESCO activities on e-governance are described in the Documents/Publications under "Resources" section. The "Global survey on on-line governance" and the "Country profiles of e-governance" were undertaken in cooperation with the Commonwealth Network of Information Technology for Development Foundation (COMNET-IT).

Use and deployment of the new Information and Communications Technology (ICT) has been rapidly growing since the early 1990s. While the initial focus of the so-called "ICT revolution" was on infrastructure deployment and connectivity, a critical shift has now taken place.

While most developing countries still face, to various degrees, serious access challenges, the focus is now on the deployment and use of specific ICT applications and to address traditional development problems and challenges.

A surge in the use of ICTs by government, civil society and the private sector started in the late 1990s with the aim not only of improving government efficiency and service delivery but also to promote increase participation of citizens in the various governance and democratic processes.

The use of ICT in the overall field democratic governance activities relates to three distinct areas where UNDP has already been doing innovative work to support the achievement of the MDGs.

First, e-governance which encompasses the use of the ICT tool to enhance both government efficiency, transparency, accountability and service delivery, and citizen participation and engagement in the various democratic and governance processes.

Second, the mainstreaming of ICT into the various UNDP Democratic Governance Practice service lines such as Parliaments (e-parliaments), elections (e-elections) and others. s

And third, the governance of the new ICT which addresses the institutional mechanisms related to emerging issues of privacy, security, censorship and control of the means of information and communications at the national and global levels.

Although e-governance is a new dedicated sub-practice area of UNDP, the organization's support for e-governance related services predates the creation of the dedicated sub-practice and builds upon the pioneering work that UNDP has done since 1992. The bulk of this work has focused on providing support to governments and civil society organizations (CSOs) in using ICT to deliver better public services and enhance the participation and involvement on citizens through networking in the various governance-related processes and issues.