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Involve Citizens to Decide What E-Government Initiatives Need to be Funded

From experience of Congress itself, it should be maintained that funding of e-government projects are driven by customer satisfaction. Is this correct? I believe this is correct. The main reason being – any e-Government initiative is targeted and centered on participatory democracy where citizen (as the customer of the services) has a greater role in policy and decision making. Citizens are the ones who utilize the e-Government services and need to be satisfied and motivated to use a particular type of e-Government service model/technology.

As Homburg states e-Government needs to be ‘responsive to societal needs’ – means it has to satisfy the customer’s (citizen’s) current and changing information/services consumption needs. As he aspires a participative democracy, the resulting technology funding needs to be made to support interaction and collaboration that leads to sufficient acceptance of service delivery medium and technology. Customer orientation is essential and is important success factor for any type of informational, consultative or participatory e-Government model, which calls for more demand driven services rather than supply oriented services.

e-Government systems have grown to such a level where it has given power to the customers to hold their representatives accountable of their votes and choices by their active participation in policy making and collaborative functioning. Service delivery and eDemocracy mediums such as e-Voting and e-Deliberation requires that users/customers need to be motivated in order to realize maximum usage with least margin of error and inviting customers to actively participate in democratic process. Customers – including Cyber citizens or Pragmatic citizens - form more than half of total citizens who care about usage of e-Government services. These customers are highly motivated and prone to be more confident in using those technologies if the inherent service models are user friendly, intuitive and leading towards greater e-Democratic setup where his voice is heard and feedback received in a timely manner. To this end, customer satisfaction is an adequate criterion for funding of e-Government initiatives.

Bibliography

1. Homburg V. (2008). Understanding E-Government -Information Systems in Public Administration. Chapters 5,6. Routledge

2.Shark A.R., Toporkoff S. (2008). Beyond e-Government & e-Democracy - A Global Perspective. Ch. 3, 16,18, 19, 21, 22. Public Technology Institure & ITEMS International