http://www.sbe.itu.edu.tr/sts
ESST
THE
http://www.esst.uio.no
THE ESST MA
Possible Social
Impacts of E-Government
A case study of
Şadi Evren
ŞEKER
2004
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank to my supervisor Dr.
Iştar Gözaydın, for opening a new window to the social sciences in my
world during her lectures and her encouraging support during my studies.
I would also like to express my special gratitude
to Prof. Dr. A. C. Cem Say, for leading me on research methodologies and
academic life. The very precious thing that I have learned from him is the
question for research which he always attempts to apply his theoretical knowledge
into daily life while he searches for reality.
I would like to thank to
Table of
Contents
2.2. Dimensions of e-government
3.2. Systems approach and large technological systems
3.2.1. E-Government as a Large Technological System
3.2.2. Technological Determinism
3.3. social constructivism of e-government (SCOT model)
Some of the e-government applications from turkey.
E-government, from the organizations that Turkey is
a candidate or member.
Legal infrastructure plans for Turkish
e-transformation
APPENDIX IV 51
INQUIRY RESULTS 51
ABBREVATIONS
ANT Actor
Network Theory
B2B Business
to Business
DPT Devlet
Planlama Teskilati (State Planning Organization)
HTML Hyper
Text Markup Language
ICT Information
and Communication Technologies
IT Information
Technology
KIT Kamu
Iktisadi Tesebbusleri (State Economic Enterprises)
NGO Non
Governmental Organization
SCOT Social
Constructivism of Technology
STS Science
Technology and Society
TBD Turkiye
Bilisim Dernegi, (Informatics Association Of
US United
States
URL Unique
Resource Locator
USD
XML Extensible
Markup Language
In recent days, e-government is a popular subject
in
By the help of theoretical modeling and results
from inquiry we have searched the answers of following questions:
- ”Can E-Government
be shaped by the cultural or social effects, or does the governance have a
uniform shape?”
- “Do we shape
technology for our purpose or does the technology shape our life by
e-government.”
- “What are the
subconscious of Turkish society about the technology, development or
social constructivism.”
In fact these questions can be answered by deeply
detailed and almost infinitive perspectives, but our purpose in this study is
only limited by the perspectives of STS studies and Turkish case. At the best
of our knowledge there was no such research exists during our studies.
Before commenting about e-government you can find
some definitions of the e-government below:
“Digital government or –following the current
technolinguistic conventions, e-government- can be defined as the civil and
political conduct of government, including service provision, using information
and communication technologies. “ , Ahmed(2001)
“eGovernment is the use of information and
communication technologies (ICTs) to improve the activities of public sector organizations.”
, Heeks(2004)
“At its core, eGovernment is about the
changing nature of relationships from hierarchical command and
control, to an interactive collaboration between government and citizens,
businesses, public sector employees, and other governments. It is about opening
the doors to multi-channel interaction and service delivery.
And it is about having centralized, yet distributed operations to maximize
efficiencies, productivity, and service delivery.”, Mtwcorp(2004)
“The term (in all its uses) is generally agreed to derive from electronic
which introduces the notion and practicalities of 'electronic technology' into
the various dimensions and ramifications of government
The most frequent use of the term eGovernment (also spelled e-government
as well as egovernment, Egovernment, E-government, E-Government, e-Gov, egov,
EGOV, E-GOV and EGovernment and described as online government) is related to:
- the delivery of public
services, where there is an
'online' or Internet based aspect to the delivery of the services (online
government services are sometimes called e-services
- the conduct of
government business where the
activities of those involved in the process of government itself (such as
legislators and the legislative process) where some electronic or online
aspect is under consideration.
- voting where some online aspect is under
consideration.”, Freedictionary(2004)
Definition of e-government may differ from author
to author but their intersection is the digitization of governmental
operations. This digitization may occur in two different domains.
- The server
domain, which is inside the government
- The client
domain, which is the interface of governmental operation to the people and
other administrative entities.
The former domain may contain the communication and
integrity of the different governmental entities on the other hand latter
domain holds the whole exterior world.
The aim of e-government is the supply of technology
for the governmental issues. Since governmental entities deal with whole
population of the country there are always more and more jobs to handle in a
reasonable time and with a reasonable cost. So governments should find a
solution to increase the efficiency of their operations. On the other hand the
necessity of electronic medium is based on the citizens, companies and foreign
governments who switch to the electronic medium.
The question rises at this point is how much
electronic is a government? A government may be publishing only static web
pages to inform citizens or a government may carry its all operations on a
fully automated electronic medium.
We will find an answer to the levels of
electrification of a government in the following chapters, but like most of the
similar technologies, by electrification of a conventional system we loose
something while gaining others. This thesis study will try to uncover these
unmentioned sacrifices.
Let’s try to understand e-government and its
dimensions better.
2.2.
Dimensions of
e-government
In the following list we have tried to list all
possible dimensions of e-government. Most of the following items can be
categorized as an advantage or disadvantage from the perspective of government
or citizen, since we believe both of these perspectives have different desires.
Besides we have left these items with only small comments to ignite the
question marks of reader. The examples and discussions are selected from the
- Employment: decreasing the number of employees without decreasing the throughput
in any organization can be counted as an advantage. E-government is away
of decreasing the number of jobs because most of the job will be migrated
to the automated software but unfortunately e-government requires more
qualified personal. So e-government creates unemployment for unskilled
employees while creating new jobs for qualified personals.
- Privacy: Privacy has a strong relation with the ethnic structure of the
population. A successful e-government application should obey the privacy
rules of the society. On the other hand there are some universal privacy
rules like Universal Declaration of Human Rights”. In the twelfth article
it is written as quoted below:
“Article
12: No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks
upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the
law against such interference or attacks.“
·
Privacy This
is a huge subject, the definition of family, the cultural role of privacy. Since
each society has its own cultural background, the term privacy may differ from
society to society. Unfortunately the only privacy criteria for the
e-government applications in Turkey
We
should be aware of the two ends of this dimension. On the one hand we have the
transparency on the other hand we have the privacy. More privacy yields less
transparency and more transparency yields more privacy.
- Reliability. Electronic applications may be counted as more reliable and robust systems than the human
employment. Although there is human employment in the electronic model of
government, the human factor is relatively skilled (educated) and error
detection is easier. So electronic systems reduces the human factor by
adding the machine factor (both has different kinds of errors).
- In the electronic
applications, optimization is
easier. Gathering statistical information and reporting is easier than the
paper based documentation. So governments can make strategic plans
depending on the characteristics of the society.
In fact, word “optimization” can have
many meanings, we only use this word as the optimization in the decision phase
of governmental operations. Moreover the word “optimization”, can be settled as
the optimization of whole these parameters.
- Mechanization of the system is possible by the e-government.
For example there are employees to simply filing documents in conventional
systems. Or the census can be automatically handled in the e-government
solutions. One of the results of e-government may be the interaction
between citizens and the e-government. Since computers are lack of natural
language or joking abilities, mechanization of a conventional governmental
operation may be a torture for the computer illiterate, old people for
example. Although the call centers can be considered as a solution to such
problems, mechanization of any component in the system effects the other
components, like the mechanization of society.
- Security problem. In our poll results security is considered as the biggest
disadvantage of e-government. Despite the secure online operations
available on the Internet like Internet banking, the Turkish society does
not feel secure on the Internet. While 100% security is never possible on
the Internet and society is aware of this fact and they see the
governmental data as a strategic entity, they agree on the security as the
biggest disadvantage. As a dimension, the more security makes things
harder and less security makes the system more user friendly, easy to
access. For example entering your password in each pages bores after an
amount of browsing, on the other hand not asking any password after
entering a site creates security gaps. Again in Turkish e-government case,
I think the decision will differ by the time and experiences.
While preparing this thesis, I could
not reach any formal study on the optimum security. The banks and companies
operating in Turkey with more experience on the online transactions and
Internet have never published such a document. Besides, there are lots of
differences from application to application. In one of the Internet banking
application, they advertise the amount of time you spend to make a simple
operation, while another advertises the number of security questions. So this
shows a disagreement on the level of security. I think a study on the
forbearance of Turkish society and required level of security in the Internet
operations is something needed before the implementation of e-government.
- Technological determinism. Despite the reduction in the number of
people employed in the system is an advantage, less people will be aware
of the design of the system, (less information in the design phase) which is
one of the reasons of the isolation of the system. On the other hand a new
generation who do not need social relations and sunk to the technological
applications will grow. Also substituting with a more complicated system
makes the system less understandable and less discussable. These are where
technological determinism and the systems approach ignited. Of course this
is not an unsolvable problem, but the social design of the system is more
complicated than the design of the system. Again this dimension of
e-government will be discussed in the following chapter.
- Cost. What is the cost of e-government and what is the cost of
conventional systems, what are the operational costs, what is the initial
cost are the subjects of this dimension. For example in the
- Psychological effects. Besides the other dimensions, electronic
government makes computers necessary in our daily life. This reality makes
the human-computer interaction more important. In my limited search during
this thesis I have faced with several risks of computers.[2]
There are many studies about ergonomics for example.[3]
Or another risk is the CVS (Computer Vision Syndrome). For example a
research on “Effect of Computer Training on Students’ Health” underlines a
fact as below:
Figure 1
Eye diseases related to computers, Kahn (200)
By the light of above, government
offices should continue human to human interaction (on the other hand we have
citizens with disabilities) and in the education system, citizens should be
became conscious about the healthy usage of computers.
- The judicial background of the e-government.
Are there any inevitable conventional paper based necessities? For example
the petitions should have wet inked signatures up until august 2004 in
- Upgrades. The technological background of the e-government. Since the
technology has an upgrade momentum, it is inevitable that the e-government
applications will be upgraded. This creates a new market for the software
developers (especially the biggest developer companies)[4].
This upgrades courses the common sense to a linear feeling, because the
idea of “a new upgrade is better than the older and it is the most correct
substitution of the old one, it is necessary to upgrade, etc.” creates
such linearity. In the course of this linear feeling, technological
determinism may sprout.
- Disaster plans. None of the governments want to loose all
governmental information in a single disaster. So making a disaster plan
is necessary. (Copying electronic information is easier).
- Electronic Disasters. There are only electronic specific problems
like y2k, or the magnetic field of earth or sun explosions are the
electronic specific problems, these problems do not occur on paper based
systems for example.
- Inconsistency. There are many independent governmental
organizations and each organization may try to apply its own e-government
solution or ERP which can yield the inconsistency. For example there are
more than thirty thousand municipalities in
"XML would be a key solution of any
segment of e-government we go with," said Mayi Canales, deputy chief
information officer at the Treasury Department and an e-government portfolio
coordinator at the CIO Council.
"I think you're going to find a
little bit of XML in all of the initiatives," said Lew Sanford,
e-government program manager for the General Services Administration.
"This is what it was designed to do."
In several reports, it is underlined
that any government wants to implement a healthy e-government application,
should declare XML schema open to the whole world TBD(2004). Besides the
applications running over XML,
- Appropriate technology. In Turkish case[5],
the technology settled is not a national product. Since e-government is a
large technological system[6],
both the hardware and software is imported from the foreign companies with
the foreign philosophies. In fact there is an ongoing debate about “Do
artifacts have politics?”. From the same subjected paper of Winner(1986),
I want to quote two of the many impressive examples.
- the bridges over
the parkways of
- The atom bomb,
which he accepts as an inherently political artifact. He explains this
argue by the centralized structure of atom bomb. Rigidly hierarchical
chain of command closed to all influences that might make its workings
unpredictable. The internal social system of the bomb must be authoritarian.
I have quoted these two examples because of their extreme similarities to the e-government. First, e-government is only accessible from the internet and we should raise the question how many of the Turkish citizens does have an internet access? By the end of 2001, the intern