Information Society Watch
A Southern Lens on the Information SocietyThe failure of e-government in developing countries: A literature review
2006, Danish Dada, The Electronic Journal on Information Systems in Developing Countries
This paper provides a review of academic literature on the failure of e-governance in developing countries. Drawing from extensive research on the topic conducted by Richard Heeks, the paper suggests that there exists wide gaps between the current reality in developing countries and the future of e-governance systems. These gaps could be classified into three types: a hard-soft gap, implying a gap between the technology and the social context in which it is applied; a private-public gap, suggesting that what works in the private sector may not work in the public sector; and a country context gap, that arises from the application of the same e-governance systems for both the developing and developed countries. The paper recommends that administrators in developing countries must assess the situation at hand before implementing e-governance.