A 7-Layered E-Government Framework Consolidating Technical, Social and Managerial Aspects

Abstract

Abstract-E-Government has been hype for the last 2 decades and still several implementations do not reach the intended success. Different definitions and consequently different models of operations and assessment were developed. This required the formulation of various frameworks describing the different perceptions and understandings of e-Government. The different frameworks proposed tend to agree on a set of elements, but each framework seems to have one or few different elements, depending on the perception of the framework founder. Also, entire categories (or dimensions) of elements seem to be left out. Through a literature review and field survey, the authors identified challenges of an e-Government initiative, categorized in five dimensions: technical, adoption, organizational, strategy and cultural. Not all categories were covered in any of the existing government frameworks. This would prove to be awkward in the formulation of new government initiatives or in the assessment of existing ones and evolution plan. In an effort to represent the majority of the factors and elements involved in most e-Government initiatives, the authors present a proposed seven-layer-framework for e-government. The layers included are: 1) end user access layer, 2) e-government layer, 3) organization layer, 4) national infrastructure layer, 5) strategic layer, 6) social cultural layer, and 7) national execution layer. The proposed model is compared with existing models and demonstrates that it covers all the aforementioned dimensions.