Egm report e-Government and New Technologies: Towards Better Citizen

 

Participants 

 

Participants at the Meeting included senior policy makers, experts on citizen engagement 

and e-government initiatives and representatives from academia, civil society, social media  

networks, private sector and international organizations. Overall, 25 experts and key staff  

provided both presentations and interactive dialog from among 20 nations during the two-day  

meeting (see attached list). 

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e-Government and New Technologies: Towards better citizen engagement for development 

1

 

 

 

Plenary Session  

The Macro View of e-government: The Why and How 

for Good Governance through Citizen Engagement 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Experts presenting at the opening session reported on the progress to date on how e-

government programmes and services are evolving in their respective countries. Each reported 

much progress in promoting and utilizing web-based e-government platforms. In Egypt alone, 

it was reported that there are already well over 6 million public domains or public Internet 

destinations. Along with the explosion of Internet usage generally comes the opportunity to 

serve greater numbers of citizens through e-government platforms. The obvious advantages 

that were noted were the speed of transactions, the always-on availability of getting 

information and making transactions such as permits and licensing, and the ability (when 

permissible) to gauge public opinion on certain issues. The panelists noted that there is a 

tremendous difference between merely providing on-line information and services as opposed 

to responding to specific requests or actually engaging citizens. 

It was also pointed out that e-government and citizen engagement are not the necessarily 

the same, though they are often lumped together suggesting quite the opposite. In many cases, 

public administrators still lack the understanding, training, and knowledge as well as 

equipment necessary to best engage citizens. Many government agencies lack not only the 

training – but the tools, policies and resources.  

On the public side, the panel identified the need for greater digital literacy programmes 

that would enable citizens to better understand both the ethical underpinnings, advantages and 

limitations of citizen engagement through the use of on-line technology. This would include 

digital ethics, civic responsibilities and obligations, as well as computer literacy. They also