E-government in the Middle East and North Africa: The Role of International Organizations in the Experience of Egypt and Morocco

TY - CHAP

T1 - E-government in the Middle East and North Africa: The Role of International Organizations in the Experience of Egypt and Morocco

AU - Mishrif, Ashraf

AU - Selmanovic, Sandra

PY - 2010

Y1 - 2010

N2 - The underperformance of the Middle East and North African (MENA) countries to achieve reasonable levels of social and economic growth has put their governments under increasing pressure to reform their public institutions and increase their efficiency and effectiveness in delivering public goods. As these countries are still lagging behind most developing countries in socio-economic development terms and their governments have yet failed to fulfil the expectations of their citizens, a number of solutions are sought to enable the majority of the population to benefit from the advantages of the modernization process. Focusing on E-government policies as instrumental to good governance, we argue that policies that have been successful in a particular context may not apply in a different one and that policy makers must take into account local peculiarities in order to identify relevant good practices. We suggest that policy relevance can be assessed by jointly considering cultural proximity as defined by Hofstede and socio-economic comparability on the basis of selected indicators. This is empirically tested through an examination of the E-government policies in Egypt and Morocco that are benchmarked against the "e-government value chain" and then their reciprocal relevance is evaluated. We also assess the viability and success of these policies in light of the role that international organizations can play in supporting the efforts to modernize public administration in the MENA region and concludes that these organizations should be active at different e-government levels: providing an interoperability framework at international level, supporting the identification of relevant good practices at national level and being directly involved in their implementation at local level.

AB - The underperformance of the Middle East and North African (MENA) countries to achieve reasonable levels of social and economic growth has put their governments under increasing pressure to reform their public institutions and increase their efficiency and effectiveness in delivering public goods. As these countries are still lagging behind most developing countries in socio-economic development terms and their governments have yet failed to fulfil the expectations of their citizens, a number of solutions are sought to enable the majority of the population to benefit from the advantages of the modernization process. Focusing on E-government policies as instrumental to good governance, we argue that policies that have been successful in a particular context may not apply in a different one and that policy makers must take into account local peculiarities in order to identify relevant good practices. We suggest that policy relevance can be assessed by jointly considering cultural proximity as defined by Hofstede and socio-economic comparability on the basis of selected indicators. This is empirically tested through an examination of the E-government policies in Egypt and Morocco that are benchmarked against the "e-government value chain" and then their reciprocal relevance is evaluated. We also assess the viability and success of these policies in light of the role that international organizations can play in supporting the efforts to modernize public administration in the MENA region and concludes that these organizations should be active at different e-government levels: providing an interoperability framework at international level, supporting the identification of relevant good practices at national level and being directly involved in their implementation at local level.

M3 - Conference paper

SN - 978-7-5647-0624-1

T3 - PROCEEDINGS OF 2010 INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION (6TH), VOL III

SP - 905

EP - 926

BT - 2010 International Conference on Public Administration (ICPA 6th )

PB - UNIV ELECTRONIC SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY CHINA PRESS

CY - CHENGDU

T2 - 6th International Conference on Public Administration

Y2 - 22 October 2010 through 24 October 2010

ER -