Vol 6. No. 2, June 2013
African Journal of Computing & ICT
© 2013 Afr J Comp & ICT – All Rights Reserved - ISSN 2006-1781
www.ajocict.net
41
Study of Some E-Government Activities in South Africa
Surendra Thakur
Enterprise Development Unit
Durban University of Technology
Durban, South Africa
thakur@dut.ac.za
Shawren Singh
School of Computing
University of South Africa
Florida, South Africa
singhs@unisa.ac.za
ABSTRACT
This paper examines the nature and extent of e-government activities in South Africa. E-Government refers to the practice
of leveraging ICT to deliver services to employees (G2E), to citizens (G2C), to business (G2B) and to other government
departments (G2G). The research method used was through direct personal engagement through semi-structured
interviews with 10 stakeholders at local, provincial and national government level. The sample comprised two senior
provincial management, two senior municipal managers, two academic government researchers, one national government
official and three businessmen connected with government. A literature review was also conducted with data sourced
from journals, books, websites and popular media for evidence of e-Government not known to the respondent or a
provincial (state) or national initiative. It finds although e-Government activities is being provided by, inter alia,
government, citizens and business, the service is few, far between and expensive. Although government has committed to
e-services, there are, with few exceptions, such services available. On the other hand citizens are rising in anger as they
demand improved service levels. It determines some typically government-centric services have already perhaps out of
necessity been usurped by citizen led initiatives. Business is also providing innovative e-services. This comes however
with skewed costs that may agitate the digital divide. There is an increasingly pervasive broadband infrastructure from
both public and private enterprise that represents an opportunity to roll e-services. The ubiquity of mobile devices and
ICT may make-services possible. This is an enticing opportunity, particularly given the increasing and sometimes violent
calls for service delivery. To achieve traction the authors argue a stronger advocacy role is needed to promote e-
Government activities by all stakeholders namely government, business or civil society. This paper uses the Prossler-
Krimmer Model to analyze e-government activities in South Africa including KwaZulu-Natal. It examines the
technological, political, legislative and societal(sectors) respectively in South Africa and concludes e-Government is a
major opportunities for all stakeholders through a combination or research, cross training, advocacy and a re-
contextualization of e-government.
Keywords- Component; e-Government, e-Services, Civil Society, e-Readiness.
African Journal of Computing & ICT Reference Format:
S. Thakur & S. Singh (2013). S Study of Some E-Government Activities in South Africa.
Afr J. of Comp & ICTs. Vol 6, No. 2. pp 41-.54
1. INTRODUCTION
The objective of e-Government is to improve service
delivery to citizen and in so doing improve the efficiency
of the governments activities. The application of
Information and Communications Technology (ICT)
facilitated by the Internet and web technology is the
primary tool to enable the objectives of e-Government.
Attention has been given to e-Government since the
1990s when it was realized that the Internet and web
technology was being used to transform business
processes and practices.
In this paper we look at some aspect of e-Government,
the paper will outline: business driven e-Government,
government driven e-Government and civil society
driven e-Government.
1.1 Background
In recent years there has been growing pressure on
government to deliver services in a more efficient
accessible manner. These applications have been referred
to as e-Government. It is difficult to define e-Government
[1, 2] as it encompasses such a broad spectrum of
activities. Currently, we have adopted the following
working definition of e-Government as suggest by Grant
and Chau [3]