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Top1. Introduction
Digital government has made public services more accessible to citizens through Government Digital Strategy Actions across different regions of the world (Alryalat et al., 2015; Dwivedi et al., 2017; Rana and Dwivedi, 2015; Rana et al., 2011, 2012, 2013a, 2013b, 2013c, 2013d, 2015a, 2015b, 2016, 2017; Sharma et al., 2021). Their context and impact on society, however, varies across different countries. One of the actions taken by governments is digital inclusion of its people, which is defined as a strategy to ensure that all people have equal opportunities and appropriate skills to access and benefit from digital technologies (Pawluczuk 2020). The UK digital government strategy, for example, has focused on stopping actions that hinder digital inclusion, as well as performing actions which promote it. These are: preventing “activity that adds little or no value… and providing greater support to those initiatives and organisations that make a difference and a stronger joint working between people, business, charities and public sector” (Gov.UK 2022). Similar practises have also been followed by many other developed countries worldwide, such as Switzerland who also try to form “trust, motivation, skills and access” between their digital government movement and its citizens to improve digital inclusion. Other countries such as New Zealand adopt a visionary plan where they aim to halve unemployment and poverty by the year 2030. While the approaches and policies that were enacted by New Zealand government, and other governments as well, the actions taken triggers people to use the technology with their basic needs but it does not necessarily encourage them to become digitally included. For example, the policies that were set in place had some effectiveness during the COVID 19 pandemic where there were prolonged periods of lockdowns and curfews and thus people had no choice but to use the technology to access public services. However, when the pandemic rolled out, some people have returned to their old habits and preferred to do things in person. Support and skills programmes have been implemented worldwide so that people of all levels of digital skill are able to further themselves in the growing digital world (Fraillon et al. 2020). As well as improving people’s ‘digital use’ skills, digital government has given a greater percentile of citizens better opportunities to use those skills. “Between 2015 and 2020, 4G network coverage doubled globally and almost 85% of the global population was covered by a 4G network at the end of 2020. The roll-out of 5G networks has started and is advancing rapidly in many countries” (ITU 2021). The more people that are able to access digital services, the more likely it is to spread, meaning that public services will be more accessible to citizens.