This chapter utilizes extensive literature reviews to assess the different perspectives of e-Government development in developing world contexts. In order to do that, the chapter presents a case study from Jordan assessing the design and reality gaps of e-Government interventions using the ITPOSMO model. The chapter posits that e-Government for development is likely to grow only if there is deliberate cognisance of culture, real work practices, and of the broader technical and socio-political environment with which the e-Government projects are introduced and applied in the developing world.
TopInformation age marks a period in human history and it is defined by exponential growth in the collection, analysis, shaping, storing, duplication and transmission of information through electronic means (Webster, 2006; Castell, 2000). It is a period that some scholars perhaps see as an age of information revolution and access to information, not an information age (Loader and Dutton, 2003). It provides clues about how digital and networked technologies already in use might have influenced the future shape, socio-economic relationships, and conduct of human institutions, human activities, citizen-government relationships and international exchange (Lips, 2010; Hood and Margetts, 2007; Heeks, 1999).
Advancement in ICTs has altered the politics, economics, sociology and culture of knowledge creation and distribution, which perhaps make it as part of a continuing process that dates back at least a century and a half (Castells, 1989). Thus, the characterisation of information age is based on the access to information, network logic, widespread proliferation of emerging ICTs and the capabilities that those technologies provide and will provide humankind (Castell, 1999). As Webster notes, however, there are enormous problems in measuring what is meant by an information age. Even with the proliferation of new and emerging ICTs, Webster asks, has society changed profoundly enough to warrant calling the present—or the near term future—an information age? (Webster, 2006). Defining information age revolves around a mix of positive and negative point of view. Therefore, the contending issues about the meaning and quality of information, together with the relationship between the citizen and the government, are portentous ones for the information age.