E-Government Development in Nanhai City, China

Abstract

Nanhai is a small city which belongs to Foshan City (a district can also be called a city in some cities of China) and lies in the central part of Guangdong province. It is in the hinterland of Pearl River Delta, close to Hong Kong and Macau. It was in 1995 that the city began to develop e-government. In September of 1996, it became one of the first cities that started to operate the Internet in China. Since 1999, the city had transferred into the period of Internet application. It became the national experimental field of an informalization process in 2000 and of an e-government application project and national information security project in 2001. However, since 2002, lots of problems have been appearing due to overemphasis on the construction of an information infrastructure and noticeable projects. Chinese e-government has been at the stage of a realistic period, with data shared among departments since 2000. Some weaknesses of the appraised projects have been appearing because of short service for urban development and the requirements from the city administration. Therefore, this case is just a description of the periodical success and would be a problematic case of the process of Chinese e-government.