Abstract
The recent global diffusion of Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) has dramatically raised expectations for technological change to support widespread global socio-economic progress and political reform. Against this backdrop, the chapter seeks to, through the use of a case study based in the Indian city of Bangalore, unravel the social, economic, and political dynamics shaping e-government projects used to reform public sector institutions, and to the further application of this knowledge as elements of game design used in the conception, development, and eventual implementation of associated software and hardware platforms. In particular, the work aims to determine whether the day-to-day use of the new digital technologies in the public sector leads eventually to radical transformations in administrative functioning, policymaking, and the body politic, or merely to modest, unspectacular political and bureaucratic reform and to the emergence of technology-based, obsessive-compulsive pathologies and maladjustive Internet-based behaviours amongst individuals in society.
TopE-Government: Defintion And Scope
Simultaneous with the shift towards a more inclusive process of participation in political decision-making and public sector reform has been an increased interest in the new digital Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) and the ways in which they may be used to effectively complement and reform existing political processes. Developments in communication technologies have historically resulted in changes in the way in which governments function, often challenging them to find new ways in which to communicate and interact with their citizens, and ICTs today are seen to possess the potential to change institutions as well as the mechanisms of service delivery, bringing about a fundamental change in the way government operates and a transformation in the dynamic between government and its citizens (Misra, 2005). The work of the public sector has traditionally been highly information-intensive; government has been, and still remains, the single largest collector, user, holder and producer of information (Heeks, 2000), and is considered to be a central resource ‘in pursuing democratic/political processes, in managing resources, executing functions, measuring performance, and in service delivery’ (Isaac-Henry, 1997).