E-governance and governance

Abstract

The potential for ICT to positively contribute to good governance has been known for a long time and has been the subject of many articles and reports, but very little concrete empirical evidence of the effects of ICT on governance, and how these effects should be evaluated, exist. The situation is even worse when we consider ICT and governance in local governments. The case study reported in this paper is based on an e-governance outcome evaluation framework that is being followed by Local Governance and ICTs Research Network for Africa (LOG-IN Africa). This framework draws on existing literature on e-government, good governance, and results-based management. Data for the case study was collected through surveys, key informant interviews, focus group discussions and review of relevant documents in two municipal councils in Kenya. The focus was on the perspectives of consumers of the services provided by the councils. Data was analyzed using both qualitative and quantitative methods.The preliminary results show that the integrated financial management system implementation had modest improvements in most indicators of the following good governance constructs: participation, responsiveness, transparency, accountability, and efficiency and effectiveness. Given the modest improvements in good governance associated with the implementation of the system in the two municipal councils and the governance challenges in implementing a similar system in central government, the paper recommends, among other things, that local governments could be used to pilot complex e-governance initiatives and lessons learned used to scale up at national level.