Introduction
Now, providing the necessary platform to provide appropriate and effective public services and forming a phenomenon called electronic government (E-Government) is the most important applications of ICT.
E-government has been expanding rapidly. In fact, the success of developed countries was for achieving e-government and that resulted in a positive orientation to other countries to use ICT for doing the affairs.
E-Government is actually an exceptional opportunity to rebuild and modernize the state.
Especially, when people expectations about services, products, method and quality of providing them have been changing increasingly, e-government will be proper.
Thus, if the more demanded affairs being electronic by a proper resolution, it will reduce the costs, time and energy and cause saving and public satisfaction.
Definitions of e-government
when all services are provided equally, all time and directly to the people, even on holidays, we can say that e-government has been formed. At first, we see some definitions of e-government for understanding and knowing that better.
1) Applying IT in different sections to increase productivity and improve public services,
2) Making available all public services electronically and increasing the use of key services ,
3) Explaining e-government as an easy use of information technology (IT) in order to distribute public services to the customers without any agent during the night and day,
4) E-government is a method for governments to use new technologies and provide the needed equipments for access to required information and public services as well as equal opportunities for citizens to civil societies and procedures.
Thus, e-government is a state that all its parts are connected to each other through the computer and during 24 hours in a safe and high-speed communications platform and all parts will access to a single database and provide services to the people through any communication device such as: Internet, phone, SMS, mail, etc.
E-government targets
Providing services to the people faster, with more quality, lower costs and higher satisfaction is the main goal of e-government. So, the government will become faster and respond to citizen needs better. Of course, this will raise people's satisfaction and social justice that is the goals of the government, too.
Realization of e-government
Government functions should be changed and the entire process and activities should be conducted electronically from the beginning to the end in order to realize e-government.
Thus, it's not possible to realize e-government only by using computers and without changing the structure and practices.
But, the method of performance, decisions and quality of services should be changes.
So it needs an executive and development program that contains all aspects of the government.
Therefore, implementing e-government will be based on the principles such as: to simplify the services offering to the people and facilitate their access to information, improving government efficiency and effectiveness by eliminating the administrative layers and levels, reducing the costs by process integration and elimination of the waste matters.
However, when it's supposed to provide public services electronically and continuously, people should be ensuring that they can use them easily. In fact, the main concern of the authorities is to facilitate public access to these services.
Factors contribute to e-government
Studying the measures of the pioneer countries in e-government shows that implementing e-government needs a great primary investment. Sometimes the cost of creating, maintaining and developing the nationwide networks and data bases puts an obstacle on the way. In addition, the capital will not be back soon. But meanwhile, we should not become discouraged because the next save will compensate these costs and it will be economical so we should insist to implement it.
Benefit
Realization of e-government does not mean the complete removal of traditional method. But, the habits must be changed for using e-government benefits.
By using new technologies in e-government, basic government processes will be reviewed and it's results are including: data transparency, increasing efficiency of the government, limitation and improving government performance, making the processes easy, making policy based on the facts and data analysis, improve and accelerate the providing public services in any place and at any time, reducing the distance between people and government, citizen participation in public decisions, increasing the social justice by creating the equal opportunities for people and reducing the government costs because of saving.
E-government will realize social justice and relations will be replaced regulations by reducing direct contact with the organizations.
All citizens will access to the services better than before and on the other hand, range of the expanded and provided services will be fit the needs by achieving e-government. Therefore, all services will be provided where people are presented not necessarily where the government is located.
Problems of implementing e-government
E-government will face some difficulties like any traditional government. Each country has its own problems depending on the investment and prioritization and presence in the intelligence community, of course the situation is different from other countries. But in general, there are some common problems for implementing e-government that all countries are facing regardless of the circumstances and the cost of the countries in ICT area.
Providing e- services needs an appropriate bed, therefore providing the needed infrastructures and improving the existence is the first problem that any country will be facing.
But it can be prepared quickly by planning. The countries that has been known as the pioneer in implementing e-government, could achieve this ability by passing from traditional society to the intelligence community during several years and they have succeeded.
However, those countries that recognize the need of investing in this field later, because of some reasons, will be faced more problems to implement e-government.
Because they have to plan and run faster to compensate the digital split.
Of course, its benefits are so much as all countries understood the importance of the issue and seek to implement it.
On the other hand, the minimum requirements for using e-government services, such as computer and internet connection lines is expensive, so it will create an obstacle for little income people .
However, because e-government is for every people so it should be accessible for every one by reducing the costs in any way and with proper planning and assistance.
Also, implementing e-government depends on population and geographic conditions in addition to technical issues. For example, these services usage is reduced in rural areas due to the lack of attention to develop individual skills. It's necessary to prepare the conditions for this group to benefit these services in addition to infrastructure development.
Developing rural ICT offices will be a successful experience in this field.
Also, the countries that are facing some problems in general education level will be faced by a broader problem about digital literacy, so they must attempt to raise the electronic education in the society. Of course, we can refer to teaching the seven computer skills as our experience in this field.
As we know, fortunately teaching computer's seven skills has been started in the country and it is very impressive. However, it has given positive results.
It should be noted that it is better all people learn these skills as the government audiences and users of the services and the government should adopt an appropriate policy for someone who couldn't succeeded to learn that.
The users avoid giving their information to the others because of security concerns and preventing the potential misuses of their information. So, we should believe that the government can maintain the information security if we want to promote the society e-literacy.
On the other hand, changing the culture and mentality of people is difficult and the culture of using e-service should be promoted. In fact, it is important to assure people that e-government service has more advantages in compare with other methods. So, using any way to raise the consumer's culture and knowledge in IT domain is appropriate. Therefore, culture of using e-government will be promoted by showing the positive effects of electronic affairs as well as new and reliable legislation.
Results:
E-government will be resulted by understanding IT development and benefit from its advantages. However, considering the impact and consequences arising from e-government usage, the strategy that has been suggested to prevent sudden reaction against the proposed changes is slow and quiet starting, but quick expanding.
Anyway, we have a proper capability in the country that will justify providing services electronically.
Fortunately a unit determination has been created to achieve e-government, especially by considering the leader's emphasis on using this technology to facilitate the affairs and also president's emphasis and naming the tenth government as e-government as well as forming e-government working group with the presence of all ministries and public agencies in this field. So it's necessary to accelerate the required planning and actions more than before and we hope to see its positive impact in people's lives and social and economic development.