The Egyptian E-government

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Egyptian e-Government The e-government programs are considered one of the most important tools in improving the administrative system. The United Nations have encouraged the governments to adopt e-government services in their report in 2016 by saying that it’s very important and effective tool to achieve the 17 sustainable development goals. Egypt started the process of the fundamental transformation more than 14 years ago. It has recognized the role of e-government in leveraging the economic, cultural and social development; providing effective and convenient services to the public, improving communication environment and the exchange of information among different governmental bodies. Egypt intends to take serious steps continuing the process of transformation in the coming years as part of its plan to achieve 2030 agenda...

The Definition of e-Government

E-government is the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) to improve the activities of public sector organisations.

E-government covers three main domains:

1. e-administration.
2. e-citizens and e-services.
3. e-society.    

1) e-administration includes:

• Cutting process costs: by improving the input: output ratio by decreasing financial costs and time cost.

• Managing process performance: planning, monitoring and controlling the performance of process resources.
• Making strategic connections in government: to be able to strengthen capacity to investigate, develop and implement the strategy and policy that guides government processes so arms and data store of government should be gathered together.
• Creating empowerment: to create empowerment authority and resources for processes should be transferred to new location.

2) e-citizens and e-services includes:

• Talking to citizens: through sharing information with citizens about public sector activities, by making public employees more accountable for their decisions and actions.
• Listening to citizens: make citizens participate in decisions making and actions in public sector.
• Improving public services: by improving the quality, decreasing the cost and make them more comfortable.  

3) e-society includes:

• Working better with business: government and business should interact to improve the quality of services and decrease the cost and make the consumer more comfortable.
• Developing communities: improve the social and economic capacities and capital of local communities.
• Building partnerships: create an organization to achieve economic and social objectives and the public sector is one of the partners it acts only as a facilitator for others.

Historical Background

In mid 1980s, the government of Egypt in its efforts to adapt with the international IT revolution launched some initiatives to build an Information Society, providing citizens, businesses, visitors and other governmental bodies with a convenient collection of information and services to utilize the benefits of the new information era to achieve national goals.

The Information and Decision Support Center (IDSC) was established in 1985 to build up Egypt’s IT industry and governmental decision support infrastructure. One of its key objectives was to provide public access to information, with a particular emphasis on facilitating business and investment, by 1990s the IDSC successfully established local centers to generate data that enables delivery of evidence-based policy support of socio-economic issues at the governmental level.

During the 1980s and 1990s, the IDSC successfully established local centers nationwide to develop and improve administrative effectiveness by generating data that enables delivery of evidence-based policy support of socio-economic issues at the governmental level.

In 1999, the need to further develop the ICT sector in Egypt and build an information society to sustain social and economic development was high on the political agenda. The National Program for the Development of Communication and information Technology was launched with two objectives:

1. To establish an information society in Egypt
2. To develop an export-oriented ICT industry.

And to serve these objectives, the ministry of communications and information Technology (MCIT) was established in 1999 by creating an information society and improving the information infrastructure. The MCIT also targeted extending the usage of ICTs for the delivery of public services and providing the necessary technical expertise, platforms, tools and funding for ICT-related projects in the country. 

In 2000, Egypt's e-government program was launched by MCIT in partnership with Ministry of State for Administrative Development (MSAD). This program was divided into two stages. The first stage (2001- 2007) incorporated setting and approving the e-Government strategic plan, implementing and assessing pilot projects, and starting geographical & sectoral deployment of some projects. The second stage (2007-2012) aimed at expanding successful pilot projects on national level, and the development of government administrative body.

E-Government program management office was established to give support for the program and manage its functions, which include e-services, shared services, operation management, technology services, and change management.In 2004, the MSAD launched new strategies and developed goals for the development and modernization of government, and for its implementation.

In January 2004.The government of Egypt inaugurated egovernment portal (www.egypt.gov.eg) where some services were placed in the portal to pilot test the project such as telephone e-billing, birth certificate, issuing, etc.

Generally, The MCIT is responsible for information society policies, economic growth and infrastructures, and the parallel, The MSAD is responsible for public administration development and the e-government agenda. Both ministries are supported by a number of government entities participating in e-government development and implementation in Egypt within the different policy areas. They are also supported by many entities in the private sectors to guarantee the quality and facility of the services delivery to the citizens.

e-Government uptake

Governments around the world invest significant resources in the delivery of online services. Ensuring the cost-effectiveness of these investments relies heavily on the uptake of e-government services by citizens and businesses. The actual uptake of e-government services plays a key role to evaluate the extent to which e-government meets citizens' demands and priorities.

Since 2001, The Egyptian government has developed an e-government infrastructure to revolutionize services for citizens and businesses. The government wanted a bilingual Arabic English portal accessible to citizens, foreigners, businesses, and investors. In 2004, The Egyptian Ministry of State for Administrative Development (MSAD) initiated the development plan of E-government Programs. ELGDP( The Egyptian Local Government Development Program) used  IT and modern management systems to enhance both the quality and efficiency of government systems, reduce service delivery time, and overcome corruption within public administration. This plan covers for approximately 54% of government services to be available by telephone and Internet services. The portal provides a vast number of different Egyptian government services over the Internet. Although many e-government services have been successfully established by the Egyptian government, the uptake of these services remains lower than desirable. The poll conducted by the IDSC in 2005 generally showed a low uptake of e-government services. One survey indicated that only 11.3% of Egyptian households were aware of the existence of e-government services and only 2% of these households had in fact used these services. The figures were higher for businesses with around 65% of businesses with internet access using online government services. The most commonly used services by businesses and citizens were online payment for public utility bills such as phones, water, and electricity. Satisfaction with the use of online utility services was higher than the administrative services. "Egyptian university enrollment" is a successful exampl of high uptake of an online service that was made mandatory.

There are various factors which collectively contribute to low user uptake. These factors include:

• The lack of awareness of the existence of e-government services.
• The digital divide. i.e. some citizens are not involved in the political process and e-government due to lack of access to technology, lack of technical skills, or due to some financial constraints.
• The lack of the necessary ICT infrastructure in remote rural areas.
• The lack of trust between government and citizens for issues related to security and privacy of personal information.
• The general tendency of a population to interact with their authorities.
• Some people prefer face to face interaction rather than online services.
• The online services offered does not meet citizens' demands and priorities.

Therefore Policy efforts to maximize e-government uptake should not end with simply increasing uptake but should also obtain the real benefit of that uptake and to achieve "inclusive e-Government".

Mechanism of involving citizens in e-Government in Egypt

The Egyptian e-Government program is considered the most important tool used to develop an administrative system that provides information and services to citizens through the Internet in an effective, efficient and transparent way. The Egyptian e-Government program focuses on main tracks: an introduction of new service delivery channels as the slogan of the program is ʽʽGovernment now delivers’’, effective communication with citizens as the program adopt citizen-centric services delivery, ensuring the transparency, optimization of resource utilization, cost reduction, and establishing and linking national databases.

Egyptian government provides many channels to deliver the government services for citizens to choose among different options that are suitable for them wherever their location. Channels like (BAWABA, Mobile Applications (WAP, SMS, and ODP), Public Services Kiosks, Call Center, and One Service Provider Window).

Objectives of e-Government Program

• Tailoring government services to meet citizens’ expectations which are reflected by the government intentions to develop e-services that deliver the citizen’s needs.

• Develop a portal that serves the investors needs and eases their transactions and procedures.
• Open and updated government information.
• Increasing Government efficiency and productivity through these new channels of communication with citizens.
• Support and foster  local competitiveness and increasing globalization readiness.
• Cost reduction for the government.

Challenges and solutions

e-Government program has faced many challenges hinders its implementation but the government seek to solve these challenges.

Challenges	solutions
Legal and regulation framework	Release Laws for E-signature and security for personal information
Low penetration of credit cards and inexistence e-payments system	Introduce simple e-payments system such as Fawry
Multiple portals for services delivery	Unified Government portal (Bawaba)
Low number of  PC in houses, schools, universities	Government initiative began in 2002 (computer at every Home) to distribute PC across the country with low cost
Computer literacy	Improve the skills through providing trainings to governmental employee and youth provided from ministry of information and communication technology.
Low ICT readiness in Egypt	Cooperate with Multinational cooperation such as (Oracle and Microsoft)

Achievements of Egyptian e-Government program

Many portals were initiated to reach the citizens and deliver the services directly to them such as (e-Government portal, Government complain portal .ETC)

Egyptian e-Government Portal

The Ministry state of administrative development (MSAD) cooperating with  the ministry of planning and the ministry of communication and information technology (MCIT) under the supervision of prime minister  Dr/Ahmed Nazif and Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates in 2004 have released The Egyptian e-Government portal (BAWBA) as the first step to bring government services online to the citizens. Which is categorized as services oriented so It offers a variety of services to citizens, investors, businesses and foreigners in a bilingual interface (Arabic and English). It offers about 75 interactive services such as

Egyptian Governmental portal

• (Electronic Tansik for High school graduate )
• land  telephone services
• traffic violation services
• booking tickets for Egypt air ,rail and land transport
• electricity and water consumption bills
• mortgage finance service ,court services
• founding services
• complaints of tourists,
• Government forms and documents like: issuance of government documents and certificates that citizens need in a continuous manner  such as birth certificates, death certificates, marriage contracts, jobs portal ,vacant traffic, taxes payments ETC.

The government portal provides the necessary video training tutorials for citizens to show them how they can use the portal to reach their intended services. It also provides a list of some frequently asked questions about the services available. Moreover, they can communicate with providers of services through the government line 19468.So it provides  almost all the services needed by citizens only  in one portal as far  there is no more complex structure of traditional government it became more simple to deal with government  .

 Unified government complaints portal

The government complaints system is a modern interface for the government expressing its desire to achieve direct communication with the citizen through the means available of ICT. The citizen can register by signing up using his/her name and National ID. It provides an instant and a user-friendly mechanism that enables people to send their complaints from any location at any time. This way it alleviates the citizen suffering and improves the level of services provided to citizens

In July 2017 the president Abdel Fattah Elsisi signed a decree in order to unify the complaints portals of each govern orates or ministries in one unified governmental complaints portal across the country through it citizens can participate, give their opinion and complain about any problem they face concerning the services they receive from governments, localities and administrative units in Egypt.

The number of complaints received in the portal reached 1300277 in December 2018  and the achievements rate concerning the reply on complaints reached 82%.

Digital divides

Also the efforts that made to transform the traditional government to electronic government, certain concerns and fears a raised due to this Digital transformation may lead to increase the digital divides in Egypt.

Examples of digital divides

e-Payment as it require bank account, credit card , some financial skills that the poor people are lacking so completely transformation to cash less society will widen the gap between classes in society.

Despite the existence of computers in schools in some areas, they are locked in class rooms to impress school visitors only for special occasions, there is still a lack of technical infrastructure, skilled teachers, and a curriculum that cope with the advancement in ICT.

Gender gap represents a challenge for government as shown that the women uptake to ICT services is lower than men, this due the culture and resistance of females to take literacy ICT training although they are provided and available from Ministry of communication and information technology (MCIT), this will require an awareness campaigns to be solved.

Smart village that supports the rapid increase in business combined by the development in  ICT as it is connected to small urban areas and highly educated graduated from universities, this would be far away from rural areas.

Liberalization of the market and involving private sector without governmental regulator frame work that would create a social exclusion and economic barriers for poor or lower middle class, as the main aim for investor to gain profits so they will serve the rich categories.

Assessment

Insuring that the implementation process of e-government in Egypt is on the right track is essential in the implementation process. A regular assessment process is necessary to keep the progress. in this section we will look into several factors such as the awareness, marketing, monitoring and evaluation.

Awareness:

Governments seeking to electronize their services have to go through 4 stages before they achieve their ultimate goal according to The UN’s (Division for Public Institutions and Digital Government) . The four stages are as follow:

Stage 1: Emerging presence: it’s limited and basic. In this stage the government provides a web page or an official website. The government may/may not provide links to ministries, local government or national institutions and authorities. Citizens have very few options.

Stage 2: Enhanced presence: the government provides larger variety of documents. Information available includes policies, laws, reports and some downloadable databases. Citizen can search for the document they need. A sites map is provided as well as a (Help) feature for further facilitation. The communication is unidirectional though (from the government to the citizens)

Stage 3: Transactional presence: in this stage there’s a two way communication between the government and the citizen (G2C) and between the government and businesses (G2B). Citizens can pay for public utilities, services and taxes online. They can submit documents 24/7. Business can bid online for public contracts using a secure link.

Stage 4: Connected presence: the communication is wider. The government is fully connected. There’s integration of (C2C) (G2B) and (G2G) interactions. The government encourages citizen to participate in the decision making process using means such as web comment form and innovation online consultation

The Ministry of Communication and Information Technology (MCIT)  along with the Ministry of state for Administrative Development (MSAD) started a program in 2001 aiming at applying an e-government service of stage 3 . The one-step portal of Egyptian government was indeed launched after 3 years allowing for two-way communication and giving the citizens the option to finish many of their transactions online. In 2004 (MSAD) put a plan that aimed at making 58% of the government’s service online by 2007 . Since the middle of 2005 the burden of the e-government transformation was shifted fully to (MSAD) which is now called the Ministry of Planning, Monitoring and Administrative Reform (MPMAR) .In 2007, according to a national survey, the awareness level reached 40 % of a sample of 1109 and those who have actually used the service represented 35 % . By 2011 there were more than 70 service available online.

Since the awareness of the citizens is highly related to the marketing strategy, the Egyptian government has implemented a 10 million dollar marketing campaign for the electronic enrollment service (EES) of college students before making the "online" enrollment obligatory and stopping the manual way in 2009. On the other hand the government has made few investments in marketing for other e-government services. In 2012 a research paper  by (Laila EL Baradie) presented a survey conducted among 363 students from private and public universities. The survey showed that 63% of youth have the intention to use e-government services and only 52 % have actually used it. Although these indicators may seem moderate but from another perspective 48% of the "heavy users" of the internet didn’t use e-government services and 37 % didn’t intend to and these are large percentage for the government if it seeks to achieve the larger goals and benefits of e-government. The survey also indicated that "never heard of it” was one of 3 main causes behind the non-usage of e-government services. More efforts were used to figure out the actual awareness of the sample subject to the survey indicated that 73%  of them don’t know the accurate address for the governmental portal in first place. The findings of these studies agree with the results stated by the (OECD) organization in their publication (OECD e-Government Studies EGYPT) in the same year . These findings shows a serious drawback of the government marketing strategy when compared to the success of the previously mentioned campaign of (EES).

This table above shows the pattern of adult’s usage of the e-government service in 2014 with only 22 % of the adult population benefit from the e-government services provided by the government and this shouldn’t be the case because if people were aware enough of the services and how to use it they would prefer to use it and save the time and cost. The figure shows also a relatively high interest in political information for the Egyptian but we should bear in mind that this was a period of political instability so the percentage might not be accurate enough in this regard .

Egypt made high efforts which led to increasing its rank from the 107th in 2012 to the 80th in 2014 according to the UN E-government survey  but this efforts have deteriorated greatly leading to decreasing the rank to 114 in 2018 . The Egyptian citizens need to learn more about e-government. They need to know how important and beneficial it is to them. They need to be more familiar to the services and to ICT in general. This will eliminate the hesitation and worry about the service and this would further affect positively the critical problems of trust, privacy and security. How to do this however is another question which will be discussed later on in the marketing section . The government can teach students in schools about e-government services. They should train the employees in the public sector on how to use it. They can put some employees in traditional service centers to guide the people through the mechanisms of doing the service online. This will help to further increase the awareness of the people about the service and their usage of it.

 

According to this graph numbers of Egyptian internet users’ from 2013 to 2019 are in increase which is a positive indicator for the Egyptian e-government to benefit from

Marketing:

There is no formally announced marketing strategies for e-government services in Egypt however there exist some marketing initiatives like TV and radio spots. According to OECD survey “respondents stated that their organization does not have a formal e-government marketing strategy". Moreover, very few organizations allocate part of their e-government budget to e-government marketing, and most survey respondents do not seem aware of the marketing efforts conducted in this area.

Monitoring of E-Government in Egypt

Checking of the e-government arrangement is essential, which can recognize purposes of solidarity and shortcomings of actualizing the e-government and help guarantee that e-government target are fulfilled, it serves to illuminate e-government goals and make progressively sensible.

Egypt has discovered the importance of monitoring the e-government policy implementation by observing the number of indicators and evaluations. Clear focuses for e-government observing have ended up being useful for better basic leadership and the improvement of better e-government arrangements which will prompt accomplish wanted results.

This observing will be done superbly utilizing OECD e-government indicate that the most widely used indicators to assess the development and implementation of e-government projects are output indicators.

Government monitoring in general seems to be conducted in an ad hoc manner in particular parts of the Egyptian public administration,  Just 11% of respondents expressed that their association has a model for how to screen and assess e-government. Monitoring and evaluation results are typically shared internally with the officials responsible for ICT and the top management in the organization and they think that the results can be available to the staff which is a kind of transparency

About a half of the OECD study respondents don't impart the outcomes to open however I think the accessibility of the consequences of e-government advancement and execution can expand responsibility and expanding subject trust in the administration, and in addition bring issues to light of the accessibility of online administrations.

Egypt estimates advance in the improvement of the data society by observing the markers (month to month or quarterly). Data society indicators are distributed by the MCIT (Ministry of Communications and Information Technology) including mobile and internet subscriptions and penetration, number of fixed line users, number of ICT companies or number of people employed in the ICT sector.

The MSAD (Ministry of State for Administrative Development) screens e-government advancement and execution all the more explicitly by utilizing of the educational and value-based administrations gave on the Government Services Portal (Bawaba).

The IDSC (Information and Decision Support Center) has built up a few markers on resident and take-up of e-taxpayer driven organizations, and gathers information on e-taxpayer supported organization utilization and fulfillment by sexual orientation, age, instruction, pay and urban/country partition. This will help them in observing of the execution of the e-government in Egypt.

Evaluation of Egyptian e-Government

Citizen’s Evaluation of Egyptian e-Government

Egypt has recognized the importance of the constant evaluation of the e-government implementation. Clear targets for e-government evaluation have proven to be instrumental for better decision making and the development of better e-government policies, and to achieve desired outputs and outcomes.

Despite some successful efforts, e-government evaluation in general seems to be conducted in an ad hoc manner in particular parts of the Egyptian public administration. UN E-Government Survey 2018 indicated that only 11.3% of Egyptian households are aware of the existence of e-government services, and only 2% of these households are in fact using these services. The figures are higher for businesses, with around 65% of businesses with Internet access using some kind of online government

The most commonly used services, by businesses as well as by citizens, are online payments of public utility bills, such as phones, water and electricity, as well as train and airline tickets, use of the online university enrollment service is mandatory.

In 2012, The Ministry of State for Administrative Development, citizens' and businesses' satisfaction with the use of online utility services seems to be higher than the administrative services.

Evaluation results are typically shared internally with the officials responsible for ICT and the top management in the organization. A majority of survey respondents indicated that evaluation results are not made available to the organization’s staff. Disseminating such information might help improve transparency and accountability within the organization, as well as clarifying targets and motivating staff. About half of respondents to the OECD survey do not share the results of their monitoring and evaluation with the public.

UN E-Government Survey 2018’s Evaluation of Egyptian e-Government

According to UN E-Government Survey 2018, Egypt ranked the 114th country across the world in developing its e-government. On the African level, Egypt came the 8th among top 10 countries for e-government in Africa.

The challenges that hinder e-Government development in Egypt

Egypt had gone through many changes during the second decade of the third millennium that had strong effects on the countries' political and economic development. That's why it is pledged to develop its reform processes .E- government can be an effective tool that can support this process of reform to achieve the broader public sector objectives of improving the quality of public services and economic growth .Unfortunately ,there are main challenges for furthermore E-government promotion in Egypt. The main challenges are organizational challenge, Budgetary challenge, infrastructure challenge, regulatory challenge and the demand challenge posed by the digital divide.

First : Organizational challenge:

Generally the structure of the public administrations .in addition to the whole governance mechanism have a powerful effect on the success of E-government programs and policies as the government's plan to use ICT are related to public administration reform. In Egypt ,many problems actually arise from Egyptian structure of public administrations like : overlapping tasks ,bureaucracy ,unbalanced work load, unconnected responsibility( the tradition of non-collaboration ) .Moreover, the hardness of collaborating with other departments or ministers ( mainly due to the lack of incentive to work together) ,lack of common e-government vision and strategy .Also the efficient governance at most relies on local administrative units but the administrative units in Egypt are at times not efficient , although there is an Egyptian Ministry for local administration development .That's why governorates still suffer from ineffective management .

Second: Budgetary challenge:

Public sector ICT budget is a critical foundation for effective e-government development and implementation .Also it is important to establish strong measures to evaluate the performance of public sector by appraising the relation between inputs(human resources and expenditures) , output(the services) and outcomes (e-government implementation) but that are considered challenging as it requires valid data that depends on  effective rules, regulations and principles. In Egypt, there are many problems that arises due to Egyptian budgetary principle in addition to lack of valid data like:

• Most of e-government budget are allocated vertically ( which means that its share of the budget is distributed among different government institutions)that leads to lack of incentive to coordinate on a joint projects.

• Lack of funding for e-government projects.

• Unclear accounting rules for e-government expenditures.

• The budget systems don't provide sufficient incentive to increase efficiency and effectiveness of the Egyptian public sector.

Third: Regulatory challenges:

Egypt faces also Regulatory challenges which is concerned with establishing legal framework  as  the key support of developing E-government. Egypt need to further improve the legal framework enabling E-government .Examples of regulatory problems :

• Lack of  specific regulation and laws that enabling e-government development.

• Regulation's rigidity and difficulty to be understood .

• The legislation itself prevents the coordination between different levels of government  or civil society and private sector.

Fourth: Digital divide:

Digital divide is mainly related to user skills in using online services. Many obstacles may arise like

• Lack of employees' (inside the government itself) or citizens' or businesses' ICT skills.

• The language of the provided service.

• There is digital divide between urban and rural areas as most of the telecommunication services and users are focused on the towns .Overwhelmingly over 75 % of the country’s telephone lines are concentrated in the capital and irregular electricity supplies are a  popular feature and a major obstacle to the use of ICT specifically outside major towns.

Fifth :Infrastructure challenges:

Graph(A) shows the percentage of expenditure on Fixedbroad from GNI per capita .Graph(B) shows the percentage of expenditure on mobileboad from GNI per Capita.

ICT infrastructure is necessary to facilitate provision and uptake of  E-government ,Although Egypt_ as an emerging economy_ has tried to achieve the potentials of ICT since the( 1960s). But still the lack of development of ICT infrastructure is considered a critical challenge for E-government development and implication .Examples:

• Internet usage is low in Egypt compared to the world average, which is due to sharing of fixed internet lines that reduces the speed and the benefits.

• Telecommunications deregulation is slow and limited ,though it is not the central factor in explaining ICT infrastructure but is one of its founding components .Deregulation has mostly applied to mobile telecommunications networks (GSM) and Internet Service Providers (ISP).The ISP sector is flourishing but is mostly limited with ISP (in 2002 ISP charges was 8.5 in Egypt which is high relative to other Arab countries because of the few offer broadband connectivity and digital subscriber lines.

• Government remain monopolies  for landlines, fiber optic connectivity, and most broadband offerings, with little deregulation and privatization which means leavening little room for private infrastructure funding.

• Speed of service remains a sensitive concern, with poor connectivity and high prices (Telephone charges in Egypt is 8.5 in 2002 which is high relative to other Arab countries ) .
  

References

This article "Egyptian e-Government" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical and/or the page Edithistory:Egyptian e-Government. Articles copied from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be seen on the Draft Namespace of Wikipedia and not main one.

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