Well the first time I heard about this systems I considered them to be quite different but, unluckily, they sound very similar. So, when I started to search in this area it was very easy to be confused. Eventually I understand that by manipulating these two terms I make things more complicated and tangled. As far as I go deeper I feel to be more in trouble than two years before. Now I am using these terms everyday and each day I need to have a very good argument for using the one or the other. Couple of days ago I got a very good explanation from my Lecturer¹ on this issue. I asked him whether I can use his ideas in my blog or not. He agreed in case I credited him. Later on he sent me his Name, Title and Name of University by email. And when I inserted it into my text I realized that he has written “Dr David Kreps, Lecturer in eGovernment, University of Salford”. Meanwhile, I was thinking that he is a lecturer in eGovernance. So all this just gave me a very good cause to start writing about definitions of the terms.

Of course, I started from Wikipedia. Obviously it is the easiest way to receive any definition. Shortly I was amused ti find out that there is no definition for eGovernance. There was just a small definition of eGovernment²

The description of eGovernment sounds quite easy presented this way in Wikipedia. And why not? It is the definition of any project for government, where Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is being used. The description of the term in this frame is clear. The same explanation of the term of electronic government I got from Subhash Bhatnagar’s book: “E-government: from vision to implementation”. And probably it is the best description of the term eGovernment. Then what about eGovernance?

Couple of days ago I received a better description from my lecturer, as I had mentioned previously. He indicated the levels of these both terms and the relations within them. So the descriptions by Dr. David Kreps goes this way:

• eGovernance - A renewed Public Sector for the Knowledge Economy
• eGovernment – A subset of eGovernance, concerned with ICT projects in the Public Sector
• mGovernment – A subset of eGovernment, concerned with mobile ICT applications
• tGovernment – A subset of eGovernance, concerned with the Transformation of the Public Sector required to make it fit for the Knowledge Economy

To be honest my vision of eGovernance did not coincide to the vision that Dr. Kreps offers us. But what I could do. Therefore I just decided to try imagining all this phenomena in one space. Imagination is always puts together all pieces of a big picture. And I started to draw.

Let’s imagine we have a big replacement of whole administrative governmental Public Sector with the term eGovernance. The replacement of public records on citizens from paper based to database records can serve as a good example of eGovernance. It is obvious that it should be the highest level that includes everything in itself. Then, there is a specific electronic communication technology which can be easily imaged by eGovernment. eGovernance is little bit more complicated. It is the logical and technological use of new electronic methods of interaction of Government with citizens, business and other governmental bodies. A good example of eGovernance can serve the voting by mobile phones. If we step further we should consider a little about Internet Government. This level is rather low in this hierarchy. The best example of internet governance is the act of paying taxes on-line, which is obviously the best solution for business and householders everywhere.

This was a little imagination on the hierachy of terms: eGovernance and eGovernment.

Albert Poghosyan

1. Dr David Kreps, Lecturer in eGovernment, University of Salford [↩]
2. e-Government (from electronic government, also known as e-gov, digital government, online government or in a certain context transformational government) refers to government’s use of information and communication technology (ICT) to exchange information and services with citizens, businesses, and other arms of government. e-Government may be applied by legislature, judiciary, or administration, in order to improve internal efficiency, the delivery of public services, or processes of democratic governance. The primary delivery models are Government-to-Citizen or Government-to-Customer (G2C), Government-to-Business (G2B) and Government-to-Government (G2G). The most important anticipated benefits of e-government include improved efficiency, convenience, and better accessibility of public services. [↩]