Rajendra Kumar and Michael L. Best
We find that the presence of village Internet facilities, offering government
to citizen services, is positively associated with the rate at which the villagers
obtain some of these services. In a study of a rural Internet project in India,
we identify a positive correlation for two such Internet services: obtaining
birth certificates for children and applications for old age pensions. Both
these government services are of considerable social and economic value to the
citizens. Villagers report that the Internet based services saved them time,
money, and effort compared with obtaining the services directly from the government
office. We also find that these services can reduce corruption in the delivery
of these services. After over one year of successful operation, however, the
e-government program was not able to maintain the necessary level of local political
and administrative support to remain institutionally viable. As government officers
shifted from the region, or grew to find the program a threat, the e-government
services faltered. We argue that this failure was due to a variety of Critical
Failure Factors. We end with a simple sustainability failure model. In summary,
we propose that the e-government program failed to be politically and institutionally
sustainable due to people, management, cultural, and structural factors.