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D emo c r a c y a n d t h e r u l e o f l aw practitioner and researcher in the m-government space will have a reservoir of their own war stories to tell of unforeseen factors that torpedoed the success of m-government initiatives. Unintended consequences Any complex intervention is bound to have unintended consequences, sometimes resulting in effects that are quite the opposite of what was originally intended (this is sometimes referred to as ‘the law of unintended consequences’). Particularly poignant, for instance, are efforts by governments in developing contexts to roll out electronic government-to-citizen (G2C) and citizen-togovernment (C2G) initiatives in an attempt to bridge the digital divide. However, because access by the poor to information technology is often limited, these initiatives tend to benefit those who have access proportionally much more than those who do not, thereby increasing the digital divide. The rich now get a route to an additional channel to access government services, whereas the poor do not benefit at all and may find traditional channels becoming less resourced. Thus, in rolling out m-government services, special care should be taken in catering for low-end devices, shared phone use, rural areas with reduced or non-existent mobile coverage, low device penetration and low literacy rates. Power and culture issues Although all organisations have ‘organisational politics’, government institutions are by their very nature even more subject to power and organisational culture dynamics. In an e-government study in Kenya, we found that ostensibly well-intentioned efforts at streamlining internal operations through government to government (G2G) e-government initiatives by the central government were perceived by local government officials, rightly or wrongly, as further attempts to centralise power and were therefore boycotted or sabotaged by the latter (Ochara-Muganda and Van Belle, 2008; 2010a; 2010b). Similarly, in an environment where access to information is often seen as a way to achieve, maintain and exert power, any efforts to use ICTs to facilitate the flow and exchange of information between government departments is likely to result in significant overt or covert resistance. Sustainability and scalability Given the innovation and technical characteristics of mgovernment, it is not surprising that many initiatives are initiated and driven by commercial vendors or academics. However, vendors have little or no financial incentive to provide government with the technical and human capacities necessary to achieve long-term independence from them, preferring a dependency role which benefits them as long-term contractors or suppliers. On the other hand, academics and well-meaning NGOs arguably have no profit motivation but usually are interested only in a proof-of-concept demonstration for research or marketing purposes, and fail to take into account the huge extra demands posed by scalable solutions such as security, robustness, reliability and resilience. Citizen attitudes and concerns Although citizens arguably benefit the most from m-government, they can also become unexpected obstacles to the successful adoption of m-government initiatives. This surfaced in our own research into the willingness of citizens to engage in mparticipation – the use of mobile technologies to allow citizens to contribute to democratic processes (Cupido and Van Belle, 2013). The lack of trust was found to be a recurring theme – distrust towards national and sometimes local government initiatives may seem irrational but is often grounded in misinformation patterns typical of many small communities; recent confrontational events with local government representatives; or even a national ‘psyche’ of distrust as a result of ineffective democratic governance and communal ‘police state’ memories. At the other extreme, the affordances of the mobile technologies may lead to unrealistic expectations, such as transferring the experience of popular television public polling contests into expectations of easy-to-use national m-voting services without realising the latter’s rigorous preconditions of confidentiality, security and other governance issues. Conclusion This article hopes to provide decision-makers contemplating mgovernment initiatives with a practical tool to assess their department’s readiness for such initiatives. In particular, the framework suggested above is not meant to be definitive but is intended as an aid to prompt further brainstorming and honest self-appraisal of on-the-ground issues that may present technological, organisational or contextual obstacles to mgovernment initiatives. Additionally, we hoped to temper the claims of some proponents by opening the reader’s mind through highlighting some typical issues which confront any m-government initiative. Readers should feel free to contact the author for the full research papers mentioned. References Al-Omari, A. and Al-Omari, H., 2006. ‘E-government readiness assessment model’. Journal of Computer Science, 2 (11), pp. 841–845. Cupido, K. and Van Belle, J. P., 2013. ‘Increased public participation in local government through the use of mobile phones: what do South African youths think?’ The Journal of Community Informatics, 9 (4). Fasanghari, M., Amalnick, M. S. and Khatibi, V., 2010. ‘A proposed framework for m-government development assessment’. Proceedings of 2010 Sixth International Conference on Networked Computing (INC). New York: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, pp. 1–5. Hernandez, J. G. V. and Noruzi, M. R., 2011. A Short Note on the Organisational Economics. Third International Conference on Information and Financial Engineering (ICIFE), Shanghai, 19–21 August 2011. Shanghai: ICIFE. Mengistu, D., Zo, H. and Rho, J. J., 2009. M-government: Opportunities and challenges to deliver mobile government services in developing countries. Proceedings of 2009 Fourth International Conference on Computer Sciences and Convergence Information Technology. New York: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, pp. 1445–1450. Meyer, T., 2010. Organisational capabilities: The essential ingredient to strategy implementation pdf Leadership SA. Available at: www.leadershipsa.com/downloads/ Organisational%20 Capabilities.pdf Accessed 11 July 2012. Norris, D. F. and Moon, M. J., 2005. ‘Advancing e-government at the grassroots: Tortoise or hare?’. Public Administration Review, 65 (1), pp. 64–75. Commonwealth Governance Handbook 2014/15 32


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