Discussion Paper No. 270 of 2021 on The Effect of E-Government on Government Effectiveness and Control of Corruption among UN Member Countries

Abstract

E-government has been implemented by various countries with the aim to improve public sector efficiency through better service delivery, increased accountability and improved interaction between the government, citizens and businesses. E-participation increases the scope of e-government to include information sharing, collaborative decision-making and participatory service delivery. Both e-government and e-participation have numerous benefits, among them the potential to improve public services and control corruption. This is particularly important given that corruption is one of the most persistent and prevalent challenges to socio-economic development and quality public service. This study sought to assess the status of e-government and e-participation in Kenya and compare it with aspirator countries to identify areas of weakness, opportunities and lessons. It also determined the effect of e-government on control of corruption among high income countries, upper middle-income countries and lower middle-income countries. The results show that Kenya’s score on the telecommunication infrastructure index was the lowest when compared to aspirator countries. The study suggested areas that Kenya could learn on e-government and e-participation in aspirator countries. Particularly, the possibility of exploring context-specific e-government initiatives such as SMS-based e-participation and mobile-based e-services was elucidated. E-government development index and E-participation index were found to have positive effects on government effectiveness and control of corruption among the three categories of countries. However, the effects were significant for highincome countries and upper middle-income countries that had higher average scores for the components of e-government development index. Therefore, lower-middle income countries such as Kenya need to continue investing on e-government and e-participation to increase their government effectiveness and control of corruption.