Introducing E-Government in developing countries analysis of Egyptian e-Government services

Abstract

Online Identification and Authentication is an essential requirement for providing e-services. Few studies have investigated the challenges facing e-Government and IDM in developing countries and, to the best of our knowledge, none of the existing research has studied the challenges facing online identification and remote authentication in developing countries, such as the North Africa Countries (NAC), where a relatively large proportion of citizens are illiterate. Therefore, the design of a national IDM system in a NAC must explicitly consider illiteracy to allow this group of citizens to benefit from online services. Egypt is one of the NAC, which has implemented online identification and authentication services that are widely recognized as the most advanced among the NAC. This paper analyses the Egyptian digital IDM in order to identify IDM requirements for online identification and authentication services that guarantee equal access to online services and an inclusive society. The study identifies strengths and weaknesses of the Egyptian e-Government and IDM services, which we believe are common to most NAC, since the NAC are quite similar in terms of social culture, citizen's education level and skills, citizen's behaviours, digital infrastructure and legislation, but also common to many other developing countries. Our analysis of the Egyptian e-Government services indicates that the security requirements and principle of equal access are not fully met, which illustrates the difficulty of introducing e-Government in developing countries.