Public Participation Readiness Toward E-Gov 2.0: Lessons from Two Countries

Nowadays, many government has programs to build inclusion and equality in the community where each individual is empowered and given equal opportunities to participate in both social and political processes. Equality in the community is a cultural characteristic of society in this digital era. Everyone wants to get equal access to services provided by the government. This provides various benefits when equality in public participation can be applied through e-Government. Based on economic perspective, increasing public access to government information and services can create economic value, increase efficiency and facilitate the business. From other perspectives, particularly from the political and civic engagement, as well as from the cultural and social participation, digital technologies enable new ways of communication, collaboration, and participation. Unfortunately, until now e-Government is only viewed from a technological perspective and does not involve community participation in e-Government development initiatives. As a result, services provided by the government have not been in accordance with the needs of the community. E-Gov 2.0 is a concept where public participation is a key factor in e-Government development initiatives. This study aims to analyse the extent to which e-Gov 2.0 readiness is based on the use of e-Government services and public participation in both countries, Indonesia and Malaysia. The results of showed that level of public participation in e-Government in both countries is still relatively low (<40%) even-though citizen's interest in joining e-participation is very high (>90%) and citizen perception about the importance of e-participation is also highly positive (>99%). Thus, the citizen participation is still less involved in e-Government initiatives. The further research will be conducted to explore the influence factors of citizen participation.