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It is the responsibility of any government to ensure efficient, transparent and reliable services to the common man through telecentres. The purpose of this study is to take into account the influence of people and process on transparency that leads to effective e-governance.

This study involved collecting data through questionnaire method from 400 citizens who visited the telecentres. Data were analysed by conducting chi-square test and independent sample t-test, and it was found that there exists significant influence of location on transparency.

The current study reiterates the fact from literature that transparency in transactions enables effective e-governance. Beneficiaries perceive that people and processes have influence on transparency.

The research adds up to the literature in establishing that there exist differentials among the rural and urban population with respect to transparency. Results could be skewed, as there could be an impact of population density across urban and rural areas.

This study brings out a framework and an action plan for the government to implement and ensure transparency in processes leading to effective e-governance.

The action plan ensures transparency in service delivery leading to effective e-governance. Increased transparency empowers citizens with increased trustworthiness towards services delivered through telecentres.

This paper fulfils the need for an action plan to assure citizens to use deliveries through telecentres with better transparency. The aspect of transparency is not being studied in the present context of service delivery by the government authorities in India. Moreover, the influence of transparency on e-governance is also under-explored.

The purpose of this study is to analyze the relationship between citizen participation and the level of trust in government’s decisions and policies; as well as examining the impact of disclosure of information on the level of citizens’ engagement with governments’ projects. In addition, testing the real motives behind Egyptian citizens’ participation in financing national projects. The study is applied to the “New Suez Canal,” which was finished in only one year opposing the three years implementation period suggested by some studies.

The researcher depended on secondary and primary data as well in working on this paper. She used secondary data gathered from scholars and from domestic and international institutions. Then, she conducted a field study and collected data through distributing 384 Likert Scale questionnaires containing 34 self-administered among respondents to test the following: 1. Citizens perceptions regarding the level of trust in government’s decisions and policies. 2. The impact of citizens’ trust on their willingness to participate in governments’ projects. 3. Is ‘public service motivation’ (PSM) behind citizens’ willingness of participating in national projects. 4. Is the ‘high expected profit of Suez Canal Investment Certificates’ behind citizens participation in national projects.

H1 and H2 have been accepted as trust, transparency and citizen participation proved to be important pillars of building a participatory government. Moreover, citizens’ participation in national projects encouraged national and international enterprises to invest in the canal provision. H3 and H4 are accepted and the statistical study revealed dual contradicting results regarding the motive of citizens’ financial participation in the New Suez Canal project. The justification for the contradiction is that right after the 2011 up-rise, Egyptian citizens were overwhelmed with patriot emotions and feelings pushing them to participate in national projects. At the same time this patriot drive was moderated by the “performance-based rewards and citizens” self-interests’ pushed by the Egyptian government (offering a high-interest rate for Suez Canal Certificates at that time). Citizens might be motivated to participate in national projects triggered by many factors: public service drive – patriotism or self-interest.

The study needs further deeper investigation and empirical pieces of evidence to answer the following questions: would different participatory actions result differently in other circumstances? Do individuals’ levels of PSM vary over time? Besides, the researcher needs to find ways to test PSM against various motives such as self-interest, which needs to be confirmed empirically.

The author came up with important recommendations for central government and decision-makers in Egypt and is based upon the study’s statistical results. The most important recommendations were: central government and decision-makers should frame a policy designed to promote citizens’ participation in decision-making drawing on the guidelines for civil participation in political decision-making. Decision-makers in the central government should work local and regional authorities to update and improve local and regional regulations concerning the participation of citizens in local public life and promote a culture of democratic participation shared by communities and local authorities. Performance-based rewards (high-interest rate) are moderating the citizens’ public service motivation (PSM – patriot sense) and citizens may be motivated by different factors such as public service drive – patriotism or self-interest.

The study is tackling an important issue, which is civil participation in political decision-making. It is also discussing promoting cultural awareness regarding the importance of democratic participation shared by communities and local authorities. The study came up with certain findings proving Egyptian civil society’s willingness in participating with the government in national projects; believing in its socio-economic benefits.

Finally, the study is of value, as it could be considered a pilot study representing the outcomes of citizen participation in national projects; in addition, it can be considered as a road map to policymakers. Moreover, the findings provide a set of recommendations and policies for governments and decision-makers to undertake tangible actions to accelerate citizen participation in further projects and decisions and be able to establish a democratic system in developing countries.

This book is a policy proposal aimed at the democratic left. It is concerned with gradual but radical reform of the socio‐economic system. An integrated policy of industrial and economic democracy, which centres around the establishment of a new sector of employee‐controlled enterprises, is presented. The proposal would retain the mix‐ed economy, but transform it into a much better “mixture”, with increased employee‐power in all sectors. While there is much of enduring value in our liberal western way of life, gross inequalities of wealth and power persist in our society.

This paper has the purpose of presenting intelligent authentication, authorization, and administration (I3A), a new concept that enables trust and information security between involved sides by agreement, rather than by over‐exercised enforcement.

To understand the needs and motivators for the concept, the areas of technology, policies, law, and human mindsets are discussed. The I3A is introduced by discussing two examples of possible solutions that would use the concept in e‐commerce.

In essence, I3A offers an open platform for enabling I3A of cryptographic keys, certificates, and privileges and integrating the use of such with secured applications on a wide variety of devices and environments. The paper argues that for the first time I3A creates a true public key infrastructure (TPKI) and leverages the benefits and the potential of existing and future PKI under one common unconstrained umbrella.

Focuses on a TPKI.

I discuss the case of Hassan Almrei, one of the five Arab men detained as suspects who have the potential to engage in terrorism. Hassan Almrei's detention arises out of a section of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act of Canada that authorizes security certificates. A security certificate permits the detention and expulsion of non-citizens who are considered to be a threat to national security. Detainees have no opportunity to be heard before a certificate is issued and a designated judge of the Federal Court reviews most of the government's case against the detainee in a secret hearing at which neither the detainee nor his counsel is present. The detainee receives only a summary of the evidence against him. I discuss this legal situation as a state of exception that is part of a legal structure in which non-citizens have fewer rights than do citizens. Two conceptual tools shape my understanding of security certificates and their use in the “war on terror”: race thinking and the state of exception. The five detainees are more than simply victims of racial profiling. Their Arab origins, and the life history that mostly Arab Muslim men have had, operate to mark them as individuals likely to commit terrorist acts, people whose propensity for violence is indicated by their origins. When race thinking, the belief in the division of humanity into those prone to violence and those who are not according to racial descent, is accompanied by the idea that there must be two different, hierarchical legal regimes for each, and when we begin to grow accustomed to places without law and to people to whom the rule of law does not apply, we enter the terrifying world of the colonies and the concentration camp. This article examines how a space where law is suspended operates in the “war on terror” and it attends to the work that ideas about race do in the environment of the exception.

This paper aims to describe good‐practice guidance on how a secure and efficient public key infrastructure (PKI) can be developed to support secure and efficient government‐to‐government and government‐to‐citizen electronic communication.

The main approach is to review and discuss the present situation.

The European Union (EU) has launched a comprehensive strategy framework and emerging actions on security and privacy issues. To this direction, a number of relevant initiatives have been put on (e.g. cyber security task force, awareness campaigns, promotion of good practices, improved exchange of information mechanisms, etc.). Their results will provide the basis for the work towards a secure information infrastructure. An important aspect towards this direction is the deployment of a PKI.

Provides a balanced good‐practice guidance for the exploitation of PKI by the public sector of the EU member states.

The purpose of this paper is to understand what are the benefits in terms of improvement of performances that a local government organization (LGO) can achieve embracing ISO 9001 certification as a strategy. This research is aimed at contributing to the answering of this question by exploring the Italian situation, in particular organizations linked to Italian local government which provide services to the citizens.

This research is based on mixed methodologies. First, a qualitative interview based on a semi-structured interview guide was administered to ten LGO quality managers. From this first qualitative inquiry 11 hypotheses to be validated have been stated. A survey has been carried out to validate the hypotheses. By means of two distinct questionnaires each hypothesis has been transformed into a specific question. The question is based on the Likert scale which allows using a χ2-test and non-parametric test such as Cramer’s V. The results from the scale were augmented by the interviewees’ annotations, which comprised suggestions and comments, to each question. The questionnaires have been administered over the last five years to 201 LGOs.

From the findings it seems that ISO 9001 could improve performances in terms of effectiveness, such as citizens’ satisfaction, reduction of defectiveness and claims, as well as staff awareness of citizens’ needs. Moreover, ISO 9001 seems to have a negative effect on citizens’ participation, internal communication and teamwork as well as cost reduction. Controversial issues related to the bureaucracy of documentation and the external auditing process emerged.

The findings are linked to Italian LGOs therefore they need further validation in other European countries where LGOs are managed in a similar way.

The implications of this research are useful for consultants and managers who want to understand what the benefits and limitations of the ISO 9001 certification are in the LGOs. The results are also useful for local government managers and practitioners who are weighing the pros and cons of ISO 9001 certification.

The paper discusses in a quantitative way the benefits of ISO 9001 certification process on the performances of LGOs opening an interesting debate on the topic.

The purpose of this paper is to consider recent field evidence to analyse what online public services citizens need, explores potential citizen subsidy of these specific services and investigates where resources should be invested in terms of media accessibility. The authors explore these from a citizen-centric affordability perspective within three exemplar developing countries in sub-Saharan Africa. The World Bank and United Nations in particular promote initiatives under the “Information and Communication Technologies for Development” (ICT4D) to stress the relevance of e-Government as a way to ensure development and reduce poverty. The authors adopt a contingency value approach to determine directly reported citizens willingness to pay for digital public services. Hence, our focus is mainly upon an empirical investigation through extensive fieldwork in the context of sub-Sahara Africa. A substantive survey was conducted in the respective cities of Addis Ababa (Ethiopia), Lagos (Nigeria) and Johannesburg (South Africa). The sample of citizens was drawn from each respective Chamber of Commerce database for Ethiopia and South Africa, and for Nigeria a purchased database of businesses, based on stratified random sampling. These were randomly identified from both sectors ensuring all locations were covered with a total sample size of 1,297 respondents. It was found, in particular, that citizens were willing to pay to be able to access digital public services and that amounts of fees they were willing to pay varied depending on what services they wish to access and what devices they use (PCs or mobile phones).

The authors adopt a contingency value approach to determine directly reported citizens willingness to pay for digital public services. A survey was conducted in the respective cities of Addis Ababa (Ethiopia), Lagos (Nigeria) and Johannesburg (South Africa). The sample of citizens was drawn from each respective Chamber of Commerce database for Ethiopia and South Africa, and for Nigeria a purchased database of businesses, based on stratified random sampling. These were randomly identified from both sectors ensuring all locations were covered with a total sample size of 1,297 respondents.

The findings suggest that by understanding citizen needs, demands and how they can benefit from online public services could drive decisions related to what public services need to be prioritised for economically active citizens, potentially explore citizen subsidy of these specific public services which will have a trickle-down benefit to poorer citizens by reducing the pressures on traditional channels of public service delivery and investigate where resources should be invested in terms of media to access online services. Willingness to pay between the top online public services showed no statistically significant difference among all respondents.

The research focused on economically active digitally savvy citizens in the major capital cities in each of our selected countries. While these are not representative of the population at large, our intention was to understand what citizen-led government services would look like from the perspective of this group, with an insight into the value they place on these online services and their ability to access them. Technology diffusion starts with the early adopters (Rogers, 2010), and here the authors have focused on those that are likely to be early adopters.

Poor fiscal capacity, namely, the amount and type of resources a state has at its disposal, not only has an impact on economic wellbeing, but particularly relevant in this case, also has an impact on the quality of government (Baskaran and Bigsten, 2013). Thus, e-government is one way in which developing countries can focus on developing good governance and strengthening civil society to improve the quality of government and motivate citizens to participate in the political process.

The economic performance of African countries has been viewed with pessimism, consistently considered to be the poorest continent (Harrison et al., 2014). Recent studies have empirically shown that new information technologies have contributed to longer term economic growth in African countries and stress the need for government to further invest in developing telecommunications infrastructures and internet access (Donou-Adonsou et al., 2016). However one of the major constraints and challenges for developing countries is the limited fiscal capacity and ability to mobilise fiscal resources to finance the provision of public services, which is essential for economic development (Ali et al., 2015).

The authors contribute to the World Bank and United Nations initiatives to promote ICT for Development’ (ICT4D) the relevance of e-government as a way to ensure development and reduce poverty. If online services are of no benefit, even if they are more convenient and lower cost, they are unlikely to be used. Accessing digital public services directly addresses the needs of economically active citizens and can also facilitate the steps towards an improved quality of government and interaction with civil society. The study has contributed to an insightful understanding of the value, cost and benefits of citizen-led e-Government in this respect.

The enforcement of the General Data Protection Regulation imposes specific privacy- and -security related requirements that any organisation that processes European Union citizens’ personal data must comply with. The application of privacy- and security-by-design principles are assisting organisation in achieving compliance with the Regulation. The purpose of this study is to assist data controllers in their effort to achieve compliance with the new Regulation, by proposing the adoption of the privacy level agreement (PLA). A PLA is considered as a formal way for the data controllers and the data subjects to mutually agree the privacy settings of a service provisioned. A PLA supports privacy management, by analysing privacy threats, vulnerabilities and information systems’ trust relationships.

However, the concept of PLA has only been proposed on a theoretical level. To this aim, two different domains have been selected acting as real-life case studies, the public administration and the health care, where special categories of personal data are processed.

The results of the evaluation of the adoption of the PLA by the data controllers are positive. Furthermore, they indicate that the adoption of such an agreement facilitates data controllers in demonstrating transparency of their processes. Regarding data subjects, the evaluation process revealed that the use of the PLA increases trust levels on data controllers.

This paper proposes a novel reference architecture to enable PLA management in practice and reports on the application and evaluation of PLA management.

In this work-in-progress, the application of blockchain technology (BT) in higher education in India – involving academic institutions, students and verifiers – in the wake of fake degrees (racket) being issued at a large scale from universities across the country is being investigated. This paper considers providing new methods of database system in education, and implementing the new BT in education can increase transparency and security in the education system.

This study used interview methodology (asking interview participants a series of informal questions to obtain knowledge).

Private and public sector organizations have many challenges to overcome in synchronizing and aligning their digital transformation efforts to enable the network effects to take hold. India’s policymakers, civil society leaders, senior business leaders and entrepreneurs are building strong clusters to help the country be the leader of the next era of the internet as a platform that helps transform human affairs for the benefit of the citizens. Executives can contribute to the digital ecosystem by creating open and collaborative cultures where knowledge and innovation are shared with the industry for the benefit of the masses and, more so, to establish quality and communication standards. They also can contribute by staying open to change, embracing digital adoption and transformation within their management models and infrastructure. It is time for institutions to rethink their processes and governance structures to become more agile and innovative players. The success of a harmonious digital identity ecosystem relies on staying ahead of the organization’s digital curve. As a first step to provide better quality in the provision of public services, Secure Key Technologies’ blockchain-based ecosystem (securekey.com) allows multiple partners to strengthen the authentication and provides identity attribute validation as a fabric of trust and as a solid foundation to embrace a new digital era. Secure Key Technologies’ vision for the future of digital identities redefines the ways both consumers and businesses approach identity verification and the sharing of key personal information. The challenges identified in the education system be it the difficulty in authenticating certifications and documents, tracking intellectual property and in accessibility can be better managed through blockchain implementation.

Digital certificates produced using blockchains are the most secure and efficient method being adopted by many countries across the globe (Grech and Camilleri, 2017). Tamper-proof blockchain records consist of three components or layers: the first contains the signed hash of the content, the second contains all the data and images and the third is the presentation and styling of the data. The verification process is relatively simple; the hash of the recipient is compared to the hash stored on the blockchain if they match the document is verified.