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This study aims to find out how the e-records management subject has been researched and tackled by researchers in the Eastern and Southern African Regional Branch of the International Council on Archives (ESARBICA).

This research paper applied a bibliometric survey, where a quantitative survey of the literature pertaining to the study of e-records management in the ESARBICA region, covering the period from 2000 to 2016, was conducted applying bibliometric methods. The survey aimed at providing descriptive data that cast a spotlight on the features and development of the e-records management base literature in the ESARBICA region.

The research data display a lamentable outlook in the contribution to the electronic records management body of knowledge from the ESARBICA region. Few research articles from professionals in the records and archives management are being published. These figures call for increased investments in electronic records management research by institutions in ESARBICA, as management of electronic content has become the centre of political and socio-economic development. Follow-up studies need to be done to counter limitations placed on this research paper. The findings show that there is under production of research publications in the ESARBICA region. The region only contributed 2 per cent of the total world output in the period under review and in the study of electronic records management from journals indexed by Scopus.

A bibliometric study places researchers at the mercy of analysing incomplete information due to limitations of resources. The variance in use of terminology (key words) by authors in published research articles may entail some being left out in an analysis of articles the same subject matter. As much as due diligence was placed on using Boolean search methods to counter such limitations they are unavoidable. An interpretation of bibliometric or citation analysis research is subjective as some analysts may label results incomplete or unreliable; hence, this paper finds itself in the same predicament. Inability to access the Thompson Reuters Web of Science database left the authors with Scopus as the only option, as Google Scholar was overlooked due to difficulties of having to rely on third-party software for analysing its indexed content that are mostly inaccurate and or ambiguous.

The findings of this study help uncover areas in e-records management, which have been researched over the years, and identify the prominent e-records management researchers in the ESARBICA region.

A number of bibliometric studies have been conducted; however, none has been conducted to establish e-records management research trends in the ESRABICA region.

This study aimed to identify and analyse the key factors influencing the adoption of e-government services and to discern their implications for various stakeholders, from policymakers to platform developers.

Through a comprehensive review of existing literature and detailed analysis of multiple studies, this research organised the influential factors based on their effect: highest, direct and indirect. The study also integrated findings to present a consolidated view of e-government adoption drivers.

The research found that users' behaviour, attitude, optimism bias and subjective norms significantly shape their approach to e-government platforms. Trust in e-Government (TEG) emerged as a critical determinant, with security perceptions being of paramount importance. Additionally, non-technical factors, such as cultural, religious and social influences, play a substantial role in e-government adoption decisions. The study also highlighted the importance of performance expectancy, effect expectancy and other determinants influencing e-government adoption.

While numerous studies have explored e-government adoption, this research offers a novel classification based on the relative effects of each determinant. Integrating findings from diverse studies and emphasising non-technical factors introduce an interdisciplinary approach, bridging the gap between information technology and fields like sociology, anthropology and behavioural sciences. This integrative lens provides a fresh perspective on the topic, encouraging more holistic strategies for enhancing e-government adoption globally.

This research involves empirical evidence from the Tanzanian context to find out whether participation, trust and transparency have a significant impact on the acceptance of e-government systems.

The research employs a survey of 153 respondents followed by structural equation modelling-variance based (CB-SEM) analysis using PLS 4. The conceptual framework was developed by extending the technology acceptance model (TAM) with additional constructs before testing it in quantitative research.

Results of the model show that the perceived ease of use (PEU) had neither a significant relationship with behaviour intention nor with perceived transparency, while all the other relationships were found to be significant.

Among others, this research provides theoretical underpinnings to the area of acceptance of technologies as well as providing areas for future research and policy implications.

The study presents the relationships involving transparency, trust and participation in e-government systems by the citizens and how they can potentially influence intention to use e-government systems.

The regulatory authorities, mobile service operators and government can use this research to enhance decision-making and governance towards effective use of mobile phone technology in accessing government services.

This research delivers a refined, extended model of TAM that comprises extra constructs, namely, trust, transparency and participation. This model provides the basis for upcoming research in the area of technology acceptance, e-government and in behavioural science.

The aim of this study is to identify the challenges and barriers to e-Government set up in developing/conflict countries, related to Information Communication and Technology (ICT) and social obstacles – that are common in developing countries like Afghanistan. In today's world e-Government plays an important role of providing easy access to government services that enable citizens in general to communicate faster. This very research concentrates on the implementation of e-Government challenges in developing countries, particularly in Afghanistan. This paper is covering (1) method of study; (2) research strategy; (3) finding and policy recommendation; (4) limitation; (5) theoretical implication; (6) recommendation and conclusion. Additional data related to e-Government in Afghanistan, acquired via a quantitative survey and interviews can also help this analysis.

This research incorporates both theoretical and empirical study; using both quantitative and qualitative method for data collection. Also, as already noted, the study reviews different literature and academic documents. The original work of the study is the collection of relevant first-hand information for empirical analysis from experts of both public and private institutions such as IT, CIO and management experts through the use of a survey tools. This was done using web-based surveying and delivery of hard and soft copies to the experts to obtain their notions about e-Government implementation obstacles. Finally, both quantitative and qualitative survey results are calculated and presented.

Empirical study has established that 5 obstacles out of 15 named by respondents, stakeholder involvement, with the highest mean, (4.1145), coordination (4.0038), information sharing (3.9962), ICT literacy (3.9822) and e-Government awareness (3.8830) are considered to be the major obstacles. This opinion was also expressed by the respondents to the in-depth interview which was explained in a paper with detail.

Most research record numerous limitations, therefore, it is important to note that this study is no exception. Some of the limitations were recorded in the course of the study will be counted for the purpose of placing the finding in the right perspective. The limitations of this study were time constraints and difficult to generate enough participation in the survey. Because of that, I did a quantitative survey but could include very few members of top management. Second, the study is limited due to the lack of participation by respondents from various sectors such as citizens, university students, academia, banks, businesses and NGOs. The third limitation was lack of research materials for this study. Many difficulties were encountered with respect to find materials of previous research studies on the topic and in particularly in the context of Afghanistan.

The studies conducted previously on e-Government and referenced herein highlighted implementation challenges in developing countries as a group. Applying this study in Afghanistan may contribute to our understanding of key challenges facing in implementing e-Government process specifically in Afghanistan. The current study contributes some significant findings to the academic field of studying e-Government implementation challenges. It adds the support and information from public and private sector's perspective regarding major challenges in e-Government implementation in Afghanistan.

As per looking to the experience of developed and developing countries, this study emphasizes the following key initiatives to be performed in parallel with the running projects by Ministry of communication and IT [18]. 1-Pilot projects, 2-Simplification of Business Processes, 3-A strong committed national leadership, 4-Involvement of Stakeholders, 6-To granting incentives for involvement of local ICT companies, 7-Exemption of basic ICT, 8-To develop a standard ICT infrastructure

Governments around the world are under the pressure from rapid globalization, fiscal, social and technological changes to provide services that are citizen-centric, efficient, transparent, effective, one stop, any time and nonstop. Post-conflict countries are under even greater pressure to create such services because they replace the vacuum caused by the violence and will be the only services offered, rather than simply an upgrade of current government offerings that already meet citizen needs. The adoption of technology is the most efficient way to integrate the public and private sector and to provide services with accountability, transparency and efficiency, but this is not an easy task, especially for developing countries. This research looks at e-Government implementation challenges in developing countries and particularly in Afghanistan. A literature review shows many challenges common among developing countries: a lack of ICT literacy, incomplete infrastructure, a digital divide existing between the rural poor and the emerging urban middle class, an uncertainty about data privacy and data security, the absence of comprehensive ICT policies and legislation, lack of an ICT culture in government and the traditional components of the economy, questions regarding the government's ongoing financial commitment to the project, e-Government awareness, willingness of ministries to engage in information sharing, a void of ICT leadership outside the technologically oriented ministries, resistance to change, an historic lack of intergovernmental coordination and low stakeholder involvement are just some of the many challenges identified. The author belief that developing countries realize the importance of e-Government and consider the implementation of e-Government to be the critical tool for economic stability and growth as well as developing a more transparent, less corrupt government. The survey questionnaires were developed based on the challenges found in literature review. The survey questionnaire was translated into local languages (Pashto and Dari) and an English version served as control indicator by a professional local translator. At first a pilot version was sent to 10 officials from the Ministry of Communication and IT. After attesting period, the survey was circulated to 150 respondents who were experts in various fields such as CIO, Management and IT in Afghanistan. All respondents agreed that stakeholder involvement, coordination, information sharing, ICT literacy, awareness, resistance to change, ICT, finance issues, ICT policy, leadership, data privacy, legislation, ICT culture and digital divide are some of the major challenges for e-Government implementation in Afghanistan. Respondents (3.1412) on ICT security were impartial in their response on whether to include this indicator into challenges. Many projects are run by the Ministry of Communication and IT and within completion of these projects most of the challenges that identified in the analysis of the quantitative survey will be addressed, although the government is also vigorously pursuing legal and policy modifications. As per looking to the experience of developed and developing countries, this study emphasizes the following key initiatives to be performed in parallel with the running projects by Ministry of communication and IT [18]. Pilot projects should be implemented in two ministries as test beds prior to general roll out to ensure the efficient use of money needed for E-government projects. This will have two benefits from one side it will save money in terms of failing projects as argued by *19+ “E-government in developing countries fail, with 35% being classified as total failures (E-government was not implemented or was implemented but immediately abandoned), and 50% as partial failures (major goals were not attained and/or there were undesirable outcomes)”. On the other hand, in case.

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.

Many countries today, especially in Europe, provide publicly funded public services in quasi-markets. As these markets commercialize, agencies of various types are providing technologies that support citizens’ choice of services. Citizens’ use of technologies for service provision is studied as e-government under labels of channel management, e-service uptake or adoption. In contrast, by using actor–network theory (ANT), the purpose of this paper is to focus on the marketing devices that are used to enroll citizens to choose technologies in a context with large penetration of quasi-market arrangements.

Based on a Swedish case study, this paper uses qualitative data from 11 occurrences of technologies to support citizens’ choice (“market devices”) in education, healthcare and public pension in an analysis of the means taken (“marketing devices”) to increase their use. The study formulates a tentative typology of these devices.

The marketing devices are intended to attract citizens’ attention to the possibility of choice (e.g. catalogs, postcards and commercials), invite interaction (e.g. various social media platforms), improve the technological support in line with user needs (e.g. user participation in development), increase visibility of technological support (e.g. search optimization) or directly connect citizens to technological support (e.g. via links).

The paper contributes to e-government research through a typology of means taken to increase citizens’ technology use based on selected concepts from ANT, and to a discussion of technologies and humans.

In this study, the authors explain citizens’ adoption of social media in citizen–government relations in China, a country that blends an authoritarian governance regime with limited tolerance of and responsiveness to online citizen participation.

Original survey data were gathered using a vignette survey among 307 respondents living in the People’s Republic of China. Multivariate analysis of the data was used to test four hypotheses and identify antecedents of Chinese citizens’ social media adoption for “thin” participation purposes.

Citizens’ perceived impact of “thin” participation, citizens’ skills and capabilities and citizens’ trust in institutions are significantly associated with citizens’ social media adoption. Social media anxiety was found not to be associated with Chinese citizens’ social media adoption.

This study demonstrates how vignettes can be used to study adoption of technological and institutional innovations in an authoritarian governance regime and how in this context existing adoption theories can be extended with notions of institutional trust to adequately explain citizens’ adoption of technological and institutional innovations in citizen–government relations.

Although some argue that social media activity could potentially mitigate democratic deficits caused by the state, in the case of China, the intertwinement of state and social media platform renders this argument unsustainable.

This study is one of the few systematic survey studies focusing on Chinese citizens’ adoption of social media in citizen–government relations.

Based on the theory of trust and cost-benefit perspective, this paper examines the relationship between citizens’ trust and their digital attitudes by considering the mediating effects of performance expectancy and perceived risk, as well as the moderating effect of media use.

The city digital transformation in Shanghai is chosen as the case in this study. 466 questionnaires were collected through a survey, with Structural Equation Modeling to test the hypotheses in AMOS.

Citizens’ trust of government and trust of technology has no significant direct effect on their digital attitudes. However, performance expectancy mediates between the trust of government and digital attitudes, and perceived risk mediates the effect of trust of technology on attitudes. The use of social media significantly moderates the association between trust of technology and citizens’ attitudes.

Exploring why citizens shape supportive attitudes toward digitalization is critical to achieving digital governance goals in developing countries, especially large cities where digital transformation is accelerating. The originality lies in using cost-benefit analysis as a perspective and media use as a moderator to examine the mechanisms of citizens’ trust and digital attitudes.

The purpose of this study is to frame digital transformation (DT) within municipalities to improve the life cycles of urban infrastructure.

The study provides the results from a systematic review of the literature on concepts of DT and its implications for municipalities, barriers and challenges to DT, as well existing DT frameworks for municipalities and their built assets. This literature review leads to the development of a DT framework to help cities conduct a planned and federated DT beforehand. Then, workshops are conducted with two major Canadian municipalities.

The results of these studies point to the need for a dedicated DT framework for municipalities because of their particular context and their role and proximity to citizens. The theoretical framework develops 22 elements, which are divided among 6 categories. Through its application, the framework helps to identify and target the predominant issues hindering the DT of municipalities, specifically “legacy practices” and “data management.”

Limitations include limited experimental conditions and small sample size. Further work is needed to validate the framework. Other approaches are advocated to complement the data collection and analysis to generate more convincing results.

The theoretical framework was validated through two case studies on two large Canadian municipalities.

Municipalities maximize the value they provide to citizens and to be at the forefront of resilience and sustainability concerns. The use of technology, digital processes and initiatives helps cities to improve planning, optimize works and provide better services to citizens.

The framework is original in that it specifically aligns assets management with DT in a municipal context.

The COVID-19 pandemic has fuelled the transition in the workplace into the digital era. The purpose of this review paper is to highlight how the pandemic has further exposed the digital divide and the structural inequalities in remote workers’ access to home-location technology infrastructure and services. The unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) is adopted to highlight how the pandemic has forced the workforce to accept and use digital technology from home for work purposes.

This desktop-based review paper is drawn from the existing literature. Although both benefits and disadvantages are noted, technology plays a critical role in connecting remote workers to the digital world.

The paper found that remote workers did not necessarily struggle to work remotely from home to undertake their daily work tasks. Still, the critical challenge was the available Information and Communication Technology (ICT) infrastructure in their respective residential areas.

The paper seeks to highlight that even though the COVID-19 pandemic and related events have fast-tracked the switch of many work activities into the digital era, the uneven distribution of ICT infrastructure accentuates the barriers to effective home workplaces for many in developing communities. The research found a significant role that the advancement and acceptance of technologies play in the efficacy of remote working from home.

The relevance of this paper is in its contribution to the literature in extending knowledge about the UTAUT on remote working during a pandemic. The arguments presented herein may contribute to policy development and the ongoing debate about how the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the shift into the digital era on a global basis.