Peer Reviewed Journal via three different mandatory reviewing processes, since 2006, and, from September 2020, a fourth mandatory peer-editing has been added.
The literature on the effectiveness of e-government in
developing countries towards improving public service
delivery is littered with failure stories. Notwithstanding,
the failures have not stopped most governments in
developing countries from increasingly turning to ICT,
most notably internet based models, as the preferred
channel for citizen-centered service delivery. This paper
investigated e-government within the developing country
context of South Africa. We used the interpretive
paradigm primarily because we wanted to increase our
understanding of the phenomenon of e-government for
public service delivery within the local South African
context. The investigation focused on one of the
governments primary service delivery programmes –
social grants. The analysis of findings suggest that egovernment
in South Africa is not aligned to the service
delivery philosophy, Batho Pele, and is hence not
effective in delivering on the public service delivery
mandate. Batho Pele which literally means “people first”
is similar to the UNDP Human Development Indicators
for development. The contribution of this research can be
extended to both practice and IS theory. The research
highlights the need for ICT4D, particularly e-government
in developing contexts, to firstly be aligned to the current
over-arching government philosophies if they are to have
any effective impact on service delivery. The practical
contribution of the research is a possible framework that
could be used to align e-government in South Africa to
the government philosophy of service delivery.
