Terminología descriptiva: un enfoque pragmático y funcional

There are a number of important considerations that must be mentioned in relation to government to business. According to the Global Business Dialogue (2001) the government has an important role in conducting activities that are related to business. Businesses are aware and motivated to deal with digitized government and depend on its improvement on the government administrative functions in utilising the information technology to apply e-government. The report also revealed that the government is aware of the importance of technology development through implementing strong IT infrastructure that improves effectiveness of G2B and strengthens the relationship between the government and private sector. Also, the report has shed light on the significant role of private sectors in improving the government-private sector’s relationships. This is through offering outsourcing, suggestion for improvements, strategies for customer convenience and satisfactions, successful example of IT utilisation and information related to the most latest technologies. In addition, passing the method of evaluation private sectors use to evaluate government technologies for e-government projects, cooperation with the government in improving governmental officials through offering IT education techniques, and providing universal equipments that deliver easiness for governmental officials environment are other suggestions for improving the relationship between G2B (GDBe, 2001; 2002). Even though the report has comprehensively addressed some important issues and challenges that should be done for G2B implementations and e-government best practices, it could not claim these issues empirically because of lack of evidence due to the limited number of studies related to G2B and/or absence of empirical studies that address the G2B demands or identifies its gaps.

Within the government to business spectrum, there is considerable emphasis on elements of improvement. Bertoletti et al. (2003) argue that one of the critical obstacles that government to business (G2B) face in e-government project in Italy is the complications that affect services to business. Their main concern on services in the business project was in the database records linkage process

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since the integration of records is different from one system to another. In addition, some records were explained in the database and can be easily matched in e-government system while others were unexplained and found unmatched and perceived complication when locating them. Based on the findings, Bertoiletti et al. (2003) suggest considering all integrated scheme and its corresponding entities, building conceptual scheme for database linkage, building the integrated conceptual scheme that identify the linkage databases and its extensions, and setting strategy for data integration transformation.

Further challenges have been noted. The review of government to business has revealed various deficincies that affect the relationships between government and services. Some can be seen in the previous mentioned article, such as a lack of legal guarantee for transactions; security and trust were also some issues of e-government that were observed to be major issues affecting the development of e-government services between government and business (Aichholzer and Sperlich, 2001). However, the Global Business Dialogue on electronic commerce report (2002) supports Aichholzer and Sperlich’s (2001) concerns about privacy, confidentiality, and security. In addition, some other deficiencies generally related to lack of infrastructure and which have a negative impact on government to business electronic development. These include gaps in telecommunications infrastructure, broadband access, difference between the designed laws and regulations and the existing ones, digital literacy, low home computers access, and electronic signature (GDBe, 2002).

Unlike the (2002) Global Business Dialogue on electronic commerce report and Aichholzer and Sperlich (2001) study, Zhang et al. (2005) had other points of views in deficiencies that affect the development between government and private sector where most of the private sector concerned a lack on both the organisational resistance to change and a lack of funding in new IT initiatives.

Dada (2006) had agreed with some previous authors on several deficiencies affecting e-government services in the private sector and added on lack of IT, systems, designs, changes of dealing, non advanced policies, and low level of security and regarded those factors addressed are essential elements that would reflect on the future expectations changes.

59 2.6.2 Private sector perspective

One of the substantial thematic occurrences in the G2B literature examines the topic from the perspective of the private sector. In the year 2006, the Global Business Dialogue on electronic commerce released a report that is one of the important sources promoting government to business studies. The report has commented on the significance of investigating e-government from the point of view of the private sector. These points were imperative because they identify the need of the e-government literature to increase the amount of theoretical and empirical studies related to government to business (G2B). This was mentioned by Zhao (2007) where it was found that most of the research studies concentrate on government to citizen (G2C) and the public sector more than the government to business (G2B).

A Primer on E-Government: Sectors, Stages, Opportunities, and Challenges of Online Governance was another report released for the Congress in (2002) by Seifert. The report has explained the e-government concepts and challenges of successful e-government implementation. The report also states the role of private sector in fueling e-government development in the initiative approach.

Moreover the report addresses the barriers that the private sector faces such as agency centric solutions and the solutions for the private sector in promoting the customer centric. Furthermore, the report has stated on how the government and private sectors’ relationships are expected to be when developing national infrastructure assurance for protecting the nation’s critical infrastructure.

(Siefert, 2002)

The 2002 Global Business Dialogue on electronic commerce report has emphasised the importance of the collaboration of the private sector in promoting e-government projects with the public sector and presented a brief outline of economic, technological, and legal/political factors when establishing successful implementation of e-government that provides services with fast and higher quality standards. Although the report has stated many important issues that reinforce the relationship between Government and Business (G2B), they did not represent cultural and/or society changes. Also, the report observation was generalised and did not specify if the proposed model or recommendations released can be applied in developed or developing countries (GDBe, 2002).

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Following this perspective, a few studies explored the expectations of private industry for government to effect market concerns. Zhao et al (2007), Geetika and Pandey (2007), and Minh (2009) argue the role of government in developing competitiveness in the private sector. Well designed portals that support private sector were seen an effective element in reducing operating cost, improving customer service, improve employees’ IT knowledge, increase service quality, ensure satisfaction, promote business productivity (Zhao et al., 2007; Geetika and Pandey, 2007, and Minh, 2009). Besides, once the government improves electronic services, this influence reflects positively on the private sector because this advanced technological change affects the processes of transactions between government and private sector which add a multitude of benefits for both of them. Zhang et al. (2005) explores stakeholders’ expectations of the benefit and barriers of e-government knowledge sharing. The study investigates the diverging and converging expectations of different stakeholders such as state government, local government, non-profit organisation and private organisation stakeholders. The findings of the study suggest that 4.5 percent of the private organisation stakeholders have valid responses to the expectations of e-government and most of them are concerned that the barriers on the organisational resistance will change and the lack of funding in new IT initiatives.

Warnick (2001: 1) argued that “Some elements in the private sector claim that allowing public access to the new capabilities embodied in e-Government represents unfair competition by providing a service that should be the purview of commercial publishers and information vendors.” It was also observed that collaboration between the government and private sector in disseminating information are expected to improve the e-government project since the private sector has some fundamentals and methods that the public cannot file by government agencies. Although the government does cooperate with the private sector as services providers to add values, packages, market information and products to assist users to accept and engage new changes and to increase the information expansion. The participation of private sectors is perceived to support e-government services for the sake of improving all the participated stakeholders in the e-government services when sharing governmental information dissemination to the public.

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While generally collaboration between the government and the private sector is examined in terms of large firms, research also explores the issue in terms of the small business perspective. For instance, Onojaefe and Leaning (2007) point out the importance of partnerships in empowering e-government through understanding the relationship between small businesses, ICT, and local communities. This is valuable research since it addresses the extent of ICT usage among small businesses through a proposed model. The applied model critically investigates the relationship between the internet and the stakeholders of a business. As a conclusion to this study, the authors have stated some important issues that have to be considered, such as the risk of mix management competencies that could affect the relationship of small business with other partners. In addition to the importance of small business in improving the technical and managerial skills, it also strengthens the relationship of small business with partners, and benefit from technology investments with partners.

However, the appearance of some deficiencies in IT infrastructure, trust, and loyalty in some countries are considered major obstacles that affect business partnerships and need further exploration.