Sustainable development is among the key issues in the current global conversations on socio-economic development agendas . Governments are required to ensure that their ongoing efforts to respond to the economic, social and environmental challenges are sustainable. However, governments are faced with complex, multi-faceted and interdependent challenges. Such challenges cannot be dealt with by a single government – let alone a single ministry. Thus, effective collaboration among agencies across the government and with the private sector, delivery of essential services that meet citizens’ needs and facilitation of citizen engagement in policy making and in public service provision are increasingly important. In recognising the role of information and communication technologies (ICT) in addressing the challenges, a good deal of efforts in electronic government (e-government) implementation are put in place to increase the efficiency of the public sector, to stimulate economic growth and to promote social inclusion, particularly of the marginalised populations. Efforts are also put into the sharing of knowledge and innovative design solutions for e-government implementation among countries. Despite the increasing efforts of governments in developing countries to leverage the added value of e-government implementation, they still lag behind governments in developed countries due to factors such as insufficient funds, insufficient ICT infrastructure and low ICT literacy of officials in the public sector. This has led to the different pace in which developed and developing countries invest in and implement innovative e-government solutions. This difference in pace has led to a gap in e-government implementation between developed and developing countries. Consequently, developing countries continue to rely on and use e-government expertise, design approaches and solutions from developed countries. However, this requires careful consideration of the different contexts of countries. The ways in which a country designs, implements, evaluates and sustains e-government initiatives is influenced by a number of factors that define its context, for example: democratic practices, economic status and availability of ICT infrastructure. Such factors differentiate the circumstances and contexts of a country from the other. The problem scope described above, particularly the gap in e-government implementation between developed and developing countries and the crucial need to consider the different contexts of countries, was the motivation for this doctoral thesis. To address the identified problems, the aims of this research are twofold: (1) to contribute in bridging the gap between developed and developing countries in e-government implementation and (2) to contribute in improving e-government implementation in developing countries. To achieve the aims, the objective of the research is to develop a strategic framework for e-government systems design and implementation. The development of the framework is based on design science research including literature review and empirical investigations of e-government design and implementation approaches employed in developed and developing countries. As per requirement of design science research, the framework is evaluated in Tanzania to demonstrate its usefulness and applicability. The framework, empirical findings and the evaluation results are not only significant contributions to enlarging the spectrum of e-government research but also significant to e-government planners and implementers in developing and developed countries. The latter is ensured by the inherently generic and flexible nature of the framework in order to be applicable in different countries with much emphasis placed on understanding the context of a country.weiterlesen