The Impact of Financial and Economic Crisis on eGov in OECD countries

The global financial and economic crisis has over night, put governments under considerable pressure to promptly address a broad range of challenging political, economic and governance issues affecting both the public and the private sector. In their effort to be agile and responsive to the situation, governments have stretched their human and budgetary resources to the limit. To swiftly create the capacity to handle these new challenges, they are looking at how efficiency and effectiveness in the public sector can be improved.

While some governments have chosen to cut e-government spending and reduce the pace of its implementation, others have chosen to seize this occasion to accelerate the pace of e-government implementation. For every country, the main issues are to avoid wasting tax payers' money, ensure that resources are used most efficiently and effectively, and rebuild citizens’ trust through increased transparency in how decisions are made and implemented. As a consequence, governments are also faced with the challenge of paving new ways to increase citizen participation and engagement.

Seen in this perspective, the different government approaches to the crisis response show some common trends. Fourteen of 22 responding countries have included e-government in their crisis response packages. Countries are generally looking into: improving performance and reducing waste in the public sector; making strategic investments in new and innovative key e-government areas; accelerating public spending on e-government; rebuilding trust with citizens; improving the quality of public services; and transforming the public sector by using e-government as a key lever.

The importance of having e-governments' broader strategic potential in mind as part of their economic policy framework has been emphasised by some countries' strategic investment priorities using public sector innovation to spearhead new technological breakthroughs (e.g. ICT security, open source, broadband coverage, and "green IT"). Using the funding of the crisis response to further develop innovative and necessary e-government solutions, can be viewed in those countries as sowing the seeds for new start-ups or business opportunities – thus supporting a long-term sustainable economic growth strategy.

Future work on e-government might benefit from greater insight into how e-government impacts the economy and subsequently, how these impacts can be measured consistently.