Integrated architecture framework for e-government: A socio-technical assessment of e-government policy documents

Emerging trends in Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in governments around the globe suggest that developing countries should embrace e-government as an enabler of efficient and effective service delivery. The Government of Zimbabwe, which is a case study in this chapter, is acutely aware of the critical role that ICTs play in socio-economic development. This chapter discusses Zimbabwe's e-government policies and programmes and maps them against the e-government architecture framework by Ebrahim and Irani (2005). The e-government architecture framework defines the standards, infrastructure components, applications, technologies, business models, and guidelines for electronic commerce among and between organisations that facilitate the interaction of the government and promote group productivity. The study is theoretically based upon the socio-technical theory, whose view suggests the existence of a technical sub-system and a social sub-system in an organisation. This theory has been adopted in this study to explain the complex relation between the government as an institution and e-government as an artifact. Drawing from the e-government architecture framework and the social-technical theory, an integrated e-government assessment framework is developed to explain the nature of relationships among government, citizens, and technology.