engleski

e-Government in European countries: gender and ageing digital divide

The 4th industrial revolution has brought not only new opportunities but new demands and challenges, also in government communication to citizens and businesses. Transformations do not only concern ICT usage differences but also social, economic, educational and business changes, and bring risks known as „digital divide“. One of the services that are integrated into the new digital environment, and not yet in full deployment, is e-government. Governments are faced with challenges of digital transformation, aiming to achieve, such as enhanced public services, enhanced administration, enhanced social value, cost reductions or empowerment of citizens bringing them closer to the public policy of decision-making. Although e-government aims to provide access to individuals, businesses, interest groups or their governments, various types of “digital divide” present barriers to full implementation of e-government services. In order to investigate the utilization of e-government, we used data from the Eurostat database for 32 countries for 2018. The research is performed by the use of K-means cluster analysis and the non-parametric Kruskal-Wallis test. The aim of the research is two-fold: (i) to perform cluster analysis of e-government practice across European countries and identify the position of Croatia, and (ii) to detect possible reasons of a digital divide in relation to age and gender divide and economic development. K-means cluster analysis revealed three clusters as optimum. Results of the Kruskal-Wallis test confirm the statistically significant difference among clusters at 1% significance regarding GDP, global gender inequality index and political empowerment. Results reveal that the digital divide is one of the major challenges preventing citizens from the use of e-government services. According to existing studies, governments should perform business processes re-engineering and transform the way of work and communication, but also enable ICT training programs in order to decrease the digital divide and to exploit the full potential of e-services.

e-government, ICT, digital divide, digital transformation, cluster analysis

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