Thursday, April 16, 2009

The Digital Divide and e-Government Usage

I came across an article about the digital divide and its demographic correlation to e-Government use and found that people that are young, high income earners, educated, and people that already use the internet for other things are most likely to engage in e-Government use.  Surprisingly, ethnicity or computer experience were not predictors of e-Government usage. 
     I thought this article was interesting because it referenced the Pew Report that we have recently studied. It also provided insight to government agencies that encourage people to use e-Government websites inside of  other forms of communication, that they also need to make an attempt to close the digital divide.

below is a link to the article if anyone wants to check it out...
.http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2009/4/22970-the-impact-of-the-digital-divide-on-e-government-use/fulltext

1 comment:

Richard said...

Thanks for sharing the article.
When I first see “e-government service,” the first thing came up to my mind was paying tax online. I am sure lots of people pay tax through internet nowadays; however, I remember seeing an article about how elder people do not pay tax online because they feel unsafe. I think this can be part of the digital device too, age.

This makes me think of the internet service in China. In a communism country, which the internet is controlled by government (e.g.: they cannot access youtube), they have all kinds of internet services, everything you can think of can be found online, including both legal and illegal ones.
And in Japan, cellphone is one of the most common way to access internet. They send e-mails and do lots of different things by their cellphone instead of computer. That kind of shows the different usage and access of internet.

Post a Comment