Paper/Speech Details of Conference Program for the 17th NISPAcee Annual Conference Program Overview II. Working Group on E-government Author(s) Catalin Vrabie National School of Political Studies and Public Administration Bucharest Romania Title Barriers in implementing e-government – Romanian study case File Paper files are available only for conference participants, please login first. Presenter Abstract This article examines the reasons for citizens to still pay tribute to traditional methods of service delivery instead of those new electronic ways like e-Tax, e-Vote, e-Market, e-Procurement, etc. Existing studies of e-government concentrate on the supply-side by focusing on the availability and level of sophistication of online services and usage but there is also a problem of citizens acceptance, of citizens level of knowledge wend came’s to ITC. In Romania only 30% of population have internet access, here there is a very reduce computer endowment, so, knowing those facts we ask ourselves if the ambitious e-Government programs have a real chances to be implemented and to be a success at the end of all. Of course that computer endowment and internet access may grow very quickly, this fact is in fact a matter of resource allocation. Using those resources depends also by education changing mentalities. The e-Government applications may have a very important act in changing mentalities, an efficient and transparent e-Procurement will raise the population trust in internet applications and the will to use it. A system for paying taxes and contributions easy to use will convince many companies and even citizens to use the new technologies instead of loosing times and energy staying in line at a city hall office. Another way of making those new technologies be more close to citizens is to invest in their ITC educations. Nowadays in Romanian schools computer skills are starting to be developed since the first class. But what about the older population that doesn’t have time or energy to start learning computer usage … well this is o real challenge. The ECDL Foundation (European Computer Driving Licence) have some programs that come to help citizens for equalize their skills in computer usage (one of the program is called equalskills) and to reduce as much as it is possible the digital divide (probably the term of digital divide is to extreme and more appropriate is the gap) between various layers within our society: rich vs. poor, young vs. old, normal vs. disabled, etc. So, in my paper, I will present the supply-side problems in adoption of e-government systems using an empirical analysis and also the demand-side problems (using a documentary analysis) focusing in the evolution of ITC in Romania and how this may affect the absorption of the new electronic services delivered to citizens by the government. Practically I will try to explain the poor performance of the e-government practices in Romania.
