Paper/Speech Details of Conference Program for the 21st NISPAcee Annual Conference Program Overview e-Government Author(s) Slavica Cicvaric Kostic Belgrade University Belgrade Serbia Jovanka Vukmirovic, Belgrade Business School, Serbia Tamara Vlastelica Bakic, University of Belgrade, Faculty of Organizational Sciences, Serbia Title The potential of e-government development in emerging markets: Perspective of local government File Paper files are available only for conference participants, please login first. Presenter Slavica Cicvaric Kostic Abstract As a new and modern concept, eGovernment is accepted in many, especially developed countries. It became a global phenomenon and represents a rapidly growing field in which governments of almost all the countries invest (Grant & Chau, 2005). Introduction of eGovernment created the opportunity to change the traditional understanding of the state. eGovernment offered a modern, efficient service and transparency as well as the change of paradigm in the process of communication between the government and the citizens (Vintar, 2002). Intensive application of information and communication Technologies (ICTs) in government includes new management approaches that should provide better service to citizens and economy based on cooperation between all entities. At local level, governments are also introducing ICTs, but in academic literature, their application and development of local eGovernment are examined in relatively few studies (Sandoval-Almazan & Gil-Garcia, 2012). This paper deals with the local government perspective of the eGovernment development. Even the level of eGovernment development and implementation differs through different countries, they all have common starting point that it should be citizen focused (Shareef et al., 2011). Therefore, according to the authors, many studies examined the perspective of citizens in accepting and succes of eGovernment. Relatively few studies have focused on local government perspective – management and employees, in this field. This study examined the attitudes that management of local government has toward introducing eGovernment, as well as the attitudes of the employees regarding the key benefits and challenges for the introduction of eGovernment, in order to find potential ways for its faster application. The empirical study was conducted in Serbia. eGovernment is in introductory state in Serbia and it has still not reached the level of development and sophistication of the EU member states (Marković et al, 2008). The survey involved collection of primary data by questionnaire. The questionnaire was sent to the addresses of 167 municipalities in Serbia, and 109 out of them answered the survey. The study found that the management of local government in Serbia is focused on the development of eGovernment, but their orientation is determined by the level of local government development. Study also identified the relevance of various eGovernment services from the local government perspective. The results show that employees consider all eServices as relevant. Furthermore, we found that the attitudes of employees regarding introduction of eGovernment are generally positive, as they see their benefits for everyday work. By identifying potential challenges and problems that employees face with in introducing the concept, the priorities for faster application could be determined.
