Understanding Systems of e-Government: e-Federalism and e-Centralism in the United States and Kazakhstan

The main purpose of the book was to analyze heterogeneous political and institutional aspects in the development of such an arguably universal tool of modern democracy as e-government from the perspectives of two nations with completely different systems of governance and traditions of public administration and provide generalizations on objective institutional limitations that indirectly affect the implementation of political and administrative decision-making in this area by governments of the United States and Kazakhstan, representing respectively the typical federal and unitary state.This book is both a policy review and agenda setting research. By applying case studies of e-government strategies in these two different countries both at the national and local levels and analyzing corresponding legal and institutional foundations, it offers ways forward for further hypothesis testing and proposes a road map for e-government practitioners to improve the strategic policy in this area in Kazakhstan and other developing nations. It provides recommendations on how to improve the regulatory and methodological basis for effective implementation of interactive and transactional services as well as how to solve challenges of an organizational character in realization of e-government projects at the national level, for example, by resorting to a promising phenomenon of civic engagement and citizen-sourcing, creation of open data-driven platforms and provision of information security measures, project outreach in social media, etc.

About the Author

Maxat Kassen is a political scientist from Kazakhstan and former Fulbright Scholar in the University of Illinois at Chicago.