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The Effect Of In-adequate Computers In Secretarial Training In Nigeria Background Of The Study
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CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
Background of the study
The analysis
of administrative efficiency is about the relationships between inputs,
outputs and outcomes. In 1957, Farrell already investigated the question
how to measure efficiency and highlighted its relevance for economic
policy makers. "It is important to know how far a given industry can be
expected to increase its output by simply increasing its efficiency,
without absorbing further resources". Since that time techniques to
measure efficiency have improved and investigations of efficiency have
become more frequent, particularly in industry. Nevertheless, the
measurement of efficiency of public administrative efficiency remains a
conceptual challenge. Problems arise because public administration has
multiple objectives and because public sector outputs are often not sold
on the market which implies that price data is not available and that
the output cannot be quantified.
e-Government programs remain at the
top of most countries policy agendas (UN, 2002). The emphasis on
e-Government may be due to the potential of information and
communication technologies (ICT) to transform public administration (PA)
to an efficient system, enhance public services quality, establish
trust between public administration and citizens and realize economic
objectives (OECD, 2003; UN, 2004). In fact, e-Government aims at
providing an efficient government management, better service delivery,
and empowerment of citizens through access to information and
participation in public policy decision making (UN, 2005). For these
benefits, the PA in most countries develops Web sites, portals and
electronic services delivery (UN, 2002; 2003; 2004; 2005). However,
differences in worldwide adoption of e-Government are considerable. The
e-Government readiness index estimated for each of UN countries varies
between 0, 9062 in the United States of America and 0, 0011 in Liberia
(UN, 2005). The Web Measure Index varies between 0 (no presence for
countries like Haiti, Zambia, Liberia, etc.) and 1 in the United States
of America.
Certainly, the diffusion of the Web in PA leans on a
political will that mobilizes the necessary human, material and
financial resources. But, this diffusion depends also on social and
economic variables (UN, 2002). UN (2005) affirm that e-Government
readiness is a function of a country’s situation of technological and
telecommunication infrastructure and of the level of its human resource
development. Nevertheless, “the number of variables - social, legal and
institutional as well as economic and technological - which might retard
the diffusion process is virtually limitless’’ (Rosenberg, 1972, cited
by Erumban and de Jong, 2006, p.303). Recently, several researchers show
the importance of culture in IT adoption and justify the divergences
between countries in the adoption of ICT, in general (Erumban and de
Jong, 2006) and of specific technologies, such as Internet, PC, fax
machines, cellular phone, telephone and pagers (Bagchi and al., 2004;
Gong and al., 2007) on the base of the cultural variables. According to
Zghal (2001), cultures include both favorable factors to ICT
exploitation and unfavorable ones that may hinder an efficient
implementation of these technologies. So, this research tries to answer
this question: what is the impact of the national culture on the
adoption of the e-Government by the PA? The analysis starts with the
definition of e-Government and the presentation of its stages of
evolution. Then, an explanation of the differences between the countries
use of the e-Government is advanced on the base of a cultural
perspective and the hypotheses are formulated. After the precision of
the methodology, the results and their interpretations are presented.
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