Annex I: Structure of the country overview

Area

Questions addressed

Historical evolution of the e-government ecosystem

What is the historical trajectory of the country’s movement towards e-government?

What is the strategic vision guiding e-government?

What are the key priorities for women’s empowerment and gender equality in the context under study? How are they being addressed by the vision for e-government?

Is there a separate e-government policy that addresses demand and supply side issues? Or is there only a piecemeal approach?

Is the Department/Ministry handling women’s rights and gender justice closely engaged in envisioning and designing the e-government eco-system?

Are there national/local efforts on digital literacy? How are they implemented? Are they adequate to the emerging needs for new literacies in the digital context? Do they go beyond building women’s skills in technical literacy? How do they focus on women’s capacities to interact with government, in the digital age?

Status of e-government services

What kind of services are provided? (ranging from e-health, e-agriculture, integrated online portal for citizens to access certificates and apply for entitlements, to online portals for citizen engagement, online grievance redress mechanisms, one-stop-shops in remote and disadvantaged areas, etc.)

Are there services directed at women? (including e-health, m-learning, online spaces for women to file police complaints etc.)

What is the uptake of these services? What is known about women’s uptake of these services? (In cases where women’s uptake is low, please identify potential reasons such as literacy barriers, prevailing gender norms etc.)

Is the underlying connectivity architecture adequate for active use of e-services?

What are current developments in building and provisioning connectivity infrastructure? (policies for subsidizing connectivity to remote and disadvantaged populations, programmes for building public access infrastructure and promoting digital literacy)

Are these steps gender-responsive? (public access strategies directed at enhancing women’s uptake, mobile-based info-outreach initiatives directed at women, e-spaces that are exclusively for women to raise grievances/concerns)

Review of legislations that implicate e-governance

Legislative frameworks governing the connectivity infrastructure

Is the right to Internet access guaranteed in law?

Legal and policy frameworks regulating the delivery of digitally-enabled services

Are there legal/policy frameworks on the following issues?

  1. Openness of the technical architecture underlying e-services
  2. Citizen charters guaranteeing responsiveness and accountability of e-government services, and specifying redressal mechanisms.
  3. Data security and privacy
  4. Citizens’ right to ‘know e-government’ — through proactive disclosure on aspects such as work flow allocation, location of authority, terms of service, and the regular update of governance related information in the public domain
  5. In cases where government agencies have adopted a public-private partnership model for e-service delivery, do policy documents require specific service level agreements and data protection agreements)

Conclusions

  1. The big picture on what is positive for women’s empowerment
  2. The big picture on what is positive in general that is likely to have favourable impacts for good governance (transparency, accountability, rule of law, responsiveness etc.) and if harnessed through appropriate design and creativity, can help women’s empowerment.