نقش تلسنتر ها در خدمات دولت الکترونیکی در مناطق روستایی The role telecentres play in providing e‐government services in rural areas

1 | INTRODUCTION An important driver for development is access to information and communication technology (ICT) (Walsham, 2010). Information and communication technology is a primary input to economic processes, and it is crucial for enterprises, communities, and individuals to successfully participate in the global economy (Hollifield & Donnermeyer, 2003). While ICT access is rapidly being provided through mobile phones (Furuholt & Matotay, 2011), people in poor, rural areas are still restricted financially from buying expensive phones with Internet capabilities. Hence, they mainly use their mobile phones for voice calling and person‐to‐person SMS (Hellstrom, 2010). We argue that facilitating public Internet access points (PIAPs) is still important for accessing the Internet in developing countries (Wahid, Furuholt, & Kristiansen, 2006). Public Internet access points, variously referred to as information kiosks, telecentres, cybercafés, community technology learning centres, and the like, experience varying degrees of success with a variety of approaches in service provision to their customers (Bell, 2006), and more work is still needed to understand their role and influences. We address this issue by exploring the role of PIAPs in several case studies across Tanzania, with the focus on their role in providing e‐government services. Good quality e‐government services are a prerequisite for global development, and it is utterly important for governments to provide universal access to public services (United Nations, 2016). While there seems to be a relationship between the lack of access to information, corruption, and bad governance (Kristiansen, 2004), effective e‐government services are instrumental in achieving efficiency, transparency, and responsiveness (Avgerou, 2010). While the adoption of e‐government has increased in most countries, developing countries are still lagging behind, with Tanzania and its East African neighbours at the low‐end of the scale (United Nations, 2016). E‐government services need to be accessed and used by ordinary citizens, which is still to happen in rural areas through PIAPs. Traditionally, PIAPs have had minimal influence on the use of e‐government services (Gomez & Baron‐Porras, 2011). After studying various telecentre projects in India, Gollakota et al. (2012, p. 189) conclude the following: In most cases there is a sense that public access venues in rural locations are underutilized, especially by those considered most disadvantaged or those who could benefit the most. According to Rajalekshmi (2014), Indian telecentre projects have different sets of proposed activities and business models, and almost all of them explicitly portray integrated e‐government services delivery as a key activity of the centres. He further claims, however, that while empirical and theoretical research in the area has been growing over the last years, information on the fundamental aspects of telecentres is scarce in the literature. For example, the links between telecentres, governance, and development do not seem to have undergone substantial scholarly research (Rajalekshmi, 2014, p. 26). The results introduced in this article are based on several case studies in Tanzania, in which we have been involved for more than 15 years. WhileTanzania is an underdeveloped country with huge economic and developmental challenges, it is noteworthy that Tanzania is among the more politically stable countries in its region of Africa (Melchioly & Sæbø, 2010). Studying Internet cafés acrossTanzania 10 years ago, we found very few traces of e‐government use (Furuholt & Kristiansen, 2007). Since then, we have revisited the research field regularly, providing us with the opportunity to explore the role that PIAPs play in providing e‐government services in rural areas. Our findings are based on a longitudinal study of several PIAPs from 2009 to 2015. We aim to improve the understanding of how PIAPs may remain sustainable, and contribute to good governance and development in poor regions. The paper is organised as follows. After this introduction, we present the theoretical foundation in Section 2 and the methodology used in our study in Section 3. Section 4 describes the 5 cases and their contexts, while our findings are presented and discussed in Section 5. Section 6 provides our conclusions and recommendations.