A Validated Citizen-Centric Approach using Delphi Technique for Converging Indigenous Knowledge Systems using ICT

Abstract

Citizen-centric approach towards design of e-government initiatives insists that the needs and aspirations of the citizens must form the core nuclei of the entire process. However, the majority of prevailing initiatives do not acknowledge the contextual influences on lives of rural citizens in developing countries like India. The present study attempts to propose a new Delphi-validated approach for design of such citizen-centric e- government initiatives. Authors ha ve aptly christened this approach as ‘Government-to- Citizen-to-Government-G2C2G framework’ t hat aims to amalgamate rural contextual factors, represented by local and indigenous knowledge systems (LINKS) using ICT. The existing constructs in popular models have been expanded to include ‘Citizens’ Characteristics’, ‘Goal-Task Characteristics’ in it. It further advocates compulsory inclusion of two new constructs viz. ‘R egional Characteristics’ and ‘Eco-system Characteristics’. e-Government initiatives based on the proposed approach are most likely to capture the diverse profile of c itizens as well as meaningfully address local governance goals by utilizing LINKS for defining rural reality.