Emergence of the E-Government Artifact in an Environment of Social Exclusion in Kenya

Purpose E-Government, introduced in African countries under the banner of New Public Management (NPM), is envisaged to fundamentally aid in improving governance in developing countries. The imported model of E-Government is therefore transferred to African countries as a panacea to bad governance by carriers such as international donor agencies, consultants, Information Technology vendors and Western-trained civil servants. Improved governance is expected to impact on the socio-economic development of these countries implementing E-Government, as an NPM instrument. This article recognizes that EGovernment success, which is critically dependent on the World Wide Web, requires socially inclusive national information infrastructure. The purpose of this paper is to offer a critical analysis into the emerging E-Government artifact in the context of a developing country. By combining three independent research streams related to governance, social exclusion, and national information infrastructure, the emerging E-Government artifact was explored from a supply-side perspective. Design/methodology/approach The research approach was critical in its philosophical orientation. The case study research strategy was adopted, which relied on various sources of data on E-Government policy and its related strategies in Kenya. Theoretical discourse analysis was employed as the predominant mode of analysis. Findings The findings reveal that the emergent meanings of E-Government have strong managerialist intentions pointing to a thinly veiled control agenda couched in the language of a desire for efficiency in governance. An unexpected consequence of this conceptualization of E-Government is to help in solidifying and possibly exacerbating the social exclusion problem.