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Potemkin Portals or the Real Revolution? The State of E-Government in

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Article in Digest of Middle East Studies · May 2014

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 Potemkin Portals or the Real Revolution? The
State of E-Government in Egypt
Timothy E. Dolan, PhD
Texas A&M International University

Abstract
Effective and optimized e-government in Egypt faces daunting challenges that are
less technical in nature and more over the issues of institutional resistance and of
political will. A review of the state of e-government in Egypt is presented with
analysis focusing on the state of service implementation in 2012. The points of
discussion on e-government covered here include:
• E-subjugation in the guise of e-government via information control and cyber-
snooping;
• Institutional resistance to the transformation of routine functions into automated
systems;
• Institutional resistance to transparency of government operations;
• Analysis of the state of Egyptian ministry websites on six dimensions of e-
government development;
• Discussion on implementation of Egypt’s e-government master plan;
• Commentary on the revolutionary potential of e-government augmented by
vision, competence, and leadership; and
• Caveats that are important to note in moving the vision of e-governance from
concept to practice.
Introduction
“You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile.”
Iconic line of the Borg from Star Trek the Next Generation television series.
“The Future is already here, it just hasn’t been evenly distributed.”
William Gibson
This is the “age of the smart machine,” so deftly described by Zuboff(1988). The
now widespread use of information technologies have transformed our traditional
social relationships particularly in the workplace, government, and even religion,
basicallyflattening hierarchical structures and making it possible to talk directly
[Correction added on 30 April 2014, afterfirst online publication: the author’s affiliation has been changed
from ‘Policy Foresight’ to ‘Texas A&M International University’].

Digest of Middle East Studies—Volume 23, Number 1—Pages 105–127

© 2014 Policy Studies Organization. Published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
 Digest of Middle East Studies

back to authority in very real ways. These information technologies have also driven
a process of reconfiguring and distending culture and society along class and genera-
tional lines between the techno haves and have-nots, while simultaneously democra-
tizing what were formerly highly stratified organizational structures. As with every
high-impact innovation, its utility has made resistance futile. There has been little if
any popular resistance, as interactivity has made life more convenient and efficient,
especially with the proliferation of cell phones, smart phones, and social networking
sites, but institutional resistance to e-government appears to be significant.
The more nimble private sector has embraced these technologies giving rise to an
age of e-commerce. The most ubiquitous manifestation in Egypt is the ATM
machine, ironically used to facilitate the traditional cash-based transactions; most
Egyptians are still highly skeptical of electronic transactions, even at point-of-sale
counters, let alone via online purchases. The reasons for the reluctance include dis-
trust offinancial institutions generally and a culture that stigmatizes debt to the
point of making bankruptcy essentially a crime. 1 In 2005, only 5% of Egyptians
were using online services (Elbeltagi, 2007). However, the number of Egyptians
going online has swelled to over 21% in 2010 (International Telecommunications
Union [ITU], 2010). This rapid expansion is made more remarkable by the still
high rates of functional illiteracy in the country as a whole. 2 There is also an inter-
national business-led transition to electronic transactions away from the traditional
cash and carry economy, but, as referenced in the perambulatory quote above, it is a
future not yet evenly distributed to the general population. The State Ministry for
Administrative Development (MSAD) has begun to offer transaction services in
conjunction with some cooperating ministries to offer train reservation and traffic
fine and tuition payment services to selected Egyptian universities which might help
begin to shift public resistance to noncash transactions (MSAD, 2012). Lack of
immediate indigenous popular demand for thefiscal transactions offered by e-
government, however, is trumped by international private sector and international
nongovernmental organization (NGO) demand. This, coupled with a rising cohort
of technocrats, has prompted the state to act. So what is the current state of e-
government in Egypt, and where might it go from here?

Caveat 1: The Two Faces of E-Government: E-Service and E-Subjugation

Historical events have washed like a tsunami over the traditional relationships
between the public and its government institutions in Egypt and the Middle East
generally, putting into question not only the legitimacy of the old regimes (still
not as moot a question as many would believe), but of how any unitary authority
might continue to claim to represent the people’s will without a new tangible
connection to them. It is critical for the rising political order in Egypt to recognize
and respond affirmatively to the utility of e-government as an effective means to
establish legitimacy. This can be accomplished through more effective
interagency

106 Potemkin Portals . .

.
communications and policy coordination to provide coherent service provision via
its official websites and mobile applications. Such portals are a potent means to
enable public access and enhance claims toward a more democratic social order. It
makes more urgent the development of e-government as a service provider and as a
medium that invites access to citizens, giving them a means to both receive informa-
tion and services and to talk back. This can blunt the effects of political extremism
by creating a responsive, transparent, and authoritative center that meets public
expectations for effective services. In the anarchy of the net, trustworthy official
information sources become critical. To accomplish this goal requires continual
striving for transparency and authoritative (as opposed to authoritarian) professional
conduct, as well as technical competence. Ultimately, e-government is a tool for
effi- ciency and public confidence building, and not a panacea to mask existing
organiza- tional dysfunction. Government must still do its job well, especially in the
area of honest and effective service provision (Peters, 1994).
The new governing order can commit to being a truly service-oriented and trans-
formative agent engaging Egyptians as citizens and not subjects. It can also attempt
to establish a cyber-authoritarian path by restricting global connectivity, and con-
trolling information by means of promulgating registration policies,filtering/
censorship, misinformation, and cyber-snooping. It can also simply neglect its e-
government infrastructure and delay advancing on this agenda into the indefinite
future. In Egypt, overt e-suppression would be unwise, unfeasible, and improbable,
because the global marketplace requires full access and secure communications, and
Egypt cannot stand apart from being globally connected. It would be impossible to
get the metaphorical toothpaste of free-flowing information back into the tube of
state control anyway. Social activist communications are done less through websites
and more through text messaging, Twitter micro-blogs, and mobile versions of social
networking sites (Preece & Shneiderman, 2009). This means that the prevailing
platforms are smart phones and not computers, making state control that much
more unlikely. The old order state apparatus might prefer the Chinese model of cen-
tralized information management which they enjoyed before the proliferation of
satellite-delivered television and web-based technologies, but if one thing is clear
from the Egyptian revolution, there is no longer any way to impose a unitary narra-
tive via state television (Abdullah, 2012).3 This does not, however, preclude the
potential for a high level of webfiltering from being imposed to fortify official
orthodoxy or support increasing cultural conservatism. Webfiltering is already a
feature throughout the region. Islamic sensitivity to what might be deemed insults to
the faith and the corruption of youth have already been grounds to justify restric-
tions over online media and seem likely to be a feature of future Egyptian media
policy.
The laws governing web use and content are universal though they are not always
well enforced or are circumvented. Relatively liberal democratic countries like India
and Turkey have laws allowing limited contentfiltering, and many countries require
individual user registration largely justified to counteract such activities as porn
hosting, online gambling, hacking, or cyber bullying (Open Net Initiative, 2009).
There is also the separate and universally recognized issue of cyber security which is
of concern in all spheres (nonprofit, private, and public), and for which the need for
an assertive government enforcement presence is self-evident. That said, govern-
ment intervention in the form of web monitoring can lead to concerns of arbitrary
filtering and the prospect of wide-ranging denial of services, promotion of misinfor-
mation, and information suppression.4 This is a particularly pervasive issue in much
of the Middle East and China, though not exclusively so (Open Net Initiative,
2009). Web technologies can thus be used simultaneously to both democratize and
subjugate by either the formal institutions of government or by other means. One
troubling potential in search engines such as Google and Yahoo is that they hold a
complete record of individual web searches and site visits that can be opened to a
government’s gaze. This is already allowed under certain circumstances (Assange,
2009). E-government as cyber-subjugation is thus very much a concern, and rightly
so, for it can undercut the beneficial potential of offering consistent, standard-yet-
flexible, easy-to-use, and transparent public services. The focus here, however, is on
the state of e-government in Egypt on public service provision while recognizing
the potential of e-subjugation as a concern.

E-Government in Egypt: From a Work In-Progress to a Work On-Hold

At present, e-government in Egypt seems to be following a well-worn pattern of
command initiatives marked by spasms of activity then followed by periods of
neglect, such as with Cairo’s subway lines, environmental clean-up campaigns, and
other administrative reforms. Egypt is still a land of big projects from developing a
sprawling “New Cairo” west and out of the Nile Valley, to ambitious new irrigation
projects in the reclaimed areas of the West Delta and massive resort developments
on the lengthy but sparsely settled Mediterranean and Red Sea coasts. In keeping
with its heritage of monument building is its impressive e-government services
portal available in both Arabic and English (https://www.egypt.gov.eg/english/
home.aspx) that is the visionary model of e-government in Egypt. Much like the
Google portal, the Egyptian e-government portal was created as a single point of
entry to a comprehensive array of e-government sites. In this single point of entry
for e-government in Egypt, there is great promise, but, like the William Gibson
quote in the introduction, its build-out is a future that has not been evenly distrib-
uted. The potential to deliver accurate, transparent, and timely public information
and services appears achievable, and the government services portal, with its
impres- sive façade, suggests that intent, but what is the current state of the
internalfinish- ing work (Fig. 1)?
The Ministry of State for Administrative Development’s efforts to establish
access to services from a single point of entry is impressive, particularly when
Figure 1: Egypt government services portal home (English) circa March, 2012.

considering that there was no official government web presence at all in 2000 and
no Egyptian e-government portal until January of 2004 (Sayed, 2004). Egypt’s
international standing on the state of its e-government development subsequently
improved significantly. Mishrif (2010) notes that Egypt ranked 29th of 192 nations
measured in the United Nation’s 2008 e-readiness report. This was up considerably
from its 2005 list which had Egypt ranked 99th (Azab, Kamel, & Dafoulas, 2009).
Further investigation, however, suggests that the overall ranking for Egypt in the
UN e-readiness index rose only to 79th with a ranking of 28th on the provision of
online services. Nonetheless, the ambitious intentions by Egypt in developing its e-
governance capability has trended upward and yielded observable results. One such
foundational effort was seen in the compilation of a national citizen’s database. The
development of this national database proved especially useful in organizing and
carrying out the nation’s recent parliamentary and presidential elections with
reasonable transparency (Darwish, personal communication, April 22, 2012).
However, with the revolution has come paralysis in developing many of the minis-
tries’ internal and public interface capabilities.
At the cusp of the Egyptian Revolution, Ahmed M. Darwish, Minister of State
for Administrative Development, had declared plans for the next phase of online e-
government readiness by implementing means to achieve:
• The separation between the service provider (government employee) and the
service acquirer (citizen) and the recording of all transactions on the computer
 closed down several doors that might open possibilities for irregular payments or
illegal transactions;
• The availability of easy information at thefingertip of businessmen and citizens
made them aware of their rights;
• The new model for government procurement increased transparency in request
for proposals and quotations (RFP and RFQ );
• The creation of a government call center and e-mail reply center to inquire and
complain will build a new culture within citizens tofight for their rights; an issue
expected to be encouraged by civil society; and
• The possibility of citizen polling on all local government portals will start a new
era of citizen participation in the decision-making process. (Darwish, 2008)
Ahmed Darwish stepped down shortly after declaring these ambitious goals, but
some of these features were observed on Egypt’s e-government portal and on some
of the ministry sites reviewed, including links for commercial business contractors
to access tender offers and auctions as well as RFPs online for ministries with
procure- ment authority, a polling service on current issues, and a citizen’s complaint
portal (MSAD, 2012).

Models for Assessing E-Government Development

There are numerous approaches to assessing the state of e-government with no
single standard measure yet established despite efforts toward that end (Borras,
2004). However, the literature points to preferred elements in many of the assess-
ment schemes put forward. One favored approach described in the literature is the
“stages” model, in which e-government development is based on the attainment of
incremental benchmarks and integration startingfirst with internal and then public
constituencies (Layne & Lee, 2001). Layne and Lee’s stages model is useful for rec-
ognizing the incremental nature of systems construction as well as in implicitly rec-
ognizing that there is no viable one-size-fits-all, “plug-and-play” e-government
model available for adoption “offthe shelf,” though there are initiatives to develop
international standards (Borras, 2004). Layne and Lee (2001) were also proactive in
pointing out what they describe as an endemic problem of uncoordinated develop-
ment between the site developers and their various agency practices that often lead
to less than optimized sites. A common example is that forms will be made available
for downloading online only to have administrators require that the forms be
printed andfilled out by hand or for signature, and then either mailed back or hand
carried to the agency office. They also point to the common problem of trying to
integrate the various databases developed by agencies that otherwise result in the
annoying redundant inputting of information by clients for each agency. This is
what the literature describes as the problem of interoperability (Ataloglou &
Economides, 2009; Gottschalk, 2009; Gottschalk & Solli-Saether, 2009;
Klischewski and Abubakr, 2010). Klischewski and Abubakr (2010) specifically
point out that the problem of interoperability is especially acute in Egypt due to a
chronic lack of interagency coordination and cooperation.
Useful e-government, as manifested in operational and well-maintained govern-
ment agency service sites, requires intensive internal coordination and lateral stake-
holder cultivation specific to the mission and functions of the government entity
well before there is a public site. In this it lends itself to the agricultural metaphor of
preparation and cultivation months before any vegetation appears. The specific
preparation and cultivation is determined by the nature of the crop being grown.
Layne and Lee’s (2001) four-stages model is consistent with this metaphor. It
consists of:
• Cataloguing
• Transaction
• Vertical integration
• Horizontal integration
This model is problematic in placing transaction ahead of vertical and horizontal
integration suggesting that the public can interact with agencies before the
agencies can interact with themselves. This can potentially lead to even greater
intra- and inter-institutional disconnect and inconsistency, that, in turn, can blunt
the effec- tiveness of e-government.
Anderson and Henriksen (2006) take a similar tack in their e-government matu-
rity model, which also involves stepwise progression. They recognize that the devel-
opment of effective services goes beyond the mere putting up of a homepage. Their
Public Sector Process Rebuilding (PPR) model focuses on optimizing customer
experience rather than the technical build-out elements of the step model. Their
four steps, commencing with activity and culminating in customer-centric service
consist of:
• Cultivation
• Extension
• Maturity
• Revolution
For some reason unelaborated on by the authors other than anecdotally about citi-
zens accessing intranet directories for services, Anderson and Henricksen see an
abandonment of discreet e-government intranet at the maturity stage. This seems to
ignore the essential need of an intranet for internal organizational communication;
something which would appear to be self-evident. The stages they put forth refer
more to “. . . discrete points in a continuous development process in the organiza-
tion. The four levels they conceived should therefore be used as general indicators
for gauging an organization’s e-Government development but should not be
regarded as absolute measures” (Anderson & Henriksen, 2006). In this case,
stages seem to function more as developmental themes than as stages withfixed
benchmarks.
Another similar approach found in the literature follows an “attribute” model
focusing on common features that any e-government site should possess
(Cyberspace Policy Research Group [CyPRG], 2001). Here, the focus is on website
features assessment rather than development. Their focus is on openness and
effectiveness.

A Framework for Assessing the State of Egyptian E-Government

Broadly speaking, most models of e-government incorporate a stages model of pro-
gressive build-out to achieve greater functionality. The common developmental
steps include:

1. Effective security systems to protect data bases and site integrity;

2. Integrated database compilation;
3. Intra-agency hierarchical integration;
4. Inter-agency lateral coordination;
5. Public access and service delivery; and
6. Transparency of government structure and process.
The planning and development of each of these stages can overlap, but by and large,
the preceding steps should be complete before subsequent steps are fully functional.
This is basic to effective project management generally (Kerzner, 2001).
Creating effective security systems is a criticalfirst step in the e-government con-
struction process. Nothing can blunt an administration’s claim to competency and
control faster than having its sites hacked, taken down, or sabotaged with a counter-
feit site, particularly if hackers were to gain access to an integrated database where
all records might be at risk. Egyptian government sites are hardly immune to such
attacks. For instance, in the course of conducting research of the various ministry
sites and their links, the Foreign Affairs Ministry’s Diplomatic Club site was found
to have been hacked on April 21, 2012 by a group that was protesting the banning
of Port Said’s soccer club after a riot during a match there that led to
the killing of some 74 visiting team fans in February of that year. In Egypt, where
electronic transactions are still novel and suspicion of them already deep (Gebba &
Zakaria, 2012), authorities must take special care to keep data and site integrity
secure. Database security is a dynamic element of threat recognition and mobilizing
countermeasures that requires constant vigilance and response to system assaults
from inside and outside the country. Vulnerabilities must be identified and
addressed in a proactive manner to prevent possibly catastrophic breaches. Proce-
dures up to and including shutting down websites when breaches are detected or
suspected must be in place. Secure data backup is also an integral part of any secu-
rity system. Failure to adequately protect government information systems would
have potentially catastrophic effects on public confidence particularly if they experi-
ence monetary or identity theft.
An integrated, standardized, systematic, accurate, and updated database compila-
tion and maintenance system is key to operational efficiency. If each governorate,
ministry, or subagency were to maintain a unique database system incompatible with
those of other government service providers, the inconsistent, contradictory, and
confusing data would undermine public confidence in the government’s compe-
tence. Redundant inputting of user information would be dramatically reduced if a
basic client database could be shared by all appropriate public agencies. The oppor-
tunities for cheating or circumventing systems would be virtually eliminated as
agencies would be able to cross-check and verify all applications and claims for
service.
The questions we constructed to measure database development included:

• Is the ministry involved in the MSAD database as manifested in the MSAD

master plan?
• Is there a single accessible (yet secure)file for each citizen or household that
provides pertinent data on services they are qualified to receive?
• Are there ways to make global changes in individualfiles once their status
changes (leaves school, gets married, recovers from illness, becomes employed)?
Public database design, compilation, and maintenance is a basic government func-
tion that dates back to the Sumerian invention of writing, which was appliedfirst
for recording harvest yields, collection, and distribution. However, it has always
been prone to inefficiency, error, high levels of needless redundancy, and corruption.
Labor-intensive paperfile systems in bureaucratic organizations were intended to
enhance accountability but were often compromised by incompetent, myopic, or
corrupt officials who would misfile, hide, or actively suppress information. Thus,
the appeal of being able to enter information into a database that can be
shared throughout an agency—and ideally across agencies and even levels of
government—is self-evident as is its being considered a threat by unscrupulous
officials. Creating and maintaining such databases are a key infrastructural trait of e-
government and one that holds the greatest promise of increasing efficiency, accu-
racy, transparency, and productivity. From the line administrator’s perspective, being
able to bring up complete client records with time-stamped notes, status updates,
and transaction histories might be regarded as a dream come true.
Intra-agency hierarchical integration is the lowest level of e-government func-
tion. Simply put, it is an agency’s intranet—the e-mail system that is dedicated to its
internal communications. It is an essential component for organizational communi-
cations and coordination from executive to line levels. It is largely credited with
organizationalflattening, most notably manifested in the collapse of middle man-
agement as many of their traditional functions as executive to staffintermediaries
and group oversight have been leapfrogged by direct communications (Zuboff,
1988). It anticipates a shift to adhocracy quasi-autonomous project teams, or auto-
mated monitoring. It is a powerful means to more accurately establish overall
accountability, a trait of good government widely regarded as lacking in Egyptian
government generally. Hierarchical integration is a nominal stage of e-government
that may have been in place for years in some ministries but may be virtually absent
in others. An intranet at the ministry level is thus uneven and an area to be strategi-
cally addressed.
Alghamdi, Goodwin, and Rampersad (2011) underscore this critical factor in
establishing effective e-government. Its absence is a common cause for readiness
failure. They cite Mutula and Pieter (2006) in noting that information access within
organizations is often lacking with access to internal databases and intranet capabil-
ity, while technically available, is often not utilized in practice.
The state of organizational vertical information integration can be gauged by
answers to the following questions:
• Do all employees in the ministry have their own email accounts?
• Do employees have access to other ministry or agency employees? (Can, for
instance, the building janitor send an e-mail message to the ministry head?)
• Is there a directory of all employees available through the ministry’s presumably
secure website, and if not who are on the directories?
Such questions can help to measure the state of hierarchical integration in Egyptian
ministries. Many of Egypt’s ministry sites, like the ministries themselves, are largely
opaque, hidden from the public view except for public directories that were found to
exist at the nominal level of “contact us” addresses with a ministry address suffix in
22 of the 29 ministries analyzed. The extent to which all employees have their own
e-mail addresses is unknown but appears to be almost nil based beyond what
was shown on the contact directories on the 17 ministry sites that had them.
The contact information was overwhelmingly limited to phone numbers, reflecting
traditional communication lines between the public and government officials.
Surprisingly, even the English language version of the Egypt e-government portal
now features only a phone number on its “contact us” page though the site also
sports a “live chat” link (MSAD, 2012). While this form of feedback may make
some sense in a country where the telephone is the principal means of communica-
tion for most people, it makes query tracking and follow-up problematic unless
those in the agencies taking the calls are entering a record with notes for analysis
and follow through. This ability to keep and hold a record of interactionsavailable
to both partiesis automatically done with e-mail communications.
The fourth stage of e-government development involves the design, creation, and
maintenance of lateral interagency links. This helps coordination and expedites
routing citizens to appropriate service providers outside of the ministries
(Gottschalk & Solli-Saether, 2009). It can also help to break the insidious problem
of “stove piping” (agencies jealously guarding against sharing their information
systems and/or being unaware of and thus not seeking access to the information
systems of others). Data sharing is critical to achieving overall policy coherence, and
providing such access is a major element of digitized government databases. Trying
to measure the degree of information sharing is especially problematic in Egypt, as
most of these connections between counterparts are informally made and rarely
manifested as links to other ministry sites or contacts. Any valid inquiry into this
dimension requires compiling data pertaining to the frequency, and importance of,
for instance, e-mails to administrative peers or others located in ministries outside
of their own. This study lacks the resources and access required to undertake this
kind of analysis but recognizes it as an important consideration in the development
of effective e-government services. It will nominally address interagency linkages
by checking if ministry websites:
• Have links to other ministries or government agencies;
• Have information on joint partnerships; and
• Have links to relevant NGOs or private sector organizations.
Thefirst four of the six steps in e-government development provide a basis for its
public face where effective interaction with the public through ministerial, governor-
ate, and other agency websites occurs. Lacking the foundational infrastructure
would be like constructing a large building complex with no stairways and elevators
for each structure and with no access to the other buildings around it. Worse, the
same building would have incompatible electrical outlets in each room. Any con-
tractor that would design and build such a system in a renovation would lose his
license. It was just to avoid such afiasco that the MASD was charged with creating
an e-government system beginning in 2000. It is thus still a top priority to build out
internal capability and interactivity particularly with those ministries that provide
direct services to the public. They need to speak with one voice on matters of
national public policy, and the sooner this is understood, the better for Egypt and
the cohesion of its new social order. Since the revolution, no real progress has been
made on the lateral integration of Ministries (Darwish, personal communication,
August 9, 2012). The result has been differing and contradictory messages on issues
of common concern, like the sudden prosecution of unregistered or foreign funded
nonprofit organizations in Egypt and the subsequent release of the foreign members
of these organizations arrested in the country who were then allowed tofly out,
effectively avoiding prosecution (Al Masry Al Youm, 2012).
Thefifth step concerns public access and service delivery. This is the public face
of e-government manifested as the official website. At its most primitive, it is little
more than a cyber-billboard with no real content beyond a message from the Min-
ister and a summary of “who we are.” Ideally, they are fully functional sites with
true interactive capacity for information and services as originally envisioned by the
MASD and the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology.
However, even this rather elementary and presumably familiar capability is ham-
pered by lack of mandating authority. Ministry site development is ultimately under
the authority of the individual ministry heads. The only recourse for the MSAD is to
exercise persuasion to convince bureaucratically inclined ministers buy into their
plan.
The current plan in Egypt, as conceived by the MASD, is to incorporate key
public services into an integrated national database from which government agen-
cies can draw common information and for citizens seeking services from certain
key functional areas. It is a rational scheme consistent with the development model
outlined above. It is pragmatic in its focus on key service areas as opposed to all
ministries that, in Egypt as elsewhere, are unevenly dedicated to the provision of
public services. It is also strategic in taking a step-by-step approach infive projects
that build higher levels of capacity. Thefive projects are:
• The National Project for Family Card;
• The national real estate registry;
• A national business enterprise ID;
• Health and medical services database; and
• A system of integrated government services.
Thefirst and most mature project is the compilation of a citizen database for
administering the “National Project for Family Card.” It is built around a citizen’s
national ID that commenced in 2001. The database provides information on fami-
lies intended to determine qualifying thresholds (income, family size, ages of
members, educational, and medical needs, etc.) with which appropriate services can
be provided.
As overseer of this initiative, Dr. Ahmed Darwish remarked on the challenges of
institutional routine and resistance to change among the officials in the various min-
istries he had to work with in trying to get this phase operational during his tenure
as Minister of State for Administrative Development. In the process of organizing
the building of the database, he would request the other social services ministries to
fill out and submit a standard form on the clients for whom they were to provide
services. They would return the forms with voluminous verifying documents that
were never requested, but which they assumed would be required to validate infor-
mation on the form. The administrative counterparts from the other ministries
could not fathom that his system would be able to cross check the information elec-
tronically and that additional verifying documentation would be superfluous. The
verification would include photocopies of the national IDs, which again were com-
pletely redundant once the ID number had beenfilled online. The common verifica-
tions were of employment and level of education, again not needed as such details
were already in the database. An ambivalently humorous episode to those in MSAD
occurred when governorate officials would demand proof of unemployment. Claim-
ing to be unemployed would be a means of circumventing verification of employ-
ment thereby making one eligible for food and other government subsidies. In order
to counter this abuse of the system, they required letters by two other government
officials verifying that the client was indeed unemployed. Such procedures reinforce
the low-trust culture endemic between the Egyptian government and its people.
The volume of superfluous material that came in with the citizen database became
so bad that the Ministerfinally had to summon roughly 250 governorate officials
from all over the country and instruct them all that he had only requested that the
form befilled out without needing employment verification. They responded with
their concerns for accountability if the information was wrong or if the person
receiving benefits was cheating. The minister’s response was to let them make a
mistake or try to cheat. It was not worth the expenditure of administrative energy in
pursuing perfection at this stage of database development. They could clean the
database later. The minister’s reasoning was, why make life miserable for everyone
involved over such a possibility? Subsequent data cleaning showed that compliance
rates were 98%, and of the remaining 2%, perhaps half of them made a mistake in
filling something out leaving only 1% intentionally cheating (Darwish, personal
communication, April 22, 2012) (Fig. 2).
The second project that was initiated from the MSAD is a national initiative for
recording real estate. This is an effort to properly assess the legal status of property
all over the nation, especially in its urban areas, for the purpose of securing the prop-
erty rights of citizens, gauge real estate values and its impacts on the national
economy, improve real estate management standards and assessment, and settling
the status of state lands illegally settled (Darwish, personal communication, April
22, 2012). This is an especially critical need given the rise of informal areas in
Egypt’s urban cores on lands of ambiguous title. A real estate records registry is also
a critical element in developing urban planning policies. To date, this element of the
overall databases project is going very slowly (Darwish, personal communication,
July 15, 2012). One principal reason is that the land registration process is complex
and cumbersome. Another likely reason may be that the titles of the extensive hold-
ings under the stewardship of the Ministry of Awqaf are not well cataloged. In
Figure 2: A schematic diagram of thefive projects by the State Ministry for Administrative Development (MSAD).

many instances land title bequeathed to the Ministry for Islamic charitable purposes
were held in hand-written registries that went back centuries making the digitation
process difficult. Overall, the Ministry of State for Administrative Development’s
real estate database creation is proceeding though the rate of progress has been slow.
A third initiative of the MSAD is the creation of a National Business Enterprise
ID which is a database registry for all commercial enterprises in Egypt. Like the
citizen’s family ID database, this would provide a common, standard database of
businesses to provide for an efficient, convenient, updated, comprehensive, secure,
and transparent reference source for customers, government agencies at all levels,
investors, and other businesses. This is a critical national economic development
project that will expedite government interactions with businesses on several levels
as well as provide a means for businesses to coordinate with each other while also
providing new channels for investment.
A health and medical services database would significantly extend service capa-
bility when records are created and made available for health service providers to
access anywhere. It portends a day when Egyptians can set up an appointment
online; swipe a card or cell phone at a doctor’s office, hospital, or clinic to check in
and have their personal records automatically sent to the service providers; receive
services and, upon completion of the visit, have a summary printout of their
payment receipts, prescribed medicines, and the time for their next appointment. 5 It
also portends the development of an informed and accountable provision of health
services; possibly under the auspices of an Egyptian national health scheme. As an
unambiguous public good, a health services database should be a high priority.
However, this element is not prioritized in the MSAD 2010–2012 Work Plan but is
identified as a subproject under the “intra-government functions” modernization
program.
The next andfinal project to integrate government services is moving forward
(Darwish personal communication, May 27, 2012). This project is the heart of the
revolution in providing comprehensive and intelligent government services but faces
resistance from a myopic and jealous, traditional bureaucratic culture often headed
by careerists who, as beneficiaries of the status quo, are least likely to innovate as it
would compromise their ability to tilt the system toward or away from allies or
adversaries, respectively. This is the last project phase to be initiated, and its launch
coincided with the Mubarak regime overthrow. The result has been a chronic lack of
leadership, manifesting its organizational paralysis as ministry heads have come and
gone leaving little internal direction or incentive to act on directives coming from an
external ministry (MOSAD) with no statutory authority or enforcement power over
them. The 2010–2012 MOSAD Work Plan had always described this project as a
“pilot” and as such has been exposed to neglect as administrative paralysis at the
ministerial level continues in Egypt.

Framework for Analysis

So what is the current state of e-government in Egypt eight years after its launch as
expressed in its ministry websites? To answer this, an evaluative instrument was
created incorporating the six e-government stage elements framework described in
“Framework for Assessing the State of Egyptian E-Government” section above.
In order to better capture these elements, not always apparent on a given site,
these indicators were constructed for each to better assess where each ministry
stands in its development and implementation of e-government services. These
indicators are summarized below:

A. Security
1—Secure data entry for online forms
2—User registration for establishing client service accounts 3—
Secure onlinefinancial transactions
B. Integrated Database Development
4—Ministry involvement Egyptian citizen database 5—
Ministry involvement in National ID for economic facilities
6—Online forms with auto-fillfields drawing upon integrated database
C. Intra-agency Hierarchical Integration
7—A functional intranet
8—A vertically integrated intranet 9—
A directory of key ministry contacts
D. Lateral Interagency Coordination
10—An official site with links to other ministries
11—An official site with information on joint partnerships
12—An official site with links to NGOs or private sector organizations
E. Public Access and Service Provision
13—A fully functioning ministry website (no broken links) 14
—A ministry website that is regularly updated
15—A ministry website oriented toward interactivity
F. Transparency of Government Structure and Process
16—A website showing ministry functions
17—A website showing ministry performance indicators 18—
A website with feedback information/Facebook page
Assessment of each of these elements under these criteria was done by direct
observation of the sites on both Arabic and English language sites where English
sites were available. Sites with at least one of the elements in each of the six func-
tional categories were deemed at least nominally effective. The highlighted items are
seen as in need of immediate upgrading as those ministries are both important in
terms of their accountability to the public and lacking site effectiveness especially in
terms of how they relate to providing online public services. Certainly not all minis-
tries in Egypt are configured to interact directly with the public, and this is recog-
nized in the analysis. The matrix arrayed in Table 1 can thus also function as a
template for prioritization in the ongoing quest to bring effective e-government to
Egypt.

Conclusion
The January 2011 overthrow of the Mubarak regime was an event but not necessar-
ily a revolution. It has not yet yielded what can truly be called a “revolution” in the
sense of a radical change in the relationship between the public and its government.
This is not particularly surprising if one understands that revolutions are not so
much events as processes. Events are still unfolding in a pattern familiar historically
characterized by high expectations that often fall short over time. January 25 is thus
better framed as a tipping point from forces that have built up over time. Consider
that truly enduring revolutions are largely technologically led, following the obser-
vation of Marshall McLuhan (1964), that, “We shape our tools and thereafter our
tools shape us.” McLuhan and Anderson (1983) discussed the rise of print media
in
Dol
Table 1: Matrix of Ministry Websites by Presence or Absence of Elements of Six Functional Dimensions
an

Ministry Security 1 Security 2 Security 3 Database 1 Database 2 Database 3 Internal 1 Internal 2 Internal 3

Ag/Reclaim Yes No N/A No Yes No No No Yes

Al Awkaf N/A No No No No No No No No
Civil Av N/A N/A N/A No No No Yes No No
Commun N/A No No No No No N/A N/A Yes
Culture N/A Yes Yes No No Yes Unknown Unknown Unknown
Defense N/A N/A N/A No No No Yes No No
Education Yes Yes N/a Yes No Yes Yes Yes Yes
Elec & Engy N/A No No No No No Yes Unknown Yes
Finance N/A No N/A Unknown No Yes Yes Yes Yes
Foreign AffYes Yes N/A Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Health N/A No N/A Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes
Higher Ed N/A No No Yes No Yes No No No
Housing N/A No N/A Yes Yes N/A No No No
Information N/A No N/A Unknown Unknown No Yes Yes Yes
Interior AffYes Yes No Yes No Yes No No Yes
Intrntl coop N/A No N/A Unknown Unknown No Yes Yes Yes
Investment Yes Yes N/A Unknown Unknown No Yes Yes Yes
Irrigation No No No No No No brkn link Yes No Yes
Justice Unknown Yes No Unknown Unknown Yes Yes Unknown Unknown
Manpower Unknown No No Yes Unknown Yes Yes Yes Yes
Mil Prod Unknown Unknown Unknown No No No Unknown Unknown Unknown
MS Ad Dev Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes Yes Unknown Yes
MS Environ No No No No No No Yes No No
MS Loc Dev No Yes No No No No Yes No Yes
Petroleum No No No No No No Yes Unknown No
Social Solid No No No No No No Yes No Unknown
Tourism N/A No No No No No Yes Yes No Sp
Indust&trade Yes No N/A Unknown Yes No Yes Yes Yes rin
Transport Yes Yes N/A No No No Yes Yes Yes g
20
14

121
122
Table 1: Continued Di
ge
Ministry Lateral 1 Lateral 2 Lateral 3 Interface 1 Interface 2 Interface 3 Transprnt 1 Transprnt 2 Transprnt 3
st
of
Ag/Reclaim Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes No Mi
Al Awkaf No Yes No Yes No No Yes Yes Yes dd
Civil Av No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No le
Commun No Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Ea
Culture Yes Yes Unknown No Yes Yes Unknown Unknown Yes st
Defense No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes St
Education Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes ud
Elec & Engy No Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes No Yes ies
Finance Yes Yes No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Foreign AffYes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes N/A Yes
Health Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Higher Ed No No Yes No No No Yes Yes Yes
Housing No No No No No No Yes Yes No
Information Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes
Interior AffNo No No No No Yes Yes No Yes
Intrntl coop Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Investment Yes No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Irrigation Yes Yes No No No No Yes No (old) Yes
Justice Yes No No No No Yes Unknown No Yes
Manpower Yes Unknown Unknown Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes
Mil Prod Unknown Unknown Unknown No Yes No Unknown Unknown No
MS Ad Dev Yes Yes No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
MS Environ No Yes Yes No No Yes Yes Yes Yes
MS Loc Dev No Yes No Yes No Yes Yes Yes Yes
Pot Petroleum No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Social Solid Yes Unknown No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
emk
Tourism No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes
in Indust&trade Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Por Transport Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
tals
...
 Spring 2014

the vernacular available to a literate population exposed to post-enlightenment ideas

of individual liberty and the social contract, giving rise to both liberal democracy
and nationalism. In the case of the Middle East, elite-led Arab nationalismflour-
ished, while liberal democracy lagged owing to a cultural legacy of charismatic
authoritarianism legitimized by a mix of state socialist policies leading to land
reform and subsidies for staple commodities and basic services including education.
In this millennium the acceleration of history turbocharged by the exponential rise
of interactive media has provided a new means for people to organize themselves
independent of formal institutions. Shirky (2008) noted, “The centrality of group
effort to human life means that anything that changes the way groups function will
have profound ramifications for everything from commerce and government to
media and religion.” His point was to link dialogical communications technology to
profound social change of which the Egyptian revolution is a subset of something
much larger. Following this premise, Egypt’s real revolution might be discerned in
the democratizing effects of media that allows people to both organize as communi-
ties of common interests and to ultimately provide an effective means to talk back to
power; the so-called “Twitter/Facebook revolutions” (Lotan et al., 2011).
Ironically, wide-ranging government reforms initiated over the previous decade
might have catalyzed a heightening of public expectations culminating in what
might yet become the Egyptian revolution. Former Minister of State for Adminis-
trative Development Ahmed Darwish remarked that it was onlyfive years ago that
Egyptian bureaucrats werefinally compelled to answer their phones (Darwish, per-
sonal communication, July 15, 2012). It is only nominally facetious to mark that
reform as the beginning of a revolution of rising expectations among Egyptians who
couldfinally contact their government officials directly with their concerns and
service demands.
A native model for a fully functioning e-government website is that of the Egypt
Post site under the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology. It,
along with the Egypt Government Portal, incorporates the security, database,
intranet, lateral links, interactivity, and transparency features outlined as essential
for effective e-government site development and functionality. It was created by
mandate of the Ministry of Communications and Technology and represents the
state of the art for universal access to government information and services in Egypt
(Fig. 3).
The templates for e-government in Egypt are in place and, following the prin-
ciple outlined by McLuhan (1964), that, “We shape our tools and thereafter our
tools shape us,” the question is not “if,” e-government will become an integral part
of the public sphere apparatus, but “when,” with a technocratic elite showing “how,”
guided by policymakers who will determine “how much” and “how soon.” It is both
not too late and none too soon in the case of Egypt’s new government, which can
begin the process of providing a means of securing greater overall confidence in
their ability to govern by building on the existing e-government infrastructure using

Dolan 123
Figure 3: Egypt post website (English) circa August 2012.

the templates built by the Ministry of State for Administrative Development

and the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology; essentially fol-
lowing through with the existing plan but ironically stymied by the “January 25th
revolution.”
Egypt’s difficult movement toward a more liberal democratic model of gover-
nance is subject to a complex set of historical forces and human nature. The histori-
cal forces include being a people subject to domination by foreign powers in an
unbroken line from the Persians in 525 B.C. to 1952 (www.historytimelines.org,
2012) and never experiencing, as a culture shift, the Western “Enlightenment” para-
digm of realizing, as a social value, the primacy of individual command over one’s
fate, failed experiments with Soviet-style state socialism and Pan Arabism and now
an assertive Islamic conservatism. As deep and powerful as these influences are,
however, the more dominant factor is probably human nature, which, in this case is
manifested in a failure to adopt a new means of meeting citizen demands for service
and transparency. It is a problem of institutional resistance that transcends any par-
ticular government or culture. Ministry heads in Egypt have tended to be old men
who ascended to their positions by “merit” (read “loyalty to the system”). Such
paths to command are common particularly in mature bureaucratic states such as
Egypt.
They are thus not open to innovation or reform as such changes, usually initiated
from the outside, are reflexively seen as a threat to their notions of authority and
stability.
The Egyptian revolution may come with a new generation of capable and com-
mitted technocrats who will be able to expand public access to government. It is
not merely a matter of installing and utilizing functional websites but also leading
a cultural shift to professional and effective interaction with the public to meet
service demands. As Dr. Ahmed Darwish observed in personal interview, it is not
that there is any less chaos behind the portals as existed before their creation. E-
government does not, in and of itself,fix bureaucratic culture. It provides a facade,
like most public buildings, of authority and competence, but also symboli- cally
signals open access and interactivity. In this regard, e-government is a useful tool
but is not a panacea. Like any tool, its utility is in the hands and skills of
its users. This piece assumes faith in the ability of Egyptians to master its
tools and embrace the vision of a means to talk back to government. Government,
for its part, will have a tool that can provide competent, targeted services in a secure,
cost-effective way, but such a vision will require a cultural shift that the technology
can foster. Vision, competence, and leadership are also vital ingredients for e-
government to achieve its full potential and therein lies the revolution.

Notes
1. In a conversation with CIB Bank CFO, Ahmed Issa Abu Hussein in March of 2012, Mr.
Hussein explained how banks protect themselves from bad loans by having the borrower
write a check for the full amount to be borrowed which is then held in the event of
default. The bank can then bring in law enforcement and charge the borrower with
writing a bad check. This Byzantine practice is the result of Islamic strictures on debt
collection that are incorporated into Egyptian civil law.
2. CIA World Factbook, 2012 puts Egypt’s 2010 literacy rate at 72%, butfunctionalliteracy is
probably closer to 50% (Keenan, 2003).
3. A dramatic example of the disconnect between the state’s media arm and the truly consequen- tial
events occurring on the streets of Egypt’s streets came at the very moment when Presi- dent
Mubarak was leaving office Egyptian State television’s news crawl was informing the
Egyptian people that “Researchers have discovered that there are, in fact, two kinds of
African elephants” (Abdullah, 2012). This line became something of a running gag among
the Twittering revolutionaries.
4. A useful reference on the issue of the more aggressive instances of webfiltering by govern-
ments is Deibert and Rohozinski (2010).
5. The author personally experienced this system while teaching in Korea in 2009 and 2010.

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