Morocco
Larache e-Government Project
Abstract
Morocco has an official discourse and a moral engagement from the public authority to promote the use of ICT in the public sector in order to enhance the well being of citizens and the good governance in the country. However, there is a huge gap between reality of the population and the government’s expectations/strategies. There is too little evidence to support the official government discourse. The speed of deployment of e-government systems remains very slow due to socio-political and economical factors, such as the acceptability, the usability, the accessibility and the appropriateness of this new technology for Moroccans and its usefulness to enhance their daily life. Indeed, these factors are interrelated and influence each other so that they create a vicious circle and aggravate the digital divide between Morocco and its developed neighboring countries with which it achieves more than 80% of its economical, cultural and social exchanges.
One of the most glaring challenges is the lack of e-Government systems deployed in local collectivities (local governments). This is where almost all interactions between citizens and the public administration take place to request/receive services/documents (birth certificate, residency certificate, passport, etc.). The Moroccan research team at Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane, in collaboration with researchers and experts in this area (eGovernment/ance) from Canada, has been developing a roadmap of ‘eGovernment to enhance good governance in Morocco’, based on action research and empirical results of a pilot e-Government/ance project that the team has been developing for the city of Fez. The aim of the LOG-IN research project is to extend the e-government research in Fez to another Moroccan city (Larache) so as to, in parallel, replicate the experience of eFez and learn, adjust and further enhance the roadmap as well as the outcome assessment framework. This research is an action research done within the field and involving all the stakeholders, including citizens, decision makers and politicians, who will be turned into researchers too so that the roadmap and the outcome assessment framework that will be developed reflect the real world settings and the corresponding needs, constraints and realities. The main goal is to combine the results that the team is obtaining in the eFez project and cross fertilize them with the outputs generated with the action research at the city of Larache, so to obtain conclusions and learning applicable at the national level, in Morocco.
§ What political, social and economic strategies will need to be adopted and what are the outcomes of deploying a local e-Government portal for a medium-sized city (Larache) offering citizen-oriented services?
§ What are the differences and similarities to the IDRC-funded e-Fez project and what can be learnt from this that would be of interest for wider e-Governance implementations?
Team Leader
Dr. Driss KETTANI
Email: D.Kettani@aui.ma
Ms. Asmae Elmahdi
E-mail: a.elmahdi@aui.ma
Mr. Mohamed ATTACH
Institution
School of Science and Engineering
Alakhawayn University,
P.O.Box 2122,
FRANE 53000- MOROCCO.