This article explores how mobile phones can be used as an extra channel or tool for governments allowing better, quick and efficient interaction, collaboration and communication with citizens and businesses. The Jordanian government use mobile phones as a way to increase the public participation and enhance democracy. The SMS Gateway is one of the Jordanian e-government projects that facilitates services and information for citizens through push and pull messages. Despite the high mobile penetration in Jordan, still the Jordanian government lags at the third phase of e-government evolution model (the communication phase) by allowing two way interactions between government and citizens. Not fully exploited, e-democracy is benefiting from the SMS Gateway by improving citizens’ participation and opening channels with citizens and businesses. Still, e-democracy needs extra efforts to be fully utilized specially in the political domain.
3rd Mosharaka International Conference on Communications, Networking and Information Technology (MIC-CNIT 2009)
Congress
2009 Global Congress on Communications, Networking and Information Technology (GC-CNIT 2009), 21-23 December 2009, Amman, Jordan
Pages
64-69
Topics
eGovernment IT Governance Issues
ISSN
2227-331X
DOI
BibTeX
@inproceedings{1041CNIT2009,
title={Mobile democracy: The case of Jordan's SMS gateway},
author={Nisreen Haddad, and Emad Abu-Shanab},
booktitle={2009 Global Congress on Communications, Networking and Information Technology (GC-CNIT 2009)},
year={2009},
pages={64-69},
doi={}},
organization={Mosharaka for Research and Studies}
}
