In recent years, the e-government revolution has induced transformational economic and social shifts around the world. The main objective of this paper is to analyze and rank the e-government agricultural services provided by the Greek government in Citizens Services Center web portal. For this reason an analysis of all the official e-government agricultural and environmental services was made. In order to characterize e-government evolution we use the four stage-model proposed by Layne and Lee (2001). The ranking of the environmental and natural resources subcategories was made with PROMETHEE II method in order to find which sector has proceeded in egovernment evolution stages. The results show that there is a need to increase the interaction between citizens and different government by providing more integrated e-government services.
Information and communication technologies (ICTs) have dramatically changed
the face of agriculture in developed countries. Many activities of farms have been
linked to databases, electronic communication, portals and websites, giving the
possibility to farmers for accessing government projects, financial institutions,
markets, technical and scientific assistance
On the other hand, rural areas are by definition distant, sparsely populated and are
dependent on natural resources
The main objective of this paper is to analyze and rank the e-government agricultural and environmental services provided by the Greek government in Citizens Services Center web portal. The paper is organized as follows. In the following section, e-government types and stages are presented. In Section 3 the official greek e-governmente services are analysed and classified, followed by the reanking methodology in Section 4. Section 5 discusses the main results of the PROMETHEE II methodology. The final section concludes.
In recent years, the e-government revolution has induced transformational
economic and social shifts around the world. In order to proceed in designing and
developing an e-government portal for agricultural services we have to define first
what e-government is. For e-Government have been given many definitions, some of
them are complex and others are simpler. One simple definition is given by the
United Nations, which defines e-Government as "the use of ICT and its application
by the government for the provision of information and public services to the people”
Many authors mentioned that the main goals of e-Government are to improve the
efficiency of public administration and reduce administrative burdens for businesses
and citizens. The types of e-government are established depending on the type of
transactions that come in contact with the public administration. E-government
includes electronic interactions of three types
In order to characterize e-government evolution we use the four stage-model
proposed by Layne and Lee (2001). E-government services normally evolve through
a four stage process
Adoption of e-government services has many potential benefits. First of all providing citizens with a greater range of services and delivery channels. One other point is that e-government is giving citizens greater access to the range of services by providing better, easier to use information on-line and joining up services at the point of delivery. It also gives services in a way which suits citizens' and businesses' needs by providing services on-line, 24 hours a day and providing faster and more accurate services. Finally, improves efficiency by replacing manual processing of routine high volume work by IT systems and it can also be used to make the purchasing of goods and services more efficient. 3
The aim of this paper is to find all the agricultural e-Gov Services provided by Greek Government to classify and rank them. For this reason, we analyzed the “Environment and Natural Resources” services of the website of KEP (www.kep.gov.gr), who has designed and developed electronic information covering the entire Public Sector, making an easier access for Internet transactions to the Public Administration. Additionally, it provides citizens and businesses alike, a central information and eservices hub for a series of administrative procedures, implementing a very significant step towards e-governance.
Services 733 185 166 156 155 139 129 116 111 % 33.7% 8.5% 7.6% 7.2% 7.1% 6.4% 5.9% 5.3% 5.1% 10 Justice and Public Administration 109 5.0% 11 Public Order and Defence 92 4.2% 12 International and European Union Affairs 39 1.8% 13 Information and Communication 21 1.0% 14 Culture and Leisure 21 1.0%
Total 2172 100.0% All the services, available to users, are organized in basic thematic categories. In the next tables, a detailed description of what each thematic category contents is presented. Each thematic category includes specific services. Table 1 presents the distribution of the 2.172 services in the fourteen thematic categories. Each thematic category includes certain subcategories regarding the thematic issues, covered in each one. As we can see, Work, Insurance and Pension is the category that includes the most services (733) and covers 33.7%. The next category is People, Communities and Living which includes 185 services and covers the 8.5% of total services. Entrepreneurship and Competitiveness includes 166 services and covers 7.6%. Moreover, the category Transportation, Travel and Tourism includes 156 services (7.2%) and Environment and Natural Resources includes 155 services (7.1%). The next categories is Economy and Finance, which includes 139 services (6.4%), and Health and Social Care, which includes 129 services (5.9%). The next categories (City planning and Land registry, Education and Research, Justice, State and Public Administration) cover about 5.0% each one, and the category Public Order and Defence covers 4.2%. Finally, the last categories (International Affairs and the European Union, Information and Communication and Culture and Leisure) cover less than 2.0% respectively. A/A Subcategories Services % 1 Natural resources 98 61.3% 6 Flora and fauna 26 16.3% 2 Energy 14 8.8% 4 Environmental Protection 12 7.5% 3 Delineation 9 5.6% 5 Water resources 1 0.6%
Total 160 100.0% Table 2 focuses on identifying the category “Environment and Natural Resources” structure and the number of services included in each one. As mentioned above, each thematic category includes certain subcategories. The subcategories included in this thematic category are: Utilization of natural resources, Flora and fauna, Energy, Environmental Protection, Delineation and Water resources.
The first subcategory is Utilization of Natural resources (Table 3). This category includes services that regard Fisheries (26.7% of total services), Agriculture (27.6%), Forestry, Livestock (22.9%), Quarries (9.5%), Beekeeping (1.9%), Mines, Quarries, Poultry (6.7%) and finally Logging (4.8%). Α/Α 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Α/Α
On the issue of Flora and Fauna there are 26 services. More than the half of them (61.5%) regards forests, while 31% regard animals and 7.7% plants (Table 4). Moreover, for the Subcategory of Energy, it includes services about renewable energies, electricity and fuels (Table 5). The most services in this subcategory (78.6%) are about fuels, and the rest 21.4% regard electricity.
Similarly, in the next subcategory about Environmental Protection, there are 13 ban hunting, waste management, environmental protection generally and pollution (Table 6). 61.5% of total services regard waste management, 30.8% of them regard environmental protection generally, and 7.7% pollution.
Additionally, the services regarding delineation refer to sea shore, streams and ditches (Table 7). Most of the services (72.7%) refer to sea shore, while the rest of them are equally distributed in streams and ditches.
Finally, in the last subcategory, Water resources, there are services referring to irrigation, lakes, rivers and groundwater (Table 8).
The method that was used for the ranking of the six subcategories of the
“Environment and Natural Resources” main category was the multicriteria analysis
PROMETHEE II, which applied a linear form of function in this particular case,
using selected criteria. A considerable number of successful applications has been
treated by the PROMETHEE methodology in various fields such as Banking,
Industrial Location, Manpower planning, Water resources, Investments, Medicine,
Chemistry, Health care, Tourism, Ethics in OR, Dynamic management,
The success of the methodology is basically due to its mathematical properties and to its particular friendliness of use.
The PROMETHEE II method (preference ranking organization method for
enrichment evaluation) is a multicriteria decision-making method developed by
ܯܽݔ݂ሼ ଵ ሺ ܽ ሻ ǡ ǥ ݂ ሺ ܽ ሻ ǡך ܽ א ܭሽ , (1)
where K is a finite set of actions and ݂ ǡ ݅ ൌ ͳǡ ǥ ݇ , are k criteria to be maximized.
The PROMETHEE methods include two phases
In the first phase, a valued outranking relation based on a generalization of the
notion of criterion is considered: a preference index is defined and a valued
outranking graph, representing the preferences of the decision maker, is obtained
The preference structure of PROMETHEE is based on pair wise comparisons. In this case the deviation between the evaluations of two alternatives on a particular criterion is considered. The preference index for each pair of alternatives ܽǡ ܾ א ܭ , ranges between 0 and 1. The higher it is (closer to 1) the higher the strength of the preference for ܽ over ܾ is.
ܪ݀ሺሻ is an increasing function of the difference ݀ between the performances of
alternatives ܽ and ܾ on each criterion. ܪ݀ሺሻ is a type of preference intensity
ܪ ሺ ݀ ሻ ൌ ൜ ܲ ሺ ܽǡ ܾ ܲ ሺ ܾǡ ܽ ሻ ǡ݀ Ͳǡ ሻ ǡ݀ ͲǤ
The ܪሺ݀ሻ function can be of various different forms, depending upon the
judgment policy of the decision maker
The multicriteria preference index ߎ is then defined as the weighted average of the preference functions ܲ : ߎሺܽǡ ܾሻ represents the intensity of preference of the decision maker of action ܽ over action ܾ , when considering simultaneously all the criteria. It is a figure between 0 and 1 and: - ߎ ሺ ܽǡ ܾ ሻ ൌ Ͳ denotes a weak preference of ܽ over ܾ for all the criteria, - ߎ ሺ ܽǡ ܾ ሻ ൌ ͳ denotes a strong preference of ܽ over ܾ for all the criteria.
This preference index determines a valued outranking relation on the set ܭ of actions. This relation can be represented as a valued outranking graph, the nodes of which are the actions of ܭ . When each alternative is facing other alternatives in ܭ , the following outranking flows are defined:
The positive outranking flow:
߮ ା ሺ ܽ ሻ ൌ σ א ߎ ሺ ܽ ǡ ܾ ሻ 4)
The positive outranking flow expresses how an alternative is outranking all the others. It is its power, its outranking character. The higher the߮ ା ሺ ܽ ሻ , the better the alternative.
The negative outranking flow:
߮ ି ሺ ܽ ሻ ൌ σ א ߎ ሺ ܾ ǡ ܽ ሻ (5)
The negative outranking flow expresses how an alternative is outranked by all the others. It is its weakness, its outranked character. The lower the߮ ି ሺ ܽ ሻ , the better the alternative.
The net outranking flow can is the balance between the positive and the negative outranking flows. The higher the net flow, the better the alternative:
߮ ሺ ܽ ሻ ൌ ߮ ା ሺ ܽ ሻ െ ߮ ି ሺ ܽ ሻ (6) 4.1
Application of the methodology
The next stage is the ranking of the six Environment and Natural Resources subategories with the implementation of the multicriteria method of PROMETHEE II, according to specific criteria. The criteria we have chosen are the number of the services included in each category and the number of the services included in each stage (publication of information on a web site, online interactivity, electronic delivery of documents and electronic delivery of services). The next table (table 9) presents the rates of the services of each category, included in the four different stages.
The multi-criteria method PROMETHE II was applied as a part of the theory of relevance superiority. The shape of the ܪ݀ሺሻ function selected is the Gaussian form (Gaussian criterion) defined as follows:
ܪ ሺ ݀ ሻ ൌ Ȃͳ ݔ݁െ݀ሼ ଶ Ȁʹߪ ଶ ሽ (7) where ݀ is the difference among the categories ܽ and ܾ ሾ݀ ൌ ݂ ሺ ܽ ሻ ൌ ݂ ሺ ܾ ሻ ሿ and ߪ is the standard deviation of all differences ݀ and for each criterion.
The multicriteria indicator of preference ߎ ሺ ܽǡ ܾ ሻ which is a weighted mean, of the preference functions ܲሺܽǡ ܾሻ with weights ߨ for each criterion, express the superiority of the category ܽ against category ܾ after all the criteria tested.
We received 50 scenarios of weights and on each scenario of weights we receive
10 scenarios on the standard deviation of ߪ distribution of Gauss. The 10 scenarios
ߪ oscillate from ͲǤʹͷݏ until ʹǤͷݏ with stepͲǤʹͷݏ , where ݏ the standard deviation of
all differences ݀ for the each criterion. Globally we take 500 prices for each net flow
per category and find the medium price
When two categories ሺ ܽǡ ܾ ሻ are compared to each other one is assigned two values of flows: the positive and the negative outranking flow. The positive flow expresses the total superiority of the category ܽ against all the other categories for all the criterions. The negative flow expresses the total superiority of all the other categories against category ܽ for all the criterions.
The net flow is the number that is used for the comparison between the categories in order to obtain the final ranking. ߔ ሺ ݔ ሻ is the net flow of each category. Thus is created the table of net flows of the six categories according to that becomes the ranking of them. The net flows are presented in table 10 and the ranking of the six categories as obtained from the net flows, is presented in table 11.
The category ranked in first place is Utilization of Natural Resources. According to the results of the analysis we observe that Flora - fauna and Energy have also positive net flows and possess the second and third place, respectively. The next positions in the ranking belong to Delineation and Environmental Protection with small negative net flows around 0. At the lowest position we find the Water Resources with negative net flows. Φ1 Φ6
Net flows Φ1 Φ2 Φ3 Φ4 Φ5 Φ6 Net Flow 0.777761 0.556467
The aim of this paper is to analyze and rank the agricultural and environmental egov services provided officially by the Greek government portal KEP (www.kep.gov.gr). For this reason an analysis of all the e-government agricultural services was made. The classification results show that the agricultural and environmental e-government services are in the fifth place of the main categories provided by the Greek government. Specifically, agricultural, livestock and fisheries e-gov services are the main subcategories of the natural resources and the services provided are well organized.
On the other hand, the distribution of these services in the four e-government evolution stages shows that the majority belongs to the initial stages of the simple web presence and interaction. Greek government web services normally offer static information about agencies and government organizations.
The ranking of the environmental and natural resources subcategories was made in order to find which sector has proceeded in e-government evolution stages. The criteria chosen was the number of the services included in each category and the number of the services included in each e-government stage. The results show that utilization of natural resources which includes e-government services for agriculture, livestock and fisheries was ranked in the first place. The results also show that there is a need to increase the interaction between citizens and different government by providing more integrated e-government services. Therefore, Greek government needs to cross organizational boundaries and develop a comprehensive and integral vision of the government as a whole.