“E-government as a tool to improve the efficiency of public administration: The case of Kazakhstan”

Digitalization contributed to the modernization of public administration, particularly e-government development. The purpose of this study is to determine the role of e-government in improving the efficiency of public administration in Kazakhstan. The research methods are comparative, economic-statistical, and qualitative content analysis. The sources of statistical data were the Bureau of National Statistics, the Committee of public services, the e-government portal, and reports of international organizations and national development institutions. The study determined that e-government is a modern paradigm of public administration that contributes to the efficiency of public administration; its development and efficiency are significantly influenced by financial, economic, technological, and legal factors. Kazakhstan has a high level of e-government development. The e-government development portal in Kazakhstan has contributed to improving public administration, especially during the pandemic. However, e-government requires further development, as its functioning has various issues (low degree of information relevance, insufficient portal filling, and low share of automated functions). At the same time, the readiness of public administration organizations for digital transformation is medium. The study proposes recommendations for Kazakhstan’s e-government development to improve public administration, mainly developing technological infrastructure and digital human capital. The results can contribute to the further e-government development in Kazakhstan and enrich the theoretical base in increasing the efficiency of public administration in the context of digital transformation.


INTRODUCTION
The quantity and quality of goods and services provided to citizens is one of the critical factors in determining government efficiency.Many governments strive to create a new system of public administrationproactive, transparent, accountable, and efficient -by innovating their organizational structures, operational strategies, and methods of resource use (Kamolov & Konstantinova, 2017).Digitalization affects modernization of public administration, in particular, e-government development.
Many countries are actively implementing e-government.According to the E-Government Survey 2022 (UN, 2022a), the top 10 countries in the global E-Government Development Index (EGDI), which assesses the quality and reach of online services, telecommunications infrastructure, and existing human capacity, included Denmark, Finland, the Republic of Korea, New Zealand, Sweden, Iceland, Australia, Estonia, the Netherlands, and the United States of America.In this rating, Kazakhstan was in 28th place.In 2001, according to the E-Government Index, Kazakhstan was among the countries with minimal e-gov capacity (UN, 2021).From 2001 to 2022, the position of Kazakhstan in this ranking has improved, which indicates its significant progress.This was largely facilitated by the state's strategic course toward digitalization.For example, until 2022, Kazakhstan was implementing the "Digital Kazakhstan" program, where one of the five areas was identified as "Transition to a digital state" (Akorda, 2017).Today, the country faces the task of building a fundamentally new architecture of "digital government," eliminating duplication, inefficient costs, and bureaucracy and increasing the accessibility of citizens to 100% of government services from smartphones.Kazakhstan has embarked on a "digital reboot" course of the public sector.There are plans to create a Digital Transformation Center to digitize all government agencies' business processes (Tokayev, 2021).
Digitalization has become an essential evolutionary step in developing the concept of "e-government."This modern paradigm of public administration is built on the principles of efficiency, openness, and citizen participation in order to ensure transparent interaction of the state with citizens or businesses.Examples of successful implementation of e-government in various countries, including Kazakhstan, demonstrate its potential to improve the quality of public administration.Thus, e-government involves simplifying and automating public administration processes, improvement of the efficiency of public services, reducing corruption risks, and improving access to and satisfaction of services for the population and businesses.There is a digital transformation of public services, including through a recommendation system (Kamolov & Aleksandrov, 2023).However, there are also certain challenges and problems, such as data protection, cybersecurity, technical infrastructure, and accessibility of services to all people (digital inequality).Therefore, the theoretical and practical studies of e-government in improving public administration efficiency are relevant research areas, especially for developing countries such as Kazakhstan.

LITERATURE REVIEW
The scientific literature uses several conceptual approaches through which e-government is analyzed.In a narrow sense, e-government has been interpreted as providing public services and information, public procurement, and financial transactions online (Twizeyimana & Andersson, 2019).Meanwhile, the e-government services are divided into four groups: government for citizens, government for business, interaction between government agencies, and citizen participation in political life and governance (Palvia & Sharma, 2007) (Table 1).In a broad sense, e-government involves ICT to provide public services, improve government efficiency, and promote democrat-ic mechanisms and values (Gil-Garcia, 2006).E-government refers to a new system of public administration, which, with the help of information technology, provides a trusting relationship of government with citizens and modernizes the entire process of managerial relations (Scholta et al., 2019 (Kassen, 2017), differences between education and income, between user needs and expectations (Gascó, 2003), public sphere regulation, form of arrangement (Effing et al., 2011), degree of state centralization, nature of political regime, and degree of democracy (Kneuer & Harnisch, 2016).A country's technological development is the main guarantee of the formation of an e-government (Jin & Lee, 2020).Another factor is the pandemic, which resulted in innovative ways to solve crises in health, education, and employment spheres (Grinin et al., 2022).
The current environment where the national network infrastructure and ICT are actively developing allows e-government to act as a fundamental tool of transparent measures that have radically changed the way of interaction between the subjects and objects of the public administration process, which improves the efficiency of public administration (Malodia et al., 2021).E-government can qualitatively change the content of public administration, including all the procedures and stages of the management and its functions, with the help of modern information technology, which will improve the quality of public administration.The quality of public administration, in turn, is achieved by meeting essential criteria such as validity, effectiveness, and efficiency (Raskin, 2017): • effectiveness: improving the quality of public administration in a particular aspect and, consequently, increasing the effectiveness of specific parameters of public administration (e.g., reducing the time required to provide public services); • efficiency: reducing state budget expenditures and expenditures of citizens and businesses; • competitiveness: standards, conditions, and parameters that meet citizens' expectations.
E-government provides an opportunity to improve the quality of public services; reduce the waiting time (

METHOD
The analysis consists of three stages.In the first stage, the study searched for scientific articles from the Scopus, Web of Science, and ScienceDirect databases from 1997 to 2022 on e-government development.
The search, review, and selection of publications were performed using search queries by combining keywords such as "e-government," "public administration," "e-gov," and "efficiency."The search results yielded 408 articles.Based on the purpose of the study, 40 articles were selected, as well as reports of international organizations, scientific publications from other databases, regulations, and reports of national institutions for e-government development.
General scientific methods (generalization, specification, systematization, analysis, synthesis, and others) were used for the literature review.
The second stage involved dynamic analysis of Kazakhstan's E-Government Development  2).
In the third stage, the paper offers recommendations based on the theoretical search and analysis of statistical data; the main methods were generalization, comparison, and synthesis.
The methodology of this study is distinguished by a comprehensive approach and analysis of the e-government portal performance indicators, which have not been previously considered from the prism of public administration efficiency.In 2021, it decreased to 26.7%, which may be due to the emergence of new channels intended to receive government services in addition to the portal (social networks, application) and the ability to visit offline public service centers.Users mostly received information -24.4% in 2015 and 22.3% in 2021.From 2015 to 2021, there was an increase in downloads of official forms and electronic submission of completed forms from 7.4% to 13.3% and from 7.9% to 11.4%, respectively (Table 4).
From 2015 to 2021, the number of organizations using the Internet to communicate with government agencies also increased by one and a half times.The peak was in 2020 -98,295 organizations associated with quarantine measures during the pandemic.Most organizations used the Internet to obtain information and electronically submit completed forms.In 2018, there was an increase in the number of organizations posting bids online in open electronic bidding.In 2021, their number dropped below the 2015 level.There was a noticeable increase in the number of organizations that performed the procedures to send documents entirely in electronic format without papers.This indicates high electronic document flow (Table 5).
The growth in the number of users of e-government services from both the population and organizations, as well as the increase in the number of issued digital electronic signatures, indicates the efficiency of the e-government platform of Kazakhstan.The service volume decreased from 24.2% to 17.4% from 2018 to 2021.It can also be attributed to the emergence of new channels for public services.The number of public services provided electronically increased to 664 units during the period under review, i.e., 94% of all public services.The total duration of technical failures of services on the e-government portal has significantly decreased, which improves the quality and reduces the waiting time, as well as reduces red tape (when only identity document is required for many services).The number of violations of the requirements in terms of the list of documents in the provision of public services decreased by more than 20 times.The number of facts of violation of terms of rendering state services has tripled simultaneously.This is primarily due to the pandemic when the remote provision of public services' high load on "E-government" portal led to interruptions and increased load on the information systems of state bodies (Ismailova et al., 2021).
However, despite this fact, state service recipients' satisfaction increased from 72.4% to 75.4%.These indicators may indicate an improvement in public services provision, especially on the part of local executive bodies (Table 6).
Based on the analyzed data, e-government in Kazakhstan contributes to the improvement of the efficiency of public administration.In this regard, further development is necessary.Thus, the e-government platform has the following problems: failure to implement the plan of integration to form a single information space between government agencies, insufficient (74.1%) content of the architectural portal with information about information resources, the presence of non-functioning information systems, reducing the share of automated functions of state bodies, the low degree of relevance of the information contained in the information systems and databases.In contrast, there are positive development dynamics in some areas (Table 7).
In connection with the above, the readiness of public administration organizations to further develop e-government becomes essential.It requires ICT availability and digital human capital in public administration.In Kazakhstan, public administration organizations use computers with access to the Internet.In 2021, the number of computers per organization averaged 18 units, of which only 60.4% had Internet.This figure is higher compared to 2019 -56.2%.Moreover, only 10% of organizations use cloud IT services in their work.There is a twofold increase in the number of organizations using cloud IT services (Table 8).
The number of ICT specialists in public administration organizations decreased by 113 persons against the background of the reduced need for ICT specialists.On average, there are 1.9 ICT specialists per public administration organization.And only 4% of organizations have information security specialists, the number of which decreased by 12 persons.In 2021, the number of employees who use computers with Internet access for business purposes and have been trained in computer literacy increased.ICT ex-

DISCUSSION
The e-government development portal in Kazakhstan has contributed to an increase in the public administration level, especially during the pandemic, as confirmed by the findings of Grinin et al. (2022) and Doran et al. (2023).Satisfaction with electronic government services is relatively high and growing, which confirms the findings of Ismailova et al. (2021).The law "On amendments and additions to some legislative acts of the Republic of Kazakhstan on the regulation of digital technologies" was approved in 2020.Nevertheless, in the process of achieving sustainable economic development, public administration is still affected by some challenges, including excessive centralization of state power, limited authority at the regional level, corrupt practices, and lack of transparency (OECD, 2017), as well as bureaucracy and paperwork (Kapoguzov & Suleimenova, 2017).There are also other challenges.For example, public distrust of state structures is exacerbated by the complete lack of state accountability and the lack of transparency in state budget spending, which, in turn, exacerbates the problems of corruption.The lack of information about how the public budget is spent in the public domain results in distrust on the part of citizens, leading to the inefficiency of public administration (Thai et al., 2019).
The results show that the introduction and use of e-government can solve these public administration problems and improve its efficiency.In Kazakhstan, there is a new stage of e-government development as a coherent system where the state freely cooperates with citizens and businesses.The main characteristic of this stage is active citizen participation in the affairs of the state and open two-way communication (Adilet, 2021).Public administration bodies should focus on improving their activities' efficiency and quality management (Maidurova, 2013).To form a new generation of Kazakhstan's e-government, it is advisable to perform the following activities: • prepare reports on the results of the activities of state bodies, place them in automatic mode on a single platform, as well as make decisions based on these data (Yakovleva, 2014); • increase the use of big data in processes such as public policymaking, official statistics, control and audit of state budget revenues and expenditures, and other government functions (Myeong, 2019); • evaluate the performance of government agencies using more advanced methods, such as predictive analytics and other analytical methods based on artificial intelligence technologies instead of binary evaluation on the principle of "done vs. not done"; • reduce budget expenditures, calculate and evaluate the costs with the help of information technology; • integrate all public administration information systems on a single platform.2007).There were also studies to assess the efficiency of public administration in Kazakhstan (Maidurova, 2013;Kapoguzov & Suleimenova, 2017).However, this study is the first to consider e-government as a tool intended to improve the efficiency of public administration in Kazakhstan based on a comprehensive study of its performance.The future research directions include the development of a methodology to assess the efficiency of e-government and the assessment of public administration within e-government through primary data collected via a large-scale survey of the country's population and expert interviews of representatives of public administration and e-government development institutions.The limitation of the study is the lack of data for 2022 and for a certain period because of changes in the coutntry's methodology for the collection of statistical data.
Index and its components from 2003 to 2022, using statistical methods and the resource "Publicadministration.un.org."The paper analyzed users of e-government services in Kazakhstan and their distribution by types of services in the period from 2015 to 2021 based on data from the Bureau of National Statistics of the Agency for Strategic Planning and Reforms of the Republic of Kazakhstan (BNS ASPR RK), the Committee of Public Services of the Ministry of Digital Development, Innovation and Aerospace Industry of the Republic of Kazakhstan (CPS MDDIAI RK) and reports on e-government performance, namely the section "About the Portal" and the resource Evaluation.egov.kz(evaluation sections: "Cooperation with citizens" and "Organizational development") (Table

Table 1 .
). Classification of services provided by e-government

Table 2 .
Indicators used in the study (Bach et al., 2013) is a single mechanism of interaction of state bodies with citizens and each other, ensuring their coherence through ICT.It includes dozens of different information systems (IS), registries, state databases (SDB), and hundreds of applications and services: IS "E-Akimat," IS "E-Notary," SDB "Individuals," SDB "Legal Entities," SDB "Real Estate Register," Unified Electronic Document Management System of state bodies, Integrated IS "Citizens Service Centre," IS SDB "E-Licensing," intranet portal of state This is also supported by the development of policy documents, where the priority is the training of the population in digital skills at all education stages, which results in the development of digital human capital(Bach et al., 2013).For example, a training program, "E-Government and e-Government Services," was developed to educate citizens and improve digital literacy: 686,189 trained Figure1.Stages of e-government development in Kazakhstan ), as well as on registration in the waiting list for kindergarten.In 2018, most users of the e-government portal were men, who entered mainly from personal computers (E-gov.kz, n.d.).There is a regional gap in access to e-government services.For the period from

Table 5 .
The purposes for the use of the Internet by Kazakhstani organizations to communicate with government agencies, units, 2016-2021

Table 7 .
Indicators of the public administration system of Kazakhstan for the e-government platform development, 2018-2021

Table 8 .
Indicators of ICT development of public administration organizations, 2019-2021 (Kangalakova et al., 2023)reyeva et al., 2022b)eveling or reducing the digital divide in the regions, especially without the provision of technological infrastructure in rural, vulnerable, and depressed areas of the country(Kireyeva et al., 2022a;Kireyeva et al., 2022b), as well as provision of the population with affordable and high-quality laptops and smartphones, which are most popular among young persons(Kangalakova et al., 2023), who in turn are the main users of e-government services.The above requires an increase in spending on ICT in the area of "General Government Administration," which is 7.2% (Alibekova & Bapiyeva, 2019).Thus, for the e-government development in Kazakhstan to improve the efficiency of public administration, the following measures are required, covering the development of technological infrastructure and human capital:1) include digital competencies in qualification requirements for state and municipal employees along with such competencies as responsibility, stress resistance, strategic thinking, leadership, cooperation and interaction, and decision making; 2) develop a centralized system of training and retraining of those employed in state and municipal administration for the use of digital technology, as well as courses in programming, data management, machine learning and artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, design and web development, blockchain technologies, game development, multimedia, Internet marketing, data analytics, e-commerce, and medical literacy.For example, the training may be based on the Public Administration Academy under the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan; 3) provide access to broadband Internet and increase bandwidth, especially for regional and local governments; 4) develop existing and use new/emerging technologies for the development of digital government and the government open data portal, followed by training the population in their use.