Call Centres and their Role in E-governance: A Developing Country Perspective

Poor governance has been undermining the service delivery and development initiatives undertaken by the majority of developing countries. Many of these governments have now started using e-governance as a mechanism to engender change in their governance systems by achieving development goals and ensure better service delivery to citizens and other stakeholders. Arguably, it also ensures improved public sector efficiency, accountability and responsiveness. Call centres have been used in recent years by a host of developing countries including India, Korea and Malaysia, as an e-governance tool to achieve the above-mentioned objectives. The paper argues that a successful adoption of call centres by governments has the potential to provide better service delivery at reduced costs, increase the public sector efficiency, minimise corruption and improve accountability, transparency and responsiveness of the public sector. It is, however, acknowledged that such initiatives in developing countries are fraught with numerous challenges that include the lack of infrastructure, low teledensity, lack of political commitment and vision, bureaucratic inefficiency and administrative corruption. Based on the extant literature and available evidence from a range of developing countries, a tentative framework is proposed to encapsulate the nature and operation of call centres as an e-governance tool. The framework also identifies the challenges call centres may face, the external environment they are influenced by, and the role they play in achieving better