Error 404: Government not Secure

Technological developments in the last few decades have created countless opportunities for society, shifting not only economic, but also governmental activities to the digital realm, resulting in the development of e-government. However, these new opportunities present new risks, as recent large-scale cyber-attacks on governmental institutions have shown. The objective of this study is to explore the relationship between cybersecurity on the one hand, and the development of e-government on the other, to provide better insight in the relationship between these increasingly important phenomena within society. Based on the literature, five individual components of cybersecurity have been identified, which were all expected to have a positive relationship with the development of e-government, namely ‘legal’, ‘technical’, ‘organisational’, ‘capacity-building’ and ‘cooperation’. To test the existence and strength of these relationships, a panel dataset was created out of six existing databases: the Global Cybersecurity Index (GCI), the UN E-Government Development Index (EGDI), the Corruption Perception Index (CPI), the Global Innovation Index (GII), the Democracy Index and the World Bank database. This panel dataset consisted of data on e-government development, the five cybersecurity components and 3 control variables, of 193 countries in the years of 2014 and 2016. With this panel dataset, a pooled OLS regression analysis was conducted. The results of this analysis indicate that the ‘legal’ and ‘technical’ component of cybersecurity have a significant positive association with the development of e-government. This study has not found a significant relationship between the ‘organisational’, ‘capacity-building’ and ‘cooperation’ components of cybersecurity and e-government development. Additionally, the study found a significant positive relationship between ‘national income’ as control variable, and e-government development. This study therefore concludes that there is a differentiated relationship between the various individual components of cybersecurity and the development of e-government. These results have scientific implications because they contribute to the discussion in the literature about the theoretical underpinning of the relationship between the concepts of cybersecurity and e-government development, and the more underlying relationship between security and development. These results also have societal implications, as they provide policymakers and governments insight into the cybersecurity determinants for the successful development of e-government services.