Approaching the e-Government as a strategic driver for improving the Ethical Model: an empirical analysis from Business Economics

The aim and the scope of the paper is to show the e-Government processes as a tool to improve the ethical model inside a country, an enterprise or a community. The study is divided into two parts: the first part is an empirical research, the second one in a theoretical analysis derived by a Business Economic approach. The first part presents a study regarding the effective correlation between two clusters: innovation and ethical behaviour model: the empirical research studies the European Union countries area and covers a six years period (2003-2008). The innovation cluster includes e-Government processes, Information Communication Technologies (ICT), Research & Development Expenditure, Education Investment, (etc.); while the second one (ethical behaviour model) contains elements such as e-Governance processes, ethical values, the observance of the law, merit rating system, social cohesion, (etc.). Inside the first cluster are located the e-Government processes that the paper systematizes in the introduction and links them to the e-Governance processes located inside the second cluster. The research of the indicators was carried out by consulting the data sources offered by the following international bodies: European Commission, Eurostat, Transparency International, World Bank and Ethical Rating Agencies [such as AEI Standard Ethics (Agenzia Europea di Investimenti Standard Ethics)]. The contribution of this research has had, as prerequisite, the identification in the current processes for improvement and development of models of e-Government of the crucial role represented by the share of the underlying reference model value, measured by ethical parameters. In the model, the issue of governance and their criticality, has been pressing an action that often, as we have already registered, leading to inefficient results, or in some cases, insufficient demand, born spontaneously the reasoning above is whether there are other ways in addition to that legislation, the improvement of these imbalances: the alternative way (followed in this study) was designed to measure the level of innovation, cluster where the e-Government processes are located. The result of empirical research shows a correlation index of about 0.90 (approx.) between the two variables (innovation and ethics): the numerical value mentioned is the average indexes measured over the period (2003-2008). The second part of the paper is dedicated to comment the research result that shows the several actions of e-Government processes. In a short period study the e-Government processes represent a right way to introduce efficiency and effectiveness in the public sector management and innovation improve the ethical behaviour model; while in a long period study, it can be argued that there is an exchange on dependence between the two variables: the ethical behaviour model can improve the innovation level standard, including, therefore, also an optimization of the processes of e-Government.