E-Democracy and Trust

In developed countries, large numbers of citizens are benefiting from e-government services and information that is ubiquitously accessible. However, citizen’s democracy and trust play a crucial role in the advancement of e-government implementation and further progress. E-democracy is strongly linked to trust. Trust is established when one person can rely on the decision and action that another person takes. In Iran, government still struggles with injecting e-government content and value to both government employees and citizens. What is actually lacking is the establishment of Government Social Networking System (GSNS) to influence e-government expansion. In this chapter, GSNS and its contribution to e-government expansion in Iran is presented. Moreover, the author deliberates if government technological support and ICT can enhance e-democracy and trust in Iran. 800 Iranian citizens were examined through a self-administrative questionnaire containing seven structured questions. The results revealed that very few respondents were fully familiar with e-government efforts and GSNS. In case of democracy and trust issues, respondents appear to be positively resistive. They make a variety of dissimilar statements while supporting their statements with interesting but disappointing reasons. This chapter presents the outcome of this study.