The Potential Impact of Government Online Service Delivery on Rural
and Remote Areas

Marina Cavill and Sarah Miller Centre for International Research
on Communication and Information Technologies (CIRCIT)

Considerable attention is being given by governments throughout
Australia and internationally to the use of information and
communication technologies as a means of improving the delivery
of government services. Enhanced communication capabilities are
providing the prospect of distance-independent delivery of services,
and particularly the capacity to improve the delivery to rural
and remote locations. An emerging planning issue is whether the
use of these technologies will result in significant reductions
in the cost of service delivery to remote locations. This is a
complex proposition to examine, as many factors will influence the
outcome of present efforts to use these technologies in service
delivery. These initiatives were identified through a selection
of case studies in the key areas of health, education, justice and
whole-of-government services. The extent to which these initiatives,
many in trial or early development stages, are likely to have
systemic influence will depend on factors such as the degree of
effort applied by governments to support this diffusion, the proving
of their beneficial outcomes, the availability of technical
infrastructure, and the appropriateness of these developments to
the organisational cultures of service provision. Despite the
rapid changes in technology capabilities, extensive adoption in
service delivery may still be a relatively slow process. A
significant and established impact on service delivery is likely
to take at least five years.