ABSTRACT
This chapter of the book is dedicated to policy analysis of public initiatives and projects aimed at developing new dimensions of the e-government concept in Kazakhstan, such as open government and open data, in an attempt to understand the political motivations of national authorities to promote such projects and answer the ultimate question of the research whether they advance digital democracy and civic engagement or it is merely a demonstration of the mighty administrative and financial capability of the central government to launch, support and effectively manipulate such presumably e-democracy-focused platforms that have nothing to do with the development of democratic institutions and the political reality is hidden by the stalking horse of e-transparency. In addition, this chapter claims to be agenda-setting research since the author will also try to offer recommendations for Kazakh political leaders and e-government practitioners on what areas of the open government concept they should first concentrate their activities in the ICT-driven public sector reforms and explain why the traditional and arguably effective thus far administrative methods of the e-government promotion will no longer work when entering the open government realm. The recommendations of the research can be extrapolated to the political leadership in almost any developing country in the world and could be interesting for researchers who investigate the concept in their future studies and hypothesis testing.
