ABSTRACT
Kazakhstan might be regarded today as a poster child of the global e-government movement and promising opportunities that related e-participation platforms could offer in the realization of major public administration projects in a typical developing and transitional society. Especially, it is true in highlighting the potential contribution of the interactive technologies to enhance public sector reforms and renovate bureaucratic and cumbersome public service delivery systems, which many post-Soviet and post-totalitarian nations in transition have been notoriously famous for, including Kazakhstan. In this regard, various international e-government surveys carried out by the panel of experts from the United Nations and World Bank argue that this nation has generally succeeded in transforming its public sector institutions by resorting to various digital collaborative and participatory platforms, especially at the national level. In this respect, this chapter will analyze the true political and socioeconomic incentives that lie behind the mere desire of the national authorities to improve public administration in Kazakhstan through the adoption of various e-participation strategies and concepts, focusing, especially, on studying the related activity of wiki-based, open data-driven and social media projects, locating current and prospective drivers and barriers in introducing a new philosophy of civic engagement and proactive political participation, providing some generalizations on promising aspects of using other e-government innovations and offering ways forward for both academics and practitioners on how to overcome the challenges.
