Can we learn from down under how to rise up in e-government? A comparative analysis of the public sector competences in the German and Australian higher education systems

Abstract

Australia has been voted world’s second in the last two United Nations e-government surveys 2014 and 2016, despite the acknowledged difficulties that arise in terms of implementation because of its federal structure. Germany, having a similar federal structure, in contrast, only ranks 15th. The study at hand aims at eliciting, if this development can be ascribed to the higher public administration and e-government education landscape. By means of a content analysis, we examined 126 higher education study programmes with a link to the public sector in Australia and compared them to a similar study in Germany from the year 2015. Results show that there are indeed differences with respect to the delivered contents and the respective competences in Australia that might contribute to the different e-government development in the two countries: Higher levels of socio-technical courses and a more contextualised programme delivery in general are two of the main findings.