A systematic review of the extant literature on the Tanzanian e-government services for economic development

Abstract

This paper investigates the existing Tanzanian e-government services for economic development through a systematic review of the literature. The main objective is to examine researchers’ articles on e-government services towards achieving the Tanzanian economic growth as well as the current issues and trends on e-government globally. Specifically, this study aims to answer three research questions on: what are the functional e-government services in Tanzania? What is the level of Tanzanian e-government service performance? And what are the factors influencing Tanzanian e-government service performance for economic development? A systematic literature search was conducted on four aggregate data sources, which included Google Scholar, ResearchGate, CORE, and Refseek. A combination of search key terms was employed to obtain the data sources from 2015 to 2022. One hundred and five articles were found by the combined search and screened, resulting to eighteen articles that were recommended for the study. Content and Microsoft Excel computer application were used to analyse the screened data sources. The findings reveal that, a number of functional services is offered and considered potential for revenue collection and contribute to the nation's economic development. Nevertheless, Tanzania has improved and dynamically advanced to the transaction level of e-government implementation where the majority of the citizens interact for services and information. However, factors related to the activeness of the platforms, accessibility, usability, infrastructure, security issues, privacy, and technical support services among others, were identified to influence the performance of Tanzanian e-government services and thus call attention to the government in addressing these issues.