Digital Governance, Public Service and Envirtizenship: Prospecting E-Society for Sustainability (E-S4S)

Abstract

The globe is undergoing unprecedented transformation. Describing the emergent society simply as a global village is speedily becoming anachronistic as there exists a conceptual shift to the concept e-society. Digitalization engenders a plethora of e- (or electronic-) phenomena: e-commerce, e-service and e-governance, among others. Just as there is the fast emergence of the global e-society on the one hand, there is also the global environmental challenge of the anthropocene: environmental imbalance and widening gap between environmentally safe and unsafe communities. The emergent e-society throws up issues of eco-friendly public service delivery mechanisms in developing nations: communities in developing countries are fast becoming referents for environmental abuses. The paper analyzes the plausibility of leapfrogging digital governance for birthing a global public service delivery framework for sustainable governance in developing countries. The paper critically examines the interplay between the phenomena digital governance, public service delivery and sustainable governance. The analysis birthed the epistemological construct envirtizens – by which we conceptualize environmentalists of the emergent e-society: digital and networked citizen-environmentalists. The paper recommends, among others, formation of a global framework – E-Society for Sustainable Development (E-S4S) – as a desideratum for engendering clean public service delivery architecture in developing countries.