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160 5 Innovative EC Systems: From E-Government to E-Learning, Knowledge Management, E-Health, and C2C Commerce
5. Knowledge management and dissemination. Knowledge Government-to-government (G2G)
has been recognized as an important organizational asset. Knowledge management (KM)
It needs to be properly captured, stored, updated, and Learning management system (LMS)
shared. Knowledge is critical for many e-commerce tasks. Mobile government (m-government)
Knowledge can be shared in different ways; experts can M-learning (mobile learning)
provide knowledge to nonexperts (for a fee or free) via a Social learning (e-learning 2.0)
knowledge portal, e-mail, or chatting and discussion tools, Virtual universities
and through social networks (e.g., via user- generated vid-
eos or text).
6. Online advisory systems. Online advisory systems of all DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
kinds are becoming popular. Some are free although most
charge fees. Users must be careful about the quality of the 1. Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of e- government
advice they receive. Social networks and portals provide using social networking versus the traditional e-govern-
a variety of advisory services of different qualities. ment portal.
7. E-health. E-commerce, m-commerce, and social commerce 2. Discuss the advantages and shortcomings of e-voting.
applications are increasingly penetrating the health care 3. Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of e-books.
field. Practically, B2B, B2C, c-commerce, and even P2P ser- 4. Discuss the advantages of e-learning in the corporate
vices are practiced all over the world. The most well known training environment.
is the electronic medical records area that helps in rapid care 5. In what ways does KM support e-commerce?
and accessibility in rural areas. Another well-known area is 6. Some say that B2G is simply B2B. Explain.
patient care applications ranging from monitoring patients 7. Compare and contrast B2E with G2E.
24/7 to improving medical testing, enabling the use of better 8. Which e-government EC activities are intrabusiness activ-
medical equipment and increasing patients’ satisfaction and ities? Explain why they are categorized as intrabusiness.
comfort. Patients’ education is greatly facilitated by using 9. Identify the benefits of G2C to citizens and to govern-
medical portals. Physicians have rapid access to all data they ments.
need and they can transmit orders electronically. 10. Relate IBM’s Jams to KM and social networks.
Social media and networks assist patients and adminis- 11. Relate KM to learning, to e-publishing, and to C2C.
trators in many ways and foster sharing and collaboration. 12. Discuss the development of e-health.
Other areas that benefit from e-commerce are medical
services acquisition, maintenance, and use. Many admin-
istrative processes and medical research are supported by TOPICS FOR CLASS DISCUSSION
EC. However, a major problem in e-health is the protec- AND DEBATES
tion of patients’ medical records and privacy.
8. C2C activities. C2C consists of individual consumers 1. Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of e-learning
conducting e-commerce with other individual consumers, for an undergraduate student and for an MBA student.
mainly in auctions (such as at eBay), classified ads, 2. Discuss the advantages of expert/expertise location sys-
matching services, specialty webstores at Amazon.com, tems over corporate databases that contain experts’
and file sharing. information and knowledge. What are the disadvan-
tages? Can expert location systems and corporate data-
bases be combined? How?
KEY TERMS 3. One of the major initiatives of many governments (e.g.,
European Commission) is Smart Cities (see Chapter 6
Automated question–answer (QA) system for the technology). Discuss the content of such initia-
Consumer-to-consumer (C2C) EC tives and explain why they are a part of e-government.
Distance learning 4. Debate: E-books will replace traditional books.
E-government 5. Debate: Why aren’t all firms embracing KM?
E-health 6. Debate: Analyze the pros and cons of electronic voting.
E-learning 7. Enter en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Government and find
Electronic book (e-book) the “controversies of e-government” section. Discuss
Expert/expertise location systems (ELS) the advantages and disadvantages. Write a report.
Government 2.0 8. Debate the issue: Is e-learning really working?
Government-to-business (G2B) 9. Discuss the content and benefits of the UN E- Government
Government-to-citizens (G2C) Development Database (unpan3.un.org/egovkb).
Government-to-employees (G2E) 10. Debate the issue of electronic vs. manual voting.