" 1. The citizens of Lebanon do not need any encouragement. They are ready and willing to use any e-government facility that is put at their disposal. The more successful government Publish Websites are regularly visited by the citizenry who is more than ready to move to the Interact stage. No matter what international indicators show, computer use and Internet penetration in Lebanon is much more entrenched in Lebanese society than figures may lead to believe. The figures used in studies and subsequent indicators do not take into account the fact that many Lebanese homes have what may be best termed as illicit or illegal Internet connections. Whole neighborhoods are wired illegally to a neighborhood provider who usually has a fast connection to the Internet and who divides and resells the bandwidth to neighborhood users, be it homes or businesses. As far as indicators go, this neighborhood provider is counted as one user while the true number of users would be closer to several dozen homes and businesses.

If by more involvement one would mean getting citizens to contact government ministries and agencies to entice them to start offering more e-government services, Lebanons political instability over the past couple of years has diverted the attention of citizens to what would be considered priorities that are essential for survival. E-government is not one of those priorities.

The question of distrust of anything and everything bureaucratic is also deep-rooted in Lebanese society. Lebanese citizens do not feel that they can convince government bureaucracies to improve their work methods so very few of them try to get involved. So the best way to encourage Lebanese citizens to get involved is by building their trust with the introduction of government reform and transparency initiatives.

2. I believe that I answered this question previously (refer to question 1) but to make things easier, I will reiterate may answers here. The most urgent actions needed for e-government are:
1. creating an electronic ID for all citizens to enable them to securely access and use online transactions and services;
2. enactment of legislation that would legalize electronic signatures and that would protect the citizen against cybercrime;
3. enabling online payments as many government services carry a fee;
4. creating access centers that would also act as electronic one-stop-shops for those citizens that do not have or cannot afford a computer and/or an Internet connection.
"