Towards E-Municipality in the Palestinian Territories Qalqilia Municipality As a Case Study

The increase in demand for services and its association with the increase of population in the Palestinian Territories as well as the limited financial resources impacted negatively on the performance of Palestinian municipalities. Also, the unstable political situation and the procedures of the continuous Israeli occupation and control over resources and land, and isolation of localities from one another and from the service centers weakened the ability of these municipalities to be bound by their responsibilities in the performance of their services and the low level of effectiveness and efficiency they have, especially in light of the traditional system used in the management of municipalities in the Palestinian Territories. This study aimed to diagnose the state of municipalities in the Palestinian Territories and readiness to adopt an electronic municipal system depending on various technical elements such as information and communication systems, data management, and management activities and simulation processes, and other non-technical elements, such as leadership and management models, human capacity, democracy, justice, transparency, and integrated development planning , etc., and then infer the gap between the current and future situation represented in the e-municipality and propose a model of the ruling elements (technical and non-technical) to deal with expected developments, as well as take into account the privacy of political and demographic in the Palestinian Territories, and contribute to the access to the e-municipality. Parallel with the literature review on e-municipality, this study relied on descriptive, analytical and deductive approaches in dealing with the Qalqilya Municipality as a case study, where the characteristics of Qalqilya Municipality were studied and compared with those of the traditional municipality, based on measuring the degree of satisfaction the citizen for some services, as well as the study and analysis of some departments of the municipality in terms of performance and techniques used to deduce the characteristics of the municipality through the qualitative analysis. Also, the internal environment of the municipality (all components of the municipality) as well as the external environment related to citizen and the community were measured and evaluated based on the ruling elements, as well as the potential obstacles and challenges from the perspective of the municipality and the local community through the quantitative analysis. In addition, the qualitative and quantitative analyses have been linked to achieve the objectives of the study. The results of the study through Qalqilya Municipality (as a case study of municipalities in the Palestinian territories) showed to have a limited readiness to adopt e-municipality (23.5%) despite the high percentage of chances of success associated with the readiness of the external environment (68.5%). The results associated with the challenges from the perspective of the municipality as well as the citizen showed the presence of a maximum priority to deal with laws and regulations related to e-services and the unstable political situation in the Palestinian territories besides the many other challenges. The study suggested a model of the basic requirements for the success of the adoption of e-municipality in the Palestinian territories, which includes several elements that overcome all challenges and obstacles. The study added to that model a number of important issues related to e-municipality such as laws and regulations, the cultural level and awareness in the community, community participation, safety, varying technical capabilities, which the municipalities should taken into account for the success of the adoption of e-municipality, and those issues are complementary of the proposed model.