Investigating the factors affecting citizen's ability to access e-government services in Nkonkobe municipality in the Easterrn Cape province

E-government which refers to electronic Government is the process of transformation of relationships of government with its constituents ie the citizens, the businesses and between its own organs, through the use of the tools of Information and Communications Technology (ICT). E-government services are the outcome of e-governance that come as automated services delivered through ICTs particularly Internet based applications that provide access to and delivery of information or services to the public, businesses, other agencies and governmental departments. This study seeks to examine the factors affecting citizens ability to access e-government services in Nkonkobe Municipality in the province of Eastern Cape and come with recommendations of how to address the issue. E-government services should be developed on platforms with the consideration of devices that people can have access to. The study showed that in as much as one can have cell phone that has access to internet , some website services such as home affairs enquiry applications are not accessible on a phone with a general web browser that has no Java Script capacity but has acces to internet. Therefore developing Short Message Service (SMS) based services or Unstructured Supplementary Serviuce Data (USSD) code that is available on all Globile System for Mobile (GSM) cell phones can increase accessibility of most services at a cheaper cost. The study concludes that although e-government is the future for our country and in this era of technology, much still has to be done in areas like Nkonkobe Municipality in Eastern Cape, as the citizens have no or lack appropriate tools to access the internet, and sometimes citizens are not aware of e-government services available. The research indicates that most citizens have cell phones despite the differences in handset capabilities, which therefore means that applications developed for e-government services can be ported foe accessibility to ordinary GSM cell phone including those without internet access