Challenges of E-Government in Enhancing the Efficiency of Public Administration and Safeguarding Citizens’ Public Rights: A Comparative Study of Iran and the United Kingdom

Abstract

The digital transformation of public administration has altered the delivery of public services, the exercise of administrative authority, and the relationship between governments and citizens. Although e-government can reduce bureaucratic procedures, accelerate service delivery, improve institutional coordination, and facilitate access to administrative information, it may also generate legal, institutional, managerial, and technological risks that undermine both administrative efficiency and citizens’ public rights. This article comparatively examines these challenges in Iran and the United Kingdom through a qualitative, descriptive-analytical, and comparative legal method. The analysis focuses on institutional fragmentation, weak interoperability, digital reproduction of traditional bureaucracy, unequal organisational capacity, cybersecurity threats, infrastructure failure, poor data quality, digital exclusion, privacy risks, concentration of governmental information, algorithmic discrimination, limited transparency, unclear administrative responsibility, inadequate human assistance, and barriers to effective complaint and remedy. The findings indicate that Iran’s principal difficulties arise from fragmented digital systems, uneven institutional capacity, incomplete data-governance safeguards, insufficient interoperability, and uncertainty regarding responsibility for digital administrative errors. The United Kingdom benefits from comparatively stronger coordination, service-design standards, data-protection mechanisms, accessibility requirements, and administrative-review structures; nevertheless, it continues to face serious concerns relating to digital exclusion, automated welfare administration, outsourcing, algorithmic opacity, cybersecurity, and the concentration of informational power. The article argues that e-government does not automatically produce efficient or rights-compatible administration. Its legitimacy and effectiveness depend on the establishment of a rights-based digital-governance framework grounded in legality, equality, accessibility, transparency, accountability, privacy, data security, proportionality, human review, and effective remedies. The study concludes that administrative efficiency and the protection of citizens’ rights should be treated as mutually reinforcing objectives. Sustainable digital-government reform therefore requires coordinated legal regulation, institutional integration, administrative-process redesign, inclusive service delivery, resilient infrastructure, and enforceable mechanisms for reviewing and correcting digital administrative decisions.