Electronic governments in Mozambique and the dilemmas of vertical accountability in the covid-19 context

With the COVID-19 pandemic, considering governance practices that value social distancing and ensure government transparency and accountability, as central in democracies was an emergency. Despite the electronic government being a decades-old phenomenon and practice in some States, in the context of COVID-19, it has proved to be a significant avenue for presenting accounts in all democratic States. In this sense, this research sought to understand how the governments of Mozambique were responsive to the citizens in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic via their portals. To meet these objectives, we resorted to asymmetric observation in government portals, by which we found that the governments of Mozambique were not compliant to the analysed requisites, and continue using traditional methods, which, in the context of COVID-19, jeopardize the good governance and develop actions linked to corruption.