e-government

e-government, the use of information and communication technologies, particularly the Internet, in government.

A popular way of conceptualizing e-government is to distinguish between three spheres of technologically mediated interactions. Government-to-government interactions are concerned with the use of technologies to enhance the internal efficiency of public bureaucracies, through, for example, the automation of routine tasks and the rapid sharing of information between departments and agencies. Government-to-business interactions typically involve the use of the Internet to reduce the costs to government of buying and selling goods and services from firms. Government-to-citizen interactions involve using the Internet to provide public services and transactions online and to improve the design and delivery of services by incorporating rapid electronic feedback mechanisms, such as instant polls, Web surveys, and e-mail.

Beyond this simple approach, defining e-government is more difficult; it is in a constant state of evolution, and an enormous “gray literature” of white papers, consultation documents, consultancy reports, corporate brochures, and league tables has emerged. There are also different national interpretations of the term, though it undoubtedly crosses borders with remarkable ease, making it arguably one of the fastest-spreading public-sector reform ideas in history.

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Use of information and communication technology in government first expanded during the 1950s and ’60s, the heyday of ideas of scientific administration. However, e-government as it is most commonly understood today emerged as an agenda for general reform of the public sectors of liberal democratic political systems during the early 1990s. U.S. President Bill Clinton’s administration led the way with the 1993 National Performance Review of the federal bureaucracy. The explosion of Internet use in the mid-1990s gave impetus to the idea, and countries such as the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand soon followed with their own versions. In the United Kingdom the Labour Party, elected in 1997, put electronic service delivery at the centre of its program of Modernizing Government.

In common with other programs of organizational reform, the claims made about e-government differ quite substantially. They can, however, be divided into two main schools of thought.

In one far-reaching perspective, the principal aim is to use digital network technologies to open the state to citizen involvement. The ubiquity of computer networks offers the potential to increase political participation and reshape the state into an open, interactive network form, as an alternative to both traditional, hierarchical, bureaucratic organizations and more recent, marketlike forms of service delivery based on the contracting out of public-sector activities (usually termed the new public management). Proponents of this perspective argue that widespread use of the Internet means that the traditional application of information and communication technologies in public bureaucracies, based on inward-facing mainframe computer systems that originated in the 1960s, should now be superseded by outward-facing networks in which the division between an organization’s internal information processing and its external users effectively becomes redundant. Government becomes a learning organization, able to respond to the needs of citizens, who are in turn able to influence public bureaucracies by rapid, aggregative feedback mechanisms such as e-mail, online discussion forums, and interactive Web sites.

A second, less radical school of thought suggests that e-government does not necessarily require greater public involvement in shaping how services are delivered but instead indirectly benefits citizens through the efficiency gains and cost savings produced by the reduction of internal organizational friction, chiefly via the automation of routine tasks. Networks are also at the core of this perspective, but it is essentially concerned with the potential of the Internet and intranets (internal organizational computer networks) to join and coordinate the activities of previously disparate government departments and services that is seen as its most attractive feature. In this view, citizens are perceived mainly as the consumers of public services such as health care information, benefits payments, passport applications, tax returns, and so on. This has been the dominant model in those countries that have taken the lead in introducing e-government reforms.

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E-government is not without its critics. Some suggest that changes are limited to a managerial agenda of service delivery more consistent with the new public management and that the opportunities offered by the Internet for invigorating democracy and citizenship might be missed. Other criticisms are that the conservatism of existing administrative elites will scupper any prospects of decisive change, that issues of unequal access (both within and between states) to online services are being neglected, that large corporate information technology interests are exercising an undue influence on the shape of e-government, that traditional face-to-face contacts with public servants, especially those associated with welfare systems, cannot be satisfactorily replaced by Internet communication, that the cost savings promised by reforms have been difficult to demonstrate, and that disintermediation (bypassing) of traditional representative bodies (parliaments, local councils) may occur, to the detriment of democracy.

Early government responses to the Internet often went little further than placing information on the Web in a simple electronic version of traditional paper-based means of dissemination. The arrival of e-government, which signaled the acceptance of Internet connectivity as a tool that could be used to improve efficiency, cut costs, and change the way governments have traditionally interacted with citizens, constitutes an important shift in public administration.