In this article, the authors address the recent trajectory of
local e-government in the United States and compare it
with the predictions of early e-government writings, using
empirical data from two nationwide surveys of e-government
among American local governments.
The authors
find that local e-government has not produced the results
that those writings predicted.
Instead, its development
has largely been incremental, and local e-government is
mainly about delivering information and services online,
followed by a few transactions and limited interactivity.
Local e-government is also mainly one way, from government
to citizens, and there is little or no evidence that it
is transformative in any way.
This disparity between early
predictions and actual results is partly attributable to the
incremental nature of American public administration.
Other reasons include a lack of attention by early writers
to the history of information technology in government
and the influence of technological determinism on those
writings.
For much of the past two decades, governments
across the globe have been adopting
and expanding an innovative means of
delivering government information and services to
citizens (G2C), businesses (G2B), and governments
(G2G).
This phenomenon has come to be known as
electronic government or e-government.
Today, all
national governments, nearly all subnational governments,
and most local governments
of any size have official
Web sites through which they
deliver information and services
electronically, 24 hours per day,
seven days per week.
By almost
any standard, this is an incredible
story of technology adoption
by governments over a very
short period of time.