Transforming E-government and E-participation through IT

1541-1672/09/$26.00 © 2009 IEEE IEEE INTELLIGENT SYSTEMS Published by the IEEE Computer Society but they are still far from satisfying their constituents, as they usually operate ineffi ciently and ineffectively. E-government and e-participation research aims to refocus government on its customers—citizens and businesses—and provide the models, technologies, and tools for more effective and effi cient public administration systems as well as more participatory decision processes. To this end, there is currently a growing interest in how this challenging domain can benefit from emerging “intelligent” technologies, tools, and applications— such as the Semantic Web, serviceoriented architectures (SOAs), Web 2.0, and social computing. Initiatives and projects both in Europe and the US reflect this interest. In Europe, through the Sixth and Seventh Framework Programmes, projects such as SemanticGov and FIT are currently applying such technologies to e-government. In North America, the Digital Government Society (dg.o) and Vassilios Peristeras, DERI, National University of Ireland, Galway