Intercultural E-government

One of the areas in knowledge management is the representation of information, an area of particular importance in e-Government, given the State’s social responsibility towards its citizens. Unlike the private industry, the State is not in a position to select its customers, and has the social responsibility to treat all citizens equally. Given this responsibility, three issues need to be addressed: the duty to provide information, the extent information is to be accessible to disabled individuals and to be provided in other languages. These are three important issues the European Union and the individual member states need to take into consideration. In this paper, we investigate the situation in Austria, and discuss how the content of websites can be offered in more than one language. This paper consists of two parts: The first part looks at the legal framework and compares the duty to provide information, the extent information is made accessible to the disabled and the provision of information in more than one language in the Unites States of America (USA), the European Union (EU), and Austria. The second part of this paper discusses three main concepts of Intercultural Communication (language, culture, and communication) and defines the requirements of professional translation management.