The Changing Orientation of E-Government

E-government has been high on the agenda of many governments over the past few years. Over time the focus of attention of e-government related initiatives has shifted. Whereas at the beginning many e-government projects were predominantly ruled by the application of new technology, the focus has now shifted towards creating new business models and customer orientation. This should ultimately result in e-government becoming the accepted norm for delivering government services. Yet, there is still a long way to go. E-government projects are unique in the sense that they require the intense collaboration of a variety of stakeholders having different views on the projects. In the past, the scope of e-government has been within organizations and was focused very much on creating added value by making use of technology in their existing processes. Today's e-government projects are even more complex as they often involve a number of public organizations that need to cooperate. Further, as citizens become more familiar with e-business ideas their expectations of e-government services increase. Whereas in the past the focus in the public sector was primarily on taking advantage of new technologies, improving existing products and supporting existing processes, today's expectations are much more focused on creating added value by innovating products and reengineering business processes. Instead of taking technology as a starting point, customer needs are now being considered as the starting point and more emphasis is being put on transforming public sector processes and services to meet customer expectations. Furthermore, cross-organizational processes show that the demand for a process-oriented approach is essential, as customer expectations and service demands often extend beyond the boundaries of a single public sector agency. Figure 1 show four possible orientations that can be considered in the context of e-government and the shift in focus over time. On the left hand side the traditional e-government orientations are shown, whereas, on the right the newer orientations are illustrated. Indeed, the number of orientations can be easily extended; however, these are the orientations we observed in the e-government research articles included in this special issue. Traditionally, technology orientation has been the basis for e-government for which web technology is used to improve government. Initially the orientation has been on the online provisioning of existing products and providing transactional level functionality. Gradually the focus of atten