TheoreTical PersPecTives on local e-GovernmenT adoPTion

The study of electronic government, known as e-government, in local governments was the first level of analysis of this type of application of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) to public sector organizations (Moon, 1999; Stowers, 1999; Ho 2002; Deakin and Dillon, 2002). Some of the reasons for this are local governments are so numerous and, therefore, make a good test case of the application of ICT diffusion. In addition, local governments are the first line of contact with citizens for simple things such as retrieving information to more complicated tasks like paying taxes online. Therefore, there is a natural tendency for researchers to want to study e-government adoption at the local level. The growth of research on e-government has rapidly expanded, especially since the commercialization of the Internet in the 1990s. This is most noticeably in terms of the number of publications that address important e-government issues that cut across many areas of public administration research. E-government adoption and implementation are critical to study, especially with local governments, given the nature of what they provide to citizens. Many of the major transformational benefits often cited about e-government are examined through studies of local governments. Most of the books in this field have broadly studied the impact of e-government on all levels of government; this study is different in that it focuses on local governments, which have a very direct line of contact with citizens, given their intensive service delivery role.