ESDLife of Hong Kong e-government application with an e-business spirit

So far research and discussion on establishing E-Government initiatives tend to focus on using E-Commerce technologies to support the delivery of government services. While this is a key aspect of E-Government, often ignored is the E-Business spirit within E-Government initiatives. Despite government services are often not-forprofit, but commercial lessons learned from E-Commerce can help to improve E-Government outcomes and encourage adoption of E-Government services among citizens. Unfortunately, the relationship between EBusiness and E-Government are often not explicitly discussed. In this paper, I explore how an E-Government initiative being implemented in a commercial E-Business context through a case study of the Hong Kong Electronic Service Delivery (ESD) initiative – ESDLife. I conclude that the collaborative approach of working with the commercial sector when setting up E-Government initiatives can be cost-effective and an efficient way to market such services to the public-at-large. However, there might be issues of neutrality and other controversies to be handled sensitively.