E-government around the world: lessons, challenges, and future directions

As demonstrated by the articles in this symposium, e-government can create significant benefits for citizens, businesses, and governments around the world. “Although still in its adolescence, the core transformative capacities of the Internet include its potential for radically shrinking communications and information costs, maximizing speed, broadening reach, and eradicating distance.” E-government is a key method for achieving many of these goals. The articles in this symposium issue have presented a number of diverse e-government projects that are currently demonstrating the potential benefits of e-government. Gupta and Jana offer an adaptable framework that can be used to assess tangible and intangible benefits of e-government and, by applying the framework to an e-government initiative in New Delhi, India, suggest that the model offers the most information when applied to mature e-government initiatives. Kuk examines the relationship between the quality of local e-government services and the levels of Internet access in the 12 regions of the United Kingdom, finding that lower quality of local e-government services correlate with low levels of Internet access. Wang investigates electronic tax-filing systems in Taiwan, discussing the implications of technology acceptance and perceived credibility of the systems as factors that influence adoption of e-government services. Each of these articles contributes to the understanding of e-government by focusing on particular issues related to e-government in specific parts of the world. The initiatives discussed in this symposium provide a better understanding of e-government in each location and offer lessons that can be applied to e-government efforts anywhere.

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