The World of E-Government

The World of E-Government Edited by Gregory G Curtin, Michael H Sommer and Veronilca Vis-Sommer The Haworth Press, New York, 2003; Pages: 289; Price: US$48; ISBN: 978-0-7890-2305-0/9 Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has revolutionalized the entire Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and it exhibited immense potential in eCommerce. The world over, the countries have been using ICT to experiment with eGovernance. The book brings out case studies of Singapore, Canada, America, The European Union, New Zealand and Germany and their rankings based on Accenture's global study. All the authors of the case studies on eGovernance agree that it runs across all aspects of government, and will inevitably be a transforming agent for government and governance. The World of E'Govemment has in one publication, in one place, at one time, some of the very latest results of superlative international research, analyses, and even no-holds-barred options-all written by some of the best obtainable researchers and practitioners in the world about the latest and most important international developments in electronic government. The papers bring out key concepts such as electronic Democracy and Participation (eDP), electronic Production Networks (ePN), electronic Public Services (ePS) and electronic Internal Corporation (eIC). The first part of the book deals with the status of the "Governance by E-Govemment" of the following first six countries in the Accentures' global study: The first paper, "E-Government in Action: Singapore case Study", gives an account of how Singapore built a pool of ICT professionals through Civil Services Computer Program, giving Singapore critical capability for conceptualization of Singapore's eGovemance program. It also discusses as to how the program was executed through five strategic thrusts and programs to drive these strategic thrusts, highlighting key initiatives and achievements namely: putting public service online, promoting public usage of eService, universal access to eService, services to enable eBusiness, empowering public sector officers, and centralized adaptive infocom infrastructure. It also identifies, accessible quality public services, building capacity for mass engagement of citizen through eGovernance and need to constantly innovate, as the major challenge in future. The second paper, "The Dual Challenge of Integration and Inclusion: Canada's Experience with Government Online", presents an account of Canadian government's initiatives to achieve integration of business process, and information systems and technology to fully deliver its multichannel service vision. The author discusses the key enablers of service transformation, including information management, privacy, security, interoperability and performance management, to meet the demands of most sophisticated users of online technology. The third paper, "Creating a Blueprint for E-Government", is an account of a vision of what fully wired government in America could accomplish and a blueprint on how to get there. It deals with today's realities, like eGovernment promises, vision principles and recommendations for the government. This is the story of the initiative and what it achieved. The fourth paper, "E-Government: An European Union Perspective" gives policies and progress on eGovernment initiative in Europe propelled by implementation of'e-Europe 2002' action plan. It also gives an excellent account of European commission's role in the eGovernment in Europe, and achievements so far and future plans. The fifth paper, "E-Government in New Zealand", brings out that Kiwis had always rapid uptake of new technology, though agrarian. New Zealand was nominated by the UN as the world's third most advanced in eGovernment, since their eGovernment unit, charged with coordinating and integrating eServices across all government agencies, sources the world for best-of-practices solutions and modifies them to their own environment. …