Building the Virtual State... or Not?

In this article, the author advances four arguments about Building the Virtual State. First, it is a historical and fails to take into account the rich and rewarding literature about information technology (IT) and government developed over the past 3 decades. Second, its theory of IT enactment is little more than a repackaging of the dominant extant theory in the field, sociotechnical systems theory. Third, evidence provided from the three case studies in the book is insufficient to test enactment (or any other) theory of IT and government. Finally, although the book claims to be about the virtual state, only one of the case studies addresses the movement of government services onto the Internet (the author's definition of the virtual state), and the other two cases do not address it at all. For these reasons, Building the Virtual State is a disappointment, and it delivers a good bit less than it promises.