Ten years of eGovernment : the end of history and a new beginning

• eGovernment practice has over the past decade developed considerably in a technical perspective moving from information provision to complete transactional services. In terms of organizational adoption the change is less impressive overall and there are structural obstacles. While new business models have indeed evolved in large government organizations where scale advantages are easily found and transactions are easily automated, these models have not been fully disseminated across the range of government organizations where services are more complex and operations small-scale. Also, whole-system synergies have not happened as expected because stovepipes tend to pertain in the e-service government. This paper argues that although there is no lack of eGovernment “frameworks”, both governments and research are both in need of better guiding models in order to address contemporary and future challenges. This argument is pursued by reviewing a decade of eGovernment development and research in terms of the guiding values as expressed by influential maturity models and relating them to the eGovernment domain, as defined by formal definitions and practice in combination. We find that development so far has overall been too narrowly guided by a technical focus and economic and administrative values and too little informed by public sector values. While there is no lack of broad frameworks there is scarcity as concerns structured research and evaluation models that encompass such values. The paper examines some models dealing with such values and concludes by proposing criteria by which maturity models should be designed so as to serve as good guides for the next decade of eGovernment development.

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Medie- och kommunikationsvetenskap -- Systemvetenskap, informationssystem och informatik med samhällsvetenskaplig inriktning (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Media and Communications -- Information Systems, Social aspects (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

Maturity model

eGovernment

electronic services

organization

values

public values

Informatik

Informatics

Publikations- och innehållstyp

ref (ämneskategori)

kon (ämneskategori)