e‐Government: evolution or revolution? (PART 2)

A diffuse need of innovation and better performance affected governments and institutions in general. Citizens and even Institutions are looking for a general re-design of the public administration both in the front and back office. In such a renovation process the ICT support turns “government” into “e-government” that means: e-Government: Delivering complete services in public administrations to individuals, businesses and organisations combined with organisational change in order to significantly improve services and democratic processes and strengthen support to public policies; fostering quality and efficiency of information exchange; empowering citizens and public services clients. This is one of the attempts to define e-government used on the occasion of the World Summit on Information Society (WSIS). As it happens very often, a certain word or terminology in common use often means different things to different people. The term e-Government is one of such term. Depending on who you talk to their background , e-Government may mean technical and/or public policy issues around the internet. Before entering the core of the contribution it may be useful to clarify terms and definitions. The terms digital government, electronic government (e-Government), mobile government (m-Government) and electronic governance (e-Governance) are used widely to represent the use of information communication technologies in public sector organisations (e.g. local and central government, public companies, public archives, etc). The terms are very closely related, which causes confusion. Governments serve multiple roles – they provide services; they govern (e.g. set, monitor, and enforce standards within systems); and, they serve the public by governing. Because of this, the terms are often used interchangeably. For this reason, the three terms need to be defined, at least for a better understanding of the present contribution, in the following way: “Digital government refers to the umbrella term that comprises all uses of information and telecommunication technologies in the public sector” (Garson 2006); e-Government is one aspect of digital government, e-Government refers to the provision of governmental services by ICTs, particularly over the Internet; e-Governance refers to the use of ICTs for organisation of political activity within and beyond nation states. E-Governance “is one of a wide range of competing terms pertaining to use of new communication technologies, such as the Internet and mobile telephony, for political and governmental purposes. Other widely used terms that have overlapping meaning include: electronic democracy (e-Democracy), online democracy, cyber democracy, virtual democracy, online governance, tele-democracy, e-participation, e-Information, e-Decision-Making and e-deliberation (Chen 2008)