Electronic Government in Europe: Reality and Vision

Abstract

In many respects, Electronic Government (or
eGovernment) is just a new name for the
informatisation of the public sector, which has
been going on for several decades now (Lenk
1994; van de Donk and Snellen 1998). The use
of IT in public administration and in other
branches of government (including parliaments
and the judiciary) has attained a high level in
many countries of the industrialised world. But
there was hardly any political interest in this
ongoing and almost invisible process of
modernising government. Especially New Public
Management as the most important explicit
movement of government reform hardly
recognised the enabling potential of IT for changing
the work practices and the business processes
in the public sector. Its image of IT was one of
an auxiliary tool, to be used for supporting financial
management and statistical information.