Multi-channel provisioning of public services - Department of ...

Introduction
In order to face the further development of ICT-supported public service provisioning,
there is a need for holistic long-term e-government strategies. Additionally, there is a
need to specifically address the e-government domain from an information systems
point of view. This involves both the investigation of current and future needs compared
to current technologies, and how current technologies can support the long-term
strategic vision of e-government.
1.2 E-government – definition and proposed challenge
E-government is, in its simplest form, the study and use of information technology in
public sector organisations (Heeks, 2006). However, with the near omnipresent nature
of information technology, the e-government domain is about to engulf most aspects of
public administration, governance of contemporary democracies and public service
provisioning.
There is international understanding that current institutional arrangements are
inadequate and do not deliver, and that major reforms are needed (Olsen, 2010).
Historically, democratic institutions have come and gone, as citizens and their leaders
have developed and redefined, often unattainable, normative doctrines and
organisational principles of good government towards which rulers and the ruled are
supposed to orient their behaviour (Olsen, 2010). Current principles for good
governance (Weiss, 2000) as defined by the European Commission include openness,
participation, accountability, effectiveness and coherence (European Commission,
2001). Similar principles can be found in the United Kingdom (Langlands, 2004), and at
the different levels of all governments.
E-government came with the growth of the Internet and the World Wide Web, and the
government reform effort initiated by the Clinton-Gore administration in 1993 as the
National Performance Review (NPR) and in 1998 the undertaking known as the
National Partnership for Reinventing Government (Fountain, 2001). In this, the Internet
does not only supply new service channels, but also acts as means to change existing
institutional arrangements. Through the use of technology and these new service
channels, early efforts were made to redesign work processes towards the needs of
customers, rather than the needs or structures of institutions. This process gave birth to
the term e-government (electronic government) (Dawes, 2008). A unified definition of
e-government does however not exist. Senators Lieberman and Thompson made the
first definition of e-government as:
A way to better use IT advances to achieve greater effectiveness and to provide
citizens easy, electronic access to government programs, services and
information.
Kraemer and King (2003)
The definition provided by the European Commission increase the scope of e-
government and adds the important perspective of organisational change, defining e-
government as …
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