community information

  learning agenda   lifelong learning, retraining

  social and cultural personal development

  transactions

  e communities: networks of villages

  e democracy

  citizenship development

Mel Usher, Executive Director of the Improvement Development Agency (IDeA)

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argues

that councils (in the UK) should work together to deliver effective local e government

built around the following strands:

  E service: the interface and relationship with customers

  E commerce: cash transactions and procurement

  E policy: informed public interest decisions

  E democracy: political dialogue with citizens and communities

  E management: improved management of people, organizations and resources

  E infrastructure: the technical bits that deliver the above

All these strands could be described as elements of the e government package. 

The context

Governments have begun to close the gap between political rhetoric and reality as they

realize their e government visions, according to the second annual global e government

study released recently by Accenture. Even so, the report, Rhetoric vs. Reality   Closing

the Gap

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, reveals that all 22 countries surveyed still have a long way to go. 

The three  Innovative Leaders    Canada, the United States and Singapore   have

completed less than half the work required to develop and provide fully mature online 

government, both in terms of service and delivery models. The factor that singles these

countries out from others is their continued leadership in the creation of e government

and mature online services. Key to this is political will, and following from that, clear

targets and timetables. 

A report from Demos: Transformation not Automation. The e government 

Challenge

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investigates the progress of Australia, Canada, France, Sweden and the United

States. The authors conclude that unless e government is the focus of wider efforts to

modernise government structures, it will not succeed. To date, e government has focused

in many cases on importing private sector business techniques into public service 

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