Abstract

E-government is commonly defined as a process of technological transformation of administrative organization and routines, with its main aim consisting in a more efficient and interactive provision of - and access to - public services. Thanks to the pervasive and globalizing impact of the ICT revolution and the Internet, e-government has rapidly become a key policy platform for bureaucratic reform. Yet, the growth of governmental intervention through electronic reingineering of the administrative branch also raises critical questions of democratic accountability. This article presents a state of the art assessment of the development of e-government by a) reviewing its main ideological manifestos originating from governmental, international and corporate actors, b) evaluating two major cross-national surveys of e-government recent achievements worldwide, c) defining a research agenda focusing on the (new) opportunities and (old) short-comings of the electronic fronteer.