e-Democracy and Community Networks

Political systems and technology are interdependent and influence each other. On the one hand, political systems and political leaders aim at influencing technological development and benefiting from technological progress; on the other, technological development has a considerable proportion of its own dynamics and potential to influence society and political systems. This chapter particularly focuses on electronic democracy and virtual communities and accordingly discusses recent ideas and plans of political leaders, derives requirements for technology, presents systems and prototypes, and reports cases demonstrating how and what technology is really used.

e-Government in Sweden

The Internet has often been envisioned to have decentralizing effects. Not only should the technology in theory have the potential for making it easier to live and run companies in rural areas, but also this is in fact supposed to happen on such a scale that the countryside would achieve a development similar to that in urban areas. In Europe, and certainly in Sweden, governments–long before Internet use became widespread–established policies to help development in rural areas. It seems then that the Internet would come as a welcome gift, as it is supposed to facilitate such policies; indeed rather make them obsolete if it in fact were true that Internet use would inherently lead to decentralization. This chapter reviews a study concerned with how Swedish government agencies used IT during the period of 1985-1999–to centralize or to decentralize?

e-Government in Canada

Moving industrial society government onto a digital platform would simply produce a digitized industrial government—a form of governance that would be increasingly out of step with the changing realities of citizens and businesses alike.1

Internet Voting

Through time, electoral processes have been incorporating more and more technology. The voting methods in the U.S., for example, have evolved from lever machines to punch cards, optical scanning and Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) machines. (A good survey of different voting technologies currently used in the U.S. can be found in Cranor (2001.) Even in those countries where paper ballots and traditional ballot boxes are used, the ballot tabulation process is likely to be using some form of computerized transmission or processing at some point.

Post-Modern Decision Making

The modern ideals for decision and action are hard pressed by doubts on their continued validity and by new difficulties in their implementation that emerge just as old difficulties seem to become more tractable. Here I present some questions and reflections on problems and possibilities when the information technological conditions are changed while at the same time modern values are called in question.

Introduction to Electronic Government

The concept of electronic government (eGov), sometimes electronic governance, is about to emerge from a practitioners’ concept to one that also attracts research. Conferences abound, and research scales up from individual researchers and projects to institutes, both those governed by industry, such as IBM’s Institute for Electronic Government1 and those governed by universities, such as the Center for Technology in Government at Albany University.2 Research and development programs such as the EU Information Society Technologies and Government Online are focusing on developing strategic and transferable IT (information technology) uses in government. Research institutes with the focus on policies and development focus increasingly on IT use, such as the Institute for Development Policy and Management at the University of Manchester.3 Countries and states establish ”Task Forces” in the field, and there is a rich supply of Web pages with titles like ”Electronic Government Resources,” where electronic services are offered.4

e-Government Trust Providers

If trust is a key value in e-commerce, it is much more so e-Government. This is because confidence is essential to the automated, blind relations with government permitted by the new technologies The function of trust providers is thus to create confidence. This chapter outlines the activities of a number of trust providers with reference to the regulation of the Internet, and the laws and institutions which engender trust in the democratic state.

Towards a Framework for Government Portal Design

This chapter identifies and describes factors that inhibit and promote successful electronic government portal design. These factors are based on a review of recent research on both electronic government initiatives and corporate portal implementations. The result is a generalized framework for government portal design. To test its viability, the framework is used as a lens to analyze a current case study, specifically a portal project led by the Government of Canada to support Canadian youth citizens. The framework offers an effective preliminary construct by which to focus and pinpoint pertinent issues surrounding government portal design.

The Significance of Law and Knowledge for Electronic Government

Governments at all levels--national, regional and local--are faced with growing demands to organize their work more efficiently and effectively. Moreover, a fundamental reassessment of their agendas has started world wide, which in many cases reduces the role which governments play in serving their societies. Government is considered as a cost factor in the first place, and it has to explicitly legitimize both its standing agenda and the take-up of new tasks. At the same time, it is recognized that public governance structures continue to be necessary to tackle many problems of an ever-changing world. Since newly emerging tasks will demand more and more attention, the existing governmental units are urged to accomplish their core business with only a part of the costs incurred at present.

Electronic Government - Efficiency, Service Quality and Democracy

eGov concerns both internal and external use of IT, for internal administration as well as for external services. It is about more IT use, better use and more strategic use. In this chapter, we shall focus on the external use, that is contacts between government and citizens and civil sector organizations, government and business, and among government organizations. The reason for this include the fact that this is the novel kind of IT use–internal IT use has been going on for decades, even if the amount and sophistication is now reaching new heights–and the kind that is seen as the most interesting component, and incentive, in restructuring government operations, for instance by increasing cooperation among government agencies and providing self-service facilities to citizens.