Editorial for the special ECEG Issue of EJEG

This contribution focuses on e‑Government as a comprehensive change programme and develops alternative scenarios with a view towards 2010. Empirical evidence of substantial risks to a successful implementation and operation of e‑Government calls for a forward‑looking approach and possible ways of correcting a wide‑spread neglect of long‑term innovation risks. The paper explores the scenario method as an established instrument for improving strategic decisions in a context of change, uncertainty and complex environments. Its application in a Europe‑wide research project leads to three macro‑scenarios with divergent implications for e‑Government prospects. The conclusions suggest particular requirements for developing more robust e‑Government strategies and encourage a wider use of scenario processes.

Government agencies around the world are making their services available online. The success of e‑Government initiatives is contingent upon citizens' willingness to adopt these Web‑enabled services. This study uses Moore and Benbasat's (1991) perceived characteristics of innovating constructs to identify factors that influence citizen adoption of e‑Government initiatives. To pilot test our adoption model we administered a survey to 140 undergraduate students at an accredited research university. This paper discusses the results of the study and their implications for research and practice.

e‑Government projects are expected to increase efficiency and quality of government services, whilst decreasing the costs. Unfortunately though, together with its perceived positive potential, e‑Government also entails risks. It is expected that the employment of proper risk assessment methods in the management of such projects will reduce the threats imposed by the various risks that surround these projects. This paper discusses about risk in e‑Government and provides a high‑level e‑ Government risk factor classification. Furthermore, this article proposes a novel risk assessment framework for e‑Services in the public administration.

Currently e‑Government initiatives have a highly fragmented nature and are hardly coordinated. An architectural approach aimed at reusing components as shared services can support government agencies in the implementation of their e‑Government initiatives. In this paper we describe research aimed at identifying and prioritising the importance of generic services that can be shared among public agencies. Generic shared services are identified and prioritised by technical experts and government representatives using a group support system session. This has resulted in an action plan to implement the services and use them as part of future e‑Government projects.

A content analysis study was conducted to determine the status of government websites of three East African countries ‑ Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda ‑ using establishment year, visibility and usability attributes. The results were matched with a four‑stage model of e‑Government growth based on the status of websites from simple to sophisticated features. The study identified 98 government websites including 33 for Kenya, 37 for Tanzania and 28 for Uganda. More than 83% of the identified websites were established between 2000 and 2003 and their creators are still undergoing the learning experience. The website visibility test ranged from 27% to 40% and the average for three countries was 32%. Usability analysis revealed more interactivity features for Tanzanian and Ugandan websites than Kenyan websites. The study concludes that all of the East African websites are at the first and second stages of the website development and corresponding e‑Government services. One of the theoretical and practical implications of the study is a move toward a standardized use of the website evaluation attributes among various researchers to gauge stages of e‑Government implementation. These attributes can also serve as indicators for individual governments to strive toward advanced stages of e‑ Government implementation.

This article is a broad reflection on e‑Democracy models used in several countries throughout the last 20 years. It is based on hands‑on experience gained through experiments and projects with local authorities conducted since the days of videotex. In essence, ICT can be utilised to radically transform the shape of political decision making into a citizen‑oriented vision. The realisation of this vision must involve the participation of people and continuous deliberation between citizens and political decision makers. Although e‑Democracy is considered a way for creating genuine dialogue between interest groups in a society in the future, the technology needs motivated communities to ensure self‑ governance is developed. If used properly ICT will transform our understanding of political action.

e‑Enforcement is the use of electronic tools in law enforcement. We examined the consequences of using two forms of e‑Enforcement for several aspects in the relation between government and inspectees: weigh‑in‑motion and the digital tachograph. Inspectees are 'obligated clients' of enforcement. They usually do not appreciate government enforcement and have strong incentives for 'strategic behaviour' or 'game playing'. Our research shows that, contrary to our expectations, e‑Enforcement does not reduce all strategic behaviour and in fact even stimulates some new forms of it. However, e‑Enforcement turns out to be successful when embedded in interaction processes and when providing added value for the inspectees.