Electronic Commerce Research and Applications 1 (2002) 92103

www.elsevier.com / locate / ecra

A European perspective towards online one-stop government:

the eGOV project
Maria A. Wimmer*
Institute of Applied Computer Science, Johannes Kepler University of Linz, Altenbergerstr. 69, A-4040 Linz, Austria
Accepted 10 April 2002

Abstract
e-Government reflects current visions for public administrations towards modernization and reorganization. Therefore,
online one-stop Government targets the improvement of customer-to-government interactions. It provides electronic public
services of distinct public authorities to citizens and businesses in a customer-oriented manner from a single point of access.
The customer-oriented approach towards online one-stop Government further offers online public services 24 h a day from
anywhere in an easy-to-use and simple way according to the customers needs. Structuring public services around citizens
life-episodes and businesses specific situations represents such an approach. To speed up innovative developments in the
field, the European Commission has provided substantial funding. eGOV is such an EC-funded project that aims at
developing an integrated platform for realizing online one-stop Government. Key innovations of eGOV are: a global access
point to enter different governmental services and information at distinct levels of public administration and with different
devices; and the development of online one-stop Government process models. To develop an integrated one-stop
Government platform, different requirements have to be fulfilled. Here, an holistic development approach provides an
important guideline to address different aspects impacting advanced one-stop Government systems. With such an holistic
approach, despite the technical developments, integrated process models for online public service delivery are put forward.
Furthermore, the legal aspects framing one-stop Government developments and the social impacts of such developments for
different user groups are investigated.
2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords: e-Government; One-stop Government; eGOV; Integrated service modeling; One-stop Government process models

1. e-Government: current visions for the public

sector
The striking success of electronic commerce in the
past few years has strongly influenced the public
sector. Electronic Government (e-Government) has
become the catchword covering many activities and
*Tel.: 1 43-70-2468-9586; fax: 1 43-70-2468-9308.
E-mail address: mw@ifs.uni-linz.ac.at (M.A. Wimmer).

attempts to innovate and modernize the field of

public administration.
Currently, e-Government is the terminus framing
and shaping the public administrations route into the
Information Society. It is used by both politicians
and strategic management, as well as indicating
concrete implementations. To clarify, e-Government
can be considered from different abstraction layers,
thereby implying aspects of distinct detail (cf. Ref.
[17]), as shown in Fig. 1.

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M. A. Wimmer / Electronic Commerce Research and Applications 1 (2002) 92 103

Fig. 1. e-Government application layers.

Within a political and strategic dimension, key

strategies, modernization ideas and future visions are
developed and decided. As the figure indicates,
Business Process Re-engineering [6] and New Public
Management [7] are supporting concepts in this
respect. Examples of e-Government issues on this
strategic dimension may be:
the introduction and exploitation of modern IT
by public authorities;
the implementation of new methods of governmental business through, for example, publicprivate partnerships, outsourcing of administrative work, multifunctional service
shops, one-stop Government shops, etc.;
the provision of better services for citizens and
businesses through, for example, one-stop
shops, usable and easy-to-use services, availability at any time from everywhere and for
everybody, etc.
Strategic visions need to be formulated and concretized into initiatives. Here, the financial and
operative resources for realizing e-Government
initiatives are allocated and the political decisions as
to whether to implement a strategy or not (political
go / no-go decision) are set. After an initiative for a
strategy has been settled, it needs to be implemented
into projects. On this layer, e-Government is
concerned with the re-engineering and adaptation of
concrete organizational structures, business processes
and object models to fit them to the strategic

93

decisions and to the new challenge of the public

sector providing electronic services. On an operative
level, e-Government is concerned with the intense
usage (application) of electronic media such as the
Internet and other telecommunication facilities to
support a modern public administration and, from the
point of view of one-stop Government, a virtual
administration.
Online public services imply an improvement in
the services for citizens and businesses, such as
offering services 24 h a day accessible from anywhere and via different media. e-Government stresses active participation of citizens and customers in
Government and Democracy. Thereby, modern telecommunication infrastructures (IT) provide the basic
means for co-operation over time and distance
between citizens, businesses and public administrations. It is important that the customer or citizen
decide up to which level s / he wants to use electronic
media to perform a specific process, i.e. if s / he only
wants to inform herself of a certain service, if s / he
wants to get in contact with the respective authority
or if s / he even wants to apply for and consume the
service via electronic media (transaction) (cf. Ref.
[1]).

1.1. European initiatives towards e-Government

Recent studies on the portals of international
public administrations show that e-Government is
still in its infancy (cf. Refs. [4,14]). Many countries
already provide information and access points to
their administrations. In most cases, though, the
concept is realized via simple, static HTML web
sites. The strategy of most countries seems to be
present on the World Wide Web. Only a few nations
(mainly within the EU, Australia, the USA and only
a few in Asia [14]) provide more advanced services
and functionality. A global entry point to different
services and information on local and national
institutions (i.e. the one-stop Government concept) is
rather rare.
The realization of one-stop Government strongly
depends on the form of Government and the constitution of the respective country. Implementing this
concept frequently calls for a huge change in organizational responsibilities and duties since, traditional-

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M. A. Wimmer / Electronic Commerce Research and Applications 1 (2002) 92 103

ly, the Governments of the world are rather fragmented into functional units that are independent of
each other. E-Governmentand specifically onestop Governmentcalls for an integration and networking of public authorities, which will have a
tremendous impact on organizational structures and
responsibilities, on data access and on the way
governmental work will be performed in the future.
The visions of e-Government go far beyond what
has been realized up to now. A rather visionary,
though holistic, view is reflected in the German
Memorandum Electronic Government as Pivotal
Vision to Modernize Governance and Government
[2], which was presented to the German public about
one year ago. Yet, one year after the Memorandum,
Germanys public administrations are still looking
for integrated developments. With e-Envoy 1 (all
public services available online until 2005), the UK
has also set an important initiative towards e-Government and towards an integration of e-Government
implementations throughout the country. However,
this initiative is still at a superficial level. What can
be recognized from the many initiatives and strategies towards e-Government is a huge demand for
holistic approaches going far beyond present-day
technical developments.
The adaptation of new technological advancements requires a careful investigation into the
philosophy, structure and productive processes of the
public organizations participating in e-Government.
In this respect, many projects have emerged and also
the European Commission (EC) has established
several initiatives to encourage developments in the
field of e-Government (e.g. the eEuropeinitiative [3]
or the Fifth Framework Program of the EC [5]). With
the latter, the EC provides huge funding to stimulate
the creation of the next generation of user-friendly,
cost-effective and interoperable public services and
systems for the different user groups of public
administrations (citizens, businesses and administrations themselves). One of the key issues in this
program is to meet the user demands for flexible
access, for everybody, from anywhere and at any
time.

See http: / / www.e-envoy.gov.uk.

2. Aspects and requirements for integrated onestop Government

A current trend of innovative developments is
one-stop Government. It refers to a single point of
access to electronic services and information offered
by different public authorities. Online one-stop Government requires that all public authorities are interconnected and that the customer (citizen, private
enterprise or other public administration) is able to
access public services at a single point even if these
services are provided by different public authorities
or private service providers. It further requires that
the customer is able to access these services in a
well-structured and understandable manner meeting
his / her perspectives and needs.
A key issue for presenting and structuring information and services in one-stop Government
systems is that the customer does not need specific
knowledge of the functional fragmentation of the
public sector.
Further requirements that have to be fulfilled in an
integrated one-stop Government platform are:
smoothly adapting traditional processes to modern technology;
providing access to public services via a single
entry point even when these services are actually provided by different departments or authorities (single window);
enabling access via different media channels
and devices (Internet, PDA, WAP, Call centers,
Citizen offices, etc.);
guaranteeing the necessary level of security,
authenticity and privacy in communication and
transactions via the Internet, especially for
personal data and information that is highly
sensitive;
adapting both the internal (workflow, databases,
intranets, etc.) and external (information and
communication services to citizens and customers, transactions of goods and services via the
Internet) change requests for public activity;
smoothly coordinating internal and external
public activity to facilitate cross-border operations (i.e. seamless Government);
enabling customers to access public services in
terms of life-events or business situations

M. A. Wimmer / Electronic Commerce Research and Applications 1 (2002) 92 103

and without knowledge of the functional fragmentation of the respective public authorities;
allowing customers to approach and monitor
different stages of service performance (simple
information gathering; interacting with an authority; contracting (online application); service
delivery and payment; complaints and other
aftercare needs such as feeding statistics or
feedback);
providing customers with pre-information at
various stages and in various depths;
providing help in filling in online forms, etc.;
clarifying and updating underlying legal issues,
laws and prescriptions;
translating the demand for a service (a license,
etc.) from the citizens / business world to legaladministrative jargon and vice versa;
matching online public services with the jurisdictional structure (competency in the legal
sense) and routing the citizen demand to the
relevant back office;
keeping track of the process, handling freedom
of information requests and other due process
requirements.

The services offered in a one-stop shop should be

easily understandable for any citizen or business
partner. Such an approach (i.e. based on life-events
and business situations) has been developed by the
Austrian initiative towards an e-Government portal
(www.help.gv.at, [19]) and has become a metaphor
for structuring citizen and business information as
well as administrative processes in a user-friendly
way. Structuring according to life-events represents
one core design issue. Any life or business event
may further be structured into four principal stages
where the customer / citizen should decide upon how
far to use electronic media. These stages correspond
to (cf. Refs. [1,8]):
simple what-is, what-is-required and where-togo information on the service;
possibility to contact people and obtain further
information (communication);
downloading and handing in forms for applications of public services (interaction or contracting);
handling a complete service (transaction).

95

Fulfilling these requirements will come close to

the realization of an integrated online one-stop
Government concept. Current developments and
initiatives are, however, still far away from such
next-generation virtual administrations obtainable
with a few simple mouse clicks. This may be due to
many aspects that still need clarification [17]: setting
up the appropriate legal grounding, adjusting the
access rights and access mode to highly sensitive
data (which is not just a matter of security, but also
of public-private and public-public partnerships, of
the current laws, of the heterogeneity of systems and
data formats, etc.), justifying red tape problems, etc.
One of the key issues is to develop and re-engineer
public services in such a way that they can be
provided through electronic means.

3. Indications for innovative developments

towards virtual administrations
e-Government not only points to the concrete
implementation of projects, but it also has a political
dimension, where strategies are worked out and
where some of them are concretized and packed into
initiatives and projects.
The many complex facets of e-Government call
for holistic development, where processes, communication and information resources, cultural and social
issues, organizational strategies, technical solutions,
security issues, etc. have to be investigated and
integrated. It requires that the whole fan of electronically mediated communication is put together and
that external and internal processes are brought
together in a smooth manner.
Taking an holistic view means to consequently
consider public administration as a socio-technical
system and, as such, as a unit of: individual citizens,
employees of authorities and governments, groups
and society, technical and information systems,
norms and laws, social and cultural practices, moral
and ethics and natural environment issues.
New ways of Government need to be analyzed and
designed in a comprehensive way whereby processes
and people are at the center of interest. Accordingly,
an holistic approach aims for a strong focus on
peoples roles and cognitive needs within a one-stop
Government system. In digging deeper into this

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M. A. Wimmer / Electronic Commerce Research and Applications 1 (2002) 92 103

argument, active user participation is stressed, where

citizens, employees, managers and members of firms
(who all participate in processes of the e-Government system) contribute with their specific knowledge and requirements to develop a system that fits
their needs and not to develop one where people
have to adopt to the technical system.
An holistic approach has to integrate the following
perspectives throughout the whole development
phase:
service and process view, co-operation (workflow, group processes, collaboration, etc.);
technical viewpoint (focusing on the technical
implementation of the system, the network, a
collaborative platform, etc.);
view on people (implicit knowledge, specific
domain knowledge, deliberating the needs and
requirements for the different user groups:
citizens, businesses, public administration employees);
security aspects (deliberating the security requests for public services and for the one-stop
Government system);
legal issues (investigating legal constraints,
frames, etc.);
organizational aspects (structural fragmentation
of public administration and division of domain
expertise, responsibilities, etc.);
social and political aspects (considering political
decisions, social impacts, etc.);
view on data and information (designing information objects, databases, etc.).
Fig. 2 shows an holistic reference framework that
combines these different perspectives. It is based on
three current approaches to electronic business (the
Business Media Reference Model of Schmid [13],
the Information Architecture of Mok [12] and the
e-Government reference model of Lenk [8], who
adopted the Schmid model for e-Government). What
can be learned from these approaches is the multidimensional consideration (from the strategic layer
to the technical layer) of distinct aspects (organizational, judicial, security, process modeling, access,
services, workflow, etc.) and core phases of an
electronic process (from information to transaction
and settlement, including an aftercare phase).

Fig. 2. An holistic reference framework for eGOV.

The holistic development approach supports considerations on distinct levels of abstraction and from
different targets. Smooth integration of the various
aspects and their mutual interdependencies is important. For example, technical developments of the
eGOV integrated platform have to be accompanied
by process investigations, developments of one-stop
Government services as well as the analysis of
judicial and societal issues. For a more detailed
discussion of this holistic reference framework, the
reader is referred to Ref. [18].

4. eGOV: an integrated platform for one-stop

Government
eGOV (An Integrated Platform for Realizing Online One-Stop Government 2 ) is a two-year, ECfunded RTD project within the Fifth Framework
Program of the EC (Key Action I: Systems and
Services for the Citizen [5]) that started in June
2001. The consortium consists of 10 partners from
Austria, Finland, Germany, Greece and Switzerland
reflecting different forms of Government and public
administrations throughout Europe. Further, the partners represent a balanced mixture of public and
private research institutions, local and global public
administrations as well as technology providers. For
more information, see http: / / www.egov-project.org /.
2

eGOV (grant IST-2000-28471) is a two-year EC-funded RTD

project (www.egovproject.org).

M. A. Wimmer / Electronic Commerce Research and Applications 1 (2002) 92 103

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Fig. 3. General system architecture of the eGOV online one-stop Government platform.

4.1. eGOV objectives and platform architecture

The main objective of the project is to specify,
develop, deploy and evaluate an integrated platform
for realizing online one-stop Government [15]. The
eGOV platform will allow the public sector to
provide citizens, business partners and administrative
staff with information that is based on life-events and
business situations, hence increasing the effectiveness, efficiency and quality of public services. This
platform will be deployed and evaluated in Austria,
Greece and Switzerland.
The technical objectives of the eGOV project
include the specification and development of 3 :
1. the next generation of an online one-stop governmental portal and the supporting network
architecture. The portal will feature a number of
advanced characteristics, for example access
from different devices, including WAP-enabled
devices, personalization, customization, multilinguality, support of push services and digital
signatures, etc.
2. the service repository (SR) and the service
3

For more detailed information on the technical components, the

reader is referred to technical reports available at www.egovproject.org.

creation environment (SCE). The SR will be the

source containing the interpretations of online
services in terms of data and information (structured around the life-events and according to the
respective governmental processes), while the
SCE will be a framework (a collection of tools)
that will serve as the front-end to the SR. These
two components will be designed and implemented upon the life-event metaphor in
order to support the citizen-centered approach
of eGOV.
3. A Governmental Mark-up Language which
should be the connecting glue of the portal
and of all public repositories. It will be implemented as an XML derivative that should
become an open standard for data exchange and
information sharing among horizontally (e.g.
municipality and provincial authority) and vertically (e.g. local municipalities) dispersed public
administrations.
Fig. 3 depicts the general structure of the one-stop
Government system architecture where the portal
represents the global entrance point to many different
local service repositories of distinct public service
providers. As the figure indicates, users such as
citizens, businesses as well as public authorities can
access the offers of the (local, regional, national and

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M. A. Wimmer / Electronic Commerce Research and Applications 1 (2002) 92 103

even supra-national) public services via the Internet

or even on the move (via devices such as mobile
phones, handhelds (PDA), etc.).
The technical development of the eGOV components (portal, service repository and service creating environment) will be accompanied by a study of
process models. Further, it will be coupled to an
investigation of social aspects to assess the impact of
using modern information and communication technologies for online one-stop Government.
A second, non-technical issue will be to adapt
process re-engineering methods for modernizing the
bureaucratic structures of Government and public
administrations and to make them more efficient and
effective.
The ultimate project goal is to promote the eGOV
developments as the next-generation platforms for
online one-stop Government.

4.2. One global access point with different devices

As indicated in Fig. 3, within eGOV, the vision is
that the customer decides what kind of device to use
to access a certain public service or information. On
one hand, this access may happen through the
Internet from home, from public kiosks, from service
centers or service points spread over populated areas.
Here, the global access point is approached via a
desktop PC, portable PC or notebook that is connected to the Internet. In some cases, access may
even be provided on the move where a portable PC
is connected to the Internet through wireless communication facilities (GPRS, UMTS, etc.).
On the other hand, certain information, communication or parts of complex services may be accessible on the move independent of space and time. The
device used to enter such information and services
might be any kind of handheld device (PDAs, mobile
phones, etc.). Here, wireless application protocols
(WAP) will be the connecting glue to link the
customer to the local services and information
through the global access point.
A core issue of the European e-Government vision
is to provide better public services to citizens,
businesses and public clients [5]. With advanced
mobile technology, public administrations and governments are heading towards this vision. Many new
services will grow in this field. The aim of the eGOV

project is to investigate the potential behind such

future applications. In the following, two ideas are
presented that will be exploited in this respect:
personalized push services. Many of the potential push services in the different fields of
public administration could be realized via
mobile communication such as informing a
citizen that his / her vaccination for protection
against ticks is overdue and that the next
occasion is just around the corner at that time;
or informing the customer about the deadline
for his / her next tax declaration;
point-to-point communication. Many requests
from customers regarding where-to-go information, opening hours, fixing a meeting date,
required documents, etc. may be provided and
handled through mobile communication. Even if
a complex transaction is running, certain input
or information may be communicated via mobile devices, e.g.: an administrator sends an
information request to the customer that s / he
needs an updated version of a specific document; the client may query the status of his / her
application; etc.

4.3. eGOV development approach

The development of the one-stop Government
portal is divided into three major phases:
1. analysis and specification (finished by the end
of December 2001);
2. design and implementation (current stage);
3. evaluation and deployment.
In the analysis phase, different user groups have
been interviewed. Three different questionnaires (for
citizens, for businesses, and for public administrations) and structured interviews have been used to
investigate the current situation, weaknesses and
potential ideas for improvements of existing services
and portals, process models and technical issues.
Within each user group, clusters according to age,
gender, experience with the Internet, size of business, business branch, hierarchical level of authority
and role within the department or organizational
structure have been built. The analysis was carried

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out in three different countries (Greece, Austria and

Switzerland). The questionnaires provided a qualitative study of the user needs and requirements for
the technical and non-technical developments within
the project 4 .
Based on these experiences and insights and
together with the expert knowledge within the eGOV
consortium, the requirements for the eGOV platform
have been specified. Since the eGOV platform should
reflect the next generation of governmental one-stop
shop platforms, a further input has been state-of-theart studies on processes, technologies, services and
current platforms.
In the current phase, the technical components of
the eGOV platform (as described above) are going to
be realized, i.e. the one-stop Government portal, the
national and local Service Repositories as well as the
Service Creation Environment will be implemented.
Despite this, the Governmental Markup Language,
which represents the basic medium and standard
vocabulary for electronic communication in the
eGOV portal, will be concretized and formulated.
In parallel with the implementation of the technical components and the GovML standard, process
models for one-stop Government processes are to be
investigated and developed. These process models
reflect the basis for the following testing and evaluation phase. They will be inserted in the eGOV SRs
and they also represent the basis for the scenarios to
be developed for the evaluation.
In the third phase, evaluation of the implemented
platform and process models will be carried out. This
evaluation will mainly be performed by the users that
have been involved in the analysis phase.

5. Process models for one-stop Government

Developing an integrated online one-stop Government platform requires a deep investigation of the
business concepts and process models of the public

sector. Traunmuller
and Lenk [16] suggest a differentiation of four perspectives to understand con4

The respective deliverables reflecting the state-of-the-art report

on processes, technologies, services and current platforms, the
questionnaire outcomes and the experiences gained therefrom are
available at www.egovproject.org.

99

cepts and processes of public administrations:

citizens and customers, process (reorganization),
(tele)co-operation and knowledge. For future developments towards online one-stop Government,
this distinction will form a fundamental basis.
The following discussion digs deeper into the
customer and process perspectives.

5.1. Business process types in the public sector

The striking success of business process modeling
in the commercial domain of electronic business
insinuates the adaptation of the concepts and models
developed for e-Commerce right away for the field
of e-Government. For some process types, this may
be possible and sensible without any change [9].
However, as several reports of Lenk and

Traunmuller
point out (e.g. Refs. [10,16,17]), this is
not always feasible and possible, especially for some
types of administrative processes which are specific
to the public sector. In general, governmental processes may be classified into the following four types
(cf. Ref. [11]):
1. Routine processes are recurrent and well structured. They can be treated in a similar way to
business processes and are extensively formalizable (e.g. applying for a passport). Some of
them can even be completely automated.
2. Individualized case processing covers situations
where standard cases cannot be treated as such,
because of the special circumstances the customer is in (e.g. application for social benefit of
a deeply in debt citizen who is raising his / her
child alone, or enrolling a child in school before
the date of legal enrollment). It requires much
interaction with the customer and high sensitivity of the administrator in charge of the specific
situation the applicant is in. This type of process
characterizes one of the core businesses of
public administrations, where a large amount of
non-instrumental rationality is important and
where secure and organized social welfare has
to be established for the applicant.
3. Negotiation processes are characterized by a
large amount of interaction and many parties
involved with partially contrary positions. Complex investigations of the circumstances and

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M. A. Wimmer / Electronic Commerce Research and Applications 1 (2002) 92 103

disagreements on the interpretation of their

results are also typical for these types of
processes. Examples are the application for
asylum or for a building permit.
4. Weakly structured processes in the field of
policy-making and democratic deliberation.
Many business processes in e-Commerce are well
structured and highly foreseeable, such as applying
for a driving license or a passport or registering a
car. Yet, the core business of the public sector is
characterized by a large amount of non-instrumental
rationality, a certain degree of discretionary power
by the administrator in charge and the many parties
involved in the process.
The categorization into four basic process types of
Government and Governance demonstrates that, for
some processes, no (complete) process model and / or
workflow may be defined in advance (especially for
process types 24). To exploit the full potential of
online one-stop Government, the big challenge is to
effectively map the different types of Government
processes to an integrated platform and to support
collaborative processes via electronic media.

5.2. Different user groups in one-stop Government

Public administration is a huge unit servingwith
some kind of monopolistic positionindividuals and
collective (private and public) customers. To meet
the peculiar requirements of the different clients in
one-stop Government, a careful investigation of their
needs is required.
Considering many of the current approaches to
modern Government, these are mainly directed towards citizen services. Yet, is this really the user
group with the highest potential for improvement and
added-value when implementing one-stop Government?
Of course, public administration has to serve every
citizen. This is an obligatory responsibility of authorities and public service points. Yet, who are the
users benefiting most from online one-stop Government?
In the EC project introduced below, a distinction
is made between three different user groups: citizens,
businesses and public administrations themselves.
Obviously, businesses have more frequent contact

with public authorities (at least once a month) than

ordinary citizens. Further, citizens may still prefer to
go to a public service point, where a public servant
helps them through the administrative tasks s / he has
to complete. This is not just due to the fact that, for
example, currently, only about 50% of the European
(in the northern part of Europe, the ratio is higher
than the mean, whereas in the southern regions it is
lower) population has access to the Internet. For
psychological reasons, citizens will continue to appear personally at the service counter or citizen
office in order to consume a public service. Hence, it
follows that much of the work burden will fall on the
front-office workers that interact with their customers
to support them in performing a contact with an
authority or act on the citizens behalf to consume a
service. So, one important user group for online
one-stop Government applications will be such frontoffice workers.
Summing up, online one-stop Government platforms have to meet the particular needs of citizens,
business partners as well as public administration
staff in distinct ways. In the next section, the eGOV
project is introduced which, among other things,
addresses the issue of integrated process modeling
for distinct user groups.

6. Legal issues framing governmental processes

A specific aspect of the public sector has to do
with the role of law. The traditional way of implementing political decisions and of observing standards of Rechtsstaat (rule of law) and public safety is
legislation. Especially in continental Europe, public
administrations are highly regulated by legislation
which is enacted on national, regional and local
levels.
There are several points where legal competence
may impact the development and implementation of
e-Government processes and, specifically, the developments in eGOV. Legal interpretation is an
activity that has to precede any attempt to automate
the sequence of steps. Further, it is an activity that is
invoked when the boundaries of automation are
reached. Moreover, judicial decrees have to be
persistent for a given administrative field. Therefore,

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collaboration also becomes a pivot of public administration.

The legal structuring of administrative work has
several functions. It can be seen both as a restricting
and as a guiding force. In the concept of the
Rechtsstaat, norms serve to protect basic freedoms of
the citizenry from public interference. At the same
time, legal norms are a standard vehicle of communication between Government and executive agencies.
Legal norms may be strict and clear, leaving no
leeway for interpretation. This is not the rule,
however. Contrary to what many observers of European public administration believe, the binding force
of many legal provisions is not very strong. Some
legal texts do hardly anything else except to communicate goals, whichwithin the scope of the legal
order as a wholemay be attained through policies
which the executive agencies are free to develop.
Norms may also serve as guidelines, indicating
aspects which have to be considered in discretionary
decision-making. It goes without saying that many
micro-political aspects of administrative behavior
contribute to determining the outcome of complex
decision-making processes. Neither the procedural
nor the material law fully determine the outcome.
Laws, judicial decrees and governance decisions
are to be considered as knowledge repositories.
Although it is not just the knowledge collection that
makes public administration, justice and governance
work. Indeed, it would be very reductive to see laws
and public administration only as specific collections
of knowledge. Even well-defined administrative processes are strongly biased by their context and by the
informal practices and experiences of the people
involved in the process. The interpretation of the
norms and influencing co-ordination play a crucial
role in the specific situations urging for collaboration. However, successfully balancing formal and
interpretative forces in e-Government represents a
challenge per se. So, when developing administrative
business processes, specific attention has to be
dedicated to the underlying laws.
In the European field of e-Government developments, there is a huge need to carefully investigate
the legal aspects because of the types of constitutions
that exist within Europe. Many developments will
have to be re-considered under the perspective of
legal consistency and many new judicial decrees and

101

laws will appear. eGOV will provide some investigations and insights into this matter.

7. Reflections on social impacts

e-Government has become an important domain
where modern telecommunication facilities provide a
new way of carrying out governmental obligations
and tasks more easily and simply. However, many
demarcating issues exist where public administration
has to provide equal treatise of cases and access to
information. The distinctive aspects are due to the
matter and purpose of public administration and
governance, the high degree of legal structuring of
administrative work, the large amount of non-instrumental rationality and the fact that many people
and institutions are involved in a case (cf. Ref. [10]).
Hence, governments still have to provide traditional
ways for citizens to fulfil their obligations and
business with public administrations.
In the context of electronic Government, the
public sectorboth at the national and community
levelmay become a partner for economic growth.
In addition to cost savings, an important consequence relates to the opportunity to change the
relationship between the citizen, business partners
and the state. Closer and faster access diminishes the
perceived distance between citizens and businesses
and the state and may enhance citizen and business
participation in democratic processes.
However, there is a risk of e-Government systems
not matching the purposes of public administrations
and ending up in an increase in bureaucracy and a
dependence on technology (evidence suggests that IT
can increase the amount of paperwork). Even if
bureaucratic constraints represent a major obstacle to
competitive development, the specific responsibilities
(guaranteeing a well-structured, safe life in society,
protecting the environment, regulating society, caring
for citizens, etc.) of government must not be hampered for the sake of process optimization. So, there
is also a latent risk of adopting process models and
concepts from the private sector without adaptation
for the needs of public administrations.
The eGOV project aims at developing an integrated platform with a single access point to any
public service offered online. As a matter of fact, the

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M. A. Wimmer / Electronic Commerce Research and Applications 1 (2002) 92 103

impact that modern government infrastructures might

have on citizens, business partners and authorities
will have to be investigated properly. Some of the
questions to be answered are:
Will it be possible to transform an unwieldy
public sector into an effective networked global
government?
What will be the economic impacts in terms of
increased efficiency, decreased costs and standardized administrative processes?
What will be the resulting social and cultural
implications?
What will be the implications on security,
quality of life, social environment, welfare, etc.?
Further questions to be answered will be whether
the eGOV project is in line with European social and
political identity and what the risks of digital divide
within the public sector are.
Another socially oriented investigation has to elicit
the main expectations of both the different users of
public services (citizens, customers or public administrations) and the producer thereof, i.e. administrative staff:
On the side of the user (end-user of the Government portal), the level of general knowledge
required for online communication with the
public administration as well as the social
attitudes and fears of citizens facing eGOV
one-stop Government services (authentication,
personalization, multilinguality and security)
have to be determined and evaluated.
On the side of the producer (administrative
staff), the changes in the distribution of knowledge, the required qualifications and individual
responsibility induced by the new process
models as well as the consequences of these
changes upon the organizational structure and
hierarchy of public administration have to be
elicited.

8. Concluding remarks
For some years, e-Government developments have
emerged around the globe. As discussed in this

contribution, e-Government may be perceived differently on distinct abstraction levels and even with
varying focuses of application. Since Europe is
characterized by many different constitutions, distinct approaches to the realization of e-Government
can also be encountered and advancements in the
various countries have reached different stages of
maturity.
The European Commission has launched substantial funding to facilitate innovative developments in
close collaboration with, for example, Europeanwide projects. eGOV is such a project that aims at
the development of an integrated platform for realizing online one-stop Government. The core requirements for online one-stop Government and the
objectives of eGOV have been discussed in this
contribution. Because developments in e-Government touch upon different disciplines, an holistic
approach is crucial.
The complexity and multifariousness of the aspects touching upon e-Government developments
call for further research and investigations in the
field. Among these, some of the most urgent issues
are an integrated service modeling that calls for
semantic standardization and that allows intelligent
service bundling according to the specific situation
and context of a citizen or business partner; the
readiness for organizational change and new work
responsibilities of public employees; and the adaptation (or creation) of a legal framework to fully enable
electronic public service provision. Within Europe,
small steps towards these investigations have already
been made. However, to reach the full potential for a
virtual public administration, a huge demand for
integration will be encountered.

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