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
Tel. +43 70 2468 9586, Fax. +43 70 2468 9308, Email. mw@ifs.uni-linz.ac.at

Abstract

E-Government reflects current visions for public administrations towards modernization and reorganization. Thereof, online
one-stop Government targets the improvement of customer-to-government interactions. It provides the 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 hours 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, a holistic
development approach provides an important guideline to address different aspects impacting advanced one-stop Government
systems. With such a holistic approach, despite of the technical developments, integrated process models for online public
service delivery are put forward. Furthermore, legal aspects framing one-stop Government developments and social impacts of
such developments for different user groups are investigated.

Keywords:

e-Govern ment; one-stop Government; eGOV; integrated service modeling; one-stop Government process models.

E-Government: current visions for the public sector

The striking success of electronic Commerce within the last few years has strongly influenced the public sector. Electronic
Government (e -Government) has become the catchword covering many activities and attempts to innovate and modernize the
field of public administration.
Currently, e-Government is the terminus framing and shaping the public administration's way into "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. [17]) as sketched in Figure 1.
Within a political and strategic dimension, key strategies, mo dernization 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 in public authorities;

- the implementation of new ways of governmental business through e.g. public-private partnerships, outsourcing of
administrative work, multifunctional service shops, one-stop Government shops, etc.;
- the provision of better services for the citizens and businesses through e.g. 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 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 a re -engineering and adaptation of concrete organizational structures, business processes and
object models to fit them to the strategic decisions and to the new challenge of the public sector providing electronic services.
On an operative level, e-Government is concerned with an 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 one-stop Government,
a virtual administration.

Vision
Dimension
Political &
Strategic

Reference models
Strategies for general strategies
Political go/mgo (NPM, BPR)
decision

Initiatives
Implemen-

Reference models for:

tation

•engineering
Feedback

Projects •system architectures

•processes
•data & information
Opera-
tion

Applications

Figure 1 - E-Government application layers

Online public services imply an improvement of the services for citizens and businesses such as offering services 24 hours a
day accessible from anywhere and via different media. E-Government stresses an active participation of the 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 may 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 on 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. [1].

European initiatives towards e-Government

Recent studies on portals of international public administrations show that e-Government is still at its infant steps (cf. [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 constitution of the respective
country. Implementing this concept frequently calls for a huge change of organizational responsibilities and duties since,
traditionally, Governments in the world are rather fragmented into functional units that are independent from each other. E-
Government - and in specific one-stop Government - recalls 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 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 Memo randum, Germany's public
administrations are still looking for integrated developments. With e-Envoy1 (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 eEurope initiative [3] or the 5th 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.

Aspects and requirements for integrated one -stop 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 re quires that all public authorities are
interconnected and that the customer (citizen, private enterprise or other public administration) is able to access public services
by 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 well understandable manner meeting his/her
perspectives and needs.
A key issue of 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
the 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” 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 citizen's/businesses' world to legal-administrative jargon
and vice versa;
- Matching online public services with the jurisdictional structure (competencies 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 became 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. [1], [8]):

• simple what-is, what-is-required and where-to-go information on the service;

• possibility to contact people and to get further information (communication);

• downloading and handing in forms for applications of public services (interaction or contracting);

• handling a complete service (transaction).

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 thereby is to develop and re-engineer public services in a way that they
can be provided through electronic means.

1
See http://www.e-envoy.gov.uk
Indications for innovative developments towards virtual administrations

E-Government not only points to 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 a 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 a 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, morale 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, a holistic approach claims for a strong focus on people‘s roles and cognitive needs within a
one-stop Government system. In digging deeper into this argument, an active user participation is stressed, where citizens,
employees, managers and members of firms (who all participate in the 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.
A holistic approach has to integrate the following perspectives throughout the whole development phases:
- 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.).
In Figure 2, a holistic reference framework is depicted 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 mo del 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 informa tion to transaction and settlement - including an aftercare phase).
 Different Views

Data & Information

t
and trac ct ry

Social,political asp.
on lding t, con ontra elive t are

Organisational asp.
Progress of ati i ac c D en rc
orm bu nt ns, ice ym fte
a Public Inf ntion Co tiatio Serv d Pa A

Legal frame
Security aspects
e o an
Service int neg

User perspectives
Technical aspects
Process perspective
Strategic Framework
Public Services,
Processes and Workflow
Interaction

Information Technology
Abstraction
layers

Figure 2 - A holistic reference framework for eGOV

The holistic development approach supports considerations on distinct levels of abstraction and from different targets. A
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 with 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 [18].

eGOV: an integrated platform for one -stop Government

eGOV (An Integrated Platform for Realizing Online One-Stop Government2 ) is a two -years EC-funded RTD project within the
5th 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 coming 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/.

The 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 of3 :

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 e.g. 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 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 imple mented upon the “life-event” metaphor in order to sup-

2
eGOV (Grant IST-2000-28471) is a two-years EC-funded RTD project, www.egovproject.org
3
For more detailed information on the technical components, the reader is referred to technical reports available at www.egovproject.org
 port 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 re positories. 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.

user
user
user

WAP/
Internet GSM/UMTS
One-Stop Network ...
Government Portal
global access point for GovML
Local Authority
citizens, businesses
Local
GovML Filter
Central and authorities GovML
Service
National Authority
Repository
National GovML Local Authority
GovML Service
GovML Filter

Service Local
GovML Filter

Repository Service Creation

Local Authority
Repository Environment
Service Local
GovML Filter

Creation Service Service

Environment Repository Creation
Environment
Service
Creation
Environment

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

Figure 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 the 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 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 with a study of process models. Further, it will be coupled with 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 administration 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.

One global access point with different devices

As indicated in Figure 3, within eGOV, the vision is that the customer decides on what kind of device to use for accessing 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
independently from space and time. The devices to enter such information and services might be any kind of handhelds (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 visions 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 up 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 protecting 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 of the requests of 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.

eGOV development approach

The development of the one-stop Government portal is divided into three major phases:
1. Analysis and specification (finished by 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 on existing services and portals, process models and technical is sues. Within each user group,
clusters according to age, gender, experience with 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 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 the state-of-the-art studies on processes, technologies, services
and current platforms 4 .
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 that, 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 to 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.

4
The respective deliverables reflecting the state-of-the-art report on processes, technologies, services and current platforms, the
In the third phase, the 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.

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. Traunmüller and Lenk [16] suggest a differentiation of four perspectives to understand
concepts 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 be a fundamental basis.
The following discussion digs deeper into the customer and process perspectives.

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 works of Lenk and Traunmüller point out (e.g. [10],
[16], [17]), this is not always feasible and possible, especially not 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. [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 the 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
processes characterizes one of the core businesses of public administrations, where a high amount of non-instrumental
rationality is important and where a secure and organized social we lfare has to be established for the applicant.

3. Negotiation processes are characterized by a high amount of interaction and many parties involved with partially
contrary positions. Complex investigations of the circumstances and disagreements on the interpretation of their results
are as well 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 which only confers to routine processes
such as applying for a driving license, a passport or registering a car. Yet, the core business of the public sector is characterized
by a high amount of non-instrumental rationality, a certain degree of discretionary power by the administrator in charge and
many parties involved in the process.
The categorization in 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 not for process types two till four). 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.

questionnaire outcomes and the experiences gained thereby are available through www.egovproject.org
Different user groups in one-stop Government

Public administration is a huge unit serving – with some kind of monopolistic position – individuals and collective (private and
public) customers. To meet the peculiar re quirements 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 an 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 the online one-stop Government?
In the EC project introduced below, a distinction between three different user groups is made: 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 still may 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 e.g. 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 this is lower)
population has access to Internet. Based on psychological reasons, citizens will continue to personally appear at the service
counter or citizen office in order to consume a public service. Hence, it follows that much of the burden of work will lay on the
front-office workers that interact with their customers to support them in performing a contact to an authority or that act on the
citizen’s behalf to consume a service. So, one important user-group for online one-stop Government applications will be such
front-office 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 others, addresses
the issue of integrated process modeling for distinct user groups.

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, in specific, 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, collaboration becomes a pivot of public
administration, too.
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 for commu nicating goals, which – within the scope of the legal order as a whole – may 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 processes of decision-making. Neither the
procedural nor the material law fully determine the outcomes.
Laws, judicial decrees and governance decisions are to be considered as knowledge repositories. Though, it is not just the
knowledge collection that makes public administra tion, 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 about the specific situations urging for
collaboration. However, successfully balancing formal and interpretative forces in e-Govern ment represents a challenge per se.
So, when developing admin istrative business processes, specific attention has to be dedicated to underlying laws.
In the European field of e-Government developments, there is a huge need to carefully investigate legal aspects because of the
type 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 laws will grow. eGOV will provide some investigations and insights on that
matter.

Reflections on social impacts

E-Government has become an important domain where modern telecommunication facilities provide a new way of doing
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. Distinctive aspects are due to the matter and
purpose of public administration and governance, the high degree of legal structuring of administrative work, a higher amount
of non-instrumental rationality and the fact that many people and institutions are involved in a case (cf. [10]). Hence,
governments still have to provide traditional ways for citizens to fulfil their obligations and businesses with pubic
administrations.
In the context of electronic Government, the public sector - both, at national and community level - may become a partner for
the 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 citizens and businesses participation to democratic processes.
However, some risks of e-Government systems not matching the purposes of public administrations may also end up in an
increase of bureaucracy and dependence on technology (evidence suggests that IT can increase the amount of paperwork).
Even if bureaucratic constraints represent a major obstacle to a competitive development, the specific responsibilities
(guaranteeing a well-structured, safe life in society, protecting the environment, regulating society, caring for the 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 services offered online.
As a matter of fact, the 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.?

Some further questions to be answered will be whether the eGOV project is in line with the 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
(citizen, customer 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 public administration as well as the social attitude and fears of citizen 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 distribution of knowledge, required qualification 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.

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 focus of application. Since Europe is
characterized by many different constitutions, also distinct approaches to realize e-Government can be encountered and the
advancements in the countries have reached different stages of maturity.
The European Commission has launched substantial funding to facilitate innovative developments in close collaboration with
e.g. European-wide 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 different disciplines, a holistic approach is
crucial.
The complexity and multifariousness of aspects touching e-Government developments call for further research and
investigations in the field. Among them, 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, little steps
towards these investigations have already sprouted. However, to reach the full potential for a virtual public administration, a
huge demand for integration can be encountered.

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