Chapter 2: Electronic Government: The Vision of a Transparent, Efficient, and Customer-Oriented Government

What factors steer a community in the direction of Ε-Government? Or, in other words, what drives Ε-Government? A study carried out at the Institute for Public Services and Tourism at the University of St Gallen (IDT-IISG) addressed this question by analyzing 32 more or less official strategy papers on Ε-Government, available in the year 2001 and written by political executives in Europe. Such papers cannot expose the real reasons at their very heart, but the official statements of the executives are able to provide clues as to the political line of argument. Figure 2.1 provides an overview of the results of the analysis.