• E-government & public sector reforms

E-government & public sector reforms

Since the 1990’s, a transnational e-government agenda has emerged resulting from strategic initiatives taken by a number of leading countries, multinational corporations, the European Union and international organisations. This transnational agenda and its commonly accepted principles convey a new vision for the entire public sector – partly based on the Anglo-Saxon liberal model – and has the potential to transform the relationship between state, citizens and businesses.

In particular, the implementation of the transnational e-government agenda raises the following three important policy issues:

• further privatisation of public sphere and the changing role of government
• impact on services, service delivery, service take-up, and the re-organisation of public administration
• impact on democracy practices such as political participation, citizen engagement and future of representative democracy

This paper shows that:

• to date the implementation of e-government in Europe does not provide evidence that the role of nation state is eroding
  
• the barriers that have been encountered to the formulation of a coherent e-European government policy also demonstrate that there is a long way to gobefore the existing structures metamorphose into new models
  
• governments so far used ICT to hold on to their sovereignty.

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