Affiliations: [a] School of Government, Victoria University of
Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand. E-mail: [email protected]
| School of Governance, Utrecht University, The Netherlands | Department of Statistics, Trinity College, Ireland | Department of Public Administration, Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Abstract: Many complexities associated with e-Government are caused by using
the wrong perspectives to understand and explain e-Government phenomena. This
argument will be further introduced and explained by using e-Government
initiatives and approaches in New Zealand as an illustrative case study.
Generally, two dominant streams of e-Government thinking about the role of ICTs
in government can be identified over time: e-Government 1.0 – a perspective
where ICTs are seen as a driving force of change in public administration and
governance, and e-Government 2.0 – a perspective that directly and explicitly
relates the use of ICTs in government and its external relationships with
transformational change. In this contribution it is argued that an alternative
stream of thinking on e-Government is needed which accommodates the challenging
dynamic, unpredictable, complex, and non-linear aspects of e-Government. As
these aspects have everything to do with the unique characteristics of
government, this alternative stream of thinking will be addressed as 'Public
Administration 2.0', to reflect that current mainstream Public Administration
thinking persistently separate out e-Government from their own domains of
interest and treat them as technology-related topics without any relevance to
the Public Administration discipline. The value of applying a Public
Administration 2.0 perspective to e-Government phenomena is further
demonstrated by discussing two examples based on empirical research from New
Zealand, one example in which transactional e-Government service provision is
compared with e-Commerce service delivery, and a second example exploring
benefits realisation around three e-Government initiatives.
Keywords: e-Government, public administration, ICT, governance, government, institutional shaping, New Zealand
