The Information Ecology of E-government: E-government as Institutional and Technological Innovation in Public Administration

It seems that only a short time ago, numerous academics and practitioners in the field were somewhat blinded by the successes of the dot-com developments in the private sector, and some of them enthusiastically claimed that public administration was to be revolutionized. But that did not happen, and also the dot-com soap bubble burst. This suggests that there is much yet to be learned about innovation in public administration, especially about innovations at the cornerstones of technological and institutional transformations. New and more fully developed formulations of theory into practice are needed. The goal of the editors of this book is to contribute to some aspects of the understanding of e-government. In order to understand electronic government, one has to scrutinize the various environments and contexts in which e-government is developed and implemented. As such, it builds upon the biological and environmental lines of reasoning that have been suggested by authors like Bonnie Nardi and Vicky O'Day, and Thomas Davenport and Laurence Prusak.