Overview of Electronic Government

E-Government, as known as electronic government, refers to government’s use of information technology to exchange information and services with citizens, businesses, and other arms of government. The implementation of the e-Government would improve internal efficiency, the delivery of public services, or processes of democratic governance and better accessibility of public services.

The primary delivery models are Government-to-Citizen or Government-to-Customer (G2C), Government-to-Business (G2B) and Government-to-Government (G2G) & Government-to-Employees (G2E).

While e-government is often thought of as "online government" there are non-Internet "electronic government" technologies can be used in this context such as telephone, fax, PDA, SMS text messaging, MMS, wireless networks and services, Bluetooth, CCTV, tracking systems, RFID, biometric identification, road traffic management, identity cards, smart cards and other NFC applications; polling station technology (where non-online e-voting is being considered), TV and radio-based delivery of government services, email and online community facilities.

There are also some technology-specific sub-categories of e-government, such as m-government (mobile government), u-government (ubiquitous government), and g-government (GIS/GPS applications for e-government).

In certain countries such as the United Kingdom, there is interest in using electronic government to re-engage citizens with the political process. In particular, it is to introduct the system of electronic voting. The aim is to increase voter turnout by making voting easy. On the other hand, the UK Electoral Commission has expressed concern about the potential for fraud with some electronic voting methods.