Encyclopedia of Digital Government

Citation

Calvert, P. (2008), "Encyclopedia of Digital Government", The Electronic Library, Vol. 26 No. 5, pp. 759-761. https://doi.org/10.1108/02640470810910774

This is a three volume reference set that includes more than 250 separate chapters on different aspects of digital government, often known as e‐government. The chapters were written by over 300 different academics, researchers and practitioners based all around the globe, from countries as diverse as Australia, Botswana, Brazil, China, Greece, Italy, Finland and The Netherlands, plus of course, many chapters from writers based in the USA.

As with any encyclopaedia, real value can often be found in the bibliographies and the definitions. Following the structure now well established in Idea Group Reference works, each chapter includes references (more than 5,500 in the work as a whole) and definitions of key terms (nearly 2,000 in total). Taken all‐in‐all, this is a large and detailed reference work.

Digital government has become a topic of great interest in almost every country on the planet, with bureaucracies changing to adopt techniques of e‐government, and academic institutions developing new research and courses in the subject. Those involved have to deal with large issues. Government‐sized processing power and well‐designed applications can make government appear more approachable and efficient. Yet technology on its own is not enough to compensate for the mistakes and common sloth of bureaucrats. Governments have to balance out the benefits of speed, efficiency and possible cost‐savings on one side against possible threats to national security, risks to citizen's rights and cost‐overruns on the other side. Some of these dilemmas are central to the content of this work, though perhaps as enthusiasts many of the writers have emphasised the benefits of e‐government over its possible pitfalls.

Most national governments and some local governments have already started the process of making information available online. In this work, there are several chapters describing the implementation of e‐government at national level in countries as diverse as Bangladesh, Canada, Finland, Hungary, Mongolia and South Korea (and many more). There are some reviews that describe work done at the regional level, e.g. Africa, ASEAN, and the EU. Then for those working at local government level there are descriptions of projects underway in several different cities, such as Shanghai, Dubai, and even Visakhapatnam in India. It is important to bear in mind that some of these reports are more about planned work than what has already been achieved, yet they remain quite useful.

Later stages of developing e‐government may include steps towards putting transactions online, such as paying taxes, applying for permits and visas, and so on. In doing so, there are matters such beyond the technology which become important, so as well as chapters on the actual process of creating the applications, it is good to see the issues being debated as well in chapter such as “Protecting citizen privacy in digital government” and “Social issues of trust and digital government” There are also chapters on making e‐government more accessible to people with impairments, and “Web sites for senior citizens”.

Another goal for e‐government advocates is electronic democracy, in which votes and cast in elections and referenda via the internet. There are several chapters on this including interesting topics such as “Internet voting” and “Online petitions to Queensland Parliament”. Beyond voting, the potential impact on government of social networking sites is huge. Blogs are already major channels for expressing political views in the USA and the trend is spreading to other western countries. Fundraising via the Internet has been used successfully in the USA. What next? This work, perhaps because of its publication date, has little on such topics.

Given the size and breadth of this work it is only to be expected that a reviewer will make some criticisms about the relative merits and weights of the contents. Given the vulnerability of information systems to cyber attacks and the horrible implications for government of an attack succeeding, there is too little treatment of the topic here; only three chapters on the specific issue, though others include security within a broader topic. The imbalance makes it difficult to recommend this as a complete reference resource. What it is, like the previous Idea Group Reference sets, is a large and pretty well organised work that can be used at different levels of teaching and research, from beginning undergraduate to postgraduate level.