VISION AND PRACTICE OF E-GOVERNMENT: AN EMPIRICAL STUDY

With the internet expanding rapidly in the 1990s, most of the reform agendas of Western countries embedded information technologies in their vision for change (Heeks, 1999; and Holmes, 2001). Existing studies into the diffusion of e-government has mainly centred on the USA and exposed a limited diffusion of digital delivery systems. This paper focuses on e-government by way of the adoption and use of ICT and internet for the delivery of information and services and explores the extent to which local governments endorse the e-government agenda by looking at the strategies and policies of municipalities and their actual use of e-government for the delivery of services and information. The paper utilizes data from a survey conducted during the winter of 2005-2006, addressed to the Chief Information Officers at Italian MUs with a population greater than 40,000. The results show that despite a certain degree of endorsement in terms of strategies for e-government, the use of e-government for the delivery of services is still quite limited. © 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd