Electronic Government-Citizen Relationships: Exploring Citizen Perspectives

Citizens that already are engaged in online activities are more inclined to connect with their governments electronically. One question that has largely gone unanswered is, Does citizens' use of the Internet to interact with governments facilitate relationships between them and their governments? This is the key issue for e-governance and is under researched. So this research explores citizen perspectives through qualitative interviews. The data is content analyzed using Leximancer. Citizens trust the e-government process but not their governments. Quantitative survey research is needed to confirm these results that are important both for relationship theory and for the working relationships between governments and citizens. (C) 2007 by The Haworth Press. All rights reserved.