M-Government Initiatives at the Local Level: The Case of Zaragoza

Abstract

This chapter introduces the concept of m-government and its implications for both citizens and public institutions. Although m-government is currently in an initial phase of development, its potential in the relationship between the public sector and the citizen is obvious because of, for example, the large number of mobile phone users among the public. In addition, the development of m-government initiatives generates a good number of bene?ts for the public sector that operates it as well as for the public, who experience improved accessibility to electronic public services. Because of this, this chapter analyses m-government initiatives developed by the Zaragoza City Council (Spain) in order to describe its bene?ts, implications for the relationship between the City Council and the citizen, and the future perspectives of these initiatives. We have speci?cally chosen a country like Spain due to the fact that mobile telephone usage is widespread and, at the same time, local government level has been chosen as the citizen participates more in the relationship with the public sector when it is at the local level.