Issues in E-Commerce and E-Government Service Delivery

Abstract

This chapter examines three issues emerging in the fields of e-government service delivery and e-commerce — the need for and a potential structure for performance measures, the heightened need for security awareness around e-government and e-commerce, and the need for e-government web design centered around usability. Beginning these discussions are some basic definitions, a review of the current literature on e-government and a discussion of the stages of e-government development. The chapter concludes with a discussion of a future research agenda in e-service delivery and e-commerce. Electronic government, or e-government, can be defined as the “use of technology, particularly web-based Internet applications, to enhance the access to and delivery of government information and service to citizens, business partners, employees, other agencies, and government entities” (McClure, 2000). As will be discussed later, e-commerce applications are a subset of e-government applications, and can be easily defined as “Business transactions conducted by electronic means other than conventional telephone service, e.g., facsimile or electronic mail (e-mail)” (National Telecommunications and Information Administration, 2002).