National Electronic Government Strategies in Austria

Abstract

One of the most emerging concepts of information technology is the one of electronic government. Electronic services that are made available by governments to citizens businesses and other governments (international) or governmental authorities (national) are general proof of the changes being made in the public sector. Intersecting the government citizen and business domain a business model can be defined considering the government-to-business government-to-citizen and government-to-government approaches. Governments around the world try to follow their most of the time ambitious strategies to become or stay competitive. In this study Austrian strategies and projects for electronic government as well as their implementation plans were analysed followed by an examination of the electronic services offered by the national governmental authorities in Austria one pioneer in electronic government in Europe leading in the European E-Government ranking 2010 and the declared 'European champion in eGovernment' for the fourth time in a row. The results revealed that Austria has developed hybrid electronic government strategies and has launched projects in that field in which national governmental authorities have to participate in order to offer electronic government services at a high level and in a competitive international environment. On a whole offering a one-stop shop gateway to governmental information and transactions generally offers higher attractiveness for conducting nationwide business and all incentives for electronic government focus on developing good practices in the area of efficient and effective electronic government. Nevertheless national strategies are transformed and implemented in different ways not always following the one-stop-shop approach and contributing to the development of isolated applications instead of integrated ones.