Currently in Greece, the Operational Programme for the Information Society (OPIS) is promoting ICT in the public sector. However, a content study of Greek government websites reveals that at local level e‑Government has generally not progressed beyond the information presentation stage. The findings of an online survey of government employees and interviews with key government officials suggest reasons for this. Recommendations are made for facilitating the development and implementation of full interactive local e‑Government.

This contribution focuses on e‑Government as a comprehensive change programme and develops alternative scenarios with a view towards 2010. Empirical evidence of substantial risks to a successful implementation and operation of e‑Government calls for a forward‑looking approach and possible ways of correcting a wide‑spread neglect of long‑term innovation risks. The paper explores the scenario method as an established instrument for improving strategic decisions in a context of change, uncertainty and complex environments. Its application in a Europe‑wide research project leads to three macro‑scenarios with divergent implications for e‑Government prospects. The conclusions suggest particular requirements for developing more robust e‑Government strategies and encourage a wider use of scenario processes.

e‑Government policies are both a sub‑set and a driver of government and public sector reform, and their implementation raises or amplifies a number of political issues in a wide number of areas. Particularly, the implementation of the current transnational e‑Government agenda raises important political issues, including the further privatisation of the public sphere and the changing role of government. Moreover, conflicting policy elements within the agenda magnify the need for more public debate on the desired outcomes of e‑Government.

The purpose of this paper is to review the arguments and examine the case for the legitimacy of the European Union (EU) and its institutions. In terms of the scope of the paper the author sought to, examine the literature in this area, engage with current issues, and speak with practitioners. This paper was written in the months leading up to the 2009 elections to the European Parliament. A number of interviews were done including two Irish members of the European Parliament (MEPs) who were standing for re‑election at the time. This was done to ground some of the ideas brought forward by the literature in the experience of those most directly involved. The paper goes on to look at some of the approaches to democratising the EU such as the way in which the EU has used information and communication technologies (ICT) to connect with the citizens of Europe. The author concludes that, while the EU does not conform to ideal models of legitimacy and accountability, it is evolving in that direction and a case can be made that the EU is at least as accountable as the nation states of which it is composed. It is also the view of the author that developments in social networking and virtual environments, offer states and politicians the opportunity to better engage with citizens and contribute to the speed of this evolution.

Identity Management is a very important research challenge within the framework of the EU eGovernment development. This paper presents the main aspects of research, analysis and design of the Open Identity Management Architecture for European eGovernment development (GUIDE), a project financed by the 6FP of the EC. An innovative interdisciplinary approach is used, aimed at covering the whole range of technical, process, policy, legal and social Identity Management issues, and seeking to overcome the existing fragmentation of Identity Management initiatives. The primary purpose of GUIDE is to develop a consistent approach to identity management across the EU that will enable Member States to agree on the identity of an entity (a citizen or a business) in order to enable sectoral applications to conduct cross‑border transactions. The paper provides some important comments concerning the European aspects of Identity Management and presents the adopted Federation Identity Management model. The development of the Open Identity Management Architecture is driven by eight key political and functional axioms, regarding how these federations (Member State governments and commercial organisations) should be inter‑linked and what criteria each constituent federation will need to satisfy in order to join the identity grid. The architecting approach is based on an enterprise model adopted as a framework for the EU eGovernment development since the research revealed that frameworks for eGovernment are in an early state of evolution. The architecture is developed as a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), implemented through the Web Services model, thus satisfying the requirements for ‘loosely‑coupled’ systems, independence of implementation and location, etc. The conceptual data model describes the key data entities that have to be supported for cross‑border identity services ‑ the citizen and the organisation. The logical service model presents the different types of identity management services that are relevant for the developed Open Identity Management Architecture. The interoperability issues, including the interoperability services and the Identity management interoperability infrastructure, are also considered.

: Participatory Budgeting aims to increase democracy in city districts by permitting citizens to participate in the spending of public budgets and in the making of important decisions regarding public life. Until today, such participation was made available mostly through physical meetings organized by public administrations (off‑line meetings). Only in recent years has software been developed in order to enable people to ‘gather’ using ICT methodologies (on‑line meetings). The paper describes this research project aimed at building a framework able to increase citizen participation in public life by developing new approaches, including the integration of off‑line and on‑line meetings among citizens and public administrations. Project eDem1.0, coordinated by the municipality of Rome and financed by the Italian Ministry for Innovation during the period March 2007 to February 2009, has aimed to apply cutting edge Internet‑based technologies (social networking, user‑generated content, etc.) to enhance the processes of participation and consultation, both between citizens and government administration offices, as well as among such offices themselves. Sociological studies, expressly conducted by the Universities of Pisa and Rome, have provided the basis for the innovative means developed in the project (normative solutions and choices, new useful software instruments, project self‑evaluation). The software platform, based on a social network structure, for implementation of such goals was developed for the most part at the ISTI Institute of the CNR in Pisa. Such development has been guided by the specific needs and wishes of the coordinating institution, to which a customized version has been provided. Initial testing of the software was begun within the framework of the Rome Bilancio Partecipativo del Municipio XI (Participatory Budgeting for District 11). The current version is a freely available, open‑source solution. Other, customized versions have been provided to and used by the region of Lazio and the township of Pescara.

In 2009 we conducted a study on pan‑European electronic services. The main focus was on eGovernment and eHealth. First, qualitative interviews were performed to determine key areas of priority and essential problems in this area; for a small country suc

This paper proposes an interpretative framework which aims to provide a systemic perspective and an instrument to elicit the links between Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) and governance, outlining the various challenges that this poses . In particular, it discusses the multiple dimensions of governance and identifies the public value drivers underpinning the conceptual and measurement framework proposed. In doing so the paper focuses on the 'openness' of governance mechanisms through it s interoperability dimension. It considers state‑of‑the‑art contributions at both academic and practitioner level and it also looks at how the proposed framework can be applied to the evaluation of two case studies at cross‑border, and national‑city level in Europe. Interoperability in fact is predominantly seen as an instrument for enabling cross‑border collaboration between public administrations within and between different Member States. Many initiatives and projects have been promoted and carried out during the last decade resulting in a growing number of potentially reusable best practices and benchmarks. Nevertheless, the complexity and volume of resulting project outcomes represent a challenge for effective exploitation of the results in other ini tiatives and intervention contexts. Moreover, despite the recognition of interoperability as a multi‑faceted concept (i.e. technological, organizational, and semantic), it seems to be mainly the technological aspects of interoperability that emerge from the available project results. The paper concludes outlining indications for future research and in particular on interoperability as a key driver for ICT‑enabled governance. Interoperability is found to play a strategic role in the delivery of e‑Governm ent services to local and national communities within the EU. Moreover, its significance is expected to increase over the next few years, especially in terms of how it supports emerging city governance models and acts as the backbone of communications at a pan‑European, national and local level.