Article Analysis: Does E-Government Measure Up to E-Business?

The only way for government to be successful in making its information available to all its citizens is to have in place the mechanisms to divulgate this information. In the age of the Internet government agencies have seen the advantages both in accessibility and cost effectiveness of having a presence on the web. Making information available via the web also allows for the information to be more current than waiting for it to be printed as it is done with many other government initiatives. The private sector has taken advantage of this medium and one only needs to look at the new small startups that turn out every day offering services to consumers via the web. Private sector has definitely benefited from this new age and their profit books show this benefit. It was only a few years ago that the company Overstock.com started with the idea of selling shoes via the web. At that time the shoe online market was non existent and less than 14% of shoe sales were the result of printed marketing. Today Overstock.com has billion of dollars in profit and have venture into selling all sorts of items for its clients.

However, there are reasons to believe that government may not always be successful in implementing practices that are otherwise commonplace in the private sector. This is particularly the case if performance is poorly measured or there is no pressure to improve on performance. E-government projects, in general, are not after profit sharing and more into providing free information and services to customers. In the end, compared to commercial firms that focus on the maximization of profits for the private owners, government organizations responds to society as a whole and are expected to maximize social utility. Factors such as “policy ambiguity, transparency requirements, customer diversity, and time constraints can contribute to decision-making differences between government and commercial organizations and affect information management and...