Big questions of e-government research

Abstract

Taking stock of an area of study and determining potential venues for further contributions by asking challenging questions have been popular in the discipline of public administration for the last two decades. This has been done through asking big questions, which aim to encourage thinking out of the box, without attempting to provide corresponding set of definitive big answers. Examples abound, such as articles published on the questions of public management, public administration education, and public network management research. This chapter argues for the necessity of a question approach in e-government research. The questions being posed here originate from review of the e-government research; and they benefit from several reviews of the e-government literature and by other developments in and around the public administration discipline as they pertain to e-government. The chapter concludes with discussion of the emergent topics and issues in e-government research and practice; as well as an evaluation of the relevance of the proposed questions for the deepening and widening of e-government research in the years to come.