Guest Editors' Introduction: E-government Interoperability, Infrastructure and Architecture: State-of-the-art and Challenges

Abstract

Since the late nineties, most countries have released their e-government strategies and defined various approaches resulting in significant progress at all levels of public administration. Despite the progress, the level of ambition was higher which has resulted in disappointments. One of the causes of the limited progress is that many e-government efforts are confronted with a lack of interoperability and integration of systems and the need to develop or expand the infrastructure. Creating interoperability and integration is a complex endeavor [23], [28]. Service provisioning in networks is likely to fail if the systems of the public agencies are not properly integrated. The integration of systems and activities extends to greater collaboration and integration between agencies [14] and can provide substantial benefits [8]. Infrastructures provide a platform and functions as a vehicle for creating e-government [10]. Infrastructures provide not only the secure and reliable connectivity, but also more and more functions are embedded in the infrastructures which are shared by many organizations and can be used to build an online presence [10].