Crucial elements for a local electronic government index: A communication-oriented approach

The idea of e-govemment has received much attention from academicians, politicians, and even from businessman during the past decade. However, as to the characteristics of e-govemment, different scholars emphasize different aspects, which makes a common definition of e-government remain elusive. The first objective of this paper is to suggest crucial elements of e-government, especially of local e-government. To that end, the paper first discusses how the purposes and functions of e- govemments differ according to their level or scope. That is, national level e-government has different purposes and functions than local level e-government. In turn, this paper also suggests the communication-oriented characteristics of local e-government. The crucial elements will be suggested according to different dimension of communications: administrative communication, political communication, business communication, and social communication. Finally, I apply the crucial elements of local e-government to consider twenty-five city governments in Metropolitan Seoul and evaluate the degree to which particular functions and services for communication are available in the.