Content Production Strategies for E-Government

Abstract

The terms electronic government (e-government) and digital government are used to refer to the utilization of the Internet and other information and communication technologies (ICT) effectively in public sectors. In e-government development activities, the concern is often in building new means to support and strengthen democracy (e.g., Watson, Alselsen, Evjemo, & Aarsæther, 1999). In other cases, the main concern may be in supporting the work of people in public sectors (e.g., Mustajärvi, 2003), or in building new kinds of services for citizens (e.g., Lyytikäinen, Tiitinen, & Salminen, 2000). Common to most development activities is the need to have the content of public sector information repositories available on information networks, including the Internet, extranets, and intranets of particular organizations. The content production practices have a major effect to what extent digital content is accessible and how well the content supports e-government goals. In planning new kinds of e-government solutions, it is important to understand the different alternatives for producing information assets and the consequences of the solutions. In the digital era, the actors on public sector have to update continuingly their content production strategies and practices for effective ICT utilization. In this article, we will introduce three strategies for content production and discuss the practices related to the strategies. We will also evaluate the benefits and challenges of each of the strategies. We will demonstrate the strategies and practices by examples from the Finnish legislative environment. Data about the case environment has been collected during long-term collaboration of researchers at the University of Jyväskylä with the Finnish Parliament and ministries (Salminen, 2003).