Development of e‐government: a STOPE view

Abstract The transition from conventional government services to e‐government services is becoming an international trend in various parts of the world. This transition is useful in two main ways. It provides benefits not only to the government, but also to all organizations and people, contributing to what is now known as the digital economy and the well being of the society. The transition is also an opportunity for the government to reorganize its services and reduce, or even eliminate, unnecessary overheads and inefficiencies that may exist in its traditional services. This paper uses the STOPE ( Strategy / Technology / Organization / People / Environment ) development profile to explore the transition to e‐government, and to support its continuous improvement. The paper identifies e‐government within the broad scope of e‐development towards the digital economy using STOPE. It describes its basic processes, and emphasizes its potential benefits. The paper also discusses maximizing these benefits using proven techniques, including TQM ( Total Quality Management ), BPR ( Business Process Re‐engineering ), and Six Sigma; in addition to experience accumulated by early e‐government adaptors. Based on STOPE, recommendations on maximizing the benefits are then introduced. Finally conclusions and potential future work are discussed. In this respect, a specific future work concerned with STOPE‐based development of typical e‐government services is proposed. The work would be useful for standardizing basic e‐government services at the national and international levels, so that well‐designed e‐government services can be globalized. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.