Rethinking Government-Public Relationships in a Digital World

Many have argued that new electronic technologies have the potential to transform how governments relate to users of public services. This article explores the limits of e-government as it is being conceived by testing it against three service recipient models: customer, client, and citizen. We argue that despite the opportunities that electronically-based service transformations present for enhancing democratic citizen engagement and the power of clients, the market-inspired customer image is likely to emerge as the most powerful way in which service recipients are characterized and addressed. The business architecture of e-government being installed today in the pursuit of better customer relationship management may also represent a decreasingly attractive medium for client empowerment and democratic interactions between service recipients and government.