Same Bed, Different Dreams? A Comparative Analysis of Citizen and Bureaucrat Perspectives on E-Government

Recent studies indicate that bureaucrats and citizens are beginning to recognize the opportunities that information and communication technologies offer for governance as well as the constraints on such technologies. However, it is unclear how much, or even if, the perspectives of citizens and bureaucrats regarding e-government coincide or diverge. Using data collected from independently administered random surveys of citizens and bureaucrats in late 2001 by Hart-Teeter, this article first compares the perspectives of these two groups on aspects of e-government: their knowledge of it, attitudes toward it, concerns about it, and thoughts about the pace of its implementation. The article models the factors determining respondents’ preferred pace of e-government implementation, then discusses policy implications from top-down (Hamiltonian) and bottom-up (Jeffersonian) approaches.