EUKN - European Urban Knowledge Network - Success Factors of E-government in communities (MEDIA@Komm)

Success Factors of E-government in communities (MEDIA@Komm)

Introduction

E-government in German municipalities is going to develop very quickly. In spite of that quality of community websites varies heavily. A standardisation is still not easy to achieve.

Proposition

MEDIA@Komm started in 1998 with a competition in which 136 towns, cities and local communities took part with their concepts. At the end of round one ten prize-winners were selected by an advisory council. After developing their outlined ideas in round two three prize-winners were selected. During the implementation phase, these three prize-winners should develop, trial, install and demonstrate their proposition for an implementation of virtual town halls. The development and implementation of the projects was accompanied by parallel research of Difu and three other institutes. The total subsidies given by the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology, BMWi (from Oct, 2002 until the end of the project by the Federal Ministry of Economics and Labour, BMWA) totalled to 50 mill. DM (ca. 25 mill. Euro).

Description

The online-document "E-government in communities - 10 factors of success" is conceptionalized as a handbook for communities to plan, create and sustain their community websites. It contains more than 300 FAQ's, more than 200 recommendations for action and numerous examples, experiences from cities and regions that participated in Germany´s large E-government competition (MEDIA@Komm) but also from other countries. Furthermore it contains empirical data and documents.

Background information

The accompanying research in three German cities and regions which were well advanced in the field of e-government should bring good practises to a broader publicity. Research was operated in a triangular interaction of evaluation, moderation and advice/support.

Methodology

Description of the starting situation. Review of existing situation (empirical interviews) with a special emphasis of the prize-winners. The proposed projects had been compared with activities outside the three commended concepts.
Results of the study were integrated into a criterion-oriented overall evaluation of the three concepts implemented by the prize-winners. From this evaluation, recommendations for action had been derived for the continued development of the solutions in the participating towns and cities, and also for their suitability for transfer to other local communities.
Creation of a cooperation and communication network including three prize-winners of the competition with their project partners, developers of technical solutions and applications, potential users of applications (e.g. citizens and companies) and potential publicity partners (e.g. media, users) etc.

Conclusions

The long-term success of local community e-government is determined by far more fac-tors than are often assumed. On-line applications and their benefits are only one aspect. One of the main insights of Administrative Science on the subject of e-government is that the technology or the applications on their own are not the key to successful e-government. In fact, there is a whole range of factors such as organisational measures, strategic procedures, qualifications, communication, partnerships, obtaining resources, standardisation and much more.

Contact info

Deutsches Institut für Urbanistik (Difu)
Germany
http://www.difu.de/
Busso Grabow, tel. +49 (0) 30 39001-248

Publication date

01/10/2003

Researcher

Deutsches Institut für Urbanistik (Difu)

Cities

Germany: Bremen, Esslingen, Nuernberg

Links

Media@Komm E-Government

Document type

research

Themes

Urban Policy > Social inclusion & integration > Community development

Keywords

Community websites