Information technology for redesigning government (API, KM, agents, and avatars)

Advanced information and communications technology (ICT) is an essential part of government operations in highly developed countries, and many functions (public service delivery, governmental decision-making, etc.) would not operate at all without sophisticated ICT. No doubt there is a huge potential for radically improving the quality of office work in local government departments and decreasing the average time needed per task per customer. This paper explores e-government from an ICT perspective and examines four areas: (i) administrative process improvement (API) - the public service counterpart of business process re-engineering; (ii) knowledge management (KM); (iii) agent technology; and (iv) avatars