Innovating Government: An Introduction to the Book

Abstract

The narratives in this book can be positioned against a background of a rapidly changing societal and policy landscape, both empirically and theoretically, in light of turbulent technological developments and new social paradigms. Since the mid-1990s, many Western governments have ‘embraced the idea that new technologies might be exploited to “reinvent” their own activities’ (Bellamy and Taylor 1998). Hence, fueling the new paradigm of the reinvented government, as elaborately considered by Osborne and Gaebler (1992), under the New Public Management philosophy, and rendering notions of business-like and customer-driven government which are facilitated by the introduction of ICTs in public administration and a growing interconnectivity of public organizations and policy spheres. Since then we have seen transformations in many areas of public administration under the heading of electronic government or e-government.

Contribution received in 2010.

The first part of this chapter is based on research published in Van der Hof et al. 2009.