Who pays for e-government?

When building or hosting an e-government application, Gov-Connect Inc.

will bill the government for the work, whether it's based on a traditional

time-and-materials contract or on the system's transaction volume, said

Paul Doty, GovConnect's executive vice president of sales and marketing.

The company has not and will not be paid for work based on transaction fees

that citizens or businesses pay to use the e-government application, he

said.

In fact, payments based on user-transaction fees have been common in

the state and local markets. For example, most state and local systems

that EzGov Inc. has built are financed with this model, according to the

company. But most observers and even companies that use the model expect

it to change.

"I believe the transactional model will continue, because it aligns

our interest with our government customers," said Ed Trimble, president

and chief executive officer of EzGov. "But I think in most cases it will

be paid by the government."