DOD class pinpoints e-gov definition

Ask 10 people “What is e-government?” and you’re likely to get 10 different answers.A professor and several students at the National Defense University figured that having a fuzzy definition might hinder efforts to establish e-government, so as a class project they set out last month to find the best definition.In the end, they settled on two, one from Microsoft Corp. and one from the government of Missouri.“They are both long definitions, but they cover the bases,” said Philip A. Irish III, a professor of information systems at the Defense school.The definitions “are not the Holy Grail, but at least we’re beginning to wrestle with the construct,” Irish said. “This is an area where the administration and Congress can come together.”Irish said his class will submit its report to the CIO Council and also to members of Congress working on e-government legislation.The class began the project by surveying all the existing definitions it could find.“It was clear there was no agreed-on formula everyone was using,” said Judith Orman, a student in Irish’s e-government class and chief of network services and operations in the Defense Information Systems Agency’s Contracting Division.The class gathered definitions from governments at all levels, including international, and from industry, Irish said. Then, each definition was tested for how well it fulfilled five criteria, also developed by class members.Criteria included whether the definition took into account the need for a citizen-centric view of government services and whether it addressed the need for leveraging IT, Rogers said.To see a detailed report on the class’ methodology and findings, go to and click on the Hot Topics/E-government button in the left-hand column.