FROM MY BOOKSHELF-1:eGov-1 (Vesion 3: Full Version): Review of
Bhatnagar (2004 Sage) by Dr D.C.Misra

Book Review of

Bhatnagar, Subhash (2004): E-Government: From Vision to
Implementation: A Practical Guide with Case Studies, New Delhi,
Sage.202 pp with Bibliography and Index.

This book review is available in this forum under three versions:

Version 1: In A Nutshell
Version 2: Abridged Version
Version 3: Full Version

This post carries Version 3: Full Version
____________________________________________________________________
BOOK REVIEW
by Dr D.C.Misra*
(Version 3: Full Version)
_____________________________________________________________________
E-GOVERNMENT CALLS FOR FUNDAMENTAL TRANSFORMATION:
CASE STUDIES SHOW THE WAY

Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?


--- T.S.Eliot (1934)

Citizens are the e-government experts.


--- PCIP (2002)

The book**, according to the author, is a result of the two years of
intensive work done at the World Bank in which the field experience
had to be distilled and communicated to the Bank staff through
workshops and training programmes. The book claims to
provide <practical insights for IT professionals, civil servants
and managers from multilateral institutions interested in the
implementation of e-government>,and is intended to serve as
<a practical guide for developing e-government at a local, state
or national level>.The author, who has been a professor of
information systems at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad
(IIMA),currently shuttles between Ahmedabad (for teaching and
research at IIMA) and Washington, D.C. (for leading an initiative on
E-Government at the World Bank) (see his detailed bio at
http://www.iimahd.ernet.in/~subhash/).The book is organised in seven
chapters.

Chapter 1 deals with definition and scope of e-government. Here the
author gives, what may be called by now the conventional definition
of e-government (which I call Level I definition, necessary but not
sufficient, for e-governance; see Misra 2004) and draws distinction
between e-government and e-governance, noting the well-known, oft-
repeated four-stage evolution of e-government, namely, Web Presence
- Limited Interactions - Transactions - Transformation. The
evolutionary stages are also in increasing order of difficulty.
Examples thus abound in the first stage of Web presence (There are
very few countries now which do not have Web presence) while we have
limited examples of fourth stage of transformation (for example, the
Bhoomi project in Karnataka which derecognised manual land records
one fine morning (a case of limited transformation) or eCitizen
portal in Singapore which is related to life episodes of a citizen (a
case of total transformation).

Chapter 2 focuses on understanding e-government in developing
countries. Here the author enumerates some of the documented case
studies of e-government applications from different developing
countries classifying them in four categories of (i) delivering
citizen services, (ii) delivery of services to business and industry,
(iii) increased efficiency within government, and (iv) empowering
citizens through access to information. He then enumerates seven key
trends of e-government in developing countries.

Chapter 3 deals with potential benefits and impact of e-government.
Here the author enumerates, among other things, the well-known
potential benefits of e-government, namely, increasing transparency,
reducing administrative corruption, improving service delivery,
improving civil service performance, empowerment and improving
government finances, and cites examples to illustrate his claims. He
concludes that <The scope of e-government as it is implemented
today is not wide enough to have generated a macro-level impact that
is discernable through aggregate indicators. In vestments in e-
government are relatively small to have created such a macro
impact>.(p-60).

This, of course, is true. However, e-government should not, and
cannot, be separated from the wider context of information and
communication technology (ICT) for Development (ICT4D). Only in its
narrow view e-government is concerned with its internal (relating to
bureaucracies) and external (relating to citizens) practices and
processes. When we say <We don't need more government or
less government, we need better government>.(Holmes 2001, p-1)
(emphasis original), the endorsement becomes a reinforcement of sorts
for the status quo, howsoever unsatisfactory. E-government then
ceases to be an instrument for any radical transformation of
governance and becomes, at the best, merely an attempt at incremental
improvement in government practices and processes.

In its broader view, which this reviewer espouses, e-government has
to be viewed as an instrument for development in new economy
(characterised by globalisation and emergence of ICT). The real
challenge of e-government thus lies in this broader
conceptualisation - treating it as a development resource and
preparing us to face the challenges of governance in the 21st
century. And by way of caution, it should not be forgotten that, as
reported by Clarke (2003, Box 1, p-5),<The new economy provides
opportunities for development but also poses new dangers such as
widening of the digital gap between rich and poor>.

What is of great concern to e-government policy makers and
practitioners is the estimate that a vast majority of e-government
projects is total or partial failure. Heeks (2003, p-2) has, for
example, reported that as many as 35 percent e-government projects
for development are total failures, 50 percent are partial failures
and only 15 percent e-government projects are successes. The book
under review also makes a note of this estimate at the outset (p-17)
but ignores to look into these alarming statistics, entailing a wide
variety of heavy costs, despite being concerned with e-government
case studies. Heeks (2004, p-2), does, however, propose an answer by
viewing e-government as <a global project of technology
transfer>.

Chapter 4 attempts to provide guidelines, based on a dozen case
studies, for implementing e-government projects successfully. These
guidelines, however, fail to stimulate thinking or inspire action as
e-government projects are not only location-specific but also sector-
pacific requiring development of location- or sector-specific
planning and implementation, as the case may be. Moreover these
guidelines, generalised on the basis of mere dozen case studies,
unnecessarily circumscribe the domain of e-government, denying
insights from e-government projects in other locations and sectors.

Chapter 5 makes a more ambitious attempt to provide guidelines for
designing a country-wide strategy for e-government. Here it is
necessary to distinguish between strategy and policy. Governments
seldom, if at all, design a strategy but they do, however, typically
develop policies which usually take into account issues, among
others, of resource constraints and equity. The author also appears
to advocate launching of <small-scale quick-strike> projects,
as distinct from pilot projects, for their demonstration effect.
Experience, however, does not appear to support this prescription.

In India, for example, the computerised railway reservation system,
formally known as Passenger Reservation System (PRS), by any
reckoning, an outstanding success, and the project, encompassing the
length and breadth of India, can by no means be described as small.
The progress in the project has been gradual €  '¶ the pilot was
launched in 1986 (version I) and incremental gains were made in 1987
(version II) and 1990 (version III) with five independent PRS nodes
at Secunderabad, New Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai and Chennai networked on
April 18, 1999. Launched on February 28, 2000, the PRS Web site,
though very badly-designed and user-unfriendly, <has in a very
short span of time become one of the most popular web sites in India,
with peak daily hits of the order of 1.7 million hits per day>.
(CRIS 2004).

The railway reservation portal came into being as a result of public
demand. As such it is an example of demand-driven e-government
(railways are a public monopoly in India) and its success makes the
point that a demand-driven e-government project has a far greater
chance of success than a supply-driven e-government project. It also
underscores the point made by Thornton (1997, p-35) in Rethinking
Government that <In some cases, progress will require that
governments make tough decisions that disrupt status quo or eliminate
entrenched bureaucracies>. Privatisation of Delhi Vidyut Board, a
public electrical utility, is another case in point though private
companies are yet to show any significant improvement either in power
supply or in consumer service.

Chapter 6 purports to be a brief essay on future of e-government. It,
however, appears to be inappropriately titled as no where does it
discuss the <future> of e-government, leave alone make any
informed guesses about it. Instead the author deals here with pious
platitudes like <A major task is to build institutional capacity
for reform>(p-93). True, but how? Any example? As a guide
perhaps,it should have shown the way. On the same page, he states
that <technology is just 20 per cent of the whole effort (Figure
6.2)>. The share of other enablers of e-government are 30 percent
business process reengineering, 40 percent change management and 10
percent managing partners (Figure 6.2, p-93). Elsewhere, however, he
changes these percentages and brings <luck> also into play by
stating the share as 20 percent technology, 35 percent business
process reengineering, 40 percent change management and 5 percent
luck!(Bhatnagar (n.d.),slide 19 of 25). A reader, who is liable to be
confused, is surely also entitled to know the basis of such
quantification failing which the percentages become
<grapevine> statistics circulating among experts (call them
heuristic if you are academically inclined).

Chapter 7, the last chapter, forming nearly half of the book and
which indeed could be said to be the main content of the book,
provides a dozen case studies on e-government <structured in
similar format>. The book, according to the author, <is based
on the analysis of two dozen cases from sixteen countries in the
developing world where e-government has been implemented to address
social and economic development challenges>(p-13). It is not
known as to why the author excluded a dozen cases from the
publication. Even a brief listing of such cases would have helped the
reader better appreciate his analysis. The book is wound up by a
brief bibliography, an annotated list of web resources and an index.

The book revolves round the case studies. The dozen case studies
dealt by the author are: 1. Bhoomi (computerisation of land records
in Karnataka), 2. Gyandoot (community-owned rural internet kiosks in
Madhya Pradesh), 3. CARD (computer-aided registration of deeds in
Andhra Pradesh), 4. FRIENDS (online payments to the government in
Kerala), 5. VOICE (computerised municipal service centres in
Vijayawada, Andhra Pradesh), 6. Income Tax (online income tax
administration), 7. eProcurement (experience from the developing
world), 8. Customs (Indian customs online), 9. Interstate Checkposts
(computerised interstate checkposts in Gujarat), 10. SmartGov
(secretariat (sachivalaya) e-application in Andhra Pradesh, 11. QPEN
(anti-corruption project in Seoul), and 12. CVC (an anti-corruption
project in India).The e-government practitioners in India are quite
familiar with these Indian cases due to their frequent coverage in
print media and on the web and non-Indian cases, being remote, are
only of academic curiosity. The cases offered thus fail to excite the
reader.

Pioneered by the Harvard Business School in 1920s, the case method
(HBS 2004) is the mainstay of this well-known business
school€  '²s
management programme (More than 80 percent of HBS classes are built
on the case method and during their 2-year stay at HBS, students
study more than 500 cases). What do we do then with mere dozen cases
in the book under review? Typically, a case is a detailed account of
a real-life situation, <describing the dilemma of the
<protagonist> a real person with a real job who is confronted
with a real problem>(ibid). Again, <Though every case is
different, nearly all center on one overarching question: What should
the protagonist do?>(emphasis original, ibid). No such dilemmas
are posed in the e-government cases given here, considerably reducing
the value of the <Guide> to the e- government practitioners.

The case studies, formally grouped under the title <Case Studies
of Social and Economic Impacts of E-Government>, which appear to
have been undertaken by the author on behalf of the World Bank,
follow a structured format of 1. Application Context, 2. New
Approach, 3.Implementation Challenges, 4. Benefits and Costs, 5.
Potential Future Benefits, and 6. Key Lessons. The structured format,
however,does not have much value to the readers as the cases, being
from varied fields ranging from computerisation of land records in
Karnataka, India to anti-corruption project in Korea, defy
comparison. It would have been better if case studies pertaining to a
specific topic, say, computerisation of land records, a subject of
basic importance in agrarian economies, had been highlighted.
Incidentally a central sector scheme, fully funded by the central
government, ministry of agriculture, in early 1990s on
computerisation of land records in the states laid the foundation for
subsequent blossoming of well-celebrated projects like Bhoomi in
Karnataka.

Technologies, organizations and administrative practices have always
co-evolved (La Porte et al. 2000, p-1). In dramatic numbers, public
organizations in an increasing number of countries are embracing
modern networked communications such as the World Wide Web (the Web),
observe Demchak et al. (1998). In the process, they are creating the
foundations for governance in an information age (ibid). Worldwide,
more than 14,000 government agencies were found online in mid-2000, a
remarkable number given that the World Wide Web is a relatively
recent development. (Norris 2001, p-116). The global average of
government online use has increased from 28 percent in 2002 to 31
percent in 2003 (TNS 2003). By 2003, 91 percent or 173 out of 191
member states of the United Nations had a website presence (DESA
2003, p-14). A survey of 12 developed countries also shows that the
optimists (people who agree that e-government will make government
more efficient and more accountable) outweigh the pessimists (people
who disagree that e-government will make government more efficient
and more accountable) by a significant amount (Accenture 2004).
However, according to Global E-Government, 2002 report, the global e-
government still is in its infancy (West 2002), with developing
countries trailing behind the developed countries.

Bruno Lanvin (2002) in his preface to The E-Government Handbook for
Developing Countries, has noted: <There is no e-government
textbook and no e-government theory; knowledge comes from practice;
excellence comes from best practices>.(CDT 2002). But then one
is reminded of English poet T.S.Eliot's oft-quoted lines:
<Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the
knowledge we have lost in information?> The pearls of wisdom in
case studies are often hidden in, following Harvard terminology
again, the <cold-questions> which trigger thinking (and thus hopefully
prepare practitioners for action). No <cold questions> are
found in the routinised presentation of case studies in this book
under review,designated <structured format> by the author.

The publication of a book on e-government, however, does draw our
attention to the present e-government scenario in India which does
not appear to be very assuring. A compilation on <Problems of
Governance in South Asia> bought out by a New Delhi-based think
tank,for example, states that <While other regions of the world,
even the developed countries like the U.S., are not free from
<misgovernance>, South Asia has the dubious distinction of
being both poor and misgoverned>. (Pai Panandiker (ed.) 2000,
p-xi).Although published in 2000, when e-government had already taken
off in India with a bang, there is no mention of <e-government>
(or any of its variants)anywhere in the book leave alone a
contribution on it,despite the compilation being edited by an eminent
scholar and commentator on current affairs and coming out of a
reputed think tank in India!

Dawn of new public management (NPM) in developed countries in 1980s
calling for large-scale privatisation of public services has also, by
and large, left the developing countries untouched, notwithstanding
its advocates like Chakravarty (2004), who has been drawing our
attention to NPM now and then in print media. His advocacy of NPM
has, however, invited a rebuttal from Heine (2004) who has, based on
experience in Chile where NPM was applied with a vengeance from 1973
to 1989, contended that <The wave of the present, and of the
future,lies not in simply dismantling government in the somewhat
naïve belief that the problems will take care of themselves. They
won't>. And Heine is right. Past record in governance
supports him. Osborne and Gaebler (1992) who made an inspiring call
for re-inventing government and came out with an apparently
convincing agenda to make government community-owned, competitive,
mission-driven, results-oriented, customer-driven, enterprising,
anticipatory, decentralised and market-oriented, also failed to make
any impact on policy makers in administrative reforms in developing
countries.

Yet changes are taking place in developing countries, albeit at a
slow pace. Acceptance of e-government and its large-scale
introduction in developing countries is just one example of the
changes taking place. Why then has the e-government scenario in
India, a leading developing country, become suddenly so uninspiring?
It is not that the governments at the centre as well as in the
states have not made necessary commitments to e-government. For
example, 28 state/union territory governments have formulated
information technology (IT) policies and are executing them (DIT
2004a). Similarly, the central government has formulated an ambitious
National e-Governance Action Plan (2003-2007), which includes 22
mission mode projects, and is implementing the action plan (DIT
2004b).

Substantial investments in e-government too are being made. For
example, the central government proposed a total outlay of Rs 2,550
crore ($560 million) in 2003 for the national plan of e-governance.
Nasscom (National Association of Software and Service Companies), New
Delhi has predicted that state governments will spend close to a
staggering Rs 15,000 crore on computing their operations over the
next five years. (FE 2004). Nevertheless, despite sound objectives
and substantial investment, the progress of e-government in India
appears to have lost its initial momentum and the progress is also
not uniform across the states.

What could then be the reason? The answer perhaps lies in e-
government leadership. An OECD symposium on Government of the Future:
Getting from Here to There noted: <Leaders within government are
key to bridging the gap between the development and implementation of
reform> (OECD 2000, p-15). A Roadmap for E-Government in the
Developing World rightly notes that <E-leaders must not only
support e-government initiatives with words but also with actions
>(PCIP 2002, p-11). Caldow (2003), however, appears to have the
final words when she observes <It takes strong and sustained
leadership to reshape institutions>,and <Until leaders are
willing to inspire fundamental reform, e-government will remain
unfulfilled,an elusive concept>.

The potential for e-government in developing countries remains
largely unexploited (Ndou 2004, p-1). E-government in India has
reached a critical phase to-day. The first e-wave (1998-2004) of e-
government has ebbed. It lost, for example, its e-champions like the
former Chief Ministers of Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka. It also lost
India's <IT poster boy>, Dewang Mehta, who made Indians
feel that,with some justification no doubt, that <I> in
<IT> stood for <India>.The first e-wave also bypassed the
populous north India, often referred to as the <cow-belt> in
media, with the sole exception of IT enclave of Delhi but then
it is the national capital territory.The second e-wave (2004 - ) of e-
government, yet to take off, is thus in desperate need of a new band
of e-government leaders to give it requisite momentum. Any takers?

Sage India, which has already earned a well-deserved reputation for
quality publications in social sciences including publications on
information technology (IT), needs to be congratulated for bringing
out this timely publication on e-government. We hope more books on e-
government will follow from this stable. Reasonably priced and well
produced, the book should be read by all concerned with e-government
in developing countries. The writer too needs to be congratulated for
making a noteworthy contribution to the limited but growing
literature on e-government in developing countries.

References

Accenture (2004): eGovernment Leadership: High Performance, Maximum
Value, May, The Government Executive Series, available
http://a456.g.akamai.net/7/456/1701/5e33f326cdecd2/www.accenture.com/x
doc/en/industries/government/gove_egov_value.pdf (accessed July 26,
2004)

Bhatnagar, Subhash (n.d.): Enabling E-Government in Developing
Countries: From Vision to Implementation (presentation), available
http://www1.worldbank.org/publicsector/egov/lweek/Bhatnagar.pdf
(accessed July 26, 2004)

Caldow, Janet (2003): Lessons from Around the World, excerpted from
Delivery, Transformation, Measurement: Essays on 21st Century
Governance, Caspian Publishing Ltd., London, 2003, Available:
http://www-1.ibm.com/industries/government/ieg/pdf/lessonworld.pdf
(accessed July 18, 2004).

CDT (Center for Democracy & Technology) (2002): The E-Government
Handbook for Developing Countries, Washington, D.C., the Author.
November. A project of InfoDev and Center for Democracy & Technology,
available: http://www.cdt.org/egov/handbook/2002-11-
14egovhandbook.pdf (accessed: July 25, 2004).

Chakraverti, Sauvik (2004): Management Mantras: Make Way for New
Public Administration, The Times of India, New Delhi, July 14, p-18,
Wednesday.

Clarke, Matthew (2003): e-development? Development and the New
Economy, Helsinki, Finland, United Nations University / World
Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU/WIDER), Policy
Brief 7, December, available:
http://www.wider.unu.edu/publications/publications.htm (accessed:
July 25, 2004).

CRIS (Centre for Railways Information System), Indian Railways, New
Delhi (2004): Indian Railway€  '²s Reservation Enquiry Web Site,
at
http://www.indianrail.gov.in/ (accessed July 26, 2004).

Demchak, Chris C., Christian Friis and Todd M. La Porte (1998):
Reflections on Configuring Public Agencies on Cyberspace: A
Conceptual Investigation, University of Arizona, Cyberspace Policy
Research Group (CyPRC), available:
http:// www.cyprg.arizona.edu/publications/reflect.rft (accessed July
27, 2004). Published in Snellen, I.Th.M. and W.B.H.T.van de Donk
(eds.) (1998): Public Administration in an Information Age: A
Handbook, Amsterdam, IOS Press, pp 225-244.

DESA (Department of Economic and Social Affairs), United Nations
(2003): World Public Sector Report 2003: E-Government at the
Crossroads, New York, the Author. October. ST/ESA/TAD/SER.E/49.
Available (only for viewing):
http://unpan1.un.org/intradoc/groups/public/documents/un/unpan012733.p
df (accessed July 23, 2004).

DIT (Department of Information Technology, Ministry of Communications
and Information Technology, Government of India, Centre for E-
Governance) (2004a): State IT Policy, available:
http://egov.mit.gov.in/ceg1/index.asp (accessed July 19, 2004).

DIT (Department of Information Technology, Ministry of Communications
and Information Technology, Government of India) (2004b): National e-
Governance Action Plan, available:
http://egov.mit.gov.in/actionplan/about.asp (accessed July 19, 2004).

FE (The Financial Express) (2004): Convergence: E-gov Spend To Touch
Rs 15,000 Cr: Nasscom, New Delhi, April 13, Tuesday, available:
http://www.financialexpress.com/fe_full_story.php?content_id=56958
(accessed July 19, 2004).

HBS (Harvard Busuness School) (2004): The Case Method, at
http://www.hbs.edu/case/index.html (accessed July 23, 2004).
Heeks, Dr Richard (2003 ):Most eGovernment-for-Development Projects
Fail: How Can Risks be Reduced?, Manchester, United Kingdom,
Institute for Development Policy and Management (IDPM). iGovernment
Working Paper Series. Paper No.14, available:
http://idpm.man.ac.uk/publications/wp/igov/igov_wp14.pdf (accessed
July 24, 2004).

Heeks, Dr Richard (2004 ): eGovernment as a Career of Context,
Manchester, United Kingdom, Institute for Development Policy and
Management (IDPM). iGovernment Working Paper Series. Paper No.15,
available: http://idpm.man.ac.uk/publications/wp/igov/igov_wp15.pdf
(accessed July 24, 2004).

Heine, Jorge (2004): Reinventing Government: Wholesale Privatisation
is Not the Answer, The Times of India, New Delhi, July 21, Wednesday,
p-18.

Holmes, Douglas (2001): eGov: eBusiness Strategies for Government,
London, Nicholas Brealey. http://www.nbreley-books.com ,
available http://www.ibm.com/ibm/publicaffairs (accessed July 17,
2004)

Kanungo, Shivraj (1999): Making Information Technology Work, New
Delhi, Sage.

Kohli, Amit and Soumya Kaushik (2003): E-Governance: The Road Ahead,
Mumbai, National Institute of Industrial Engineering (NITIE),
available http://www.indiainfoline.com/bisc/egov.html (accessed July
22, 2004).

Lanvin, Bruno (2002): Preface, in CDT (2002) (q.v.)
La Porte, Dr Todd M., Dr Chris C.Demchak, and Dr Christian Friis
(2000): Webbing Governance: Global Trends across National level
Public Agencies, Tuscon, Arizona, University of Arizona and Fairfax,
VA, George Mason University, The Cyberspce Policy Research Group,
Published in Communications of the ACM, January, 2001, available
http://www.cyprg.arizona.edu/publications/acm.rtf (accessed July 28,
2004).

Madon, Shirin (2003): Evaluating the Developmental Impact of E-
governance Initiatives: An Exploratory Framework, London, London
School of Economics and Political Science, April, Working Paper
Series 124, (Work in progress), available
http://is.lse.ac.uk/wp/pdf/WP124.PDF (accessed July 28, 2004)

Misra, D.C. (2004): Defining eGovernment (forthcoming)

Ndou, Valentina (Dardha) (2004): E-Government for Developing
Countries: Opportunities and Challenges,The Electronic Journal of
Information Systems in Developing Countries, 18(1)1-24, July,
available http://www.is.cityu.edu.hk/research/ejisdc/vol18/v18r1.pdf
(accessed July 25, 2005)

Norris, Pippa (2001): Digital Divide: Civic Engagement, Information
Poverty, and the Internet Worldwide, Cambridge, United Kingdom,
Cambridge University Press

OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) (2000):
Government of the Future, Paris, the Author. Available:
http://www1.oecd.org/publications/e-book/4200081E.PDF (accessed July
18, 2004).

Osborne, David and Ted Gaebler (1992): Reinventing Government: How
the Entrepreneurial Spirit is Transforming the Public Sector, New
Delhi, Prentice Hall of India.

Pai Panandiker, V.A. (ed.) (2000): Problems of Governance in South
Asia, New Delhi, Konark Publishers. Under the auspices of Centre for
Policy Research, New Delhi.

PCIP (Pacific Council on International Policy), The Working Group on
E-Government in the Developing World (2002): Roadmap for E-Government
in the Developing World: 10 Questions E-Government Leaders Should Ask
Themselves, Los Angeles, CA, the Author, sponsored by Oracle and
Microsoft supported by Carnegie Corporation of New York, April,
available: http://www.pacificcouncil.org/pdfs/e-gov.paper.f.pdf
(accessed July 25, 2004).

Thornton, Kenneth R. (1997): Rethinking Government, Washington, D.C.,
International Business Machines Corporation

TNS (Taylor Nelson Sofres) (2003): Government Online: An
International Perspective 2003: A Global Summary, November,
available: http://www.tns-global.com/gostudy2003 (accessed July 19,
2004) (n=31,823 adults interviewed in 32 countries). TNS Consultants:
Victoria Parr and A. Dexter.

West, Darrell M. (2002): Global E-Government, 2002, Providence, Rhode
Island, Brown University, Center for Public Policy, available:
http://www.InsidePolitics.org/egovt02int.html (accessed July 25,
2004).
_____________________________________________________________________
*Dr D.C.Misra,the reviewer, a former civil servant, is New
Delhi€  '¶
based Independent eGov and IT Consultant. He was Chairman, Task Force
for IT Policy for Delhi and also a post-doctoral Visiting Fellow at
Queen Elizabeth House, International Development Centre, University
of Oxford,United Kingdom.E-mail: dc_misra [at]hotmail.com.(5.9.04)
[End].
_____________________________________________________________________
**Bhatnagar, Subhash (2004): E-Government: From Vision to
Implementation: A Practical Guide with Case Studies, New Delhi,
Sage Publications. ISBN: 81-7829-394-3 (India-PB) 202 pp Rs 280.

COMMENTS ARE ALWAYS WELCOME.