"People are rejecting proposals because they do not fit into 'technical' or 'socio-economic' [categories]. E-government is multidisciplinary," Maria Wimmer, professor of e-government at Koblenz-Landau University in Germany, told E-Government Bulletin.
Wimmer is leading 'eGovRTD2020' (http://www.egovrtd2020.org/), a commission-funded project to survey government IT managers, policymakers, academics and industry representatives on the predicted state of e-government in 2020 in areas such as use of technology, communication with citizens and public sector organisational structure.
The next step, said Wimmer, will be to conduct a 'research gap analysis' to discover which areas require new research, followed by a "roadmap for research" to be presented to the European Commission next year in the project's final report.
"Many countries lack funding for research in e-government," Wimmer said. "Policies are short-sighted and do not look ahead to future developments and needs - we need to change minds; we need to impact policymaking."
The research team is drawn from institutions in Australia, France, Germany, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Slovenia and the US.
