Introduction

The Internet and related technologies have dramatically changed the way we live, work, socialize, and even topple national governments. It is not surprising that they would have a sizeable impact on the way local governments relate to the public, especially their own citizens. As was the case with previous communication technology breakthroughs, such as radio and television, early commentators predicted that the Internet would revolutionize public administration and politics; as we gain some perspective and experience, we find more often that governments adopt Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) as part of their toolbox for facilitating efficient and citizen-oriented service delivery at all levels of government. Local governments, which by definition are the closest to their citizens, have not been an exception to this trend. Local governments across the industrialized democracies have adopted ICTs to facilitate electronic government or e-government in the areas of information dissemination, service delivery, and citizen engagement in government. With a focus on e-government at the local level, this study pursues both a macro and micro perspective of e-government functionality in the federal republics of Germany and the United States and unitary France and Japan. The macro perspective focuses on the state and scope of e-government functionality across a large number of randomly selected municipalities of all sizes in these advanced industrialized countries. Based on a small sample of case studies, the micro perspective analyzes the successful implementation of e-government in Seattle (United States), Nuremberg (Germany), Bordeaux (France), and Shizuoka City (Japan).