The Next Phase or a New Revolution

Is AI-government more, or different, than the e-government? Since the inception of the Internet, scholars and practitioners have advocated the use of Internet in government. Commonly known as e-government, the concept materialized over several decades and we have seen various manifestations of that in different times and in different countries. In the early stages of the Internet revolution, scholars recognized that the transformational success of ebusiness has a role to play in government and identified some exciting features of e-government. It was clarified that e-government involves using technology to benefit citizens; it is about providing seamless and integrated service to citizens and building a partnership between government and citizens (Fang, 2002; Silcock, 2001). It was recognized that various configurations of relationships such as G2C, C2G, and G2G are possible (C is citizen, and G is government) (Fang, 2002). It was viewed as a paradigm change when traditional bureaucracy will be replaced by collaboration and network building (Tat-kei Ho, 2002). It was also recognized that the impact will not just be on federal and state level but also at municipal, town, or city levels of government (Moon, 2002). In fact, the optimists viewed it as a global phenomenon (Jaeger and Thompson, 2003).

As citizen benefit became the underlying driver of e-government service development and design, at least three integrated challenges were identified (Jaeger and Bertot, 2010): (1) a theoretical framework needed to be developed that focused on the strategic imperative, high-level concepts, and valuecentric transformation (Anthopoulos and Fitsilis, 2014); (2) a people-focused model needed to be in place to manage and educate the decision-makers, manage change, create awareness and a sense of urgency, and show how such a transformation will benefit citizens (Rowley, 2011; van Velsen et al., 2009; Wagner et al., 2016; Wassenaar, 2000); and (3) a technical design, process maps, infrastructure, analysis, interoperability, technology design, and implementation standards and approaches needed to be articulated and presented (Janssen and Veenstra, 2005; Pardo et al., 2012; van Velsen et al., 2009).