Trakhtenberg Anna
The paper shows that e-government rhetoric constantly comes into conflict with the practice of e-government implementation. In rhetorical terms, e-government is seen as a tool for REGO designed to provide the transition from rigid hierarchical structures of traditional public administration to integrated “one-stop government”. Information technologies make possible for authorities to do more with less and ensure citizen empowerment. This approach combines normative theory of democracy with technocratic utopia. But the real process of e-government implementation regularly runs into organizational resistance, and it is accompanied by numerous failures of costly projects. Conservative officials who do not want to work as expected are usually blamed for these failures. However, from the neo-institutionalist point of view, the failures are the result of public administration desire to confirm its legitimacy, at the same time ignoring the effectiveness of the proposed measures. It seems that new technologies implementation is a ritual that allows showing the administration modernity and social responsibility. It means that e- government may cause some incremental changes that could potentially generate cumulative effect.
Keywords: e-government, new public management theory, neo-institutionalism, institutional isomorphism, institutional myth.