¹Department of Management, Information Systems and Innovation Group, London School of Economics, London, UK

Correspondence: A Cordella, Department of Management Information Systems and Innovation Group, London School of Economics, Houghton Street, London, WC2A 2AE, UK. Tel: +44 20 7955 6031; Fax: +44 20 7955 7385; E-mail: a.cordella@lse.ac.uk

Abstract

Bureaucratic institutions not only provide mechanisms to coordinate work activities in the public sector, but also serve to enforce the democratic values of equality and impartiality. This paper explores how recent approaches to e-government neglect these important dimensions of bureaucracy and proposes an alternative approach to e-government. This paper sets the wider new public management reform context to help explain some of the difficulties the NHS IT Projects are running into by 2007. The e-bureaucratic form is proposed as an e-government solution, which, while taking advantages of the information and communication technology as means of coordination, also help to enforce the values of equality and impartiality underpinned through the actions emanating from bureaucratic structures.