Knowledge Management in Electronic Government

&quote;We know more than we can tell and we can know nothing without relying upon those things which we may not be able to tell&quote; (Michael Polanyi) The importance of knowledge management (KM) is increasingly recognized in the public sector and in relation with e-government implementations. Because governments and public administrations deal with information and knowledge on a large scale, this domain is particularly predestined to actively practice KM: much of the work of public authorities refers to the elaboration of data, infor- tionandknowledgeoncitizens,businesses,society,themarkets,theenvironment, laws, politics, etc. Evenmany&quote;products&quote;ofpublicadministrationandgovernmentaredelivered intheshapeofinformationandknowledgethemselves.Thisaspectespecially- plies to the policies, management, regulation and monitoring of society, markets and the environment. With the recent evolution of e-government projects, high expectations are linked. As a consequence, e?cient support from adequate KM conceptsandtoolstoexploitthehugeknowledgeandinformationresourcesdealt with in e-government is expected. Not only the trend towards a knowledge society calls for KM solutions. C- rent e-government developments signi?cantly in?uence the public sector. These require the rethinking of knowledge distribution and management: Citizen- and business- oriented service delivery, including one-stop service provision, inter- ganizationalco-operationbetweengovernmentagenciesandcross-bordersupport for complex administrative decision making call for largely opened-up access to remote information and knowledge resources. E-government - and speci?cally the concept of online one-stop government - integrates dislocated information and knowledge sources into a global virtual knowledge fabric.