The topic eGovernment has developed as one of the most important enabler for the innovative administration during the last years. Numerous efforts of different administrations as well as of economy and research show that the application of innovative information and communication technologies constitutes a crucial element for the modernization of public administrations worldwide. Many activities within the field of eGovernment have carried out at the Institute for Information Systems (IWi) at the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI). The Competence Center eGovernment was founded in 2001 in order to meet the increasing interest in eGovernment. The goal of the competence center is a comprehensive knowledge transfer between research, academia, and administrative practice. The knowledge and insights gained from the IWi projects in the area of public administration should remain available for extended use beyond the respective project terminations.
The Institute for Information Systems (IWi) has elaborated expertise and knowledge since the beginnings of eGovernment. Thus, an interdisciplinary knowledge basis for the experience exchange between administrative research and practice is realized. A key factor in this effort is the number of realized co-operations with institutions from research and administrative practice, whereas extensive contacts have been established on national and European levels. The Competence Center managed and currently manages projects on the European level (www.r4egov.info, www.ejustice.eu.com), the federal level (www.rafeg.de), as well as the state level (“Project innoGov”, “Project Search Support for Regional Funding” and “Project Online Services Saar 2.0”). The basis of project work is the high position of the Institute in the context of process management. The connection of the project areas process management and eGovernment meets the necessary change of a task-oriented to a process-oriented and innovative administration. Through this, relevant issues of eGovernment can be addressed, as for example process-oriented service creation, inter- and intra-organizational integrated service processes or process-oriented collaboration of federal units. In addition to the execution of projects, studies regarding the issue eGovernment are also made. Thus, a federal wide empirical survey concerning the issue “Process orientation in public administrations” was realized, for example. An international analysis in order of a company provided findings as regards management of low-structured processes in public administration.