Requirements Practices in E-Government Solution Development

E-government research and practice have been dominated by concerns with the impact of technology on constituents and public organizations, and with IT project success factors. In this paper, a critical review of the role and implementation of requirements methods and practices in the e-government solution development process is conducted. It is argued that the limited amount of literature on the subject suggests that requirements engineering is largely ignored or haphazardly applied in the public sector, and that this state of affairs has not been sufficiently examined in academic research. Requirements practices must be analyzed specifically in the context of e-government due to the distinctive challenges experienced by government agencies in the areas of user satisfaction with online services, constituent representation in solution planning, enterprise systems implementation, and COTS selection and integration.