From information infrastructure to information polity

Most academic journals will reach a publishing watershed; a point in their existence at which a reorientation is deemed appropriate. So it is with Information Infrastructure and Policy as it transforms during this edition and the next into a wholly new journal, Information Polity: The International Journal of Government and Democracy in the Information Age. This edition remains true to the progenitor journal; the next will break with those roots and come to centre its contents upon research and debates surrounding the evolution to forms of electronic government and democracy. It will become the leading journal in the field, worldwide, encouraging both academics and practising officials and politicians to set out their ideas and join debate. It is my intention too that the new journal carries reviews of influential reports and books, thus becoming a core reference point for scholars and practitioners interested in these vital fields. The articles in this edition provide for suitable ‘hyphenation’ between new and old. Those articles by Pawlowska and by Loukis and Tsouma, for example, provide the basis for international comparisons that will remain a feature of the new journal. This editor is determined that the journal becomes an international reference point too. The article by Meijer sits within the enduring theme of changing spatial relationships emerging from the adoption by governments of new ICTs. The piece by Costopoulou and Anagnostou centres on the abiding and core issue of telecommunications infrastructure as it relates to the provision of e-services. Finally, the article by Edwards engages with that most contemporary of themes, ‘Internet democracy’, and does so in a way that raises many questions about the ways in which Internet discussions aimed at the enlargement of democracy might best be managed. All readers of this edition are encouraged to help the Editorial Board and myself to develop the journal in the direction of the aspirations that we have set for it. Let me have your articles, and please encourage others to contribute. 21st century government and democracy will become more and more a set of activities supported and delivered through information and communications technologies, including the Internet. This journal can stimulate debate and offer worldwide learning on the many issues that are developing around these emergent activities.