Governing Electronically
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Also by Paul Henman
ADMINISTERING WELFARE REFORM: International Transformations in
Welfare Governance (co-edited with Menno Fenger)
CROSSTALK: Topics of Australian Church and Society (edited)
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Governing Electronically
E-Government and the Reconfiguration of
Public Administration, Policy and Power
Paul Henman
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© Paul Henman 2010
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this
publication may be made without written permission.
No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted
save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence
permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency,
Saffron House, 6-10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS.
Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication
may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
The author has asserted his right to be identified
as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs
and Patents Act 1988.
First published 2010 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN
Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited,
registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke,
Hampshire RG21 6XS.

The consequences of technology 5
Locating and understanding e-government 7
Structure and argument of the book 10
Undertaking the study 12
2 Conceptualising Technology and Government 17
The things things do 20
Governmentality 24
Information technology and government 28
3 The Governmentality of E-government 33
Part II Domains of E-government 45
4 E-Welfare 47
International context 47
The Australian welfare system 50
The e-welfare case studies 52
Moving forward: Future directions in e-welfare 69
5 E-Tax 73
International context 73
The Australian taxation system 78
The e-tax case studies 81
Future directions in e-tax 93
6 E-Health 95
International context 95
The Australian health system 98
The e-health case studies 100
Future directions in e-health 110
vii
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Part III Reconfigurations of Government 113
7 Reconfiguring Public Administration 115
The changing face of public administration 116

ABN Australian Business Number
ABR Australian Business Register
ACIR Australian Childhood Immunisation Register
AFDC Aid to Families with Children
AHIC Australian Health Information Council
ANAO Australian National Audit Office
ATO Australia Taxation Office
AUSTRAC The Australia Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre
B2B Business to Business
CEO Chief Executive Officer
CIO Chief Information Officer
CTPA Centre for Tax Policy and Administration
DGI Direction General des Imports
DoFA Department of Finance and Administration
DoFD Department of Finance and Deregulation
DoHA Department of Health Ageing
DSS Department of Social Security
EDI Electronic Data Interchange
EITC Earned Income Tax Credit
ELS Electronic Lodgement Service
FaCS Family and Community Services
FAO Family Assistance Office
GDP Gross Domestic Product
GIS Geographical Information System
GPII General Practice Immunisation Incentive
GST Goods and Services Tax
HCA Human Capital Alliance
HIC Health Insurance Commission
ICT Information and Communications Technology
IRAS Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore

evolving world wide web. These ICTs are central to modern life including
our personal and social relationships, our employment and our experience
of work, and the operation of the modern state. The advent of the inter-
net has generated new and heightened interest in the governmental oper-
ations of the state, spurring new debates about power, democracy, surveil-
lance and freedom.
The origins of my intellectual journey, of which is this book repre-
sents another step, began before the internet became commonplace
and euphorically celebrated. As such it contains a critical stance to much
e-government literature, which is neither theoretically nor historically
informed. By studying contemporary uses of ICTs by governments, this
book seeks to offer a more nuanced appreciation of what new and often
networked ICTs are contributing to the reconfiguration of public admin-
istration, policy and power. As such, this book does not present the use
of the internet (and other advanced ICTs) by government as a major
rupture in the practices of the state. Nor does it argue that such use is
simply a further extension of a continuous trajectory. In the same way
this book is neither an account against or for technology. A further
dualism that this book seeks to bypass is one that posits either that techno-
logy drives social change on the one hand, or social actors and dynamics
drive technological deployment and change. Rather, it argues that con-
temporary ICTs in their complex interweaving with social actors and
political endeavours, contribute subtly to the practice of government, but
nonetheless their contribution can be at times significant. Charting and
making visible these dynamics is the objective of this book. It is by
making such dynamics visible, the possibility of thinking and acting
otherwise is given birth.
As with all major projects, this one has been influenced by and con-
tributed to by a number of human and non-human actors. I particularly
want to thank the enormous intellectual and personal contribution of

Examining E-government
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1
Introduction
It is undeniable, we are governed by technology today. E-government,
or the use of electronic information and communications technology
(ICT) for the conduct of government (also referred to as digital gov-
ernment and electronic government), involves both a disrupture
and a continuation of the nature of government in modern nation
states. The emergence of the internet, in particular, has stimulated
a new interest among politicians, public administrators and academics
about the role of technology in government. Much has already been
written and debated, with considerable attention being given to
the meaning of e-government for contemporary public administration
and management, political participation and democratic processes.
The unique contribution of this book is its focus on the role of
e-government in public and social policy processes. In short, the
key message of this book is that e-government has underpinned
an evolving process in the reconfiguration of the very nature of
public and social policy, with implications for public administra-
tion, political power and citizenship. To illustrate this point, I begin
with an analogous story about information technology and scientific
discovery.
In 1999, the BBC aired its ground breaking ‘nature documentary’
Walking With Dinosaurs. In the last episode which explained the
making of that TV series, a discussion about the role of computer
modelling technology grabbed my attention. The developers explained
that while computer modelling was necessary to make the film, it
led to some unexpected scientific insights and surprises. The computer

the animals to life more than I had appreciated, first of all.’
The computer technology gave rise to scientific insight and discovery.
Palaeontologist 3: ‘The film-makers, in making computer models
and physical models, have actually been teaching the palaeonto-
logists some things. They’ve been showing us what works and what
doesn’t work. And, I’ve been delighted to see that the information
has actually been flowing in both directions.’
This account of the animation of dinosaurs using computer models
demonstrates that it is too simplistic to describe the technology as merely
a tool operating in accordance to human needs and visions. It is certainly
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true that people make decisions about using and building the tech-
nology, but the very operation of that technology independently can
generate unintended outcomes. It is widely acknowledged that the
deployment and use of technologies can often involve unintended
consequences. For instance, technologies may break down or not
operate in the manner intended and the creativity of humans may
mean that technologies are deployed by end users in ways not
originally envisaged by their designers. However, I am suggesting
something more significant: that technologies can give rise to new
knowledge and conceptual and intellectual advances, such as new
insights about the movement of long-extinct dinosaurs described
above. In this regard, technologies are creative, the result of a process.
Their action is innovative.
Transferring this insight from dinosaur animation to e-government,
this book’s key argument is that the use of advanced electronic in-
formation technologies can also create new ways of understanding,
being and acting both within and beyond government. Deploying
e-government can and does generate new insights into the way in

Law 1992). Despite these lessons, accounts of social change under-
pinned by a version of technological determinism still seem to
arise again, again and again, as do accounts underpinned by social
determinism.
There are two other conceptual predispositions attached to the deter-
minism debate. The first is agency. Deeply embedded within socio-
political thinking is the idea that only humans have agency, that it is
only humans who have consciousness to determine their behaviours.
4
Under such a definition, technological artefacts – such as today’s elec-
tronic information and communication technologies
5
– are not regarded
as having agency. However, such a dualism of humans who have agency
to initiate action and artefacts who do not, conceptually exorcises any
role of artefacts in social change. Rather, it is necessary to appreciate the
activity of artefacts that is independent of human agents. In this respect,
Bruno Latour and Michel Callon (Callon 1986a; 1986b; Latour 1988;
1991) have provocatively argued that non-humans are ‘actors’ (see also
Ashmore et al 1994). This nomenclature is not to argue that non-humans
have consciousness or intention, but that their activity needs to be under-
stood in some sense as independent from human intention. This
chapter’s opening story of dinosaur computer modelling illustrates this
point. Whether or not we decide to ascribe ‘agency’ to non-humans, we
must accept the reality that technology produces outcomes which are
significant and have an effect in a host of other arenas.
The second conceptual predisposition attached to the determ-
inism debate is the apolitical nature of technological artefacts, a pre-
disposition that flows partly from the first. It is often held that artefacts
have no politics. They are morally and politically neutral tools. The

to focus on the technological side of e-government and what it contri-
butes to the social side of government, in terms of public administra-
tion, policy and power. The reason this book gives primacy to material
technology (or non-humans) is because technological artefacts, and
particularly their productive power, has been overlooked. The book’s
message to social scientists who focus on humans is that technological
artefacts act; and what they do is important to the social domain. But
the book also has a message to those scholars who focus on artefacts:
that the contribution of technologies to the social domain must be
understood as arising from the complex interweaving of humans and
non-humans, and not as inanimate objects to be located within a social
context. Returning to the Walking with Dinosaurs anecdote, we need to
appreciate what the computer models do – namely give rise to new
insights about the gait of long-extinct animals – but we can not divorce
that contribution from the activity of scientists and movie-makers, their
prior knowledge, their quest for further knowledge and their activity in
building technologies to assist those intellectual dreams.
Locating and understanding e-government
E-government is now a topic of considerable academic, business
and government interest. Several academic journals are now devoted
to its inter-disciplinary study, and involve scholars as diverse as
information technology and information science, management and
Introduction 7
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organisational studies, and political scientists. Perri 6’s four-way
characterisation of e-government as involving e-democracy, e-service
provision, e-management and e-governance helpfully indicates the
breadth of activities involved in e-government (2004: 15–17).
For 6, e-democracy involves the use of digital networks by which gov-
ernment solicits or receives the views of citizens, businesses and other

ities. Policy making occurs first and dictates the activities of policy
administration. Administration is the handmaiden to policy making.
There are important political reasons for this demarcation, such as
ensuring policy is democratically accountable through the elected
government. Administrative technologies – of which information
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technologies are arguably the most important – are characterised as
part of policy administrative processes, rather than policy making
processes. They are regarded as neutral tools to implement policy. This
simplified conception of policy making has a strong hold on the acad-
emic and popular imagination. However, the fissure between policy
administration and policy making is far fuzzier in practice (Hudson
and Lowe 2004: ch. 12; Verschuere 2009). Indeed, the tradition of
street-level research has consistently made this point (Lipsky 1980;
Brodkin 2003). This book provides another challenge to rethink the
classical demarcation between policy making and policy administra-
tion, and thereby allows a space to rethink the role of technology in
government policy processes.
In addition to challenging widespread assumptions about public
policy and the role of technology in those processes, this work also
challenges implicit assumptions that e-government is ‘new’. As
Chapter 3 discusses in greater detail, the term ‘e-government’ arose in
the late 1990s as part of the popularisation of the internet and the
World Wide Web. This technological event stimulated intense acad-
emic and political interest in the use of ICTs for the conduct of gov-
ernment. Yet this interest largely failed to appreciate that computerised
information technologies have been operating in government for
decades and that the new internet technologies were in fact being built
on top of and reliant upon those technologies. As a result, lessons from

in the ways contemporary government is thought and practiced.
Structure and argument of the book
The remainder of this book is organised into three parts. Part I develops
the conceptual, methodological and analytical approach to e-govern-
ment. In particular, Chapter 2 presents a conceptual approach to tech-
nology and government such that technology can be understood as
exhibiting governmental capabilities. The conceptualisation of techno-
logy largely draws on Heidegger’s later work, while the idea of govern-
ment, as the ‘conduct of conduct’, draws from the writings of Michel
Foucault. In particular, the practice of government is understood as involv-
ing both ‘political rationalities’ and ‘technologies of government’. This
conceptualisation of government underpins a central thesis of this book,
namely that not only do political rationalities shape the ways in which
e-government is configured and used, but also the use of e-government
can shape the formation and configuration of political rationalities.
Chapter 3 builds on this conceptual approach to examine the very
idea of ‘e-government’. It examines ‘e-government’ as a governmental
rationality in order to destabilise its naturalness and highlight the
assumptions built into the terminology. The political ambitions for
reconfiguring public administration that are embedded in e-government
discourses is made visible, but so is the way the discourses involve a
historical forgetting of previous governmental uses of ICTs.
Part II presents six e-government case studies from three key policy
domains, namely welfare (Chapter 4), taxation (Chapter 5) and health
(Chapter 6). Readers not interested in the details of the e-government
case studies can bypass these and read Part III for the lessons from their
analysis. These studies provide empirical data with which to begin the
analysis of e-government’s contribution to reconfiguring public admin-
istration, policy and power (Part III). These are Australian case studies,
10 Governing Electronically

Technology is used as a system-wide response to govern systemic risk,
and e-government is leading to a growth in the conceptualisation and
conduct of targeted forms of risk government, whereby populations
are differentiated and governed differentially. Chapter 11 extends the
lessons of earlier chapters by examining the way e-government is enhanc-
ing complex government by both enabling policy and administration
to be increasing complex and simultaneously helping citizens and admin-
istrators to manage that complexity. Chapter 12, the final chapter, draws
the lessons from the earlier Chapters of Part III together to examine the
power effects of e-government and what this means to the reconfigur-
ation of citizenship, subjectivity and society. This chapter then draws the
threads together in a brief conclusion.
Introduction 11
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Undertaking the study
E-government is a field of great and frequent change with continual inno-
vation and development. The governmental application of advanced elec-
tronic information and communication technology is extremely varied in
terms of the policy and institutional domain, the nature of governmental
activity (for example, the administration and management of policy, the
delivery of services, the development, analysis and evaluation of policy,
the involvement of political and democratic processes and interacting
with and reporting by external organisations to government), the objec-
tives to which e-government is seeking to deliver and the specific tools
which are constructed and deployed. Because of this great flux and diver-
sity it is all too easy to approach the examination of e-government by
identifying and focusing on new and innovative technologies. Attention
and excitement typically gravitates to the new tools.
However, if the task is to try to understand the contribution of
e-government to the reconfiguration of public administration, policy