E-government : the youngest brother

Information technology has become a very important issue in citizens' relations. It started with e-commerce followed by e-business and ended by e-government. Firms and consumers use internet to provide information and perform many of their business actions. During the last years Governments also started to communicate with citizens through internet providing information and some services. After e-commerce and e-business now it is the Public sector that should face new technologies through e-government. In Spain in order to achieve the optimal technological level, municipalities and Autonomous Communities (AC), have used financial aid from the Spanish Central Government and European Union institutions. This paper examines the evolution of e-government implementation during the last decade (2001-2011) in the Spanish AC. It also assesses its effectiveness exploring three different institutional factors, namely economic aid, type and size of government. The study concludes that e-government has been adopted by all AC but it is still at an early stage. Nevertheless we can also see from the results that institutional economic aid does not necessarily foster the development of e-government implementation. Therefore we suggest that when giving financial aid to promote specific economic aspects in an economy, Institutions should carefully look at efficiency rather than concentrating exclusively on income per capita or gross domestic product, as they tend to do.