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Using E-Government

By Elizabeth Wasserman

Alice Marshall admits to being a procrastinator. She's always registering her car or paying her taxes at the very last minute. That's why Marshall, who runs a busy public relations agency in Virginia, is so ecstatic that more and more government services are now offered over the Internet.

"It's one less trip you have to make, one less thing to put in the mail," says Marshall, who blogs about electronic government services web sites, a.k.a. e-government. So far Marshal says she has used e-government sites to pay property taxes, register her car and download federal tax forms -- and that's just the beginning.

The public services available online from federal, state and local governments now numbers in the thousands of services from coast-to-coast, although no one really knows the exact count. During the past two years, growth among users of e-government services has been in double digits, according to Paul Taylor, chief strategist for the Center for Digital Government (centerdigitalgov.com), a national research and advisory institute. The majority of people who use e-government conduct their business after hours, when it's convenient for them, he says.
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