Knowledge Management in Electronic Government: 5th IFIP International Working Conference, KMGov 2004, Krems, Austria, May 17-19, 2004, Proceedings / Edition 1

“We know more than we can tell and we can know nothing without relying upon those things which we may not be able to tell” (Michael Polanyi) The importance of knowledge management (KM) is increasingly recognized in the public sector and in relation with e-government implementations. Because governments and public administrations deal with information and knowledge on a large scale, this domain is particularly predestined to actively practice KM: much of the work of public authorities refers to the elaboration of data, infor- tion and knowledge on citizens, businesses, society, the markets, the environment, laws, politics, etc. Even many “products” of public administration and government are delivered in the shape of information and knowledge themselves.Thisaspectespecially- plies to the policies, management, regulation and monitoring of society, markets and the environment. With the recent evolution of e-government projects, high expectations are linked. As a consequence, efficient support from adequate KM concepts and tools to exploit the huge knowledge and information resources dealt with in e-government is expected. Not only the trend towards a knowledge society calls for KM solutions. C- rent e-government developments significantly influence the public sector. These require the rethinking of knowledge distribution and management: Citizen- and business- oriented service delivery, including one-stop service provision, inter- ganizationalco-operation between government agencies and cross-bordersupport for complex administrative decision making call for largely opened-up access to remote information and knowledge resources. E-government – and specifically the concept of online one-stop government – integrates dislocated information and knowledge sources into a global virtual knowledge fabric.