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1. Introduction
1.1 Background
According to Fountain (2003), e-government research is “research related to the intersection of government practices and information technology”. In the same sense, Dias (2019) assumed that e-government research deals with the study of the use of information and communication technology (ICT) by governments in their different but complementary and interrelated dimensions.
The term e-government appeared in the late 1990s (Grönlund and Horan, 2005), and according to Heeks and Bailur (2007), this term was first used in 1997, while the term electronic government was used before that date in the 1993 U.S. National Performance Review. At that time, the term “electronic” was used to denote modern, new, and future-oriented projects powered by information and communication technologies. Moreover, the term digital government was used interchangeably with electronic government (Scholl, 2017).
Generally, public funding in both the United States and Europe has played a role in the emergence of e-government research through the support of ICT projects directed at improving government operations (Scholl, 2020c). In 1998, the US National Science Foundation released the first appeal for research grant proposals in the digital government research program, and in 1999 began holding annual workshops for holders of this grant (Ciment, 2003; Dawes et al., 2004). Shortly after the United States, the European Union started, under the Fifth and Sixth Framework Programs, to fund research programs related to e-government (Scholl, 2020c). Since then, e-government research began to emerge and grow significantly in size and content (Przeybilovicz et al., 2014). Subsequently, several scientific conferences were held, and specialized journals emerged to discuss and publish e-government research (Grönlund and Horan, 2005).
Between 2001 and 2007, Several journals and conference outlets were dedicated to publishing e-government research, including the International conference on digital government research (DG.O), International Conference on Electronic Government (EGOV), International Conference on Theory and Practice of Electronic Governance (ICEGOV), Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS), Electronic Journal of e-Government (ECEG), Journal of Information Technology and Politics (JITP), formerly known as The Journal of E-Government, Electronic Government (EG), International Journal of Electronic Government Research (IJEGR), and Transforming Government: People, Process, and Policy (TGPPP) (Grönlund and Horan, 2005; Harihara and Basden, 2008; Scholl, 2020c). Besides, there were Government Information Quarterly (GIQ) and Information Polity (IP), which...