Towards service integration in electronic government implementations

Service integration is one of the most critical issues affecting electronic government implementations all over the world. Providing integrated services to citizens, businesses, and all other stakeholders involved in electronic government activities at "one stop portal" is considered to be a big opportunity for governments to improve their services’ efficiency and effectiveness. This paper aims to provide a general background and theoretical foundation towards understanding the role of service integration and its importance in electronic government implementations in order to achieve the main aims and objectives of electronic government programs all over the globe by conducting a comprehensive literature review on electronic government, in general, and the issue of service integration in particular. The paper has shed a new light on the main concepts,definitions, characteristics, interactions, models, objectives, benefits, challenges and analytical bases for the topic. As a result, a model that is suggesting a set of key factors to accomplish service integration in electronic government implementations and clarifying the importance of service integration in electronic government implementations is proposed. The main contribution of the paper is to build a good understanding of the nature and role of service integration in electronic government implementations and to establish a foundation for further research in this domain. Keywords : E-government implementation; Service integration; Maturity models; One stop portal; Pillars; Critical factors