Solving Legal Issues in Electronic Government: Authority and Authentication

This article is an overview of some of the legal themes and issues faced by governments in the electronic age, with particular regard to their own operations: electronic service delivery and the administration of government itself. Electronic government is the performance of any function of government using electronic records and electronic communications. It may involve, in the language of the Uniform Electronic Commerce Act, ‘‘us[ing] electronic means to create, collect, receive, store, transfer, distribute, publish or otherwise deal with documents or information.’’ The term thus covers the provision of governmental services to the public, including commu- nication from the public to the government. It also extends to the ‘‘back office’’ of government, the methods of public administration within the Executive Branch of government and between government and those who supply goods and services to it. The term is sometimes used to extend to regulation of private activities carried on electronically, either as extensions of traditional activity or as new types of con- duct made available by means of electronic communica- tions. The current paper does not address such questions