ABSTRACT
As the dot.com bubble expanded and grew to full size, there was a near avalanche of e-business books touting the meaning of “e-” as the quest to create and capture profits in “new ways.” In hindsight, however, it is clear that the implicit connection between e-business and “new ways of profits” had more to do with Wall Street mania than reality. The irony is that it is the government arena, where the focus on profits is absent, that provides the most potent insights on the value and realities of e-Service. This is because in a government context, we can remove from our thinking the factors that were the main drivers for e-business during the dot.com boom—namely, and succinctly, fear and greed. Fear arose from the many predictions, and some actual observations, that traditional businesses were being “blown to bits” (Evans and Wurster 2000). It appeared that nearly all traditional businesses were in line to be toppled by Internet-savvy teenagers at work in their garages. For this reason, e-business jumped overnight to the top of nearly every CEO’s agenda as pressure from stockholders, customers, and competitors rose to a peak. Running hand in hand with fear was greed, about which, as an ardent capitalist, I certainly make no negative value judgment, for, to paraphrase a classic movie line, “Greed is often good.” Greed led to soaring stock values and the creation of new dot.com fortunes, although many would subsequently be lost. As hyped by the media, greed drove the message that e-business was the only path to profits in the “new economy.”
