Public-Sector E-Commerce and State Financial Management

Abstract

This article examines the development of public-sector e-commerce at the state level with a focus on financial management. The author first provides a review of the current literature and relevant theories on e-government in relation to e-commerce and financial management. Second, an overview of state issues, trends, and development in the domain of e-commerce are investigated with data from an e-commerce survey. Third, the author develops and tests a model of e-commerce development. An e-commerce index is tested against a series of management and social-economic characteristics of the states. The overriding factors that explain e-commerce development at the state level are information technology (IT) management capacity and social services IT capacity. The traditional factor used to explain technology diffusion, being state wealth, was not found to be statistically significant.