The emerging information society challenges relations between public agencies and citizens in many ways. Providing e-services on the Internet and using other forms of information and communication technologies are basic components of e-government. E-services as such are innovations – even if the service itself existed before – as they are a new way of producing and organizing the service. For secure use and successful implementation of innovations in public contexts, the innovation must be considered legitimate and related to policies.

   The European Union and all other levels of government form policies, which are translated among the various levels to manage the useful, secure praxis of e-services. Translation in organisational terms takes place across governmental levels in the multi-level governance chain and secondarily from technical to administrative settings. Since the Swedish public administration relies on a dual steering approach, with strong, constitutionally mandated regional and local autonomy, such policies cannot be forced onto regional and local public agencies. Instead, European and national policy statements become soft policy instruments in the local context, and their implications rely on local uptake in the specific setting and on the competencies of the professionals in local public administration. 

   Since this is a new, emerging field of innovative policy and practice, our analysis will build on an inductive methodological approach. The theoretical framework of policy and technology translation allows inclusion of this broad process of changes. Our focus here on the translation process is to highlight translations both across levels in multi-level settings and as constructions of meanings of security. The conclusion is that the organizational settings of multi-level governance are greater constraints than new technology for implementation of public e-services.