The aim of the article is to analyze the implementation of municipal contact centers (CCs) - an e-government initiative on the local level - from the perspectives of citizens and public administrators. This article is based on case studies from four Swedish municipalities. The results indicate that the CCs: contribute to increased access to municipal service, localize public services and combine different services into a one-stop practice striving to provide a "holistic" approach to the individual citizen in her local context. However, the quality of the service also depends on the organizations of the work within the back-office of the municipality. All issues from the citizens were registered which contribute to increased knowledge about the citizens needs and perceptions regarding municipality services and planning in urban issues.

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.   

Public e-services are technical innovations which enable organizational changes. The basic pre-conditions for e-services in the public sector differ in several respects from e-commerce in the private sector. When the “customers” are citizens, the distribution of, access to and use of the services are not based on an open market distribution. Public e-services bring about innovative organizational changes for the new e-society and bridge formerly unseen digital divides. However, such changes demand an innovative behaviour among people in professional roles which are usually strictly and formally defined. 

    The conceptual model developed in this paper will discuss the differences of e-services, e-administration and e-democracy. Following this model, an illustrative case of a public e-service on the Internet will be presented and analyzed. The e-service extending the geographical reach of public organizations is the Common application system for upper secondary school in the regions of West Sweden and Östergötland in Sweden. The professionals in public administration acted as entrepreneurs and improved the intended benefits of the e-service. We therefore see a demand for developing general models to analyze as well as for promoting public e-services.