A Holistic Reference Framework for e-Government: The Practical Proof of a Scientific Concept

In the field of e-Government Austria ranks second within the European Union. The following paper describes one contributing factor for this success: The Holistic Reference Framework for e-Government as postulated by Wimmer, which defines eight different views, each of them representing a specific frame to integrate stakeholders into e-Government projects, to observe all aspects of various stakeholder groups with their specific needs, but also their specific know how. In accordance with this Holistic Reference Framework, the Austrian Federal Ministry of Finance developed its online e-tax application FinanzOnline, which has achieved outstanding acceptance by its users. The same holds true for the new federal budgeting and bookkeeping system. The paper at hand describes the way the project processes were set up in congruence with the Holistic Reference Framework and describes the established systems and their results.