This volume is a collection of papers presented during the Third Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Conference on e-Commerce, e-Business, and e-Government, held in Brazil in 2003. The papers are divided into nine areas, related to various aspects of e-government, or technologies used by government organizations. Researchers from many countries, including Japan, Australia, and Finland, produced the papers included in the book. They address issues that are of general interest globally, but frequently receive less attention in US publications. The reader will notice an emphasis on formal modeling methods, used to represent operational situations and relatively simple systems. The research was carried out prior to 2003, and two years later, it is evident that the technology has moved ahead, and some issues have disappeared or have changed. However, the book gives an excellent perspective to a technologist: after reading the papers, one can see the mental picture used by researchers in 2003, and can include the changes found in 2005 in order to create one’s own vision of the pace and direction of global innovation in information technology (IT).

Section 1, on e-government, contains two papers. The first is an attempt to create a roadmap for the development of e-government, focusing on simple pragmatic recommendations: start with a portal, and try to create good architecture, strengthen security, enhance usability, and use open standards. The second paper is a more theoretical paper, explaining the methodologies necessary to modernize the relationships of local governments with citizens, based on information technology. The authors describe several projects where their ideas have been applied, such as SIFET and the Taviano initiative.

Section 2 presents views on new business models promoted by new technologies. The authors of the first paper talk about Internet content providers, explaining the results of qualitative research on various business models used by companies creating and delivering online content. The next paper analyzes the characteristics of market markers in the business-to-business (B2B) space in Australia. The last paper of the series, “The Success Strategies for Hybrid Business Model,” discusses the effects of the failure of early Internet companies on the emergence of hybrid models that combine traditional operations and Internet-based electronic commerce. Based on the theory of planned behavior, the authors develop a simple model of consumer behavior in a hybrid environment.

Section 3 addresses structural innovation on the Internet, focusing on the influence of new technologies on various types of operations. The first paper of the series describes innovation in the supply chain; the second addresses new technology platforms in the media industry; the third analyzes issues in collaborative commerce systems, with an emphasis on the role of quality of service (QoS); and the fourth paper addresses the properties of e-business systems that need to be developed using new, more dynamic life cycle management models.

Section 4 contains papers on auctions and electronic payment systems. The section includes a description of a methodology that can be used to calculate return on investment (ROI) for e-commerce systems, dynamically based on a combination of qualitative and quantitative models; a description of a micropayment system, based on easily verifiable and easily deployed e-coins; and an analysis of electronic auctions in Finland.

Section 5 provides information on the future aspects of communications, and covers several innovative communication systems and protocols. The papers present views on I-centric communications, one of the most important projects for wireless networks; a vision of multilevel communications models, including everything from low-level protocols to semantics; and an analysis of business models that can be developed to provision QoS networks.

Section 6 covers the Internet and the Web. It begins with a good descriptive paper on the semantic Web, and continues with papers on the user tradeoffs necessary to achieve meaningful personalization, and the role of Extensible Markup Language (XML) in the new generation of electronic database interchange (EDI). The section concludes with an analysis of the different levels of personalization needed for institutional Web sites.

Section 7 focuses on technologies that are still new in 2005: grid computing and advanced infrastructure platforms in general. The papers in the section discuss the role of grid in creating a more powerful infrastructure for e-government, propose a practical architecture for grid-based applications, describe an application and approach for the rapid development of Web applications, and present a set of tools for defining integration-geared meta-models based on the meta-object facility (MOF).

Section 8 discusses one of the most serious information technology (IT) problems: the integration of e-services. The papers contain numerous interesting insights, and describe applications of service-oriented architectures, a workflow system based on multiple meta-models, and research addressing the formalization of contracting and the creation of XML schemas and applications in this area. The last two papers present some interesting ideas on the formalization of international alliances, and present a useful framework for the modeling of electronic businesses.

The final section of the book is dedicated to the issues of modeling and construction of e-services. The first paper describes the components necessary to define a framework for the modeling of e-services that would address interfaces, interaction, and protocols in an abstract manner. The second paper proposes a further abstraction for enterprise business architectures, to create a modular and hierarchical information systems framework. The third report outlines a methodology for constructing adaptable services from commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) components. Another paper investigates the relationship between service levels in a system and its utilization. The final paper presents the general results of research on service modeling, from the technology and behavioral points of view.

The book will be good reading for both researchers and practitioners. The reader will learn a lot about various methodologies, the elements of modeling theory applied to architecture definitions and business issues, and a wide range of issues surrounding the use of Internet technologies in government. The papers contain high-quality research, presented in a way that is easy to understand, even for a nonspecialist.