After sixty years of investment in the computerization of public services, and more than a decade of investment in applying Internet technologies to government, e-government in the new millennium is finally coming of age. The countries that have been at the leading edge of the e-government journey have made many mistakes along the way, and taken many blind alleys. Increasingly, however, they are now beginning to understand and tackle successfully the very deep structural and cultural transformations across the public sector which are needed if ICT is to deliver the fullest possible benefits to citizens and tax payers. This is not about e-government, it is about the mainstream transformation of government itself. At the same time however, an increasing number of developing countries are beginning to ramp up their own investments in e-government, often in ways which risk repeating the mistakes of the early adopters.