The Editor's Column

The third issue of our fourth volume consists of two Research articles and a Practice paper, providing an interesting set of perspectives on electronic government, service use, and banking. The first Research article is by Leo Anthopoulos, Panagiotis Siozos, Alexandros Nanopoulos, and I. A. Tsoukalas, and is titled, "The Bottom-up Design of e-Government: A Development Methodology based on a Collaboration Environment." This article addresses the need for a process for bottom-up design of e-government. The authors develop and present a systematic method for collaborative design of e-government services by public servants, showing how a collaborative process can enhance the ultimate provision of a variety of e-government services to relevant stakeholders.

The second Research article is by Tamara Dinev and Paul Hart, and is titled "Privacy Concerns and Levels of Information Exchange: An Empirical Investigation of Intended E-Services Use." This article takes an in-depth look at the very familiar issue of privacy in electronic environments and provides a new perspective on that issue. Instead of viewing information exchange as a single concept that means the same thing to everyone, the authors develop different levels of information exchange that they then use to assess the relationship to privacy concerns of users. This multi-dimensional view provides a new look at a very important aspect of electronic services.

The third article is a Practice paper by Ram Acharya, Albert Kagan, Marion G. Sobol, and Vinod Kodepaka, titled "Competition and Adoption of Internet Technologies by Texas Community Banks." The interesting data that is reported in this article shows how trends in electronic banking are changing the competitive structure of different types and sizes of banks. Small banks that traditionally rely on relationship banking need to assess that strategy, and the authors of this article provide some good recommendations from their analysis of the situation. We hope you enjoy these three articles and the points of view they bring on these issues.

Several editorial board changes have been made, in the on-going rotation of board members. We are delighted to announce the addition of two new Senior Editors for the journal, both of whom have served since the journal's inception as Associate Editors and are now taking on this new role. Sidney Davis of the University of Nebraska at Omaha brings his expertise in e-commerce and human-computer interaction, and we are very pleased that he is joining the Senior Editor group. Amitava Dutta of George Mason University is also a very welcome addition, bringing expertise in business process design, systems thinking approaches to business problems, information technology governance and auditing, and the management of information technology services. We extend a very warm welcome to both of these accomplished scholars.

We extend a sincere thank you to Ellen Christiaanse, who has concluded her term as Senior Editor. Professor Christiaanse handled a broad variety of papers with a developmental and helpful perspective that we all appreciated, and we thank her for her service for the journal.

We also extend a warm welcome to our newest Associate Editor, E. Vance Wilson of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Professor Wilson's interests and accomplishments range across a variety of topics, but he has a particular interest in e-health and will be serving as guest editor of an upcoming special issue on that topic. We appreciate the addition of his expertise to the journal's board.

As always, we actively invite articles on a wide variety of topics related to the over-arching concept of electronic services. Prospective authors may contact our office anytime with questions about potential submissions. We are always interested in proposals for special issues on topics relevant to the journal, and anyone interested in developing such a proposal should contact our office.