E-government in agriculture and in segments of the food chain – A practitioner report

Abstract

Aiming to share our experience this paper targets managers running complex projects, persons interested in open source technology and players of e-government. The project commenced in 2006 as one of the largest interdisciplinary, multi-stakeholder e-government-projects of Switzerland. The intention was to create a simple, cheap, stable and safe system for agriculture administration and control as well as for segments of the food chain. For this purpose multiple disciplines had to be considered and multiple stakeholders from different fields had to be brought together. Subjects of this paper include: transparent government, models of collaboration among government, NGOs and citizens, customer-centric e-government and infrastructure for data sharing.