One of the sectors more involved by radical change produced by the move to Knowledge Society in Europe is that of Public Communication and Public Information  Management. The establishing of new media and of Information and Communication Technology has allowed opening up new horizons in managing the relations of Public Administrations among themselves and with the citizens and the territory in general, creating their own models of production and distribution of information and services supplied, but also of communication of the citizen with the P.A. and access of the same to political action (policy-making) and to democratic participation (democracy). Areas of application of Public Communication have been identified that allow to valorise and communicate the territory (of a continent, of a nation, of a region, of a province, of a town). But also Public Communication within the same Public Administration which strongly sees its own operational dynamics. Internet and the technologies linked to it (electronical mail, electronic documents, digital signature, forum, chat, videoconferencing, etc.) are operating a substantial change to Public Communication in the Information Society. The growth of citizen culture in the use of new technologies is accelerating these processes. e-Government  is born: the array of innovative methods and technologies for Public Communication.
Certainly an accelerating element of this process of transformation has been the results of the European Council of 23 and 24 March 2000. In the final document of the Council, the European Union has accepted the challenge of the knowledge society. Among many points of interest, what follows seems to us quite interesting in illustrating the needs that the e-GoV Project has identified:
 “The European Union is faced with an epochal change resulting from globalisation and by the challenges presented by a new economy based on knowledge. These changes involve every aspect of the life of people and require a radical change to the European economy..The Union must shape these changes coherently with its own values and concepts of society, even in the light of following enlargement”

Among the main results which this policy has attained within the European Union we would like to recall:
- the christening of the eEurope programme, directed, for that matter, to address and support the developing of e-government forms aimed at building an information society open to all its citizens
- the christening of the sixth FP6 framework programme, aimed at building a European space of functional research, for that matter, to the building of a Europe of knowledge and widespread know-how.

e-Government allows realising new services, new products, new communication tools of “bi-directional” communication and the creation in this sense of a preferential channel of contact among the State and its citizens, as well as realise a specific electronic government as component of the more general management action of the public “res”.
In order to better understand the breadth of the e-Government context, from the applicational and technological viewpoint, we need to observe that every process of e-Government assumes, in general, different types of actions: Infrastructural actions (National Networks), Actions of the central adiministrations (Portals), Actions of the regions and of the local authorities. Through these actions e-Government can see its application in diverse sectors. Among these we would like to remember: Integration of Registrar offices, the Electronic Identity Card, Digital Signature, Electronic Document Flow Handling, e-procurement, e-Learning, Telework, Computer Portals, Portals for delivering services.