Consider the possibilities for a Digital Government from the point of view of the people and organizations who interact with government services, rules, or information: private citizens, businesses, nonprofit organizations, and government agencies and employees themselves. Often, reports and recommendations for improving government urge that public agencies pay more attention to their "customers," or more actively engage their "stakeholders," or focus on "the citizen." These terms usually serve to focus attention on the "person in the street." While this is undeniably important, they also tend to downplay or ignore the roles and importance of the others. It therefore seems useful to outline the full range of actors concerned with the way government works.

Customers are the direct consumers of specific services. Retirees who receive Social Security benefits are customers; so are the families who vacation in state parks and the parents who bring their children to public health clinics.

Stakeholders are specific individuals, organizations, or groups that have an interest in the existence, design, cost, or outcome of a government action or program. Advocacy organizations, other units of government, and those subject to government oversight or regulation are all stakeholders in the programs that engage them. Employers, for example, care about proposed changes in minimum wage laws, and health care advocates are stakeholders in the development of managed care regulations.

Citizens are individuals who have defined rights and responsibilities in democratic processes and institutions, such as the right to vote or the right of free expression. When your neighbor enters the voting booth or rises to speak at a town meeting, she is not a consumer of government services, but an active participant in the democratic process.

Government agencies and public officials can be cast in the customer and stakeholder roles just as individuals or businesses can. A county may be the customer of the state health department and rely on it to provide a full range of public health services that the county might otherwise need to perform. States are stakeholders in many Federal programs, such as the Interstate Highway system, ready to debate and influence the laws and policies that define them.

Often, the same person or organization plays several of these roles. A physician is licensed by a state board of medical examiners (making him a regulated entity), benefits from the extensive research resources of the National Library of Medicine (of which he is a customer), is active in committees of the State Medical Society which try to influence health care policy (a stakeholder), and personally urges his local school board to consider a tougher attendance policy (a citizen exercising his right to free speech and public participation).

Given all these roles and relationships, the form and features of "Digital Government" can potentially influence every kind of government service, regulatory program, decision-making process, and institution of governance.