Depending one's definition of e-government, research in this field is now well into its second or possibly its fourth decade. The last ten years has seen an enormous volume of research published, but in recent years there has been growing criticism of the quality of much of this research. Critics have pointed, inter alia, to the large number of the case studies (often examining single cases) and the paucity of theory. For much of the last decade, e-government research has been largely focused on the Internet and the Web at the expense of broader exploration of ICT use in public administration. There has also arguably been too much emphasis on e-government as implementation of public services. While implementation, like best practice, barriers to e-government and so on are all important, the focus on service delivery and its problems has left a number of important areas of e-government relatively unexamined. This paper suggests that there are many uses and impacts of ICT in government that are currently being neglected by the academy. Starting from the earliest literature, the history of research into government IT is reviewed. It is suggested that this much we can learn from this research tradition. From this, a number of fields which offer potential for interesting e-government research are proposed.