The paper presents a rigorous framework to plan, perform and
manage foundational e-government projects. Each project aims to
establish a government-wide direction for e-government and create an
initial impetus in this direction within individual agencies. The
framework identifies five kinds of tasks - survey, development,
training, research and dissemination, and prescribes how they can be
planned, performed and managed to achieve the stated objectives. The
general focus is on support for strategic planning and capacity
development. The technical focus is on middleware infrastructure
development. We also outline how the framework was applied to carry
out an e-government project in Macao, China.