Test-Session page 3 E-G OVERNMENT IN C HILE AND THE A DOPTION OF XML AS S TANDARD Claudio Gutierrez 1 , M. Cecilia Bastarrica 1 , Rodrigo Frez 1 , Cristian Fuenzalida 1 , Sergio F. Ochoa 1 , Pedro O. Rossel 1, 2 , Agust´ ın Villena 1 This paper presents the development of e-Government in Chile from its beginning, until the recent adoption of XML as standard for electronic documentation in Government agencies. The local legislation is the result of technical and legal discussions among the Government, private sector and academia. This work presents the context, the process of adoption, and relevant experiences. 1 Introduction One of the basis of the modernization process in Chile is the development of an electronic gov- ernment. This development is viewed as the “incorporation of Information and Communication Technologies in the administrative organizations of the State, in order to improve the informa- tion services offered to citizens, the efficiency of public agencies, and to increase substantially the transparency of the public sector and citizens participation” [12]. Recent studies show that e-Government in Chile is between the “Presence” and the “Interaction” maturity phases [3]. This means essentially that the problem of interoperability is becoming one of the main issues. Based on this diagnosis, on international experiences, and available technologies, the Chilean Government took in the year 2004 the bold step of introducing XML as standard for all the electronic documentation exchange among its agencies. From a technical point of view, this decision is easily understandable based on the well-known features of XML and related technologies. The social, administrative and engineering consequences of this decision are less obvious. This paper presents the origins and evolution of e-Government in Chile, and the process toward the adoption of XML as standard for digital documentation. First, the context is introduced in Section 2 by presenting the geopolitical situation and the process of adoption of Information and Communication Technologies in Chile. Then, Section 3 presents the state of the art of e-Government in Chile, including the origins, legislation and the most relevant and successful experiences previous to the general adoption of XML. Section 4 presents the transition from paper document management to the adoption of XML as standard for digital documentation, and discusses the Chilean Norm about XML documentation in detail. Finally, Section 5 presents the conclusions. 2 The Context Chile is a long and thin country located on the southwestern coast of South America, and with a population of 16 million people. Considered as one of the countries in the area that has a better consolidated democracy and stability after decades of turbulence and dictatorships, it is also 1 Departamento de Ciencias de la Computaci´on – ITCC, Facultad de Ciencias F´ ısicasyMatem´aticas, Universidad de Chile, e-mail: {cgutierr,cecilia,rfrez,cfuenzal,sochoa,prossel,avillena}@dcc.uchile.cl 2 On leave from Departamento de Computaci´on e Inform´atica, Universidad Cat´olica del Maule, Chile.