资料：It seems simple enough. Take all the line-forming and paper-filling busy work of the government, and put it all up on the Internet. Now, in order to report a pot-hole, pay your property tax, complain to an official or cast a vote, just log on and hit a few buttons. Goodbye bureaucracy, hello e-cracy?

However, the shift to e-government is turning into one giant pain in the neck — technology isn't the problem, money is. The Gartner Group estimated that project spending for e-government will grow from $6.5 billion in 2010 to more than $16.8 billion by 2025.The cost worldwide over the next 15 years, however, is thought by some to reach or even exceed $600 billion.

Citizens are of two minds — they like the convenience and flexibility of e-government, but they have shown no great interest in coughing up extra tax dollars for this purpose. E-government is turning out to be much more expensive than its early champions envisioned. Just because that a state's department of motor vehicles allows online auto registration doesn't mean it can shut down its physical stations. The cost of creating and maintaining an Internet presence must be added to the existing cost structure.

Why so expensive? It's cheap enough for a regional forest service to put up a fire alert website. But mounting a comprehensive system of inputs and outputs that mirrors and in some instances supersedes off-line government structures is a mammoth expenditure, conducted with little assurance that emerging technological standards won't leave your effort in the dust.

If this sounds eerily similar to the confidence wall dot-com businesses piled into last year, good for you, because it’s the same wall, the wall of reality, where money is still money, and because a thing is virtual doesn’t mean it’s free. It is a really big problem. We all know it is going to cost a ton of money, but no one knows where to go for the money.

The author’s major purpose in writing this passage seems to .

• A.make suggestions on facing the reality and modifying expectations
• B.advocate that e-government is costly and useless
• C.explain why e-government is no longer popular
• D.persuade governments to cut the cost