The 8th international EGOV conference 2009 takes place 31 August till 2 September 2009 in Linz, Austria within the DEXA conference cluster. The annual EGOV conferences bring together leading researchers and professionals from all over the globe and from many disciplines. They give annual state of the art overviews in eGovernment and eGovernance research, implementation and application, until 2008 including eParticipation and eDemocracy. Thereby, the conferences provide important guidance for research and development in this fast-moving domain of study. They also host annual PhD colloquia on eGovenment and eParticipation as pre-events.