In essence, this publication is about government taking responsibility for the way it uses ICT. The role that government plays in the information society and the responsibility that it bears go much further, however. In addition to being accountable for iGovernment, government is also responsible, to a certain extent, for the way the iSociety as a whole functions. Such sweeping responsibility can be defined in terms of the following questions: What aspects of the information society should government be concerned about? Should it intervene? If so, how? Former Dutch Prime Minister Wim Kok addressed this issue in April 2001 at the Infodrome Conference: “We must nevertheless ask ourselves what responsibilities government will face in the years ahead in connection with the consequences inherent to the information society.” That responsibility can be described as the system responsibility that iGovernment has for the iSociety. Any intervention in the iSociety will naturally be politically charged and to a certain extent controversial, but an attempt must nevertheless be made to find common ground for matters that government is obliged to guarantee. iGovernment's system responsibility cannot simply be ignored.

That is because, first of all, government must stand up for its citizens when the private sector fails to adequately guarantee their interests. For example, the growing power over information exercised by such global corporations as Google, Facebook and Apple will force government (and the European Union) to consider whether – and if so how – that power should be restricted in the public interest. There have already been certain moves in that direction. Responding to questions raised by Parliament in August 2010, the then Minister of Economic Affairs Maria van der Hoeven undertook to ask the Data Protection Authority (CBP) to evaluate a new clause in Apple's privacy policy. In some cases, questions touching on government's system responsibility will need to be addressed at the European level and through a European actor (a ‘lead authority’) because it is only the European Union that has the necessary weight and authority to take forceful action.