Promoting the construction of digital government has become a strategic choice for many countries. CiteSpace is used to make quantitative and visual analysis of 2959 documents in the core collection of journals in Web of Science,and a knowledge map of foreign digital government construction research from 1999 to 2021 is drawn. It is found that European and American countries occupy an important position in the research of digital government construction,and have accumulated a number of classic basic literature achievements. The research on the construction of digital government abroad has gone through four stages:embryonic start-up period,rapid development period,stable transition period and deepening development period. Foreign digital government research forms four core research systems by means of technological innovation, based on the construction model,the concept of realizing the value of public services,and the exploration of breaking through the practical dilemma and seeking the development path. At the same time, the research also faces the problems of too much empirical research,insufficient qualitative theoretical construction,subdivided research fields and less comparative research. Facing the future,foreign research experience and shortcomings provide a useful reference for the construction of digital government in China.