While many developing country e-Government efforts are national government focused, rural and municipal initiatives hold great promise as well for bettering the lives of citizens. Rural and municipal e-Government directly connect government and citizens and can further efforts to provide services effectively, promote economic development, and foster citizen engagement. The paper reviews best practices and success stories in rural and municipal e-Government efforts, and then develops an assessment model, SENSE, for determining the promise of rural and municipal eGovernment investments. The paper concludes with a discussion of Open City Portal – an open source platform for municipal portals – that enables municipalities with limited budgets and technology expertise to develop a municipal portal that helps achieve many of the objectives of e-Government.