Identifying the critical success factors for major government projects that incorporate IT or “digital” developments

Brunel University London is preparing funding proposals to support a multi-disciplinary study to identify new critical success factors for major projects within the UK government involving information (or “digital”) technologies, by interpreting them as political interventions rather than rationalisable IT developments or institutional changes. This study is timely as two independent reports on recent project failures illustrate how changes to the high-level governance and management of such projects introduced since 2010 have significantly increased the risk of failure, rather than reduce it as intended. This note sets out an analysis of these reports as a preliminary step that illustrates the urgency and importance of resetting the project control system around factors that improve the chances of success. It concludes by proposing objectives for such a study

Digitally enabled service transformation in UK public sector: A case analysis of universal credit

YesThe race against ‘Digital Darwinism’ in public sector had caused failures of several high profile large-scale Digitally Enabled Service Transformation (DEST) projects. While technical and managerial issues are often emphasised as the factors underpinning such failures, the vital role of key actors and the interplay between these actors and structures is underplayed when examining the causes of DEST failure. To enable a richer understanding of DEST, this paper proposes an analytical lens combining Institutional Theory (IT) and Structuration Theory (ST) to explore the case of ‘Universal Credit’, a very large and ambitious DEST project in the UK. Analysis reveals that the institutional actors and structures played significant roles in the transformation process. Albeit governing the actors’ actions, institutional structures are shaped through actions that are influenced by knowledge, power and norms. Hence, recognising and addressing these subliminal factors are critical to promote actions that can facilitate DEST success. The contributions of this case study are two-folds. Theoretically, it provides a distinctive conceptual approach to study DEST; and practically, the lessons help in signposting better managerial practices

Fostering Smart Cities through ICT Driven Policy-Making: Expected Outcomes and Impacts of DAREED Project

YesThe concept of smart city is emerging as a key strategy to tackle the problems generated by the urban population growth and rapid development. It is widely recognised that Information and Communications Technology (ICT) play a key role in addressing some of the urban societal challenges such as improving energy efficiency and reducing carbon emissions. Although there are various ICT tools providing intelligence and services relating to energy consumption and monitoring processes, they mostly tend to work in isolation. Therefore, this paper presents the outcomes and impacts of the concept of DAREED which aims to deliver an integrated ICT service platform to drive energy efficiency and low carbon activities at neighbourhood, city and district levels. Furthermore, the research highlights the need for ICT-driven policy making using platforms such as DAREED in the context of e-Government. This paper contributes to the current understandings of e-Government literature in terms of how ICT can help public authorities and stakeholders such as policy makers to achieve and drive energy efficiency. From a practical stance, the paper offers valuable insights to public administrations on how ICT can be used to address pressing societal challenges such as efficient energy use and facilitate better policy making

Factors Affecting Citizens’ Trust and Confidence in Government and Its Relation with Transformation of Government

During the last two decades citizens trust and confidence in their governments has continued to decline and e-government is seen as a means to reverse this trend. However, it appears that e-government alone is not enough. The literature has drawn conflicting conclusions, the consensus suggests that ICT enabled government transformation often improves citizens’ trust in government. This research investigates the influence of a transformed government on citizens’ trust and confidence. Based on a systematic literature review, a conceptual model was developed and then a pilot study conducted using an online survey targeting ordinary citizens of the Kingdom of Bahrain. The findings of the pilot study confirm that citizens’ trust and confidence in their government is positively influenced by transformation of government mediated by government performance and citizens’ satisfaction

The Use of Wireless Internet Parks to Facilitate Adoption and Diffusion of E-Government Services: An Empirical Study in Qatar

The Qatari government has launched Wireless Internet Parks (iPark) concept under their national electronic government (e-government) initiative with a view of providing free internet access for all citizens while enjoying the outdoors. By offering free wireless Internet access, the Qatari government hopes to increase accessibility of e-government services and encourage their citizens to actively participate in the global information society with a view of bridging the digital divide. The adoption and diffusion of iPark services will depend on user acceptance and availability of wireless technology. This paper examines an extended technology acceptance model (TAM) that proposes individual differences, technology complexity, and trust environment constructs to determine perceived usefulness and perceived ease of the iPark initiative by using a survey based study. Results of the survey showed that among other constructs Wireless Internet trust and technology complexity has a significant affect on perceived usefulness of iPark services

Evaluating the use and impact of Web 2.0 technologies in local government

Second generation web-based technologies (Web 2.0) such as social media and networking sites are increasingly being used by governments for activities ranging from open policy making to communication campaigns and customer service. However, this in turn has brought about additional challenges. By its very nature, Web 2.0 tech- nologies are more interactive than the traditional models of information provision or creation of digital services. Such technologies open up a new set of benefits, costs and risks to those government authorities who make use of these social and digital media to enhance their work. This study draws on the extant literature together with an in-depth qualitative case enquiry to propose an emergent framework for evaluating the intra-organisational use of Web 2.0 technologies and its impact on local government. The study findings identified additional four factors (i.e. benefits: intra-marketing, informal engagement, costs: workload constraints and risk: integration with other systems) as part of the evaluation criteria which have not previously been discussed in the existing literature surrounding the context of Web 2.0 use in local government. The study concludes that a combined analysis of the evaluation and impact assessment factors, rather than one particular approach would better assist decision makers when implementing Web 2.0 technologies for use by public administration employees

Examining the influence of intermediaries in facilitating e-government adoption: an empirical investigation

YesThe adoption and diffusion of electronic government is often impeded by many social and individual factors relating to citizens. In this respect, intermediaries have emerged as a new model for delivering e-government services to overcome such obstacles. This study aims to examine the role of intermediaries in facilitating e-government adoption and diffusion using a survey based empirical study of 502 participants in Madinah City in Saudi Arabia. An extended UTAUT model is used as the theoretical basis utlising trust in the Internet and Intermediaries. The results of this study show that there are significant relationships among the factors that influence intention to use e-government, namely, performance expectancy, effort expectancy, and trust of intermediary. In addition, the findings show that there is a significant relationship between facilitating conditions and usage behaviour proving that intermediaries can influence adoption of e-government services

The complexities of electronic services implementation and institutionalisation in the public sector

This is the post-print version of the final paper published in Information & Management. The published article is available from the link below. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. Copyright @ 2013 Elsevier B.V.Electronic service implementation (ESI) in the public sector attempts to improve efficiency, effectiveness, and transparency of governmental departments. Despite having provided the necessary infrastructure and investment, many governments have struggled to realise such aims due to the various forces that challenge implementation and institutionalisation. Using institutional theory as a lens, we explored the forces influencing the implementation and institutionalisation of ESI in the public sector. While our results reinforced previous research in IT implementation and organisational transformation, they showed that the dynamic nature of technology poses unanticipated pressures, and that these can impede the implementation and institutionalisation process

Modelling use continuance in virtual worlds: The case of second life

Electronic government (e-government) has shown encouraging results in developed countries in the context of delivering electronic information and services to citizens. However, despite the many lessons that can be learned from the experiences of those egovernment initiatives, developing countries are still faced with various issues pertaining to their implementation of e-government services. Like many other developing countries, the e-government initiative in the state of Qatar has faced a number of challenges since its inception in 2000. Using a survey based study this paper describes citizens’ behavioural intention in terms of applying the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of technology (UTAUT) model to explore the adoption and diffusion of e-government services in the state of Qatar. Analysis of the results indicates that there is significant positive relationship between performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence and behavioural intention to use e-government services for the citizens of Qatar. Implications for practice and research are discussed