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Abstract: This article considers the emergence of e-government in the UK and Sweden by conducting a structured document analysis of relevant government reports. The aim of the research was to examine differences in management planning practice - i.e. how change was planned and executed differently in both states. The key finding was that the focus of digital transformation shifted over time from digitalizing services to digitalizing internal departmental work processes. Both governments enacted change by identifying and supporting new roles and agencies deemed able to drive change. In so doing, both actively sought to balance macro-social and micro-social shaping forces. However, the 'macro' rationales and micro-level practices for digitalizing services also showed some differences of focus in each case.
Keywords: digital transformation, digital government, eGovernment, comparative analysis, document analysis, organisational transformation, digitalisation
1. Introduction
National contexts are important factor in the shape that different eGovernment projects take (Tinholt et al., 2016; Lee et al., 2005). Digital transformation is viewed as a key modernizing force in both the public and private sectors. Digital technologies are viewed a key to efficiencies, competitiveness and innovation (Andriole, 2017) and transforming business operations, products/services, processes, organisational structures and management concepts (Matt et al., 2015). Organizational transformation is not automatically a consequence of technology, however, and requires concerted management effort that drive, shape and govern those transformations; a digital transformation strategy 'that serves as a central concept to integrate the entire coordination, prioritization, and implementation of digital transformations' (ibid.: 339). In contrast to IT strategies, digital transformation strategies come from a business-centric perspective. That is, they focus more broadly on the transformation of products, processes and related organizational arrangements. It is generally accepted also that IT strategies (Henderson and Venkatraman 1993) and digital transformation strategies (Matt et al., 2015) need to be aligned with other business strategies.
Our focus in this paper is on the way in which digital transformation is enacted by governments in terms of the adoption of new and re-shaping of old organisational arrangements, roles and tasks. This paper, using a structured analysis of government policies via Nvivo, examines the differing approaches that have been taken by the Swedish and British national governments toward digitalisation of services and digital transformation from 2010 to the present.
2. Literature...