Content area
Full text
ABSTRACT
E-government represents a major change management challenge to public agencies. This paper explores the experience of English local government authorities. The proposition that 'process', rather than more conventional 'event', approaches to change management are more likely to result in change the goals of e-government being met, is explored. The article concludes by suggesting that conventional models of change management theory and practice fundamentally misunderstand the nature of technology-driven organisational change represented by e-government. A processual perspective, on the other hand, provides a more effective framework for explaining and understanding organisational and socio-technical outcomes and the reasons for variations in different contexts. Moreover, attempts to transform the state through the technologies of e-government present a significant opportunity for the processual perspective to inform practice.
Keywords: transformational change; e-government; change management
Public agencies and transformational change have not typically featured as a locale for the study of change processes and yet across the globe the institutions of the state are undergoing fundamental change (see e.g. Bellamy & Taylor 1998; Fountain 2002; Heeks 2005). Electronic government (e-government) has been variously defined as the exploitation of 'the power of information and communications technology to help transform the accessibility, quality and cost-effectiveness of public services' and as a means to 'revitalise the relationship between customers and citizens and the public bodies' not least through the provision of '24 ? 7' on-line access to national, regional and local government, and other public services (see e.g. ODPM 2002; Kraemer & King 2003).
These definitions suggest far reaching technological and organisational changes for the institutions currently charged with the delivery of public services. For example, the implementation of local e-government in England is perhaps the most diverse and complex change programme ever undertaken by local government in the country (not to mention parallel activities in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland). The process touches all public services (from social services to housing and from education to street cleansing) and every single department of local government. As a programme of transformation, it implies changes in structures, processes, working practices and corporate cultures. As a result, it affects everybody involved with local government including elected members, staff (from chief executives to frontline officers to temporary staff) and, of course, citizens and local businesses in...