E-Government and E-Governance: Organizational Implications, Options, and Dilemmas

Abstract

This chapter suggests that e-government and e-governance initiatives can potentially have major organizational impacts through three mechanisms: improved decision-making, more intensive and productive use of databases, and better communications. These mechanisms impact on both the internal organization of public agencies and their configuration of networks and partnerships. E-enablement therefore makes obsolete many existing organizational structures and processes and offers the prospect of transformation in both service delivery and public governance arrangements. However, the organizational changes which can be effected through the e-revolution are only just beginning to become evident. While it seems likely that existing organizational configurations in the public sector will not be sustainable, the most appropriate ways forward will only be uncovered through much experimentation within e-government and e-governance programmes. In the nature of experimentation, many of these initiatives will turn out to be unproductive or cost-ineffective, but that is perhaps the necessary price to pay for the level of public sector transformation which now appears to be in prospect.