Civil Servants' Resistance towards E-Gopvernment Development

Abstract

As the new UNPAN E-Government Readiness Report (2004) stated, during the last years, governments worldwide have made rapid progress in embracing information and communication technologies for electronic government. All over, several projects have been carried out in order to offer more and better information to citizens and to improve public service delivery. Nevertheless, not all of them have been successful. Several factors have restrained governments at all levels from implementing thriving e-government initiatives. Research has shown that workers’ resistance to change is one of the major obstacles that organizations face when trying to implement innovation change processes. The public sector is not an exception. Due to its intrinsic characteristics, the introduction of information technology and, particularly, of electronic government programs requires paying special attention to the potential crisis situation to which these initiatives could lead. The intention of this article is to make clear how public servants experience and react to those changes that result from the adoption of information and communication technologies (ICTs) within the public administration; that is, to analyze the people dimension of change.