The majority of e-government implementations and their subsequent use, particularly in developing countries, have resulted in high rates of failure. These failures of e-government implementation have been caused by a plethora of organizational, human, financial and infrastructure challenges that mostly result from organizational factors such as lack of resources, political commitment and poor collaboration. These commonly result when government organizations try to sustain their e-government facilities alone and have insufficient resources, competence, and legitimacy to do so. This study is an attempt to understand how organizational factors shape the sustainability of e-government implementation within a local government context. A case study of local e-government implementation is presented and then analyzed from perspective of organizational view. Our construct is based on organizational factors that are commonly found to influence information systems implementation. Our findings show that organizational factors such as organizational and employees' professionalism, commitment, coordination and cooperation, and responsibility sharing among local government institutions have influenced the sustainability of e-government implementation within the local government. Our findings also show that e-government is a complex project that requires coordination and cooperation among actors as well as the need to share responsibility among the actors to support the sustainability of the project.
TopIntroduction
E-government adoption and implementation within government organizations is targeted to improve local public services provision and transform local government organizations. E-government is broadly defined as the production and delivery of government services through IT applications (Moon, 2002, p. 425). This includes utilizing IT by governments to deliver information and services, reduce bureaucracy, increase citizens’ participation in government policies and democracy as well as enhance their responsiveness to citizens’ needs. Current advance of IT adoption within their citizens requires governments use IT “for delivering much needed sustainability in social and economic services to their citizens” (United-Nations, 2012, p. 2) for sustainable development both the government itself and the citizens. As a result, the sustainability of e-government is important to ensure the sustainability of government services delivery.
However, However, the majority of e-government implementation and use, particularly in developing countries, have resulted in high sustainability failure (e.g.: Best & Kumar, 2008; Dada, 2006; Dong, Yu, Wang, & Zhang, 2012; Heeks, 2002a; Nawi, Ibrahim, & Rahman, 2013). Heeks(2003) identifies 85% of e-government project are sustainability failure. The e-government projects were successfully implemented and used in certain period of time but then abandoned (Heeks, 2002b). The impact of this sustainability failure is that e-government failed to sustain for long period of operation and utilization for both governments and citizens benefits.
The cause of e-government sustainability are different from case to case but generally it may include problem relating to technology, financial, regulations, government organization environment, and organizational factors (Gil-García & Pardo, 2005). Previous studies (e.g.: Chen & Gant, 2001; Ho, 2002; Norris & Moon, 2005) highlighted that organizational factors play significant role in determining the success and failure of e-government. For this study purposes, organizational factors is defined as “those variables that affecting the organizational structure that the organization could adjust or change to suit its changing environment” (Thompson S.H Teo, Tan, & Buk, 1997, p. 96). The organizational factors shape government organizations’ decisions and actions in the implementation of e-government (Chen & Gant, 2001) which then determine the outcomes of e-government. For example, organizational factors such as strong leader support, good collaboration among departments, and resource availability have contributed to successful e-government in Singapore (Ke & Wei, 2004). On the other hand, lack of organizational factors influence, such as lack organizational resources, low management support, and lack employees skills, have caused about 85% e-government implementation in developing countries fail to achieve its goals (Heeks, 2003).
Previous studies (e.g.: Chen & Gant, 2001; Gil-García & Pardo, 2005; Ke & Wei, 2004) found that organizational factors, such as strong leadership, resources availability, strategic plan, clear vision, influence e-government implementation success. E-government sustainability as “the retaining and using of e-government systems with no intention by government organizations and its people to abandon it and return to the manual system” (Nurdin, Stockdale, & Scheepers, 2012, p. 72). The e-government might be considered sustainable when government organizations achieve their major goals and did not experience significant undesirable outcomes (Heeks, 2003). However, there is limited published organizational theory literature in e-government on how a sustainable e-government implementation is influenced by organizational factors particularly at local government level in developing countries. A lack of understanding regarding of organizational factors and their influence on e-government sustainability may positively influence actions taken to resolve organizational problems relating to e-government implementation sustainability.