Understanding e-government failure in the developing country context: a process-oriented study

ABSTRACT

This research aims to investigate the underlying process-based causes of e-government failure. Through the lens of actor-network theory, this paper presents a process-oriented study of the failure of Thailand’s Smart ID Card project. Adding to the extant knowledge on e-government failures that attributes this phenomenon to internal and external factors, this paper argues that the reason the project failed was a cumulative process of failure to create and maintain the actor-network. Policy implications for developing countries to efficiently manage their e-government initiatives are given, such as adopting an open principle in setting e-government project objectives and initiating the actor-network; implementing the e-government target in stages based on prepared environment; allowing an e-government system to evolve according to the degree of readiness in the information and communications technology (ICT) system design, implementation and local adoption; and including large, nationwide projects as part of a national informatization strategy.

KEYWORDS:

• Actor-network theory
• accumulated process
• developing countries
• e-government failure
• process-oriented study
• Thailand

Acknowledgements

We thank the Review Editor, Gerald Grant, and the two reviewers for their constructive and detailed comments, which helped us to improve our work and ultimately make it publishable.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Panom Gunawong is a lecturer in the School of Public Administration, Faculty of Political Science and Public Administration at Chiang Mai University, Thailand. Dr Gunawong holds a Ph.D. in Development Informatics from the University of Manchester, UK. His core areas of research are e-government, social media in public administration, failure analysis and actor-network theory.

Ping Gao is with the Global Development Institute, the University of Manchester. His research focuses on IT innovation and standardization, especially in the Chinese context and from government perspective.