The digital government imperative: a context-aware perspective

ABSTRACT

The paper applies a ‘context-aware’ research approach to explore Italy’s digital government trajectory, using the information and communication technology -enabled programme that introduced the One-Stop Business Shop to exemplify its analytical potential. The interpretive lens captures the political, institutional and external forces at play to illustrate how the outcomes of public-sector reforms are shaped not by legislative strong-arming and ubiquitous technological enablement but by the environmental dynamics. To demonstrate the central role of contextual factors in achieving the desired change, the study conducts a qualitative exploratory analysis that opens doors left mostly closed by the deterministic view of the mainstream literature on digital reform.

KEYWORDS:

• Administrative reform
• one-stop government
• simplification
• e-government
• context-aware approach
• configurational lens
• ICT

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Walter Castelnovo

Walter Castelnovo, PhD, is assistant professor of Information Systems and Inter-organizational Networks at the University of Insubria (Italy). He served as member of the committee for many international conferences and journals on e-government and information and communication technology evaluation. He is also the e-government advisor of the Association of the Municipalities of the Region Lombardia (Italy) that represents more than 1,500 municipalities.

Maddalena Sorrentino

Maddalena Sorrentino researches in Business Organization at Università degli Studi di Milano and is a professor of e-government. Her articles have been published in international journals and conference proceedings. She is the Director of ICONA, a research centre for organizational innovation in public administrations.