Editorial

Citation

Irani, Z. and Kamal, M. (2013), "Editorial", Transforming Government: People, Process and Policy, Vol. 7 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/tg.2013.32607aaa.001

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: Transforming Government: People, Process and Policy, Volume 7, Issue 1

It gives me great pleasure to welcome you to the first issue of the seventh volume of Transforming Government: People, Process, and Policy. This issue is dedicated to the publication of selected papers researching in the public sector domain from the Transforming Government (t-Gov) Workshop 2012 (www.tgovworkshops.org). Over the years, the constant update of the journal’s scope to advocate theory and practice has led to an increase in quality of submissions (in regular as well as special issues). In this issue there is an eclectic and exploratory nature of research covering topical issues associated with e-Government and public sector service delivery.

The issue commences with a case study by Csaba Csáki, Leona O’Brien, Kieran Giller, J.B. McCarthy, Kay-Ti Tan and Frédéric Adam, entitled “The use of e-Payment in the distribution of social welfare in Ireland: charting the daily experience of recipients”. In this paper the authors argue that regardless of the large number of relevant case studies and academic reports on the topic in context, there is limited understanding on the impact governmental payment practices have on the financial behaviour of citizens. The authors are also assert that there are limited investigative studies conducted that address how governmental use of payment methods and related policies may impact citizen/consumer behaviour. As a result, this research is aimed at understanding the issues associated with the introduction of e-Payment into governmental social and welfare payments services in this predominantly cash-user society/culture. In doing so, this paper reported on a case study seeking to understand the view of welfare recipients in face of governmental plans to eliminate paper-based forms of distributing social welfare in Ireland.

Following the case study based paper is research presented by Nripendra P. Rana, Yogesh K. Dwivedi and Michael D. Williams, entitled “Evaluating alternative theoretical models for examining citizen centric adoption of e-Government”. The authors in this paper evaluate the performance of the competing models of IS/IT adoption in context of e-Government adoption research. As the selection of the IS adoption models is commonly quite fragmented in nature in e-Government adoption research, this evaluation can provide guidelines to the researchers toward formulation of a common integrated model, which can be used specifically for e-Government adoption research. In doing so, this research undertakes a comprehensive literature review of the empirical studies on citizen-centric adoption of e-Government services in the form of their meta-analysis. As a result, this research identifies that the leading IS/IT adoption models are being used in e-Government adoption research. From these existing models, the authors evaluate the performance of the five most frequently used IS/IT adoption models in e-Government adoption research.

Then, we have another case study presented by Lars Kristian Hansen and Pernille Kræmmergaard, entitled “Transforming local government by project portfolio management: identifying and overcoming control problems”. The case study based project presented in this paper investigates IT project portfolio management (IT PPM) in a Danish local government organisation. The authors assert that as public sector organisations endeavour to achieve greater maturity in e-Government, PPM becomes a high priority concern for them. In supposing that the control is central in IT PPM, the authors explore how a Danish local government organisation conducts control in IT PPM. Based on the latter investigation, the authors identify control problems and develop relevant suggestions to overcome these control problems.

Subsequently, we have a research paper by Fathul Wahid and Maung K. Sein, entitled “Institutional entrepreneurs: the driving force in institutionalization of public systems in developing countries”. The authors claim that in IS literature where institutional theory is extensively discussed and employed to study IS implementation at the same time, there is limited attention given to study the actual process of institutionalization. In order to address this literature void, this research paper utilises three views derived from the theory, such as:

1. 1.

   institutional isomorphism;

2. 2.

   institutional logic; and

3. 3.

   institutional entrepreneurship.

Moreover, the authors investigate the interaction between the latter three views in order to study the role of the dominant institutional entrepreneur in the institutionalization of a public system, as an instance of e-Government initiatives.

Thereafter, we have Øyvind Hellang, Leif Skiftenes Flak and Tero Päivärinta presenting their research paper entitled “Diverging approaches to benefits realization from public ICT investments: a study of benefits realization methods in Norway”. This research provides an overview of the state-of-the-art of benefits realisation methods used in the Norwegian public sector. In addition, it highlights the variety of methods-in-use and recommends that the current methods can be divided into three approaches, including differences with regard to their fundamental concepts and principles. The observed distinctions contribute to a better understanding of the variance of benefits realisation practices in different settings of public ICT investments and can assist researchers to more accurate analyses and practitioners to make more informed choices when selecting methods for benefits realisation in their organisations.

Finally, we have Eleni Kaliva, Eleni Panopoulou, Efthimios Tambouris and Konstantinos Tarabanis presenting their research paper entitled “A domain model for online community building and collaboration in eGovernment and policy modelling”. The purpose of this research is to develop a model for online community building and collaboration for e-Government and policy modelling domain. The authors report that a domain model is a representation of the concepts and the behaviour of a particular business domain. Domain models can be highly reusable for developing any IS within the domain reducing software development costs and delivery time, and increasing its reliability and quality. The proposed model offers better insights to the domain under investigation. The authors assert that their proposed model can also be used in the development of relevant platforms leading to the reduction of software development costs and delivery time as well as the improvement of software quality and reliability by minimising domain analysis errors.

We hope you will find this issue interesting and though provoking, and hope to receive your valuable contributions for the forthcoming issue.

Zahir IraniEditor

Muhammad KamalGuest Editor