Sustainable eGovernance? : decision making, coordination and continuity in Swedish eGov practice

• The use of ICTs in the public sector, eGovernment, is increasingly understood as a complex phenomenon intricately embedded in a continuously changing environment including multiple actors, rather referred to as eGovernance. A need for research that is “future oriented” has been identified, and previous research has suggested a sustainability perspective. Research employing the sustainability concept has increased recently but is still a fledgling research area without a common focus or use of the concept. There is a lack of research with a thorough basis in sustainability theory and a need for empirically founded theoretical development regarding sustainable eGovernance. Hence, the research question of this paper is, How can current eGovernance practice be interpreted from a sustainability perspective? A case study is performed in the context of Swedish eGovernance practice, at national and municipal level. Inductive interviews are used to investigate practitioners’ views. Thereafter we test a framework of eGovernance sustainability, developed based on the eGovernance literature, against the views of the practitioners. We find that sustainability in eGovernance is most prominently related with decision making and coordination related to infrastructure, as actors struggle with achieving continuity and implementing a holistic view of the use of ICT in the public sector. We also find that eGovernance research, while still shallow, has a focus that corresponds well to the issues that practitioners find most crucial for the future. Hence, the results provide a consolidated framework of eGovernance sustainability issues, both theoretically and empirically informed. 

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Medie- och kommunikationsvetenskap -- Systemvetenskap, informationssystem och informatik med samhällsvetenskaplig inriktning (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Media and Communications -- Information Systems, Social aspects (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

eGovernance

eGov

Sustainability

EGOV4SD

Case study

Governance

Decision making

Infrastructure

Informatik

Informatics

Publikations- och innehållstyp

vet (ämneskategori)

ovr (ämneskategori)