title: Implications of Socio-Technical Interactions for e-Government Implementation and its Success
Creators: name: Al Hussaini, Yousuf Khamis Nabhan
Publisher: name: University of Liverpool Repository
Year: 2021

description: e-Government projects have become a strategic enabler for public administration reform and the development of the local economy. However, there is an agreement among researchers that most e-Government implementation projects fail to achieve their goals and deliver their desired benefits. One important reason for this failure reported in the literature is that current e-Government system designs do not meet the socio-technical reality of e-Government, which is shaped by several environmental, social, political, and technical forces. Researchers emphasise that e-Government projects can continue to fail unless equal attention is devoted to these diverse aspects. On the other hand, the current e-Government stage/maturity models (e.g., Layne &amp; Lee, 2001) offer only little awareness about the effects, implications, and attributes of the changes happening within and between organisations as e-Government projects go through design and implementation, thus falling short to fully address the socio-technical nature of e-Government. Moreover, little is known about not only how and in what ways social and technical factors interact and affect each other but also the implications of their interactions for e-Government implementation and its success. This research is set to investigate the implications of socio-technical interactions for implementing e-Government and its success, using the lens of socio-technical systems (STS) theory. This study was conducted within the previously unexplored setting of Oman using the multiple case-study method. Further, it employed semi-structured interviews as the primary data collection instrument, supported by archival analysis as a secondary data source. Oman was chosen as the context for the study due to its rapid socio-economic development in embracing an e-Government design for public administration reform. The research outcome indicated that the socio-technical factor effects identified in this study are mostly consistent with those reported in the extant literature. The findings of the analysis of socio-technical factors’ interaction, presented in terms of theoretical propositions, further support the extant literature. They demonstrated that examining e-Government implementation from the holistic view of STS theoretical lens can help significantly understand the complexity of e-Government systems. This outcome will help in identifying the various tangled issues attached to the project’s implementation and contribute towards lowering the failure rates of e-Government projects. It can also assist e-Government researchers by offering them a holistic analysis of this phenomenon to avoid the pitfalls resulting from focusing on specific aspects or dimensions of e-Government. The results of this study also offer a diagnostic tool to practitioners to gain better control over e-Government projects and provide great opportunities for avoiding potential failure and increasing the rate of success, either entirely or partially.