International Journal of Information Management 32 (2012) 66–74

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International Journal of Information Management

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ijinfomgt

E-government implementation strategies in developed and transition

economies: A comparative study
Vishanth Weerakkody a,∗ , Ramzi El-Haddadeh a , Tomas Sabol b , Ahmad Ghoneim a , Peter Dzupka b
a
Brunel Business School, Brunel University, United Kingdom
b
Faculty of Economics, Technical University of Košice, Slovak Republic

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: In the last decade, electronic government in Europe has emerged and established itself as a viable alter-
Available online 1 December 2011 native channel for public service delivery. While e-government has now matured in most developed
European countries, transition economies in Europe, have only recently begun to recognise its poten-
Keywords: tial benefits and incorporated e-government as part of their national strategy. Although time may result
E-government in the amplification of e-government experience for transition economy countries, lessons drawn from
Transition economies
developed countries indicate that political, fiscal, social, strategic and organisational issues need to be
Europe
addressed when formulating plans for deploying e-government. Using case study research, this paper
Strategy
Implementation
examines strategies adopted by the UK and Slovakia in the context of e-government implementation. Par-
Diffusion ticularly, the paper examines how the perspectives on e-government vision, strategy, focus and related
organisational change influence the implementation and diffusion of e-government in developed and
transition economies in Europe.
© 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction change as part of their national agenda for public sector transforma-
tion (Ministry of Finance of the Slovak Republic, 2008). Irrespective
The Internet has offered the opportunity to all public sec- of the nature of these programmes, the changes are branded under
tor organisations, including Local Government Councils (LGC1 ), to the umbrella of e-government. The incentives for implementing
modernise and achieve citizen-centred services through cohesive these changes have been motivated by the desire to improve
policies and programmes that join-up service delivery across local efficiency and to reduce costs and wastage for government and
government (Newman, Raine, & Skelcher, 2001; Weerakkody & introduce citizens’ centric public services at local level that are
Dhillon, 2008). Although many countries have now successfully transparent and accessible. Yet, very few LGCs throughout Europe
implemented e-government, in most countries the focus of e- have realised these objectives.
government has been to e-enable existing front office processes in While majority of the studies that have been conducted to
their current state without significant improvements or efficiency understand the reasons for such a lack of success have been largely
gains (Irani, Elliman, & Jackson, 2007; Weerakkody & Dhillon, focused on developed European countries, there has been limited
2008). Consequently, many of these governments are now embark- research focused on understanding the impact of e-government in
ing on the transformation of their internal inter departmental and TEs. As part of their study, Rabaiah and Vandijck (2009) examined
external inter organisational business activities through utilising the e-government strategies of the European Union countries and
various ICTs. In Europe, the governments in developed economy concluded that most of these strategies lacked a strategic frame-
countries (DECs) are pursuing a far-reaching and ambitious pro- work. This lack of e-government frameworks was also highlighted
gramme of innovation and radical change in the public sector by Zarei and Ghapanchi (2008). This research gap is particularly
aimed at transforming services (Beynon-Davies & Martin, 2004; critical given evidence that TECs in Europe have been lagging in
Weerakkody, Janssen, & Dwivedi, 2011). On the other hand, transi- electronic service delivery despite over a decade of implementation
tion economy countries (TECs) such as Slovakia in Eastern Europe efforts (UN, 2010). In addition, according to the United Nations e-
have started somewhat less ambitious initiatives to improve pub- government development rankings, TECs in Europe have made very
lic services that are very much focused on ICT enabled incremental little progress in their e-government implementation efforts (Ibid).
Given the aforementioned context, this paper aims to provide
a comparative study of the strategies for e-government develop-
∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +44 1895266020. ment and implementation between the UK (DEC) and Slovakia
E-mail address: vishanth.weerakkody@brunel.ac.uk (V. Weerakkody). (TEC) to: (a) better understand the challenges that both transition
1
Local Government Council in the UK is equivalent to a Municipality in Slovakia. and developed economies face in their efforts to implement and

0268-4012/$ – see front matter © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2011.10.005
 V. Weerakkody et al. / International Journal of Information Management 32 (2012) 66–74 67

diffuse e-government, and (b) identify lessons that will enable TECs rather than IT, such as physics and chemistry. Recently, various
to develop appropriate strategies for e-government implementa- researchers have recognised this research gap and carried out stud-
tion and diffusion. In this respect this paper will aim to examine ies in an attempt to highlight key issues surrounding the impact
e-government implementation strategies in the UK and Slovakia of ICT on the public sector in TECs. For instance, Kubiatko and
and draw lessons on how national strategies are interpreted at Halákova (2009) studied ICT adoption in secondary education envi-
local level during implementation in the two different economies ronments in Slovakia. Samoilenko (2008) conducted a study of
in Europe. factors that affect the efficient utilisation of investments in tele-
In order to realise the above aim, the paper is structured coms in the context of TECs and Myrtidis and Weerakkody (2008)
as follows. The next section offers a literature perspective of examined the strategies adopted by state financial institutions in
ICT implementation and use in TECs. Section three then pro- TECs when implementing ICTs. Hovelja (2008) examined how key
vides a background to the formulation of effective strategies for challenges to ICT adoption identified in previous studies by the
e-government through the literature offering an overview of e- OECD relate to TECs in the context of Slovenia and Janson, Cecez-
government development and implementation in both the UK and Kecmanovic, and Zupancis (2007) explore how ICT can facilitate
Slovakia. Section four presents an outline of the research strategy organisational learning in the same country. While such studies
adopted for this study. Next, a comparative case study presents the have been more focused on specific TEC contexts, other broader
results of empirical findings of e-government implementation and studies have also been conducted that offer useful insights for the
diffusion strategies in the UK and Slovakia. This leads to a discussion present study. For instance, the early studies by Muller (2002) is
in the next section that synthesises the literature with empirical very relevant for the research discussed in this paper as it reports
findings comparing. Finally, the paper concludes by presenting the on Internet use in TECs across Central and Eastern Europe. Similarly,
key contributions that can be drawn from the study and offering Piatkowskim (2004) reports on the impact of ICT on growth in TECs
pointers towards future research. through a comprehensive study of central and Eastern European
countries.
While these studies are encouraging, it is hard to ignore the
2. E-government implementation and exploitation in fact that most TECs have often relied on business models and ICT
developed and transition economy countries: a literature strategies that were designed for developed countries. Roztocki and
perspective Weistroffer (2008) argue that many business models or strategic
tools developed and used in the business environment of developed
Management styles in transition economies differ substantially countries are of limited validity and offer limited applicability in
from those in developed economies as the planning and control TECs. While this is very true, there are also many applications of e-
in transition economy countries were usually dominated by state- government that are universal and can easily be replicated at a user
owned firms in the past with only a marginal private business or citizen level to diffuse basic public services that are common to
sector (Roztocki & Weistroffer, 2008). In fact, Kuhlenbruck, Meyer, most countries irrespective of their economic status (Weerakkody
and Hitt (2003), argue that the collapse of many formerly state- & Dhillon, 2008; Weerakkody, Karunananda, & Dwivedi, 2009).
owned organisations in Central and Eastern Europe’s TEs may be At the same time, it is hard to ignore differences and barriers to
attributed to failed organisational learning and the lack of effective adoption of such e-government services between developed and
IT support. transition economy countries that are caused due to issues such as
In most developed European economies, e-government imple- digital divide (see Carter & Weerakkody, 2008). However, Roztocki
mentation has advanced significantly in terms of the complexity and Weistroffer (2008) concur that although individual posses-
(i.e. single point of access for all services) and user centricity (i.e. the sion of ICT in TECs may be modest, a substantial portion of the
level of personalisation) of the services offered. Further, countries population access the Internet through workplace, family, friends,
such as the UK have now moved their focus from e-government Internet cafes, public libraries, and other means. However, Hovelja
(i.e. e-enabling customer facing processes) to radically reengineer- (2008) cautions that TECs should be selective when implementing
ing their internal operations to further transform the way services ICT solutions in organisations and not fall victim to large multina-
are delivered to citizens and reduce costs for the public organisa- tional vendors whose solutions may not always fit with the goals
tions delivering the services (Beynon-Davies & Martin, 2004; Daniel and objectives of TECs.
and Ward, 2006; Weerakkody et al., 2011). Consequently, this has The above literature confirms that although there are many
seen e-government implementation efforts in developed European studied on e-government implementation in DECs, most stud-
countries move from cataloguing basic government information in ies on TECs in the public domain are focused on traditional ICT
the late 1990s to providing more interactive and citizen centric implementation rather than e-government. This confirms the argu-
services to citizens. However, prior research shows that there are ments presented before that e-government implementation is still
considerable governance, organisation, business process and tech- maturing in TECs and suggests that empirical research is needed
nology barriers that need to be overcome when ambitious national to explore and analyse the implementation strategies adopted by
strategies for e-government are interpreted into implementa- TECs. In this respect, the lessons that DECs offer can be a further
tion plans and projects at local government level (Van Veenstra, source of knowledge and contribution towards the understanding
Klievink, & Janssen, 2011; Weerakkody et al., 2011). In this respect, of e-government implementation in TECs.
it can be argued that e-government implementation efforts in DECs
in Europe offer many lessons for TECs who are still comparatively
at the early stages of e-government implementation. 3. Formulating effective strategies for e-government
While there is an abundance of literature on the implemen-
tation and adoption of e-government in developed economies, One of the most prominent factors contributing towards the
there is comparatively very little research on transition economies. success of e-government has been the adoption and diffusion of
Researchers such as Roztocki, Weistroffer, Monar, and Nasirin services offered online (Moon, 2002) which are aimed at help-
(2007) and Arogyaswamy and Koziol (2005) attribute this to that ing the enhancement of public service delivery systems (Lean,
fact that most past research activities in transition economy coun- Zailani, Ramayah, & Fernando, 2009). Previous studies have shown
tries, particularly in Eastern Europe, were controlled by central that it is imperative to have an overall well thought out and
government administrations and was often directed to other fields robust strategy for establishing an e-government vision at the
68 V. Weerakkody et al. / International Journal of Information Management 32 (2012) 66–74

national level (Information Service Division, 2002; Irani, Love, & 3.2. The Slovakian strategy for e-government implementation
Jones, 2008). The plan of action for e-government according to and diffusion
Lowery (2001) should include the following: a clear definition of
e-government that covers key areas to be addressed and identi- The Slovak Republic has a dual system of public administra-
fication of all customers; a vision that is easily understood and tion, consisting of state administration and self-government. The
succinctly expresses the concept of and plans for e-government; fact that Slovakia is divided into a number of regions is focused on
specific goals and objectives that can be monitored and measured; introducing the concept of self-government (Slovak term “samo-
and identification of policies necessary to support e-government. sprava” meaning home rule). Although e-government was initially
Holmes (2001) argues that from the various e-government strate- introduced to the Slovak public sector around the same time as
gies and actions there are five underlining principles emerging: the UK (late 1990s), the strategy for implementation, resource
put information and services online and do everything online; allocation and commitment from respective governments was
ensure easy and universal access to online information and ser- lacking in the early stages. Nevertheless, recently a number of
vices; skill government employees to be knowledge workers; work strategies have been adopted by the current central government
in partnership to make it happen; and remove barriers and lead by that are focused on accelerating the progress of development and
example. implementation. A strategy document was approved by the Slo-
vak parliament in February 2008 which defines the vision for
e-government in Slovakia until 2013 as well as identifying the
needed steps that are expected to lead the modernisation of public
3.1. The UK strategy for e-government implementation and administration services. Consequently, the national strategy for e-
diffusion government was developed and introduced (Ministry of Finance of
the Slovak Republic, 2008). As a result of the aforementioned devel-
Although the delivery of e-government services in the UK is opments, recently there have been some signs of improvement in
one of the most advanced in the world (UN, 2010), a study by the the central government strategy towards more transformational e-
OECD (2009) found that only 32% of the UK population is using e- government; for example, the central public administration portal
government services. Official efforts to implement e-government (portal.gov.sk) was established in 2006. This portal has been built
in the UK began in 1997 when the government proposed plans to as a one-stop-shop providing access to information sources and
provide access to all public services through a single government services delivered by individual public administration institutions.
web portal called Directgov. In terms of providing direct support to Although the financial resources are now in place for e-
Local Government Councils (LGCs) to achieve their e-government government in Slovakia, questions still remain as to whether the
programmes, two specific units were set up: (i) an e-government government and related stakeholders have learned from their past
strategy support unit, which offered guidance on implementa- failures (and successes) and accordingly set appropriate goals as
tion, procurement, collaborations, tracking progress and learning part of their strategy and plans for e-government. Little evidence
from other industries such as technology; and (ii) an e-government is seen in terms of progress; according to the United Nations
implementation unit, which offers individual support to meet e- e-government survey in 2010, Slovakia was ranked 43 in 2010,
government targets and provide onsite programme and project five places down from 2008 when the country was ranked 38
management assistance (Cabinet Office, 2007). (UN, 2010). Conversely, other independent reports such as the 8th
To reach the e-government vision in the UK, the government benchmark measurement study by Capgemini published in 2009
has developed a cohesive strategy with strong leadership and a suggests that Slovakia is one of eight ‘fast growers’ in terms of
clearly articulated action plan that leverages the resources of the sophistication and growth in Europe but at the same time offers
private sector (Accenture, 2003; Weerakkody & Dhillon, 2008). a mixed picture as it has average internet use and low broadband
The UK initiated broad changes to its e-government program in access, high e-government use by businesses and low usage by
2004. Along with significant increases in expenditure on IT and citizens (CapGemini, 2009).
progress on a number of high profile programmes, a new vision In Table 1, the authors synthesise the contextual background
for ICT was developed which was spearheaded by a dedicated unit of ICT and e-government in the UK and Slovakia from a litera-
responsible for e-government (Accenture, 2005). In addition, The ture perspective where the strategic and practical considerations
UK has always been conscious that e-government is a means to help of e-government implementation are comparatively outlined. This
drive the local policy objectives of mainstream services, release comparative analysis is based on e-government vision and focus,
efficiency gains and achieve tangible improvements in terms of implementation issues, changes to strategy, the impact of ICT and
shared priorities agreed between central and local government the need to understand citizens’ needs on e-government imple-
(ODPM, 2005). mentation and diffusion,
Around 2007, the emphasis of e-government in the UK shifted
from e-enabling front office processes to transforming internal
operations to realise more efficiency gains and cost reductions 4. Research method
(Irani et al., 2007; Weerakkody & Dhillon, 2008). This new focus
on e-government implementation was aimed at achieving three The focus of this research is to provide an empirical comparative
key changes in strategy. These include implementing ICT enabled study of the strategies adopted for e-government implementation
services that are designed around the citizens, moving towards a and diffusion between developed (UK) and transition economy
shared services culture, and expanding government’s professional- (Slovakia) countries in Europe. The only sources of published
ism in terms of planning delivery, management and governance of information on e-government in the UK and Slovakia are official
IT-enabled change. In this context, with its recent e-government government reports and publications. Despite their significance,
strategy, the UK government has attempted to fundamentally these publications provide a limited picture of the current situation
change the way in which ICT is used in order to achieve joined in both countries in adequate depth. This study uses an interpre-
up working between different parts of government and provide tivistic qualitative research approach (Creswell, 1994; Creswell &
new, efficient and convenient ways for citizens and businesses to Clark, 2006; Miles & Huberman, 1994; Myers, 1997; Walsham,
interact with government (Beynon-Davies & Martin, 2004; McIvor, 1995) utilising semi-structured interviews in addition to utilising
McHugh, & Cadden, 2002; Weerakkody & Dhillon, 2008). a number of secondary resources. Therefore, data collection and
 V. Weerakkody et al. / International Journal of Information Management 32 (2012) 66–74 69

Table 1
Comparative analysis of the government perspective on e-government implementation and diffusion strategy in the UK and Slovakia.

United Kingdom Slovakia

The national perspective on

e-government implementation
Vision A modern, efficient government which meets the needs of Modernising the public administration services through
citizens and businesses and utilises the benefits of latest adapting a national strategy for e-government to enable
developments in e-business citizen-centric services
Focus Government portals and links to private sectors to be Single portal concept to provide links to public services so that
implemented and to have all government services accessible citizens and businesses can access all government services
electronically by citizens; focus on improving existing services electronically using one location
and redesigning government structures
Implementation The office of the deputy prime minister developed a common Discontinuity in strategic planning and implementation of
model to help local councils to understand the picture of the e-government – this is caused by a lack of political consensus.
local e-government strategy, analyse the current position and E-government strategy tends to change when there is a change
implement these strategies of government depending on political preferences
Changes The office of e-Envoy was established in 1999 to encourage the The creation of the ‘Operational Program Informatisation of
UK population as a whole to get on-line and work with local Society’ (OPIS) in 2009 has resulted in renewed motivation and
councils to make all government services available accelerated efforts to implement e-government services across
electronically by the end of 2008. Since 2007, the UK local government municipalities, but there are no visible signs
government changed the emphasis of e-government to that, when developing and implementing e-government
transformational government with a view of reengineering solutions, existing good practices from other countries are
back of processes and IS/IT systems to improve efficiency and being adopted to prevent reinventing the wheel
cost savings
Impact of ICT Electronic services should be seen as an enabler for citizen Although the impact of ICT is recognised as strategic for
centric services in terms of accessibility and availability. facilitating electronic services, local government seems to see
However, it should not be seen as the only channel for offering a need to implement physical front office services that mirror a
public services at local level one-stop concept
Understanding citizens’ needs Acknowledgement of the need to engage citizens is clear in the General lack of tradition of the Slovak public administration in
national strategy for e-government development and focusing on citizen-centric services is hindering e-government
implementation and there is evidence of various local efforts and no efforts were evident in engaging citizens when
government initiatives to engage citizens implementing and delivering such services

analysis follows suggestions made by Markus (1983), optimis- that were used in this comparative study allowed the authors to
ing both primary and secondary data resources to understand maintain an adequate level of data triangulation which was deemed
the strategic perspective of the government throughout its recent to be important in tracking the variation between primary and sec-
implementation strategies on e-government which conform with ondary data and thus improving the accuracy, interpretation and
the aim of this paper. Hence, the authors decided to undertake a analysis of the collected data (Mingers, 2001). This ensured that no
single case study in each country, with the intention that the one bias emerged from either the participants or the researchers (Yin,
case study would provide richness and help generate a more sub- 2009).
stantive framework (Irani, Love, Elliman, Jones, & Themistocleous, A variety of secondary data source such as internal reports, other
2005). publications that form part of the case study institutions’ history
As suggested by Currie (2009) multiple levels of analysis were and past project documentation and strategy documents offered
used in the empirical inquiry to reflect the similarities and dif- further information and context for the study (Irani et al., 2008) and
ferences in these two different contexts. In this respect, a semi allowed for additional triangulation and validation of the findings
structured interview approach was followed for data collection (Miles & Huberman, 1994; Yin, 2009). The data analysis process
(Yin, 2009). In the UK, one strategic, two middle and one operational was done manually and began by examining the verified transcripts
level experts were interviewed in a large local government agency for emerging themes. These emerging themes were identified by
between the periods of August to September 2009. In Slovakia the scanning for direct quotes and keywords that were associated with
interviews were limited to one key senior executive responsible e-government strategy and related themes. Finally, these themes
for e-government implementation due to time and accessibility were mapped against the conceptual analysis presented in Sections
constraints. This interview was conducted in September 2010. 2 and 3 of the paper (which was summarised in Table 1) to maintain
However, a large number of official strategic documents were made further verification through cross checking against the individual
available to the researchers in Slovakia to complement the inter- empirical source.
view data. This guide was based on the conceptual analysis of
strategy formulation for e-government implementation and diffu- 5. The empirical perspective of e-government
sion discussed in Section 3. implementation strategies
Access to the interviewees in both the UK and Slovakia was
gained through personal contacts and the researchers had the inter- 5.1. E-government implementation and diffusion in the UK
viewees’ permission to use a tape recorder. In keeping with ethical (LGC UK)
protocol, the interviewers ensured that the interviewees were fully
informed about the purpose of the interviews, and took steps to Due to confidentiality reasons, the authors use the coded name
put the interviewees at ease so that a two-way, open communica- LGC UK, to refer to the first case organisation from the UK region (a
tion climate existed. Subsequently, email exchanges and telephone developed European economy). This case organisation is situated
calls were used more than once to clarify any unclear information in London and is home to a vast population (over 200,000). LGC UK
(Walsham, 1995; Yin, 2009). All interviews were recorded with has been ranked highly in terms of e-government service delivery
permission from the participants and transcribed for qualitative among other local authorities in the UK by the Audit Commission.
analysis. The interviewees were given the transcripts to check and LGC UK has a collection of e-government services including online
resolve any discrepancies that may have arisen and to eliminate any council tax payments, payments of housing benefits, environmen-
bias (Irani et al., 2005; Jick, 1979). The mixed nature of resources tal services, request for pest control, property services, planning
70 V. Weerakkody et al. / International Journal of Information Management 32 (2012) 66–74

permission applications and licenses to name a few. Furthermore, CSM, since of late people are more accountable and motivated
LGC UK has agreed a strategy that will bring together back-office towards their work and the front line people are working differ-
services of each directorate in a single site and create up to four ently. Conversely, “the trust issue is a challenge because when you
‘first stop shops’ and joint service centres to provide front-office start sharing; some people have a ‘me and my’ mentality; however the
services. culture has changed to, ‘this belongs to us’ as a whole and not individ-
Interviews were conducted in LGC UK with its CIO (Chief ual departments”. As a result this is what is “opening up departments
Information Officer) and Head of Information and Customer Ser- towards sharing (CSM). It was clear that culture is a big change bar-
vices (ICS), E-Government Officer (EO) and the Corporate Services rier in the transformational government agenda. The head of ICS
Manager (CSM). The key findings from these interviewees are sum- stated that “it’s about changing people’s attitudes towards change
marised in the following paragraphs. The interviews identified the and breaking the silo mentality they have; it is about seeing trans-
Involvement of key stakeholders (employees, IT consultants, cit- formation as a positive advantage for the organisation as a whole. . .
izen groups, local councillors) in the council’s ICT and business we are now beginning to break down the silos of cross departmental
transformation strategy as one of the key factors for e-government sharing.” Consequently, involving people in change using training
implementation success in LGC UK. The head of ICS suggests that incentives becomes a necessity in order to overcome these cultural
LGC UK has reengineered most of the legacy IS/IT systems to facili- barriers. The head of ICS pointed out that “we have had problems in
tate electronic service delivery. The head of ICS stated that LGC UK the past with our CRM system but we know where the barriers are and
“is using a service-oriented architecture approach for its transforma- we are dealing with them . . . We are coming closer to understanding
tional government agenda and he also highlights that it is an ideal and building upon the relationship of collaboration in the context of
approach to use”. On the other hand, the Corporate Services Manager transformational e-government. However, we still have a long way to
highlights that “some key services are integrated with other services, go . . . In terms of getting people within the organisation involved in
however most services were re-modelled from scratch like for example the change initiative we offer training and support. We explain why we
HR, payroll and procurement”. In order to do this, LGC UK involved are making the changes to people in the organisation so that we can get
key stakeholders in the process of re-modelling functions from them on side. LA1 was a poor performing council and this practice of
scratch and the use of a SAP ERP system to integrate the various involving people and training them actually helped in changing work
functions. practices”.
Another key issue that was highlighted was the use IT as an The above findings clearly indicate that LGC UK were very ambi-
enabler for citizen-centric services. The EO highlighted that “a one- tious and keen to implement e-government. As such, they have
stop-shop concept is mainly up to the citizen to decide if they wish formed a team around committed individuals who were driving
to use one channel for all public services. In this respect IT must be the initiative through adopting a strategy of education, training and
used as an enabler so that when a citizen wants to, he/she can access collaborative working. The interview finding indicate that although
services through the channels they prefer. Otherwise you go back to the national strategy for e-government sets out the overall vision,
the old approaches of local government where there are restrictions at local government level, implementation strategy and efforts are
on how citizens can request services. So, ultimately citizens should very much oriented towards delivering services that are focused
have a choice of what channel of communication they best prefer on local community needs and expectations. Furthermore, it is also
to communicate with the council”. As such, understanding citizens’ fair to suggest that implementation strategy was mainly shaped by
needs in relation to e-government is critical in terms of promot- prior experiences as well as the expertise of the project managers
ing citizen-centric services. The CIO suggested that, “LGC UK left and those individuals directly involved with e-government efforts
behind all mainframe legacy systems in 2002”. Part of the strategy in LGC UK.
at LGC UK is to replace computer hardware every three years and
by collaborating with voluntary agencies, the council shares infor- 5.2. E-government implementation and diffusion in Slovakia
mation and recycles old systems so that people in the community (LGC SLOVAKIA)
such as elderly people that have not got access to computers and
the Internet can benefit from e-government services. As the CIO Like the UK case study, due to confidentiality reasons, the
pointed out, “ultimately, as a council we must offer a range of meth- authors use the coded name LGC SLOVAKIA, to refer to the
ods of interaction for citizens to engage with the council. We have second case organisation from Slovakia (a transition economy).
to measure the take up of what we propose to change in the organ- LGC SLOVAKIA is one of the largest cities in Slovakia with a large
isation, in order to be successful”. In terms of best practice, “local population (over 200,000 citizens). LGC SLOVAKIA is considered
authorities need to understand their population and see what peo- as one of the leading municipalities in using ICT to deliver pub-
ple want out of e-government services and design services around lic sector services. LGC SLOVAKIA has been ranked in the top five
them, thus this is the key to achieving transformed services in our in 2009 for excellent public service delivery. LGC SLOVAKIA’s first
experience” (CIO). online presence was in 1997, and since then the city representatives
Interviews also highlighted the importance of maintaining suc- have been working on improving the municipality’s e-services.
cessful collaboration and integration internally between business For example, recently a front office of the municipal government,
units in the government agency and externally with different stake- based on a ‘one-stop-shop’ approach was introduced. According
holders outside the public sector. The head of ICS suggests that he is to LGC SLOVAKIA strategy documents, the main aims of the city
interested in the partnership and sharing of information between in the area of e-government are: increasing satisfaction of citizens
LGCs and external voluntary agencies and private sector agencies. and businesses with public administration services; digitization of
‘LGC UK Direct’ is the first point of contact for citizens online. Cur- public administration processes; increasing efficiency and perfor-
rently, the EO is “working on finding what citizens’ want out of the mance of public administration; and capacity building of public
e-government concept and services are being designed around citi- servants.
zens’ needs, in order to support the UK transformational government Interviews with the Chief Information Officer (CIO) in
agenda”. LGC SLOVAKIA suggested that although new strategic plans are in
In terms of transforming public sector organisations from a silo place for online services, there are still some difficulties in devel-
based institution to a process based one that is capable of deliv- oping and implementing e-government at local government level.
ering e-services, organisational culture appeared to be one of the In this sense, the CIO referred to the introduction of the electronic
biggest barriers that the public sector is facing. According to the forms (e-forms) service in 2009 to LGC SLOVAKIA in which it aimed
 V. Weerakkody et al. / International Journal of Information Management 32 (2012) 66–74 71

to provide 18 electronic ‘intelligent forms’. He pointed out that since the IT department is now supporting all city servants by frequently
its inception in 2009, there have been only 70 users who used this organising and providing training to current staff.
service. He continued by identifying the reasons behind such fail-
ure is due to the fact that (a) the service was not promoted through
the right communication channels, and (b) although citizens can 6. Discussion
download, fill and print the form, they still need to submit it phys-
ically. Nevertheless, the CIO pointed out that the “e-forms were just This research has shown that although the high level vision of
the first step for e-government in LGC SLOVAKIA. We have initiated e-government is the same for many countries, the implementation
a number of other projects to expedite the implementation process of strategies, plans and focus vary between countries. It was found
e-government services with a total budget of 4 million Euros which is that while local municipalities in Slovakia are focused more on local
maintained under the Operational Program Informatisation of Society government modernisation, automation and rationalisation of pro-
(OPIS) which was formed in 2009”. In addition, the CIO stated that cedures, in the UK they are focused on reengineering back office
“the general aim of these projects is to implement 94 electronic ser- processes and change management. From a tactical perspective,
vices” (the full set of services in Slovakia is estimated to be 140). both national and local strategy was seen to be more important
According to the CIO, these new projects will focus on fifth gen- in the UK, a developed economy, than what it is in Slovakia, a
eration services which will aim to deliver personalised services to transition economy. The dependence on external funding from EU,
citizens for the first time. digital divide, delivering citizen-centric services, lack of skills, resis-
Within the OPIS project proposals development, an analysis of tance to change and providing the needed training to employees
all processes in the LGC SLOVAKIA municipal government area was were seen as the most important challenges highlighted by local
done by involving all key stakeholders within the municipality. All municipalities in the transition economy (Slovakia). However, in
heads of departments participated in this process and were asked the developed economy (UK) local councils considered raising citi-
for personal opinions to formulate the development and imple- zens’ awareness of e-government and offering a choice of methods
mentation strategy. The CIO pointed out, “all processes, experiences for citizens to engage with government among their key challenges.
and requests were collected and, if possible, also incorporated into the From an organisational change perspective, interviewees in both
project proposal” The interview also clarified that LGC SLOVAKIA case studies confirmed that e-government has implemented a com-
was keen to cooperate with other public agencies and municipal- prehensive paradigm shift to their way of working.
ities in Slovakia to share experiences and good practices. In this Further, when comparing the empirical research findings to the
respect LGC SLOVAKIA cooperates with Bratislava city (the capital literature, there is a similar focus and level of importance in the dif-
of Slovakia) in the implementation of e-government solutions par- ferent e-government strategies for implementation and diffusion
ticularly for internal administrative processes such as taxation and from both a theoretical and practical perspective. However, strat-
accounting. In addition, a platform was set up with the Association egy and organisational change are two topics that are seen to be
of IT Officers in Municipal Governments of Slovakia to facilitate more important theoretically (Earl, 1993; Galliers, 1991; McFarlan,
good practice exchange and experience sharing. The CIO pointed 1971; Sambamurthy, Zmud, & Byrd, 1994) than what was actu-
out that these are two rare local examples and expressed disap- ally found in practice. With regards to good practice, this research
pointment that best practices were not shared at a wider national indicates that e-government should be defined with cues such as
and European level, particular between developed and transition customer/citizen oriented local government, service delivery using
economies. a ‘one-stop’ concept, change of work processes and the use of ICT to
A successfully case of service delivery in LGC SLOVAKIA was maximize service efficiency and cost savings. Local agencies have
through a physical front office that was set up as a one-stop shop come further in the UK than in Slovakia and this is attributed to
for citizens. The CIO explained that all public services provided two reasons: (a) the UK has a local strategy promoted by the gov-
by the city are accessible in this one-stop front office. According ernment which the local agencies are guided to follow and (b) the
to LGC SLOVAKIA estimates, in 2009 more than 100,000 citizens UK has had strong leadership from the start of the e-government
visited this front office. All internal departmental information initiative in 1999 compared to Slovakia.
resources and processes are now accessible from this front office. Having presented the findings, it is clear that countries in both
According to the CIO, ICT will be used to e-enabling this one stop developed and transition economies consider e-government as a
concept where services will be designed around citizens needs and national priority. However, as expected, their focus, strategies and
delivered online as the next stage of LGC SLOVAKIA’s e-government implementation plans differ from each other. What is common
plan. As stated by the CIO “for the time being we miss the interface of though is that, in their e-government implementation, both the UK
electronic communication with the citizens”. and Slovakia are focusing on building services around the citizens’
One of the other factors that were highlighted during the needs and making government and services more accessible with
interview is the need to reduce the organisational and cultural the use of ICT. While the UK strategy has stronger guidelines at
barriers in e-government implementation. The CIO pointed out local level, the status of e-government in Slovakia can be described
that LGC SLOVAKIA were faced with strong resistance during the as “ready for development or improvement”. The current level of
implementation of new information systems. According to the CIO e-government services in Slovakia is still modest compared to the
“technical implementation is not difficult, but the most difficult thing EU average. While local governments in Slovakia have a unique
is to persuade people to accept new systems”. As it was pointed out chance to develop their e-government services to catch up with
by the CIO “Most of the city servants were (and still are) used to the other EU countries, the Slovak government is still dependent on
traditional public service work practices and structures – these peo- EU structural funds. Sadly, this implies a very high risk for future
ple have been working for the city since the time when there were no sustainability of e-government in Slovakia.
computers. Their ‘ceiling’ of IT skills is very low and they have problems A key lesson that emerges from the study is that, in comparison
working with new software or even when the design of an interface is to the developed economy, the transition economy country has not
changed. However, younger generation city servants have no problem had strong leadership to push the implementation of e-government
in using new IT systems”. The CIO suggested that senior manage- forcefully. It is widely accepted that e-government was not on top
ment in LGC SLOVAKIA on the other hand strongly supported the of the political agenda in Slovakia until 2009 and there was no high
introduction of new information systems, which made the whole level ‘IT champion’ who would promote and push through the e-
process somewhat easier to manage. Further, it was revealed that government agenda at the highest political level (this can be at
72 V. Weerakkody et al. / International Journal of Information Management 32 (2012) 66–74

Table 2
Empirical perspective of e-government implementation and diffusion strategy in local government in the UK and Slovakia.

United Kingdom Slovakia

Empirical perspective of e-government

implementation strategy
Vision Facilitating e-government through the Facilitating the provision of personalised
implementation of enterprise-wide cooperate e-government services through sharing of
information systems to integrate front and back experiences and best practices among
office processes municipalities
Focus Initial focus was to offer ‘one stop shop’ concept to Focus on improving the satisfaction of public
diffuse e-government services. However, due to services among citizens and businesses using the
low levels of citizens adoption, local councils are concept of ‘one stop shop’ to diffuse e-government
adopting various channels (such as face to face, services. Currently, this is achieved using a physical
mobile, digital TV, social media) to engage with office rather than through an online service
citizens
Implementation Combining business process re-engineering Implementing new information systems to
techniques and service oriented architecture automate traditional public sector services and to
approaches to improve existing processes and introduces interactive online services
supporting legacy systems
Changes While the initial focus of e-government Focus on a ‘one-stop-shop’ concept for all
implementation was centred on a ‘one-stop-shop’ e-government services, but forced to adopt a more
concept, in recent times a multi-channel approach step-by-step (incremental) approach for
has been adopted to encourage citizens e-enabling local level services
engagement
Impact of ICT Local councils have worked closely with large Local municipalities have focused on utilising ICT
software and technology vendors to integrate and to automate existing traditional processes, but are
utilise existing legacy systems with new IT systems faced with resistance from management and
employees to adopt new IS/IT systems
Understanding citizens’ needs Acknowledgement of the need to engage citizens is Although the national strategy for e-government
demonstrated through proactive collaboration and focused on offering personalised services, no
engagement with citizens through various efforts were evident at municipality level to
channels engage citizens when designing and implementing
online services
Practical considerations for e-government
Collaboration Local councils have established working Lack of proactive collaboration and coordination
partnerships with neighbouring councils, local between municipalities and other relevant
NGOs and citizens groups to deliver more stakeholders (citizens, NGOs, technology providers
comprehensive and citizen centric services etc.) has resulted in delays and new challenges for
e-government implementation
Organisational culture Employees are encouraged to participate in the Lack of employee participation in change and
changes that are implemented within local incentives to promote participation (i.e. training)
councils and training is provided to equip as well as ineffective communication between
employees with the needed skills senior management and lower level employees is
resulting in user resistance
E-government implementation Adequate skills and human resource capabilities Insufficient human resources and lack of
expertise were evident at local level to support the e-government and project management experts
development and implementation of and professionals at all levels of public
e-government services and the resulting back administration was seen to hinder implementation
office process reengineering tasks that were and diffusion efforts at national and local level
needed to support these services

least partly explained by the fact that in the past there were more specifically at the local level. In particular, senior management’s
urgent political, economic, and social reforms with higher prior- approach to realising change was seen as a key enabler as much
ity in transition economy countries). As such, the responsibility for as a barrier towards successful e-government implementation. In
e-government has moved several times from one government to addition, collaboration between local government agencies and
another (due to political change), accompanied by lack of coordi- with stakeholders plays an influential role towards the successful
nation, insufficient management and no clear definition of roles and diffusion and adoption of e-government services (Rowley, 2011).
responsibilities. Besides, it was noticed that the level of e-government develop-
However, with forming of OPIS in 2009 in Slovakia, there ment and implementation expertise and support has a significant
has been a stronger focus on implementation recently. In con- impact on the progress of e-government at local government level.
trast, the UK government has had a business unit responsible for In this respect, appropriate strategies to train and skill local gov-
ICT and e-government since 1999. From the information gath- ernment employees was seen as an imperative to ensure proactive
ered during the interviews and secondary research in the UK and participation in change.
Slovakia, the main features that characterise the e-government Furthermore, as outlined in Table 2, the central government has
initiatives are mapped against the conceptual analysis of e- pushed the local authorities in the UK to: (a) collaborate with other
government development and implementation strategies outlined local agencies, (b) improve information sharing within depart-
in Table 1. In this respect, Table 2 offers a high level compari- ments and with other local agencies, (c) provide better coordination
son of the two countries’ e-government efforts from an empirical of business processes and (d) provide integrated service delivery
perspective. (Beynon-Davies, 2005). In doing so, LGC UK officials believe that
As indicative in Table 2, the empirical research in the study to achieve this, a flexible and integrated e-government infrastruc-
exposed a number of practical issues that needed consideration. ture is required to: (a) enable web based transactions, (b) improved
Organisational culture has emerged as one of the fundamen- service delivery, (c) improve performance management and knowl-
tal issues that impact the implementation of e-government edge and (d) improve the robustness of business processes. In this
 V. Weerakkody et al. / International Journal of Information Management 32 (2012) 66–74 73

context, LGC UK adopted well known off-the-shelf enterprise sys- Through the adoption of a research strategy focusing on a
tems to facilitate this change. transition economy country that is not in an advanced stage of
On the other hand, government reports indicate that Slovakia e-government implementation and diffusion, this study offers a
is lagging behind in the delivery of e-government due to a num- holistic view in understanding the good and bad practices of e-
ber of factors. It is accepted that the concept of e-government is government strategy formulation and planning. In addition, the
ill-defined in Slovakia and at the same time is not harmonised factors influencing electronic service development in the public
with EU terminology. This is further compounded by the lack sector are largely strategic and political in nature and there-
of sufficient legal frameworks that interlink existing legal norms fore implementation and diffusion success will largely depend on
and regulations with their corresponding ICT applications and e- local government and/or individual level strategies, project plans,
government throughout the various public administration areas. availability of skills and resource allocations by respective public
It is also acknowledged that the current status of ICT infrastruc- agencies. These factors can be further compounded by organisa-
ture is insufficient for provision and use of transactional electronic tional culture, approaches used to facilitate change and attitude
services. In terms of e-government adoption, evidence in Slovakia towards collaboration in both developed and transition economies.
suggests that the digital gap (between younger, better educated, Nonetheless, it was clear that transition economy countries
economically well off population and the elderly, less educated, need better alignment of their national ICT strategies with vari-
low income, rural population) is widening (Ministry of Finance of ous local level e-government projects. Close synergy needs to be
the Slovak Republic, 2008). developed between respective public municipalities implement-
ing electronic services and other stakeholders (employees, citizens
groups, businesses, NGOs and third party ICT providers) helping
7. Conclusion these agencies to facilitate successful implementation. Further,
clear legislation, political will and commitment, and implemen-
The empirical evidence in this study shows that irrespective of tation guidelines and standards in terms of the projects and ICTs
socio-economic status of the two countries, there were a num- that are used to support e-government will need to be identified
ber of common themes that emerged in terms of e-government by the respective governments and closer collaboration will need
implementation and diffusion. In this respect, the need to align to be established between local councils/municipalities and central
central and local e-government plans, political will and commit- governments to facilitate smother implementation and diffusion of
ment, guidelines for local level implementation, developing user e-government services.
centred solutions, strong leadership and a common understanding
of the benefits of e-government are seen as some of the key com- 7.2. Research limitations and future directions
ponents of good e-government implementation practice. From a
citizens’ perspective, adoption was seen to be lacking both in the It has to be noted that this research only focused on e-
UK and Slovakia and this is worrying from a national perspective government implementation and diffusion strategies facing local
as it hints that good strategies, plans and implementation projects government in one transition and one developed economy country
will be meaningless if not backed up with appropriate marketing and did not investigate how these strategies may influence citi-
strategies to raise e-government awareness levels among citizens. zens’ adoption of e-government services in these countries or in a
From a planning perspective, it is inappropriate to draw any con- wider context. Although the authors acknowledge this as a research
clusions regarding overall e-government strategy in developed and limitation, a glimpse of the many previous studies on public sec-
transition economies given the limitations of this research – as the tor electronic services adoption suggests that issues such as ICT
empirical findings only represents the views of a few individuals in literacy, lack of access to online resources, and language and age
one UK council and one Slovakian municipality. Nonetheless, it can barriers may pose significant challenges in terms of adoption of e-
be clearly distinguished that the Slovakian e-government strategy government services from a citizens’ perspective. The results from
is less comprehensive than the UK whereby the country has focused such studies can help formulate effective strategies for overcom-
on a few services at a time with decisions being made on a one-by- ing some of the present barriers to e-government implementation
one basis to implement and promote local e-government services. and diffusion seen in Slovakia. This is particularly important as only
Although this approach mirrors Earl’s (1993) suggestions that a one interview with a key individual responsible for e-government
more incremental approach is suitable for strategy formulation was conducted in Slovakia, although this effort was combined
and execution, the empirical evidence in the transition economy with reviews of a large number of secondary resources. Further, as
suggests otherwise. much as this study provides some insights on the variations in the
strategic scope of e-government implementation between UK and
Slovakia, it is noted that further cross-country comparative studies
7.1. Contribution to theory and practice can be of benefit for developed and transition economy e coun-
tries across Europe. In this respect, online platforms such as the EU
Limited studies that were found in the literature addressed ICT best practice database (http://www.epractice.eu) as well as social
implementation and adoption strategies in the public sector in tran- media tools can be of benefit to European countries in sharing expe-
sition economy countries (InfoDev, 2007; Kubiatko and Halákova, riences in e-government implementation. Finally, although from a
2009). This is particularly relevant as the motivations for using strategy and implementation perspective e-government will differ
ICT in the private sector often differs significantly in comparison between developed and transition economies due to culture, socio-
to the public sector. However, the empirical evidence in the UK economic settings and political environment, future research can
(through the case study of local government efforts to implement nonetheless attempt to identify good practice for e-government
e-government) indicate that the public sector is now following a implementation in common public administration processes across
similar strategy to that of the private sector in terms of the exploita- developed and transition economies.
tion of ICT to improve service delivery and customer satisfaction.
On the other hand, research published thus far on the exploita-
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