eGovernment and Organizational Changes: Towards an Extended Governance Model

Over the last decade the diffusion of Information Technologies has represented one of the main drivers of government reform. The adoption process of such technologies has posed significant challenges for public organizations. The aim of this paper is thus to look into the process of organizational change that public agencies have undergone, in order to single out its most salient characteristics, such as understanding changes in the adoption of technologies, in organizational choices, in skill needs and in customer-public administrations relationship. On the one hand, organizations are gradually opening up their institutional boundaries in order to proactively answer to environmental changes. On the other hand, citizens play an increasing role in the context of e-Government, since their suggestions and contributions may considerably influence decisions taken by public administrations. Specifically, we attempt to answer this research question: What are e-Government organizational implications in the back office and in the interaction with citizens due to Information Technologies diffusion? Using data from a survey on 1,206 Italian public administrations, we show how organizational changes are emerging, based on the overcoming of traditional bureaucratic organizational forms. The implications of these findings are also