Adoption of web-based technologies in pursuit of work productivity and creativity within the public sector in South Africa

This paper reports on the diffusion and adoption of web-based technologies by government departments in KwaZulu-Natal Province in the context of work productivity and creativity. Through a survey, key government departments were sampled through multistage and purposive sampling techniques. Questionnaires that were largely structured were distributed to 260 top, middle and lower management respondents from four government departments in the province, namely, department of Arts and Culture; Home Affairs, Education and Health. The data was analysed using thematic categorisation and tabulation, and the findings were presented descriptively. The study adopted Rogers’s theory (Diffusion of Innovations) as its theoretical framework. The results show that essential Web-based tools and services are largely available and accessible to the civil servants. The results further depict that most of the civil servants used the Web to communicate among themselves, to disseminate departmental information, and for research purposes. The respondents largely concur that the use of the Web had increased their work productivity and creativity. It is concluded that despite the constraints and challenges encountered in the application and use of the Web in government departments, a wide range of web-based technologies have been adopted to facilitate the sharing and exchange of information in the sector. Whether levels of Web service availability and accessibility are uniform among the civil servants (both management and ordinary staff) requires further investigation.