Evaluating Egovernment Change in the Regional Context

Much governmental change internationally is expressed in terms of associated processes of eGovernment change. However, much existing literature on e-Government is descriptive and lacks context. There is little attempt to place this form of organisational change in both its local context and the wider context of national and trans-national change in the public sector. Without such context it is difficult to understand and interpret the ways in which particular governments and their agencies struggle with differing conceptions of e-Government. This paper presents a case study of a significant e-Government change programme being undertaken by a regional administration in the UK – the National Assembly for Wales. The paper describes the strategic plan developed for e-Government within this body and situates this strategy in terms of its local context. We also set this case study in the wider context of the New Public Management movement, the developing literature on the nature of e-Government and relate this to the concept of governance. We posit that the institution described in this case is struggling with nascent forms of what we refer to as network governance. Such forms of governance are particularly interesting because of the critical importance effective informatics infrastructure plays in organizational performance.