E-government and organisational transformation of government: Black box revisited?

• ICT is the key enabler of OT in the e-government era.
• A theoretical framework explaining the role of ICT in OT is proposed.
• The main characteristics of OT in the e-government era are identified.
• Explaining OT is tackled from two angles, through the depth and the nature of OT.

During the e-government era the role of technology in the transformation of public sector organisations has significantly increased, whereby the relationship between ICT and organisational change in the public sector has become the subject of increasingly intensive research over the last decade. However, an overview of the literature to date indicates that the impacts of e-government on the organisational transformation of administrative structures and processes are still relatively poorly understood and vaguely defined.The main purpose of the paper is therefore the following: (1) to examine the interdependence of e-government development and organisational transformation in public sector organisations and propose a clearer explanation of ICT's role as a driving force of organisational transformation in further e-government development; and (2) to specify the main characteristics of organisational transformation in the e-government era through the development of a new framework. This framework describes organisational transformation in two dimensions, i.e. the ‘depth’ and the ‘nature’ of changes, and specifies the key attributes related to the three typical organisational levels.