Competency Requirements for Transformational E-Government

Abstract

One key aspect of e-government is its potential for an ICT enabled transformation of the public sector. Through ICT, new forms of collaboration and interorganizational public service networks become feasible, making it possible to carry out the public sector's tasks more efficiently and effectively. However, a rather significant gap exists between this transformational potential and the tangible results that have been achieved so far. One reason for this slow and cumbersome implementation seems to be that public managers lack the necessary competencies to bring the promises of e-government to fruition. This article analyzes the changing competency requirements for public managers that accompany e-government and describes the first steps in the development of an egovernment competency framework for public managers. The article sums up the results of a literature review on e-government competencies, a survey carried out for the article, and data gathered in focus group workshops. Based on these results, a first set of e-government competencies is then outlined that goes beyond pure ICT skills. The article concludes with a discussion of the framework and its implications for human resource management in the public sector.

Does E-government Education Meet Competency Requirements? An Analysis of the German University System from International Perspective

“…New competencies in terms of knowledge, skills and attitudes are in demand [5,11]. However, these competencies are not generally self-evident as in the context of ICT-use a new context-specific division of labor emerges: Managers and employees at different organizational levels need different skills and competencies to be up to their task.…”

“…However, these competencies are not generally self-evident as in the context of ICT-use a new context-specific division of labor emerges: Managers and employees at different organizational levels need different skills and competencies to be up to their task. Even though there is a lack of empirical research about which knowledge, skills and competencies are required in different international administrative cultures and at the various administrative levels, some recently published articles give indications [11,24]. These provide hints especially in regard to public managers' technical and non-technical competency requirements.…”

“…Even fewer attempts have been made to comprehensively systematize e-government competencies [11,18], which could serve as a basis for this article. These attempts are summarized in table 1.…”

“…Exemplarily assigned knowledge, skills, competencies technical Information technology skills [18], IS design competency [11]; information systems [5] sociotechnical e-government impact [11,12]; technology and egovernment adoption; politics of e-government [12] organizational e-government structures [4]; organizational design [11]; process management [4,11] managerial…”

The Tale of e-Government: A Review of the Stories that Have Been Told So Far and What is Yet to Come

“…This topic is also apparently too young in terms of appearance in scientific contributions. Though being a necessary prerequisite for successful eGovernment implementation, providing for more efficiency and effectiveness, it has gained limited attention so far, except for recent ventures like [13,27,28].…”