Understanding e-Government project trajectories from an actor-network perspective

Abstract

A number of models have been offered to help explain the trajectories of e-Government projects: their frequent failures and their rarer successes. Most, though, lack a sense of the political interaction of stakeholders that is fundamental to understanding the public sector. This paper draws on actornetwork theory to provide a perspective that is used to explain the trajectory of an e-Government case study. This perspective is found to provide a valuable insight into the local and global actor-networks that surround e-Government projects. The mobilisation, interaction and disintegration of these networks underpins the course of such projects, and can itself be understood in relation to network actor power: not through a static conception of 'power over' others but through the dynamic-enacted concept of 'power to'. As well as providing a research tool for analysis of e-Government project trajectories, the local/global networks approach also offers insights into e-Government leadership as a process of network formation and maintenance; and into the tensions between network stabilisation and design stabilisation.

Remontando a Rede De Atores Na Implantação De Um Sistema De Informação Em Saúde

“…Essas pesquisas têm abrangido diversos contextos, tais como governo eletrônico (Heeks & Stanforth, 2007), saúde (Braa et al, 2004;Sheikh & Braa, 2011) e gestão baseada em processos (Albuquerque, 2012;Sarker, Sarker, & Sidorova, 2006). Na América Latina, e especialmente no Brasil, pesquisas têm se baseado na ANT para estudo da inclusão digital (Andrade & Urquhart, 2010;Teles & Joia, 2011), geoprocessamento (Rajão & Vurdubakis, 2013;Silva, 2007), política industrial de informática e inovação (Marques, 2004;Ramos, 2009) e governo eletrônico (Barbosa, 2008;Cavalheiro & Joia, 2014).…”

“…A abordagem ANT, embora não tenha um aspecto crítico explícito, ao reconstruir "a rede e as ações de seus constituintes, associado a uma recusa em fazer distinções apriorísticas ou em assumir algo como dado, habilita uma luz crítica para ser posta no que é assumido, o mundano e o status quo" (Doolin & Lowe, 2002, p. 74 A seguir, usando a abordagem ANT, é descrito o processo de implantação do E-Hosp no HPT de acordo com os quatro momentos de tradução apresentados no Quadro 1 (Callon, 1986), tal como realizado em vários estudos em SI (Albuquerque, 2012;Andrade & Urquhart, 2010;Heeks & Stanforth, 2007;Ramos, 2009;Teles & Joia, 2011 (Latour, 1997). O grupo de analistas era composto por um coordenador e cinco analistas e, uma vez que não foram observadas dissidências entre eles durante a implantação do sistema, optou-se por nomeá-los todos sob a rubrica "Analistas".…”

Formatting the Public Sector with ICTs: Exploring Institutional Sources and Processes

“…There is not enough work that explores the nature of institutional interplay and how it conditions the micro-level process of implementation [6]. There are a few studies that have adopted Actor Network Theory and concepts of improvisations to explore this process [5], [21]. In this paper, the theoretical concept of formats [27] is employed to explain how semi-configured packages arrive with e-government projects, and how local actors in the public sector work on appropriating them to fit within existing institutional arrangements.…”

Institutional Barriers to Digitalization of Government Budgeting in Developing Countries: A Case Study of Ghana

“…However, in most cases, the outcome has been a failure due to institutional, socio-cultural and technological barriers (Siddiquee, 2016). Among the barriers identified are complex and multi-level bureaucratic structures inherited from past colonial administration (Imran, 2013), e-illiteracy and inadequate ICT infrastructure (Bertot et al, 2010;Heeks & Stanforth, 2007;Hendriks, 2013). Other challenges include resistance to change, power struggles and lack of cross-agency collaboration (Schuppan, 2009) as well as failure to update existing laws (Basu, 2004).…”

“…Notwithstanding the benefits of digitalization, its deployment in the public sector can be a challenge (Falk et al, 2017). Generally, the nature of the culture and structures in the public sector can be barriers to digital innovation (Heeks & Stanforth, 2007;Irani et al, 2007;Weerakkody et al, 2011). The traditional public sector is characterized by hierarchical and disparate structures as well as bureaucracy and paper-based processes (Davison et al, 2005;West, 2004) that cause inefficiencies and delays (Beynon-Davies, 2007).…”