e-Government Leaders, Organisational Change and ICTs: Learning from FAME and other e-Government Experiences

So-called ‘slow’ adaptation to technological change is actually a characteristic of major innovations, particularly those requiring significant organisational change. The implementation of ICT to support government sector working is no exception: it is a complex socio-technical practice comprised of interrelated technical, cultural and organisational issues. As part of the “Framework for Multi-Agency Environments” (FAME: www.fame-uk.org) project interviews were conducted with leaders of e-government projects and with project managers responsible for local authority FAME strands. How far do leaders/managers think in terms of organisational change and what technology can do to help that objective, and how far do they think about the opportunities for organisational change that ICT developments might enable? Grounded theory method (GTM) is used in the context of local authority leadership to explore these issues.