Abstract

Government service transformation, with information and communication technology (ICT) as critical enabler, has received a lot of attention since the introduction of the public Internet in the early 1990s. It has been widely acknowledged as a solution not only to deliver better, more effective, and convenient public services to citizens, but also to make government services more efficient and easy to use (e.g., Bellamy and Taylor, 1998; Borins et al., 2007; Danziger and Andersen, 2002; Heeks, 1999; Weerakkody and Reddick, 2012). It may not be surprising therefore that government service transformation concepts, strategies, and initiatives have been a profound item on the agenda of governments around the world, and are still being pursued to date (e.g., the recent UK Central Government’s Transformation Programme; ¹ the Australian Federal Government’s Digital Transformation Office; ² Lips, 2014; Weerakkody and Reddick, 2012). However, although narratives of technological innovation always have used “transformation” as a major theme, there are a variety of definitions and no clear consensus about what is meant by this term in the context of the impacts of ICT on government (Borins, 2007b).