Managing continuity and change: a new approach for strategizing in e‐government

Managing e‐government is invariably managing change. Despite plethora of literature on change management, the rate of success of e‐government projects is dismal, especially in developing countries. Deriving from strategy and change management literature, this paper seeks to present a new approach to strategize for better change outcomes in e‐government domain. A new construct of “continuity” is introduced and proposed to be managed concurrently with change forces to attain better delivery of strategic deliverables in e‐government projects.

Continuity and change forces affecting e‐government domain identified from the literature are statistically validated by conducting an “idea engineering” exercise. For this response from e‐government experts to a structured questionnaire is elicited to validate the forces, which are further modeled in the strategic framework proposed.

Drawing from strategy and change management literature, it is hypothesized that “managing change in e‐government can be better leveraged by consciously and concurrently managing continuity”. Based on expert survey, out of the initial six continuity and eight change forces proposed, only one continuity force has been dropped and the rest are further modeled in the framework. Propositions for future research and implications for policy makers and implementers are highlighted.

Given the low rate of success of e‐government initiatives, especially in developing countries, this framework may serve as an important approach to strategizing in e‐government domain and may be of value to not just the policy makers but also to other stakeholders like project planners, implementers and also the beneficiaries.

The value of this paper lies in the application of the concept of strategic management of continuity and change in e‐government domain; identification of continuity and change forces in e‐government; and proposing a model linking the “constructs of continuity and change” forces with strategic deliverables of e‐government.