Kamalia Azma Kamaruddin, Ariza Nordin and Nor Laila Md Noor
In order to get the essence of what transformational government entails, we delved into various literatures using keywords such as‘ transformational government’,‘ connected government’,‘ government 2.0’,‘ open government’ and‘ citizen‐centric government’ to find its approach, dimensions, requirements, characteristics or concept. Al‐azri et. al.( 2010) proposes a classification of paradigms for successful e‐government transformation as( a) organizational,( b) technology and( c) user, which is in line with taxonomy of t‐ government issues presented by Janssen and Shu( 2008). Thus, this research will adopt this view in theorizing and classifying the definitions of t‐government based on the literatures found.
Dais et. al( 2012) explains the requirements of t‐government as having citizen‐centric delivery and effective management within government, which strikes a balance between user and organizational paradigms. This view is also shared by Saha( 2010), in which he describes connected government as having seven dimensions that are mostly in user and organizational views. Another author that seconded this outlook is Al Khouri( 2011). He explains the characteristics of citizen‐centric e‐government as having increased trust and accountability, collaboration among departments and stake holders, avoid duplication and overhead, track effectiveness of initiatives, improved transparency, consistent user interface and convenience channels, increase responsiveness and security, and opportunities for businesses to provide inputs( Al Khouri 2011). In a similar note, Bannister and Connolly( 2011) also elaborate on the concept of transformational government by giving emphasize on organizational paradigm, such as networked and entrepreneurial government, decentralization, agility and the elimination of bureaucracy.
On user‐centric view, Osimo( 2010) in his editorial article in European Journal of ePractice defines transformational government, to go beyond traditional eParticipation, including open government, citizensdriven services, and adoption of social tools. His opinion differs from Dwivedi and Janssen( 2011) as the latter focus only on reengineering back office processes and IT systems in the public sectors. A mixture of organizational and technological view was found in the work of Reinwald and Kraemmergaard( 2012), where they emphasized important characteristics of transformational government as having integrated databases, process reengineering and cross‐agency integration, however, no mentioning of user‐centric factors was included in their definition. The most comprehensive concept of t‐government have to be said on the work of Borras( 2012) and OASIS Technical Committee, where all paradigms are unified to give an emphasis to t‐ government approach proposed by them. The summary of t‐government principles is shown in Table 1.
It can be concluded that there is no universally accepted definition of the transformational government concept. T‐government is an ill‐defined concept and arises from governments having to become more citizenfocused while recognizing that it would need fundamental changes to governance( Janssen and Shu 2008). From the summary of t‐government characteristics, it is clear now that transformational government is multidimensional which involves a combination of organizational, technological and user domains. In this research, elements of citizen‐centric t‐government will be established, as the transformation process has to deal with user‐oriented dimensions of change. We will discuss this further in the following section.
3. Discussion
Al‐Khouri( 2011) in his paper alleged that governments should transform from department‐centric model to a citizen‐centric model. This concept was also repeated by Luna‐Reyes et. al( 2011) who said, having a citizencentric approach increases efficiency and reduces bureaucracy in public offices. Many other authors who presented their work in transformational government research also echoed this idea. However, what is actually coined by the term citizen‐centric, and what are its elements, have never been discussed thoroughly in previous literatures. To shed light on this matter, this section explains the citizen‐centricity concept for common understanding, comparing and guiding implementation of ICT‐mediated transformational government initiatives.
To get the crux of what makes a citizen‐centric model, we referred back to the user domain of t‐government characteristics in Table 1. Using abductive method, we further analyzed the essence of each characteristic in previous literatures to get a solid understanding of its concept. By grouping the similar characteristics together and finding a statement that best match it’ s meaning, these four constructs stood up to represent the citizencentric notion, as depicted in Figure 1.
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