Investigating Factors Inhibiting e-Government Adoption in Developing Countries

Abstract

Researchers in the discipline of electronic government (e-Government) have historically presented several factors impeding the adoption and implementation of these systems. This paper is uniquely aimed at investigating the factors inhibiting e-Government adoption in a developing country – Pakistan. The literature indicates that the move towards integrated service provision and transactional e-Government is considered as an immense challenge for developing countries as compared to developed regions. Moreover, the progress towards realising the full potential of e-Government using digital technologies to improve public services and government-citizen engagements has been slower and less effective in the developing countries. Pakistan, over many years, has experienced similar lethargic e-Government growth due to economic and political instability, poor governance and deteriorating government institutions. Thus, the ever increasingly weakening state of government structures in Pakistan calls for the need to deliver end-to-end ‘joined-up’ public services to key stakeholders (i.e. citizens, businesses, government employees and other government agencies). The contribution of this research is twofold – firstly, identifying factors inhibiting e-Government adoption in Pakistan – here the focus is to identify the significant problems of meeting demands which are attributed to several issues within organisational, strategic, technological, political, operational, stakeholders and social structures. Secondly, the authors propose an achievable approach to enacting e-Government enabled delivery of services. The conceptual findings, as noted, are validated through qualitative based research in the context of Pakistan government organisations.