Public sector digital transformation barriers: A developing country experience

Abstract

Influenced by the global uptake of digital transformations, governments in developing countries are making considerable investments in digital transformation initiatives; however, these often result in very high failure rates. The overall purpose of this study is to identify why digital transformations in the public sector of developing country contexts fail. This paper reports on a rich revelatory case study of a Sri Lankan government agency that experienced digital transformation failure. Data was collected primarily via semi-structured interviews and augmented with document analysis that enabled us to derive deep insights into why digital transformations fail. We identified 23 failure factors which were grouped into 5 meta-themes, namely, Organisational, Implementing Agency, Cultural, Leadership and Macro-Level Factors, forming a failure factor model. The analysis also unveiled complex interrelationships between these themes/factors, which formed the basis for 6 evidence-supported propositions detailed in the paper. The findings will benefit public sector organizations in developing countries and their implementation partners to effectively plan their digital transformation strategies.