ABSTRACT
I. Introduction.............................................................................................................. 84 II. Toward a new public management......................................................................... 84 III. Electronic government programs ............................................................................ 86 IV. Digital government initiatives and change processes............................................. 87 V. Conclusions: implications for public managers ...................................................... 90
The need for efficacy and efficiency has given rise to multiple attempts to reform public administrations and to modernize the states. During the last few years, a new tool has become available: information and communication technology (ICT). This technological innovation in the public sector has resulted in digital administration and government programs that have not always been successful. To understand why requires analyzing the organizational and institutional setting where the transformations that are related to the adoption of ICTs in the public sector occur. Therefore, this chapter will explain how the adoption of new technologies has given rise to important organizational change processes but has not necessarily provoked cultural alterations or institutional changes. Also, it will show that those factors that produce resilience to technological change are not different from those related to other public administration transformations since all of them are rooted in one particular type of institution defined by the attributes of the bureaucratic model.
