Making sense of e-government implementation in Jordan: a qualitative investigation

E-government has become a popular focus of government efforts in many developed countries and, more recently, in several developing countries. Jordan is one such developing country that has embarked on an e-government initiative (the programme was launched in the year 2000, and is expected to take several years to complete). Existing empirical research on e-government has been undertaken principally within western developed countries. Of those studies that have focused on e-government implementation within developing countries, a few have identified one or more factors that play a part in the progress or otherwise of an e-government capability. Whilst useful as a combined list of possible factors to bear in mind, these studies have been based on “one-off” snapshot analyses of the situations found within the countries being studied. There is no indication as to whether the existence factors vary over time, and why this occurs. The aim of this research was to investigate the dynamic nature of, and interrelationships between, the factors that influence e-government implementation in Jordan over time. By conducting 42 semi-structured interviews with major stakeholders in Jordan including employees of the public and private sectors as well as ordinary citizens, qualitative data was collected over three periods of empirical work. By analysing the data based upon Strauss and Corbin’s variant of the grounded theory method, the research aim has been achieved. The findings of this research indicate that the factors that affect e-government implementation in Jordan differ in terms of their levels of dynamism: some persisted over three years of this longitudinal research while others emerged during the second and third cycle of the empirical work. Furthermore, while there are some factors that are similar to those that were already mentioned in the previous literature, four new factors have emerged from this research, these being: Wasta, war in Iraq, Parliament’s priorities, and government priorities. The factors that were founded from this research, and their dynamic nature, cumulated into a model based on the Jordanian context. This model said an important message to both researchers and policy makers working in the field of e-government: the factors of influence should never be regarded as being static or complete. The value of this research lies in the fact that it is one of only a handful of research that focus on issues affecting e-government implementation specifically in Jordan. Furthermore, it is unique in that it views the factors operating in this environment from a dynamic rather than a static perspective