E-Government Development in Swedish Municipalities : An emprical study

Digital transformation is having a significant impact on society, with new and innovative technology leading to new practices for organizations. The public sector is one sector that seeks to implement digital transformation to solve issues that are currently impacting this sector. One of the main goals of using digital technology is to implement E-Government, in which the public sector uses digital channels to provide services and interact with the stakeholders. The Swedish Government has set a national agenda in which it is stated that the public sector in Sweden should be the best in the world at utilizing digital solutions. Despite that there are many benefits associated with implementing E-Government, the actual implementation has been slow. A study from 2007 found that municipalities in Sweden were still at a very early stage in E-Government implementation. However, since then there has not been any research that investigated the current state of E-Government implementation, despite the topic being highly relevant. Therefore this research paper attempted to understand which stage of E-Government implementation municipalities in Sweden are currently at. This was done by creating a framework that consisted of important factors for implementing E-Government, and then applying the framework to five Swedish Municipalities. The results and analysis found that there had been certain progress in the development of E-Government, in terms of stating more clear objectives and goals, better organizational structures, such as implementing a top-down approach for planning digital transformation initiatives within the organization, and an increase in cooperation. In general, municipalities in Sweden were at a similar level of implementing E-Government initiatives, but were yet to have a fully implemented E-Government. Furthermore, depending on the specific environment of the municipality, the progress of implementing E-Government would be either faster or slower. There was limited evidence which indicated that municipalities would be able to fully achieve E-Government, as the findings did not show any plans to incorporate active decision making through E-Government.