The Governance of E-government
| Published date | 01 July 2007 |
| Author | Karl Löfgren |
| DOI | 10.1177/0952076707078764 |
| Date | 01 July 2007 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
The Governance of
E-government
A Governance Perspective on the Swedish
E-government Strategy
Karl Löfgren
Roskilde University, Denmark
Abstract Around the world, there are several governmental attempts, by means of new
information – and communication technologies (ICTs) – to regenerate the
relationship between citizen/business and governments. This article explores
the Swedish electronic government reform attempts of transforming
functionally specialized governmental agencies into a more coherent and
integrated network administration – the so-called ‘24/7 Agency’. Based on a
theoretical point of departure in the governance network literature, and
Kingdon’s different streams of problems, solutions and politics, the article
investigates the twisting ways of fulfilling the vision of the reform-makers.
The conclusion is that the institutional structures, in this case the Swedish
model of government organization with independently managed under
performance management, in many respects encumber the reform per se. In
addition, the article concludes that theoretically there are many reasons to
include national institutional settings in the study of governance networks in
future research. Methodologically, the article is based on an interpretative
policy analysis where data has been derived through interviews with central
policy makers and studies of policy documents.
Keywords e-government, governance, policy networks, Sweden
1. Introduction
The ongoing process of initiating and implementing electronic government (e-
government) strategies across the world has been widely studied from all sorts of
disciplines, including information systems, organizational behaviour and public
DOI: 10.1177/0952076707078764
Karl Löfgren, Department of Social Sciences, Roskilde University, P.O. Box 260, DK-4000 Roskilde,
Denmark. [email: klof@ruc.dk] 335
© Public Policy and Administration
SAGE Publications Ltd
Los Angeles, London, New Delhi
and Singapore
0952-0767
200707 22(3) 335–352
administration (for a review of the literature, see Gil-Garcia and Pardo, 2005).
However, what seems to be missing in the growing literature on e-government is
a more critical stance on the institutional structures for the reform initiatives and
the underlying setting of governance. Although there is no lack of literature on
different national governments and international organizations’ visions and
strategies (cf. Grönlund, 2002), the mainstream e-government literature rarely
goes beyond basic descriptions of the policy ideas and the actors behind them. The
bargaining and negotiations between policy actors (both inside and outside the
government), which initiate the policy, set the agenda, as well as actually imple-
ment the policy, has been notably overlooked in the literature of e-government
(with some exceptions, for example Acaud and Lakel, 2003; Bellamy, 2000;
Pratchett, 1999). Unless one includes the centrality of information and communi-
cation technologies (ICTs) for policy making in general (Margetts, 1998), there is
a tendency towards ‘policy issues’ in the literature becoming synonymous with
formal and regulatory constraints such as, for example, legal issues regarding
privacy, security and authenticity, or with financial constraints. Consequently,
the success, or failure, of current reforms are explained through single govern-
ment’s ‘e-government maturity’ usually based on rather simple benchmarking
exercises, where the benchmarks are derived from technological aspects thus
leaving out the certain national institutional settings (Janssen et al., 2004).
This article examines the reform process of the Swedish government’s attempts
to modernize the civil service through the means of new ICTs under the overall
notion of the ‘24/7 Agency’. Sweden has, in several international benchmarking
studies (cf. Accenture, 2006; United Nations, 2004), been extolled as one of the
front-runners in terms of e-government ‘maturity’. One of the reasons for this
policy success is claimed to be the so-called Swedish ‘dualist model’ of civil
service, where the different governmental agencies, unlike many other European
governments, are independently managed under performance management, and
hold a considerable high level of autonomy vis-a-vis the Government. This
administrative model, which dates back to the formation of the Swedish central
governmental organization in the 17th century, provides the government agencies
with pretty much free scope to complete the Government’s general aims within the
limits of some overarching instructions, accompanied by a negotiated budget from
the Cabinet.
My point of departure is that the Swedish success story of electronic govern-
ment is subject to discussion, and that an analysis of the underlying governance
structure will demonstrate the significance of the institutional national settings for
the success or failure of e-government reforms. The theoretical approach in this
article, presented in section two, is deduced from a governance network perspec-
tive to policy making. In addition to the governance perspective, this section will
also discuss the decision-making aspects based on John W. Kingdon’s work on
multiple streams of agenda setting (Kingdon, 1984/2003) as well as network
implementation approach (Exworthy and Powell, 2004). Kingdon’s streams will
Public Policy and Administration 22(3)
336
To continue reading
Request your trial