nvestigating Success Factors for E-Government: Tips from the Italian Case

The technology-centred approach to e-government, focused on fostering web-based procedures in themselves, seems unable to fully achieve the expected performances, even in the most advanced contexts. Can the Italian case be useful to ponder over this issue? Except for some circumscribed and privileged situations, Italy cannot be described as a centre of excellence, with regards to e-business practice. Nevertheless, the recent Italian legislative debate about the matter can be studied as a source of an alternative vision of e-government issues - even though the related laws have not been implemented as they should. Some recent Italian laws, in fact, focus on how Public Administration (PA) should be organized in order to assist citizens, namely: (a) when citizens ask for information from the PA, (b) when they need to access PA documents, (c) when they report problems or claims, and (d) when they perform procedures. This legislation is not focused on e-government in itself, but rather on the relationship between citizens and the different PA bodies, and on organizational, back-office issues connected with the purpose of achieving citizen satisfaction. Web-based applications are considered within this wider vision: in other words, according to this approach, e-government tends to be fostered by a cultural and organizational innovation within the PA, more than vice versa. It is not a goal in itself, but it is part of a more general endeavor to improve the overall performance of the PA, measured from the citizens’ perspective. According to this novel legislative approach, the crucial question is not “How should we implement e-government services?” but “Who should deal with e-government within the PA?”. The organizational answer that the Italian law is seeking to provide is: “within each PA body, e-government should be designed and managed by a single Department dedicated to a wider purpose: taking care of the whole range of interactions with citizens (traditional face-to-face interactions included). To be successful, this Department must have a strong role (and actual power) in back-office innovation.” Field studies are being conducted to assess the soundness of such an approach, and the tentative outcomes are discussed in this paper.