icegov2012 proceedings

E-Government Success Factors in the Context of an ITenabled
Budget Reform: A Questionnaire Report
ABSTRACT
The adoption of e-government initiatives is not in vacuum. They
are usually adopted in complex settings influenced by not only IT
factors but other factors from different structures, such as
contextual, organizational, collaboration, knowledge, and trust.
These structures come from the context in which the egovernment
project is embedded. The goal of this research is to
explore the multiple factors from various structures involved in egovernment
success using a contemporary case of an IT-enabled
budget reform in Mexico. This study comprises a descriptive
summary of answers from a questionnaire applied over federal
and state government officials who participated in this initiative
who adopted it into their daily practice. Due to the context of the
IT-enabled budget reform, questions about the factors from
different structures including the budgeting structure were
analyzed. General characteristics and potential benefits of the egovernment
initiative were also examined. The main motivation
of this study is to extend our understanding of possible enablers
and inhibitors that public officials face during the adoption of egovernment
projects into work routines and different contexts.
Derived from the questionnaire results, a selection of 11 “practical
advices” were identified as useful for a successful adoption of egovernment
projects.
Categories and Subject Descriptors
J.1 ADMINISTRATIVE DATA PROCESSING [Computer
Applications]: Government – applications, government.
General Terms
Management, Human Factors, Theory.
Keywords
Electronic Government; Success Factors; Questionnaire.
1. INTRODUCTION
Most of e-government projects involve a complexity of the
multiple factors and actors involved in practice [18,19,24,34,38].
In the literature, there are many frameworks that attempt to
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ICEGOV '12, October 22 - 25 2012, Albany, NY, USA
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1200-4/12/10...$15.00
Gabriel Puron-Cid
Centro de Investigacion y Docencia
Economicas (CIDE)
gabriel.puron@cide.edu
336
integrate these multiple factors and actors involved in the
implementation of e-government initiatives [18,19,34]. These
efforts have contributed to our understanding of e-government
mechanisms of success and failure, but neglect other interacting
structures and actors involved in the phenomenon [18,19,24,34].
Depending on the type of e-government, other relevant structures
and factors need to be considered in practice and consequently in
theory [8,18,19,34]. For this paper, structures are analytical
dimensions considered in interaction in the adoption of egovernment,
while factors are particular features of this
interaction. This study accounts for the multiple success structures
and factors, not only from information systems, but from other
disciplinary fields and policy domains that are involved in the
adoption of e-government [18,19,34].
One of the most critical applications of e-government is present in
the field of budgeting [34]. Because of the intensive informational
content and technological use in the budget process, information
systems have become central to budgeting operations in
government, and vice versa [27,28]. As Joyce, Lee, & Johnson
[26: 397] noted “Contemporary approaches to budgeting and
accounting obviously require considerable amounts of information
for decision making and evaluation. Information Systems, then,
constitute an effort to bring about greater coordination of [diverse]
organizational units in the collection, storage, manipulations,
retrieval, and analysis of information.” This paper examines the
multiple factors of e-government success by using an IT-enabled
budget reform in Mexico as a contemporary e-government case in
the field of budgeting. This case not only helps to understand the
traditional structures from information systems and actors such IT
staff members involved in e-government initiatives, but also it
considers other critical structures and actors interacting as well
from other fields and staff areas (i.e. budgeting, planning,
management, evaluation, auditing, etc.). Since late 1980s,
Mexican government has reformed its budget system involving
the adoption of various information systems and managerial
techniques across time. The last of these reforms, known as PbR-
SED for its Spanish abbreviation of “Budgeting based on Results-
Performance Evaluation System”, was recently designed and
enacted in 2008 and its purpose is to transform the way agencies
spend public resources based on results and cost savings, new
information systems, and novel budgetary techniques. The PbR-
SED represents an ongoing and complex transformation and is
expected to condense multiple factors and actors from different
organizations.
This exploratory study comprises a descriptive summary of the
answers of the questionnaire over the PbR-SED adoption. The
questionnaire was applied over federal and state government
officials who participated in the initiative. With a response rate of