E-Government : The Need for Effective Process Management in the Public Sector

The concept of e-government has evolved from the domain of e-business where enterprises need to collaborate with partners, suppliers and customers for the effective delivery of e-services. While needing integration and communication between business processes and underlying information systems in disparate organizations, in a non-process-oriented, legacy system driven public sector, this presents a significant challenge. Using a case study in a local council, this research will explore process management and integration issues in the UK public sector and highlight the opportunities for service improvement in the context of e-government implementation. While cross organisational process and information systems integration barriers are seen in the literature as presenting the main technical challenge for realising fully integrated e-government services, this research found that a legacy of bureaucracy and established illogical routine tasks were preventing the government from expediting their e-government initiative in the UK.