Abstract:

Governments around the globe are embarking on a major transformation program that will change the service delivery philosophy of public sector. The future envisaged by governments is a ‘seamless service’ supported by a strong information and communication technologies infrastructure that underpins the whole of government agenda. In order to deliver these reform agenda, the reliance on information and communication technologies and delivery of and e-government transformation is imperative. However, in a transformational initiative, information technologies must be integrated with other stakeholders requirements to be effective, and their governance issues are the responsibility of all stakeholders involved in government service delivery. Without the buy in of all stakeholders, information technology governance issues will not adequately address all potential threats and barriers to the transformational agenda. The key issue among these is how the general public takes information and communication technologies enabled transformational initiatives. This paper presents preliminary findings of a global study into how social and cultural issues impact on global e-transformation initiatives. A significant portion of literature has been reviewed, exploring social and cultural issues at the global level to discover how e-transformation, in the forms of e-learning, e-commerce, e-government and e-governance, has been handled by different economies and societies.