Abstract:

This research paper aims to contribute to the emerging discourse on Transformational Government (t-Government). T-Government represents the next evolution in the journey of e-Government which focuses on delivering value to stakeholders of the public sector. The paper highlights the need for public sector ICT enabled projects to move beyond a narrow focus on service delivery based on technical functionality but to also consider the service experience offered to stakeholders throughout the process of delivery, thus delivering sustainable t-Government. The paper traces the trajectory of the Gauteng Freeway Improvement Project (GFIP), an electronic-tolling project, based in Gauteng Province South Africa, to argue for the importance of shifting the mindset of implementers of e-Government to the concept of t-Government.  The research employs a critical emancipatory perspective and utilises the Actor Network Theory (ANT) to understand the roles and interests of various stakeholders within the GFIP and assess how each stakeholder has influenced the project’s sustainability. We show that unless governments employ user-centric approaches to similar programmes in future, they may jeopardize a critical requirement of t-government namely, the need for the character of the service experience of stakeholders to continuously support e-Participation principles.