Investigating outcomes of t-government using a public value management approach

Abstract

A main objective of transformational government (t-government) is to realize public sector reform. Initiatives of public sector reform, commonly referred to as New Public Management (NPM), often failed to achieve the desired results and led to undesired outcomes. Hence, a new reform approach, referred to as Public Value Management (PVM), emerged to overcome these negative effects and to which the use of information technology (IT) is central. This paper investigates a t-government effort in the Netherlands to find whether it realizes the objectives of PVM. The findings of the case study show that t-government does not achieve these objectives. Instead of realizing a transformed organizational structure, t-government is found to be concerned with setting up governance among the different parties in a in network to allow for collaboration. Furthermore, the case study results show that to realize the outcomes of PVM, t-government needs to be accompanied by a professionalization of the work force and by making government processes more transparent to ensure public accountability. © 2012 IFIP International Federation for Information Processing.