Public Sector Digital Transformation: Challenges for Information Technology Leaders

The digital transformation journey in the public sector has become a common agenda for elected leaders, public administrators as well as academics and researchers in the past few years. However, evidence suggests that the efforts to achieve the anticipated benefits from digital transformation proved challenging. Prior studies suggest that several issues related to the introduction of new information systems have unfavourably affected digital public service delivery processes. This paper presents the result of a single case study conducted at one of the most digitalised Ministries of the Ethiopian Federal Government. Using interviews and publicly available documents, we identified a list of factors that could determine the success of digital transformation in public organisations. The findings indicate that the Ministry is struggling from a lack of clearly articulated and shared IT strategic vision and conducive organisational structure fostering digital transformation. Besides, the dysfunctional communications between the IT and remaining departments, lack of information security awareness and measures to mitigate information security risks, the incomplete utilisation of IT solutions due to low skill sets or non-existing culture encouraging digital literacy have all contributed to the bumpy digital transformation journey. The result of our study contributes to research and practice by pointing out various areas of concern that need to be monitored as digital services are continuously rolled out.