PhD student in Information Systems and Innovation
Research Interests
Thesis: 'The Enactment of E-government System Implementation Projects by ICT Professionals in the Public Sector: A Case Study of Dubai'
We are currently in an age that is marked by efforts to harness information and communication technologies to transform the public sector in order to become more transparent, efficient and cost effective. For more than a decade practitioners and academics have attempted to come up with best practice approaches and models to guide countries in the process of implementing e-government systems: to devise practices that will achieve the promised reform and socio-economic development through the utilization of ICT’s. But we often find e-government projects, although informed by global best practices from consultants and international organizations, taking different forms and yielding different results.
This research presents an explanatory account of how the implementation of e-government system unfolds at the local level, by focusing on the ICT professionals who work within government departments and who plan, develop and support these information systems. More specifically, this research investigates how ICT professionals appropriate and enact new institutions and practices associated with e-government projects, and why these enactments take their particular form. This then leads us to consider the implications of these actors’ practices for government institutions and the e-government project as a whole. The theoretical concepts of formats (Sassen 2007) and enacted sense making (1979) are employed to analyze findings. The thesis draws on a case study of a government department in the city of Dubai, which has been engaged in the development of e-government systems for a decade.
Supervisor