Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Government Information Quarterly journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/govinf Towards a comprehensive understanding of digital transformation in government: Analysis of flexibility and enterprise architecture Yiwei Gong a, ⁎ , Jun Yang b , Xiaojie Shi a a School of Information Management, Wuhan University, Wuhan, Hubei 430072, PR China b Alibaba Cloud Research Center, Alibaba Group, Chaoyang, Beijing 100102, PR China ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Digital transformation Digital government Flexibility Enterprise architecture Public services Cloud infrastructure ABSTRACT Digital transformation (DT) is a strategic imperative for governments that aim to improve their services and efficiency. Despite high expectations regarding DT practices, there is limited empirical evidence on how gov- ernments are approaching DT in a hierarchical bureaucracy context and how flexibility is created to enable progression. In this research, we employed a case study approach to investigate and analyze DT based on re- levant events occurring in a five-year period. A conceptual model was created by combining the diamond fra- mework, the technology enactment framework, and enterprise architecture scope to facilitate the chronological analysis of these events and reflect upon the creation of flexibility. The findings indicate that DT in government spreads in waves with adaptations in different organizational elements, impacting the whole administrative system from the provincial level to the country level and including both radical and incremental changes. Flexibility increases alongside progress in DT and can be technology-enabled or policy-enabled. The creation of flexibility also depends on organizational elements and bureaucratic levels. This study advocates a cross-level view to comprehensively understand DT and offers insights to help other governments craft DT agenda. 1. Introduction As the current digital economy prioritizes seamless and user-centric experiences, citizens expect public services to be highly available, ef- ficient, and flexible (Mergel, Gong, & Bertot, 2018). Governments around the world regard digital transformation (DT) as a strategic im- perative to improve service performance, enhance customer experience, streamline operations, and create new business models (Curtis, 2019; Fitzgerald, Kruschwitz, Bonnet, & Welch, 2014). Examples of digital government transformation strategies include the “EU eGovernment Action Plan 2016-2020” (EUROPA.EU., 2016), the US's “Digital Gov- ernment Strategy” (CIO.GOV, 2012), and the “Internet Plus Govern- ment Services” policy in China (GOV.CN, 2016). Understanding and predicting the development of DT is important for policymakers, government executives, researchers, and all in- dividuals who prepare, make, implement, or evaluate digital govern- ment decisions (Janowski, 2015). Despite high expectations regarding DT, failures in transforming public sector organizations in recent years have indicated a lack of understanding of the complexity of DT and the relationships among technologies, information use, organizational contexts, and institutional arrangements (Tassabehji, Hackney, & Popovič, 2016). To date, there is limited empirical evidence on how governments approach DT (Mergel, Edelmann, & Haug, 2019). Existing empirical studies have predominantly focused on a single organization at the country level (e.g., Liu & Zheng, 2018; Tassabehji et al., 2016; Weerakkody, Janssen, & Dwivedi, 2011) without considering the cross- level policy implementation in hierarchical bureaucracy. DT in government often accompanies cross-level changes that im- pact multiple organizational elements. Digital technologies can funda- mentally transform the infrastructure, products, services, business processes, business models, and strategies of an organization as well as its inter-organizational relationships in extended business networks (Bharadwaj, El Sawy, Pavlou, & Venkatraman, 2013; Chanias, Myers, & Hess, 2019; Sebastian et al., 2017). Responses to various forms of transformation require different forms of flexibility, such as infra- structure flexibility and organizational flexibility, to enable adapta- tions. The concept of flexibility refers to an organization's ability to efficiently respond to a changing environment (Gong & Janssen, 2012). Organizations lacking flexibility are often prone to failure in transfor- mation, and flexibility is needed to explore digital options (Svahn, Mathiassen, & Lindgren, 2017). Although the need for flexibility has been indicated for governments undergoing DT (Nograšek & Vintar, 2014), e-government literature to date has only partially dealt with flexibility, considering it from different and rather isolated https://doi.org/10.1016/j.giq.2020.101487 Received 4 October 2019; Received in revised form 2 May 2020; Accepted 2 May 2020 ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail address: yiweigong@whu.edu.cn (Y. Gong). Government Information Quarterly 37 (2020) 101487 0740-624X/ © 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. T