M.A. Wimmer, H.J. Scholl, and E. Ferro (Eds.): EGOV 2008, LNCS 5184, pp. 73–84, 2008. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2008 Adoption of High Impact Governmental eServices: Seduce or Enforce? Rex Arendsen, Tom M. van Engers, and Wim Schurink Leibniz Center for Law, University of Amsterdam, Faculty of Law, P.O.Box 1030, 1000 BA Amsterdam, The Netherlands VanEngers@uva.nl Abstract. The adoption of high impact governmental e-services is not obvious. Especially small and medium sized companies hesitate to invest and adopt. Non-adoption endangers the realization of the 25% reduction objective within the EU’s Lisbon Agenda of the administrative burden of businesses by 2012. On the other hand governmental organisations gain from the use of these e- services. In several cases this is the underlying argument behind the legal enforcement of the use of governmental e-services. In the study reported in this paper we answer the question which factors influence the adoption of these high impact governmental e-services. The designed research model has been tested in an empirical business-to-government context. In contrast to several business-to-business studies we found that especially organisational readiness is a hampering factor for the adoption of these governmental high impact e- services. These findings question the effectiveness of governmental enforcement strategies. Keywords: high impact governmental e-services, adoption of innovations, governmental pressure, reducing the administrative burden of businesses. 1 Introduction The Ministerial Declaration of the eGovernment Conference ‘Transforming Public Services’ formulates targets to be included in the Action Plan for eGovernment under the framework of i2010 [1]. One of these targets concerns: delivering high impact services designed around customers’ needs. When adopted, integrated and used these kind of services lower transaction costs for businesses and speed up service delivery 1 . In the e-business W@tch 2006/2007 edition the European Commission underlines the importance of governments promoting ICT adoption to the further development of e- business [2]. The adoption of these high impact, and often complex, e-services however is not obvious. Especially small and medium sized companies hesitate to invest and adopt. This is one of the reasons behind the legal obligation of the Danish Electronic Invoicing system. After years of seduction policy the Dutch Tax Administration in 2005 choose to enforce electronic tax filing by businesses [3]. The question is which factors influence the adoption of these high impact governmental e-services? Many of these systems when adopted contribute to the reduction of the administrative burden businesses suffer [4]. A 25% reduction of this 1 This paper focuses on businesses.