Why e-government projects fail? An analysis of the Healthcare.gov website Leonidas Anthopoulos a, ⁎, Christopher G. Reddick b , Irene Giannakidou d , Nikolaos Mavridis c a Business School, TEI of Thessaly, Greece b Department of Public Administration, The University of Texas at San Antonio, USA c NCSR Demokritos, Institute of Informatics and Telecommunications, Greece d Department of Informatics, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece abstract article info Article history: Received 27 November 2014 Received in revised form 11 July 2015 Accepted 11 July 2015 Available online 12 August 2015 Keywords: E-government Project failures Project management Government websites Social network analysis Twitter Electronic government or e-government project failure has been widely discussed in the literature. Some of the common reasons cited for project failure are design-reality gaps, ineffective project management and unrealistic planning. Research shows that more than half of e-government projects result in total or partial failures with re- gard to the initially grounded standards, scheduling or budgeting plans, while even more fail to meet end users' expectations. This paper focuses on the factors that lead to e-government project failures. It explores the context of project failure and investigates the launch of the U.S. Healthcare.gov website. This case is concerned with a highly public e-government project failure where gaps between political agendas and planning are identified through an examination of media sources and social media data analysis of Twitter discussions. The finding of the analysis indicates that e-government users react against failures, while e-government projects will impact and attract opinion makers' attention that influence audience behavior. This research provides classifications of e-government project failure reasons and sources. Moreover, another contribution is the beginnings of a typology for social media activity against e-government project failures. © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Public administration's digitization and re-engineering was initially discussed during the decade of 1960s, while Internet-enabled e- government was introduced in the early 1990s (Andersen and Henriksen, 2006; Anthopoulos & Fitsilis, 2014; Garson, 2004; Layne & Lee, 2001; Scholl, 2003) both as a means for governments to utilize Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) in order to become more effective and efficient in delivering information and services to the public; more accountable and transparent regarding their internal processes, procurement and auctioning; more open with regard to citizen engagement in decision and policy making; and even more friendly and able to deliver customized and modern public services (Heeks & Bailur, 2007; Kim, Pan, & Pan, 2007; Tan, Pan, & Lim, 2005). Electronic government or e-government is being imple- mented through top level e-strategic planning, which results in corresponding program development and becomes feasible with project portfolio and project implementation (Anthopoulos & Fitsilis, 2014). E-government projects differ from other project categories (i.e., construction and ICT etc.), due to their complexity in terms of orga- nizational size; corresponding resistance to change; novelty; end-users' impact and politics. Moreover, many e-government projects combine technical features from both the construction and the ICT industries, which increase innovation and uncertainty (Janssen, van der Voort, & van Veenstra, 2015; Janssen, Van Veenstra, & Van der Voort, 2013). However, after all of these years, e-government outcomes are being questioned and various scholars debate about its potential. Failures, which vary from not establishing project success; to missing citizen expectations and adoption (Janssen et al., 2013); even to preferences in turning back to traditional channel selection (i.e., face-to-face visits and voice phone calls) are being illustrated in the literature (Heeks & Bailur, 2007; Reddick & Anthopoulos, 2014; Reddick & Turner, 2012), questioning both e-government feasibility and sustainability (Paulin, 2014, 2015). On the other hand, governments try to reach solutions that can enhance e-government development and various proposals have been given so far, some of them worth mentioning and include (Anthopoulos & Fitsilis, 2014): management frameworks that emphasize e- government; legal framework adjustments that release e-government potential (i.e., digital signatures); strategic key driver definition (i.e., eID); political declarations that drive e-government vision (i.e., European Union Malmo Declaration on e-government and U.S. Paperless Action etc.); and international monitoring and measurement Government Information Quarterly 33 (2016) 161–173 ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: lanthopo@teilar.gr (L. Anthopoulos), chris.reddick@utsa.edu (C.G. Reddick), igiannak@gmail.com (I. Giannakidou), nmavridis@iit.demokritos.gr (N. Mavridis). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.giq.2015.07.003 0740-624X/© 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. 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