tGov Workshop ’10 (tGOV10) March 18 – 19 2010, Brunel University, West London, UB8 3PH Montazemi et al. Significance of IT Governance in Transformational Government 1 Significance of IT Governance in Transformational Government Ali Reza Montazemi, DeGroote School of Business, McMaster University, Canada montazem@mcmaster.ca Jeff J. Pittaway, DeGroote School of Business, McMaster University, Canada pittawjj@mcmaster.ca Hamed Qahri-Saremi, DeGroote School of Business, McMaster University, Canada qahrish@mcmaster.ca Abstract E-Government is envisioned to improve the operational efficiency of government service delivery. A recent United Nations (2010) e-Government Survey shows that within the past decade governments around the world have increasingly adopted information and communication technologies (ICT) to improve their service delivery. Nonetheless, scholars are sceptical that governments have achieved the efficiency benefits of transformation because they have not enacted technology to redesign their institutionalized business processes. However, there is a paucity of empirical research into the factors that inhibit governments’ business processes transformation through technology. To ameliorate this gap, we used an interpretative field study to assess how mechanisms of IT Governance affect actors’ enactment of technology to redesign institutionalized business processes at four Canadian municipalities. Our findings show that the maturity of IT Governance is a significant factor in ICT-enabled business process redesign. Moreover, we find that although governments can mimic the same t-Government service delivery to citizens using the same ICT, it is the degree to which governments have (or have not) redesigned business processes that determines the cost of service delivery per citizen; costs that varied 95% across four sites. Therefore, enactment of technology to redesign institutionalized business processes provides a more accurate assessment of transformational government than assessments based on types and qualities of services rendered as assessed, for example, in UN surveys. Keywords: e-government, t-government, transformational government, IT governance, technology enactment 1. INTRODUCTION Public sectors have made considerable investments in information and communication technologies (ICT) (i.e., hardware and software) in an effort to improve public service delivery and increase operational efficiencies; an initiative called e-Government (e.g., Butler and Murphy, forthcoming; Devadoss et al., 2002; Heeks and Bailur, 2007; Irani et al., 2007; United Nations, 2008). Extant literature show that the focus of governments' investments has been to provide customers – both citizens and business constituents – with web-based access to information and some transactional functions based on pre- existing government processes (e.g., Andersen and Henriksen, 2006; Weerakkody and Dhillon 2008). In support of their agendas, public sectors have commissioned studies that have produced a series of stage models to explain the concept of e-Government and to prescribe best practices (e.g., ibid.; Heeks and Bailur, 2007; Irani et al., 2007; Siau and Long, 2005). E-Government stage models essentially remain focused around ICT capability (Irani et al., 2007). In consequence, e-Government strategies assume that ICT is the driver of e-Government (Anderson and Henriksen 2006; Heeks and Bailur, 2007). Scholars contend, however, that governments have failed to realize the efficiency benefits of an e- Government operating model despite their considerable investments in ICT (e.g., Heeks, 2006; Irani, forthcoming). There has been no significant improvement because governments have not changed how they work: 80 percent of the workers in state agencies, for example, report that e-Government has made