Change Management as a Critical Sustainability Factor to prevent failure of e-Government Initiatives Lemma Lessa School of Information Sciences, College of Natural Sciences, Addis Ababa University Ethiopia lemma.lessa@gmail.com Devadoss Saravanan Department of Management, College of Business and Economics, Addis Ababa University Ethiopia drdsaravanan2009@gmail.com ABSTRACT E-government improves and more importantly transforms the public sector especially in developing countries. In order to take advantage of such benefits, developing countries have been investing a lot on e-government initiatives in spite of their limited budget. Extant literatures show that there are only few success stories whereas majorities of those efforts end up in a failure. In this paper we argue that one way to avoid e-government failure is to learn from successful change management efforts put forth during e-government implementation. Based on a multiple case study, this study explored the difference in the way two districts managed the required changes during the implementation of WoredaNet e-government project. The study revealed that there exists difference between the two districts on three core issues: change efforts conducted on the human elements, organizational culture and the commitment of top management. Accordingly, recommendations are also provided as to how to approach different change related factors and issues in order to successfully manage the required changes during e-government implementation. Categories and Subject Descriptors J.1 [Computer Application]: Administrative Data Processing – Government. General Terms Management, Measurement, Performance Keywords E-Government, e-Government success, Change Management, e- Government sustainability 1. INTRODUCTION E-government has received interest all over the world because it paves the way for a government to exercise its functions in an efficient and effective manner, hence transform its relations with citizens, businesses or other arms of government. In line with this, there are some promising efforts by the federal government of Ethiopia to transform the traditional paper-based interaction within and between government organs. However, there also exists significant difference among districts in the management of IT integration into the administrative processes in the public sector although the districts have related administrative structure and technology introduction. Although there is notable number of e-government success stories in the country, the failure to sustain those initiatives in some districts is turning IT into technology of national inequality. 2. METHOD Multiple case study (one typical success and another typical failure cases) is followed to explore the difference in the way two districts managed the required changes during the implementation of WoredaNet e-government project. 3. CONCLUSIONS Specifically this research concludes with highlighting the following key conclusions and recommendations based on lessons learned from the two districts: 3.1 Adaptation to change Introducing new technology to an existing organizational environment is all about introducing change in that environment. This is because the introduced technology serves as medium of action by the human agents in the organization to perform tasks. Proper use of the technology may also require change in human capacity, perception of the human agent and in institutional properties. Although same technology is introduced in different organizational setups, the extent of assimilation of the technology may show a discrepancy from one organization to another depending on the organizational contextual factors; and the extent of adaptability of institutional elements to the newly introduced change. 3.2 Technology interpretation The study also showed that the technical staff, management, and employees in different districts interpreted the design assumptions, value, and use of the WoredaNet technology (and its resulting services) in a very different way. This in turn caused difference among districts in the deployment, institutionalization, use, and its overall contribution to effectiveness of the district’s activities and its sustainability. 3.3 Leadership As revealed in the study, one of the most critical factors that contributed to the success of the WoredaNet project is at district level is commitment from top management to overcome the barriers and challenges for change. The e-Government Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Conference’14, Month 1–2, 2014, City, State, Country. Copyright 2014 ACM 1-58113-000-0/00/0010 …$15.00.