Towards the Framework of Active Ownership of a Public E-Service within Transformational Government

The success factors and challenges of e-government projects are often examined from the perspective of observers who analyze and document the current state of affairs. In most cases, however, no clearly designated entity is identified as responsible for fostering these success factors and mitigating the challenges. To make e-government success influencers more actionable, we propose a framework of active ownership of a public e-service that specifies the responsible entities along with their skills and tasks. The underlying rationale is that a public e-service is more usable and more widely adopted if it has an accountable and engaged owner. In addition to making e-government success factors actionable, the active ownership supports e-services through a “paradigm shift” in the management of e-government engagements: instead of fragmented managerial responsibilities distributed across time-restricted projects, a public e-service receives holistic, lifecycle-long management led by one accountable entity. Moreover, mapping the tasks related to active ownership to the components of transformational government reveals that these tasks align closely with the concepts of public digital transformation.