Understanding Factors Affecting E Government

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

School of IT Business – KAIST ICC Campus – Daejeon South Korea; [email protected]

Zo Hangjung

School of IT Business – KAIST ICC Campus – Daejeon South Korea; [email protected]

Abstract

The Information Technology (IT) must be successfully assimilated into the organization in order to exploit its potential value and benefit for their target adopter. This paper examines the factors affecting assimilation of e-Government in Indonesia. A conceptual framework was developed for analyzing the assimilation of e-government, in the context of IT innovation, which developed based on Innovation Diffusion Theory, Technological-Organizational-Environmental (TOE) Framework, and Institutional Theory.

We analyze assimilation process into multiple stages by utilizing theory on technology diffusion. It is an integrative model composed of initiation → adoption → routinization. From this theory, TOE framework is combined to explain how assimilation process affected by ICT expertise, ICT infrastructure, TOP management championship, organizational compatibility, extend coordination, regulatory environment, and competition.

Based on this framework and by using data from questioner, the determinants and mechanisms of this process are identified and process of e-Government assimilation is reconstructed. Questionnaires will be distributed to respondents in central and local government in Indonesia.

At the end, the empirical research on e-Government assimilation designated to contribute a new understanding and model enhancement for academics along with practitioners and policy maker.

Keywords: e-Government, Technological-Organizational-Environmental Framework, innovation, assimilation, initiation, adoption, routinization, PLS.

Biographical notes :

Boni Pudjianto is doctoral candidate at the School of IT Business, Korean Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST – ICC Campus). He accomplished his undergraduate and master program from Bandung Institute of Technology Indonesia. Currently he works at Ministry of Communication and Information technology as ICT researcher in Directorate General ICT Application. His research interest include e-government, e-business, MIS, adoption, innovation, ubiquitous technology.

Zo Hangjung is the Arachne Information System Laboratory Coordinator and an Associate Professor in IT Business, Korean Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST – ICC Campus). His research interest includes IT Strategy, SOA, BPM, Web 2.0, Open Source, e-Business, e-Government, MIS.

1. Introduction

The study of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in the public sector has made a long history and a considerable contribution to the modernization and study of adoption in public administration (Brudney & Selden, 1995; Perry & Kraemer, 1979). There are several literature examine adoption and technological impact on government delivery services. However, the new improvements and utilization ICT to serve the citizens still becoming an interesting focus research. Nowadays governments at all levels are using computers and the internet to inform citizens and interact with others. Government are using ICT to enable their employees to do their tasks as well as opening possibility from citizens to interact with government. Numerous studies have been done to examine e-Government adoption, implementation and their impacts (Brown, 2007; Moon & Norris, 2005; West, 2004). Since that time, e-Government has been attracting research interest, and is believed to become one of the most important IT implementation and organizational challenges in the next decades. (Marche & McNiven, 2003).

Research on e-government can be classified into three main areas: e-Government development and evolution (Kunstelj & Vintar, 2004; Srivastava & Teo, 2004; Tan & Pan, 2003), e-Government adoption and implementation (Koh et al., 2005; Melitski et al., 2005; Li, 2003), and the impact of e-government on citizens and businesses (Banerjee & Chau, 2004; West, 2004). These research areas identified as an important contributor for governments, policy makers, practitioners and academics. Nevertheless, there has been little research and empirical studies exploring factors that determine assimilation e-Government in developing countries, particularly in the context of Indonesia. Therefore, these gaps become the prime motivator for this research.

Former researchers found that not all e-Government implementation accomplish with successful program. Approximately 60 percent of the implementation e-Government fail or cannot reach the expected outcomes. Heeks (2003) observed and analyzed more than 40 e-Government development projects in developing countries and found that around 35 percent from these projects were totally fail, while 50 percent partially failed, and there is only 15 percent were success. This figure gives an indication that the failure rate in developing countries is high and become more risky compare to developed countries. These phenomena stimulate our exploratory research on what, why and how this happen which later contribute to the extent of examining factors affecting assimilation e-Government in Indonesia.

This study is in line with predecessor researches where assimilation of e-Government has been categorized as one of the important facet of e-Government diffusion. This study utilizes the literatures on diffusion of innovation (Rogers 1995), combine with institutional theory and Technological-Organizational-Environmental (TOE) framework to determine the antecedents of its assimilation. This research observes the evidence on IT assimilation within the government organizations and analyzes the affect from internal and external factor to its assimilation such as decentralization and autonomy policy from central to local government in the Republic of Indonesia.

The definition of e-Government used in this study referred to the process of transformation of the relationships of the government with its stakeholder - citizens, businesses and employees – using the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) to improve efficiency, effectiveness, transparency, accountability, responsibility and service delivery of public governments (Kraemer & King, 2003; World Bank, 2000). In the real context, implementation of e-Government initiatives requires substantial reform in public organizations, because of the typical form of a bureaucratic organization with conservatives cultures make it resistant to change from new innovation. Moreover, government organizations are often have to handle numerous conflict of interest from different stakeholders/constituents and institutional context as well as problematical from regulatory environment, to all of which contribute the complexity of implementation e-Government. As a result, the outcome of e-Government program is quite difficult to predict due to high influences and dynamic condition which often become a later failure; and an early failure could turn in to a later success (Larsen and Myers 1999). Thus, the value of e-Government assimilation could not be recognized until the whole process is implemented throughout the organization which later can be claimed as a success program. From this point, e-Government assimilation becomes an interesting research topic because it is about enhancing operational, efficiency and quality of service in a long-term organization (Zhu and Kraemer 2002, 2005, 2006).

There is a rich body of literature on e-Government adoption and implementation, however researches on e-Government assimilation is still limited. The existing research mostly concerned with adoption of e-Government while they procured and implement a system. Particularly, researches in the area of post-implementation context, where mismatch from goals and the expected outcome are differ from the initial program (Weerakkody & Dwivedi, 2006; Williams et al., 2007). Just within a decade, the research on actual practices and functionalities development become concern of e-Government researchers (Gil-García, & Cresswell, 2005; Ebbers & Van Dijk, 2007)

Drawing upon the literature on Technology-Organization-Environment (TOE) Framework (Tornatzky and Fleischer, 1990) as the guiding theoretical lens, we develop a theoretical model to explain what are the determinants of e-Government assimilation, and how it is affected by its antecedents. The TOE framework, which has emerged as a useful theoretical lens for understanding technology adoption, has been mostly used in the context of e-business, and here we extend the lens on the e-Government. Afterward, we combined TOE framework with the innovation diffusion literature (Rogers 1995, Fichman 2000). We defined the terminology of e-Government assimilation as a series of stages from an organizations’ initial evaluation of e-Government at the pre-adoption stage (initiation), to its formal adoption, and finally to its full-scale deployment at the post-adoption stage in which e-Government becomes an integral part of the operational activities (routinization). Initial efforts from academics have been devoted to studying assimilation mostly in e-business area (e.g., Zhu et al. 2003, 2006) and we try to expand our knowledge frontier to e-Government research area. In this research, we focus of research observation on multiple stages of e-Government assimilation to investigate the antecedents of assimilation and their contextual factors. Therefore, several research questions arise as follows:

1) Why does e-Government assimilation differ from one organization to another?

2) What kind of theoretical foundation can be used to study e-Government assimilation?

3) What factors contribute to e-Government assimilation within the organization?

4) Is there any difference effect on every stage?

5) How would these effects vary across different organization level? (central vs local government)

To answer these questions, we use the perspective of Innovation Diffusion Theory and Institutional Theory bound with TOE framework, to elucidate how the information system or IT innovation is reproduced and assimilated within the organization (profound as, institutionalized). So far research focused on implementation of e-Government as not as much as those in e-business environment, however it keeps evolves in response to the changing of demands and technology developments. While there has been little research about the processes by which e-Government assimilation is initiated, adopted, and reutilized from theoretical and empirical perspective. Therefore, this paper contributes to the theory and practices (policy maker) of e-government by emphasizing on how an e-government is implemented and institutionalized.

The rest of this proposal is organized as follows: First, we present our literature review for conducting our research the review; then we present the theoretical development and hypothesis, followed by data and instrument. Finally, we closed by discussion and conclusion.

2. Literature review

2.1. Theory of Innovation Assimilation

The study of Innovation Assimilation has a long history grounded from Innovation Diffusion Theory developed by Rogers (1995) as a multi-disciplinary field with contributions from prominent academics, researchers, sociologists, economists, communication researchers, engineering researchers, and many others. However, it is important to make a distinction between the diffusion and the assimilation of an innovation. Diffusion is the process by which a technology spreads across a population of organizations, while assimilation refers to the process within organizations stretching from initial awareness of the innovation, to potentially, formal adoption and full-scale deployment (Robert G Fichman, 1999). In the same context, Purvis et al. (2001) defined assimilation as "the extent to which the use of technology diffuses across the organizational projects or work processes and becomes routinized in the activities of those projects and processes." Along with conforming assimilation definition, Rogers (1995) added definition of innovation as "the process through which an idea, practice, or object that is perceived as new by an individual, such as the Internet, are disseminated over a matter of time in the society".

Past research on IT innovation adoption and diffusion has long converged on analyzing a core set of theoretical models. M.M. Kamal has identified various information technology adoption models from the research conducted in the past, presented in figure 1.

Figure 1. IT Adoption Model, adopted from M.M. Kamal (2006)

It has been suggested that there are functional parallels between Information System (IS) implementation in general and diffusion of technological innovation (Premkumar et al, 1994 ; Fichman, 1992 ; Kwon and Zmud, 1987). The main advantage of borrowing the innovation diffusion theory is that it has already a valuable cumulative tradition and that it provides a strong theoretical base for IS researchers for evaluating IS and IS projects and for assessing the possibilities of the diffusion of the technological innovation and its incorporation within the organization.

Drawing upon the innovation diffusion literature (see Fichman 2000, Zhu et al 2006), we define e-Government assimilation as a series of stages from initiation, adoption and routinization as shown in figure 2. Initiation at the first stage of e-Government assimilation will evaluate the potential benefits of e-Government, by identifying and prioritizing needs and problems on one hand, and to search the organization’s environment to locate innovations of potential usefulness to improve organization’s performance.

Adoption as the second stage of e-Government assimilation is consistent with the technology adoption literature (Rogers 1995, Chau and Tam 1997). We define as the decision to use or not the IT within organization’s activities. Organizations can adopt an innovation in varying degrees, ranging from copying an innovation without making any changes, to using an innovation as an inspiration. During this stage, pressure to change often raises from internal or external forces. As a result, top management need to realign the priorities and necessary resources in the change effort. Furthermore, in order to lower resistance of adoption new technology innovation, tactics such as communication and employee participation need to be induced.

Figure 2. Three stages of e-Government Assimilation

Routinization as the last stage is defined as the stage in which e-Government is widely used as an integral part in an organization’s activities. Moreover, in the information systems (IS) literature, routinization has been proposed as a significant dimension of IS success (DeLone and McLean 1992). Thus, routinization in its own right is an important construct worthy of research.

With theoretical support by Innovation Diffusion Theory in the context of e-Government, we analyze e-Government assimilation as multi stages assimilation. Therefore we analyze the effect of its assimilation in every stage.

2.2. Technology–Organization–Environment (TOE) Framework

Tornatzky and Fleischer (1990) developed a framework that explains the decision to adopt a technological innovation by a firm is not only based on the technological consideration, but also dependent on the organizational and environmental contexts. They summed up the findings of their study as TOE framework, which has been extensively used by researchers to study technology adoption. TOE framework identifies three aspects that influence its assimilation of IT assimilation (Figure 3), based on: The technological context describes the existing technologies in use and new technologies available to the organization. The organizational context describes some of the organizational characteristics and resources such as the organizational readiness, top management championship, and other factors relevant to organizational context. The environmental context consists of the environmental characteristics in which the organization conducts their services. These three contextual factors influence an organization’s decision to assimilate an innovation, which eventually impacts the organization performance. We extend this theoretical argument which was developed on e-business area to the proliferation of technological innovations in the context of e-Government area.

Figure 3. Conceptual model TOE Framework

Within the context of Information System (IS) research, former IS studies have utilized the TOE framework in different settings, for example, e-procurement adoption (Thompson S.H.Teo et.all.2009), e-business value (Zhu et al., 2004), e-business diffusion (Hsiu-Fen Lina et all.2008), e-commerce (Jennifer L. Gibbs et.all 2004), etc. Empirical studies using TOE framework consistently support the association research in all or some of the contextual factors with technology adoption and performance analyses. From literature review we found most of studies on TOE framework are used to examine on technology adoption and diffusion. Even though the TOE framework has been used in various research contexts, but it has not been used extensively to analyze e-government, particularly in assimilation process (Table 1).

Table 1. Previous Studies that Intersect with TOE Framework

References

Research subject

Main construct

Thompson S.H.Teo et al. (2009)

Adopters and non-adopters of e-procurement in Singapore

Perceived direct benefits, indirect benefits, perceived costs, firm size, Top management support, Information sharing culture, Business partner influence

Hsiu-Fen Lin et al. (2008)

Determinants of e-business diffusion

IS infrastructure, IS expertise, organizational

compatibility, expected benefits of e-business, competitive pressure, trading partner readiness

Ming-Ju Pan et al. (2008)

Determinants of adoption ERP

IT infrastructure, technology readiness, size, perceived barriers, production and operations improvement, enhancement of products and services, competitive pressure, regulatory policy

Cheng Zhang et al. (2007)

IT diffusion

IT infrastructure, government regulation and promotion, IT management

Shirish C. Srivastava et al. (2007)

e-government development

ICT infrastructure, technology development, human capital, public institutions, macro economy

I-Chiu Chang et al. (2007)

the adoption of electronic signature

User involvement, adequate resources, hospital size, internal need, vendor support, government policy, security protection, system complexity

Susan K. Lippert et. al. (2006)

Web Services Adoption

Security concerns, reliability, deployability, firm size, firm scope, technological knowledge, perceived benefits, competitive pressure, regulatory influence, dependent partner readiness, trust in web service provider.

Zhu & Kraemer, (2006)

Innovation Assimilation on e-Business

Technology readiness, technology integration, size, global scope, managerial obstacles, competition Intensity, regulatory environment

Zhu & Kraemer, (2005)

Usage and Value of E-business

Technology competence, size, international scope, financial commitment, competitive pressure, regulatory support

Jennifer L. Gibbs & Kenneth L.K. (2004)

The Determinants of E-commerce Use

Technology resources, perceived benefit, lack of organization compatibility, financial resources, firm size, external pressure, government promotion, legislation barriers

Kuan & Chau, (2001)

EDI Adoption

Perceived direct benefits, perceived financial cost, perceived technical competence, perceived industry pressure, perceived government pressure

2.3. Institutional Theory

From an institutional perspective, DiMaggio and Powell (1983) identified that organizations can be influenced by varied pressures arising from either external environment or internal organizational factors. Organizations become more similar due to isomorphic pressures reflected by three important legitimization processes (or forces): coercive/regulatory, mimetic/cognitive, and normative.

The institutional factors provide a useful research view on an IT assimilation study. The institutional environment in which the organization is embedded exerts an influence on the adoption process exhibited by individual organizations. In IT assimilation, organizations tend to be induced to adopt and use certain information systems by external isomorphic pressures.

A coercive forces or regulatory is based on government regulations and policies and also affected by political and legislative influences. Hoffman and Ventresca (2002) describe how organizations emphasize legitimation processes and have the tendency to institutionalize organizational structures and procedures following legislations.

A mimetic forces or cognitive refer to copying other systems' practices (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983; Scott, 2001). It works when uncertainty is prevalent, at which point organizations are likely to model themselves on other organizations perceived to be legitimate or successful. Therefore, mimetic forces are often associated with the bandwagon effect (Staw and Epstein 2000).

A normative mechanism is motivated by norms that occurs primarily as a result of professionalization defined as "the collective struggle of members of an occupation to define the conditions and methods of their work, to control the production of the future member professionals, and to establish a cognitive base and legitimization for their occupational autonomy" (DiMaggio and Powell 1983, p. 152).

From an institutional view, public services are likely to adopt e-Government due to the pressures from regulation and competition environment. In Indonesia, government has determined e-Government as part of the national policy program. Therefore, National ICT Board (lead by President) and Ministry of Communication and Information Technology had determined e-Government as one of the priority program in the National ICT’s Flagship. However, during assimilation process within organizations, e-Government may be influenced differently depending on scope, policies and specific actions. For example, organizations often take actions, not because of their internal consideration, but because they are expected to follow environment norms. These conditions affect to the successfulness of e-government implementation in each institution.

2.4. E-Government in Indonesia

The introduction of ICT for public sector in Indonesia was officially started by establishment of the Coordinating Team for ICT Development (TKTI) through a Presidential Decree No.50/2000 as the high-level task force to advance the use of electronic media to facilitate the government’s communication, interaction and transactions. TKTI was formed as a coordination team between government institutions, academia and private sectors. In addition, TKTI was also responsible for providing guidelines and recommendations on how to proceed with ICT development including e-Government.

In Indonesia, the term "e-Government" was officially introduced to public administration through the Presidential Instruction No.6/2001 regarding Information & Communication Technology (ICT) that addressed the government of Indonesia has to use ICT to support the practices of good governance. When the State Ministry of Communications and Information was established in 2001, there was a specific national policy on e-Government stipulated on Presidential Instruction No. 3/2003 concerning National Policy on e-Government Development. In Indonesia, e-Government is required due to the following reasons: 1) to support the government change towards a democratic governance practices; 2) to support the application of authority balances between central and local government; 3) to facilitate communication between central and local governments; 4) to gain openness and transparency; and 5) transformation towards information society era.

Figure 4. Indonesia’s Roadmap to e-Government

The Government of Indonesia (GoI) developed a five-phased roadmap activity to achieve a successful deployment of e-Government programs that is exhibited in Figure 4. This roadmap provides an evolutionary framework that incorporated government current activities and charts a direction towards achieving GoI’s e-Government vision and sustaining the full benefits of a mature e-Government environment. This roadmap also adopted a series of e-Government legislation that bring Indonesia to be more aligned with international practice in implementing e-Government.

In order to strengthen its movement, e-Gov Task Force was formed to identify and prepare sort of policies and guidelines required for the implementation of e-Government. Some of policies and guidelines on e-Government that have been enacted can be shown as follows:

Table 2. Policies and Guidelines on e-Government

No

Name

Number

1

National strategy and policy for e-Government development

Presidential Instruction No.3 /2003

2

Guidelines on infrastructure standard for government portal

No.55/KEP/M.KOMINFO/12/2003

3

Guidelines on management electronic document system

No.56/KEP/M.KOMINFO/12/2003

4

Guidelines on master plan e-government institution development

No.57/KEP/M.KOMINFO/12/2003

5

Guidelines on ICT training program for e-Government

No.47A/KEP/M.KOMINFO/12/2003

6

Guidelines for establishment local government website

2003

7

Guidelines for government information system network development

69A/KEP/M.KOMINFO/10/2004

8

Guidelines information system development for central-government

69A/KEP/M.KOMINFO/10/2004

9

Guidelines information system development for Province

69A/KEP/M.KOMINFO/10/2004

10

Guidelines information system development for municipality /regency

69A/KEP/M.KOMINFO/10/2004

11

Guidelines for data, information and government information system organization management

69A/KEP/M.KOMINFO/10/2004

12

Guidelines for standard and service quality and application development

2004

13

Guidelines institutionalization, authorization, and public private partnership for e-government

2004

14

Guidelines e-government project planning and budgeting

2004

15

Guidelines for good government and change management

2004

16

Standard competence for e-government management

2005

17

Blueprint e-government application for local government

2005

18

Blueprint e-government application for central government

2005

19

E-government interoperability framework

2005

20

Go.id domain management for central and local government

No.28/PER/M.KOMINFO/9/2006

21

The Electronic Information and transaction Bill

No.11/2008

22

Draft Government Decree on e-Government

2009

3. Theoretical Development and Hypothesis

Grounded to prior research on assimilation e-Government, we extend the research of assimilation of e-Government in multiple stages and observe its affect to each individual stage. We develop an extended model of e-Government assimilation in multiple stages based on single stages e-Government assimilation and TOE Framework, as shown in figure 5. We posit e-Government assimilation dependent factors as : initiation → adoption → routinization and also keeping the variables Technological-Organizational-Environmental constructs which was drawn from previous work as the independent factors. Recall our earliest definition e-Government assimilation defined as a series of stages from an organizations’ initial evaluation of e-Government at the pre-adoption stage (initiation), to its formal adoption, and finally to its full-scale deployment at the post-adoption stage in which e-Government becomes an integral part of the operational activities (routinization). Here, we analyze the correlation of every independence factor (TOE factors) to each assimilation constructs.

Figure 5. Multiple stages model of e-Government Assimilation

To measure dependent variables, we gather relevant information about IT innovation and evaluate its potential benefits. Thus, 1) e-Government Initiation was measured by how the potential benefits of e-Government were rated before the institution began using e-Government. 2) e-Government adoption was measured by an aggregated index; whether the institution had used the IT along the operational services. (3) e-Government Routinization was measured by the level of organizational usage of e-Government to support their operational services.

In the following part, we give a brief description of the constructs, theory and hypothesis used in this study.

Technological Context

Technological context defined as the existing technologies in use and new technologies available to the organization. The existence of ICT infrastructure and the ICT expertise appears to be critical to the assimilation of e-government. Without the availability of technological infrastructure, e-government implementation will be considered as an unrealistic program (Srivastava and Teo, 2004; Koh et al., 2005). Thus, the level of ICT expertise and the availability of infrastructure in an organization will associated with the level of e-government assimilation.

ICT expertise is defined as the organizational level of specialized ICT expertise in e-government to provide a reliable support and to continuously refine and adjust the organization needs. Organizations are more likely to adopt e-Government when ICT expertise is available, by reason of the ICT expertise can increase organization tendency to implement technological innovation (Crook and Kumar, 1998). Chau and Tam (1997) examined lack of ICT expertise becomes a key factor reducing ICT implementation. Empirical evidence identifies that organization whose employees have the necessary skills and technical knowledge are more likely to implement e-Government applications (Lin and Lee, 2005). Hence, this study hypothesizes:

(H1)(+++) that a higher level of ICT expertise is positively related to e-Government assimilation within their initiation, adoption and routinization.

ICT Infrastructure: Prior technological context in IS researches has shown that organization with sophisticated ICT infrastructure have possibility increased their chances in implementing IS (Zhu and Kraemer, 2005). Therefore, we define ICT infrastructure as a collection of physical technology resources, including shared technology and technology services across organization which provide a foundation for ICT-related services. Kowtha and Choon (2001) examined that IT innovation depends on complementary resources and existing ICT infrastructure, since organization that are already familiar with IT appear to have a positive attitude toward further IT assimilation. Hence, it is hypothesized:

(H2) (+++) that increased ICT infrastructure will increase the likelihood of successful e-Government assimilation with greater proportion in adoption and routinization than on initiation.

Organizational Context

The second important context necessary for e-government assimilation is the organizational context. Previous studies on IS researches have utilized TOE framework for explaining the organizational context by using various organizational factors. These factors include tangible and intangible resources are required by the organization (Zhu et al., 2006).

However, in e-government studies we focus the need of integrated capability of resources for e-government assimilation. There are three factors are specified within the organization context: Top management championship, Organizational readiness, and Extent of coordination. Among these resources, Top Management Championship appears to be a vital resource. Bogaert et al. (1994) have emphasized that in addition to physical resources, human resource is essential for organizational readiness and identified as a major enabler for e-government.

Top management support was defined by Chatterjee et al. (2002) as a term of managerial beliefs and support in initiatives and participation in adoption and diffusion of IT innovation in large systems within the organization. Furthermore, it refers the extent to which top management provides long term strategic vision and necessary resources for technology adoption. Top management support is a meta-structuring action because it defines institutional norms and values regarding how managers should engage in structuring actions related to the e-Government. In this context, top management support and commitment has often been considered play a crucial role in any initiation and adoption process.

Top management has great power to influence other members’ behavior within the organizations. Through long term strategic vision, top management can encourage the entire organization to learn and participate in e-Government assimilation. In addition, by strong support from top management the necessary resources can be allocated to e-Government program appropriately in high priority. Therefore, we hypothesize:

(H3) (+++) top management support will positively influence e-Government assimilation with greater proportion in initiation and adoption than on routinization.

Organizational compatibility: We utilize the previous study from Grandon and Pearson (2004) in the scope of e-Commerce to be fitted in the e-Government context. In this study, the examination of organizational compatibility refers to the degree to which a technological innovation is perceived as being consistent with existing operating practices, beliefs and values, past experiences, and needs (Rogers, 1995). Rogers argued that greater compatibility between organizational policy and technological innovation is positive because it permits innovation to be interpreted in more familiar contexts. From the empirical study (Grandon and Pearso), it was indicated that organizational compatibility appeared as the best discriminator between organizational adopters and non-adopters of technology innovation. E-Government can make a significant impact in work procedures because it changes and replaces numerous manual paper-based work procedures with electronic means and may even involve the reengineering of entire value chain. Therefore, greater fit among components of e-government, for example between e-government functions and existing operating practices, is desirable because it increases the likelihood of achieving successful e-government adoption and routinization. Furthermore, the incompatibility of new technologies with existing values and work practices is one of the greatest inhibitors in IS adoption. Thus, when organization perceive e-government as compatible with existing beliefs and work practices, they are more likely to be positively affected to promoting its successful adoption and routinization. Referring to Chatterjee et al. (2002), the study shows that a well-developed strategic investment on ICT innovation will positively influences the extent of organizational assimilation in adopting e-Government. Hence, we hypothesize:

(H4) (+++) organizational readiness will positively influence e-Government assimilation in initiation adoption and routinization.

Extent of coordination: Top Management will influence e-Government assimilation and they are likely to possess varying interpretations about the role, responsibility and value of ICT. Therefore coordination must be shaped and consensus within the organization in order to support organization’s priorities and goals as well as considering the strategic missions. Coordination theory suggests that Top Management judgments and actions across the organization can be linked through the use of a variety of coordination mechanisms, ranging from standard operating procedures, liaison roles, and task forces to manage teams. Each one of these mechanisms has its unique strengths, and frequently an organization is found to use a combination of formal and informal integrative mechanisms to manage its work activities. In this context, coordination is required to blend business process and IT knowledge in different functional units of the institution. To support this, we need knowledge integration as the underlying role of sharing and integration the distributed knowledge and cognition across organizations. Without such knowledge integration, organizations are unlikely to achieve differential success in technology assimilation. Therefore, we hypothesize:

(H5)(+++) the assimilation of e-Government will positively influence the use of coordination mechanisms in initiation adoption and routinization.

Environmental Context

Past researches based on TOE Framework in technology adoption and diffusions have found that there is significant association for the environmental factors with the assimilation of IT in organizations (Zhu et al., 2004, 2006). Other researches on e-Government have found various factors affecting the environmental context of e-government implementation, such as Norris and Moon (2005) emphasized that e-Government adoption and diffusion were correlated with institutional factors. In more specific, Gibbs and Kraemer (2004) prevailed that institutions tend to be induced to adopt and use IT system due to the external isomorphic pressure. Grounding to those explanations, we use institutional theory to support this argument and we define e-government institutionalization as the institutions that are affected by external forces to become isomorphic in the environmental context.

Previous studies have provided three fundamental dimensions of the institutional theory, known as normative, coercive/regulatory and mimetic/cognitive. Therefore in this study, we utilize institutional theory on the need of conforming to the environment context to the TOE framework. Some factors have been identified as the antecedents, such as 'regulatory environment’ and 'competition’.

The normative pressure is concerned with the norms that are prevalent in the domain concerned. As public sector organizations are moving gradually from an administrative focus to the customer service perspective, governments emphasize and promise to deliver easy access to services on-line (Menisci, 2003; Pollitt & Bouckaert, 2000; Stratford & Stratford, 2000). At the same time, the use of ICT has become indispensable for this transformation, and the benefits of advanced ICT have triggered anticipation toward effective, efficient and transparent public organizations. Hence, e-Government is believed has the power to create new modes of public service whereby all public organizations provide and deliver modernized, integrated, and seamless services for citizens. That is, the use of ICT for enhanced government services is perceived as a norm.

Regulatory environment identified as coercive pressure on assimilation e-Government that can arise from government regulation or policy from professional as well as legislative influences. Past researches have shown coercive pressure to be a significant factor in adoption of innovation (Hart and Saunders 1998; Hu et al. 2006). We predict that such pressures remain significant in the e-Government assimilation stage. Therefore, government organizations tend to implement e-Government is either the result of government mandates and/or by the informal pressures. When adoption of mandated functions are enforced or encouraged by some external pressure, isomorphic pressure can be used for explanation; since such a development connects isomorphic tendencies to organizations' reliance on resources from their environments (Pfeffer and Salancik, 1978).

In the context of development e-Government, it requires the formulation of a new policy and regulatory framework. In digital convergence era, without parallel development of laws, policies and strategic directions by government and stake holders can results in abuses and discourage the use of such technologies. In this study, regulatory support refers to governments’ role to encourage e-government usage by establishing e-government laws and providing incentives. Prior studies show that regulatory support is a critical environmental factor that tends to affect e-government usage.

In Indonesian case, central government plays an important role in framing regulatory and legislative policies for nation-wide. They provide national roadmap, strategic blue print and standard for e-government as well as other policies to support decision makers on accelerating e-Government assimilation. Other coercive pressure also comes from the policy and regulation enacted within the local government. These local policies become an important factor because it plays as the integral part of handling operational services in daily tasks.

Another example can be picked from establishment of the role of Government CIO (GCIO): We have also observed a trend in the changing role of CIOs within government agencies in last five years. Generally, an agency CIO role may be viewed as having three components: a) providing ICT infrastructure services; b) involving in the agency’s efforts in IT service transformation and information management; and (c) participating at the agency’s political level governance network for influencing and facilitating strategic use of ICTs in government wide collaborative networks. However, up to now the position of Government CIO has not been established as a formal position. It is usually coupled with the role of Chief Data Center or Chief Data Processing Unit which is closely to operational level. The promising effort arises since 2009, when the Ministry of ICT is preparing the Government Law related to "Organizing e-Government in central and local Government" which stipulates GCIO as a formal position. Therefore, we hypothesize:

(H6)(+++) the regulatory environment is positively related to e-Government assimilation in initiation adoption and routinization.

Competition drives e-Government adoption and assimilation (Iacovou, Benbasat and Dexter 1995, Zhu et al. 2003). Competition may first drive organization to initiate and adopt innovations to maintain their competitive edge. Porter and Millar (1985) in their strategic rationale study argue that by adopting information systems, organization might alter the rules of competition and leverage new ways to outperform rivals. Based on ICT technologies, organization can improve service responsiveness and information transparency, increase operational efficiencies (Zhu and Kraemer 2002), and achieve user satisfaction.

However, in government organization, the competition pressure tends to have an influence from intention of mimicking from other successful institution. Therefore, a mimetic forces or cognitive isomorphic are likely perceived to be a legitimate motivation to copying other systems' practices to become their successful model. One explicit example manifestation of these pressures is in the case of e-Government rating systems that have been developed by academia to assess the adoption of IT in the government sectors. Several institutions rank the progress of establishing e-government in central and local level agencies, and governments feel pressured to improve their performance on these metrics. This competition has response to isomorphic pressures and to conform to contemporary norms of progressive organizations rather than an effort to improve the efficiency of governance. Hence, we hypothesize

(H7)(++-) the competition environment is positively related to e-Government assimilation in initiation adoption but negatively related to routinization.

4. Data and measurement

To test the conceptual model and the associated hypotheses proposed above, we used the survey methodology to test and analyze our model. A survey instrument was developed from a comprehensive literature review for identifying appropriate measurement factors. Some modifications were made to the existing scale to make those more suitable in the context of e-Government assimilation. Moreover, some parts will be refined after several runs of pretest and revision that is scheduled at the end of September 2009. Since the target organizations are the Government institutions which have implemented e-Government systems in Indonesia, thus the questionnaire was translated into Indonesian language. After the questionnaire was finalized, the survey was executed by online system prepared by IT Business Lab – KAIST ICC campus.

To have a broad representation of both central and local government organization, the survey will be conducted in Indonesia during the October - November 2009 period. The sampling was a stratified sample by scope of organization 1) central government and 2) local government. The units of analysis in our study are the Ministerial or Departmental organization, Government agencies and Local Government. Hence for a meaningful testing of hypotheses in this research, we require data from a large number of organizational aggregated at the national level. Survey was conducted only with those organizations that already use internet in managing their government as represent of e-Government. Eligible respondents were the individuals at each organization best qualified to speak about the e-Government program and their implementation such as Chairman or GCIO.

Some basic information related to Indonesian Government’ structure and respondent, explained in summary as shown in table 3.

Table 3. Respondents

Item

Number

Note

Ministry / Department

33

Central Government

Agency

25

Province

33

Local Government

Regency

349

Municipality

91

Officers :

First rank officer

Chairman / GCIO

Operationalization of Constructs

The survey is conducted by online questioner to all institutions in central and local government with specific target. Furthermore, we employed Partial Least Squares (PLS) as it allows for constructs to be modeled as either formative or reflective indicators (Chin, 1998). Also, PLS imposes minimal demands in terms of sample size to validate a model compared to alternative structural equation modeling techniques.

We test the conceptual model and the associated hypotheses proposed above by conducting some checking for consistency of the data and any potential biases on key variables. In next process, we plan to conduct a two-stage analytical procedure. In the first stage, the confirmatory factor analysis was conducted to assess the measurement model and followed by second stage where the structural relationships were examined. We used three kinds of validity to validate our model: construct validity, convergent validity and discriminant validity. Moreover, we checked The Variance Inflation Factor (VIF) for all the constructs to avoid multi-colinearity problem among the variables. Then, we test the proposed hypotheses, analyze and finding the result.

Survey instrument

We evaluate several literatures as a reference for developing this scale (Iacovou and Benbasat 1995; Massetti and Zmud 1996) and in particular, the TOE Framework analysis and dimensions of e-business assimilation as identified by Zhu at al. (2006) were used as a guide to construct a formative scale.

Consistent with previous explanation in theoretical part, we developed measurement instrument for technology-organization-environment context based on prior research. Measurement items were adopted as much as possible from previous research to facilitate cumulative research outcome. However, specific measurements were added after careful exploration and adjustment in the context of e-government.

Dependent Variable

We classified into 3 stages: (1) E-Government Initiation was measured by how the potential benefits of e-business were rated before the organization began using e-Government. Four items were used: increase transparency, coordination, expand services and reduce cost. (2) E-Government Adoption was measured by an aggregated index: whether the firm had used the Internet for each of the value chain activities. Other studies used a similar approach to measure the adoption of open systems (Chau and Tam 1997) and software practice technologies (Fichman 2001). The items are ranging from front office and back office, represented by web/portal services for internal and public services (Keppres No.3, 2003). Then, we aggregated the adoption items to form our dependent variable, e-government adoption. This approach has been suggested by the literature to enhance the comprehensiveness of adoption measurement (Grover and Goslar 1993, Fichman 2001). (3) E-Government Routinization was measured by the extent of organizational usage of e-government to support value chain activities based on volume, diversity and depth.

Independent Variable

ICT expertise was measured by using the number of ICT professionals (as percentage of the total number of employees) is based on the method used by Bresnahan et al. (2002). The following two items, awareness of e-Government and training of e-Government were selected to reflect the organization level of specialized ICT expertise. Responses were measured with five-point scale Likert scale with anchors ranging from strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (5).

IT infrastructure was operationalized by asking respondents to indicate (1) the ratio of the number of computer to the total number of employees; (2) the ratio of the number of computers on-line to the total number of employees. The following questions represent the information technology infrastructure, integrated system, shared database were selected to describe a figure of technology used in the organization (Zhu etal.2006).

Top Management Support was adapted from Chatterjee et al. (2002) as a three item reflective scale. It refers to the extent to which top management actively support in the management of the e-Government initiative. For that reason, participation was operationalized by asking the respondents to rate on a five point Likert scale the extent to which the senior management of the organization actively participated in the following planning and monitoring activities: (1) articulating a vision for the organizational use of the e-Gov, (2) formulating a strategy for the organizational use of the e-Gov, and (3) establishing goals and standards to monitor e-Gov program. An additional question was added as the manipulation check.

Organizational Compatibility refers to the perceived alignment between the IT innovation and the culture, values, and preferred work practices of the assimilating organization. Using past, we measured this using a three-item reflective scale adapted from Jones and Beatty (1998).

Extent of Coordination refers to Chatterjee et al. (2002) to measure in terms of the use of different types of coordination mechanisms to manage e-Government program. This mechanism can be a form of Guidelines or standard to manage the e-Government initiatives. Organizations can also establish a formal group such as a task force to monitor e-Government related activities. Moreover, to facilitate monitoring efforts, goals, plans and procedures might also be set by the senior executives of the organization. In addition to formal structural arrangements such as oversight team, can be effective in securing organization-wide support and cooperation in the diffusion of innovation (Rogers 1983). Further individual mechanisms possess strengths and weaknesses in facilitating knowledge integration therefore, the use of a variety of mechanisms together is reflective of higher levels of coordination through Government CIO (G-CIO).

Regulatory environment extents to entire e-Government law and regulation that support e-Government initiatives and implementation: it’s related to laws and regulation on e-Government initiative, an incentives provided by the government, the need of organization and adequate of legal protection. These items correspond to the areas in which government regulations and policies can encourage assimilation, as adapted from Kraemer et al. (2006).

Competition environment is measured by three items represent the degree of rivalry among existing government organizations to provide the upmost services and achievement, followed by affected from competitive disadvantage and affect from e-Government award. Such operationalization has been used in the e-business and IS researches.

5. Discussion and implications

The primary purpose of this study is to understand fundamental factors influencing the e-Government assimilation. There are three major factors: Technology, Organization and Environment, based on TOE frameworks that will influence the multistage assimilation of e-Government. Therefore, it is important to analyze which factors significantly affect the e-Government assimilation. Furthermore, drawing upon theoretical development from contextual and conceptualization, we extent our analysis to test the effect on seven variables of TOE framework in multiple stage assimilation. Our model tries to identify factors shaping the assimilation and reveal the difference and effect in every stage of assimilation.

Secondly, this study designated to contribute to academics by enhancing previous research on innovation assimilation and IT diffusion literature. In several researches, it has been shown the usefulness of TOE framework in several domains, such as adoption in CRM, RFID, as well as diffusion across difference sector. However there has been little research about the processes by which an e-Government assimilation is initiated, adopted, and reutilized from theoretical and empirical perspective. Therefore, this paper contributes to the theory and practices (policy maker) by emphasizing on how e-government is implemented and institutionalized, particularly in the area of diffusion of IT Innovation and its assimilation in public sector.

In spite of the importance result and implications that will found from this research, the complete report and analysis from empirical study could not be presented in this paper. This because process of pre-test and survey activity will be conducted during October-November 2009, followed by analysis and interpreting the result that expected finished on December 2009. We hope our research will encourage researchers to explore and enhance the e-Government research.