eGovernment Strategies’ Evaluation: A qualitative comparative analysis on eGovernment strategic objectives set over the years by the European Commission and the Greek government

Abstract

The European Commission has made significant steps towards establishing eGovernment at a national and European level. However, according to the EU eGovernment Benchmark 2020, the Greek Government seems to lag behind in terms of achieving specific digital transformation goals such as Transparency, Cross-border Mobility, Key Enablers and so the digitalization and penetration scores are significantly lower than the average ones of the EU 27+UK. These findings generate questions about the strategy proposed by the EC and how has been implemented by the Greek Government and the impacts that the proposed strategies have on the digitalization process. Previous literature has addressed several issues of government transformation such as the barriers and the frameworks for establishing eGovernment. By conducting a qualitative comparative case study research and the Grounded theory analysis, the researchers divide the strategic objectives set by the EC and the Greek transcription of them into themes and quantify the data in order to provide an understanding of the strategies set the E, the specific themes that they address since 2006 and how the implemented in Greece. From the analysis, three recurring themes were found: Inclusive Citizen-centric Digital Services, Digital Enablers, Administrative Efficiency & Transparency. However, the findings suggest that there are differences between the strategies proposed by the EC and the strategies implemented by the Greek Government. These differences resulted in following two different frameworks which may have impacted the lower score of the Greek Government in the EU Benchmark Report 2020.