Effects of GWEA Implementation on ICT Standardisation Across SA Government Departments

Efficiency with the standardisation of ICT plans is critical to the alignment of optimal organisational strategies and in further assisting an organisation in obtaining the industrial competitive advantage. By contrast, the alignment of business and ICT has proven to be a challenging exercise in many organisations, and even more so in government departments. Most of these challenges have arisen because of the limited, or rather, lack of proper formalised approaches such as enterprise architecture (EA) that can assist the organisation in the standardisation of ICT plans which can be comfortably aligned with business strategies. Moreover, these deficiencies manifest in complexities and inconsistencies, affecting organisational goals. Therefore, to achieve the objective of this study, qualitative research was employed to uncover the complexities around the effects of Government Wide Enterprise Architecture (GWEA) implementation in South African government departments. An innovation decision process from the perspective of the diffusion of innovation (DOI) theory was used as a lens to guide the analysis of the qualitative data. Based on the findings, a solution of a model of conceptual factors for determining the success of GWEA implementation was developed and proposed through a framework from this study.