eGovernment — A driving force for public sector innovation?

Given the procedural nature of many government tasks, the adoption of new information and communication technologies (ICT), especially electronic government (eGovernment) has become critical for government organizations. Therefore the main research question of the paper is to identify the influence of eGovernment on process innovation in the public sector and how public sector workforce skills and barriers such as risk aversion or staff resistance affect this relationship. The findings show that public sector organizations which implement eGovernment are more successful in terms of process innovation. Moreover the moderation effect of public sector workforce skills delineates an inverse u-curve relationship. The relationship between eGovernment and process innovation is stronger with medium-skilled workforce compared to low or high skilled workforce. In addition the results also show that eGovernment negatively influences process innovation when more barriers exist.