Inter-Organisational Collaboration towards Process Integration in the Public Sector. E-Government Collaboration in Egypt

This paper demonstrates the importance of collaboration between government departments as a backbone for inter-organizational integration between agencies such as ministries. We argue that the challenges related to e-government adoption can be partially attributed to the lack of standard collaboration practices between government agencies. We use the case of the foreign financing decision making process in Egypt as an example of a government process where close collaboration between government agencies such as ministries and the central bank of Egypt is essential. Our research identified a number of organizational and interorganizational problems such as difficulties in tracking and documenting the decision making process across different departments within and across government agencies. Based on our empirical findings, this paper proposes a framework for effective inter-governmental collaboration in the case of the Egyptian government in particular and e-government adoption in general.