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The pervasive and ubiquitous introduction of IT across industries has been noted in the last decades. Most recently, the academic, as well as practitioner outlets, are caught up with the debate on such concepts as digital technology, and digital innovation that is fundamentally changing the way organisations go about doing their businesses (Janowski, 2015; Porter & Hepelmann, 2014; Yoo et al., 2010). The application of IT in the public organisation has also been discussed along with the recent phenomenon of digitalisation.
The term ‘digitalisation’ is often confused with or used interchangeably with ‘digitisation’. Despite some overlap between the two terms, their distinction is widely discussed in the literature. For instance, Legner et al. (2017, p. 301) define digitisation as “the technical process of converting analogue signals into digital form, and ultimately into binary digits.” The authors also argue that the term was coined by computer scientists since the invention of the first machine. It is worth noting that while digitisation is mainly concerned with technology, the term ‘digitalisation,’ on the other hand, describes a multifaceted sociotechnical phenomenon, and the alteration and adoption of processes through the use of digital technologies (Legner et al., 2017). As digitalisation continues to affect how individuals, organisations and society at large, it has garnered the attention of leaders and policymakers. Thus, Berman (2012) define digitalisation as “a set of complementary activities reshaping customer value propositions and transforming their operations using digital technologies for greater customer interaction and collaboration.” As such, firms of all sizes across industries are rushing into the wave of digitalisation (Holotiuk & Beimborn, 2017). The findings of empirical studies suggest that the introduction of new information technologies in general and digitalisation, in particular, provides opportunities for many organisations (Legner et al., 2017).
As one of the information-intensive sectors, the benefit of digitalisation in the public sector is acknowledged in the literature (Altameem, et al. 2006; Jonathan & Rusu, 2018; Janowski, 2015; Rusu & Jonathan, 2017). In the context of developing countries, a long list of benefits of digitalisation in the public sector has been identified (Al-Naimat et al., 2013). For instance, scholars argue that citizens stand to benefit from digitalisation in the form of reduced time and cost as well as the easing of ‘red tape’ resulting in efficiency and improved accountability (Altameem et al., 2006). Other advantages include the disconnect of service from location, the bi-directionality of communication, mobility of communication, networking (both social networking and connection of organisations), as well as the creation of businesses resulting from new business models enabled by digitalisation (Prem, 2015).