Empirical Validation of the Concept of Active Ownership of an E-service within Transformational Government In Sri Lanka

Sammanfattning

This paper holds an empirical investigation into the impact of active ownership on sustainability and efficiency of public e-services in a transformational government setting through a comprehensive qualitative case study of Sri Lanka. Although active ownership is an active topic of debate in digital government literature as a tool of maintaining the continued existence of the public e-services following the initial implementation, there is a lack of empirical evidence to support its practical implementation, especially in developing countries. This study fills that gap by discussing the nature of the practice, experience and limitation of ownership in the real-world delivery of e-services to the public. The research will utilize an interpretivist qualitative methodology, with the data relying on twenty semi-structured interviews with senior public-sector officials and technology professionals working in the private sector of the design and implementation of the digital public services and their maintenance. Reflexive thematic analysis was performed on the data based on the six stages of analysis provided by Braun and Clarke with the assistance of MAXQDA to guarantee the systematic coding, transparency, and analytical rigour. The results indicate that there are four interconnected themes that influence the outcomes of the e- service to the population, including innovation and citizencentric design, organisational capabilities, citizen trust and data privacy, and collaboration and coordination. Regular assessments by the stakeholders stated that low usability, restricted accessibility, and ineffective linguistic support decrease citizen adoption, whereas low internal capacity, in the form of staff deficits, insufficient training, and slow approval procedures destroy long-term service sustainability. The issues of data management, the reliability of the system, and the lack of standardized security levels were revealed as some of the essential obstacles to citizen confidence. Scattered coordination and institutional practices of siloing also limited interoperability, flexibility and sustainability. The present study is also valuable in its critical discussion of the way the empirical findings can be extended and put into perspective the available literature on digital government and active ownership. The latter part illustrates that active ownership is an active practice of governance and not a role and is influenced by organisational capacity, cross-institutional co-ordination, and trust by citizens. The discussion validates the applicability of the Active Ownership Framework and mentions contextual limitations in the process of developing transformational government in the context of fragmented accountability and poor institutional capacities. Combining empirical evidence with theory, the research contributes to the current knowledge on how the long-term stakeholder engagement helps to ensure the longterm e-sustainability of the public services and shapes the policy and practice in Sri Lanka and other such settings. In sum, the research shows that the active ownership in practice is not determined only by the formal responsibility but by the constant involvement to the design improvement, institutional capacity, trust-building and cross-organisational coordination. The results can be used as empirical evidence of the active ownership framework and offer situational-specific information to guide policy and practice in Sri Lanka and the similar transformational government setting.