The doing of Norwegian local governments' digitalization: exploring ICT-mediated adventures

This thesis deals with the implementation of e-government programs in the Norwegian local sector. The investigation has a twofold aim: my ambition is to contribute to strengthen the vague e-government theoretical foundations, while gaining a better understanding of the emergent and evolving digitalization of Norwegian local governments. I have paid special attention to governmental efforts towards the implementation of advanced ICT-based communications. In this sense, visions, aims, and strategies are central elements in this study. In particular, I examine how digitalization is being shaped and performed in terms of negotiations of multiple visions at play; and an aspect that has been unexplored in the previous literature, namely, the resulting and evolving configurations of interested parties. In order to examine the ‘doing’ of such a socio-material process, I engage with concepts from Science and Technology Studies (STS) and Organization Studies (OS). The three different theoretical stances I make use of – The Actor Network Theory (ANT), Sociomateriality and Social Learning – draw on three shared ontological commitments: symmetry, semiotic relationality, and situatedness. The three papers forming the core of this thesis share a common interest in unraveling how ICT is being implemented by local governments in Norway; yet each paper addresses different angles of and/or technologies involved in the phenomenon. The first paper examines efforts with respect to the domestication of local governments’ websites. The second paper explores visions and strategies informing the digitalization process in the local sector. I identify authorities’ initial visions for the ICT-driven transformation of local sector, and examine how those in charge of implementing ICT in local governments get visions situated and enacted in practice. The last paper departs from the previous insights in regard to the excessive concern about the managerial dimension depicting the implementation of ICT in the Norwegian local sector. I critically examine how encounters between local governments and interested parties are performed by means of Facebook, and aim to elucidate whether social media represents a realistic opportunity to eventually realize democratic aims for and engage residents in the digitalization process. Putting the findings from the three papers together, what become clear is that (1) local governments are implementing ICT in different ways. Each authority needs to decide what to put together in their sociomateriality of ICT elements. As the result certain visions become prioritized, and others become ignored, according to local conditions. (2) In turn, this leads to a situation where the democratic dimension of e-government is not realized in any substantial way through the implementation of ICT innovations. Thus, digitalization in practice is not the all-embracing process of change anticipated. (3) Furthermore, the assemblage of heterogeneous components into sociomaterialities according to local needs and constraints has configuring effects on stakeholders. (4) Local autonomy in the ICT realm is rendering municipalities as local information societies with a great disparity in terms of offerings, which is leading to the emergence of a geographical digital divide.