My research domain is e-government. My research focus is on the impact of information and communication technologies (ICTs) on public sector organisations and the service they deliver. Within such a broad field, my research questions the impact of ICTs on the coordination and control mechanisms and the execution of organisational tasks of public sector organisations and on the values they deliver. More precisely, it addresses questions related to: (i) the proper frameworks to study the impact of ICTs on the creation of “public value”; (ii) the ICTs impacts on governments’ service delivery; and (iii) the effect of ICTs on public sector’s ability to innovate and adapt to changes in the environment within which it operates.

The e-government literature has largely discussed the impacts of ICTs on efficiency and productivity gains of public sector organisations. Less attention has been paid to the impacts of ICTs on different dimensions of public value -organisational, institutional and economic, managerial as well as political, social, and institutional- generated by the adoption of ICTs in the public sector. My research aims at filling this gap by questioning how ICTs change the processes, practices, and the nature of public services, and hence the public value they generate. The study of these impacts, which is the outcome of several pieces of work (EJEG, 2007; JIT, 2007, GIQ, 2010; JSIS, 2012), provides a fertile ground for further investigation both at the empirical and at the theoretical level.

Building on my existing work, I intend to further explore how ICT mediated transformations impact upon the processes by which public services are produced and delivered and hence the public value they generate.

The design of ICTs shapes institutional and organisational arrangements according to the logic and functionalities of the technology (JEOB, 2016; GIQ, 2015; GIQ, 2013; JSIS, 2010, JSIS, 2012). Additional research is needed to better explore how the design of ICTs is shaping these arrangements and to investigate its impact on the values of the services delivered by public sector organisations. To get a better understanding of these phenomena, it is my intention to introduce an international comparative perspective into my research. TO further develop this research interest I plan to study how the digitisation of the judiciary and hence the design choices made to process efficiently the information flow among different Judicial Systems impact upon the nature and value of the services provided by these institutions. The aim of this project is to explore the institutional and legal transformation associated with the deployment of ICTs in the judiciary and understand the magnitude of the changes associated with the digitisation of the judiciary. This project builds on my previous research that has questioned the transformation associated with the deployment of ICTs in public sector organisations and the value of the services they deliver, to offer new theoretical framing and empirical evidence needed to study and better understand the magnitude of the transformations associated with the digitisation of the public sector and the judiciary in particular.

Beside the study of the institutional and legal transformation associated with the digitisation of public sector organisations, I am also working on a series of papers that discuss the impact that ICTs have on the coordination mechanisms and organisational configurations that underpin the process of public sector services production and delivery. In the specific, I am studying how ICT mediated co-productions of public services impacts upon the public value production chain. It is my plan to develop this research stem to address the managerial challenges associated with the coordination of different modes of co-production -such as outsourcing, crowdsourcing, and open sourcing- when these different modes of co-production engage with public services that generate conflictual public values.

To provide an even better understanding of the complexity of the transformation associated with e-government policies, I am building the foundation needed to study and hence better understand how e-government policies can hinder the government's ability to adapt to the environment within which it operates. ICTs frame contingent institutional and organisational arrangements (JSIS, 2010) designed to structure the processes by which public services are provided. Once these processes are deployed, they are very difficult to change because they are structured in hardwired technologies that are hard to redesign. This rigidity of the technology makes it difficult to change the way in which public sector organisations work and hence increase their inertia to change. ICTs curb the possibility to reform the public services they mediate creating legacies that are not only technological but also normative and institutional. This raises challenging questions regarding the implication that contingent e-government strategies can have on future reforms and transformation in the organisation of public sector organisations and the services they deliver. This is the focus of my most recent paper (JEBO, 20160) and important building blocks of my ongoing research interests.

To summarise, my existing research provides a critical reappraisal of the emerging field of e-government and offers a solid foundation for my future research projects.