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Bureaucratic Reform And E-Government In The United States: An Institutional Perspective, Jane E. Fountain

Jane E. Fountain

Technology enactment, an analytical framework that focuses on the processes by which new information and communication technologies come to be used by organizational actors, is distinctly institutional in orientation. An institutional perspective provides a challenge to researchers to integrate attention to structure, politics, and policy into studies of e-government. It also invites attention to the roles and relationships of formal and informal institutions. Formal institutions—laws, reg- ulations, budget processes, and other governmental procedures—are central to legitimation and shaping incentives for the use of ICT as an integral and inseparable set of elements in the administrative state. Informal institutions—networks, norms, and …