Government Digital Transformation: A Tailor-Made Digital Maturity Assessment Framework

Abstract

Governments seek to implement digital transformation initiatives to improve the effectiveness of their public services. To achieve this, governments need to assess their IT environment and evaluate their digital maturity. The conventional digital maturity assessment frameworks, mainly constructed by consulting firms, often fail when applied to the public sector due to the differences between the business and government sectors in terms of their operational missions and activities. Therefore, a maturity assessment framework that accommodates the unique requirements of governments and their operating environments is necessary. The novelty of this research lies in its contribution to digital transformation in the public sector by presenting a framework specifically designed to assess the digital transformation maturity of government organizations. This research is based on analyzing the factors of maturity assessment models developed by industry leaders from three leading global consulting firms. Insights from the academic literature on these factors were extracted, and a comprehensive survey was conducted with 88 IT experts from government institutes across six countries to ensure their relevance and applicability in real-world government settings. In this research, we tested our hypothesis on whether there is a significant relationship between the importance of digital transformation factors and their implementation. The analysis indicated that there is no strong statistical relationship between the importance of digital transformation maturity factors and their implementation. The framework helps assess digital maturity and supports the formulation of effective strategies to drive successful digital transformation initiatives in government.