Learning from Failures: a Chance to Overcome the Crisis. E-Government Adoption in the Municipality of Palermo, Italy.

Due to its effect on regional and national competitiveness the issue of e- Government has become particularly relevant in the light of an ongoing financial crisis. Mostly because e-Government has a great potential in reducing the cost of regulatory compliance for government customers, in improving efficiency and tax administration and in avoiding frauds and errors. However, it must not be considered as a simple set of tools for technological innovation but rather a phenomenon that requires redesigning the entire institutional governance model and the roles of the main actors involved. This paper presents part of the PhD thesis project of the author on the implementation and adoption of e-Government strategies in the Municipality of Palermo, southern Italy, in a crucial period of the starting of a new web portal project. Research is being conducted adopting a managerial perspective with the help of Institutional Theory as a framework to understand the particular context and to depict the deep causes of lack of coordination among institutions. Moreover System Dynamics, a particular kind of dynamic simulation, will be used in order to individuate the variables affecting the adoption rate and to analyze what feedback foster or avoid the achievement of the tipping point to assure the development of e-services. A similar integrated approach to e-government, although with different applications, has been already proposed by Luna Reyes & Gil-Garcia (2011).