The diffusion of eGovernment in public administration bodies. The links between back and front office service

This paper contributes to explaining the dynamics of eGovernment diffusion in Italian municipalities which play a key role in interfacing citizens and Local Public Administrations. By defining appropriate synthetic indicators, the study will analyse the relationships between the digitalization of back office services - in terms of ICT equipment and use as well as inner work process re-engineering - and front office services - in terms of quantity and interactivity of online services provided by municipalities. The analysis uses two integrated datasets. The first one, set up by ISTAT, provides information on the ITC use in 3,323 administrative bodies, representing the 8,100 Italian municipalities. The second, set up by the so called RCC Observatory (Regional Competence Centres for eGovernment and the Information Society) is made up of 1,825 data units and contains precise information on a set of online services provided by the official websites municipalities. This study provides a contribution to the political debate about the priority of investing in front and back office services so as to facilitate a more effective introduction of new technologies in public sector. Results show that municipalities appear to follow different adoption patterns and heterogeneous innovation paths.