Digital Innovations in Public Administrations: Technological or Policy Innovation Diffusion?

Abstract

Defined as digital innovation in public administrations, electronic government (e-government) diffusion has been studied by two bodies of work in the literature. The first has mainly focused on e-government, drawing on the theory of innovation diffusion as a general framework, while the second has mainly applied the administrative policy diffusion framework to the specific case of American states. Inspired by institutional theory, this second framework has not been applied to the case of European local governments. Furthermore, each framework has been mobilized by studies examining separately one of the two levels of e-government diffusion: website implementation or website services development. The aim of our paper is to examine if technological and administrative policy innovation factors impact the level of e-government development by municipalities. For that purpose, the paper collected data from a sample of 5,108 municipalities located in the French Grand Est region. JEL Codes: H70, M10