Innovation in E-government: Analysis of municipal web pages in the Nordic countries

The article seeks to test propositions about innovation in e-government inspired by innovation theory. The tests are carried out on data from a survey of municipal web pages in the four Nordic countries of Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden. The research question is concerned with explaining variations among Nordic municipalities as to the features of their respective web pages. A model of innovation is developed, aiming at capturing typical features of local government as a setting for innovations in e-governance. Web pages were analyzed according to their information and communication features. Sources of innovation investigated include motivating, enabling and predisposing factors. All of these sources are important for innovation; one of the enabling factors stood out most of all - national context. Surprisingly though, it was the Danish context that explained the most of the variance, not the Finnish setting, as expected. The last part of the paper is devoted to a discussion of the factors that may account for the Danish preeminence in this respect.

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