With the understanding that well-connected government can enhance efficient and effective delivery of services to citizens Governments around the world - have become increasingly interested in assuring that their ICT systems are built and maintained in a manner that results in the highest levels of interoperability, data access and interchange, and “digital sovereignty.”
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Technical standards will invariably be articulated in an eGovernment strategy; but typically such standards won’t impede a government’s successful pursuit of an eGovernment strategy because useful standards are both widely available and known (and therefore generally not a challenge) and ever-evolving (and therefore not well suited to rigid lists or mandates).  However, without organizational interoperability, an eGovernment strategy may become mere words on a page and a lot of money spent. Organizational interoperability means the organizational structures, business processes and personnel enable enterprise-wide and cross-enterprise information sharing, cooperation and collaboration.

The government enterprise may need to reorganize to eliminate barriers to collaboration. Enterprises may need to reform the organizational structures, management hierarchy, mission statements, rules and leadership guidance to implement changes to information management, workflow and business processes. For example, historically, business processes were designed to meet needs internal to the enterprise.  Today, an enterprise must start with the service being consumed by the end user – the citizen, small business, industry or other government agency – and design business processes to provide the service most efficiently.  Similarly, the enterprise may need to redesign their information management to achieve the proper degrees of information sharing and privacy protection.

Individuals, whether staff or senior managers, need to adapt. As business processes and practices are altered or eliminated – managers may have to identify new means to measure productivity, transition the old revenue streams and methodologies to new processes and organizational structure, or identify new revenue streams.  Workers at any level of the administrative hierarchy may feel threatened by new interconnectedness.  Trust, norms, and networks central to social capital are fluid and could be threatened by reorganization.  Change in job content, loss of status or power, changes in interpersonal relationships, changes in the decision-making approach, and job insecurity are common reasons employees resist new technologies. A worker may perceive a threat to their “ownership” of information — their influence, or social stature — that may have accrued over many years of service. One method to avoid some of these problems is to include the workforce in the design of the eGovernment initiative from the outset. Their input could lead to innovations otherwise lost.  Workers may not have the skills to effectively undertake the imperatives of an eGovernment strategy and do their job within a new organizational structure with new processes and systems.  The government must make it a priority to develop proper training for, and achieve “buy-in” by, all who manage and work for the enterprise, these are the people who will or will not implement the eGovernment strategy.