Abstract
Around the world, there are several governmental attempts, by means of new information — and communication technologies (ICTs) — to regenerate the relationship between citizen/business and governments. This article explores the Swedish electronic government reform attempts of transforming functionally specialized governmental agencies into a more coherent and integrated network administration — the so-called `24/7 Agency'. Based on a theoretical point of departure in the governance network literature, and Kingdon's different streams of problems, solutions and politics, the article investigates the twisting ways of fulfilling the vision of the reform-makers. The conclusion is that the institutional structures, in this case the Swedish model of government organization with independently managed under performance management, in many respects encumber the reform per se. In addition, the article concludes that theoretically there are many reasons to include national institutional settings in the study of governance networks in future research. Methodologically, the article is based on an interpretative policy analysis where data has been derived through interviews with central policy makers and studies of policy documents.
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