Economic Crisis and Government Digital Transformation – Some Positive Evidence

Economic crises are an inherent problem of market-based economies, which is repeatedly appearing with various levels of intensity, resulting in ‘recessions’, meant as significant contractions of economic activity. They have negative consequences on organizations (both private and public ones), as they decrease their financial resources, and therefore their operational and investment expenses and activities. In this paper we focus on public organizations and investigate the effects of economic crisis on a highly important activity of them: their digital transformation activity. For our study we have selected a highly appropriate national context: Greece, which has been hit by a strong economic crisis between 2010–2018. We investigate the effects of this economic crisis on the digital transformation of a large, costly and highly important for the society and the economy public organization: the Ministry of Education. For this purpose, we have constructed a research framework, based on the ‘Resource-based View’ (RBV) of the firm, as well as a comprehensive conceptualization of government digital transformation, as our theoretical foundations. Data have been collected through a combination of qualitative and quantitative techniques. It has been concluded that the above economic crisis resulted in a serious decrease of the ICT-related investment and operating expenses (for the acquisition of ICT resources) of the Ministry of Education. However, despite this decrease the economic crisis has led to a significant increase of the digital transformation developments of this Ministry, and a significant advancement in all the main dimensions of the digital transformation of it.