Local e-government, the power of cognitive alignment

The state of the art literature about e-administration adoption (e.g Layne and Lee (2001)), claims that there is a process of adoption of IT, unfolded through several stages. Our hypothesis is that IT adoption, as much as any strong organizational and cognitive process, looks very much like a diffusion process with thresholds. Although the usage of computer is already well established, connectivity requires competences that are not acquired progressively. A trigger factor has to be present which provokes a cognitive and organizational alignment sometimes very spectacular in small municipalities. This makes the variegated usages of IT mutually reinforcing. We verify our theoretical hypothesis through a statistical analysis of an inquiry on local government in Brittany, focused on both e-government and e-administration. We end up with a typology which summarizes the pattern of usages by municipalities. The statistical study is complemented by a series of case studies on smallest municipalities which confirms the "cognitive alignment" hypothesis. While 50% of Breton municipalities are barely using IT, and to some extent have not yet entered the maturation cycle, a significant group of small ones has a strong intensity of usage, contradicting a maturation cycle.