Analyzing the Challenges of Digital Transformation in Iran's Public Sector: a Qualitative Research

In recent times, owing to the rapid growth of technologies and their significant impacts on economic, political and social spheres as well as the changing expectations of citizens, digital transformation in the public sector has become an imperative need. Governments act as the guardians of the society in harnessing and benefiting from digital transformation. However, despite this, there are challenges confronting the government that hinder it from playing such a role. According to the literature review and the lack of a comprehensive framework of the challenges of digital transformation in Iran's public sector, this study was conducted with the aim of analyzing the challenges facing Iran's public sector in establishing digital transformation. In this study, the qualitative content analysis method was employed to collect data and extract expert opinions from semi-structured interviews with 40 information technology specialists. Based on the findings, the challenges of digital transformation in Iran's government organizations can be categorized into four types: hardware challenges (information technology infrastructure and financial infrastructure), software challenges (digital governance and the culture of digital transformation), human challenges (competencies of digital transformation custodians and digital citizenship competencies) and ecosystem challenges (ecosystem interactions and ecosystem capacity). This framework can be utilized by theorists and researchers as a guide for future studies on digital transformation in the public sector and provide useful guidelines for policymakers and government managers.