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Public administrations in Germany are undergoing a structural and technological change. The strategy and several measures for managing this change are defined within the e-government act (EGovG) and the online access act (OZG) of the federal government, as well as in the jurisdiction of the individual federal states. Currently the online access act contains 575 public administrative processes that have to be changed, in order to modernize and digitalize the German public administrative system. A key action for managing these changes is the process assessment and the subsequent optimization of administrative business processes. This can be seen as a prerequisite for a full digitalization of government processes. Based on these legally binding changes, the work routines of administrative staff will also change as a result of rising restructuring activities. Digitalization changes such as these present a considerable challenge for public administrations (Van der Voet, Kuipers, & Groeneveld, 2016). The implementation of these changes in the form of IT projects should ideally focus on the fulfilment of the requirements set by the e-government act, but should also consider the affected employees. However, employees resistance to change is still one of the major problems facing the implementation of IT innovations in the public sector (Basyal & Seo, 2017). Without the acceptance of the employees as end-users of the introduced technology, the usage and success of IT-projects cannot be guaranteed in the long run (Krüger, 2014).
One effective measure to ensure acceptance of change in the public sector is to involve employees in the change process (O’Brien, 2002). Involving employees into IT-projects should increase acceptance, as they personally contribute to the projects. Employee participation and involvement into the development process of IT-projects has been an established strategy in the software industry for decades. Within the context of user centred design, projects are tailored to the requirements of the users, which can result in higher usability of software products and an increased acceptance and employee motivation (Dillon & Morris, 1996). These approaches are able to improve acceptance of planned changes as early as possible and resolve doubts and fears. Although several participation opportunities and methods exist to involve employees in IT projects in the public sector (Ben Rehouma, 2019) such approach is not yet fully applied in the practice (Ben Rehouma, 2018). Furthermore, the establishment of change management approaches based on participation in the public sector can prove a challenging task (Van der Voet et al., 2016).