Institutional Barriers to Digitalization of Government Budgeting in Developing Countries: A Case Study of Ghana

Abstract This paper aims to understand how and why institutional barriers constrain digitalization of government budgeting in a developing country context. E‐Government studies that specifically focus on public sector budgeting as a cross‐agency activity remain limited. While the dominant research focus has been on government interactions with citizens and businesses, budgeting as a significant cross‐agency process is yet to receive the necessary research attention. To address this gap, this study employed institutional theory as the analytical lens and qualitative, interpretive case study as the methodology to investigate a government budgeting digitalization project and related challenges in the developing country context of Ghana. The findings show that outdated laws and the culture of paper document flows were institutional barriers to the budgeting digitalization. Other barriers included non‐use of an integrated system implementation approach as well as inadequate and unreliable online access for all the participating units. The originality of the paper lies in its focus on government budgeting as a significant e‐government research phenomenon.