Exploring ICT expenditures and their relationship with e-maturity. The case of Italian Local Governments

The article undertakes a quantitative approach to investigate the relationship between ICT expenditures and e-maturity in local governments. We rely on data belonging to a unique database on 7106 Italian local governments. We propose a way of assessing e-maturity on a large scale, and we test the relation between e-maturity and ICT expenditures. Results partially confirm the existence of a statistically significant relationship between the two factors. In particular, we observe different patterns depending on the size of the organisation. For small local governments, e-maturity is related with ICT expenditures, meaning that the how (the decision on money allocation) is more important than the how many (the total amount of money spent). On the contrary, for medium and large municipalities, this relation exists, hence a higher e-maturity level is associated with higher ICT expenditures.