Exploring the relationship between IT competence and digital transformation within government projects in the UAE

This work is set to explore the relationship between digital transformation (DT) and organizational IT competence (IC) within UAE public sector. The study exposes several latent patterns to understand the nature of influence between the two critical factors towards the success of digitalization projects. A cross-sector study covering several governments and semi-government departments and agencies purposefully sampled for being or have been engaged with similar processes. The views of 186 participants were collected, validated, and analyzed for influence and significance. Unlike the assumed mono-directional influence, the results revealed high correlation significance (p-value < .01) and symmetrical R ² value (.74) for mutually influenced relations between the two categorical factors, pushing for digitalization success, while simultaneously pulling organizational units further towards new mandated levels of competencies. Our work is the first to report on a wide range of government initiatives of such scale in UAE, and neighboring Gulf Council Countries as a response to volatile global market dynamics. Additionally, we substantiate the influence of several sub-variables that feed into the two identified categories, validated by high Cronbach’s alpha (avg of .77) for internal consistency. We believe the disseminated results here come with a particularly timely value as many local and federal departments are currently engaged with several initiatives toward sustainable and expandable digital government services in UAE as a model for other governments in the region to follow.