Public e-procurement and the duality of technology: a comparative study in the context of Brazil and of the State of Paraíba
The diffusion of e-commerce technology in the private sector has led public administrations to use the potentialities of information and communication technologies (ICTs), including the redesign of several governmental activities (Cordella, 2007). Managing public purchases, "one of the main areas where the government can be 'reinvented'" (Santos, 2004, p. 150), represents one of the areas that has received a great deal of investments and attention, both in technological terms, aiming to modernize the process, and in juridical-legal terms. In this way, the electronic public process (eprocurement) became widely adopted by organizations, including public administration (PA), seeking to improve the business process (Coulthard & Castleman, 2001; Leukel & Maniatopoulos, 2005). Although the investments in electronic government and information systems (IS) represent a significant proportion of the organization budget (Mussi & Zwicker, 2009), the literature present