The dematerialisation of the document flows received and sent by the public administrations (PAs) is one of the main cornerstones of the Italian e-government programme. The empirical data relative to the diffusion of the new document management systems reveal that today less than half of Italy's central PAs have attained an adequate level of project advancement in terms of the Computerised Correspondence Register (the system whereby each document is automatically filed and retrieved), despite the fact that the deadline for compliance was 1 January 2004. The paper develops a number of reflections to understand the idea of change that guided first the legislator and then the monitoring authority. The thesis advanced is that also when implementation seems problematic, the rhetoric of managerialism dominates the e-government discourse. Through our reconceptualisation we argue that e-government reveals its organisational implications only when the statements of principle are translated into concrete actions and decisions.