Anne Fleur van Veenstra

Opening Moves --- Drivers, Enablers and Barriers of Open Data in a Semi-public Organization

Governments around the world are opening up their data to increase transparency and stimulate re-use of their data. Semi-public organizations follow, but often for different purposes as they also aim to realize commercial gains with their data. Many organizations, however, find the process of opening up data cumbersome as changes need to be made to different organizational layers. This paper identifies drivers, enablers, and barriers of open data, by reviewing literature and by conducting a case study of open data in a semi-public organization in the Netherlands. We found that while the drivers for opening up data remain the same in every phase of the process, the enablers and barriers shift between the different phases. While in the beginning of the process, organizational factors such as having an implementation strategy and ensuring data quality gained much attention, this attention shifted to factors related to re-use of data. Further research should thus focus on how to develop valuable open data business models, how to foster re-use and build strategic partnerships with users.

Barriers and impediments to transformational government: insights from literature and practice

Transformational government (t-government) has been introduced as a new stage of e-government aimed at realising structural changes and greater benefits in the public sector. Yet, there are many impediments blocking transformation, and there is limited insight in these barriers. In this paper, impediments for t-government are investigated by conducting a literature review and carrying out three case studies. The impediments found in literature were confirmed and extended using the case studies. Impediments simultaneously occur on the governance, organisational and managerial, and technical level and need to be addressed in concert. Research on transformation can benefit from understanding these interrelated impediments.

Failure of large transformation projects from the viewpoint of complex adaptive systems: Management principles for dealing with project dynamics

Many large transformation projects do not result in the outcomes desired or envisioned by the stakeholders. This type of project is characterised by dynamics which are both caused by and result of uncertainties and unexpected behaviour. In this paper a complex adaptive system (CAS) view was adopted in order to better understand project dynamics and identify management principles for dealing with them. A case study of a large transformation project in the Netherlands was carried out, in which six patterns were found through which project dynamics could be identified. A logical consequence of the immense complexity of the case study’s project dynamics was that stakeholders lost sight of the overall goals, focussed on managing incidents and approached the project in an ad hoc way. Informed by CAS theory, we present seven management principles that respect the dynamics of this type of project and can aid in coping with project dynamics.

The Entanglement of Enterprise Architecture and IT-Governance: The Cases of Norway and the Netherlands

Governments are developing infrastructures to spur e-government development. These e-government infrastructures are based on the notion of ICT as a utility that can be (re-)used by organizations at all levels of government to create their own service provisioning and to facilitate interaction with each other. This paper investigates the development of such infrastructures by looking at regional and national aspects. A cross-country comparative framework is developed and 2 countries are analyzed. We found that infrastructure development in both countries is similar at a global level, yet the governance is different. While Norway aims to enable integration by developing a Business Process Management building block on the national level, in the Netherlands local governments compose and integrate the building blocks with implementation support from the national level. These differences between e- government infrastructure developments of the two countries can be attributed to the degree of centralization of government and the degree of active support given to e-government developments.

A Decision Model for Data Sharing

Data-driven innovation has great potential for the development of innovative services that not only have economic value, but that help to address societal challenges. Many of these challenges can only be addressed by data sharing of public and privately owned data. These public-private data sharing collaborations require data governance rules. Data governance can address many barriers, for example by deploying a decision model to guide choices regarding data sharing resulting in interventions supported by a data sharing platform. Based on a literature review of data governance and three use cases for data sharing in the logistics sector, we have developed a data sharing decision model from the perspective of a data provider. The decision model addresses technical as well as ownership, privacy, and economical barriers to sharing publicly and privately owned data and subsequently proposes interventions to address these barriers. We found that the decision model is useful for identifying and addressing data sharing barriers as it is applicable to amongst others privacy and commercial sensitive data.

Opening the Black Box: Exploring the Effect of Transformation on Online Service Delivery in Local Governments

To enhance the quality of their online service delivery, many government organizations seek to transform their organization beyond merely setting up a front office. This transformation includes elements such as the formation of service delivery chains, the adoption of a management strategy supporting process orientation and the implementation of enterprise architecture. This paper explores whether undertaking this transformation has a positive effect on the quality of online service delivery, using data gathered from seventy local governments. We found that having an externally oriented management strategy in place, adopting enterprise architecture, aligning information systems to business and sharing activities between processes and departments are positively related to the quality of online service delivery. We recommend that further research should be carried out to find out whether dimensions of organizational development too have an effect on online service delivery in the long term.

Management and Failure of Large Transformation Projects: Factors Affecting User Adoption

Transformational e-government (t-government) aims to realize public sector reform. Yet many of the large transformation projects have not resulted in the desired outcomes, as stakeholders did not adopt the results of the projects. These projects are characterized by a large number of stakeholders, many uncertainties and complexities. Although there is a vast amount of literature available on project failure and despite its importance of this topic, little is known about factors influencing the adoption of large transformation projects by stakeholders. In this paper factors influencing and delaying the adoption of a large transformation project are identified. Adoption is hindered by a combination of factors originating from the complexity and uncertainties in combination with too high ambition levels and the neglecting existing realities. During the transformation process the focus on the users was lost and shifted towards an internal orientation.

Investigating Outcomes of T-Government Using a Public Value Management Approach

A main objective of transformational government (t-government) is to realize public sector reform. Initiatives of public sector reform, commonly referred to as New Public Management (NPM), often failed to achieve the desired results and led to undesired outcomes. Hence, a new reform approach, referred to as Public Value Management (PVM), emerged to overcome these negative effects and to which the use of information technology (IT) is central. This paper investigates a t-government effort in the Netherlands to find whether it realizes the objectives of PVM. The findings of the case study show that t-government does not achieve these objectives. Instead of realizing a transformed organizational structure, t-government is found to be concerned with setting up governance among the different parties in a in network to allow for collaboration. Furthermore, the case study results show that to realize the outcomes of PVM, t-government needs to be accompanied by a professionalization of the work force and by making government processes more transparent to ensure public accountability.

A multi-level framework for measuring and benchmarking public service organizations: connecting stages-of-growth models and enterprise architecture

Measuring and benchmarking the maturity of public service organizations is a challenging and time-consuming job as they differ in scope, size, and complexity. Existing growth models often use instruments that are generic, have no measures and do not relate the stages to the actual realisation of the systems architecture. Furthermore, these approaches take a one size fits all approach instead of a customized approach. Although the type of information to be measured can vary among different organizations, these approaches use similar instruments (e.g. stage models) and indicators (e.g. stages). Therefore, in this paper we propose a multi-level framework in which measures can be selected based on the domain and case specific needs and characteristics. Specifically, our framework focuses on measuring enterprise architecture, by looking at the blueprint for ICT infrastructure, information systems, organizational as well as technical aspects, horizontal and vertical integration and interoperability, and rules, regulations, laws, and legislations etc. Enterprise architecture provides basic understanding about the different elements of a public organization in a systematic manner. Therefore, this paper subsequently investigates the use of enterprise architecture and stages-of-growth models for measuring public organizations by means of an explorative case study of Dutch tax department using a multi-level architectural framework. The case study shows that the organizational information that can be retrieved from enterprise architecture is useful to measure and benchmark public organizations, which is hardly possible using state-of-growth models. The proposed multi-level framework is capable of measuring and benchmarking the information at the different levels by allowing public organizations to use multiple assessment approaches (e.g. stage models) and connecting them to enterprise architecture.

Modes of Governance in Inter-Organizational Data Collaborations

Big data and data-driven innovation are drivers for economic growth. To capture this growth, data often need to be shared among organisations. However, many challenges to sharing data among organisations exist. This paper investigates how governance is organised in inter-organisational data collaborations. First, based on literature, four archetypical modes of governance are identified: Market, Hierarchy, Bazaar and Network. Subsequently, these theoretical modes are investigated empirically by exploring governance modes in four use cases. Based on a cross-case comparison, we find that major challenges to data sharing are the commercially sensitive nature of data and privacy risks. Due to legal implications, sharing of personal data always takes place hierarchically. Therefore, coordination and control over data need to be firmly in place before organisations engage in data sharing. Further research should look into how these aspects can be organised in inter-organisational data collaborations to foster innovation.