Maddalena Sorrentino

Can intermunicipal collaboration help the diffusion of E-Government in peripheral areas? Evidence from Italy

Abstract This paper analyzes the implementation of new intermunicipal structures in Italy to support the development of E-Government in the countrys peripheral areas. Our exploratory case study, conducted in the Piedmont Region, shows that intermunicipal collaborations can facilitate the coordination of interdependent subjects, rationalize existing resources (e.g., through the reuse of application software solutions), and prevent the dispersion of federal government funds. Nevertheless, intermunicipal collaborations alone do not seem to have the power needed to ensure that decisions made at the central level will automatically translate into concrete and binding commitments for the municipalities involved. From a methodological standpoint, the article makes use of the analytical frameworks offered by organization science to interpret the effects of collaborative arrangements on E-Government implementation.

The strategic value of SOA: a comparative case study in the banking sector

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has helped to drive increasingly intense global competition. In turn, this intensity increases the need for flexibility and rapid changeability in ICT to support strategies that depend on organisational agility. We report a comparative, cross-cultural case study of the implementation of Service-Oriented Architectures (SOA) at a Scandinavian bank and a Swiss bank. The strategic rewards in the adoption of SOA appear to go beyond marketplace issues of ICT capability acquisition, and unexpectedly arise in the creation of an extensible organisational ICT architecture. The extensibility of the ICT architecture that results from the adoption of SOA provides potential for greater organisational agility (and thereby competitiveness).

Does the Answer to eGovernment Lie in Intermunicipal Collaboration? An Exploratory Italian Case Study

The paper analyses Italys recent attempt to build new intermunicipal structures to support eGovernment development also in peripheral areas of the country. Preliminary findings for an individual region (the Piedmont Region) show that intermunicipal collaborations can facilitate the coordination of interdependent subjects, rationalize existing resources (e.g. through the use of application software solutions), and prevent the dispersal of government funds. At the same time, the new intermunicipal structures alone do not seem to have the authority needed to ensure that the decisions made by the technical round table participants will automatically translate into a concrete and binding commitment for all the municipalities potentially involved. The paper seeks to use the analytical frameworks offered by organization science to interpret the effects of collaborative arrangements on eGovernment implementation.

Value generation in e‐government from service‐based IT integration

Purpose – Understanding how value is actually generated in e‐government projects is one of the most challenging, and relevant, issues in e‐government research. This paper aims to investigate the contribution of service‐based information technology (IT) integration for generating value in the public sector, proposing a theoretical framework based on the theory of IT conversion effectiveness.Design/methodology/approach – The paper illustrates this novel approach to electronic government evaluation with an exploratory case study of a service‐based IT integration project developed by the City of Genoa, showing how and why IT integration can substantially contribute to value generation in the public sector.Findings – Contrarily to what one would expect according to the original theory of IT conversion effectiveness, value generation may happen even with no substantial growth in the pre‐existing IT asset portfolio. In fact, what is truly important is not only the availability of IT assets (policy output), but a...

Sowing the seeds of IS cultivation in public service organisations

This paper aims to highlight the relevance of a cultivation approach with the goal of exploring the concrete implications it may have for public administrations (PA) involved in projects of organisational change. We suggest that adopting an approach to change that reflects the cultivation perspective is an unavoidable choice for PA, much more so than it is for the corporate world. The claim is that public-sector organisations design and implement organisational solutions that find it hard to move away from the ‘maintenance’ logic of legacy systems. Compared with the rational perspective, which is geared entirely to establishing optimal relations between means and ends, the cultivation approach enables us to make valuable advances at the interpretive level. We argue that the value of the processual and incremental perspective can be useful in creating a more realistic and less illusory reconstruction of the relationship between technological change and organisational change. In this paper, we discuss how combining policy studies with ICT social studies can help empower the cultivation logic, originating new tools for analysing and evaluating e-government results.

Socio-technical Perspectives on e-Government Initiatives

ICTs are intended to be a powerful tool in support of government transition to the “Digital Age”. The purpose of this paper is to emphasize the importance of integrating a socio-technical perspective into the body of eGovernment practices. The current realisation in Italy of an “Action plan for eGovernment” is a source of interesting preliminary evidence for our purpose.

Interpreting e-government: implementation as the moment of truth

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 Italys 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.

Health care services and the coproduction puzzle : filling in the blanks

This qualitative study analyzes an Italian hospital’s endeavor to introduce a coproduction practice and the critical factors that affect its efficacy and efficiency. The empirical evidence shows that the meaningful engagement of the patient can be achieved only by factoring in the socioorganizational conditions of all stakeholders; that no divide exists between organizational production and client coproduction, rather, it is a relationship of interdependence that in turn raises critical issues; and that formalized and effective “practices-in-use” cannot work unless there is strong managerial commitment and enforcement of the new coproduction initiative.

The enabling role of Web services in information system development practices: a grounded theory study

This study presents a grounded theory analysis of a case study in the banking industry with a view to showing the enabling role of “Web services” technology in information system development practices. The grounded theory analysis of the Cashier Management System development project at the Central Europe Bank (a pseudonym) shows that Web services technology is a key technological enabler for more agile forms of IS development, characterized by incremental analysis, requirements revision, requirements emerging in use and incremental implementation. In particular, an initial in-depth analysis phase, conducted in a traditional way, is then followed, during system development, by several iterative phases of requirements revision/addition, in fulfilment of emerging or previously unplanned user needs discovered along the way. Such system development practices, enabled by the Web services technology and influenced by a variety of contextual factors, cover a middle ground between methodical and amethodical development processes.

E-Government Implementation Evaluation: Opening the Black Box

This paper perceives e-government evaluation as a research field that can produce the cognitive input to help us understand the causal nexus that should attribute the effects of an e-government programme to its implementation and transform this learning into an effective intervention tool. Drawing on contributions from Organization Theory and Policy Studies, we propose an interpretive key that assigns a dual role to e-government evaluation: valuable cognitive resource and tool of accountability for the policymakers. The reflections offered here are based on an exploratory case study of a City of Milan project and aim to provide further insights for e-government research and help better inform managerial praxis.