Sofiane Sahraoui

E‐inclusion as a further stage of e‐government?

Purpose – An IT rationalist discourse predominates in the e‐government literature. Furthermore, and whenever an alternative and holistic discourse is developed, e‐government evaluation remains mechanistic. E‐inclusion is rightfully advocated as a socially inclusive strategy for e‐government planning and development but it is erroneously considered as a further stage of e‐government development, following the fourth and transactional stage. The paper aims to reconfigure e‐government and e‐inclusion as two parallel processes of government intervention to support a socially inclusive development strategy through a national IT strategy.Design/methodology/approach – This paper reviews the general discourse surrounding e‐government development and implementation, highlighting its mechanistic underpinnings and contrasting it with an inclusive approach to e‐government. The mechanistic discourse of e‐government is analyzed through key constructs that underlie the e‐government concept. Vision and objectives, e‐gove...

ICT governance in higher education: Case study of the rise and fall of open source in a Gulf university

Open source software is a natural fit in higher education as both are based on an ‘open science’ model of knowledge development, and collaborative learning. It also helps bridge the gap between knowledge production and its use whenever academics become involved with open source development contrary to the proprietary model where software is produced within the confines of commercial vendors R&D labs. However in higher education, open source has not broken through the bottom of the software stack where it is confined to fulfilling mostly system computing requirements. At the application and visible level, open source adoption is hampered by a number of factors chief amongst these is the lack of reliable ICT governance structures. The problem is exacerbated in developing country contexts where governance in general is subjected to the power-play between several actors of the higher education scene. The governance conundrum faced by open source adoption in developing countries is illustrated through a detailed case study of an open source project failure at GNU, an American-style university in the Gulf region. The rise and fall of GNU open source project is discussed within a general framework of ICT and open source governance in developing countries higher education sector. Lessons are drawn from the case to recommend a FOSS strategy for development.

Learning through Planning: Conceptual Definition and Empirical Validation of a Planning Cultural Construct

The information systems literature provides a wide range of models for undertaking IT planning but lacks research into the antecedents of IT planning effectiveness. Most studies have indeed focused on the mechanics of IT planning rather than on its antecedents (Brancheau et al., 1996; Rodgers, 1997; Sahraoui, 2002) and emphasis was put on the strategies, structures, and planning methodologies used to achieve effective planning rather than on the people involved in IT planning (Henderson & ABSTRACT

An Agile Perspective on Open Source Software Engineering

Open source software OSS development has been a trend parallel to that of agile software development, which is the highly iterative development model following conventional software engineering principles. Striking similarities exist between the two development processes as they seem to follow the same generic phases of software development. Both modes of development have less emphasis on planning and design and a more prominent role for implementation during the software engineering process. This article expounds on this connection by adopting an agile perspective on OSS development to emphasize the similarities and dissimilarities between the two models. An attempt is first made to show how OSS development fits into the generic agile development framework. Then, the article demonstrates how the development process of Mozilla and Apache as two of the most famous OSS projects can be recast within this framework. The similarity discussed and illustrated between agile and OSS development modes is rather limited to the mechanics of the development processes and do not include the philosophies and motivations behind development.

A research participatory approach to managing knowledge workers

Management of end-user computing has gradually evolved into the management of knowledge workers following the advent of the knowledge-intensive environment in organizations. This new environment, characterized by a dissemination of relational knowledge among the knowledge worker community, warrants a new approach to managing knowledge workers as an alternative to the traditional functional approach. The limitations of a functional approach are highlighted from a double perspective, the first is the subdivision of the organization into thinkers and doers, and the second is its inadaptability in non-western contexts. A participatory research approach is introduced as a suitable alternative befitting the knowledge-intensive environment. Its implications for managing knowledge workers are also provided.