Governmental agencies from all over the world are in various stages of development to migrate their traditional systems architectures to more horizontally and vertically integrated architectures. In this paper a stages of growth model for the development of information architectures for local governmental agencies is presented. By analyzing discontinuities in the architectures coordinating back and front office applications five stages are derived. The five‑stage model consists of 1) no integration, 2) one‑to‑one messaging, 3) warehouse, 4) broker and 5) orchestrated broker architecture. Public decision‑makers can use these stages as a guidance and direction in architecture development, to reduce the complexity of the progression of e‑government initiatives, to communicate changes to the rest of the organization and to provide milestones to evaluate and control cost of architecture development.

This paper describes a business process and organizational re‑design and implementation project for an e‑government service organization. In this project the initial process execution time of a Virtual Private Network (VPN) connection request has been reduced from some 60 days to two days. This has been achieved by the use of a new business process reengineering (BPR) implementation approach that was developed by the Utrecht University. The implementation approach is based on a combination of Enterprise Information Architecture (EIA), Business Process Modeling (BPM), Knowledge Management and Management Control methodologies and techniques. The method has been applied to improve the performance of a Dutch e‑ government service department (DeGSD). DeGSD is an e‑government service department that supports and promotes electronic communication. It can be described as an electronic mail office for consumers that provides the ICT infrastructure to communicate with the government. The goal is to reduce administrative activities for both the government and consumers. Supporting technology and part of the process is outsourced. In our approach we used EIA as a starting point because it describes all relations and information exchange with all stakeholders. This is different compared to more traditional approaches which tend to have a main focus on the internal processes (when it comes to automation) whereas our approach aligns the processes and systems across different participants, such as suppliers and customers, in the supply chain. Also included in the implementation approach are management control design mechanisms to ensure that the organizations strategy is in sync with its processes and activities that are performed by the employees. Management control is crucial in enabling the continuous measuring and improving of the organizational performance. Although the proposed BPR implementation approach worked in the project at DeGSD, further validation is necessary. Therefore we suggest that more case studies are performed at both government and profit organizations.

Public sector ICT use is now moving towards integration of services and processes across departments, for instance in the healthcare sector. This is a challenging issue as it involves distributed decision making, often across both public and private organizations, which implies a multitude of issues. Enterprise Architectures (EA) aim at providing a common framework that includes data, resources and processes, through which all aspects of the enterprise can be directed towards a common goal in an efficient manner. It as been argued that architectures should be perceived as evolving (rather then as carefully planned roadmaps), although more research on how EA evolves is needed. This paper addresses the general question of, how does an EA evolve during implementation? A case study is used to illustrate how an EA evolves throughout the process of implementation. The case is the implementation of a national patient record system in the decentralized Swedish healthcare system. The project is part of a larger effort to implement an EA in the healthcare sector aimed at further integrating the whole sector. Data is collected by means of observations, interviews and document analysis. Using an Actor‑Network Theory perspective, this paper presents four episodes during which an EA evolves through interactions. In this way the paper contributes with a deepened understanding of how EA evolves by arguing that EA programs should be seen as something that needs to be planned with regard to that it will, and should, evolve in order to respond to needs discovered in the process. The contribution is a deepened understanding of how sub‑projects co‑evolve with a national EA project, thus mutually affecting each other. This should not be perceived as something unequivocally negative as this might also be strategic, and leads to evolution of other parts of the EA to suit each other.

Abstract: This article examines the way stakeholders in parts of the UK local government community have developed a set of tools and frameworks for supporting e‑Government‑related change. In particular, it looks at how ideas from Activity‑Based Costing ha ve been drawn upon to support business process improvements and decisions about delivery channels. The article follows the evolution of an approach known as the Cost Architecture Framework and how this is being used by public bodies to support more effi cient and effective service designs. The implications of the approach … including its links to ideas on lean management … are then discussed. The article provides an insight into how communities of actors can come together to develop common approaches a nd solutions in addressing their e‑Government needs. It also discusses the limits to such collaborations in the face of resource constraints, and the need for end‑user customisation in supporting local applications.

Enterprise architecture (EA) is an approach to improve the alignment between the organization’s business and their information technologies. It attempts to capture the status of the organizations’ business architecture, information resources, information systems, and technologies so that the gaps and weaknesses in their processes and infrastructures can be identified, and development directions planned. For this reason, EA has become a popular approach also in the public sector to increase their efficiency and ICT utilization. Yet researchers have largely ignored this context, and it seems that quite little is known about how EA is developed, implemented, or adapted in different countries and in the public sector. We thus conducted a systematic literature review to identify the major research topics and methods in studies focusing on public sector EA. We analyzed 71 identified articles from the past 15 years. Our analysis shows that the development viewpoint, case studies in developed countries, and local settings seem to form mainstream EA research in the public sector. Taken together, it seems that public sector EA is scattered, and there is no strong, single research stream. Instead the researchers conduct local case studies. This means the knowledge on EA development, implementation or adaptation, their challenges and best practices does not accumulate. There is consequently a need for more research in general, and targeted research in some specific segments.

This paper examines the challenges of enterprise architecture (EA) adoption in public sector organisations. So far, demonstrating the benefits of EA has appeared difficult in this context, and the results in transforming public sector remain modest: Both the penetration and the maturity of EA appear rather low. In the academia, however, the adoption of EA has gained less interest than the EA development and methodologies. Hence, there is a need for research on what are the challenges of EA adoption, and how to overcome them. This paper presents the results of an expert survey on the challenges of EA adoption in the Finnish public sector. The analysis of quantitative data, supported with a qualitative data, reveals three interrelated factors: Resistance towards EA, Relevant EA goals, and the EA practices in use. Managing the identified key issues classified in these three broad concepts would be the prerequisite for institutionalising EA and making it a legitimate practice. The findings extend the current knowledge of the public sector EA with practicable ideas how to increase the level of penetration and maturity.

Enterprise architecture (EA) is a widespread approach for the development of new digital solutions in a planned and controlled way for large and complex organisations. EA is also viewed as a prerequisite for the digitalisation of the public sector. However, public sector organisations struggle to implement EA programmes, and research has demonstrated that organisational and managerial issues are critical obstacles to EA implementation. This study aims to increase our understanding of EA implementation in the public sector by investigating the central challenges for EA initiatives and to trace the progress of current EA initiatives in the Norwegian public sector. An additional goal is to disclose some ways to improve the situation. We conducted three interpretive case studies in the hospital, higher education, and labour and welfare sectors. We have identified 28 challenges to the EA initiatives. We find that organisational and technical complexities, as well as a limited understanding of EA and lack of formal EA governance mechanisms, are significant obstacles. Among others, the lack of understanding of EA and its methodology will lead to problems with anchoring the EA approach in the organisation and facilitating the necessary EA arrangements to induce the promised benefits of EA, which are necessary requirements to establish the EA initiative’s legitimacy and foster the organisation’s willingness to implement change. Our study provides four lessons learned for planning and implementing EA initiatives, as follows: #1. It is advisable to take small steps. #2. The use of external consultants should be carefully considered. #3. Formal architectural governance mechanisms are important for legitimacy and enforced use. #4. Executive commitment and understanding of EA are crucial for achieving a sustainable EA initiative. Finally, we find a common evolution of the EA initiatives through the phases of optimism, resistance, decline and finally, reconsolidation of the most persistent ones.

Currently e‑Government initiatives have a highly fragmented nature and are hardly coordinated. An architectural approach aimed at reusing components as shared services can support government agencies in the implementation of their e‑Government initiatives. In this paper we describe research aimed at identifying and prioritising the importance of generic services that can be shared among public agencies. Generic shared services are identified and prioritised by technical experts and government representatives using a group support system session. This has resulted in an action plan to implement the services and use them as part of future e‑Government projects.