Architectures for Tinkering?: Contextual Strategies towards Interoperability in E-government

Abstract

Research has revealed the entanglement of e-government strategy and information infrastructure and that the control of infrastructures often remains an illusion as actual development and implementation is challenged by a constant drift. However, guidelines for public sector CIOs how to deal with these challenges remain scarce: Are governments well advised using architectures and other conceptualizations as tools in a top-down implementation of an infrastructure based on a preset interoperability strategy? Or should governments rather develop contextual strategies that build on the understanding of the actual drift of infrastructures and employ selected architectures only as facilitators for stakeholder communication during the next phase of interoperability achievement? In view of nowadays available theoretical reflections, the case of Egypt is analyzed to examine the role of service-oriented architecture in the control and drift of the G2G infrastructure.Findings reveal that what at first seemed to be an immature vendor-driven "technology-first" approach with a clear absence of IT governance strategy, in retrospect can be considered as the appropriate choice of architecture because it has successfully impacted agendas of most local stakeholder to move into the direction of e-government interoperability. Attempting to generalize, it is suggested that strategies towards e-government interoperability should select architectures based on reflection of the specific implementation context: to embrace existing infrastructure components, to be comprehensible and acceptable by the stakeholders involved, to be suitable for designing and standardizing the next generation of component interfaces, and to provide a timelimited frame for "tinkering," i.e. allowing stakeholders to find their own way of embracing and implementing the concepts in focus.

Contextual Components of an Enterprise Architecture Framework for Pan-European eGovernment Services

“…Many authors point to challenges which relate to the construction of PEGS. There is a lack of guidelines that describe how to create, organize, use and comply with cross-border building blocks [22]- [24]. Interoperability among governmental institutions requires publication of commitments (methods, specifications, standards) that describe the ways of interoperation beyond technical connectivity.…”

“…Klischewski has shown how governance of interoperability is established through a defined interoperability strategy. The author suggests to deliberate upon strategic design directions and to base interoperability on clear architecture design decisions that enable actors to follow the same architecture vision [24]. Architecture design decisions are made on the basis of strategic considerations and the Strategy Management Model illustrates how to capture such rationales (foci & purposes) for architecture descriptions (cf.…”

“…Several authors have reasoned about design strategies in interoperability projects (e.g. [24], [30], [48]). However, there is no ultimate proposition of an architecture design strategy for PEGS.…”

“…However, any EA adoption depends on stakeholder acceptance and appropriate architectural governance [2], [26], [28], [30]. EA needs to respond to social interdependencies [12] and has to be adjusted to the strategic, social and technological context in which the architecture is embedded [24].…”

“…Additionally, there are missing techniques that describe how to specify, implement and govern the information exchange between ICT systems and how to manage IT-supported relationships. [2], [3], [24], [26].…”