Centralization/decentralization cycles in computing: Market evidence

Proceedings of the 39th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS'06)

Kuk

2006

Within the public sector, the deployment of enterprise architecture is often an attempt to address the decentralization/centralization relationships to improve the links between the central and the local governments. The underlying aim is to provide a better structure to manage the diverse, independent and local IT-related projects and development activities. In this paper we propose a novel approach to analyzing and understanding the requirements and limitations for enterprise architectures in government.We use the perspective of a complex adaptive system as a metaphor to examine 11 e-government projects with each involved the development of enterprise architecture in the Netherlands (1980s -2004. Through analyzing the key interaction points between the central and the local governments, we identify architectural design principles that will increase interorganizational jointness and IT implementation success.

Section: Balancing Central and Decentral Layersmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Complex Adaptive System Perspective of Enterprise Architecture in Electronic Government

Proceedings of the 39th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS'06)

Kuk

2006

“…The tensions between centralization and decentralization of IT is one of the major recurring issues in literature [e.g. 19,20,21]. With the advent of the Internet, web services technology has become viable to centralize functions that are currently or were formerly performed at a decentralized level.…”

Section: It-governancementioning

confidence: 99%

“…There is some disagreement in the literature about the driving forces behind centralization decisions [e.g. 19,20,21]. King [19] found three separate aspects, control, physical location and function that can be either centralized or decentralized.…”

Section: It-governancementioning

confidence: 99%

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

Aagesen

Veenstra

2011 44th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences

et al. 2011

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.

“…There is some disagreement in the literature about the driving forces behind centralization decisions [6][9] [15]. Peak and Azadmanesh's [15] research suggests that computing strategies oscillate unevenly between domination of centralization and decentralization, and that commercial computing has already experienced two centralization/ decentralization cycles. They observed that centralization emphasis shifts based on changes in technology.…”

Section: Theoretical Background 31 Centralization/decentralizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Managing the development of shared service centers

Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Electronic Commerce - ICEC '05

2005

Politicians and public managers continue to debate over whether to centralize or to decentralize departments, information systems and services. Shared service centers (SSCs) are gaining importance in public administration as a means to innovate, to reduce costs and to increase service levels. The discussions about the decision whether to use SSCs seem to be predominantly focused on efficiency and effectiveness aspects, which are rational arguments.In this paper we describe and analyze the introduction of a SSC within a municipality from a stakeholder perspective and centralization/decentralization strategy. Our analysis suggests that that implementation of SSCs should pay careful attention to the management of the implementation process. In our case study we found that most of the stakeholders considered the SSC as a complete centralization strategy in the initiating stage. During the implementation stage of the SSC they became aware that it would not be a completely centralized; a mixed decentralization/ centralization strategy was taken. An active stakeholder management strategy can help to set the right expectations, creating a sense of urgency and avoid misconceptions.