Companies are required by law to report all kinds of information to various public agencies. Since most public agencies are autonomous and define their information demands independent of each other, companies have to report information to various agencies in different ways. Accordingly, governments are initiating programs that aim to transform business-to government information exchange to reduce the administrative burden for companies and improve the accountability at the same time. Yet little research is available on the type of transformations needed and the role of the infrastructure. Drawing on a case study, this paper investigates the interplay between technical infrastructure and transformation. In this case study an information brokerage infrastructure based on the Extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) was developed providing a one stop shop for companies and public agencies. The case study shows that the infrastructure should be flexible enough to accommodate changes over time but stable enough to attract a large user-base. The increase in efficiency and effectiveness of information exchange processes requires extensive transformation from both public and private parties.
Abstract. The ongoing financial crisis is forcing governments to consider leaner (less resource intensive) forms of public service delivery. This is a difficult process, especially since recent private sector scandals demand that governments become more vigilant. Public-private collaboration (PPC) needs to address this 'lean yet vigilant' challenge. However, PPCs have proven to take a long time to establish and bring to fruition. Hurdles that delay the achievement of goals include the need to agree on standards in an environment with heterogeneous interests, changing laws and unclear revenue models. While literature on managing PPC hints towards the need for both compulsory measures (plan-driven, restrictive) and adaptive measures (learning-driven, leeway), case studies illustrating how these measures can be integrated in practice are scarce. Drawing on the Standard Business Reporting case in the Netherlands, this paper shows that both compulsory and adaptive measures are necessary to advance in multi-actor standardization processes. Our findings indicate that PPC managers need to impose with leeway by taking an engineering approach to architecture development yet providing leeway in the details.
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