Prescriptions for Public-Sector Information Management

Abstract

This article reviews, analyzes, and assesses prescriptions for public-sector management of information technology (IT). It draws on four sources of such prescriptions: (a) the best-practices literature, based primarily on expert opinion and focused on managerial processes; (b) the empirical IT research literature, based primarily on quantitative analyses of the IT function; (c) benchmarks (the attempt to develop objective measures of the success of IT in public-sector organizations); and (d) the problem/disaster literature, based primarily on analyses of problems and disasters that have occurred in public-sector IT systems. The best-practices literature offers guidance, but the prescriptions are too general, and the methods for identifying best practices need expansion. The empirical literature is valuable and can provide prescriptions for specific technological questions, but the body of research is too sparse and offers contradictory prescriptions. Benchmarking has potential, but the approach is very undeveloped and subject to corruption. The problem/disaster literature offers cautionary examples, but its empirical base is unrepresentative of most failures.

Strategic Information Systems Planning and U.S. County Government

“…The private sector economic context rivets the attention of top business organization levels on SISP. The literature consistently maintains that SISP is critical to achieving a strategic competitive advantage or profitability for an enterprise [Boar, 2001;Rocheleau, 2000;Bajjaly, 1999;Doherty, Marples, and Suhaimi, 1999;Estabrooks, 1995;Segars, Grover, and Teng, 1998;Bryson and Alston, 1996;Bryson 1995;Neiderman et al, 1991;Sethi, 1998, 1996]. Strategic competitive advantage requires maintaining market share, insuring customer satisfaction, managing continuous improvement of process and product quality, and maintaining legal compliance and ethical stature.…”

“…Today, IT planning must be weighed as a part of the process of establishing strategic objectives by converting simple IT planning to SISP and all that the model implies. [Rocheleau, 2000;Balutis and Kiviat, 1997]. Consideration of the use of IT to achieve strategic goals and objectives is a fundamental part of the process of selecting the strategic objectives that contribute the most value to an organization.…”

“…In county government as in state government, strategic objectives are selected through a process of political discourse and compromise among a wide variety of external and internal interest groups typically with diverse needs and goals [Dufner, Holley, and Reed, 2002;Guy, 2000;Rocheleau, 2000;Allison, 1986]. IT issues often are not considered in the process of establishing county objectives.…”

Top management support: Mantra or necessity?

“…Few explicitly recognise the fundamental difference between project success (the realisation of business benefits) and project management success (on-time on-budget to specification) (Baccarini 1999;de Wit 1985). The result is that the number of success stories (however defined) is reported to be almost twice the number of failures (Falconer et al 1999;Rocheleau 2000). A project success perspective suggests the opposite situation is more likely to be true (Clegg et al 1997;Standish 1999;Standish 2003;Willcocks et al 1994;Young 2006b) Project management success has been shown not to strongly relate to project success (Markus et al 1994;Markus et al 2000).…”

Guiding the Public Sector: Assessing the Use of Recommended Practices in the Budgeting Process

“…Early discussions of recommended guidelines addressed topics such as the use of consultants by public managers (Bowen & Collett, 1978) and the merits of policy evaluation (Bozeman & Massey, 1982) while, more recently, topics have ranged from information (Rocheleau, 2000) and human resources management (Coggburn & Hayes, 2004) to benchmarking municipal service quality (Folz, 2004) and emergency management (Henstra, 2010). Local public finance topics such as procurement (Duncombe & Searcy, 2007), the use of e-government during the budget process (Justice et al, 2006), and the prevention of local fiscal crises (Coe, 2008) have been examined as well.…”