Towards a smart State? Inter-agency collaboration, information integration, and beyond

Abstract

Information technologies (IT) can now be considered one of the key components of government administrative reform. The potential is even greater when working across organizational boundaries. Unfortunately, inter-agency collaboration appears to face an even greater number of challenges than similar IT initiatives within a single organization. The challenges include data and technological incompatibility, the lack of institutional incentives to collaborate, and the politics and power struggles around a pervasive silo structure in most governments, among many others. This paper argues that there are clear trends towards greater inter-organizational collaboration, information sharing, and integration, which could lead, in the near future, to what might be called a smart State. The paper starts discussing the promises and challenges that have already been identified for government information sharing and integration initiatives. Then it describes two trends in terms of inter-organizational collaboration and information technologies in government settings. The paper ends by providing reflections about the technical and political feasibility, as well as the social desirability, of an integrated virtual State in which the executive, legislative, and judicial branches 1 are actively collaborating and sharing information through the use of advanced information technologies, sophisticated coordination mechanisms, shared physical infrastructure, and, potentially, new organizational and institutional arrangements.

Achieving state‐of‐the‐art ICT connectivity in developing countries: The Azerbaijan model of Technology Leapfrogging

“…The first outcome is the effective coordination of the entities that are participating in ICT development (eg, government agencies and business organizations such as telecommunications companies). This is because the high‐level strategy will outline the government's collective goals, and the action plan will delegate responsibility, ensuring the disparate entities can better channel their resources and capabilities toward achieving those goals (Gil‐Garcia, ). The second outcome is that it provides an indication of the government's vision and commitment, which previous scholars have identified as a critical success factor of ICT4D (see Unwin, ).…”

Information Sharing in the Regulatory Context

“…Integration is not only complex, but multidimensional including factors related to technology but also organizational, political, economic, institutional and social components that can impact capability to integrate data [4]. The impact of these factors can vary greatly depending on the context and nature of the sharing relationships, the types of information and the degree of integration sought.…”

“…Most of this work has focused on IS among government agencies at the same level of government or between government agencies from different levels of government, i.e. national and sub-national [4,5,6,7,8]. Many of these studies and initiatives have looked at intraorganizational, inter-organizational and intergovernmental IS through the context of government information.…”

The effects of technology use on efficiency, transparency, and corruption in municipal governments

“…They highlight the important issues of facilitating interaction among citizens, governments, and businesses [14], [37]- [40] and ensuring that technological aspects foster transparency and increase user satisfaction [41].…”