A Realist Evaluation of the Sustainability of Disease Surveillance Intervention Outcomes in Sub-Saharan Africa

In recent years, the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) and to improve disease surveillance has been on the increase. This is in line with the notion that ICTs improve timeliness, availability and quality of public health data. Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is burdened with increasing health challenges and poor health infrastructure. Thus, an explosion of ICT-based health surveillance interventions to curb these challenges. However, despite the implementation of these interventions, important questions around the effectiveness and sustainability still remain. This study proposes a realist evaluation of disease surveillance intervention outcomes from a sustainability perspective to uncover what works, for whom, under what conditions and why? We also discuss how the complex adaptive systems theory and affordance theory provide a lens for investigating this phenomenon. The results of this study will contribute to the evidence based movement for Information Systems (IS) research and practice in SSA

Co-evolutionary IS-Alignment: A Complex Adaptive Systems Perspective

Many studies have investigated the effects of information technology (IT) in achieving organizational performance. However, despite substantial IT investments, organizations often fail to improve organi-zational performance using IT. This failure could be the result of a lack of Business-IT alignment. Re-cently, scholars and practitioners have adopted a complexity science approach to better address the many interwoven IT, organizational and environmental turbulence challenges. These efforts resulted in the emergence of the complexity-based concept of co-evolutionary IS/IT-alignment (COISA). COISA involves “the series of coevolutionary moves that makes IT aligned over time.” However, the notion of COISA remains conceptual, and further operationalization in preparation for more empirical evidence seems appropriate. Therefore, this study aims to provide further clarification on the conceptualization of COISA in turbulent environments. We conducted a structured literature review using a theoretical foundation of Complex Adaptive Systems theory. In this effort, we developed a COISA model composed of five continuous alignment processes characterized by co-evolutionary moves toward alignment, situated in two organizational contexts. This model provides a basis for further empirical re-search on COISA