Overcoming Status Quo Bias: Nudging in a Government-Led Digital Transformation Initiative

While Singaporean citizens are keen on using e-payments in retail shops, they still prefer cash payments in hawker centers and coffee shops, i.e., traditional open-air complexes selling inexpensive cooked food. A government-led initiative seeks to tackle the situation, known as status quo bias. The key actors involved in this initiative are public agencies, the central bank, and a private Singaporean electronic payment service provider. Working with these partners, we investigate the process designed to nudge citizens to use e-payments for micropayments in hawker centers and coffee shops. We employ a design ethnography methodology and adapt an existing nudging framework. Early findings reveal contingency factors that shape the nudging approach. Through this study, we expect to contribute to the theoretical development of nudging theory to overcome status quo bias in government-led digital transformation initiatives

Vested Interests Obstructing Information Systems Use: Land Administration in a Least Developed Country

While there are identified factors that inhibit information communication technology (ICT) adoption in the public sector of LDCs such as lack of knowledge, attitude and mindset, leadership, socio-economic condition, infrastructure and so on, another implicit and relatively unexplored factor, the„vested interest‟ of some stakeholder groups,often becomes the overriding factor for ICT and information system adoption and use in organizations. This problem was evident in a case study of land administration organization in Bangladesh. This paper attempts to elucidate the nature and interactions of the vested interest factor through an in-depth revelatory case study, and explains this phenomenon in relation to prior literature with possible implications for future IS research. While the „vested interest‟ issue has not been prominent in western society or in the relevant literature, it has been found to be crucial in some developing country environments. The findings warrant further investigations and explanations in order to suggest appropriate strategies to overcome this critical obstruction to information system use in some public sector organizations in least developed countries

Procurement of Information Technology and Canadian Municipalities

This paper examines the trends for the attainment of information technology (IT) and the barriers to the successful procurement of IT. A literature review, survey of IT managers in Ontario municipalities, and three interviews with municipal IT professionals were conducted. The findings reveal that Ontario municipalities are satisfied with their IT projects for using detailed plans, engaging in formal strategic planning, introducing mechanism controls to avoid risks, and using letters of agreement with formally established terms and conditions for projects, all of which are steps towards a successful procurement process. Nevertheless, there are still some barriers for small local governments in the successful procurement of IT

A Framework and an Agenda for Social Media Research in IS

As the body of Information Systems (IS) research on social media grows, it faces increasing challenges of staying relevant to real world contexts. We analyze and contrast research on social media in the e-government field and in IS research, by reviewing and categorizing 63 studies published in key journal outlets, in order to identify and complement research foci and gaps. We find that, in comparison with egovernment social media research, IS studies tend to adopt an abstract view of the individual user, focus on a monetary view of value added by social media, and overlook the role of contextual factors. We thus propose an extended framework for mapping social media research, by including a focus on the role of context and environment, and identify a research agenda for future studies on social media-related phenomena relevant to real world contexts

Does public or private sector matter? An agenda for IS research in E-government

PACIS 2009 - 13th Pacific Asia Conference on Information Systems: IT Services in a Global Environmen

Designing social media analytics tools to support non-market institutions: Four case studies using Twitter data

This research investigates the design of social media tools for non-market institutions, such as local government or community groups. At the core of this practice-based research is a software tool called LocalNets. LocalNets was developed to collect, analyse and visualise data from Twitter, thereby revealing information about community structure and community assets. It is anticipated that this information could help non- market institutions and the communities with which they work. Twitter users send messages to one another using the ‘@mention’ function. This activity is made visible publicly and has the potential to indicate a Twitter user’s participation in a ‘community structure’; that is, it can reveal an interpersonal network of social connections. Twitter activity also provides data about community assets (such as parks, shops and cinemas) when tweets mention these assets’ names. The context for this research is the Creative Exchange Hub (CX), one of four Knowledge Exchange Hubs for the Creative Economy funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). Under the theme of ‘Digital Public Space’, the CX Hub facilitated creative research collaborations between PhD researchers, academics and non-academic institutions. Building on the CX model, this PhD research forged partnerships between local councils, non-public sector institutions that work with communities, software developers and academics with relevant subject expertise. Development of the LocalNets tool was undertaken as an integral part of the research. As the software was developed, it was deployed in relevant contexts through partnerships with a range of non-market institutions, predominantly located in the UK, to explore its use in those contexts. Four projects are presented as design case studies: 1) a prototyping phase, 2) a project with the Royal Society of Arts in the London Borough of Hounslow, 3) a multi-partner project in Peterborough, and 4) a project with Newspeak House, a technology and politics co-working space located in London. The case studies were undertaken using an Action Design Research method, as articulated by Sein et al. Findings from these case studies are grouped into two categories. The first are ‘Implementation findings’ which relate specifically to the use of data from Twitter. Second there are six ‘situated design principles’ which were developed across the case studies, and which are proposed as having potential application beyond Twitter data. The ‘Implementation findings’ include that Twitter can be effective for locating participants for focus groups on community topics, and that the opinions expressed directly in tweets are rarely sufficient for the local government of community groups to respond to. These findings could benefit designers working with Twitter data. The six situated design principles were developed through the case studies: two apply Burt’s brokerage social capital theory, describing how network structure relates to social capital; two apply Donath’s signalling theory – which suggests how social media behaviours can indicate perceptions of community assets; and two situated design principles apply Borgatti and Halgin’s network flow model – a theory which draws together brokerage social capital and signalling theory. The principles are applicable to social media analytics tools and are relevant to the goals of non-market institutions. They are situated in the context of the case studies; however, they are potentially applicable to social media platforms other than Twitter. Linders identifies a paucity of research into social media tools for non-market institutions. The findings of this research, developed by deploying and testing the LocalNets social media analytics tool with non-market institutions, aim to address that research gap and to inform practitioner designers working in this area