Challenges in information systems procurement in the Norwegian public sector

Public procurement of information systems (IS) and IS services provides several challenges to the stakeholders involved in the procurement processes. This paper reports initial results from a Delphi study, which involved 46 experienced procurement managers, chief information officers, and vendor representatives in the Norwegian public sector. The participants identified altogether 98 challenges related to IS procurement, divided further into 13 categories: requirements specification, change management, cooperation among stakeholders, competence, competition, contracting, inter-municipal cooperation, governmental management, procurement process, rules and regulations, technology and infrastructure, vendors, and IT governance. The results contribute by supporting a few previous findings from conceptual and case-based studies, and by suggesting additional issues which deserve both further research and managerial and governmental attention. As such, the results provide altogether a rich overview of the IS procurement challenges in the Norwegian public context

Legitimation of E-Government Initiatives: A Study of India’s Identity Project

Part 5: IT in the Public SectorInternational audienceLegitimation is an important aspect of e-government initiatives due to the complex and diverse issues related to policy and technology implementation which create huge demands for resources. Legitimation is one of the core concepts of Institutional theory. Though institutional theory is gaining importance in IS and e-government research, there are very few studies on the strategies and process of legitimation in e-government implementations. In this paper we use institutional theory and examine the institutionalization of India’s Unique Identification (UID) project. Given the novelty and uniqueness of the UID initiative, we find that the predominant strategy used is that of conformance and proactive manipulation of the environment. The main contribution of the paper is in identifying that different strategies are used for supply side and demand side stakeholders of e-government projects