publications: bookchapter

Book Chapters (7)

Information Sharing and Public Health: A Case-based Look at the ICT Expectations-Reality Gap

In Albert Meijer, Kees Boersma, Pieter Wagenaar (Eds.),ICTs, Citizens & Governance: After the Hype! .pp.180-197.Amsterdam: IOS Press.

Sharing information across organizational boundaries is central to efforts to improve government operations and services. However, creating the capability necessary to enable information sharing across the boundaries of organizations is among the most difficult types of information technology projects. New knowledge about information sharing is required; in particular, new understanding about how government, non-governmental and private sector organizations come together to share information is necessary. This chapter draws on the experiences of key actors in three states in the United States as they organized to create new capability to share information as part of their responses to the West Nile virus outbreaks. The cases highlight the gap between expectations and reality, providing opportunity to more fully understand the gaps between expectations (the hype) about ICTs and the reality facing government practitioners who seek to use ICTs to share information. Examining the cases in terms of four contexts of information integration and sharing provides a more specific understanding about the gaps between these expectations and the reality (after the hype). The lessons learned in the context of public health include the central role of information sharing and the implications of resource constraints on data capture and use capability in the context of an outbreak management and surveillance effort. Insight into the interdependence of system design and process support and improvement in the context of public health surveillance was also found to be critical to future planning of public health surveillance systems. This chapter serves to reemphasize to both researchers and practitioners the need to close the gap between expectations and reality; the point is made again through the cases that closing the gap depends on strategies that draw on technology, process, interorganizational, and political perspectives and resources.

Sustainable cross-boundary information sharing

In H. Chen, L. Brandt, V. Gregg, R. Traunmüller, S. Dawes, E. Hovy, A. Macintosh, & C. A. Larson (Eds.),Digital government: Advanced research and case studies, and Implementation .pp.421-438.New York: Springer.

Information is one of the most valuable resources in government. Government managers are finding however, that information needed to plan, make decisions, and act is often held outside their own organizations, maintained in disparate formats, and used for widely different purposes. Efforts to bring this data together across boundaries have provided new understanding into just how difficult cross-boundary information sharing is. Finding ways to bring together information and integrate it for use in solving pressing public problems is fast becoming a focus of attention for digital government practitioners and researchers alike. This chapter reports on one such study1 of cross-boundary information integration that revealed three important lessons for creating and sustaining cross-boundary information sharing: 1) interoperability is key, 2) a shift in agency culture is necessary, and 3) the role of policymakers is central to this type of project. Four recommendations for action derived from the case studies are presented as well. Government executives and policy-makers need to ensure the creation of enterprise-wide mechanisms and capabilities such as (1) governance structures, (2) resource allocation models, (3) scalable strategies, and (4) non-crisis capacity.

Building Collaborative Digital Government Systems: Systemic Constraints and Effective Practices

in W. McIver and A.K. Elmagarmid (Eds.),Advances in Digital Government: Technology, Human Factors, and Policy .NewYork: Kluwer.