Abstract
Information systems (IS) are a key enabler to improve effectiveness and efficiency in the public sector. The realization of large IS projects, however, still remains a challenge in public administrations. One reason is that the complex task of IT governance in federal structures requires contributions from a large number of stakeholders. To address this challenge, we conducted Action Design Research in cooperation with different institutions of the German labor market and developed a requirements engineering process with a corresponding IT governance in the public sector that takes complex federal structures into account. The process was successfully implemented at the German Federal Employment Agency and proved valuable to deal with 146 municipal requirements regarding an IS in the context of unemployment benefits. Moreover, we derived four general success factors with a special attention on the interleaving of requirements engineering process and IT governance.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
The structured literature search encompasses the databases ACM Digital Library, AISeL, EBSCO Host, IEEE Xplore, Palgrave, Science Direct, Wiley, and INFORMS.
References
Ali S, Green P (2006) Effective information technology governance mechanisms in public sectors: an australian case. In: Proceedings of the 10th Pacific Asia conference on informational system, Kuala Lumpur
Berkovich M, Krcmar H, Leimeister JM (2011) Requirements engineering for product service systems—a state of the art analysis. Bus Inf Syst Eng 3(6):369–380
Bitkom (2013) Öffentliche Hand gibt über 20 Milliarden Euro für ITK aus. http://www.bitkom.org/de/themen/37244_78084.aspx. Accessed 28 October 2014
Bloch M, Blumberg S, Laartz J (2012) Delivering large-scale IT projects on time, on budget, and on value. McKinsey & Company, New York
Brown AE (2005) Framing the frameworks: a review of IT governance research. Commun AIS 15:696–712
Brown CV (1997) Examining the emergence of hybrid IS governance solutions: evidence from a single case site. Inf Syst Res 8(1):69–94
Campbell J, McDonald C, Sethibe T (2010) Public and private sector IT governance: identifying contextual differences. Aust J Inf Syst 16(2):5–18
Cleland-Huang J (2005) Software Requirements. In: Thayer RH, Christensen MJ (eds) Software engineering—the development process, vol 1. Wiley, Chicester, pp 113–123
Cohn M (2004) User stories applied: for agile software development. Addison-Wesley, Harlow
Coughlan J, Macredie RD (2002) Effective communication in requirements elicitation: a comparison of methodologies. Requ Eng 7(2):47–60
Curtis B, Krasner H, Iscoe N (1988) A field study of the software design process for large systems. Commun ACM 31(11):1268–1286
Davis AM (1993) Software requirements: objects, functions, and states. Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River
De Haes S, Van Grembergen W (2008) An exploratory study into the design of an IT governance minimum baseline through Delphi research. Communications of the AIS 22(24):443–458
Denford JS, Dawson GS, Desouza KC (2015) An argument for centralization of IT governance in the public sector. In: Proceedings of the 48th Hawaii international conference on system sciences, Kauai
Dufner D, Holley LM, Reed BJ (2003) Strategic information systems planning and U.S. County Government. Commun AIS 11(13):219–244
European Commission (2013) ICT PSP running projects. http://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/en/ict-psp-running-projects. Accessed 28 Oct 2014
Gartner (2013) Gartner survey shows 75 percent of government CIO budgets flat or increasing in 2013. http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2572815. Accessed 28 Oct 2014
Goeken M, Patas DKJ (2010) Evidence-based structuring and evaluation of empirical research in requirements engineering. Bus Inf Syst Eng 2(3):175–185
Gregor S, Jones D (2007) The anatomy of a design theory. J AIS 8(5):312–335
Van Grembergen W (2007) Introduction to the Minitrack: IT governance and its mechanisms. In: Proceedings of the 40th Hawaii international conference on system sciences, Waikoloa
Hevner AR, March ST, Park J, Ram S (2004) Design science in information systems research. MIS Q 28(1):75–105
Hull E, Jackson K, Dick J (2004) Requirements engineering. Springer, London
Iivari J (2003) The IS core—VII: towards information systems as a science of meta-artifacts. Commun AIS 12(37):568–581
IT Governance Institute (2003) Board briefing on IT governance. http://www.isaca.org/restricted/Documents/26904_Board_Briefing_final.pdf. Accessed 28 Oct 2014
Jansen A, Tranvik T (2011) The state of IT governance: patterns of variation at the central government level in Norway. Proc EGOV LNCS 6846:159–172
Jarke M, Lyytinen K (2010) High impact requirements engineering. Bus Inf Syst Eng 2(3):123–124
Jørgensen M, Moløkken-Østvold K (2006) How large are software cost overruns? A review of the 1994 CHAOS Report. Inf Softw Techn 48(4):297–301
Jurisch MC, Ikas C, Palka W, Wolf P, Krcmar H (2012) A review of success factors and challenges of public sector BPR implementations. In: Proceedings of the 45th Hawaii international conference on system science, Maui
Juristo N, Moreno AM, Silva A (2002) Is the European industry moving toward solving requirements engineering problems? IEEE Softw 19(6):70–77
Karten N (1994) Managing expectations. Dorset House Publishing, New York
Kaur J, Bahri AHS (2014) Implementation of information technology governance in the malaysian public sector practice. In: Proceedings of the 18th Pacific Asia conference on information systems, Chengdu
Köbler F, Fähling J, Krcmar H, Leimeister JM (2010) IT governance and types of IT decision makers in German Hospitals—an Empirical Study Among IT decision makers. Bus Inf Syst Eng 2(6):359–370
Kovitz BL (1999) Practical software requirements: a manual of content and style. Manning, Greenwich
Krishnan S, Teo TSH (2012) Does governance matter? Investigating the impact of governance on E-government maturity. In: Proceedings of the 33rd international conference on information systems, Orlando
Van Lamsweerde A (2009) Requirements engineering: from system goals to UML models to software specifications. Wiley, New York
Loucopoulos P, Karakostas V (1995) System requirements engineering. McGraw-Hill, New York
Macaulay LA (1996) Requirements engineering. Springer, Heidelberg
March ST, Smith G (1995) Design and natural science research on information technologies. Dec Support Syst 15(4):251–266
Martin S, Aurum A, Jeffery R, Paech B (2002) Requirements engineering process models in practice. In: Proceedings of the 7th Austrian workshop in requirements engineerings, Melbourne
Marzullo FP, Moreira de Souza J (2009) New directions for IT Governance in the Brazilian government. Int J Electron Govern Res 5(4):57–69
Nfuka EN, Rusu L, Johannesson P, Mutagahywa B (2009) The state of IT governance in organizations from the public sector in a developing country. In: Proceedings of the 42th Hawaii international conference on systems sciences, Big Island
Nfuka EN, Rusu L (2010) Critical success factors for effective IT governance in the public sector organizations in a developing country: the case of Tanzania. In: Proceedings of the 18th European conference on information systems, Pretoria
Nuseibeh B, Easterbrook S (2000) Requirements engineering—a roadmap. Proceedings of the conference on the future of software engineerings, New York
Orlikowski WJ, Iacono CS (2001) Research commentary: desperately seeking the “IT” in IT research—a call to theorizing the IT artifact. Inf Syst Res 12(2):121–134
Pang MS (2014) IT governance and business value in the public sector organizations—the role of elected representatives in IT governance and its impact on IT value in U.S. State Governments. Decis Support Syst 59:274–285
Piccinini E, Gregory R (2013) The nature of complexity in IS projects and programmes. In: Proceedings of the 21st European conference on information systems, Utrecht
Pohl K (1993) The three dimensions of requirements engineering. In: Proceedings of the 5th international conference on advance information systems engineering, Paris
Rahman AA, Haron A, Sahibuddin S, Harun M (2014) An empirical study of the software project requirements engineering practice in Malaysia public sector—a perspective from the Stakeholders’ Challenges. Int J Comp Theory Eng 6(1):52–56
Renzel D, Behrendt M, Klamma R, Jarke M (2013) Requirements Bazaar: social requirements engineering for community-driven innovation. In: Proceedings of the 21st IEEE international requirements engineering conference, Rio de Janeiro
Robertson S, Robertson J (2006) Mastering the requirements process. Addison-Wesley, Harlow
Saiediana H, Dale R (2000) Requirements engineering: making the connection between the software developer and customer. Inf Softw Technol 42:419–428
Schwertsik A, Wolf P, Krcmar H (2009) IT-controlling in federal organizations. In: Proceedings of the 17th European conference on information system, Verona
Sein MK, Henfridsson O, Purao S, Rossi M, Lindgren R (2011) Action design research. MIS Q 35(1):37–56
Sethibe T, Campbell J, McDonald C (2007) IT governance in public and private sector organisations: examining the differences and defining future research directions. In: Proceedings of the 18th Australasian conference on information systems, Toowoomba
Sommerville I (2004) Software engineering. Pearson, Boston
Van Velsen L, van der Geest T, ter Hedde M, Derks W (2009) Requirements engineering for e-government services: a citizen-centric approach and case study. Gov Inf Quart 26(3):477–486
Verner J, Cox K, Blerstein S, Cerpa N (2004) Requirements engineering and software project success: an industrial survey in Australia and the U.S. In: Proceedings of the 9th Australian workshop on requirements engineering, Adelaide
Weill P (2004) Don’t just lead, govern: how top performing firms govern IT. MIS Quart Exec 3(1):1–17
Weill P, Ross JW (2005) A matrixed approach to designing IT governance. Sloan Manag Rev 48(2):26–34
Winkler TJ (2013) IT governance mechanisms and administration/IT alignment in the public sector: a conceptual model and case validation. In: Proceedings of the 11th international conference on Wirtschaftsinformatik, Leipzig
Xia W, Lee G (2005) Complexity of information systems development projects: conceptualization and measurement development. J Manag Inf Syst 22(1):45–83
Zakaria NH, Haron A, Sahibuddin S, Harun M (2011) Requirement engineering critical issues in public sector software project success factor. Int J Inf Electr Eng 1(3):200–209
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Klier, J., Klier, M. & Muschter, S. How to manage IS requirements in complex public sector structures: toward an action design research approach. Requirements Eng 22, 419–432 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00766-016-0245-7
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00766-016-0245-7