Open source deployment in local government: Rapid innovation as an occasion for revitalizing organizational IT

This paper aims to present a theory of the perceived outcomes of open source software adoption for an organizational IT department.

The paper is an interpretive case study of three open source pilot projects in local government, based on interviews with IT management, IT staff, and users. Data analysis based on constructivist grounded theory is used to generate theory about the perceived organizational outcomes of open source adoption.

Open source adoption is perceived as an occasion for rapidly developing effective new business applications, even in the context of shrinking IT resources and a poor relationship between IT and the rest of the organization. IT management and staff see the potential to improve their strained relationship with users, and improve their image of themselves as product developers and explorers. Disruptive project strategies, that keep open source adoptions outside of normal resource allocation processes, are consistently associated with open source success.

While only exploratory, the case study shows that open source deployments can have a significant impact on the wider organization, up to and including the announcement of the first municipal government policy in the USA requiring that open source be considered for all future software acquisitions.

The case study offers a pathway for IT departments to achieve better perceived organizational outcomes, using fewer resources, under challenging circumstances.

The paper offers new conjectures on post‐adoption outcomes for open source researchers, and a new mechanism for IT department transformation in the information systems literature.