skip to main content
10.1145/2691195.2691257acmotherconferencesArticle/Chapter ViewAbstractPublication PagesicegovConference Proceedingsconference-collections
research-article

From e-government strategy to services: challenges of inter-organizational IT governance in Egypt

Published: 27 October 2014 Publication History

Abstract

IT governance has been identified as a key enabler also for implementing e-government solutions. However, little is known about what 'best practice' of IT governance could mean when applied to an inter-organizational and highly distributed information infrastructure as typical for the public sector. In this paper the case of Egypt is analyzed based on previous investigations and publications, governmental documents, and data collected from a recent project involvement. The main IT governance challenges have been found as: unclear definition of network membership, extensive voluntarism, vague goal orientation, unprotected data resources, absence of financial governance, and the project status of network. Accordingly, lessons to be learned include that (1) creators of a network hub must clarify goal direction, membership responsibilities, performance assessment for all government agencies involved, (2) participating government agencies need to understand, commit to, practice sharing of accountability beyond hierarchy or ownership, (3) countries with little collaboration culture and network experience are better off to rely on accepted dominating actors for managing inter-organizational collaboration hubs in e-government. Based on essential attributes of the required governance process milestones are suggested for improving inter-organizational IT governance while addressing the detected challenges in Egypt and beyond. In conclusion, more research is needed to discuss any fit of inter-organizational IT governance arrangements to a given e-government context. Building on IT governance research related to enterprises, future e-government research can stay aligned and continue to share the lessons learned.

References

[1]
Scholl, H. J., Kubicek, H., and Cimander, R. 2011. Interoperability, Enterprise Architectures, and IT Governance in Government. In M. Janssen, H. J. Scholl, M. A. Wimmer & Y.-h. Tan (Eds.), Electronic Government. LNCS Vol. 6846, Springer: Berlin Heidelberg, 345--354.
[2]
Ciborra, C., and Hanseth, O. 1998. From tool to Gestell. Agendas for managing the information infrastructure. Information Technology & People, 11(4), 305--327.
[3]
Hanseth, O., and Lyytinen, K. 2004. Theorizing about the Design of Information Infrastructures: Design Kernel Theories and Principles. Case Western Reserve University, USA. Sprouts: Working Papers on Information Systems, 4(12). http://sprouts.aisnet.org/4-12.
[4]
Grant, G., and Tan, F. 2013. Governing IT in inter-organizational relationships: Issues and future research. European Journal of Information Systems, Vol. 22, 493--497
[5]
Markus, M. L., and Bui, Q. 2012. Going concerns: the governance of inter-organizational coordination hubs. Journal of Management Information Systems, 28(4), 163--197
[6]
Janssen, M. 2012. Sociopolitical Aspects of Interoperability and Enterprise Architecture in E-Government. Social Science Computer Review, 30(1), 24--36
[7]
Ojo, A., Janowski, T., and Estevez, E. 2012. Improving Government Enterprise Architecture Practice--Maturity Factor Analysis. Proceedings of 45th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-45), IEEE
[8]
Gøtze, J., Christiansen, P. E., Mortensen, R. K., and Paszkowski, S. 2009. Cross-National Interoperability and Enterprise Architecture. Informatica, 20(3), 369--396
[9]
Gregor, S., Hart, D., & Martin, N. 2007. Enterprise architectures: enablers of business strategy and IS/IT alignment in government. Information Technology & People, 20(2), 96--120
[10]
Aagesen, G., Veenstra, A. F. v., Janssen, M., and Krogstie, J. 2011. The Entanglement of Enterprise Architecture and IT-Governance: The Cases of Norway and the Netherlands. Proceedings of 44th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-44), IEEE
[11]
Hjort-Madsen, K., and Pries-Heje, J. 2009. Enterprise Architecture in Government: Fad or Future? Proceedings of 42nd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-42), IEEE
[12]
Jansen, A., and Tranvik, T. 2011. The State of IT Governance: Patterns of Variation at the Central Government Level in Norway. In M. Janssen, H. J. Scholl, M. A. Wimmer & Y.-h. Tan (Eds.), Electronic Government, LNCS Vol. 6846, Springer: Berlin, Heidelberg, 159--172
[13]
Scholl, H. J., and Klischewski, R. 2007. E-Government Integration and Interoperability: Framing the Research Agenda. Intl Journal of Public Administration, 30, 889--920
[14]
Klischewski, R. 2011. Architectures for Tinkering? Contextual Strategies towards Interoperability in E-government. Journal of Theoretical and Applied Electronic Commerce Research, 6(1), 26--42
[15]
Darwish, A. M. 2008. Egypt: from e-government to e-governance -- the road to fast pace development. Proceedings of 2nd International Conference on Theory and Practice of Electronic Governance (ICEGOV), ACM Press, 1--3
[16]
Klischewski, R., Abubakr, R. 2010. Can e-Government Adopters Benefit from a Technology-First Approach? The Case of Egypt Embarking on Service-Oriented Architecture. Proceedings of the 43rd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-43), IEEE
[17]
Klischewski, R., Askar, E. 2012. Linking service development methods to interoperability governance: The case of Egypt. Government Information Quarterly, 29(1), S22--S31
[18]
Mohamed, M. A., Galal-Edeen, G. H., and Hassan, H. A. 2013. Towards Adoption of Government Enterprise Architecture: The Cases of Egypt and Syria. Proceedings of 13th European Conference on eGovernment (ECEG 2013), Como, Italy
[19]
Ministry of Communication and Information Technology. 2004. The Egyptian and Information Society for Government Service and Delivery. Cairo, Egypt; http://www.egypt.gov.eg/english/documents/
[20]
Ministry of State for Administrative Development. 2006. Egyptian Government Enterprise Architecture Framework. Cairo, Egypt; http://www.egypt.gov.eg/english/documents/
[21]
Ministry of State for Administrative Development. 2010. Administrative Reform 2010--2012 Work Plan. Cairo, Egypt; http://workspace.unpan.org/sites/internet/Documents/UNPAN048749.pdf

Cited By

View all
  • (2019)Inter-Organizational IT Governance ResearchInternational Journal of IT/Business Alignment and Governance10.4018/IJITBAG.201901010310:1(40-54)Online publication date: Jan-2019
  • (2017)IT Governance in E-Government Implementations in the Caribbean: Key Characteristics and MechanismsInformation Technology Governance in Public Organizations10.1007/978-3-319-58978-7_9(201-227)Online publication date: 20-Jul-2017

Recommendations

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Other conferences
ICEGOV '14: Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Theory and Practice of Electronic Governance
October 2014
563 pages
ISBN:9781605586113
DOI:10.1145/2691195
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

Sponsors

  • Macao Foundation, Macao SAR Govt: Macao Foundation, Macao SAR Government
  • Municipio de Guimarães: Municipio de Guimarães

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 27 October 2014

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Check for updates

Author Tags

  1. Egypt
  2. e-government strategy
  3. enterprise architecture
  4. inter-organizational IT governance
  5. inter-organizational coordination hubs

Qualifiers

  • Research-article

Conference

ICEGOV2014
Sponsor:
  • Macao Foundation, Macao SAR Govt
  • Municipio de Guimarães

Acceptance Rates

ICEGOV '14 Paper Acceptance Rate 30 of 73 submissions, 41%;
Overall Acceptance Rate 350 of 865 submissions, 40%

Contributors

Other Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

  • Downloads (Last 12 months)13
  • Downloads (Last 6 weeks)1
Reflects downloads up to 22 Jan 2025

Other Metrics

Citations

Cited By

View all
  • (2019)Inter-Organizational IT Governance ResearchInternational Journal of IT/Business Alignment and Governance10.4018/IJITBAG.201901010310:1(40-54)Online publication date: Jan-2019
  • (2017)IT Governance in E-Government Implementations in the Caribbean: Key Characteristics and MechanismsInformation Technology Governance in Public Organizations10.1007/978-3-319-58978-7_9(201-227)Online publication date: 20-Jul-2017

View Options

Login options

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

PDF

eReader

View online with eReader.

eReader

Media

Figures

Other

Tables

Share

Share

Share this Publication link

Share on social media