User participation is seen as an important enabler for successful public e-service development. However, at the same time development of public e-services is still often characterised by an internal government perspective with little consideration for external users’ perspectives. This paper challenges the overly positive attitude that is surrounding user participation in e-government research. The paper aims to illustrate and problematize various aspects that influence why, how, and in whose interest user participation is conducted in public e-service development. First, via a literature review, we identify a set of dimensions for critically exploring how, why, and in whose interest user participation is conducted in public e-service development projects. Second, we use these dimensions in order to characterise and analyse three empirical public e-service development cases in order to test the utility, usefulness, and feasibility of the identified dimensions. Our findings highlight the importance of questioning and elaborating on the motives behind user participation (the why) in public e-service development. We also identify two basic forms of how user participation is addressed in public e-service development projects: 1) veneered participation, and 2) ad-hoc participation. Furthermore, we argue that any decisions made regarding user participation in public e-service development should be based on conscious and informed choices concerning why user participation is needed and what it may bring for different stakeholders and their interests.

Working with an integrated management system (IMS) is a challenging task. In public organizations, the formalization of an IMS including the communication of control mechanisms, rules, goals and culture are crucial. Several types of carriers are used in order to communicate the content in an IMS – both human actors and artefacts. An artefact studied in this paper is an intranet, as one carrier of the IMS. The purpose of this paper is to explore how institutional theory – focusing institutional carriers – can help us to understand how an IMS is represented through human actors and technology in a government agency. The conclusion is that the application of an institutional carrier perspective on an IMS can help us to understand the past and present, the role, and the relative success of such a system. An IMS can be aligned or misaligned related to three dimensions of structure, process and people. Achieving an aligned and legitimate IMS is crucial in order to achieve goals in an organization. The implications of this study are that further research and practice should give more attention to institutional carriers when studying and improving IMS.

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to analyse and understand the contemporary management of electronic identification (e-ID) development to: identify and formulate challenges and reflect upon the use of a combination of perspectives. To generate knowledge on this issue, we investigate e-ID development in Sweden from: an e-government systems development lifecycle perspective and a project challenge and critical success factor (CSF) perspective. Design/methodology/approach– This is a qualitative case study covering an analysis of the three years in a larger project focusing e-ID in a public e-service setting. Empirical sources have been face-to-face interviews; official documents and different kind of forums for presentations and discussions in, for example, hearings arranged by authorities; meetings with the coordinating agency, and practitioners’ networks events. Findings– This study concludes that there are significant challenges involved in managing e-ID development because of its contextual and integrated character. Challenges involve the organization and management of the program and can be traced back to e-government, general project management literature and theory on path dependency. Based on this study, we can question, e.g. governance models, centralization and a narrow focus on the technical artefact. Our study is also an illustration of a possible way to analyse e-ID within an e-government initiative. Research limitations/implications– The present study shows that an e-ID can be considered as a back office-enabler for launching e-services, but also highlights the need for management of the artefact as an integral part of e-service development because it is intertwined with the use of e-services from a user perspective. This aspect together with the insights related to challenges and success factors including path dependency provides implications for future practice of e-ID management and development in particular and information systems artefact development in general. Originality/value– This paper addresses challenges related to the development of e-ID in a public e-service setting. Few studies have theoretically combined a lifecycle perspective on challenges and success factors related to e-ID development while also focusing different dimensions of path dependency as an example of a challenging area within a program frame. Studying e-ID as a contemporary phenomenon from a contextual perspective in line with sociomaterial thinking – with a focus on the interplay between technology and people –can also help us to understand and discuss artefact development in general.

E-service development has grown to become a daily practice in most public organizations as a means for realizing digital agendas and e-government initiatives on different levels (local, regional, national and transnational governmental levels). Public e-service development is often an inter-organizational (IO) effort with multiple actors and organizations involved in the multi-faceted dimensions of design, development and delivery decisions. Still, there is a lack of research focusing on IO public e-service development practices in particular. In order to address this lack we elaborate on reported challenges and their implications for IO public e-service development in practice. By returning to two empirical cases of IO public e-service development, the IO dimension is evolved. Our purpose is to highlight challenges in IO public e-service development with implications for research and practice. Findings are presented as eight emerging lessons learned from an inside-out perspective related to phases in IO public e-service development processes.

This paper reports from a pilot study conducted in an ongoing research project focusing on how users and their needs are being part of the development of smart grid services. The project aims to explore how development and use of services related to smart grids in homes might affect practices involving electricity consumption. The empirical material centers around an urban development project with a focus on social sustainability. So far only preliminary remarks can be made, and these points to that smart grid services are not in the center of attention, but rather taken for granted, and that the users are rather absent from the discussions. This indicates that the practices of which electricity consumption are part are not taken into consideration, but instead it is taken for granted that users shall adjust their needs based on information about electricity consumption patterns and prices.

In this paper, we approach the field of critical success factors (CSF) by analyzing a successful case of IT implementation within the public health sector. The purpose of the paper is to gain further understanding of if and how well CSFs can explain a successful case. The main conclusion drawn is that even though the studied organization shows signs of common CSFs, this alone cannot explain the success. An important contribution from this study is thus the focus on contextual factors when trying to understand what makes an implementation project successful.

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The main purpose of this paper is to discuss the spectrum of interpretations that can be related to the implementation and use of a healthcare information system (HIS). The empirical part of this paper is based on a qualitative case study of a Swedish healthcare provider, called “Alpha”, where a HIS was implemented. By studying how different actors interpret technological and organizational changes in a healthcare case, we mirror different images of the implementation project. Put together, this diversity of images provides an illustration of the complexity associated with the process of implementing a HIS. We apply an adjusted version of Orlikowski’s practice lens, with its roots in Structuration Theory, in order to study technology in organizations (focusing inertia, application and change). The implementation process of a HIS is much too complex to be judged as being either entirely positive or negative; instead it offers an illustration of the multi-faceted and reciprocal relation between IS and organization. This challenge literature on critical success factors. This study illustrates several images of HIS implementation and use. Highlighting images is one way to illustrate reluctance, support, complexity and power that are present in HIS implementation and use. This is one important contribution from this article. The complexity in the implementation is linked to healthcare organizations as professional bureaucracies, being highly politicized and institutionalized and to the IT artefact as an integrated HIS. Viewing images as rational myths is also discussed in this paper as an original approach to understand HIS implementation.

In order to deliver services to citizens, public sector agencies of today offer various types of channels for interaction. In this article we aim to develop an understanding of the reciprocal relation between multi‑channel services and work prac tice. By showing how actors at different organizational levels in an agency differ in their interpretation of multi‑channel services we have generated knowledge that is essential in multi‑channel strategy formulation. The study illustrates an example of a n agency that works actively and in a mature way with e‑government and e‑services. This qualitative case study illustrates that the top level management, middle management and the case officers need to confront and discuss their understanding of e‑governm ent and their work practice in order to reach a situation where strategies actually are influencing daily work more explicitly. An important aspect is the decision to adopt an internal or external perspective on multi‑channel service management. The resul t of this decision might be to view multi‑channel service management as a way of reaching either internal agency efficiency or external citizen benefits.

ICT potentially plays an important part in achieving sustainable urban development. Subsequntly, ICT could be expected to have a central role in the general discourse of urban development, and in specific development projects, both as a means in the planning process itself and as an end product, i.e. smart city solutions. By exploring a case study of a local urban development project (Urb@n) in Sweden, we explore different characteristics given to ICT and how they can be understood as different discourses of sustainable development. By studying how ICT is spoken of in the planning phase of urban development we can understand how different stakeholders interpret and incorporate (or not) the technology in the design and development of urban areas, and how they collaborate in order to achieve goals. Our findings show that there are discrepancies between how ICT is spoken of on a policy level and in practice. A conclusion is that technology is both taken for granted and black-boxed at the same time. This indicates rather naïve conceptions and understandings among stakeholders of what characterizes ICT and how it can be used for different purposes to support sustainable development.