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@ 2012 e-Service Journal.All rights reserved. No copies of this work may be distributed

in print or electronically without express written permission from Indiana University Press. 73

Infrastructures forPublic Service Delivery:

Aligning IT governance and architecture

in infrastructure development1

Anne Fleur van Veenstra

Delft University of Technology

Gustav Aagesen

Norwegian University of Science and Technology

Marijn JanssenDelft University of Technology

John Krogstie

Norwegian University of Science and Technology

ABSTRACT

Governments are developing infrastructures to accelerate online service delivery. Service

infrastructures are shared facilities that can be used and configured in such a way that

different public organizations are able to create their own online services. This paper

investigates the governance and architecture of these infrastructure developments by

conducting a cross-country analysis. We developed a comparative framework for analyzing

two countries that share many institutional similarities: Norway and the Netherlands.

Furthermore, the typical complexities of infrastructure development are analyzed and

trade-offs are identified. We found many similarities between the service infrastructure

1. This paper is a revision of the paper The Entanglement of Enterprise Architecture and IT-Governance:

The Cases of Norway and the Netherlands, presented at the 44th Hawaii International Conference on

System Sciences (HICSS-44), January 411, 2011.

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Anne Fleur van Veenstra, Gustav Aagesen, Marijn Janssen, and John Krogstie

74 e-Service Journal Volume 8 Issue 3

development and architecture in the two countries, but as a result of the governance being

different, differences in e-services development could be observed. While Norway enables

integration of building blocks into e-government initiatives of individual government

organizations by developing a Business Process Management building block on the national

level, in the Netherlands local governments integrate the building blocks with implementa-

tion support from the national level. The differences in governance between the two

countries lead to different ways of e-government infrastructure development and, ulti-

mately, to different ways of e-services delivery. Governance is thus an important contingency

influencing infrastructure development. A key element for advancing infrastructure

development is to ensure the complementarity of IT architecture and governance.

KEYWORDS: e-government, public service delivery, service infrastructure, next generation

infrastructure, business process management, cross-country comparison

INTRODUCTION

To inspire and support e-government developments, governments all over the world cre-

ate national e-government infrastructures to provide generic functionalities that can be

used by different public agencies to develop electronic services (Janssen, Chun, and Gil-

Garcia, 2009). A service is a series of interactions between the service provider and clients

resulting in an observable output (Spohrer, Maglio, Bailey, and Gruhl, 2007). The con-

cept of service infrastructures is based on the idea that basic building blocks are devel-

oped and shared among the many governmental users to create services. Governments

can use the services provided by the infrastructure to create electronic services (e-ser-

vices) to their customers (citizens and businesses) by composing them out of the available

building blocks. The main advantage is that organizations do not need to develop, main-

tain or control major parts of the systems themselves, but instead they can re-use existing

building blocks to create their e-services. At the same time a basic infrastructure stimu-

lates standardization of services, development and interoperability (Landsbergen and

Wolken, 2001). This promises to reduce control, operating, and maintenance costs (Ka-

plan, 2005) and e-government is given a boost (Janssen et al., 2009).

This infrastructure for e-service delivery is built on top of the Internet-based com-munication infrastructure, which ensures connectivity with citizens and business, as

shown in Figure 1. Although this figure presents a simple overview, infrastructure devel-

opment is a complex undertaking. The complexity of service infrastructure development

is a result of the technology used, as well as of the interactions among different organiza-

tions and the different stakeholders that are involved in the set-up of a joint infrastruc-

ture. Stakeholders may have different and potentially conflicting objectives and priorities

(Flak, Nordheim, and Munkvold, 2008). Development of such service infrastructures

likely varies widely among different countries. It is often guided by National EnterpriseArchitectures (NEAs),which aim to align business and IT, interrelate elements, and give

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Infrastructures for public service delivery

75

direction to e-government developments (Zachman, 1987; Janssen and Hjort-Madsen,

2007; Ebrahim and Irani, 2005). Yet, we lack insight into the development of such infra-

structures and how this influences e-services delivery. Furthermore, a closer look needs to

be taken at how governance of such infrastructures can be set up effectively between the

central level that is primarily in charge of developing these building blocks, and the pub-

lic agencies and local governments that provide e-services to citizens and businesses. IT-

governance, also called governance in this paper, aiming to direct and oversee an

organizations IT-related decision and actions such that desired behaviors and actions are

realized (Huang, Zmud, and Price, 2010, p. 289), needs to manage such dependencies.

This paper investigates the architecture and governance of service infrastructuredevelopment as well as the complexities involved in this development by looking at the

impact it has on public service delivery. The investigation is carried out by comparing

developments in two countries: Norway and the Netherlands. These countries share the

aim to establish a service infrastructure that can be employed to enable individual gov-

ernment agencies to re-use existing building blocks for e-services delivery. A systematic

and structured comparison will be conducted by first developing a framework aimed at

understanding and explaining the development of service infrastructures. Governance is

required to assure the consistency and timeliness of enterprise architecture (Winter andSchelp, 2008; Perks and Beveridge, 2002). Therefore, we investigate aspects of both gov-

ernance and the NEA. A cross-country analysis allows us to explore differences in service

infrastructure development and their influence on e-services delivery. As these two coun-

tries have many similarities, this will allow us to identify the influence the few differences

have. This paper is structured as follows. First, we develop a framework for comparison

of service infrastructure development. Then, we investigate service infrastructure and e-

services development in Norway and the Netherlands and compare the two countries.

Finally, after a discussion on the outcomes of this comparison, we present conclusions

and recommendations for further research.

Figure 1. Overview of positioning and use of service infrastructures

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COMPARATIVE FRAMEWORK

The set-up of generic service infrastructures influences the outcome of e-government de-

velopments and the provisioning of services to citizens and businesses. Policies shape the

direction of e-government development by deciding which projects are initiated and sup-ported by the government. But despite the formulation of a shared vision on the direction

of e-government (Ministerial Declaration on eGovernment, 2009), the actual imple-

mentation of policies may take on different forms at the national and local level. NEAs

are formulated to guide the development of such service infrastructures. Furthermore, to

guide decision-making and the adoption of NEAs, governance is recognized to be of im-

portance. While NEAs are an instrument to guide implementation, IT governance di-

rects decisions-making processes.

National Enterprise Architecture (NEA)

NEAs can be used to guide the development of e-government. Architectures help to

shape both the service infrastructure as well as the use of the infrastructure by local gov-

ernments and government agencies. The existence of isolated, overlapping in function

and content, highly fragmented, and unrelated computerized applications have led to

isolated islands of technology (Peristeras and Tarabanis, 2000). Architecture is an in-

strument to guide e-government developments and ensure that the individual efforts are

coordinated. Traditionally, the purpose of EA is to effectively align the strategies of en-

terprises with their business processes and the coordination of their resources (Ebrahim

and Irani, 2005; Zachman, 1987). Enterprise architectures define and interrelate data,

hardware, software, and communication resources, as well as the supporting organiza-

tion required to maintain the overall physical structure required by the architecture

(Zachman, 1987; Richardson, Jackson, and Dickson, 1990). Architecture can be viewed

at various levels, including hardware, network, system, application, business process and

enterprise level (Richardson et al., 1990; Armour, Kaisler, and Liu, 1999). Many govern-

ments have embraced enterprise architecture as an instrument to further develop e-gov-

ernment (Janssen and Hjort-Madsen, 2007; Bellman and Rausch, 2004) and there aremany existing architecture frameworks (Lillehagen and Krogstie, 2008).

IT Governance

Information technology (IT) governance, also referred to as governance in this paper, rep-

resents the framework for decision rights and accountability to encourage desirable behav-

ior in the use of resources (Weill, 2004). Governance involves the mechanisms to direct

and guide IT-related decisions by allocating responsibilities, communications and align-

ment procedures and processes to manage the dependencies between responsibilities

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77

(Huang et al., 2010). IT governance mechanisms determine how communication, re-

sponsibilities and decision-making structures are formalized (Weill and Ross, 2005). Ross

(2003) criticized enterprise frameworks for taking a technologist view. She claims that

these frameworks do not highlight the role of institutions and capabilities critical to adop-

tion and diffusion of architecture. IT governance, or in this context architectural gover-

nance, is often viewed as a necessary conditions for ensuring success. The tension between

centralization and decentralization of IT decision-making authorities is one of the major

recurring issues in literature (e.g. King, 1983; Peak and Azadmanesh, 1997; Sambamur-

thy and Zmud, 1999). With the advent of the Internet, Web services technology has be-

come viable to centralize functions that are currently or were formerly performed at a

decentralized level. There is disagreement in the literature about the driving forces behind

centralization decisions (e.g. King, 1983; Peak and Azadmanesh, 1997; Sambamurthy

and Zmud, 1999). King (1983) found three aspects control, physical location and func-tion that can be centralized or decentralized.

Framework for Comparison

An important issue in comparative cross-country research is to create a framework that

allows comparison of concepts that are sufficiently equivalent (Gharawi, Pardo, and

Guerrero, 2009). Various cross-country frameworks can be found in literature. Pollitt

and Bouckaert (2005) compare public management reform among countries by looking

at the global, national, and cultural environment, as well as the institutional, manage-ment, and work level. Cummins et al. (1996) study tax reforms and investments using a

panel. Afonso, Schuknecht and Tanzi (2005) compare public sector performance and

efficiency among countries, and Janssen and Hjort-Madsen (2007) compare NEAs. Fur-

thermore, frameworks for comparing e-government development have been developed.

Beynon-Davies (2007) set up a framework to position e-government as a socio-technical

phenomenon capturing elements from business and informatics. Nour, AbdelRahman

and Fadlalla (2008) developed a framework for evaluating the core values of e-govern-

ment projects according to the degree of e-government readiness and the level of democ-ratization. Although all of these frameworks show relevant aspects for comparison, few of

these frameworks include aspects of e-government infrastructure developments.

Only the framework of Janssen and Hjort-Madsen (2007) is related to our research

domain and it was therefore taken as a starting point. This framework for comparing

NEAs within public administrations comprises five elements: 1) policies, actors and struc-

tures; 2) governance; 3) architecture model; 4) architecture principles and standards; and

5) implementation (Janssen and Hjort-Madsen, 2007). The framework for our compara-

tive study extends this by adding IT governance, which guides central and decentralized

actions and the construction of tools and infrastructure components to facilitate e-services

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delivery. While on the one hand government strategies for establishing service infrastruc-

tures are partly implemented through the development of NEAs, on the other hand, the

governance and support directed at government agencies shape the individual agencys

ability to act according to these policies. Thus, our framework extends the framework of

Janssen and Hjort-Madsen (2007) by focusing on the infrastructure and through identi-

fying governance structures and measures taken in order to support the implementation

of the NEA.

The framework evolved iteratively together with the investigation and analysis of the

case studies. After identifying the guiding principles of infrastructure development (poli-

cies, IT governance, and enterprise architecture) from literature, we investigated the case

studies for any other guiding elements. The framework in Figure 2 describes (from top to

bottom) thepoliciesdefined at a national level that aim for e-government development as

well as any external factorsthat may be of influence on both the policies as well as the e-government developments. Governancemeasures are formulated to support implementa-

tion of these policies. Governance measures are additionally influenced by other external

factors such as technology affordances and stakeholder expectations (Aagesen and Krog-

stie, 2011). Governance includes instructions and allocation of tasks and responsibilities to

different public agencies. We also found two further categories of factors to be of influence

on the infrastructure development during the execution of the case studies. To support the

adherence of tasks and responsibilities to policy objectives architecture methods, guidelines

and standardsare defined and made available to the various government agencies. These

can be used to aid adoption and guide implementation and to monitor and measure policy

outcomes. In addition to the knowledge-based procedural support provided through

methods and guidelines, infrastructure componentscan be provided centrally with a similar

goal of supporting the public agencies ability to deliver their e-services effectively.

Public agencies and local governmentsare both e-service providers to citizens and busi-

nesses and developers of these services. In an e-services infrastructure they can be producers

as well as consumers of shared services. Infrastructure componentsare the building blocks with

which e-services can be developed. This interaction is shown at the bottom of our model.

Represented by the numbers (15) in the model, our aim is to investigate the following:

1. Organization:How is the governance of e-government organized? How are re-

sponsibilities divided? Which governance mechanisms exist and what instructions

are given to public organizations?

2. Architectural support:Which methods, guidelines and standards are made avail-

able centrally to public organizations as a means of support and control of e-gov-

ernment projects?

3. Infrastructure: Which infrastructure components are provided centrally to sup-

port service delivery?

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79

4. Use and adoption: How do governance and support differ among public agencies

and local governments, and what roles do these organizations play towards estab-lishing a national service infrastructure?

5. E-services:How do public agencies and local governments interact with citizens

and businesses? What are the differences between services provided? What is the

role of the service infrastructure in this?

By performing a cross-country comparison of e-government infrastructure devel-

opment, it is possible to identify how policies have been implemented and where policy

implementations are different. We will also be able to see which governance mechanisms

are currently deployed and which support mechanisms (methods, tools, and frameworks)are being developed. We used the inductive case study methodology developed by

Figure 2. Framework for cross-country comparison of service infrastructure development

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Eisenhardt (1989) to derive the aspects of our framework. By having a clear research goal

in mind (exploring service infrastructure development), but without postulating hypoth-

eses beforehand, we selected cases using theoretical sampling. This meant that we chose

two countries that were clearly developing e-government infrastructure and that are able

to provide data for answering the research question.

Then, using different data collection methods, similarities between the two cases

were identified and subsequently the elements of the framework were drafted. The cases

were investigated by studying relevant policy documents from the respective govern-

ments and the organizations involved with infrastructure development between March

and September 2010. The first round of data collection was based on Norwegian reports

published between 2005 and 2010. This was followed by an effort to find equivalent or

differing Dutch data, which was succeeded by repeated efforts until structures or mea-

sures for one of the two governments were found or found lacking or differing in theother. Subsequently, we invited key actors from Norway and the Netherlands to com-

ment on our description of infrastructure development in their respective country to vali-

date our findings. In Norway, feedback was provided from within the Ministry of

Government Administration and Reform. In the Netherlands, from within the Ministry

of the Interior and Kingdom Relations.

CASE STUDIES

In this study we compare Norway and the Netherlands. The reason for doing a cross-

country comparison between those two countries is that they share a number of institu-

tional similarities. Both are constitutional monarchies and parliamentary democracies

with around 430 municipalities and around a dozen counties or provinces. Some basic

statistics to compare both countries are denoted in Table 1. Data pairs are from 2007 to

2010, depending on availability. This shows that both countries have a high Internet and

broadband penetration. The main difference is population density, which is very low in

Norway and very high in the Netherlands. Furthermore, Norway has a long-stretched

territory, with vast areas without settlement.

Norway

The Ministry of Government Administration and Reform (FAD) has been responsible

for the coordination of government IT policy since 2004. This includes an overarching

coordinating responsibility for IT adoption in municipalities, despite the fact that re-

gional and local development is usually the responsibility of the Ministry of Local Gov-

ernment and Regional Development (KRD). The Ministry of Transport and

Communications is responsible for telecom policy. Furthermore, there are a number of

coordinating bodies of a more or less formal nature, both between and within sectors.

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Being responsible for the policy creation and the future strategy and directions for

the development of e-government in Norway, FAD has defined the public sector as the

rule maker, the pilot, the service provider, and the developer of public services. At the

general level the goal is to have cohesive, safe, user-centered and efficient public IT. Cur-

rent focus areas include: better coordination of efforts and project management (but also

program and portfolio management), privacy matters in transfer of data in remits, trans-

parency in automatic processes, open user surveys to understand satisfaction, use and

needs, and understanding the need for anonymity and pseudonyms in government infor-

mation systems.

Organization. A separate agency for public management and e-government (Difi) was

established in January 2008 as a merger of three government offices: Norway.no, theeProcurement secretariat,and Statsconsult. Responsibilities for Difi include better integra-

tion of work in areas such as reform, IT, management, organization, restructuring, infor-

mation policy and procurement policy. Responsibility for the maintenance and

innovation of the national information infrastructure framework is allocated to the Nor-

wegian Register Authority (BRREG).

The central instrument of control the Ministries have on national agencies is the

allocation letter (Tildelingsbrev). It passes on economic boundaries, priorities, goals and

means of reporting results for the given organizational unit. In order to follow up and to

ensure that national agencies are doing sufficient architectural planning in e-government

Table 1. Key figures on Norway and the Netherlands(taken from http://ssb.no/, http://cbs.nl/)

Norway The Netherlands

Citizens (millions) 4.86 16.6

Pop. density pr km2 14 392

Gross domestic product (GDP) per capita in PurchasingPower Standards (PPS) (EU-27 = 100)

131 119

Unemployment rates represent unemployed persons as apercentage of the labor force (%)

3.1 5.9

Gross domestic expenditure on R&D (GERD) as apercentage of GDP (of businesses)

1.57 1.73

Number of ministries (number) 17 14

Households with Internet connectivity / broadband (%) 86/78 90/77

Number of municipalities/provinces 430/19 431/12

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projects, a self-declaration form is to be sent to the Ministry of Finance and FAD as part

of the budgeting procedure and in applying for funding of new projects. This comply-or-

explain principle is mandatory for national agencies and encouraged for local govern-

ments. Completing the form involves describing potential reuse of existing services,

project risk and risk management, the socio-economic value generated through the proj-

ect, adherence to defined architecture principles, and the use of established core compo-

nents and electronic identification mechanisms. In addition to the self-declaration form,

procedures for central evaluation of IT projects have been initiated to prevent duplication

of efforts. All these initiatives are maintained and overseen by Difi. Separate procedures

to evaluate the finance and budgeting as well as value realization of suggested IT efforts

are initiated by the Agency for Financial Management (SS).

Architectural support. There are three contributing types of initiatives within methods,

guidelines and standards that stand out in Norway. The first is the focus on competen-

cies and cross-agency management collaboration. This is achieved through establishing

separate Web sites for procurement and project support for managers. In addition to this,

guidelines and support for planning and quality assurance for IT projects are established

by Difi, and guidelines for creating socio-economic analysis as a part of project proposals

are provided by SS.

The second is the set of centrally defined architectural principles that act as guid-

ance under information systems planning and development. The principles include ser-

vice orientation, interoperability, universal availability, security, openness, flexibility andscalability. Difi is responsible for the management of the principles and will develop

models for adoption and compliance.

The third is the reference catalogue defining mandatory and suggested standards

for data for government IT systems. First launched in 2007, the reference catalogue pro-

vides public organizations, suppliers and other stakeholders with an overview of recom-

mended and mandatory standards relevant to IT solutions in the public sector. It is

decided by the government that the reference catalogue should be used by all national

agencies when planning new solutions. The Norwegian Association of Local and Re-gional Authorities (KS), being the employers association and interest organization for

municipalities, counties and local public agencies, has established a separate standardiza-

tion body, responsible for representing the local governments in the national reference

catalogue as well as translating the national reference catalogue to the local level. The

reference catalogue is supported by a separate regulation for the use of IT standards in

the public administration. Taking effect from January 2010, this regulation can enforce

the use of standards both on public agencies and local governments.

Infrastructure. The Norwegian government set out to pursue a cohesive policy to ensureefficient re-use of public information for increased value creation and the development of

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83

new services. Large-scale new national IT projects are to be assessed as to whether they

can use the shared IT components or whether they may have or can develop components

that can be made available to all. It is a precondition that these assessments must not re-

sult in especially negative consequences for the project and for innovative operating solu-

tions linked to it. Already existing shared components include an electronic identification

component, the Altinn portal, which is a common Internet portal for public reporting,

norway.no/ norge.noas a one-stop public service center for citizens, and the national pop-

ulation register, property register and business register.

A new overarching IT architecture for the public sector is being developed. This

architecture includes the second-generation national information infrastructure for Nor-

way (Altinn 2). The Altinn platform additionally provides interfaces for automated data

delivery from businesses, acts as a centralized third party intermediary for data integra-

tion, provides multi-actor process support and allows task allocation and task sharing.All Altinn services should be created to allow Web service access as providing a Web-

based user interface is not required for all services.

For future service development, there are ambitions for examining how legal pro-

tection can be catered for in relation to fully or partially automated decision-making so-

lutions. The government set out to review the division of labor between supervisory

authorities, in processing of personal privacy data, within the interests of facilitating

closer cooperation and coordination (FAD, 2006).

Use and adoption. Local governments in Norway are highly autonomous. Thus, there iscurrently no direct authority in e-government matters that can enforce best practice or

measures for increased consolidation of services at the local level. Due to this, the com-

ply-or-explain principle is so far only mandatory for national agencies, but is advised as a

desktop exercise for local governments. Similarly, the planned national information in-

frastructure is not customized in favor of the local governments. Difi/FAD have been

criticized for not supporting local government requirements sufficiently, and separate

projects are underway to address this problem in particular. One example of this is the

need to establish shared components that can act in accordance to archiving laws in orderto enable local governments to make full use of the Altinn framework.

Shared-service networks exist on the local level, and there has been established a

separate set of guidelines for municipal collaboration by FAD. Separate goals for e-gov-

ernment for the local governments has been developed by KS.

E-services. In establishing electronic self-service solutions, each public agency/sector

must make relevant services available via the norge.noand Altinn portals. This is in addi-

tion to any access to services available directly using the agency Web sites. Separate

guidelines for electronic forms on the Internet have been made available through the

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ELMER initiative. ELMER improves Web forms through guidelines for equal presenta-

tion across agencies and increased usability.

The Altinn 2 framework provides a separate service development framework

(TUL) for government service interaction and cross-agency integration. It supports the

developer in composing service process flows based on predefined service building blocks

in combination with separately developed modules for interacting with professional sys-

tems in government agencies. The predefined service building blocks provide support for

data submission, messaging, information services, link/authorization services, data dis-

tribution services, and support for creating cross-agency compound services.

The Netherlands

The responsibility for e-government is shared between the Ministry of the Interior and

Kingdom Relations (BZK) and the Ministry of Economic Affairs, Agriculture and In-

novation (EL&I). There is no single ministry in charge, which resulted in critique on the

lack of direction and control of e-government (Docters van Leeuwen, 2009). While BZK

is mainly involved in e-government service development for citizens, is EL&I concerned

with developments for businesses. Most developments to improve service delivery, how-

ever, originate within individual government organizations, often at the level of local

government.

The main e-government policy pursued until 2010 is to realize a national e-govern-

ment infrastructure consisting of generic building blocks to be used by all governmentorganizations for their services provisioning. This policy, which is the responsibility of

BZK, is carried out through a joint priorities program of municipal governments, provin-

cial governments, water boards, and the central government. The program is called the

National Implementation Program (NUP) and identifies nineteen generic building

blocks to be implemented by all government agencies as well as developing six example

projects aimed to show the advantages of e-government implementation. Currently a

follow-up program to the NUP is developed that focuses more on implementation and

on developments in the back office, instead of the front office.BZK and EL&I are also responsible for a government-wide policy that has many

links with e-government: the decrease of the administrative burden for citizens and busi-

nesses. Currently, citizens and businesses often need to provide the same information

twice to different government organizations. By integrating service delivery of public or-

ganizations as well as integrate chain processes, the public sector aims to diminish the

administrative load by 25% in 2010, which it has claimed to have achieved, as a dimin-

ishment of 28% was claimed to have been realized in reality (Rijksoverheid, 2009).

Organization. The central management of e-government lies with a government steeringgroup and an underlying governance structure in which all parties are represented. In

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85

addition to this governance, the development and maintenance of e-government resides

mainly in two public agencies. The most important agency is the ICTU foundation that

was set up in 2002 to develop IT-projects for multiple government organizations. The

ICTU foundation was set up to become a camping site for cross-organizational IT-proj-

ects. The comparison with a camping site was made to show that a wide array of projects

was set up within the organization, which is still a collection of loosely connected e-gov-

ernment development programs.

While the responsibility for the NUP is at the Ministerial level, most generic build-

ing blocks and example projects are developed by ICTU. The foundation is also responsible

for the implementation of open standards and for the national e-government benchmark.

Another governance activity ICTU is involved in is providing local governments with

guidance to implement the e-government infrastructure building blocks on request.

The other important public agency involved in e-government development is Lo-gius, which is the service organization maintaining all generic building blocks once they

have been developed. Furthermore, two advisory boards have been established to oversee

standardization and to test all new laws and regulations on their administrative load.

Architectural support. To create greater interoperability and more uniformity towards

citizens and businesses, a national reference architecture was developed in 2002: the

Dutch Government Reference Architecture (NORA). NORA has been growing since

and its focus is currently shifting more towards realizing interoperability between gov-

ernment agencies. On the basis of NORA, a number of sub-architectures were createdfor specific groups of government organization, such as the municipalities, provinces,

and the water boards.

The standardization board holds a list of standards that need to be used, based on

the comply-or-explain principle. This means that for all public IT projects that require

procurement at the European level, these standards need to be implemented or a very

good explanation needs to be given if they are not. Furthermore, the municipalities have

to comply with the objective that they should set up a policy for using open standards. By

the end of 2009 half of the local governments had adopted the policy objectives for openstandards and open software. Also, the standardization board will set up an interopera-

bility framework that will be complementary to the reference architecture NORA.

Infrastructure. In the past, government organizations developed their own infrastruc-

ture blocks such as authentication mechanisms and electronic forms. As a result of a pol-

icy of centralization, now a set of nineteen generic building blocks has been identified to

be used by government organizations to maintain their online presence and ensure in-

teroperability. The main e-government building blocks are the Citizens Service Number

(BSN), DigiD, the MyGovernment.nl (MijnOverheid.nl) citizens portal, vital recordregistries, e-forms and a gateway for transactions between businesses and the government

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(DigiPoort). Although implementation of these generic infrastructure blocks is falling

behind relative to their implementation schedule, they are considered to be the basis of

future e-government developments.

Use and adoption. Local governments such as municipalities, provinces, and waterboards are actively stimulated to implement generic building blocks. A program organi-

zation was set up at ICTU for the purpose of implementing the infrastructure building

blocks in local governments, as well as a program aiming to maintain the quality of e-

government developments within local governments, and a benchmark that serves the

same purpose.

Most large semi-autonomous national agencies, such as the Inland Revenue Ser-

vice and the organizations responsible for unemployment benefits and student loans, are

highly autonomous. They are also front-runners in the field of e-government develop-

ment. They, therefore, are stimulated or targeted by central government policies, but de-

velop most of their activities themselves. Furthermore, they set up a cooperative

consortium called the Manifest group that actively develops common e-government

projects for these executive organizations, such as the DigiD authentication mechanism.

E-services. Municipalities are considered to become a one-stop-shop for e-services in the

direct environment of citizens (Jorritsma, 2005; VNG, 2010). This is based on the idea

that municipalities are best equipped with local knowledge and have an understanding of

the needs of their constituents. A set of guidelines for citizens interactions, the Citizens

Service Code, was developed including ten guiding principles for governments to comply

with when developing and implementing services.

The NUP policy framework defined generic building blocks in six categories: e-

access, e-authentication, the unique citizens identification number, information ex-

change, registries, and open standards. Among the generic building blocks for e-access

specifically designed to meet citizens needs is the personalized citizens portal MijnOver-

heid.nl. This portal aims at integrating all personalized service delivery of public agen-

cies. For businesses, a different portal was designed aiming to integrate all the information

they may need: answerforbusiness.nl (antwoordvoorbedrijven.nl). Furthermore, underthe NUP framework, six example projects were appointed to showcase the advantages of

e-government development and implementation. Through the identification of these

projects, focus is slowly shifting from infrastructure development to the development of

(cross-organizational) services.

Cross-country Comparison

Table 2 provides a summary of the national case studies based on our framework. Over-

all, the studies show many similarities between the Norway and the Netherlands and we

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87

Norway The Netherlands

1. Organization

Difi as the separate e-government agency(established 2008) developing methods andcoordinating policy enactment

Provider of competency support (passive)

ICTU as the separate e-governmentagency (established 2002) serving as themain focal point of infrastructuredevelopment

Provider of centrally funded competencysupport (active)

2. Architectural support

Centralized architecture development andtranslated into domain and organizational

architectures at the local level 7 Defined architectural principles for e-govern-

ment planning and development Focus on increased competencies for public

agency managers Improved planning and reduced project

failures Reuse of previous efforts and knowledge

management Reference catalogue for electronic formats and

standards Procedures for central evaluation of IT-projects

Centralized architecture development andtranslated into domain and organizational

architectures at the local level Many principles, no overarching architec-

ture of dependencies among buildingblocks and centralized/decentralizeddivision of activities

National references architecture, domainarchitectures guided by models and bestpractices

Focus on (open) standards

3. Infrastructure

-everal available core components Central BPM tool for integrating cross-organi-

zational processes Service development framework at the central

level

everal available core components No central mechanism for integration;this

happens at the local level Many bottom-up initiatives, fulfilling the

need of local agencies for business processmanagement and orchestration

No service development framework at the

central level4. Use and adoption

Comply-or-explain principle only mandatoryfor national agencies;requires describing use ofshared components

Direct support to regional agencies from thecentral government on e-government matters islimited to that provided through guidelinesand facilitated collaboration environments

Comply-or-explain principle for somestandards only;not all shared componentsand standards are part of this

Local governments are free to adoptbuilding blocks and architecture

Table 2. Cross-Country comparison of service infrastructure development

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were able to identify similar structures and dynamics between equivalent agencies in

both countries. Still, some differences between the two countries were identified, that

resulted in differences in service infrastructure development and e-services.

Organization. Concerning the organizational aspects, Norway has a separate ministry

for government administration and reform responsible for e-government at the Ministe-

rial level (although having limited influence, being the department with the lowest bud-

get), while in the Netherlands there is no equivalent. The separate e-government agencies,

Difi and ICTU have further taken on different approaches to e-government. ICTU,

being established in 2002 has a history for active involvement in e-government projects,

while Difi has focused on its role as a facilitator for increased competency and manage-

ment collaboration, planning and project management in e-government projects through

training and online resources.

Architectural support.Architecture principles for e-government planning and implemen-

tation exist in both countries. But while the Norwegian principles are limited to seven, The

Netherlands has hundreds, most which are technology-oriented and at a different granu-

larity level. Both Norway and the Netherlands established reference catalogues for elec-

tronic formats and standards, but while in the Netherlands this is aimed at all government

organizations including local governments, in Norway it is only aimed at public agencies.

Another main difference between the two countries is, that in Norway support mecha-

nisms are more centrally organized. In the Netherlands, meanwhile, support to local gov-

ernments has gained much more attention as they are aimed to become the one-stop-shops

for e-service provisioning to citizens. In Norway, less support to local governments is given.

Infrastructure. Norways goal is to provide all services through portals running on this

infrastructure. While in the Netherlands portals have been set up, their use was under-

mined by the service delivery activities by the local level and the executive agencies. For

example, the citizens portal is hardly used today, although this may change as develop-

ments are still ongoing and recently some of the major executive agencies have commit-

ted to it use for their services provisioning. The Norwegian Altinn portal was originally a

portal for businesses, but the scope shifted towards becoming the current national infra-

structure for all public e-services provisioning. Furthermore, a strong focus on BPM canbe found in Norway. Similar efforts are not present in The Netherlands.

5. E-services

Services developed by single agencies shouldadditionally be made available on centralized

portals

Most citizens interactions withthe locallevel (around 75%) and the executive

agencies Local customization and integration of

building blocks

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89

Use and adoption. Both countries have a few strong semi-autonomous national agencies

that are front-runners in e-government development. National agencies in Norway are

bound to the comply-or-explain principle for e-government developments, while in the

Netherlands these organizations are more or less self-governed and only need to comply-

or-explain for specific technical standards. This allows them to autonomously collaborate

within the Manifest Group and develop their own infrastructure building blocks. Mu-

nicipal consortiums exist both in Norway and the Netherlands and allow for economies

of scale. Again, the main difference between the two countries is that autonomous na-

tional agencies are more centrally governed and bound to standards in Norway, com-

pared to the Netherlands. A second difference is that Dutch municipalities are actively

supported and funded by the national level in their e-services development, while in

Norway there is no direct (financial) involvement.

E-services. In Norway core components for parts of the service delivery chains are devel-

oped, whereas in the Netherlands, organizations are responsible for their own service de-

livery developments. The idea behind the latter strategy is that local governments know

best the needs for services of their constituents, whereas in Norway the main idea is to

support the e-services development by providing the developers with tools for composing

services. In the Netherlands, this support is mainly provided to local governments

through financial support. E-services development in the Netherlands took off at an ear-

lier stage than in Norway, as local governments could go ahead developing services for

their own organization with the support of the central government, spurring adoption.Currently therefore there is a strong focus on standardization in the Netherlands, to en-

sure that the different organizations will still be able to exchange information, as it may

be too late for fully shared e-services development.

Therefore, in the Netherlands policies aiming at standardizing inter-organiza-

tional data exchange are implemented, while at the same time the diversity of e-services

delivery across organizations is embraced. The strong central governance in Norway

mainly focusing at the large public agencies thus leads to differences in e-services from

the Netherlands that, as a result of a more loose central governance has mainly focusedon diversified e-services delivery by local governments. This means that uniform services

will be available through portals in Norway, but more diverse services tailored to local

needs will be available through Dutch municipalities.

COMPLEXITIES IN INFRASTRUCTURE DEVELOPMENT

The framework enables analysis of both cases in a structured manner. However, develop-

ment of the service infrastructure to improve e-government service provisioning is an

endeavor that has to deal with many complexities. These complexities are important to

understand, as they strongly influence development choices. Without understanding

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them, incorrect conclusions may be drawn from our analysis. Complexity is an inherent

property of infrastructure development. By using the lens of complexity a richer view

than by using reductionist and deterministic approaches can be accomplished. A com-

plex system is often viewed as a system consisting of interacting parts that change over

time (Simon, 1996). Complexity is difficult to define (Edmonds, 1996). This does mean

that the precise analysis of the factors influencing complexity is necessary to advance our

understanding of the system. The interviews revealed that complexity in both cases is

found in several aspects, including:

1. The large number of stakeholders:stakeholders have varying interests as their situa-

tions are different. They have many relationships, which mutually influence each

other;

2. Changing boundaries:it is hard to define the boundaries of the infrastructure as

well as of the IT of an individual organization, as these may shift as the infrastruc-

ture evolves;

3. Balancing generality and specificity:infrastructures are generic to ensure broad use,

whereas specificity can add more value. This balancing process is continuous;

4. The need for supporting a wide variety of e-services, which poses different require-

ments on the service infrastructures, which may be subject to change over time;

5. Balancing the national and the local level:as both levels are struggling for gaining

control and realizing progress, emphasis can shift between the two levels over

time;6. Heterogeneity of the systems landscape:the embedding and use of the infrastructure

in the existing systems is hampered by legacy systems. The essential role of archi-

tecture is to ensure that the right conditions are created;

7. Path dependencies:previous decisions concerning the infrastructure may spur or

constrain future development and adoption of the infrastructure; and

8. Governance and architecture are strongly interwoven:shared infrastructures require

clear governance that fit the institutional situation and infrastructure develop-

ment best.

The complexities make it hard to determine a best way to advance developments. We

argue that it is essential being sensitive to changes that might occur and therefore it is nec-

essary to have continuous monitoring mechanisms in place. These mechanisms need to

ensure that a constant evaluation of which developments fit the current timeframe best is

carried out.

The first complexity involved is the existence of many different stakeholders having

different objectives and interests. This becomes clear from the cross-country comparison

when looking at the different Ministries responsible for e-government developments in

the Netherlands, as well as the several organizations responsible for different aspects

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91

of e-government, such as development, maintenance and standardization. In Norway a

similar situation is present, although responsibility is centralized in one Ministry. Still,

different agencies are responsible for planning and quality assurance, set-up of guidelines

and analysis and standardization. Different agencies may have different objectives regard-

ing the joint infrastructure based on their responsibilities.

A second complexity is concerned with the boundaries of the service infrastruc-

tures. It is yet unclear when an infrastructure is complete, and the requirements on the

infrastructure may shift over time. This becomes clear from the cross-case analysis by

looking at the Netherlands, where there a focus on setting up portals in the past shifted

to increased focus on standardization as it became clear that many government organiza-

tions already developed their own websites. This also influences the boundaries of orga-

nizations. Once a new centrally infrastructure component is developed and adopted

replacing a previous component implemented locally, the responsibility and ownershipboundary shifts from local to central.

Ensuring the balance between creating generic building blocks and leaving room

for organizations to create service delivery mechanisms that are specific enough to satisfy

the needs and wishes of their clients is a third complexity. This complexity can be dem-

onstrated by looking at the development of the business process management building

block that was developed at the national level in Norway, whereas this is left to the local

agencies in the Netherlands. In Norway, focus is on the centralization of governance to

create a national service infrastructure with generic building blocks in place, whereas in

the Netherlands local governments are considered to know best the needs and wishes of

their specific constituents and, therefore, their actions are only supported by the service

infrastructure. The absence of a coordinating Ministry in the Netherlands can explain

the lack of focus on the development of a central BPM component handling cross-orga-

nizational processes.

A fourth complexity is concerned with the wide variety of e-services to be delivered

requiring to citizens and businesses. In practice, not all demands on the infrastructure are

met and in both countries a focus on certain e-services can be observed. In Norway, focus

is on the support of the public agencies, while in the Netherlands focus is on the local gov-ernments to become one-stop-shops. Public agencies often have less distinct business pro-

cesses and more similar services to deliver than regional agencies, and are therefore

probably better manageable. Joining up, and having these agencies to adhere to a defined

best practice is, thus, relatively easier. Evolving the infrastructure to meet their needs be-

fore considering the needs of the local government agencies may be more manageable.

Keeping the balance between the national and the local level is a fifth complexity

involved in the development of service infrastructures. In both countries, based on the

autonomous nature of local governments, it is not an option for the central level to en-force practices. Still, we observe differences in governance and in the level of active

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support for local e-government development between the two countries. Norway shows a

strong centralization of governance efforts, whereas in the Netherlands, focus is on the

local level, through the early and active support of the e-government support agency

ICTU. In both cases, central government initiatives are often criticized for not taking the

requirements of local governments sufficiently into account. Bottom-up initiatives

through municipal consortiums are mirroring centrally defined directions for e-govern-

ment, but are often not generic enough to develop into national infrastructure building

blocks. Over time, it is likely that for some aspects the local level may become dominant,

such as for developing one-stop-shops, whereas for others, the central level may become

dominant, such as for standardization.

The heterogeneity of the systems landscape is a sixth complexity involved in the

development of service infrastructures. This is best exemplified by the situation in the

Netherlands, where many developments are driven bottom-up, causing fragmentationthat makes it less likely that it will be possible to pursue the development of a single na-

tional e-government information infrastructure. For example, there are many initiatives

of creating shared service centers at the local level, which blocks the creation of a single

shared service center. Different work practices using different applications are developed,

impeding the creation of common building blocks.

A seventh complexity is the existence of path dependencies. Path-dependent histo-

ries are related to available alternatives, and the presence or absence of increasing returns

and attendant path dependencies (Eisenhardt & Martin, 2000), which spur or constrain

the adoption of the infrastructure. These may be seen as the characteristics of complex

systems that have a memory and that can be guided by influencing the conditions affect-

ing decision-making. Decisions that have been made in the past, still influence and con-

strain decisions that need to be made today.

A final complexity involved is that governance and architecture are strongly inter-

woven. While the infrastructures and the main building blocks in both countries show

many similarities, governance is different. The differences we observe between e-govern-

ment infrastructure developments of the two countries can largely be attributed to the

degree of centralization of governance and the degree of active support given to e-govern-ment developments. Centralization or decentralization aspects of IT governance is a cen-

tral theme in literature (Sambamurthy and Zmud, 1999). Some aspects are outside the

control of the local level and need to be dealt with by the central level and vice versa.

While in Norway most attention is given to the national agencies through centralized

governance, in the Netherlands much support is given to the local governments. A result

of this combination of decentralized governance and active support by ICTU is that the

Dutch e-government landscape is fragmented and little collaboration can be observed.

Norway, initially not providing direct support to individual agencies, has taken on a dif-ferent approach: through focusing on centralized architecture development and by

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93

providing a service development framework on which individual agencies can create their

own services, coherence among the infrastructure building blocks is easier to achieve.

The analyses of both countries show that a key element for advancing infrastruc-

ture development is to ensure the alignment of the IT architecture and governance. From

our comparison it has become clear that decisions about the NEA and the governance

influence e-services delivery. While in Norway a strong central governance was in place

from the start, uniform e-services that adhere to clear architecture principles are devel-

oped by public agencies through national portals. In the Netherlands, however, more

loose governance aiming at the autonomous development of e-services accompanied by

different architectures for different types of local governments has led to more diversified

e-services provisioning tailored to local needs. This shows that in order to ensure specific

goals for e-services provisioning, governance and architecture need to be aligned.

DISCUSSION AND LIMITATIONS

The countries included in this case study share many institutional characteristics, such as

the large autonomy of local governments and executive government agencies as well as

the guidance provided on the central level by a specialized organization set up for e-gov-

ernment development. By selecting and subsequently analyzing case studies that are rep-

resentative of such decentralized public administrations, theoretical sampling allows for

analytical generalization, referring to generalization on the basis of a restricted collection

of data with the same characteristics (Yin, 1989). The findings from this study may thus

be generalized to countries that share these characteristics with Norway and the Nether-

lands, but it is uncertain whether the findings can also be generalized further.

By exploring the complexities of e-government infrastructure development, this

paper aimed to contribute to literature and practice in three ways. Firstly, by developing a

framework that identifies the state of infrastructure development in public administra-

tions. Secondly, by contributing to current literature on service infrastructures by explor-

ing the complexities involved. And thirdly, by showing the implications for governance

and architecture.

The framework presented in this paper allows for giving a straightforward andstructured overview of service infrastructure development and its guiding mechanisms.

Furthermore, the framework contributes to literature on infrastructure development by

enabling identification of typical complexities. The complexities are important to under-

stand, as they influence the shaping and emerge of the infrastructure. This framework

gives insight into the choices that are faced, as well as into the implications of these

choices as it demonstrates the interdependencies of the different aspects to e-government

infrastructure development. While existing frameworks mainly focus on the develop-

ment of e-services within the wider context of e-government, this framework providesinsight into the development of service infrastructures that can be used by government

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agencies to create their own e-services. Hence, it contributes to literature on e-govern-

ment development by providing greater insight into the backdrop of e-services develop-

ment by including aspects such as IT governance and architecture.

The complexities involved include a number of trade-offs that need to be addressed

by the central government providing guidance to e-government development as well as

by the individual organizations aiming to develop e-services. Insight into these complexi-

ties likely contributes to research and practice of service infrastructure development as

yet little systematic knowledge has been gathered on the difficulties that are faced. Jans-

sen, Chun, and Gil-Garcia (2009) provide an overview of literature on service infrastruc-

ture development demonstrating the need for further research on the difficulties faced

during development.

The cases show the importance of aligning of governance and architecture. Com-

plexities are mainly found on the interrelations between different aspects and levels.While citizens have most contact with their local governments and harmonization of

local government services can therefore lead to an increase in e-government development

and acceptance, centralized development will remain necessary to ensure standardiza-

tion and mitigate fragmentation of developments leading to duplication of efforts and

redundancy. One way to drive developments further may be to centralize architecture

development to ensure standardization in infrastructure development, and to decentral-

ize governance to enable organizations to develop their services in a way that suits them

best and thereby spur adoption. Nevertheless, a requirement is that the IT architecture

and governance should be complementary to each other. Having centralized components

without having the proper governance in place to ensure local adoption of these compo-

nents is useless. And on the other hand, if local variety of e-services is valued, governance

needs to be developed that stimulates this localization of services. Thus, service infra-

structure development needs to address trade-offs that exist between different aspects of

development and ensure alignment between IT governance and architecture.

CONCLUSION

Many countries develop e-government infrastructures to spur e-service development.However, little is known about the relation between IT governance and architecture and

about the complexities involved in this development. Current theories, frameworks, and

tools are incomplete or of limited use in helping to understand and manage the complex-

ity of these emerging interdependent infrastructures. The complexity originates from the

large number of stakeholders, shifting boundaries, balancing generality and specificity,

dealing with a wide variety of e-services, balancing the national and the local level, hetero-

geneity of the systems landscape, path dependencies, and the entanglement of governance

and architecture. Service infrastructures development is influenced and shaped by thesecomplexities. The framework developed in this paper helps to understand the elements

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95

that create these complexities. The framework shows that at least five elements should be

described to understand the infrastructure development: (1) governance; (2) architectural

methods, guidelines, and standards; (3) information infrastructure; (4) the roles of local

and national agencies; and (5) the service interactions between citizens, businesses and

public agencies.

Using this framework we compared infrastructure development in Norway and the

Netherlands. The infrastructures in both countries show many similarities, but their gov-

ernance is different. In Norway core components that provide generic centralized support

for parts of service delivery chains are developed, whereas in the Netherlands the focus is

on municipalities as one-stop-shops based on the idea that they have the best understand-

ing of the local situation. Norway, thus, has centralized IT governance, whereas in the

Netherlands this is decentralized. As a result, in Norway most policies focus on support

for national government agencies, while in the Netherlands financial support is providedto local governments. Furthermore, the differences in governance also explain differ-

ences between specific infrastructure components. For example, while Norway enables

integration by developing a centrally provided business process management building

block, in the Netherlands local governments compose and integrate the building blocks.

Whereas this has resulted in a large number of different approaches to business process

management, this does allow for local customization. Governance should, thus, be

viewed as an important contingency influencing service infrastructure development.

The cases show the complexity of infrastructure development, as many trade-offs

exist between different objectives of service infrastructures. Further research should look

at these interdependencies, such as between (de)centralized development and gover-

nance. While centralized development suggests more standardization, decentralized de-

velopment suggests a faster development and acceptation of e-government at the local

level. Important guiding mechanisms for service infrastructure development are archi-

tecture and governance. Therefore, an important finding is that architecture and gover-

nance should be complementary.

Investigating these interdependencies can benefit from comparing additional

countries and additional elements. This study only included the development of infra-

structures in two rather similar countries. To investigate other contingencies of

service infrastructure development, other countries should be included in the compari-

son too.Another possible research direction is the comparison of development methods

(including processes, methods and tools) and how components are build and put to-

gether through architecture and standards, to accommodate both run-time and design-

time usage scenarios of the infrastructure. Recommendations for further research thus

include both the wider application of the framework to include more cases as well as the

inclusion of additional aspects influencing service infrastructure development.

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C o p y r i g h t o f e - S e r v i c e J o u r n a l i s t h e p r o p e r t y o f I n d i a n a U n i v e r s i t y P r e s s a n d i t s c o n t e n t m a y

n o t b e c o p i e d o r e m a i l e d t o m u l t i p l e s i t e s o r p o s t e d t o a l i s t s e r v w i t h o u t t h e c o p y r i g h t h o l d e r ' s

e x p r e s s w r i t t e n p e r m i s s i o n . H o w e v e r , u s e r s m a y p r i n t , d o w n l o a d , o r e m a i l a r t i c l e s f o r

i n d i v i d u a l u s e .

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