Information and communication technologies (ICT) are one of the key vehicles in enabling the reform of public administration. Public organizations have introduced enterprise architecture (EA) methods to manage their ICT assets and to improve the quality, efficiency and interoperability of public services. In Finland, the Act on Information Management Governance in Public Administration, making the use of EA mandatory for the central and local government institutions, was enacted in late 2011. For the present, however, concrete results from EA efforts are moderate. Most of the public organizations are still struggling with the adoption of this new policy. Not many studies of the problems, or the critical success factors (CSF) of EA adoption process can be found, even though this understanding is essential in enabling any later stages of the EA life cycle. The goal of our research was first, to identify the problems that organizations encounter while adopting EA and then, by analyzing these problems, to develop a model of CSFs of EA introduction for public organizations. Qualitative and quantitative data were collected over the span of several years, using different techniques in a triangulation setting. Grounded theory (GT) was used as an approach for the data collection and analysis. GT allowed us to inductively develop an empirically grounded theoretical model about this substantive area that lacks previous studies. The result, the proposed model characterizes the critical problems in relation to the classes of CSFs. This raises the argument that the CSFs of EA adoption must be of dynamic nature. The detailed content of the CSF are specific to an organizational environment. They are also interrelated, and a strong CSF can be exploited to reinforce the weaker ones. The research contributes to the theoretical bodies of knowledge of EA and CSFs of organizational change invoked by ICT developments. It also suggests how the current capabilities of an organization can be turned into drivers of successful EA adoption. Therefore, the results are of interest to researchers, as well as practitioners. PhD disseration.
Published in 2014
Publisher: Jyväskylä studies in computing
https://jyx.jyu.fi/dspace/handle/123456789/44513
Date added: 02/24/2018
Enterprise Architecture