· · · Institutional Repository

Cyber-attacks against companies and governments are seeing an increase in complexity and persistence. These more complex attacks are aimed at penetrating corporate and government networks to obtain classified information. Common intrusion detection methods lack in their ability to detect such complex attacks. A framework is proposed to relate attack characteristics to analysis methods and business criteria. Traditional signature based detection algorithms still remain useful but the advanced approach of the attackers requires the use of intelligent data analysis. The framework is used as a roadmap to design a system capable of detection advanced persistent threats.

Market pressure for cost-efficiency is forcing, and the implementation of XBRL is enabling, accounting firms to optimize their business processes to become more cost-efficient. While the manufacturing industry has benefited much from available BPM methodology for becoming more agile, leaner, cost-effective and customer-focused, it is still unsure how BPM should be applied in the services industry and especially in knowledge-intensive organizations for benefiting from digitalization and standardization. A case study research is performed to investigate how, and which, BPM principles can best be applied for the utilizing digitalization and standardization in knowledge-intensive organizations in the financial services industry. The case study research entails a process analysis, simulation and improvement of a business process from an accounting firm. The research suggests that existing BPR principles and Lean Management offer concrete support for improving these types of business processes using XBRL, but that it is difficult to quantitatively validate these improvements. To improve the possibilities for adequate quantitative validation of process improvements, future research should be focused upon identifying measurable indicators for the efficiency and quality of knowledge-intensive business processes (in the financial services industry).

The increasing ubiquity and capabilities of smartphones provide opportunities to combine their processing power, storage, connectivity and sensors into a shared resource pool for end-users and service providers. This is analogous to the concept of cloud computing, in which cloud computing datacenters provide a shared resource pool. Several technological architectures and prototypes exist in which smartphones themselves serve as such a mobile cloud computing resource pool. However, little guidance is available regarding the possibilities for commercialization of mobile cloud computing. This study identifies factors influencing the feasibility and viability of the mobile cloud concept in order to provide input for future mobile cloud business models. To this end the opportunities for mobile cloud to deliver multi-sided platforms are explored. Multi-sided platforms serve as matchmakers between supply and demand side customers, while the platform owner can benefit from mediating between different types of customers. Mobile cloud platforms can mediate between end-users of mobile cloud services, individuals providing smartphone resources and service providers. To evaluate the feasibility and viability of mobile cloud platforms, ecosystems theory is used to formulate a set of qualitative criteria for the role divisions, structures and performance of multi-sided platforms. The criteria have been applied in fourteen semi-structured interviews with mobile industry experts, resulting in a range of success factors and inhibitors for mobile cloud ecosystems. With regards to ecosystem role divisions it is noted that mobile cloud platforms are most likely to succeed when positioned in existing strong ecosystems with large user bases of service providers and service consumers, such as those of the handset operating systems and internet based service providers. Operators lack such ecosystems and innovation capabilities and are therefore less likely mobile cloud platform owners. However, their support may still be required as end-users incur data subscription costs and cause inter-operator traffic handoff when sharing smartphone resources via the operator network. Billing mechanisms between users and between operators may need to be adapted to take this into account. With regards to ecosystem structure a mobile cloud platform owner can benefit from the revenues obtained by providing third parties and end-users access to a shared mobile resource pool, which may include unique and desired resources such as sensors. However, this coordinating platform ownership position may be difficult to maintain as similar access to mobile resources may be obtained by installing specific-purpose applications on smartphones. Operators and handset OS developers may therefore struggle to maintain platform control as internet-based service providers can use web-based cross-platform applications to gain access to any number of smartphone resources, regardless of geography and hardware. The performance of mobile cloud ecosystems is currently considered to be hampered due to current technological limitations and market conditions. Scarce and perishable smartphone resources, limited, expensive bandwidth and lack of clear end-user sharing incentives are the most visible hurdles, along with the security, privacy and legal concerns associated with smartphone resource sharing. While some of these issues may be addressed over time with technical and network improvements, these improvements may also disrupt the need for smartphone resource sharing. Faster operator networks diminish the need to share connectivity, while increasing smartphone power and cloud computing datacenters reduce the need to offload computing tasks to other smartphones. This potential performance of mobile cloud platforms is expected to change when more collaborative services making use of multiple devices are conceived, rather than considering mobile devices as a straightforward resource pool akin to cloud computing datacenters. A shared pool of smartphone sensors is expected to lead to innovations of which both end-users and service providers can benefit. Additionally it is noted that in private or community environments such as homes and offices some of these performance hurdles may not apply, as they provide an environment where trust and cost are less of an issue and appliances are more visible than in a general purpose resource pool. Follow-up research towards mobile cloud platforms could focus on mechanisms to award smartphones users for opting in to a shared resource pool. Furthermore, operator, device and service provider centric ecosystems could be further specified in terms of role divisions, relations and platform assets shared using the success factors and inhibitors uncovered in this research as a basis. Finally, as mobile cloud can potentially seamlessly integrate with the traditional cloud, future research could explore ways to optimize whether the resources of a traditional cloud datacenter, a local mobile cloud resource or a remote mobile cloud resource are acquired depending on cost and connection properties.

Software as a Service (SaaS) has been utilized as a means to deliver an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system since the last decade. This software delivery model enables Small Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs) to outsource the system from vendors based on pay-per-use or pay-per-period without having to do prior investments. Yet, SaaS model is still immature in concept and the unforeseeable uncertainty is relatively high because of different application specificity and behavioral acceptance for adopting a SaaS-based application. In the field of ERP and SaaS, there is no literature, which discussed about what benefits can be achieved from adopting a SaaS ERP system. Moreover, differences in opinion about SaaS benefits have emerged from the perspectives of critical actors, e.g. an agreement toward cost-savings and time-savings among vendors and adopters. This research explores the benefits of delivering SaaS ERP system within SMEs by considering three perspectives, which are the perspective of vendors as SaaS providers, the perspective of SMEs as SaaS adopters, and the perspective of lifecycle process of SaaS. In order to accommodate differences which might arise when conceptualizing these perspectives, each perspective is directed to a set of common goals and benefits, namely the benefits of Service Oriented Computing (SOC). For this reason, we developed a methodology for assessing benefits of SaaS that consists of three main steps, which are understanding, conceptualizing, and estimating the benefits of SaaS. Research data was collected from interviews and questionnaires to appreciate benefits from the three perspectives. Following this, the structures of SaaS benefits were conceptualized for each perspective. Then, we estimated the benefits of SaaS qualitatively by indicating such benefits whitin a case study, and quantitatively by applying Partial Least Squares (PLS) Path modeling method within which the structures of SaaS benefits were developed through SmartPLS software. Our findings show that the proposed methodology can be used to realize the benefits of SaaS in more structured way through the models of SaaS benefits that accommodate the three perspectives. Although the models are weakly validated due to limited research data, rich descriptions of SaaS benefits pertaining to the delivery of SaaS ERP system within SMEs can be gained from the structures of SaaS benefits. Furthermore, a sound understanding to overcome differences in opinion about SaaS benefits can be expected through this comprehensive methodology since each perspective in realizing the benefits is directed to the achievement of the benefits of SOC. Yet, we suggest further research for the task of validating the models with more reliable research data. The comprehensive methodology can be improved by enhancing variables and factors that define the benefits and can be used as a best practice to improve readiness of adopting a SaaS-based application in general, and a SaaS ERP system in particular.

The use of a common set of semantic metadata is seen as one of the most promising developments in information exchange among public and private parties. Semantic metadata is data that provides context to core data and helps to convey the actual meaning and perspective of the information that is shared among people, systems and organizations. All information sharing activities are aimed at one objective: having the right information available to the end user, with as little loss, time delay and clutter as possible. Using a common set of semantics in electronic information exchange is believed to further reduce costs and time of information exchange, increase information quality and remove many of the unforeseen side effects and complexities of interconnecting stand alone information systems. Semantic metadata management is required in order to use semantic metadata effectively in a PPIC. A common vocabulary is of little use if it does not match organizational requirements. The main difficulty in semantic metadata management is that it touches on many elements of the organizational architecture. Semantic metadata management is primarily an alignment effort and partially a standardization effort. It includes the alignment of processes, technology and data models, both within and beyond organizational boundaries. However, many existing semantic metadata management approaches are ad hoc and lack a coordinated and premeditated approach. There are many theories and studies on individual topics related to metadata management, but a documented approach that puts all elements within the given scope in perspective is non-existent. This master thesis project was aimed at aiding those tasked with implementing a coordinated form of semantic metadata management within the domain of Public Private Information Chains (PPIC). The problem was approached from an enterprise architecture point of view. This means a broad, holistic view was applied. A PPIC is a digital information chain consisting of both public and private parties that is centered around a certain information process with a high rate of repetition and mutual responsibilities. This research project started out with a literature review and expert interviews. Best practices were extracted and tested in an in depth case study with two complementary cases in Dutch government organizations. The main research question has been answered by developing a reference architecture for semantic metadata management in a PPIC. A reference architecture is a generic blueprint that provides a holistic approach for a specific architecture archetype. It puts all elements required for semantic metadata into perspective making it easier to structure the many pieces of the puzzle. The reference architecture uses a format that on the one hand provides enough rigor to ensure interoperability, while on the other hand provides enough leeway to fit organizations with different characteristics or specific requirements. The mixture of rigor and leeway has been achieved by using both prescriptive design principles and tradeoffs that extend the design space. The reference architecture is centered around mitigating the main challenge in this domain and reinforcing one of the main potentials: reduction of complexity. Much of the complexity regarding information exchange in PPIC’s is artificial, not inherently present. Challenges have arisen by creating connections between systems, processes and organizations that were never designed from the outset to be interconnected in such a way. The semantic metadata management approach that is introduced in this research has two pillars. First, a conceptual model is introduced to act as a single point of reference between all components, reducing the number of existing relations. Second, the relations between all components in the organizational architecture are actively managed. This proactive approach reduces incidents and improves information quality. The solution presented in this thesis is generic. The design principles and tradeoffs apply in a similar way to both private and public organizations. Moreover, it applies to organizations with different maturity levels in technology, data management and processes and with a varying level of ambition on this topic. In an information chain the diversity in stakeholders and their interests is a given situation. A certain degree of commitment and effort can be expected from the stakeholders in the chain, but semantic metadata management should not interfere with the private processes or bring an additional burden. The evaluated reference architecture presented in this study deals with this problem. Even though the solution is primarily aimed at providing benefits in inter-organizational information exchange, it is useful for internal use in individual organizations as well.

Introduction Daily approximately 150.000 individual travel movements are conducted by passengers and Schiphol-workers to and from Schiphol. For this they use cars, taxis, busses, shut-tles, trains, motorcycles, scooters and bicycles. As such Schiphol is Holland’s biggest mobility node. Understandably this makes accessibility of vital importance. Within Schiphol the Traffic & Transportation (T&T) department has the responsibility for the accessibility of Schiphol. Separated in several modalities (public trans-port/taxi/private transport/roads) the goal is to improve the accessibility for Schiphol’s customers (passengers/personnel/business partners/cargo). T&T has the ambition to become “Europe´s most accessible multimodal hub”. To achieve this the performance on the quality of accessibility will have to increase while facing an increased passenger volume and tougher constraints. Therefore increased insight in the performance of the accessibility operation is required. In short: the rele-vant performance delivered by T&T on airport accessibility has to be measured. Design tracks The objectives of this thesis is to (1) Design a method that can measure T&T´s perform-ance and (2) Create a system that uses the designed method to report on the perform-ance. To achieve these two objectives, two design tracks are undertaken Design Track I The first step is defining what is considered relevant performance for T&T. Through research and interviews, relevant performance is regarded as the quality of accessibility delivered to the client. This can be measured by the amount in which the demands of a client group on the quality of accessibility are met by the characteristics of a modality. To be able to measure the regarded performance, the offered accessibility is analysed. It is found that T&T can influence the quality characteristics of each modality based on the relation with the stakeholder that operates the modality. There are three levels of influ-ence: Control, Guide and Influence. To get more insight in the accessibility demand of the different client groups (Passen-gers and Schiphol workers) an experiment is conducted. This experiment indicates a different demand profile on accessibility between the client groups, especially towards price and information. A combination of literature on measuring accessibility and internal Schiphol documents is used to declare factors and criteria that determine the quality perception of the client on accessibility. Six factors (cost, time, reliability, quality, convenience and information) and 34 underlying quality criteria are declared. To measure these criteria there is a need for data points and sources that report on these criteria. A table of needed data points, sources and expected unities is created. As it is found that the unities of the data points differ greatly and it is unknown what levels of performance are considered adequate, a measuring method is proposed that states the increase or decline of performance on the criteria. This is done through indi-ces that are calculated by comparing performance on two different moments in time. The declaration of 7 formulates enables the design of a measurement method that puts weights on the calculated indices. These weights are based on the found demand pro-files. The criteria that are considered most important in the accessibility perception of a certain client group, are given a higher weight, resulting in a bigger influence on the overall index on airport accessibility. Combining all criteria, factors and weights on the different modalities and client groups with the seven formulas, gives the possibility to create an overall index on the delivered quality of accessibility of an airport. Design Track II As less than 40% of the needed data sources is available, it is not possible to implement the developed method in a Performance Measurement System (PMS). Therefore an alternative system is created. Based on an analysis of available data sources, supportive systems and existing KPI, a PMS System is developed. This system is based on Excel and can present indicators on a monthly basis. The PMS shows a comparison with the pre-ceding month and the same month one year ago. To enhance the insightfulness, coloured arrows are used to show high, medium of no decrease/increase between the periods. Also a graph is presented in the same fashion graphs are currently presented, for each indicator. Indicators are coupled for each mo-dality. This gives modality managers the possibility to quickly look for the most relevant indicators. As the developed PMS is not able to indicate the client perception of the current quality od accessibility, a second system is created. This system uses public messages on online social media (mostly twitter) to measure the sentiment on the accessibility quality of-fered on train, bus and taxis servicing Schiphol. The system is able to present the amount of positive, neutral and negative messages on a modality. This enables manag-ers to react on incidents and to see the change in perception over a longer period of time. Conclusion A first draft design of a method to measure the quality of airport accessibility is created. Implementation is not possible to a shortage on data sources. It therefore proposed to start developing the needed data points. If more than 60% of the needed data is avail-able, the designed measurement method can be implemented. It is advised to use the available Qlikview Business Intelligent system for an improved PMS. Furthermore both design steps are first ventures into creating a system to measure per-formance at T&T. Due to limitations in time and resources, several assumptions had to be done. To increase the validity of the indicators presented by the measurement method, several recommendations on improvement are done.

The research carried out had the objective to find additional means of income for the Hague Justice Portal (HJP), a website owned by the Hague Academic Coalition (HAC) which is composed of eight different members. The increasing dissatisfaction felt at the HAC (members) and the municipality of The Hague regarding the HJP’s failure to find other means of income, besides the funding from its members and the municipality, was the stimulus for this research. Several issues surround this objective with the main factors being the following; the HAC members have the feeling that the HJP adds little value to their organization, thus they provide little support. This leads to a level of inactivity resulting in the HJP having a static business model, resulting in no success of finding additional means of income. Furthermore the current subsidy to the HAC stops by the end of 2011 and how or if it is continued remains unknown. The HAC members are not the only stakeholders for finding additional means of income, the total network of content suppliers, funding agencies, visitors, technology providers and advertisers need to be considered to achieve this objective. For this reason the following research question has been raised and answered: How can a business model for the Hague Justice Portal be designed which fits and meets the constraints and objectives, and is feasible? After carrying out the stakeholders-, external business- and visitor analysis it followed that advertisers are most eligible to meet the goal of finding additional income. Visitors are unlikely to be a source of income since the majority are either still studying, doing an internship or just started a job and thus have little budget to spend. More so since the most popular services for this user group are the vacancies and event calendar, which can also be found elsewhere for free, although some aggregating needs to be done. Visitors have shown to be interested in certain parts of the HJP, and not use the HJP as a total product which greatly reduces chances of making them pay. Public organizations need to lower their expenditure, thus also for subsidizing organizations, and rather focus on cooperation. By understanding the limitations surrounding HJP, it became possible to develop design options with the intention to find income but also to enhance the HJP, acting as a catalyst for the income generating design options. A clear distinction could be seen between the design options requiring or benefiting from a new Content Management System (CMS) and those who didn’t. For many of the HJP improvement design options, not only the HAC (members) would benefit, on the contrary, those benefiting the most are the other stakeholders. This on itself is no problem once accepted that the HJP is there for the visitors who may also be the HAC (members) itself. Instead of pushing the HJP onto the market the demand from the various (paying) stakeholders should be central. The distinction between the design options led to the development of three scenarios; 1) keep the current CMS and do little with advertisements, 2) keep the current CMS and maximize advertisement income and 3) get a new CMS and realign the business and IT in order to achieve the objective of generating additional income. Scenario 1 will result in support dropping of visitor numbers within 1 to 2 years and possibly lead to the closure of the HJP. Scenario 2 (estimated yearly costs €108.750,-) tries to maximize advertisement income (estimated €15.000,-) by catering to advertiser demands but also by doing so for the visitors, the HAC (members) and the HJP. Although income generation will be likely, this will be depended on the amount of action undertaken by the HJP and HAC (members). Scenario 3 (estimated yearly and investments costs €100.150,- and €33.000,-) is the most desirable state since for the HJP when decided upon can last for several years and tackle many of the issues found and should lead to additional income (estimated €27.500,-) and added value for the HAC (members). Discontinuing the HJP will result in a tremendous drop in expenditure for the HAC, several pleased HAC members as they will no longer be required to fund the HJP and support for the HAC from the municipality of The Hague will go down. If the HJP wants to generate more income, the HJP, its editors, the HAC and its members will need, to adjust the mainly academic focus and also include a more commercial one. It is unlikely that HAC (members) would like to commit themselves of taking the step towards scenario 3 at once, considering the uncertainty of income being generated, them receiving added value, the commencement of the new Institute of Global Justice and the continuation of the subsidy from the municipality of The Hague. Instead a process is recommend by implementing the recommendations of scenario 2, and together with more clarity of the uncertainties and risks, use the outcome of this process as input for a ‘go / no go’ decision moment. Knowledge gathered prior to this moment could be used as input for a new HJP once a decision has been made. Other options besides continuing with scenario 3 are to continue in a ‘lighter’ version requiring less budget, cooperate with the IGJ or to stop.

Cloud computing market is expected to grow rapidly in the next five years. Even though Software-as-a-Service and Infrastructure-as-a-Service solutions will dominate most of the market, Platform-as-a-Service solution is forecasted to have the fastest-growing segment, especially in Western Europe. On the other hand, cloud computing is also argued to be the new playing ground for Telecommunication industry. As the industry facing a threat for just being the network “bit piper”, telecom operators might find a new revenue source within the cloud computing domain. The issues explained above have led us to conduct a research that aimed at two objectives. First is to give guidance to larger enterprise companies in the Netherlands on how to capture values from PaaS offering. Second, this research aimed to identify whether telecom companies could create particular new business value and opportunities from the PaaS service provision. Therefore this study raised a challenging main questions: “What factors are important for large enterprise clients to adopt Platform-as-a-Service in order to capture the business value that is offered from Platform-as-a-Service offering, and what are the strategic implications of the Platform-as-a-Service adoption for Telecom industry?” To answer the main questions, five research sub-questions were formulated. A theoretical approach from business model literature is used to guide answering the main research questions. A conceptual model of PaaS adoption factors was developed, which is based on the STOF business model framework. Analysis of PaaS market in the Netherlands was conducted among 9 client companies and 3 PaaS provider companies, in order to validate the conceptual model. The results showed that the PaaS market in the Netherlands are still immature, thus making the validation of the conceptual model for PaaS adoption hard to be generalized. Modification of the analysis approach was taken that enable us to analyze the conceptual model for SaaS adoption as well. Our study found that there are several factors within the Service domain that are important for clients when they consider which applications to be moved to PaaS or SaaS environment. The most important factor is criticality of application that wants to be moved to the cloud. These factors from the Service domain influence client’s technical requirements on Security, Quality of Service, and System Integration issues. Furthermore, our research found that there are several factors that client take into account when they about to choose PaaS and SaaS providers. These factors serve as assessment framework whether the providers’ profile can meet clients’ requirements. Our finding shows that Branding is the most important factor of PaaS and SaaS providers. Branding is important because it is closely associated with trustworthiness. Moreover, trust also becomes really important, because in PaaS and SaaS implementation clients are losing control of their application data. In addition, our finding also shows that the factor of data location is really important in PaaS and SaaS adoption. A key stakeholder, namely the regulators, drives this data location factor. We also found that clients perceived system integrators and network providers as the other important key stakeholder in the provision of PaaS and SaaS services. Furthermore, our study also found that telecom companies could play two roles in cloud computing domain in order to create new business value, and hence making new revenue source. The first role is to be Cloud service provider. This role means that telecom companies could exploit their main resources of Internet network infrastructure to deliver a guaranteed and high level end-to-end cloud services (both PaaS or SaaS services). The second role is to be Cloud service broker. This role exploits telecom companies’ resource of broad customer base and customer relationship in order to mediate cloud providers and the clients. Being cloud service broker enables telecom companies to gain monetary incentives by means of revenue sharing. Our study concludes that clients need to take into account factors in the four domains of Service, Technology, Organization, and Finance in order to capture the value of PaaS and SaaS offering. On top of that, clients need to take into consideration the regulation applied in order to legally implement cloud computing solutions. Clients also need to acknowledge the importance of system integrators and network providers in utilizing cloud computing services. This study adds several main contributions to the literature. Firstly, this study has made the first attempt to construct an adoption model for PaaS and SaaS specifically. Secondly, this study has contributed to business model theory, particularly by extending the applicability of STOF model. Thirdly, this study confirms the existing literature that describes key stakeholders on cloud computing. On top of that, we contribute by adding Network Provider as another key stakeholder. Nevertheless, this study bears some limitations. Due to small sample size, this research serves as means of first validation of the constructed model. We are aware that further research can be conducted to do more extensive validation by means of survey research. However due to the immaturity of cloud computing market, especially PaaS, we suggest that further research on PaaS is better to be conducted later to wait for the market to be developed. Besides the sampling issue, our research was not able to validate our findings on telecom companies role in cloud computing. Further research could focus on validating our results empirically through involvement of industry experts.

When designing a Single-Window in which multiple organizations, both governmental and businesses, are involved, security is a key aspect. Nevertheless agreeing on security measures is difficult as organizations might have different security policies, heterogeneous systems design and various levels of ambitions. Principles are heuristics that can help to make sure information security is maintained in these multi-actor networks. Yet there is no overview of such information security principles available in the literature. This thesis proposes principles to help engineering a secure end-to-end information system in a business to government (B2G) setting. There are already a lot of frameworks on the topic of security, but they do not cover all security aspects of an information sharing network with public-private parties instead of one organization. The principles presented consolidate insights from literature and a case study.

To provide up-to-date services towards citizens and businesses, administrative organizations need to make sure their business services and processes and supporting applications are flexible and agile enough to deal with changing situations and ensure legal compliance all the time. The research presented in this dissertation provides a reference architecture to improve the flexibility and agility of business processes for administrative organizations. The reference architecture was tested using a prototype and two pilot services according to scenarios from different organizational contexts. The test indicates that the implementation of the reference architecture allows for quick adaption of business processes at low cost, and ensures the legal compliance of the business processes.

The use of information and communication technology (ICT) for international trade is increasingly impor- tant. The EU-funded projects ITAIDE and CASSANDRA propose further innovations to solve the trade con- trol and facilitation dilemma.

Companies do a lot of mergers and acquisitions as part of their corporate strategy. This has been a trend for some time now. Another important trend is that companies use increasing amounts of IT in their business to accomplish different things. The complexity of integrating IT systems during an M&A is something that is often forgotten when engaging in M&A activities. Research into this complexity has so far not yielded much evidence as to the exact role that IT plays within M&As. One of the difficulties for researchers is that measuring the outcome of M&As is not done consistently and is therefore hard to compare to other M&As. The goal of this research is to fill this gap. The main question is: What should a Business-IT merger performance measurement system look like? The system that was designed in response to the question consists of the following factors: transaction costs, information costs, business process consolidation, enterprise system consolidation, customer satisfaction, user satisfaction, business opportunities, and IT opportunities. The first two factors are the financial benefits, transaction costs are about the boundaries of the firm and a merger should yield a more efficient organization-al form this is measured by transaction costs. Information costs is the costs of retrieving information from IT systems, the more complex the systems the higher these costs. Therefore the information costs should rise initially because getting information from two different systems and combining them should be more difficult than after the integration when the systems have become one. The business processes and the accompanying enterprise systems are measured based on their consolidation. The level of integration and the ambitions for the new company drive these measures. A company cannot survive without customers and their satisfaction will be measured. On the IT side the users of the systems are the customers and their satisfaction will be measured. Together these last two factors are part of the service-profit chain. The final two factors are busi-ness and IT opportunities. These are aimed at the benefits of the merger that were not or cannot be specified beforehand. A survey was conducted to explore the validity of this system. The response was very low but given these respondents the factors were all deemed appropriate, except for IT opportunities. Further research into the validity, especially in case studies and other “real” situations is necessary. The proposed performance measurement system further specifies to measure the performance of each of these factors starting one year before the merger and for five years after the merger. Most factors are meas-ured using indexes that allow for comparison of different M&As both within one company and between com-panies.

IT-induced public sector transformation investigates the organizational changes that are undertaken to transform public administrations using information technology (IT). While IT made governments more efficient, it is unclear whether it will also make them more effective in creating public value for citizens and businesses. This study investigates the outcomes of IT-induced transformation and the factors that influence these outcomes. It finds that transformed organizations do not emerge on the short term; IT-induced transformation often remains a promise of IT projects rather than an outcome. Instead of realizing organizational change, governments focus on setting up governance. While many of the public sector IT-projects traditionally aim to improve service delivery to citizens and businesses, in practice, they more often create better enforcement and control for government organizations.

Governments aim to improve service delivery towards citizens and businesses. One of the main trends in this area is that organisations are increasingly trying to integrate service delivery by using information and communication technology (ICT). Service integration is necessary as individual service offerings are often just a part of a bigger process. This overall process does not stop at the boundaries of individual organisations, or at the boundary between the public and the private sector. Therefore, in order to improve service delivery, the service providers have to collaborate and integrate their services across organisational boundaries. The challenges that these collaborations face are varied, including heterogeneous organisations, a variety of processes, and fragmented information systems. How can we deal with these challenges to realise integrated service delivery? It is this question that is the background of this dissertation. It is addressed by exploring the interdependence in integrated service delivery, provided by networks of public and private organisations. Ultimately, the dissertation improves the understanding of the coordination of such public-private service networks.