ICT Strategy Process in Small Dutch Municipalities

ICT Strategy Process in Small Dutch Municipalities: Exploratory research on the formulation of the ICT strategy and the accompanying effects

Boele, Bastijn (TU Delft Technology, Policy and Management)

Janssen, M.F.W.H.A. (mentor)
van der Voort, H.G. (graduation committee)
Reterink, Hans (graduation committee)

Delft University of Technology

Engineering and Policy Analysis

2021-03-05

Small municipalities are facing problems in the field of ICT. The costs of ICT have been rising for several years. Legislation is decentralized to municipalities and this makes ICT more complex for municipalities. In addition, ICT is becoming more and more essential in society and citizens have higher expectations of digital services. However, there is no political legitimacy because municipal councils have no or little affinity and knowledge of ICT. Moreover, small municipalities have less knowledge to tackle the increasingly complex ICT and lack the resources to recruited specialists. In order to tackle these problems, municipalities choose to collaborate, but collaborations seem not to have an unambiguous positive effect. This research creates insight in how a municipal ICT strategy is formed. It has been found that municipalities have to deal with many external influences and that through collaboration the most important factors of the ICT strategy process can be influenced. However, opting for collaboration results in trade-offs to be made. With the insights from this research, municipal councils can gain more in-depth knowledge about the ICT strategy process, which will result in a more legitimate strategy. In addition, this research offers municipalities insight into the trade-offs that have to be made to increase access to knowledge or reduce costs.

ICT strategy process
Municipalities
Collaboration

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:b4b86a09-b52e-40d2-a244-7e547437404a

Student theses

master thesis

© 2021 Bastijn Boele