When Willeke can get rid of paperwork: A lean infrastructure for qualified information exchange based on trusted identities

As a frequent participant in eSociety, Willeke is often preoccupied with paperwork because there is no easy to use, affordable way to act as a qualified person in the digital world. Confidential interactions take place over insecure channels like e-mail and post. This situation poses risks and costs for service providers, civilians and...

Steering the adoption of Standard Business Reporting for cross domain information exchange

Over the years, several governments around the world have introduced a version of Standard Business Reporting (SBR) for information exchange with public agencies. Their main goals are to ease the reporting burden for businesses and the regulatory burden for government agencies. This paper takes a look at the adoption numbers in the...

Panel: Removing the barriers for personal data management

In our data-driven society, both public and private organisations are struggling with issues regarding privacy and personal data. On the one hand, consumers are required to hand over more and more personal data in return for (free) online services. On the other hand, regulations increasingly demand data minimisation and informed consent....

The collaborative realization of public values and business goals: Governance and infrastructure of public-private information platforms

The scale of society's evolving challenges gradually surpasses the capacity of the public sector to address them. Coping with these challenges requires budget-short governments to look for innovative ways to transform and improve their operations and service provisioning models. While in many cases transformation starts from the inside-out ...

Challenging the Chain: Governing the Automated Exchange and Processing of Business Information

What is digital business reporting? Why do we need it? And how can we improve it? This book aims to address these questions by illustrating the rise of system-to-system information exchange and the opportunities for improving transparency and accountability. Governments around the world are looking for ways to strengthen transparency and...

Lean government: Critical success factors for XBRL-based business-to-government reporting

Lean government is all about doing better with less through the use of ICT and the realisation of process improvements. The recently introduced eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) has shown some initial success in realising lean government. Once data is stored in XBRL format, businesses can transmit it electronically to government for...

An activity theory analysis of boundary objects in cross-border information systems development for disaster management

One of the main challenges in cross-border disaster management is the development and use of information systems that cater the needs of heterogeneous relief agencies, policies, activities and cultures. Drawing upon activity theory, this paper examines cross-border information systems development for disaster management. We infuse the concept of...

A research agenda for information quality assurance in public safety networks: Information orchestration as the middle ground between hierarchical and netcentric approaches

One of the key challenges in public safety networks is to ensure a high level of information quality (IQ) during disaster response. Since many evaluation reports on disaster response efforts have revealed instances of poor IQ, both academics and practitioners are in search of information architectures that assure IQ. This article focuses on the...

Netcentric Information Orchestration: Assuring Information and System Quality in Public Safety Networks

During daily operations, relief agencies such as police, fire brigade and medical services manage information in accordance with their respective processes and organization structure. When disaster strikes, the ad-hoc combinations of such hierarchy based information systems fail to assure high information quality (IQ) and system quality (SQ) for...

Extracting principles for information management adaptability during crisis response: A dynamic capability view

During crises, relief agency commanders have to make decisions in a complex and uncertain environment, requiring them to continuously adapt to unforeseen environmental changes. In the process of adaptation, the commanders depend on information management systems for information. Yet there are still numerous reports of situations in which...

Reconsidering information management roles and capabilities in disaster response decision-making units

When disaster strikes, the emerging task environment requires relief agencies to transform from autonomous mono-disciplinary organizations into interdependent multidisciplinary decision-making units. Evaluation studies reveal that adaptation of information management to the changing task environment is difficult resulting in poor information...

Identifying and confirming information and system quality requirements for multi-agency disaster management

This paper investigates the relevance and assurance of information and system quality as requirements for information systems success during disaster management. Despite the many examples of poor information quality and poor system quality, research on the relevance and assurance of these requirements is sparse. In order to design successful...

Advances in multi-agency disaster management: Key elements in disaster research

Multi-agency disaster management requires collaboration among geographically distributed public and private organizations to enable a rapid and effective response to an unexpected event. Many disaster management systems often lack the capability to cope with the complexity and uncertainty. In this introduction to the special issues on advances...

Challenges and obstacles in sharing and coordinating information during multi-agency disaster response: Propositions from field exercises

Although various scholars have researched issues regarding disaster management, few have studied the sharing and coordinating of information during disasters. Not much empirical data is available in this field and there is sparse insight into the factors that may impede or facilitate information sharing and coordination among stakeholders. In...