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Outsource or Invest? A Multiple Case Study of Digital Government Platform Strategies

Published: 14 September 2022 Publication History

Abstract

For obtaining external resources and capabilities to improve public service delivery, involving technology and service vendors to develop digital platforms is in the consideration of many governments. However, the development of government platform is challenging, and governments often lack a clear strategic planning for their platform initiatives. This paper aims at providing insights of strategies for digital government platform development by reporting on the findings of a multiple case study in China. The strategies and outcomes of six province-level government platforms were investigated to reflect two strategic patterns, outsourcing-based or joint investment-based strategy, and their pros and cons in government platform development. The findings show that financial capacity, sensitiveness to data security, and willingness to share accountability will shape the platform strategy and result in different ways to establish platform management organizations. This study helps to understand the strategic choices for government platform initiatives and the corresponding requirements.

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  • (2024)Understanding strategies for digital government transformation: A strategic action fields perspectiveInternational Journal of Information Management10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2024.10276676(102766)Online publication date: Jun-2024

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cover image ACM Other conferences
dg.o '22: Proceedings of the 23rd Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research
June 2022
499 pages
ISBN:9781450397490
DOI:10.1145/3543434
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 14 September 2022

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Author Tags

  1. Digital government
  2. Government as a platform (GaaP)
  3. Outsourcing
  4. Platforms
  5. Public-private Partnerships

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  • Refereed limited

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dg.o 2022

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Overall Acceptance Rate 150 of 271 submissions, 55%

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  • (2024)Understanding strategies for digital government transformation: A strategic action fields perspectiveInternational Journal of Information Management10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2024.10276676(102766)Online publication date: Jun-2024

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