John Krogstie
email: krogstie@idi.ntnu.no

Comparing Private and Public Sector on Information Systems Development and Maintenance Efficiency

Keywords: e-government, information systems development and maintenance, public vs. private sector

This paper provides a comparison between public and private organizations on key figures relative to the information systems support activities. Many have claimed that public sector has a less satisfactory conduct of information system support than private sector. In this article we present selected data from survey investigations performed among Norwegian organizations on how they conduct information systems development and maintenance. This investigation has earlier been compared with similar investigations of this sort. A major finding from the previous comparisons is that even if we witness large changes in the underlying implementation technology and approaches used, a number of aspects such as the overall percentage of time used for maintaining and evolving systems in production compared to time used for development is remarkably stable. When we compare public and private organizations in the last survey, we find a small difference on some variables, but these are not statistically significant, thus cannot be used to conclude that IT development and evolutions is conducted more poorly in public sector than in private sector.

Introduction

According to Heeks [START_REF] Heeks | Implementing and Managing eGovernment[END_REF] "Most eGovernment systems fail. They are either total failures, in which the system is never implemented or is implemented, but immediately abandoned; or they are partial failures, in which major goals for the system are not attained and/or there are significant undesirable outcomes". Also many other authors report on what appears to be more problems in the public than the private sector ITdevelopment. In [START_REF] Moløkken-Østvold | Effort and schedule estimation of software development projects[END_REF] it is reported that "Public projects had an average effort overrun of 67%, as opposed to the 21% average in private projects. This observed difference appears to be caused by systematic differences between private and public organizations found at 1) the political level, 2) the organizational level, and 3) and the individual level". A number of reports indicate that this is a challenge experienced internationally [START_REF] Flak | What is the Value of eGovernment -and How can we actually realize it[END_REF] in OECD countries, USA and in the UK [START_REF]Government and IT -"a recipe for rip-offs": time for a new approach[END_REF]. A reason these failures get so well-known though, is actually because they are public, thus information about success and failure is also public information, something which is not the case in the private sector. Failure is happening both in public and private sector, and usually, the failures are only partial; most systems get delivered and are used in some way. Since most work on IT is not on developing new systems, but on maintenance, operation and user-support [START_REF] Davidsen | A longitudinal study of development and maintenance Information and Software Technology[END_REF], an alternative way to compare IT efficiency than only looking at the development efficiency, is looking upon how work is distributed in the ITorganization, and the amount being done on value-adding work. Application systems are valuable when they provide information in a manner that enables people to meet their objectives more effectively [START_REF] Boehm | Software economics: status and prospect[END_REF]. An application system is part of an encompassing organizational system, which in turn is part of a broader business environment. This environment of change that an organization must address implies that the supporting information systems also must be easily adaptable. As stated already in [START_REF] Brooks | No silver bullet[END_REF], it is one of the essential difficulties with application systems that they are under a constant pressure of change. Given the intrinsic evolutionary nature of the sources of system needs as described above, it should come as no surprise that specifications and the related information system must evolve as well [START_REF] Boehm | Software economics: status and prospect[END_REF][START_REF] Lehman | Laws of Software Evolution Revisited LNCS 1149[END_REF]. The goal of both development activities and maintenance activities is to keep the overall information system support of the organization relevant to the organization, meaning that it supports the fulfillment of organizational goals. A lot of the activities usually labeled 'maintenance', are in this light value-adding activates, enabling the users of the systems to do new task. On the other hand, a large proportion of the 'new' systems being developed are so-called replacement systems, mostly replacing the existing systems without adding much to what end-users can do with the overall application systems portfolio of the organization. Based on this argumentation we have earlier developed the concept application portfolio upkeep as a high-level measure to evaluate important aspects of to what extent an organization is able to evolve their application system portfolio efficiently. How application portfolio upkeep is different from maintenance is described further below.

In this paper, we present results from a survey-investigation performed in Norwegian organizations in this area during the end of 2008. We have earlier compared the overall results with similar investigations done in 2003, 1998 and 1993 [6, 7], finding a stable overall pattern of distribution of work from the last three investigations. We will in this paper look more closely at the results from the last investigation, comparing figures from public and private organizations. Norway has quite a number of companies which are defined as private, but yet having substantial public ownership, the state being a major shareholder. Also, a lot of previous public organizations have recently been transformed to private companies or state owned limited companies or other kinds of organizations with varying degrees of freedom being run more according to private business principles than what was usual some decades ago. On the other hand we find certain important traits among public organizations e.g. that they all have to abide to the same non-optimal rule of procurement and development of ITsolutions when external companies are involved in developing the requirements to a system, they are not allowed to be involved in the implementation of the system [START_REF] Følstad | User Involvement in e-Government Development Projects[END_REF] making such a dichotomy between private and public companies meaningful. Thus our core research question is: Is information systems development support conducted in a less optimal way in the public sector, compared to the private sector in Norway.

We will first give definitions of some of the main terms used within information systems evolution. We describe the research method, including a number of more detailed hypotheses spawned from the field detailing the above research question, before the main results from our investigation are presented. Then a closer investigation on the differences between private and public sector respondents are presented. The last section summarizes our results and presents ideas for further work.

Definition of Core Concepts

Maintenance has traditionally been divided into three types: corrective, adaptive and perfective [15] inspired by, e.g. Swanson [START_REF] Swanson | The dimensions of maintenance Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Software Engineering[END_REF]. Maintenance is defined as the process of modifying a software system after delivery to production.

1. Corrective maintenance is performed to correct faults in hardware and software. 2. Adaptive maintenance is performed to make the computer program usable in a changed environment 3. Perfective maintenance is performed to improve the performance, maintainability, or other attributes of a computer program. Perfective maintenance has been divided into enhancive maintenance [START_REF] Chapin | Software Maintenance Types -A Fresh View[END_REF] and non-functional perfective maintenance. Enhancive maintenance implies changes and additions to the functionality offered to the users by the system which is also included as part of perfective maintenance [START_REF] Lientz | Software Maintenance Management[END_REF]. Non-functional perfective maintenance implies improvements to the quality and other features being important for the developer and maintainer of the system, such as modifiability. Non-functional perfective maintenance thus includes what is often termed preventive maintenance, but also such things as improving the performance and security of the system.

In addition to the temporal distinction between development and maintenance, we have introduced the concepts application portfolio evolution and application portfolio upkeep. Some writers provide more detailed overview of maintenance tasks [START_REF] Chapin | Types of Software Evolution and Software Maintenance[END_REF][START_REF] Jones | The Economics of Software Maintenance in the Twenty First Century[END_REF]. Jones [START_REF] Jones | The Economics of Software Maintenance in the Twenty First Century[END_REF] has in total 21 categories, also including user-support as part of maintenance; an area looked upon as belonging to 'additional work' in most other investigations.

Research Method

The investigation was a continuation of a longitudinal study on information systems development and maintenance in Norwegian organizations. The original reason for doing a survey investigation was to get a better overview of the general problems that organizations seemed to face on providing information systems support. Since the situation in individual organizations differs very much from year to year, a survey method was preferred instead of a case study method to get an aggregated view. Such investigations had at that time not been done in Norway, and it was a natural choice to do a survey similar to what had been done in other countries like USA [START_REF] Kitchenham | Preliminary guidelines for empirical research in software engineering[END_REF][START_REF] Nosek | Software maintenance management: Changes in the last decade[END_REF][START_REF] Swanson | Maintaining Information Systems in Organizations, Wiley Series in Information Systems[END_REF].

Our survey form was implemented in the SurveyMonkey web-tool and invitations were distributed by e-mail to 300 Norwegian organizations. The organizations were randomly selected from the list of member organizations of The Norwegian Computer Society -NCS. (NCS has currently around 1000 member organizations). Some of the selected respondents had marked that they did not want to receive request from SurveyMonkey or had changed their e-mail address. Thus only 278 of the invitations were delivered to the selected organizations (although we do not know if they were submitted further to the appropriate recipient within the organization).

The survey form contained 48 questions including demographic data. The contents of the form were based on previous investigations within this area; especially those described in [START_REF] Holgeid | A study of development and maintenance in Norway: Assessing the efficiency of information systems support using functional maintenance[END_REF][START_REF] Krogstie | Software maintenance in Norway: A survey investigation[END_REF][START_REF] Krogstie | A Longitudinal Study of Development and Maintenance in Norway: Report from the 2003 Investigation[END_REF][START_REF] Lientz | Characteristics of application software maintenance[END_REF][START_REF] Nosek | Software maintenance management: Changes in the last decade[END_REF][START_REF] Swanson | Maintaining Information Systems in Organizations, Wiley Series in Information Systems[END_REF].

According to Galtung [START_REF] Følstad | User Involvement in e-Government Development Projects[END_REF], the minimum sample size that is meaningful in a survey is 40 units. Earlier survey-investigations in the area of development of application systems toward a comparable population had given a response rate of about 22% [START_REF] Holgeid | A study of development and maintenance in Norway: Assessing the efficiency of information systems support using functional maintenance[END_REF][START_REF] Krogstie | Software maintenance in Norway: A survey investigation[END_REF][START_REF] Krogstie | A Longitudinal Study of Development and Maintenance in Norway: Report from the 2003 Investigation[END_REF] and the response rate of similar surveys has been around 20-25% (e.g., [START_REF] Lientz | Characteristics of application software maintenance[END_REF][START_REF] Nosek | Software maintenance management: Changes in the last decade[END_REF]. Thus an answer ratio of approximately 20% was expected also in this investigation. 79 responses were returned, giving a response rate of 28%. Out of these, 67 responses could be used for the analysis since the additional 12 responses were incomplete. 20 of these 67 responses were from organizations in the public sector.

The forms were filled in by people with long experience with IT-related work (average 17.5 years), most being the IT director in the organization. Of the respondents, 57 out of 67 (85%) indicated that IT was of extremely [START_REF] Chapin | Types of Software Evolution and Software Maintenance[END_REF] to large (4) strategic importance for the organization (on a Likert scale from 5 to 1). This indicates that application systems support including own development and maintenance is an area of importance for the majority of respondents.

Previous Investigations

We have earlier compared some of the results of the last investigation with the results of similar investigations [START_REF] Davidsen | A longitudinal study of development and maintenance Information and Software Technology[END_REF][START_REF] Davidsen | Information Systems Evolution over the Last 15 Years[END_REF][START_REF] Krogstie | Work distribution, Methodology, and Technology for ISD and Mainten-ance: Trends over the last 30 years[END_REF]. A number of later investigations on the distributions of work have been done, but they typically focus on the distribution of maintenance tasks only [START_REF] Gupta | An Empirical Study of Software Changes in Statoil ASA -Origin, Priority Level and Relation to Component Size[END_REF][START_REF] Lee | An Empirical Study of Software Maintenance of a Web-Based Java Application[END_REF][START_REF] Schach | Determining the Distribution of Maintenance Categories: Survey versus Measurement[END_REF], many only looking on the situation in one organization.

The data was exported from SurveyMonkey as Excel-files, and these were imported into SPSS. Statistical significance of some of the results is determined using the two-tailed Student t-test for normally distributed data and the Mann-Whitney non-parametric test when the data to be compared where not normally distributed. To decide what type of test to perform the variables used in the comparisons were tested for normality. Where either the Shapiro-Wilks (S-W Sign) and/or the Kolmogorov-Smirnov (Lilliefors-Sign) significance levels were less than 0.05, we used the nonparametric Mann-Whitney test. Statistically significant results are highlighted in the result section using boldface font using a significance level of 0.05.

Potential Threats to Validity

The results of our study should be interpreted cautiously as there are several potential threats to validity. This discussion is based on recommendations given in [START_REF] Jørgensen | Empirical Studies of Software Maintenance[END_REF][START_REF] Kitchenham | Preliminary guidelines for empirical research in software engineering[END_REF].

Population. The sample of our study was initially intended to represent the population of Norwegian organizations with own development and maintenance work. Since a substantial number of the major Norwegian organizations of this type are members of NCS we chose the around 1000 member companies of NCS as our population. This includes in addition to all large organizations in Norway, also organizations within the IT-industry. We emphasized that it was the organizations own IT-activity we were asking about. Some of the responses that we had to dismiss were from IT-companies not having substantial own IT-activities. As described above, we distributed our survey forms to a random selection of 300 NCS member-companies. Other studies also use member lists as a source of subjects, e.g. [START_REF] Lientz | Software Maintenance Management[END_REF]. In particular, the same source of subjects was used in the Norwegian studies in 2003, 1998 and 1993.

Respondents Most of the persons who responded were IT managers. They may have different views of the reality than developers, maintainers and users. For example, [START_REF] Jørgensen | Empirical Studies of Software Maintenance[END_REF][START_REF] Schach | Determining the Distribution of Maintenance Categories: Survey versus Measurement[END_REF] found that manager estimates of the proportion of effort spent on corrective maintenance were too high. Since the respondents from both public and private sector were IT managers, we would not expect this to influence the comparisons.

Response Rate and Number of Respondents.

The response rate of 28% can be argued to be low, although it is higher than in the previous investigations. According to [START_REF] Saunders | Research methods for business students[END_REF], it is common for Internet and e-mail surveys with a response rate of 11 % or lower. Still, a problem with a low response rate is that the respondents may not be representative of the population.

Quality of Data

On some of the questions, we were particularly interested in the quality of the answers, recognizing that some of the information called for might not be easily obtainable. Answers to the quantitative questions were checked relative to each other for control, and where there were discrepancies the respondents were contacted. The remarks made on the questions gave more insight into the answers. We qualified for instance all data regarding distribution of work both in our study and in the earlier studies without finding significant differences on the variables we have used in the hypothesis testing between those reporting having good data and those coming with qualified guesses.

Interpretation of Terms.

Achieving consistent answers requires that the respondents have a common understanding of the terms used in the survey form. This may be difficult to achieve in practice. For example, Jørgensen [START_REF] Jørgensen | Empirical Studies of Software Maintenance[END_REF] found that the respondents used their own definition of, for example, "software maintenance". We conducted a pilot study followed by interviews in a few companies to detect unclear questions. We also got comments from several colleagues including experts in cognitive psychology concerning clarity of questions. In particular the cognitive psychologist was helpful relative to pointing out badly or ambiguously formed questions. For many questions, there was space available to issue comments. This possibility together with the possibility to crosscheck numbers between different questions was the mechanisms used to identify possible misunderstandings among the respondents for followup. We also built upon earlier surveys that had undergone similar pilot and full use.

Hypothesis

To detail the main research question presented in the first section the following hypotheses were formulated to investigate the development of the different measures for distribution of work between private and public sector. Since we are looking for differences (and would expect to find something in disfavor of public sector based on earlier reports), we have formulated the hypothesis as if private and public sector are equal (to potentially refute this).

H1: There is no difference between the breakdown of maintenance work (in corrective, adaptive, enhancive and perfective maintenance) in public and private organizations. Rationale: Whereas perfective (in particular enhancive maintenance) provides more value than other types of maintenance, it is interesting to look into this breakdown. Investigations reporting on the distribution of time among maintenance tasks [START_REF] Benestad | Understanding software mainten-ance and evolution by analyzing individual changes: A literature review[END_REF][START_REF] Gupta | The Profile of Software Changes in Reused vs[END_REF] report very different numbers. On the other hand these investigations vary greatly. Whereas some look on single systems of numerous organizations and the whole portfolio of numerous organizations, other look only at one or a few (important) applications in one organization. Since this distribution naturally will differ according to where the system is in the lifecycle (development, evolution, servicing, phase-out, closed [START_REF] Rajlich | A staged Model for the Software Life Cycle[END_REF]), this difference between the maintenance work on individual systems should be expected. When averaging across a large number of application portfolios on the other hand, we have found a more stable distribution.

H2: There is no difference between the percentage of time used for development in private and public sector Rationale: When comparing the percentage of time used for development activities in organizations earlier, we have found this to be decreasing, but not so much between the three last investigations. Thus is interesting to see if this is equal also between private and public sector.

H3: There is no difference between the percentage of time used for maintenance in private and public sector Rationale: When comparing the percentage of time used for maintenance activities in organizations earlier, we have found this to be stable on around 40 percent of the overall time in investigations both in the seventies, eighties, and nineties in both USA and Norway. It is interesting to see if this is different between private and public sector.

H4: There is no difference between the distribution of work among maintenance and development between private and public sector when disregarding other work than development and maintenance. Rationale: Since the amount of other work than development and maintenance is taking up more time now than 10-15 years ago, we found it beneficial also in the surveys in 1993, 1998, and 2003 to look at the proportion between development and maintenance time only. The proportion of time used for maintenance has earlier shown to be stable on around 60% (i.e., 40% for development) in all investigations, across countries. When a larger percentage of maintenance is claimed, this often includes, e.g. user support [START_REF] Jones | The Economics of Software Maintenance in the Twenty First Century[END_REF].

H5: There is no difference between the distribution of application portfolio upkeep in private and public sector. Rationale: These numbers were on the same level in 2008 and 2003 as in 1998, and it interesting to see if it would be equal also across private and public sector. A high percentage on application portfolio upkeep would in particular signal poor IT support practice cf. the discussion in the introduction.

Results

42% of the organizations had a yearly data processing budget above 10 mill NKr (approx. 1.5 mill USD), and the average number of employees among the responding organizations was 1115 (1333 in private, 604 in public). Around a third of the ITactivity was outsourced (32.9% in private, 24.1 in public). Whereas only two of the respondents reported to have outsourced all the IT-activities, as many as 84% of the organizations had outsourced parts of their IT-activity. Whereas the public organizations have outsourced more of the development (40% in public, 29% in private) and maintenance (34% in public, 30% in private) work than the private organizations, they have outsourced less of the operations (31% in public, 41% in private) and user support (21% in public, 29% in private). 94 new systems were currently being developed; 60 of these systems (64 %) were regarded as replacement systems. The average age of systems to be replaced was 7 years (6.35 years private, 8.76 years public). Work on application systems was in the survey divided into the six categories presented in section 2. We also asked for the time used for user-support and for systems operations which took up the additional time for the work in the IS departments. Basic management activities are kept out.

In earlier investigation of this sort between 50% and 60% of the effort is done to enhance systems in operation (maintenance) when disregarding other work than development and maintenance [START_REF] Davidsen | A longitudinal study of development and maintenance Information and Software Technology[END_REF]. An exception from this was our study in 1998 that was influenced particularly by the amount of Y2K-oriented maintenance. Table 1 summarizes the descriptive results on the distribution of work in the categories in our investigation, comparing to our previous investigations. 34.9% of the total work among the responding organizations is maintenance activities, and 21.1% is development activities. When disregarding other work than development and maintenance of application systems, the percentages are as follows: maintenance activities: 65.7%, development activities: 34.3%. This is at the same level as in 2003. 63% of development and maintenance work was application portfolio upkeep, and 37% was application portfolio evolution. This is almost the same as in 2003 and 1998, which in turn was significantly different from the situation in 1993 where application portfolio upkeep-and application portfolio evolution respectively amounted to 44% and 56% of the work.

Fig. 1 summarizes the results from our investigations where we look upon the complete portfolio of the responding organizations. Most interesting for comparison with other surveys is looking at corrective, adaptive, and perfective maintenance, which appears to be much more stable than the numbers reported from others above. We do note though that the enhancive maintenance part of perfective maintenance appears to be declining. In the light of this stability of figures, we have divided the population to test H1-H5 comparing private and public organizations. Before looking for significant relationships, the variables used in the comparisons were tested for normality. A number of variables cannot be investigated as if they where normally distributed. On some variables we could use the assumption of normal distribution, using t-tests. For the others we have used non-parametric tests as described in section 3.

We tested H1-H5 by comparing the numbers from private and public sector as summarized in Table 2. We list the number of cases, the mean and the standard deviation for all relevant figures to test the eight hypotheses (for H1, there are four test, for the difference in corrective, adaptive, perfective and enhancive maintenance respectively). Δ is the absolute difference in the mean between private and public sector, and p is the probability for erroneously rejecting the equality of means. None of H1 to H5 are rejected. On the other hand, we do see a slight tendency of worse practice in public sector, i.e. more resources used on application portfolio upkeep, and more resources used for other tasks than development and maintenance, but again, these differences are not statistically significant. Especially taking into account the pattern of outsourcing reported above, there seems to be small overall differences in these regards.

Discussion and Conclusion

Overall percentage of time used for evolving systems in production compared to time used for development is remarkably stable over time, and also relatively equal across private and public sector. The small differences found are not statistically significant.

The same applies to the rate of replacement, only here it might appear that public sector is better off than private sector. Since more complex infrastructures are supporting the information systems serving a larger number of in particular external users, more and more of the resources are used for other tasks such as operations and user-support, less and less time is available for providing new information systems support in organization, although it seems to have plateau on 20% of the overall time, a level reached already ten years ago in Norway (i.e. even earlier than indicated in [START_REF] Jones | The Economics of Software Maintenance in the Twenty First Century[END_REF]). The small differences between private and public sector is contrary to the image often painted on the poor state of public sector IT relative to the private sector.

On the other hand, the efficiency of the time used for development and maintenance tasks are not captured in these investigations, i.e. the amount of new functionality provided through the development of new systems or enhancive maintenance.

The main investigation aimed at providing a longitudinal study of IT practice in general. In this light the comparison between private and public sector is an exploratory investigation. Several of our results have spurred new areas that could be interesting to follow up on in further investigations, and we have it addition to the survey performed several detailed case studies in different public sector IT-departments. To come up with more detailed empirical data on to what extent the application systems support in an organization is efficient, demands another type of investigation, surveying the whole portfolio of the individual organizations, and getting more detailed data on the amount of the work that is looked upon as giving the end-user improved support, and how efficient this improved support was provided. This should include the views of the users of the application systems portfolio in addition to those of the ITmanagers and developers. It would be hard to get such data through a survey though, thus calling for additional case studies, with the problems of generalization of results.

A long-term plan is to do a similar investigation in 2013 following up the 5 year cycle of investigations, but here also ensure a support for investigating results relative to the private/public sector dichotomy.

1 .

 1 Application portfolio evolution: Development or maintenance where changes in the application increase the functionality provided by the total application systems portfolio of the organization. This includes: • Development of new systems that support new areas • Enhancive maintenance 2. Application portfolio upkeep: Work made to keep up the functionality provided by the information system portfolio of the organization. This includes:

Fig. 1 .Fig. 2 .Fig. 3 .

 123 Fig. 1. Comparisons of distribution on maintenance tasks, percentage

Table 1 .

 1 Distribution of the work done by IS-departments in percentage

	Category	2008	2003	1998	1993
	Corrective	8.2	8.8	12.7	10.4
	Adaptive	6.2	7.3	8.2	4
	Enhancive	11.3	12.9	15.2	20.4
	Non-functional perfective	9.1	7.6	5.4	5.2
	Total maintenance	34.9	36.7	41,4	40
	Replacement	9.7	9.9	7.7	11,2
	New development	11.4	12.6	9.5	18,4
	Total development	21.1	22.5	17.1	29.6
	Technical operation	23.7	23.8	23	NA
	User support	20.1	17.1	18.6	NA
	Total other	44.0	40.8	41.6	30.4

Table 2 .

 2 Test of hypothesis

		Sector	N	Mean	SD		P
	Corrective maintenance, percent-age of all work (vs. H1a)	Private Public	44 19	23.6 24.4	15.5 19.9	-0.8	.314
	Adaptive maintenance, percentage of all work (vs. H1b)	Private Public	44 19	17.5 22.8	13.5 15.0	-5,3	.163
	Perfective maintenance, percent-age of all work (vs. H1c)	Private Public	44 19	58.9 52.8	21.1 16.2	6.1	.163
	Enhancive maintenance, percent-age of all work (vs. H1d)	Private Public	41 18	31,5 26,0	18,5 20.9	5,5	.319
	Maintenance, percentage of all work (vs. H2)	Private Public	44 19	37.2 29.8	17.4 17.5	7.4	.130
	Development, percentage of all work (vs. H3)	Private Public	44 19	21.9 19.4	16.3 17.1	2.5	.519
	Maintenance, disregarding other work (vs. H4)	Private Public	43 18	64.9 67.8	22.2 20.0	-2.9	.621
	Application portfolio upkeep (vs. H5)	Private Public	43 18	61.4 66.4	20.8 21.6	-5.0	.411


Karin Axelsson

Ulf Melin

Citizens' Attitudes towards Electronic Identification in a Public E-Service Context -An Essential Perspective in the eID Development Process

Keywords: Electronic Identification, Citizens' Attitudes, Focus Groups, Public E-service, Trust

des établissements d'enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés.

Introduction

The use of public e-services is increasing in most countries, as an important part of egovernment. More advanced, integrated public e-services are introduced, compared to early years' cataloguing e-services [START_REF] Layne | Developing Fully Functional E-government: A four-stage model[END_REF]. Complex e-services do often require secure solutions for electronic identification and signing of documents [cf . 30]. There are many on-going efforts to develop electronic IDs (eID) that are equally secure and easy to use, both on national level [35] and in international projects. The European Commission conducted a survey in 2007 indicating that a majority (28 out of 32) of the member countries use or plan to use an eID scheme [START_REF]Secure Electronic Identity Across Europe[END_REF]. Some countries have signed agreements on mutual recognition, but eID systems differ between member states and inter-operability across borders was almost non-existent at the time of the survey [ibid.]. In EU this situation has been addressed within the STORK project (Secure identity across borders linked) where a European eID inter-operability platform has been established in order to enable citizens and businesses to use their national eIDs in any participant member state for use of public e-services [ibid.].

In Sweden, which is the national context of the empirical study in this article, a coordinating function responsible for the development of Sweden's future eID solution has recently been established. The commission of this e-identification board is to define technical requirements and enable government agencies' and municipalities' access to eID solutions. The goal of this effort is to provide eIDs to citizens and businesses that are easily accessible and possible to use together with all public e-services. This should also enhance competition between service providers and improve conditions for developing new methods of electronic identification and signing of documents [35].

As these examples show, there is a lot of work going on in the field of eID development and implementation. Even though the e-government area nowadays is surrounded by statements of the importance to be citizen-oriented and user-focused [e.g. 5; 18; 24; 26; 36], we do however not identify the same user centeredness when it comes to eID development. The issue's complicated matter seems to imply a focus on infrastructures, standardization, and involved governmental actors' power relations at the expense of citizens. eID's technical nature together with security and privacy issues are instead put in foreground. The ambition to reach consensus among all involved public organizations seems to be demanding enough, without analyzing citizens' attitudes as users of eID. In one sense, eID can be viewed as a technical aspect of e-services. No one choses to use an eID without a purpose; i.e. an eID is always used in conjunction with an e-service, and as such it is an important prerequisite for an e-service. On the other hand, for the common e-service users it can be difficult, and not even necessary, to separate the eID from the e-service. The link between an e-service and the eID is also an aspect not explicitly addressed in the literature. The eID in general has received relatively little attention in non-technical research [START_REF] Seltsikas | Expectations and outcomes in electronic identity management: the role of trust and public value[END_REF] and is identified as an urgent research theme [START_REF] Irani | Electronic transformation of government in the U.K.: a research agenda[END_REF]. To put it in other words, the material dimension of the eID has, so far, received more attention than the social and organizational dimension of it [cf. 27]. The users' experience of the eID might influence their opinions of the e-service and vice versa, as well as the service provider, largely. This makes us argue that citizens' attitudes towards eID are crucial to understand, from a theoretical and practical point of view, in order to increase successful public e-service and e-government development, implementation, and use.

The purpose of this article is, thus, to highlight the importance of addressing and exploring a selected group of citizens' attitudes when developing eID solutions within a public e-service context. We report from an empirical study of young Swedish university students' attitudes towards eID when using an e-service at the Swedish Board for Study Support. Three focus groups were conducted with students who were asked to use a public e-service which demanded secure electronic identification. After having conducted the assigned tasks the students' attitudes were discussed in the focus group. By using this example we aim to show that a thorough understanding of how a certain crucial target group (in this case students who finance their university studies with national study loans) apprehends the use of electronic identification is vital in this kind of national development process.

After this introduction, the article is organized in the following way: In Section Two we describe the theoretical background of electronic identification as well as citizen participation and involvement in e-government projects, followed by the research approach and the focus group design in Section Three. In Section Four we present and analyze our empirical findings. The article is concluded in Section Five, together with some statements about further research.

Theoretical Background

In this section of the article we discuss core concepts from the fields of electronic identification and citizen involvement and participation in e-government projects.

Electronic Identification

When technical systems, with social and material dimensions [START_REF] Orlikowski | Sociomateriality: Challenging the Separation of Technology, Work and Organization[END_REF], such as e-services, are developed to avoid risks and problems in society, new risks might evolve simultaneously [START_REF] Czarniawska | Organizing in the face of risk and threat[END_REF]. The development of eID solutions is an example of this kind of process that deals with certain problems, but also creates new requirements of security and trust in the systems. In Sweden several governmental inquiries have questioned both the technical infrastructure and the business model that today's eID solution builds upon. The investigations point at several weaknesses; e.g. technical complexity, a complicated business and pricing model, as well as lack of transparency, flexibility, user interface standards, and a long-term perspective. Additionally, user related problems are also reported regarding acquisition, usage and updating of eIDs. It is, for example, not possible to use eIDs on public computers since the eID is connected to certificates and security applications on a certain computer. People without permanent residence in Sweden cannot easily get an eID which might be seen as a democracy problem. People who need to use eID in their professional work have to use their personal eID as all eIDs are based on a person's social security number. [34] Altogether, there is a fear that the legitimacy of safe public e-service provision might be threatened by these weaknesses. Since the agreement with the present eID solution providers soon is about to be renewed, a development process that should result in a new eID solution avoiding the above mentioned problems has been initiated.

The process is organized by the Swedish e-identification board, mentioned in the introduction. The process is on-going and has so far engaged public sector in many ways; both directly as participants in the process and as reviewers and critics of the suggested outcome. A public investigation has been conducted, a hearing has been held, and many public actors have been involved in different ways [35]. In one sense this process is very inclusive and open minded as it strives to listen to and involve as many stakeholders as possible. One group that is left outside the process is, on the other hand, the citizens.

Citizen Involvement and Participation in E-Government Projects

In an e-government context, public e-services are developed for "all citizens", thus, an inclusive ambition seems feasible [e.g. 2; 4; 31]. Understanding the needs, usage situation, requirements and challenges of future users is necessary in order to develop public e-services that will be frequently used. Governments cannot actively stimulate or even force usage in the same way as a private organization can order employees to use a certain IT system. This situation makes it even more delicate to develop public e-services. Commonly used methods for user participation, such as participating in the project group, in focus groups (as described below) or test groups, might be useful in the e-government context as well. But since such representatives for citizen groups always will be extremely marginal in relation to all possible users in a target group, we also need other methods to involve citizens [START_REF] Axelsson | Exploring the Importance of Citizen Participation and Involvement in E-government Projects -Practice, Incentives and Organization, Transforming Government: People, Process and Policy[END_REF].

In e-government policies and strategies there has often been a strong rhetorical emphasis on the citizen perspective. In many governments' national strategic action plans for their e-government agenda, citizen aspects, as a part of "customer orientation", are distinctly put forth. The ambition to ease citizens' authority contacts, provide better public services, make governmental internal work processes more efficient and ease administrative burden, and increase possibilities to participate in democratic processes (e-participation) are a few examples of intended citizen benefits to be identified in strategic governmental intentions and documents [e.g. 8; 36; 39]. At the same time, lack of citizen participation and involvement is common in many egovernment projects and by several researchers explained as a reason for unsuccessful project results [e.g. 18 ; 29]. Citizen participation can contribute to e-services that are usable for the citizen and meet an experienced need or solve citizens' problems [START_REF] Goldkuhl | What Does it Mean to Serve the Citizen in E-Services? -Towards a Practical Theory Founded in Socio-Instrumental Pragmatism[END_REF]. These e-services also have potential to be trusted and perceived as secure, as trust in technology and administration often goes hand in hand [START_REF] Bélanger | Trust and risk in e-government adoption[END_REF]. Altogether, previous studies on the importance of citizen participation [START_REF] Axelsson | Exploring the Importance of Citizen Participation and Involvement in E-government Projects -Practice, Incentives and Organization, Transforming Government: People, Process and Policy[END_REF] imply that the development process of eID should not be seen as an exception. Citizens' attitudes, thus, need to be considered when developing eID solutions as a part of public e-service use and egovernment development and implementation.

Research Approach

The overall research design in this study is qualitative and interpretive [START_REF] Walsham | Doing interpretive research[END_REF] and based on three interactive focus groups. Focus groups have a long history as a data collection method in the marketing field [START_REF] Fern | Advanced focus group research[END_REF]. Over the years focus groups have become an instrument in the public society to hear "the people's voice". Focus groups are also used as a data collection method by researchers, mainly in social sciences [START_REF] Vaughn | Focus group interviews in education and psychology[END_REF]. Recently, focus groups have been used as a method in critical social information systems (IS) research [START_REF] Stahl | Focus groups and critical social IS research: how the choice of method can promote emancipation of respondents and researchers[END_REF]. Morgan [START_REF] Morgan | The focus group guidebook[END_REF] describes focus groups as group interviews. A moderator guides the group when discussing decided issues by posing questions (in our case open ended questions together with questions oriented towards particular aspects of the eID solution) that have been formulated in advance. A focus group is always created with a specific purpose; a knowledge gap that the focus group is supposed to fulfill. Focus groups are a feasible method to gather knowledge and enquiries from different individuals [ibid.]. Different persons possess pieces of knowledge about a certain matter and when these pieces are brought together, shared and discussed the total amount of knowledge increases. When organizing and performing a focus group it is important to be able to declare what the group is supposed to produce; the expected outcome.

The moderator who coordinates the focus group must try to facilitate that everyone participates and that no one dominates the group. The atmosphere should be friendly to encourage everybody to contribute to the discussion in order to fulfill the underlying purpose of the focus group. The moderator is not supposed to insert his or her own opinions into the discussion [START_REF] Krueger | Moderating focus groups: Focus group kit 4[END_REF]; instead the moderator should ask generative questions to the group. Morgan [START_REF] Morgan | The focus group guidebook[END_REF] argues that the focus group can be either homogenous or heterogeneous. This implies that the participants can either be gathered so that they are similar or different regarding certain matters; for example, gender, age, education, and life situation. There are advantages with groups of people knowing each other as well as with groups of strangers. Individuals view issues from different perspectives and focus groups are, thus, a suitable method to use in order to understand how different views are constructed and expressed [START_REF] Kitzinger | The challenge and promise of focus groups[END_REF]. Focus groups thereby provide a profound discussion in a certain matter. This is in line with Powell and Single [START_REF] Powell | Focus groups[END_REF] who define a focus group as 'a group of individuals selected and assembled by researchers to discuss and comment on, from personal experience, the topic that is the subject of the research' [p 499].

Stahl et al. [START_REF] Stahl | Focus groups and critical social IS research: how the choice of method can promote emancipation of respondents and researchers[END_REF] note that focus groups, despite the long history in many fields, still is not an often used data collection method in IS research. However, focus groups have been used in several e-government projects to gather citizens' opinions of eservices [9; 10] before and during e-service development processes [e.g. 1; 23]. Focus groups have also been characterized as a suitable and beneficial research method when conducting e-government studies [START_REF] Axelsson | Talking to, not about, citizens -Experiences of focus groups in public e-service development[END_REF]. In this study we follow a proposed phase model for focus groups in e-government development and implementation projects, which is further described below.

Focus Group Design and Performance

Axelsson and Melin [START_REF] Axelsson | Citizen Participation and Involvement in eGovernment Projects -An emergent framework[END_REF] propose a phase model to guide the performance of focus groups. The phases are (1) introduction, [START_REF] Anthopoulos | Applying participatory design and collaboration in digital public services for discovering and re-designing e-Government services[END_REF] open discussion -brainstorming, (3) discussion from user scenarios or use of e-services, (4) concept based discussion, and (5) evaluation. In this study the Swedish Board for Study Support was chosen as the empirical case. The Swedish Board for Study Support is an agency which early launched public e-services that demanded secure electronic identification and was, thus, suitable for this study. The Swedish Board for Study Support's main, and crucial, target group is students who finance their studies by national study loans. Therefore we recruited in total 16 university students from a Swedish university as focus group participants. Three focus groups were arranged; one focus group with six students from mixed educational programs ("Mixed"), one focus group with six students from information systems studies ("IS"), and one focus group with four students from culture studies ("Cultural"). By doing this we aimed for both heterogeneous and homogenous groups regarding educational background, as discussed by Morgan [START_REF] Morgan | The focus group guidebook[END_REF]. The focus groups also differed regarding gender, which year of university studies the student was in, and what kind of computer and certificate the student used. Both soft certificate ("Soft") (downloaded to a certain computer) and hardware based certificates ("Hard") (a smartcard with the certificate) were used, as well as PC compatible computers ("PC") and Apple Macintosh ("Mac"). Below in table 1, the focus group participants are described. We followed the advice to let two moderators lead the focus group [START_REF] Axelsson | Citizen Participation and Involvement in eGovernment Projects -An emergent framework[END_REF]. One of them could then be active and provide the discussion by posing questions while the other documented and observed the situation. The focus groups were initiated by the two moderators who introduced the purpose of the focus group. All participants had a client relation to the Swedish Board for Study Support; i.e. they had taken national study loans. They had also access to an eID and had previously used some e-services at the Swedish Board for Study Support's website. This implies that the participants were not totally novel e-service and eID users. After the introduction and an open discussion about the electronic identification topic, the participants were asked to use an e-service at the website (www.csn.se) to perform two tasks; 1) use their eID to login and calculate the repayment, and 2) suppose that they have forgotten their eID password and had to solve this problem. When all participants had performed these two tasks the moderators led the discussion based on open questions. The purpose of this discussion was to find out the participants' opinions about the tasks they had completed; for example, if the tasks were easy, if they encountered any problems, but also how they thought about security aspects when they used their eIDs and the eservice. Questions were asked both about the present solution for eID and wishes for the future. The focus groups were concluded with an evaluation where the process was examined in order to find aspects that could be improved in next focus group or issues that had not been covered in the discussion. The focus group documentation was then analyzed in an interpretative way [START_REF] Walsham | Doing interpretive research[END_REF] in order categorize data and identify patterns that would provide us with further understanding of young citizens' attitudes towards electronic identification. This qualitative, empirically grounded analysis resulted in two major themes of the respondents' attitudes; usability of eID and security of eID. These themes are discussed in the next section.

In this section we discuss some inductive statements from the focus group participants in order to explore young citizens' attitudes towards their use of eID. As the analysis of the empirical data indicates two major themes; usability and security, the statements are structured according to these themes.

The focus group participants brought their own laptops (PC or Mac) to the meeting together with their soft or hardware based certificate for eID. They were asked to conduct the tasks in the web browser they usually use. Both soft and hardware based certificates have certain operative system (OS) requirements that have to be met. This implies that the user of a certain certificate has to install an approved OS and web browser version before use. Soft certificates are downloaded to the computer or to an USB memory stick. Soft certificates also require a security application on the computer, but can then be used without any other device. Hardware based certificates are placed on a smartcard which is put in a certain smartcard reader connected to the computer. The heterogeneity of today's eID solutions was illustrated in the focus groups as the above mentioned platform dependencies were present and discussed.

Usability of eID

The focus group participants were asked to solve the task to get a new password for their eID. Depending on what eID solution they use, they encountered different usability related challenges and problems. The participants did not immediately know how to solve the task, but most participants found out that they had to contact their bank as the bank is certificate provider. The common opinion was that this was unnecessarily cumbersome. Several participants argued that it was not worth the effort to get a new password instead of downloading a new certificate: "There are so few things I use eID for, so the effort I spend on downloading the certificate and put it on a USB stick that I bring with me, does not match the need. It's easier to just download a new one next time." The students use their eID rather seldom, which makes them argue that they could accept some usability inconveniences. On the other hand, they seem to find their eID solutions usable. As one of the respondents [IS-4] said, he would not use it if it had severe usability problems. He argued that usability is much more important than security in this case. Another respondent agreed and continued: "If it isn't useful, I might as well choose to use paper forms and a pen instead." [C-3] One respondent [M-6] thought that the fact that he has to download a new certificate when he changes computer makes the portability and the usability suffer.

Another respondent [M-2] assumed that this must be an even larger problem for novice Internet users, which others agreed upon: "We are used to download things.

What about elderly people who might not understand why they have to download security applications and certificates?" [M-3]

Differences regarding how citizens of certain ages regard eID and the use of public e-services were also discussed during the focus groups. As we have only studied young and well-educated citizens (i.e. university students), most of them technology positive, this view might of course be biased. However, the respondents agreed that their generation is used to information technology and e-services, but also puts high expectations on their usability: "We belong to the Wikipedia generation -a click and then we expect everything to be done." Altogether the focus group discussions illustrate that even though the general impression is that the present eID solutions are rather usable, there are some aspects that influence the opinions about usability of eID. The frequency of eID use is put forth as one aspect together with how familiar a person is with the Internet and eservices in general terms. These aspects seem to affect the attitude towards the use of eID. Flexibility in the usage situation is partly dependent on which kind of certificate a user has, and this is also emphasized as an important aspect of the usability impression.

Security of eID

The other theme present in the focus group discussions is security, which of course is an obvious dimension of electronic identification. One respondent said that she finds her eID to be safe, which is important for her: "If I had not felt it was safe, I would not have used it." One of the respondents [IS-1] argued that security in present eID solutions is rather low, that is at least his impression of it. He said that since he downloads a new certificate each time he uses the eID, due to forgotten passwords, he gets the feeling that it is unsecure. Another respondent [IS-3] continued this line of thinking and said that the security level is so high that the usability suffers and that, instead, decreases security, when people act as this respondent [IS-1] does.

The focus groups with students from mixed educations and information systems studies mostly agreed that the use of eID had several advantages compared to the use of paper-based forms. The speed and the sense of security when getting a receipt immediately after signing a document were regarded as advantages compared to manual handling. In the third focus group, consisting of students in cultural studies, the opinion that traditionally signing feels more secure was instead dominating. This notion was also mentioned by a respondent in one of the other focus groups: "I can 'feel the paper' when I'm signing a document in a traditional way, instead of using the Internet. I think people appreciate that feeling. That is probably the main reason for people not using e-services." However, none of the three focus groups seemed seriously worried about security issues when using eID. The fact that there are no financial transactions or sensitive personal information in the tested e-service appears to be decisive. The students use eID mainly in their contacts with the Swedish Board for Study Support and the Swedish Tax Agency. These agencies' e-services do concern financial matters (loans and taxes), but the students do not apprehend the eID use as directly influencing their finances. A respondent argued that there is no really harm if: "[…] someone would sign something in my name at the Swedish Board for Study Support." [M-1] This is an interesting opinion to relate to the on-going development processes of new eID solutions, as security is the main theme in these projects. An eID solution does of course have to be secure. The focus groups results do, however, illustrate that usability aspects are put forth as even more important to young citizens than security.

Even though the findings from the focus groups indicate that young citizens regard usability as more important than security aspects when using eID, we also identified a relationship between usability and security in the data material. Both usability and security aspects are requested if the respondents should use the eID and, consequently, the e-service. When they regard the levels of both usability and security as satisfying they trust the electronic identification and signing process. The attitudes above concerning usability and security are, thus, linked to trust -a theme only briefly touched upon above in the focus group data. Trust is an important factor in all identification processes; both as a prerequisite and as an effect of identification. In fact, democracy depends in part on the trust in public institutions on a general level [START_REF] Lauer | The risk of e-voting[END_REF]. Therefore, trust is an essential issue also in e-government research and development. Several studies have explored the role of trust in different sectors.

Trust can be related to the potential of public e-services to improve government transparency, responsiveness, and accountability. Even with this potential, e-services will only be adopted if citizens deem them trustworthy [START_REF] Bélanger | Trust and risk in e-government adoption[END_REF]. Bélanger and Carter [ibid.] provide a model where they divide trust into institution-based trust (e.g. trust in the Internet, such as secure data transmission, as an essential part of e-government) and trust in the government agency providing the e-service. The latter highlights aspects such as organization and knowledge in the agency. Labels like "trust in the government" and "trust in the Internet " are also present [ibid.]. In the light of this model, usability aspects might be related to trust in the government while security aspects are vital for trust in the Internet. Understanding both these kinds of trust seems to be essential for development of successful eID solutions.

The perceived level of trust in the eID influenced whether the respondents in our study choose to use the e-service or not. If they cannot remember their password or find it too cumbersome to download a new certificate, they use another communication channel when interacting with the agency. This is an important aspect that goes against the view of eID development as a purely technical matter that does not have to comprise any user participation. One theoretical contribution of the study is thus that there is a need to focus both social and material dimensions of the artifact [START_REF] Orlikowski | Sociomateriality: Challenging the Separation of Technology, Work and Organization[END_REF] in this case the eID. The eID obviously serves as an entrance to the e-service, which usability and security levels might discourage or encourage the citizen to go on and use the e-service. This is in a long-term perspective decisive for an agency's possibility to realize the potentials in using e-services as a part of e-government development.

The purpose of this article has been to highlight the importance of addressing and exploring a certain group of citizens' attitudes when developing eID solutions within a public e-service context. The three conducted focus groups have provided us with illustrations of how young citizens, in our case university students within different study programs, think about the usability and security of eID. Even though the small amount of respondents cannot tell us how general these attitudes are in a statistical sense, the very presence of attitudes of eID indicates that citizens should not be excluded from the development and the future implementation process. This also calls for further theoretical and practical investigations of perspectives and models, e.g. conceptual foundations of identity and e-identity [START_REF] Halperin | A roadmap for research on identity in the information society[END_REF]. This study contributes with an illustration of how attitudes gathered from the focus groups can be used as an early warning system providing decision makers, development project leaders, and others with indications of aspects and interpretations of the intended eID solutions in an eservice usage situation. Neglecting citizen attitudes cannot be done without risking that important opinions are disregarded. This might in a longer perspective lead to decreased usage of public e-services and lack of trust for e-government, as discussed above. We have shown a brief example of how citizens' attitudes can be caught. These attitudes can serve as important additional input to the development of eID solutions that supports successful e-government. A conclusion from this study is that citizen participation is important not only in public e-service development, but also when developing electronic identification solutions for e-services. This also calls for further conceptual and theoretical studies in the area.

It is has not been our ambition to give a comprehensive view of citizens' attitudes towards eID in this article, but our findings indicate that further citizen-oriented studies are necessary as complement in national and international development and implementation processes. Future contributions to conceptual development regarding e.g. the linkages between the eID and the e-service, and the general citizen orientation perspective in the e-government research field are also essential. A more systematic approach to explore different citizen groups' attitudes towards eID in an e-service context would be a feasible next step to take, also including groups with a different age structure, private vs. professional eID use, and public sector vs. private sector (e.g. e-business). Addressing trust [cf. 6] deeper in the eID context is another major issue for further research. eID can also be studied in relation to the concept of personal identity [cf. 7] and technology adoption and acceptance [START_REF] Titah | E-Government Adoption and Acceptance: A Literature Review[END_REF] in order to better understand the theoretical basis for electronic identification. The latter dimension can also be combined with a more explicit stakeholder perspective [14; 32] in further research. The interface between the eID and the e-service used is also interesting to study more in depth, as well as the type of e-service offered (e.g. if sensitive or more confidential information is affected than in the present case) and its relation the eID. The fact that several providers of e-services and eID's are present makes the issue of trust and accountability even more delicate, not at least when breakdowns occur.

Table 1 .

 1 Three Focus Groups.

	Focus group	Gender	Respondent Year	Education	Certificate	Computer
		Male	M-1	5	Industrial economics Soft	PC
	Mixed	Male	M-2	1	Industrial economics Soft	PC
		Female	M-3	1	Information systems	Soft	PC
		Female	M-4	4	MBA	Hard	Mac
		Male	M-5	2	Information systems	Hard	PC
		Male	M-6	1	Industrial economics Soft	PC
		Male	IS-1	4	Information systems	Soft	Mac
	IS	Male	IS-2	4	Information systems	Soft	PC
		Male	IS-3	4	Information systems	Soft	PC
		Male	IS-4	4	Information systems	Soft	Mac
		Male	IS-5	4	Information systems	Soft	Mac
		Female	IS-6	4	Information systems	Soft	PC
		Male	C-1	3	Cultural studies	Soft	PC
	Cultural	Male	C-2	1	Cultural studies	Hard	PC
		Female	C-3	4	Cultural studies	Soft	PC
		Female	C-4	4	Cultural studies	Soft	PC

Acknowledgments

This study has been financed by the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency. We are also thankful to Karl Eriksson and Tommy Talén, master students in information systems 2011, for their supportive work in the focus groups described above.


Mark Scannell
email: mark.scannell@lgma.ie

Frank Bannister
email: frank.bannister@tcd.ie

Shared Services in Irish Local Government

Keywords: ICT, shared services, local government, e-government, governance. 1

de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, émanant des établissements d'enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés.

Introduction 1.1 Research Questions

For a variety of reasons, e-government has given rise to a renewed interest in shared services in government ICT. The most recent cause of this has been the emergence of cloud computing, but pressures to save costs have also been a significant factor [START_REF] Niehaves | Shared service strategies in local governmenta multiple case study exploration[END_REF].

In Ireland, the use of shared services in local government goes back nearly three decades and its chequered history over this period offers a particular opportunity to study this phenomenon. The low take-up of shared services Irish local government is surprising. Research suggests that shared services are a logical way of organizing ICT for non competing entities delivering similar services. Ulbrich [27; 28] describes wholly owned systems as an "unaffordable luxury". A survey by AT Kearney in 2003 [START_REF] Kearney | Success through shared services From back office functions to shared drivers[END_REF] found that popular candidates for shared services include human resources management and ICT.

The lack of take-up is even more puzzling given that local authorities are a particularly good fit for shared ICT services. There are many variations of shared service model. One is where a number of non-competing organisations provide broadly the same range of services to different customers, clients or constituencies. Examples of such groups in the public sector include hospitals, parts of the education system and local government. Local governments typically provide an almost identical range of services to different geographical areas. Such services include maintenance of roads, provision of water and sewage services, social housing, planning, emergency services and refuse collection. A computer system designed for one local authority (LA) should in theory fit all LAs or require only minor local tailoring to do so. Consequently, when it comes to the provision of ICT services, there is a number of strong arguments for collaborative development and sharing including economies of scale, sharing of scarce resources and pooling of expertise. Despite this, in Ireland, instead of sharing services many local authorities choose to ignore centrally developed systems and instead develop their own equivalents.

Literature Review

Defining shared services

The concept of shared services in local government goes back to the earliest years of computing. In 1961 the United States Federal Advisory Committee on Intergovernmental Relations (cited in [START_REF] Ruggini | Making Local Government More Workable through Shared Services[END_REF]) defined the term shared services as:

"Intergovernmental cooperation at the local level either by formal written contracts or by informal verbal agreements which often provides a workable method of meeting particular problems."

Shared services are often considered a form of outsourcing [START_REF] Janssen | Issues in relationship management for obtaining the benefits of a shared service center[END_REF]. Corradini [START_REF] Corradini | Shared Services Center for E-Government Policy[END_REF] endorses the view of the shared services centre as an internal function. Within these conceptualisations there are several variations. For example, while the shared services might be provided by an internal or separate, but wholly owned, shared services provider (SSP), the SSP may in turn outsource some specific services (such as the provision of Wi-Fi) to one or more third parties (figure 1).

Fig. 1. Single owned provider shared services model (with optional outsourcing)

Tompkinson [START_REF] Tomkinson | Shared services in local government : improving service delivery[END_REF] describes shared services in local government as the shared provision by more than one local authority of a specified service in which service aims and objectives are mutually shared and for which local people are the end users.

McWilliams [START_REF] Mcwilliams | Have you considered insourcing? Across the Board[END_REF] further differentiates between centralisation of ICT and shared services. Centralisation, he states, is about standardising services whereas shared services are customised for individual customer sets. Thus a shared service may be provided by a single internal entity or may be in the form of a network with different individual LAs providing a specific service or set of services.

These are only two of several possibilities. There are many other definitions, see, for example [START_REF] Bergeron | Essential of Shared Services[END_REF], [START_REF] Kagelmann | Shared Services al alternative Organisationsform; am beispiel der Finanzfunktion in muknationionalen Konzern[END_REF], [START_REF] Quinn | Shared services, Mining for Corporate Gold, Pearson Education[END_REF], [START_REF] Moller | Implementing Shared Services in Europe[END_REF]. The definitive characteristic of an ICT shared service is that the users get their ICT services (applications, networks, etc.) from the SSP. For the purposes of this paper shared services will be defined as the sharing of ICT infrastructure including hardware, software, communications and support between two or more local authorities in a centrally hosted environment whether that host is real or virtual, single or multiple hosted. It is accepted that there are other possible definitions, but a more detailed discussion of these is beyond the scope of this paper.

Governance

An important aspect of this research is the governance of shared services. Bannister [START_REF] Bannister | e-Government and Administrative Power: The one-stop-shop meets the turf war[END_REF] argues that the mere mention of shared services can result in an outbreak of a [START_REF] Ren & Wagenaar | Governance of shared service centers in public administration: dilemmas and trade-offs[END_REF] point out there are several other reasons for the resistance to adoption of shared services. These objections range from the problems of one-size-fits-all to security risks, the loss of influence over implementation costs and problems with proposed timelines, project plans and local priorities. In this context, the decision making structure within the LGMA itself is a significant factor. This is discussed briefly below.

For these reasons Weill and Ross [START_REF] Weill | IT Governance: How Top Performers Manage IT Decision Rights for Results[END_REF] argue that for the successful implementation of a shared service solution there must be strong ICT governance. By governance they mean that the processes by which organizations align ICT actions with their performance goals and assign accountability for those actions and their outcomes. To be effective, ICT governance must be actively designed and not the result of isolated mechanisms (such as steering committees, offices of ICT architecture, service level agreements, etc.) implemented at different times to address the challenges of the moment. Good IT governance is essential to overcome barriers to the adoption of a shared services solution. Janssen and Wagenaar [START_REF] Janssen | An Analysis of a Shared Services Centre in EGovernment[END_REF] discuss the frustration that can occur at user level and the potential for alienation between shared service providers and local users. If this is to be avoided there have to be clear responsibilities and structures. Strong communication, both formal and informal, is important to ensure that this kind of difficulty does not arise. To avoid the types of problem identified by Bannister [START_REF] Bannister | e-Government and Administrative Power: The one-stop-shop meets the turf war[END_REF] and Ren and Wagenaar [START_REF] Ren & Wagenaar | Governance of shared service centers in public administration: dilemmas and trade-offs[END_REF], a shared service requires a carefully executed strategy, the re-organisation and redesign of activities and roles, the standardisation of processes, applications and the underlying architecture and the management of the transformation involved by the engagement of all stakeholders [START_REF] Marijn | Emerging shared service organizations and the serviceoriented enterprise[END_REF]. Colman [6; 7] suggests that there is a necessity for strong "strategic" management and a good eye for what areas would benefit most from streamlining and consolidation and argues that the quality of the service level agreement (SLA) is critical to success. He argues that a SLA needs what he calls two way accountability, i.e. customers must also be accountable to service providers for their behaviour. Customers of an SSP must be able to feel in control [START_REF] Geoff | Peace in our time[END_REF], but providers must be respected.

Finally a critical component of good governance is a clear perception of all of the stakeholders. Mitchell et al [START_REF] Mitchell | Toward a Theory of Stakeholder Identification and Salience: Defining the Principle of How and What Really Counts[END_REF] suggest that power, legitimacy and urgency are attributes that can be used to identify stakeholders. Janssen [START_REF] Janssen | Managing the development of shared service centers: stakeholder considerations[END_REF] concurs, noting that stakeholder management is essential to successful shared services.

2.3

Cost reduction

While there are many benefits of shared services, in practice shared services are often driven by pressures to reduce costs. David [START_REF] David | Learning to share[END_REF] suggests that centralising business processes can cut costs by between 25% and 30%. Centralising using a shared service eliminates duplication and can thus reduce costs even further. In Ireland, as elsewhere in the world's public sectors, there is constant pressure to produce more with less.

Smith et al [START_REF] Smith | Consolidation And Shared Services[END_REF] argue that one of the problems in shared services models is cost containment and that such models tend to fail unless there is a demonstrated reduction in cost. Sometimes savings will only become visible over a five to seven year period which is a long time in government thinking. A further contentious issue is the question of how the costs of shared services are to be spread amongst users. LAs resent having to pay for services that they do not use even if they could use them, but choose not to. They feel pressured to use what they regard as an inferior service simply because they are paying for it, something which can become a further source of friction. Nonetheless, shared services as a source of savings are firmly on government agendas (for example in the UK [START_REF] Proservartner | UK unveils government shared services model[END_REF]).

This has only been a brief review of the literature, but a number of key points can be drawn from it. First, there are several conceptualisations of shared services. Second, a key problem in shared services take-up is perceived loss of power and control, but there are several other barriers to take-up. Third, while cost savings are often a primary driver of shared services, often driving out other reasons for implementing such a system, in practice cost savings may be hard to achieve in the short term which can lead to political problems if other benefits have not been part of the business case. Finally, as in so much in information systems, good communication and stakeholder identification and management are critical to success.

Research methodology

This research was carried out in the spring and summer of 2010. A mixed methods approach using a questionnaire and a small number of extended semi-structured interviews was used. The survey instrument was divided into four sections. The first section collected background/demographic information such as experience, staffing levels and size of budget. The second section asked for factual information about current and potential shared services. The third section sought attitudes and opinions about shared ICT services. In the fourth section respondents were asked about perceived barriers to the adoption of shared services. The instrument included a variety of question types, some using Likert scales and others which were open and which invited free-form comment. The first version of the survey was discussed and modi-fied a number of times before being pilot tested using a number of senior managers in the LGMA. After feedback had been received from them the survey was redesigned and then checked by an expert in survey design. Because of the small number of local authorities, rather than sampling, a census was used. The questionnaire was sent to the Heads of Information Systems (HIS) in each of the 34 local authorities in June 2010. After following up the initial request a total of 23 responses were received.

Following the survey semi structured interviews were held with five senior managers in Irish local government. Three of these were County Managers (i.e. the chief executives in the relevant LAs); the other two people interviewed were senior executives in the LGMA. Each interview took between one and two hours and was undertaken at the interviewee's place of work. While the results from the survey were used in guiding the questions in the interviews, the findings of the survey were not given to the interviewees in advance. In preparation for the interviews, a detailed desk study of the interviewee's organisation and that person's role within that organization was undertaken. Detailed notes were taken and these were written up immediately the interview and checked with the interviewees for accuracy.

Findings

Survey

A feature of the HIS group is that the majority of them have been in their roles a long time. Forty percent have been in their current role for over 10 years and a small number have been in their job for over 20 years. The views expressed were therefore mostly those of people with long experience of shared service in Irish LAs. Of the 23 LAs that responded to the survey, 22 reported that their LA either currently participated in at least one shared service or had done so in the past. Table 1 shows the breakdown of shared service currently offered by the LGMA and the number of users of each. A comparison of both tables shows that, while there is considerable overlap, there are inconsistencies in the responses. For example 18 respondents said that they felt that payroll was a potential shared service. However while this has long been an available service, only 14 of the LAs avail of it. On the opposite side, web filtering software is used by 14 LAs, but only seen as a potentially useful service by three LAs.

System

The HISs were then asked what services they perceived as primary candidates for shared services. The results are shown in figure 3. While e-mail was the dominant choice, what is noteworthy is the number of respondents who did not select any service suggesting that they did not see shared services as adding any value.

Fig 3. Single most useful application as rated by users

It was noted in the literature review that strong governance is seen as critical to effective implementation of shared services. This was strongly supported by respondents (see table 3).

Question Statement

For the successful implementation there must be strong IT governance. Table 3. Importance of governance (rated from 5=strongly agree to 1=strongly disagree)

When asked about the problems and barriers to adoption, the barriers identified coincided with the literature, but none was strongly supported. The strongest concern was loss of local control and there was no clear view on technical issues or legacy systems. 4. Barriers to adoption (rated from 5=strongly agree to 1=strongly disagree)

Question

A number of interesting comments emerged from the free form question including the variety of views on the reasons for lack of take-up. Over 60 percent of respondents said that they would prefer a regional to a national shared services centre, but half said that their own LA would not be willing to act as a regional host. There was a diversity of view on who should take the leadership role in promoting shared services.

In the free comment part of the questionnaire the dominant barriers to take up were identified as culture, governance, affordability and lack of trust. This suggests that the lack of success in shared services in LAs in Ireland is due to a failure of leadership and management and has little to do with the technology. Problems such as lack of resources or shortages of technical skills were not considered significant. Poor business cases and lack of leadership emerged as the common themes as did failure to standardise business processes. Many respondents felt that trying to implement shared services without making key procedural changes first was a core problem. What emerges from the survey is reasonable support for findings in the literature, but also a wide diversity of views on every aspect of shared services from barriers to adoption to solutions to the problem of low take-up. It might be an exaggeration to describe this as a wicked problem [START_REF] Buchanon | Wicked Problems in Design Thinking[END_REF], but it is certainly a complex one.

Interviews

A somewhat different perspective emerged from the interview. The county managers had a different worldview, placing the questions in a broader context by discussing a wide range of shared services beyond ICT though they too agreed that the pattern of adoption was patchy. There are places in Irish local government where there is extensive cooperation between local authorities and other areas where silos persist.

One of the questions that arose during the interviews was how ICT can learn from the success stories in other shared services within local authorities? Amongst the key things that emerged was that strong SLAs are critical; so-called 'gentleman's agreements' generally do not work. There need to be proper legal contracts in place. There also needs to be strong central management with clear roles and responsibilities. Agreed and acceptable allocation of costs and charges is important. Unpleasant surprises arising from cost increases need to be avoided as these undermine confidence.

Political leadership is essential. The role of central government in promoting shared services is part of this. In contrast to the importance placed by the HISs on standarising business processes, the county managers emphasised that there are regional variations in business processes which must be addressed. Confirming what is reported in the literature, the managers were clear that for shared services to succeed there should be no perception of loss of local control. It was also felt that data sharing was perhaps more important than process sharing. There was a divergence of views on leadership. Everybody agreed that there is a need for strong leadership and that there is currently a lack of leadership, but there is no unanimity on where that leadership should come from.

Reflections

While it might seem self evident that there must be considerable scope of shared services in ICT in Irish LAs, there is no consensus on what services should be shared and a good deal of ambivalence about willingness to avail of such services were they to be offered. There is a conflict between the view that says everything needs to be standardised and the view that there are local variations which need to be taken into account despite the existence of national policies on many of these matters. A good example of the problem of local variation was provided by Dunn [START_REF] Dunn | Local Authority Housing: A Review of the Assessment and Allocation System[END_REF] when she examined the criteria for local authority public housing lists in all 34 local authorities in Ireland. She found almost no consistency in the rules that were applied for prioritising waiting lists. There is a need for more research into the extent of local variation in services.

The research confirms the conjecture underlying question two that take-up is low.

Overall only 31 percent of the potential range of offerings has been adopted. The barriers to adoption were the subject of the third question. Those identified in this research coincide largely with those reported by other researchers. Almost nobody identified technology as a barrier. The barriers are classically those of management and organisational pathologies. The final question asked what might be done to increase the adoption rate? Historically it would appear that the very structure and role of old LGCSB and its unclear relationship with local authorities in general and the larger LAs in particular was a problem from the start. The absence of proper SLAs and difficulties with the pricing mechanism have aggravated the problem. Technology difficulties, particularly with a centrally developed human resource management system, have not helped. As in many similar situations, while the technology gets blamed, it is only a proxy for other, more fundamental, problems. Finally, part of the problem lies in the current structure of the LGMA where decisions related to shared services are made by an IT committee comprised of county managers and HISs. It may be unrealistic to expect a group so composed to make decisions which would effectively transfer resources and power from their own organisations to a central body even if, in theory, they own that body [START_REF] Bannister | e-Government and Administrative Power: The one-stop-shop meets the turf war[END_REF].

The absence of strong and clear leadership has allowed a situation to develop which, if not anarchic, is diverse, uncoordinated and inefficient. The main hopes on the horizon may be the recent reorganisation of the LGMA and the emergence of cloud computing. Asked about cloud computing in the survey all respondents were positive and saw this as a promising development. Nonetheless the cloud too has the potential to become yet another technological patch which will not work unless more fundamental procedural, managerial, organisational and structural problems are addressed. That it can be done is not in question. It is also worthwhile noting there have been other attempts at developing shared services in Ireland which have been successful. One notable case is the Institutes of Technology (of which there are 16) which have over the past five years implemented an effective shared service solution not dissimilar to the type of solution envisaged for the local authorities [START_REF] Bannister | Sense and Sensitivity: Power and shared services in public sector ICT[END_REF].

It may be that financial pressures will force local authorities into more take-up of shared services, but that will only happen if they are convinced that shared services are more cost-effective and that the price of those services will be consistent over time. A more radical solution to the problem would be to put in place a strong central authority with essentially central financial control of ICT budgets throughout the local authority sector. This would be extremely difficult to put into practice politically and could hardly be considered to be democratic, but it may be the only long term solution.

Outsource Supplier 1 Outsource Supplier 2 User 1 Shared Service Provider Outsource Supplier 3 User 2 User 3 User 4 User 5

	power struggle and an accentuated desire for independence based on fear about, inter
	alia, excessive central control. This problem became evident Ireland in an (unpub-
	lished) study carried out by the Institute of Public Administration in Ireland (IPA) in
	2004 into the financing of shared ICT services in Irish local government. Power is a
	major factor in shared service acceptance, though as Ren and Wagenaar

Table 1 .

 1 Usage levels of shared applicationsThe percentage rate of take-up can be computed as follows:

		No. System	No.
	CORE Human Resource (HR)	16	Finance	7
	Web Filtering Software	14	Road Management Software	7
	Payroll	14	Web Filtering Software	6
	Geographical Information Sys.	12	Backup Software	6
	Website	11	Telecommunications	6
	Higher Education Grants	10	Environmental System Complaints	5
	Planning System (iPlan)	9	Project Management Systems	5
	Anti Virus Software	9	Enforcements	4

which is a low success rate for a service that has been available for nearly four decades. Table

2

shows the responses to the question what services the HISs would consider sharing:

Table 2 .

 2 Shared applications that users would consider adopting.