Carl Erik Moe
email: carl.e.moe@uia.no

Tero Päivärinta
email: tero.paivarinta@uia.no

Challenges in Information Systems Procurement in the Norwegian Public Sector

Keywords: Public procurement, procurement of information systems, Delphi study

Public procurement of information systems (IS) and IS services provides several challenges to the stakeholders involved in the procurement processes. This paper reports initial results from a Delphi study, which involved 46 experienced procurement managers, chief information officers, and vendor representatives in the Norwegian public sector. The participants identified altogether 98 challenges related to IS procurement, divided further into 13 categories: requirements specification, change management, cooperation among stakeholders, competence, competition, contracting, inter-municipal cooperation, governmental management, procurement process, rules and regulations, technology and infrastructure, vendors, and IT governance. The results contribute by supporting a few previous findings from conceptual and case-based studies, and by suggesting additional issues which deserve both further research and managerial and governmental attention. As such, the results provide altogether a rich overview of the IS procurement challenges in the Norwegian public context.

Introduction

Public procurement, i.e. "the acquisition (through buying or purchasing) of goods and services by government or public organizations" [START_REF] Hommen | Public Procurement and Innovation: Towards a Taxonomy[END_REF], of information systems (IS) involves significant investments, where costs are covered by the taxpayers. For example, in Norway, a country of roughly 5 million inhabitants, the central government, municipalities and county governments used 6.6 billion NOK (825 million Euros) for purchasing hardware and software alone, in 2006 [START_REF] Ssb | Offentlig sektor kjøpte datautstyr og programvare for 6,6 milliarder i 2006[END_REF]. Procurement of IS consulting has been simultaneously increasing [START_REF] Iyer | Procurement of IT Consulting Services and Firm-Specific Characteristics[END_REF] due to a broader view of how IT is deployed in organizations.

Procurement of IS from the market is challenging, if compared to acquisition of more standardized goods and services. The systems often need to be customized to the needs of the public sector [START_REF] Keiichiro | How Local Governments Should Procure Information Systems?[END_REF]. Moreover, procurement decisions are made early in the process, when requirements are still uncertain [START_REF] Saarinen | Procurement Strategies for Information Systems[END_REF]. The buyer may face challenges to evaluate the bids against requirement specifications and to compare between potentially competing, complex system options. By information systems we limit ourselves here to software and systems implemented for specific organizational purposes, such as enterprise resource planning and e-services tailored for the buyer's needs. We thus exclude acquisition of off-the-shelf software, such as standard text processing, e-mail, and other generic applications, from this study. In IS procurement, the procurer also often needs to weigh between alternative IS implementation strategies (e.g. [START_REF] Hallikainen | Determining Information Systems Procurement Strategies -AHP Approach[END_REF]), such as in-house development, tailoring from proprietary software, or adhering to open-source software ecosystems. Procurement of related IS consulting services can also involve complexity, including difficulties in specifying requirements, risks of incurring costs, and problems inherent in outsourcing confidential knowledge to external consultants [START_REF] Dawson | Information Asymmetry in IS Consulting: Towards a Theory of Relationship Constraints[END_REF].

The public sector may face procurement challenges slightly different from the private business community. It is often bound by strict regulations concerning procurement and public tendering. For example, most European countries are required to publicly announce their call for tenders for all procurements above a certain threshold value; this applies to member states in EU, and in the EEA area. In addition, public projects are often large, both in terms of scope and of volume, which makes them risky. There are several incidents of significant overruns in time and costs, such as the Golf project for the Norwegian defense [START_REF] Riksrevisjonen | Riksrevisjonens oppfølging av forvaltningsrevisjoner behandlet av Stortinget[END_REF] or the NHS Programme for IT in England [START_REF] Bbc | Warning over fresh NHS IT delays[END_REF]. The above-mentioned issues make the field of public IS procurement a relevant, but challenging, area of research.

Our research question is: What challenges and dilemmas are typically faced in the procurement of information systems and related services in the public sector?

The paper reports results from two initial phases of a Delphi study among three expert panels related to IS procurement in the Norwegian public sector (procurement managers, CIOs, and vendor representatives). The experts identified a list of 98 challenges in public IS procurement projects, which were further divided into 13 categories. Based on the initial list, the experts and researchers came up with a narrowed-down list of 19 major challenges. A discussion of the major challenges contributes to the previous literature by confirming a few (mainly conceptual and case-based) findings and suggesting additional issues which deserve managerial and governmental attention for improving public IS procurement.

The rest of the article is structured as follows. Section 2 summarize previous challenges of IS procurement identified in the public sector, as a basis for discussion of the results. Section 3 describes the research process and section 4 summarizes the results. Section 5 discusses the results in light of the previous research and section 6 concludes with suggestions for further research.

Previous work

A considerable body of research on procurement in the IS field has focused on online procurement or e-procurement, both in the public and in the private sectors [START_REF] Davila | Moving Procurement Systems to the Internet: The Adoption and Use of E-procurement Technology Models[END_REF][START_REF] Gebauer | Impact of the Internet on Procurement[END_REF][START_REF] Hsiao | Delivering on the Promise of E-Procurement[END_REF][START_REF] Henriksen | E-Procurement Adoption in the Danish Public Sector: The Influence of Economic and Political Rationality[END_REF]. E-procurement appears most beneficial when the purchased items have explicit requirements or are manufactured according to common quality standards, and when there is a large pool of suppliers [START_REF] Hsiao | Delivering on the Promise of E-Procurement[END_REF]. Hence this line of research seems to offer little insight into public procurement of more complex information systems and IS services. There is also a stream of research covering procurement policies in general. This line of research questions whether and how procurement can be used as an instrument for specific policies (such as stimulating innovations or development of green products). Other researchers cover how procurement of technology can be carried out, whereas a few has focused on the procurement process of IS itself.

The findings from previous research on public IS procurements and associated challenges can be summed up in a limited number of different issues or research topics (Table 1). These issues are discussed in more detail below.

Table 1. Summary of the findings from previous research

Challenge

Reference Various stakeholders [START_REF] Spekman | Environmental Uncertainty and Buying Group Structure: Empirical Investigation[END_REF], [START_REF] Boyne | Public and Private Management: What`s the difference[END_REF], [START_REF] Pan | Information systems project abandonment: a stakeholder analysis[END_REF] Opportunism, from consultants [START_REF] Dawson | Information Asymmetry in IS Consulting: Towards a Theory of Relationship Constraints[END_REF] Limited interest from vendors, due to payment model and standard government contracts [START_REF] Doshi | The New OGC guidance: The future raodmap for government IT procurement[END_REF], [START_REF] Moe | Limits of Public Procurement: Information systems acquisition[END_REF] Balance between different socio-economic objectives, e.g. between partnership and fair competition [START_REF] Thai | Advancing Public Procurement: Practices, Innovation and Knowledge Sharing[END_REF], [START_REF] Lawther | Innovative practices in public procurement partnerships: The case of the United States[END_REF], [START_REF] Loader | Is local authority `lean`? An exploration to deterine if `lean` can explain a useful explanation of practice[END_REF] Specifying requirements before announcing tender [START_REF] Moe | Limits of Public Procurement: Information systems acquisition[END_REF] Focusing on life cycle cost and not just initial procurement costs [START_REF] Tyssedal | Life cycle cost based procurement decisions. A case study of Norwegian Defence Procurement pojects[END_REF]

Stakeholders

A large body of general-level procurement literature addresses how the process itself is or should be carried out. Organizational buying involves multiple participants [START_REF] Wind | Conceptual and methodological Issues in Organisational Buying Behaviour[END_REF] and represents a decision process where many purchasing decisions are influenced by various members of the buying centre [START_REF] Spekman | Environmental Uncertainty and Buying Group Structure: Empirical Investigation[END_REF]. The public sector also involves the complexity of satisfying different needs of different stakeholders. The main conventional distinction between public and private organizations resides in ownership; whereas a limited group of entrepreneurs or shareholders owns private businesses, public agencies are owned collectively by members of political communities [START_REF] Boyne | Public and Private Management: What`s the difference[END_REF]. Organizations subject to political rather than economic controls are likely to face multiple and potentially conflicting sources of authority [START_REF] Boyne | Public and Private Management: What`s the difference[END_REF]. In general, public IS acquisitions involve several stakeholders with the challenges of balancing among their goals, which gives a starting point for this research.

Opportunism

Dawson et al. [START_REF] Dawson | Information Asymmetry in IS Consulting: Towards a Theory of Relationship Constraints[END_REF] discuss information asymmetry when clients procure services from IS consultants. They use the agency theory to identify possible manifestations of opportunism, and how this can be constrained. Whereas their work is highly conceptual, it introduces the challenge of opportunism between clients and consultants. Pan [START_REF] Pan | Information systems project abandonment: a stakeholder analysis[END_REF] uses a stakeholder analysis in a case study to analyse how a procurement process of an e-procurement system was abandoned. He claims the study provides useful insight for practitioners on how to manage stakeholders in IS development projects.

Contract issues

Research on policy for public acquisitions has focused on issues related to both competition and contract types. These issues are expected to apply to public procurement of IS as well. A large study of the choice of contracts in Indian software industry find that reputation matters in terms of whether fixed price or cost-plus contracts is used [START_REF] Banerjee | Reputation Effects and the Limits of Contracting: A Study of Indian Software Industry[END_REF]. Bajari and Tadelis [START_REF] Bajari | Incentives versus transaction costs: a theory of procurement contracts[END_REF] develop a model inspired by data from the private-sector construction industry and show that cost-plus contracts are preferred when buyer and contractor share uncertainty about many important design changes that occur after the contract is signed and production begins. These findings should be relevant for procurement of information systems in instances when requirements are incomplete.

However, findings from the public sector indicate that the regulations and contract arrangements are protective of the government customer, through particular payment models [START_REF] Doshi | The new OGC guidance: The future roadmap for government IT procurement[END_REF] and the use of standard government contracts [START_REF] Moe | Limits of Public Procurement: Information systems acquisition[END_REF]. This is suggested to limit the vendors' interest to participate in public tenders [START_REF] Moe | Limits of Public Procurement: Information systems acquisition[END_REF].

Balance between socio-economic objectives

One line of previous work has focused on challenges or conflicting goals in public procurement. Thai states that public procurement must deal with a broad range of issues [START_REF] Thai | Advancing Public Procurement: Practices, Innovation and Knowledge Sharing[END_REF], such as:

• Balancing the dynamic tension between a) competing socioeconomic objectives, and b) national economic interests and global competition as required by regional and international trade agreements;

• Satisfying the requirements of fairness, equity and transparency;

• Maintaining an overarching focus on maximizing competition; and

• Utilizing new technology to enhance procurement efficiency, including eprocurement and purchase cards.

However, Thai [START_REF] Thai | Advancing Public Procurement: Practices, Innovation and Knowledge Sharing[END_REF] provides little empirical evidence, and others have questioned the traditional way of doing procurement and suggest moving towards public procurement partnerships. Complexity of procuring information technology, software and IT-services is one of the reasons for such a move [START_REF] Lawther | Innovative practices in public procurement partnerships: The case of the United States[END_REF]. In a recent paper Loader [START_REF] Loader | Is local authority `lean`? An exploration to deterine if `lean` can explain a useful explanation of practice[END_REF] finds through a survey of 105 authorities in UK that 63% of local authorities have to some extent partnership with some suppliers, two thirds of the respondents recognizing partnership as being more likely to produce best value, rather than switching supplier through a tendering process. However the term partnership was not defined to the respondents, and we do not know to what extent they do practice partnership.

In spite of the goal of transparency and fair competition, there may be further reasons to believe that the process is not altogether transparent, and that not all competing vendors have equal opportunities. A qualitative study of IT procurement processes in private companies in four European countries [START_REF] Schiessl | A Qualitative Oriented Study About IT Procurement Processes: Comparison of 4 European Countries[END_REF] shows that the choice of vendors may be based on limited information. The findings indicate that the search for supplier is usually initiated either through contacting a known supplier or one that has been recommended, and on average a rather small amount of suppliers were actually contacted in this study.

As the public sector is large, the effect of public sector procurement may be big. The European Union (EU) policymakers have increasingly encouraged "public procurement of innovative products and services" as a policy instrument for raising private sector R&D investment in member states [START_REF] Hommen | Public Procurement and Innovation: Towards a Taxonomy[END_REF]. The documented outcomes indicate that public procurement has significant positive effects on innovation [START_REF] Aschhoff | Innovation on demand -Can public procurement drive market success of innovations[END_REF]. It is less clear if and how this normative recommendation is operationalized in IS procurements. Research has been carried out through surveys with large samples (in Germany, on effects on innovation).

Specifying requirements

The findings from Moe et al. [START_REF] Moe | Limits of Public Procurement: Information systems acquisition[END_REF] indicate tensions or dilemmas concerning creating requirement specification up front and doing the system specification as an integral part of the procurement process, and other dilemmas related to negotiations and fixed price contracts. The paper reports two case studies on procurement of fairly complex information systems in a Norwegian municipality. Whereas the general-level IS procurement literature recommends the in-house development strategy in case of unclear requirements [START_REF] Saarinen | Procurement Strategies for Information Systems[END_REF], it may not be a realistic option for those public organizations with minimal internal IS development resources.

Focus on initial procurement costs

Tyssedal [START_REF] Tyssedal | Life cycle cost based procurement decisions. A case study of Norwegian Defence Procurement pojects[END_REF] finds that even though the Norwegian ministry of Defense has stated that the lowest life cycle cost should be preferred, still procurement in some projects are reviewed on the basis of initial procurement costs alone. Tyssedal [START_REF] Tyssedal | Life cycle cost based procurement decisions. A case study of Norwegian Defence Procurement pojects[END_REF] uses agency theory to explain this phenomenon, and suggest that agents may be more riskaverse than the principal. He finds only limited support for information symmetry between principal and agent affecting the use of life cycle cost for decision making.

The literature thus identifies a number of potential challenges of IS procurement, while giving a limited account of empirical data to validate the conceptual and normative recommendations. Moreover, there exists little systematic research on what other challenges there may be, or which of the challenges would be most prominent. One of the challenges that is referred to, is the issue of different stakeholders, and this may be more important in the public sector, but there is limited research on how this issue adds to the other challenges.

Research method, data collection

As the contemporary literature on the IS procurement challenges in the public sector remains without largely established theoretical or empirical grounds, we chose a research approach which orientates towards mapping the state-of-the-art expert opinions in the field. Hence, we chose the Delphi study method, which is often used in the field of information systems in order to find key issues and to explore an emerging topic [START_REF] Okoli | The Delphi method as a research tool: an example, design considerations and applications[END_REF], with three expert panels: municipal and regional procurement managers, chief information officers (CIOs) and representatives of vendors providing their systems and services to the public sector. This paper presents the preliminary results of the two first steps of the study. In general, we follow the process steps recommended for Delphi studies by Schmidt [START_REF] Schmidt | Managing Delphi Surveys Using Nonparametric Statistical Techniques[END_REF] and Okoli & Pawlowski [START_REF] Okoli | The Delphi method as a research tool: an example, design considerations and applications[END_REF].

The first activity was to select the experts for the study. We limited ourselves to inviting experts that are practitioners, representing the three different stakeholder groups mentioned above. We selected practitioners from different types of public entities of a reasonable size (municipalities, government run entities such as hospitals and entities in central government), where they possess a recognizably good level of experience. Likewise we selected experts from different categories of vendors with a considerable portion of the market for the public sector, including consultants, software houses offering systems targeted to public sector (e.g. systems for social services) and general software houses (e.g. offering ERP systems or systems for accounting and HRM). Experts were identified partly through suggestions from other experts, and partly through contacting the major vendors and municipalities.

In order to qualify as an expert, we set a minimum level of at least 3 years of experience in the current position or in a similar position with responsibility for either procurement or, on the vendor's side, selling. We chose to include procurement managers and CIO`s, as both these groups should in general have expertise on IS procurement. We decided not to include user representatives as it turned out to be hard to find expert participants from this group. We set a requirement of having taken part in minimum 3 procurement processes of information systems or services. The procurement manager panel included 18, the CIO panel 17, and the vendor panel 11 participants. However we lost one procurement manager before the study was completed; hence there were 45 participants in total. Most of the CIO`s and procurers are from municipalities [START_REF] Aschhoff | Innovation on demand -Can public procurement drive market success of innovations[END_REF], the rest [START_REF] Dawson | Information Asymmetry in IS Consulting: Towards a Theory of Relationship Constraints[END_REF] being employed in either health care organizations, counties (fylker) or state government.

The first phase of the actual Delphi study with the selected panels was the brainstorming of issues related to the research question. In this phase, we treated the experts as individuals. Each expert was asked to list at least 6 challenges or dilemmas of public IS procurement. Each issue has a shorter "name", definition, and a brief reasoning why this is important according to the expert in question. That is, what are the consequences of the challenge, if it is not managed, and what causes it? The experts e-mailed their lists to the researchers, thus remaining anonymous to each other. After gathering the challenges from the participants, the researchers unified the list, removed exact duplicates and unified terminology. The consolidated list of 96 identified challenges was sent back to experts who gave feedback to validate that the researchers had not dropped out any in this phase and that the researchers had not misinterpreted or changed meanings. The feedback resulted in the list which was added with 2 challenges. Some of these fit perhaps less within a text book definition of the procurement phase, e.g. "Change of work processes and benefit realization", or "Management of problems after delivery". However all challenges in the consolidated list were identified by experienced procurers and we thus decided to include them, instead of relying on our own interpretations or prejudices about the relevant challenges within the procurement theme.

The second round narrowed down the brainstormed list to a manageable number of the most important issues, to be ranked within each panel. Now, we divided the experts into the three panels described above. In each panel, the experts defined around 20 issues that they considered as "most important". The presentation order of these 98 factors was randomized to the varying panel members to avoid bias related e.g. towards choosing factors from the top of the list. This study reports these preliminary results.

The third phase of the Delphi study will aim at a consensual ranking of the relative importance of the issues identified as most important in the narrowing-down phase. Despite the fact that the Delphi research was in process while writing this paper, proceeding towards the panels ranking the issues, the collection of the top issues already provide us with food for discussion and theory creation.

Results

The consolidated list from the brainstorming phase consisted of 98 challenges and dilemmas. The challenges are divided further into 13 higher-level categories, which help to organize and to get an overview of the results. Whereas no readily theorized category structure for the theme of procurement existed, the researchers grouped the challenges in this phase according to more common themes which they interpreted to emerge from the brainstorming data. The categorization has a purely pragmatic role for the further process, and it should thus not be considered as a "theorizing" effort as such. The narrowing-down-phase included altogether 19 issues (table 1), which were selected as follows. Firstly, we selected a "top ten" list based on the votes in total. This resulted in a selection of 12 issues (the 10 th place was shared by three issues).

Then we had to find out whether there were large differences between the groups. Kendall's tau values, which measure the agreement between the panels [START_REF] Schmidt | Managing Delphi Surveys Using Nonparametric Statistical Techniques[END_REF], from this phase showed some positive and significant correlations between the panel-wise selections for the narrowed-down lists:

• procurement managers -CIOs: 0,474, sig 0,000;

• procurement managers -vendors: 0,205, sig 0,006; and

• CIOs -vendors: 0,234, sig 0,004.

However, as all the Kendall's tau values between the panels were less than 0,5 (values above 0,5 would have indicated strong inter-panel agreement) we decided to form a narrowed-down list, which would include the most important issues identified in each panel, in addition to those issues identified important across the panels. Hence, we decided to include the panel-wise challenges chosen by more than 50% [START_REF] Schmidt | Managing Delphi Surveys Using Nonparametric Statistical Techniques[END_REF] of members in each panel (Table 2). Table 2. Major challenges. The list shows the 19 challenges that were selected after the narrowing-down phase. The numbers in brackets show how many from the different groups that selected this challenge as one of the more important ones.

#

Total votes, N=45 Procurement managers, N=17

CIOs, N=17

Vendors, N=11 The differences between the three groups did result in some challenges being included due to one group only finding them among the most important. For example, "Vendors oversell" is an issue, which none of the participants from the vendor side found worth listing, whereas "The vendor is not given an opportunity to show its qualities" was listed by more than half the vendor participants but by none of the others. "Sober requirements" is another example along the same vein.

This heuristic resulted in additional six challenges to be included in further analysis. In this phase, we also realized that two challenges (1.10 and 5.2) were so close to each other that they could be merged to one issue of "Finding good criteria for vendor evaluation. Then, we calculated individual votes altogether for this merged criteria -and it was, indeed, making itself as an additional (13 th ) criterion to be included among the "top 10".

In general, the narrowed-down list involves all but one (governmental management) of the 13 categories identified in the first phase. That is, the major challenges relate to many issues, and require holistic attention among the stakeholders. Three of the categories had more than one issue among the top 19: ensuring competition, requirements specification, and rules and regulations. However, the number of issues per category does not necessarily indicate the relative importance of the category. The experts highlight also significant challenges related to change management, cooperation among different stakeholders of procurement, competence, contracting, inter-municipal co-operation, the procurement process, technology and infrastructure, vendors, and organizational IT governance in general. Governance of IT and the organization 13.9 Too much focus on costs Among the five issues with most overall votes from all experts across the panels, the most voted one was change management of work processes and benefits realization, which thus should be considered already during the procurement. The next issue was lack of coordination and standardization of the procurement process, being especially in the top agenda of CIOs and vendors. The third issue, procurement competence, was especially highlighted by the procurement managers. Complexity of regulations was also among the top five of CIOs, whereas the fifth issue concerning technological integration and compatibility challenges of the purchased systems was in the agenda of both CIOs and procurement managers.

In addition to the above-mentioned issues, the procurement managers especially highlighted the challenges of getting clear and complete requirements for the procurement process. They also mentioned two challenges related to vendors. That is, the procurement managers experience that in some areas particular vendors may have a monopoly-like position, whereas sometimes the customers also experience the vendors "overselling" and thus creating exaggerated expectations.

The CIO panel lifted up the challenges related to the framework contracts in general, such as decreased flexibility to choose the best partners and systems for particular needs. The vendor panel seems to have a slightly differing view on the challenges, highlighting sober and realistic requirements from their customers, problems with the need for opening new projects for tendering instead of longer-term co-operations, problems with foci of requirements hindering the vendors from showing their qualities, and the overall focus on costs only among the public sector procurers.

Co-operation challenges exist between different stakeholders within the public sector customers but also between the municipalities; sometimes networks of municipalities pursue joint acquisitions of systems. In addition, rules and regulations are regarded to hinder longer-term vendor-customer partnerships, when new projects need to be opened for public requests of bids. Finally, solid vendor evaluation criteria are hard to find and prioritize.

Discussion

The results, i.e. the major 19 challenges identified in public sector procurement of IS, confirm a few previous findings (see table 1), but also reveal a group of new challenges, which have not been discussed in detail in previous research. There was also one previously identified issue, which was not directly among the challenges of this study.

The issue of the vendors "overselling" their ability to deliver products and services denotes potential for opportunistic vendor behaviour, confirming the ideas of Dawson et al. [START_REF] Dawson | Information Asymmetry in IS Consulting: Towards a Theory of Relationship Constraints[END_REF]. Alongside with the overall differences among the panel prioritizations, our study thus supports their suggestions for improving stakeholder management in public IS procurements. The previously identified challenge of focusing too much on initial procurement costs in a case study from the Norwegian ministry of Defence [START_REF] Tyssedal | Life cycle cost based procurement decisions. A case study of Norwegian Defence Procurement pojects[END_REF] is also present in our list.

The issues of finding good vendor evaluation criteria and to balance among different objectives (such as fair competition and partnership) [START_REF] Thai | Advancing Public Procurement: Practices, Innovation and Knowledge Sharing[END_REF][START_REF] Lawther | Innovative practices in public procurement partnerships: The case of the United States[END_REF][START_REF] Loader | Is local authority `lean`? An exploration to deterine if `lean` can explain a useful explanation of practice[END_REF] were also well visible in our list of major challenges. Transparency for ensuring fair competition between the potential vendors is clearly a public-sector-specific challenge, whereas the private firms can be more pragmatic on these issues. The classic challenge of coordinating between various stakeholders in procurement in general [START_REF] Spekman | Environmental Uncertainty and Buying Group Structure: Empirical Investigation[END_REF] and in the public sector IS investments [START_REF] Pan | Information systems project abandonment: a stakeholder analysis[END_REF] was also one of the major challenges. Our results thus support the previous calls for more focus on managing these challenges in public procurement practices and processes. In addition, municipal cooperation is found to be one of the major challenges, and some of the participants are from municipalities that are highly involved in networks with neighbour municipalities where they try to use procurement as an instrument to negotiate better prizes, and to move to a more shared portfolio of systems.

The experts highlight importance on clear, complete, and sober requirements specifications, which has been perhaps less recognized as an issue for public sector procurement, if compared to the field of systems development in general. However, increased focus on requirements specifications may be especially important for the public sector, as procurement regulations specify tendering as the default instrument for enhancing fair competition and requirements must often be clarified up-front before talking to vendors [START_REF] Moe | Limits of Public Procurement: Information systems acquisition[END_REF]. This regulation-initiated challenge may be controversial to the observations made in the software engineering and information systems literature since the end of 1970s, which have recognized the difficulties for defining "complete" and "clear" ex-ante requirements and the fact that requirements tend to change during development (e.g. [START_REF] Parnas | Designing Software for Ease of Extension and Contraction[END_REF]). Varying IS procurement strategies for coping with "standard" requirements versus complex projects with uncertain requirements has also been suggested for some time [START_REF] Saarinen | Procurement Strategies for Information Systems[END_REF]. However, many public-sector organizations can rarely develop systems internally, despite such a strategy for procurement being recommended for projects with unclear requirements [START_REF] Saarinen | Procurement Strategies for Information Systems[END_REF]. Our data thus confirms that this dilemma of ex-ante requirements definitions for IS procurement largely remains to be solved in the Norwegian public sector.

To our slight surprise, the issue of facilitating change in work processes and benefits realization was regarded as an important challenge that relates to procurement as well. We regard this as a new finding in the field of public IS procurement. As such, this finding supports the benefits realization literature, which highlights the importance of planning for the expected benefits from IS investments from early on (e.g. [START_REF] Ward | Benefits Management: Delivering Value from IS & IT Investments[END_REF]). This issue has not been identified in the previous literature of the public IS procurement. However, the challenge of establishing benefits realization practices from IT investments in the Norwegian public sector has been recently identified in other studies [START_REF] Päivärinta | Issues of Adopting Benefits Management Practices of IT Investments in Municipalities: A Delphi Study in Norway[END_REF][START_REF] Päivärinta | Pre-Determinants of Implementing IT Benefits Management in Norwegian Municipalities: Cultivate the Context[END_REF]. Our results thus motivate further research, development and education initiatives on public benefits realization practices, linking them also to the procurement process of IS investments.

A need for coordination and standardization of IS procurement processes (among organizations) is probably specific to the public sector. In the public sector, among the altogether 430 municipalities plus other public sector organizations in Norway, such coordination may be possible in the first place. However, procurement standardization would probably represent a big public project in itself, to be coordinated by the statelevel government. The issue of procurement competence was also highly ranked, which has surely some implications for both governmental and educational institutions. This is not surprising as IS procurement is a complex field due to the risk associated with large IS projects and due to the complex regulations.

The three issues related to rules and regulations (complex rules, hindering partnerships and long-term planning) for public IS procurement has also got less attention in the previous literature. This issue surely relates both to the dilemma of exante requirement definitions and the call for increased competence. Interestingly, increased competence comes out top on the list from procurement personnel whereas complex rules comes out near the top from CIO`s, it may well be that procurement personnel sees the need for increased competence due to the complex rules, whereas CIO`s are more challenged by the rules themselves. Framework contracts, on the other hand, may hinder flexibility to adopt new ideas from the non-included vendors. However, these issues may also give food for thought for the policy-makers and the framework-contractors, in order to make the current rules better suited for information systems projects. These challenges may be present also in parts of the private sector; rules and regulations may be just as complex in larger corporations.

The challenge of considering technological integration and compatibility of the systems highlights the importance to involve the IT and operations experts of the customer organization in the procurement process. In Norway, which is a small country, some vendors may have also reached a "monopoly-like" position in some niche areas specific to the public sector. On the other hand, due the regulations and strong focus on ex-ante requirements defined by the customer, some vendors may have few opportunities to show their specific qualities, if the customers cannot ask for that. The challenge of inter-municipal co-operation may be also a case characteristic to the Norwegian context, where the municipalities have been so far rather independent with regard to their IT/IS implementations. Whereas 2/3 of CIOs and procurement managers in our panels were employed in the municipal sector, but not all municipalities participate in inter-municipal procurement networks, this issue may appear a bit contextual for particular organizational settings.

Interestingly enough, the challenge of "uninterested vendors" due to complex regulations and practices in the public sector, identified in the previous research [START_REF] Moe | Limits of Public Procurement: Information systems acquisition[END_REF], was not present among the 98 identified challenges per se. This might have something to do with our selection of panels -i.e., by involving only vendors which already are active with the public sector. On the other hand, the issue of "monopoly-resembling vendor conditions", identified by the customer organization representatives, likely relates to this issue, taken that the scarcity of the vendor selection would be a consequence of such disinterest to overcome the public bureaucracy threshold. This Delphi study revealed typical challenges of IS procurement in the Norwegian public sector. Three expert panels, involving procurement managers, CIOs, and vendors, defined altogether 98 challenges and dilemmas, divided into 13 categories: requirements specification, change management, co-operation among stakeholders, competence, competition, contracting, inter-municipal co-operation, governmental management, procurement process, rules and regulations, technology and infrastructure, vendors, and IT governance. The results provide a rich overview on the challenges and complement the previous, largely conceptual and case-based, literature on public IS procurement challenges. The study supports the previously identified challenges related to stakeholders, vendor opportunism, standard government contracts, balancing between objectives, requirement specification for tendering, and plain focus on costs. In addition, the study revealed previously less discussed challenges of public IS procurement, such as aligning benefits realization to procurement, coordinating and standardizing public procurement processes, procurement competence, complex and constraining regulations, rigid framework contracts, issues of technological integration and compatibility, monopolistic vendor positions, unawareness of particular vendor qualities, and inter-municipal cooperation. In general, the identified major issues provide food for thought for Norwegian researchers, policy-makers, and practitioners in the field.

Our further research efforts will focus on finalizing the Delphi study with panelwise prioritizations of the issues in order to see whether the experts would reach further consensus about the definitely most important issues, and whether the stakeholder prioritizations vary. We plan also to conduct in-depth studies to form theories of causes and effects related to the most important issues. Whereas the Delphi analysis alone reveals little or no relationships between the issues, our further work will focus on creation of cause-effect relations between the most commonly observed issues through qualitative analyses of the brainstorming data and additional field work. Another natural avenue for further work resides in cross-country studies, which might reveal more information about generalizability of these results beyond the Norwegian context.

Table 3 .

 3 The narrowed-down list of 19 major challenges divided into the 13 categories

	#	Category	Top 19 Challenges and Dilemmas
			1.1 Clear requirements
	1. Requirements specification	1.2 Complete requirements
			1.3 Sober requirements
	2. Change management	2.1 Change of work processes and benefits realization
	3.	cooperation Different stakeholders,	3.3 Co-operation between different stakeholders
	4. Competence	4.1 Procurement competence
			5.2 (& 1.10) Finding good criteria for vendor evaluation.
			5.3 Weighing/prioritization of vendor evaluation criteria
	5. Competition	5.5 Monopoly-resembling vendor conditions
			5.6 The vendor is not given an opportunity to show its
			qualities
	6. Contracting issues	6.6 Framework contracts
	7.	municipalities Cooperation between	7.1 Municipal cooperation is challenging
	8. Governmental management


Fathul Wahid
email: fathul.wahid@uia.no

Explaining History of e-Government Implementation in Developing Countries: An Analytical Framework

Keywords: General Systems Theory, Institutional Theory, mechanistic systems, organic systems, colonial systems, e-Government, developing countries

The paper proposes an analytical framework to explain history of e-Government implementation over a certain period of time in the context of developing countries. The framework is built upon General Systems Theory (GST) and Institutional Theory enriched with literature from organizational changes, and information systems/e-Government implementation. Three scenarios of implementation are proposed, each with its own departing worldview (i.e., mechanistic, organic, and colonial systems), isomorphic mechanism, implementation model, and possible impact.

Introduction

Countries in the world have been investing a lot of resources in implementing e-Government in various levels and aspects. While some governments have been successful in implementing e-Government initiatives, many initiatives fail to live up to expectations [START_REF] Heeks | Most e-government-for-development projects fail: how can risks be reduced?[END_REF]. In general, development of e-Government in developing countries is lagging behind developed countries [START_REF]2010: Leveraging E-government at a Time of Financial and Economic Crisis[END_REF]. As noted by Sein [START_REF] Sein | E-government in developing countries: linking G to C through I[END_REF], "implementing e-Government initiatives in developing countries is a complex and challenging process that face many hurdles."

Having this in mind, backdrop of this paper is twofold. Firstly, hitherto, most of the existing models of e-Government evolution suggest a natural linear progression [START_REF] Maumbe | Questioning the pace and pathway of egovernment development in Africa: A case study of South Africa's Cape Gateway project[END_REF]. This linear progression is indicated in various stage models that could be found in the literature [START_REF] Layne | Developing fully functional e-government: a four stage model[END_REF][START_REF] Moon | The evolution of e-government among municipalities: rhetoric or reality?[END_REF][START_REF] Reddick | A two-stage model of e-government growth: Theories and empirical evidence for U.S. cities[END_REF][START_REF] Siau | Synthesizing e-government stage models -a meta-synthesis based on meta-ethnography approach[END_REF]. As noted by Lyytinen and Newman [START_REF] Lyytinen | Explaining information systems change: a punctuated socio-technical change model[END_REF], "a majority of change studies treat the change as a simple, linier progression where a new (technical) system is designed, adopted, and modified in step-wise manner." Due to the absent of considering contextual specificity, this linear progression model has been criticized and extended [START_REF] Andersen | E-government maturity models: Extension of the Layne and Lee model[END_REF][START_REF] Maumbe | Questioning the pace and pathway of egovernment development in Africa: A case study of South Africa's Cape Gateway project[END_REF][START_REF] Moon | The evolution of e-government among municipalities: rhetoric or reality?[END_REF].

In order to make e-Government implementation relevant for a specific context, serious consideration must be given to the social, cultural, and economic differences in e-Government development [START_REF] Basu | E-government and developing countries: an overview[END_REF][START_REF] Maumbe | Questioning the pace and pathway of egovernment development in Africa: A case study of South Africa's Cape Gateway project[END_REF]. Moon [START_REF] Moon | The evolution of e-government among municipalities: rhetoric or reality?[END_REF] points out that the stage model is a conceptual tool to examine the evolution of e-Government, and in practice, it may not follow a true linear progression. Coping with the limitations of the linear progression model, for instance, Lyytinen and Newman [START_REF] Lyytinen | Explaining information systems change: a punctuated socio-technical change model[END_REF] develop a punctuated socio-technical change model which is based upon socio-technical theory viewing organizational systems as multivariate systems of four interacting and aligned components, i.e., task, structure, actor, and technology.

Secondly, in connection to this issue, in a literature review, Walsham and Sahay [START_REF] Walsham | Research on information systems in developing countries: current landscape and future prospects[END_REF] identify several limitations in IS research in developing countries. The limitations include lack of in-depth study on IS implementation in developing countries. They also call for more action research and longitudinal study. Similarly, Yildiz [START_REF] Yildiz | E-government research: reviewing the literature, limitations, and ways forward[END_REF], Heeks and Bailur [START_REF] Heeks | Analyzing e-government research: perspectives, philosophies, theories, methods, and practice[END_REF], and Stanforth [START_REF] Stanforth | Analysing e-government project failure: comparing factoral, systems and interpretive approaches[END_REF] suggest e-Government researchers to pay more attention on process-oriented or longitudinal studies, beyond output-based or factorial or cross-sectional studies that have been being focus of the e-Government studies in the last decade. To our knowledge, only a few studies in e-Government employ a longitudinal analysis. Among the exceptions include the studies by Pan et al. [START_REF] Pan | Escalation and de-escalation of commitment: a commitment transformation analysis of an e-government project[END_REF], Stanforth [START_REF] Stanforth | Using Actor-Network Theory to analyze e-government implementation in developing countries[END_REF], and Heeks and Stanforth [START_REF] Heeks | Understanding e-Government project trajectories from an actor-network perspective[END_REF].

Against these backdrops, the current paper can be considered as a first attempt to address the call and fulfil the mentioned void by proposing an analytical framework built upon General Systems Theory (GST) along with Institutional Theory to explain development of e-Government over certain period of time. GST enables holistic study of history and allows multiple, simultaneous paradigms, each with its own system metaphors [START_REF] Porra | The history of Texaco's corporate information technology function: a general systems theoretical interpretation[END_REF]. Three system metaphors, e.g., mechanistic, organic, and colonial systems will act as historical-construct inventories [START_REF] Porra | The history of Texaco's corporate information technology function: a general systems theoretical interpretation[END_REF]. In addition, Institutional Theory, which might be used as a lens to study history of IS implementation within an organization [START_REF] Avgerou | IT and organizational change: an institutionalist perspective[END_REF], is brought in to explain how collective awareness or isomorphic change occurs. Institutional Theory offers three mechanisms of institutional isomorphic change: coercive, mimetic, and normative [START_REF] Dimaggio | The iron cage revisited: Institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields[END_REF][START_REF] Scott | The adolescence of Institutional Theory[END_REF]. Explanation using these two theories is hoped to provide a fresh interpretation how e-Government initiatives evolve over a certain period of time, which in many cases cannot be explained by the extant e-Government linear progression models.

Following this introduction, the rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section 2 and 3 respectively explains the main conceptions of GST and Institutional Theory. Next, Section 4 explicates and integrates these two theories along with literature from organizational change and e-Government implementation as an analytical framework to explain e-Government implementation. Lastly, Section 5 draws concluding remarks that bring this paper to end.

General Systems Theory

Ludwig von Bertalanffy and Kenneth Boulding are among the most prominent founders of GST [START_REF] Skyttner | General Systems Theory: Problems, Perspectives, Practice[END_REF]. The GST thinking is based on the fact that after examining laws in various fields of science (e.g. biology, physics, medicine, psychology, social sciences), von Bertalanffy [START_REF] Von Bertalanffy | An outline of General System Theory[END_REF] found what he calls formally identical or isomorphic laws. Isomorphism exists "when common characteristics, structures, formulas, and forms of organization are in accordance in different systems" [47:39]. Various forms of GST can be found in literature [START_REF] Skyttner | General Systems Theory: Problems, Perspectives, Practice[END_REF]; for example, Miller's Living Systems Theory [START_REF] Duncan | Miller's Living Systems Theory: issues for management thought and practice[END_REF][START_REF] Skyttner | General Systems Theory: Problems, Perspectives, Practice[END_REF], Checkland's System Typology [START_REF] Checkland | Systems Thinking, Systems Practice[END_REF][START_REF] Skyttner | General Systems Theory: Problems, Perspectives, Practice[END_REF] and Porra et al.'s [START_REF] Porra | The history of Texaco's corporate information technology function: a general systems theoretical interpretation[END_REF] three metaphors, i.e. mechanistic, organic, and colonial systems. As aforementioned, this paper will adopt the three metaphors proposed by Porra et al. [START_REF] Porra | The history of Texaco's corporate information technology function: a general systems theoretical interpretation[END_REF]. Each of the metaphors is explained in some detail as follows.

Mechanistic systems are isolated from their environment and only outside forces can change their structure [START_REF] Porra | The history of Texaco's corporate information technology function: a general systems theoretical interpretation[END_REF]. This mechanistic worldview which is derived from classical physics of the nineteenth century leaves no room for any directiveness, order, or telos [START_REF] Von Bertalanffy | General System Theory: Foundations, Development, Applications[END_REF], and hence mechanistic systems have static teleology and assume one-way causality [START_REF] Von Bertalanffy | General System Theory: Foundations, Development, Applications[END_REF]. The principle of causality states that every effect is preceded, not followed, by a cause [START_REF] Skyttner | General Systems Theory: Problems, Perspectives, Practice[END_REF].

According to Porra [START_REF] Porra | Colonial Systems[END_REF], a mechanistic system does not have temporality; in other words, as soon as the purpose or goal of the system is determined by the initiator of the machine, the system stops changing, and "grows" by adding or changing parts to make its life longer. The system cannot evolve as a living system does [START_REF] Porra | Colonial Systems[END_REF]. Such systems are based on formal rules and can only operate with their hierarchy of rules no matter what the conditions and will ultimately fail when new environmental conditions emerge [START_REF] Morgan | Images of Organization[END_REF][START_REF] Porra | Colonial Systems[END_REF][START_REF] Porra | The history of Texaco's corporate information technology function: a general systems theoretical interpretation[END_REF].

The organic worldview is introduced in response to insufficiencies in the mechanistic view [START_REF] Von Bertalanffy | General System Theory: Foundations, Development, Applications[END_REF] by adding the notion of feedback and control to the formal rule-based structures of mechanistic systems. Organic systems include an implicit assumption of progressive evolution [START_REF] Porra | Colonial Systems[END_REF]. The evolution of organic systems "is gradual, discontinuous unfolding of events by incremental adaptation to its immediate environment" [37:44]. According to Porra [START_REF] Porra | Colonial Systems[END_REF], an organic system may survive longer than a mechanistic system by making local corrections to its behaviours during dynamic times. But this paradigm cannot capture the nature of turbulent change or punctuation that happens in the context of organization.

To cope with this limitation, Porra [START_REF] Porra | Colonial Systems[END_REF] introduces so-called colonial systems. These are based on mobile animal colonies. Borrowing terms from the biological evolution field, a colony can be defined as [37:39] "a voluntary collection of individuals with the shared characteristics of a common evolutionary social history (phylogeny), common methods for realizing stability and radical change (species-level evolution), and a common local context". Porra [START_REF] Porra | Colonial Systems[END_REF] builds colonial systems as an alternative to the mechanistic and organic system perspective. Colonial systems see an organization as a complex adaptive system, not only a collection of individuals working alone but also interacting -collaborating and competing -at different levels [START_REF] Bitar | Towards an Understanding of Elusive Organizational Phenomena: Organizations as Complex Adaptive Systems[END_REF]. In responding to the changes in the environment, members of the colonial systems co-evolve. Coevolution is a process where changes in an element depend (to varying degrees) on changes in other linked elements and will cause change in yet other ones [START_REF] Bitar | Towards an Understanding of Elusive Organizational Phenomena: Organizations as Complex Adaptive Systems[END_REF]. Hence, as a result, the members of the system will have a shared evolutionary history [START_REF] Porra | The history of Texaco's corporate information technology function: a general systems theoretical interpretation[END_REF].

GST in its various forms has been used in different areas of IS research [START_REF] Kanungo | General Systems Theory: a guiding framework for IS research[END_REF]. Kendall and Kendall [START_REF] Kendall | Metaphors and methodologies: living beyond the systems machine[END_REF] point out that IS development methods, such as lifecycle concept or work breakdown structure, can be traced back to GST as underlying principles. Structured IS development methodologies are built upon the principles of mechanistic systems. Machines are used as the metaphor of this methodology [START_REF] Kendall | Metaphors and methodologies: living beyond the systems machine[END_REF]. Multiview methodology defines an IS as a social process using the principles of colonial systems to some extent. Kendall and Kendall [START_REF] Kendall | Metaphors and methodologies: living beyond the systems machine[END_REF] use society as a metaphor for this methodology. Soft-system methodology introduced by Checkland [8] also uses GST as underlying principles. In addition, Porra et al. [START_REF] Porra | The history of Texaco's corporate information technology function: a general systems theoretical interpretation[END_REF] used GST with three metaphors, i.e. mechanistic, organic, and colonial systems, to construct the history of Texaco's corporate information technology function.

Institutional Theory

The development of Institutional Theory can be traced back to its early development in economics, political science, and sociology [START_REF] Scott | Institutions and Organizations[END_REF]. This theory sees institutions as multifaceted, durable social structures made up of symbolic elements, social activities, and material resources. Institutions, however, are not just constraint structures but also simultaneously empower and control [START_REF] Jepperson | Institutions, institutional effects, and institutionalism[END_REF]. According to Scott [43:48], "institutions are comprised of regulative, normative and cultural-cognitive elements that, together with associated activities and resources, provide stability and meaning to social life". Scott [START_REF] Scott | Institutions and Organizations[END_REF] refers to regulative, normative and cultural-cognitive elements as the three elements or pillars of institutions.

The regulative conception assumes that institutions constrain and regularize behaviours by setting up rules and systems of rules [START_REF] Scott | Institutions and Organizations[END_REF]. Rules or systems of rules are symbolic systems and one of the carriers in the institutionalization process. According to Gil-Garcia and Martinez-Moyano [START_REF] Gil-Garcia | Understanding the evolution of e-government: The influence of systems of rules on public sector dynamics[END_REF], in an institution, systems of rules can be designed primarily as behaviour-constraining mechanisms and can be primarily thought of as a solution-guiding mechanism.

The emphasis of the normative view is that normative systems (i.e. values and norms) provide a prescriptive, evaluative, and obligatory dimension of social life [START_REF] Scott | Institutions and Organizations[END_REF]. Normative systems are seen as carriers in the institutionalization process. Here, values are defined as "the conceptions of the preferred or the desirable, together with the construction of standards to which existing structures or behaviour can be compared and assessed" [43:54], whereas norms "specify how things should be done" [43:54-55].

The third conception of institutions stresses the centrality of cultural-cognitive elements of institutions. This conception assumes that "internal" cognitive processes are shaped by an "external" cultural framework [START_REF] Scott | Institutions and Organizations[END_REF]. According to Douglas [START_REF] Douglas | The effects of modernization on religious change[END_REF] -as cited in [START_REF] Scott | Institutions and Organizations[END_REF] -cultural categories should be treated as "the cognitive containers in which social interests are defined and classified, argued, negotiated, and fought out".

Although institutions function to provide stability and order, they undergo change that is both incremental and revolutionary [START_REF] Scott | Institutions and Organizations[END_REF]. In this sense, institutions are seen not only as a "property" or state of an existing social order, but also as a "process", including the processes of institutionalization and deinstitutionalization. Generally, institutionalization may be defined as "the process through which a social order or pattern becomes accepted as a social 'fact'" [3:236], whereas deinstitutionalization is "the process by which the legitimacy of an established or institutionalized organizational practice erodes or discontinues" [33:564]. For example, when information technology is adopted by an organization, the information technology development and organizational change involve the continuing institutionalization of information technology intertwined with the deinstitutionalization of the dominant organizational form [START_REF] Avgerou | IT and organizational change: an institutionalist perspective[END_REF].

According to Scott [START_REF] Scott | The adolescence of Institutional Theory[END_REF], institutionalization can be considered as a process of creating reality [START_REF] Berger | The Social Construction of Reality[END_REF] or as a process of instilling value [START_REF] Selznick | Leadership in Administration[END_REF]. As a process of creating reali-ty, Berger and Luckmann [6:54] -as cited in [START_REF] Scott | The adolescence of Institutional Theory[END_REF] -argue that, "Institutionalization occurs whenever there is a reciprocal typification of habitual actions by types of actors". Both actions and actors are typified: certain forms of actions come to be associated with certain classes of actors. As a process of instilling value, institutionalization is the process "to infuse with value beyond technical requirement of the task at hand" [45:17] -cited in [START_REF] Scott | The adolescence of Institutional Theory[END_REF]. Before value is instilled in an organization, it merely has instrumental utility as a mechanical and disposable tool [START_REF] Scott | The adolescence of Institutional Theory[END_REF].

External environment is seen as influential for organizations. Institutional Theory views organizations not as passive entities that are controlled by the demand of their environments but as active players capable of responding strategically and innovatively to environmental pressure [START_REF] Orlikowski | Technology and institutions: what can research on information technology and research on organizations learn from each other?[END_REF]. According to Selznick [START_REF] Selznick | Leadership in Administration[END_REF] -cited in [START_REF] Avgerou | IT and organizational change: an institutionalist perspective[END_REF] -we cannot explain what is happening in organizations by considering only the "rational" actions of their members; indeed we should take into account "irrationalities" stemming from the context of the organization as well as from cultural systems embedded in organizations. Thus, organizations are subject to pressure to be isomorphic with the external environment through various mechanisms. There are three mechanisms of institutional isomorphic changes: coercive, mimetic, and normative [START_REF] Dimaggio | The iron cage revisited: Institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields[END_REF][START_REF] Scott | The adolescence of Institutional Theory[END_REF].

Coercive isomorphism stems from political influence and the problem of legitimacy and is a result of pressure exerted on organizations by other organizations upon which they are dependent, such as resource-dominant organizations, regulatory bodies, and parent corporations [START_REF] Dimaggio | The iron cage revisited: Institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields[END_REF][START_REF] Teo | Predicting intention to adopt interorganizational linkages: an institutional perspective[END_REF]. Normative isomorphism is associated with professionalization. In relational channels among members of a network, norms that are widely adopted by other organizations will influence organizational behaviour [START_REF] Dimaggio | The iron cage revisited: Institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields[END_REF]. When organizations have direct and frequent communication with each other, they are more likely to think alike or behave similarly [START_REF] Teo | Predicting intention to adopt interorganizational linkages: an institutional perspective[END_REF]. Mimetic isomorphism is a response to uncertainty. Uncertainty may emerge when organizational technologies are poorly understood, when goals are ambiguous, or when environments change [START_REF] Dimaggio | The iron cage revisited: Institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields[END_REF]. In this case, over time, an organization may change to become more like other organizations in terms of its environment.

Scott [START_REF] Scott | Institutions and Organizations[END_REF] points out that institutional carriers are important in terms of the ways in which institutions change. He classifies carriers into four types: symbolic systems, relational systems, routines, and artefacts. Each institutional element has its own dominant carriers. For example, the carriers of the regulative element of institutions are rules, power systems, and standard operating procedures; values, authority systems, and roles are the carriers of the normative element; the carriers of the culturalcognitive element include typifications and identities.

Institutional Theory has been used as a lens in different areas of IS research. Most of the researchers using this theory believe that IT itself is an insufficient predictor of IT impact on organization performance improvement [e.g., [START_REF] Avgerou | IT and organizational change: an institutionalist perspective[END_REF][START_REF] Baptista | Institutionalisation as a process of interplay between technology and its organisational context of use[END_REF][START_REF] Orlikowski | Information technology and the structuring of organizations[END_REF][START_REF] Orlikowski | Technology and institutions: what can research on information technology and research on organizations learn from each other?[END_REF][START_REF] Soh | An institutional perspective on sources of ERP package-organisation misalignments[END_REF][START_REF] Teo | Predicting intention to adopt interorganizational linkages: an institutional perspective[END_REF]. Avgerou (2004:234) suggests that, "IT innovation itself is a process of combining technical-rational and social forces, neither driving, nor subsumed in the forces of organizational change, but interacting with them". Orlikowski and Barley [START_REF] Orlikowski | Technology and institutions: what can research on information technology and research on organizations learn from each other?[END_REF] suggest that IS scholars should take into account the institutional context where IS is developed and implemented. In addition, Institutional Theory is also used to portray the relationship between actors and to explain isomorphic mechanisms between the actors occurs during the IT implementation [e.g., [START_REF] Gil-Garcia | Understanding the evolution of e-government: The influence of systems of rules on public sector dynamics[END_REF][START_REF] Hjort-Madsen | Institutional patterns of enterprise architecture adoption in government[END_REF][START_REF] Kim | An institutional analysis of an e-government system for anti-corruption: the case of OPEN[END_REF][START_REF] Teo | Predicting intention to adopt interorganizational linkages: an institutional perspective[END_REF][START_REF] Tingling | Mimetic isomorphism and technology evaluation: Does imitation transcend judgment[END_REF].

4 Explaining e-Government Implementation using GST and Institutional Theory: An Analytical Framework Implementation of IS, in which e-Government is a specific instance of its application, could be approached from various ways. Myers [START_REF] Myers | Dialectical hermeneutics: a theoretical framework for the implementation of information systems[END_REF] argues that generally, there are two mainstreams in IS literature when researching IS implementation: factor research and process research. Factor research or variance research [START_REF] Langley | Strategies for theorizing from process data[END_REF][START_REF] Robey | Learning to implement enterprise systems: an exploratory study of the dialectics of change[END_REF] tries to identify possible determinants of IS implementation success. This research speculates about the processes connecting antecedents with outcomes [START_REF] Robey | Learning to implement enterprise systems: an exploratory study of the dialectics of change[END_REF]. Unlike variance research, process research focuses on the development of IS projects. The focus of the research includes the relationship between the designers and the users of an IS, and the impact of the systems on the organization [START_REF] Myers | Dialectical hermeneutics: a theoretical framework for the implementation of information systems[END_REF]. Process research seeks to explain how change emerges, develops, and diminishes over time [START_REF] Robey | Learning to implement enterprise systems: an exploratory study of the dialectics of change[END_REF]. Yet, from another stance, Keil [START_REF] Keil | Managing MIS implementation: identifying and removing barriers to use[END_REF] -as cited in [START_REF] Myers | Dialectical hermeneutics: a theoretical framework for the implementation of information systems[END_REF] -suggests three models of IS implementation based on the nature of causality as a basis. The three models are: (a) implementation as technology acceptance; (b) implementation as organizational change; and (c) implementation as organizational problem solving involving mutual adaptation. The first two models assume that the design activities will produce the change smoothly, and the design system remains stable. Here, IS change can be considered as linear and cumulative in nature and involve either technical or social dimension [START_REF] Lyytinen | Explaining information systems change: a punctuated socio-technical change model[END_REF]. The third model include the intertwined relationship between technical and social aspects of IS implementation. As Lyytinen and Newman [START_REF] Lyytinen | Explaining information systems change: a punctuated socio-technical change model[END_REF] argue, the IS change should be seen as complex, multi-level, and punctuated change that involve both technical and social changes.

Inspired by the idea from GST by identifying isomorphic conceptions both in GST and Institutional Theory, the paper proposes an analytical framework that consists of three scenarios as follow.

Scenario 1: Mechanistic systems, coercive, techno-centric, accepters

When an organization is considered as mechanistic systems, for example by assuming that the organization has static teleology, formal and unchanging rules, and is singularly purposeful (see Table 1), e-Government implementation may follow teleology model as pointed out by Van de Ven and Poole [START_REF] Van De Ven | Explaining development and change in organizations[END_REF] 1 . Goal enactment is the generating force of the teleology model [START_REF] Van De Ven | Explaining development and change in organizations[END_REF] which is also found in the conception of the mechanistic systems [START_REF] Porra | Colonial Systems[END_REF]. The teleology model consists of a cycle of goal formulation, implementation, evaluation, and modification of goals based on what was learned by the organization. Further, Van de Ven and Poole [START_REF] Van De Ven | Explaining development and change in organizations[END_REF] argue that this sequence emerges through the purposeful social construction among individuals within the organization. Such conceptions can be found in the mechanistic paradigm [START_REF] Porra | Colonial Systems[END_REF][START_REF] Porra | The history of Texaco's corporate information technology function: a general systems theoretical interpretation[END_REF]. Based on an extensive literature review across disciplines (200,000 titles, 2,000 abstracts, 200 articles), Van de Ven and Poole [START_REF]2010: Leveraging E-government at a Time of Financial and Economic Crisis[END_REF] identify four main organizational change models, i.e. teleology, life-cycle, evolution, and dialectic models. Each model has its own motors and assumptions.

Institutional adoption pattern

Accepters

Improvers Transformers [START_REF] Hjort-Madsen | Institutional patterns of enterprise architecture adoption in government[END_REF] Institutional impact Automated Improved Transformed [START_REF] Heeks | E-government in Africa: promise and practice[END_REF][START_REF] Hjort-Madsen | Institutional patterns of enterprise architecture adoption in government[END_REF][START_REF] Sahraoui | E-inclusion as a further stage of e-government? Transforming Government: People[END_REF] In the context of e-Government implementation, the teleology model is probably adopted in the beginning stage of e-Government implementation where technological determinism dominates the assumptions. In other words, the implementation is techno-centric [START_REF] Sahraoui | E-inclusion as a further stage of e-government? Transforming Government: People[END_REF], which mostly are the cases in developing countries that generally are lagging in e-Government implementation when compared to their counterparts in developed countries [START_REF]2010: Leveraging E-government at a Time of Financial and Economic Crisis[END_REF]. In the beginning stage, as well, most local governments implement e-Government initiatives to response to national government regulation or programs. Technical assistance and funding may be provided by the national government to foster the e-Government implementation in lower levels. Here, technology acceptance may be used as an indicator of successful implementation [START_REF] Keil | Managing MIS implementation: identifying and removing barriers to use[END_REF].

The mechanistic systems are formal rule-based [START_REF] Porra | Colonial Systems[END_REF] which are similar with the conception of regulative element of institutions, which is legally enforced [START_REF] Scott | Institutions and Organizations[END_REF]. The centralized power and control in the mechanistic systems [START_REF] Porra | Colonial Systems[END_REF] also found in the regulative element of institution that position power systems as one of the institutional carriers [START_REF] Scott | Institutions and Organizations[END_REF]. In this situation, from the perspective of Institutional Theory, coercive pressure from higher authority (i.e., the national government) may be influential. When the incentive is put as the main motor behind the process of institutionalization, e-Government implementation may only be manifested as automation of the government business process [START_REF] Sahraoui | E-inclusion as a further stage of e-government? Transforming Government: People[END_REF]. Using Hjort-Madsen's [START_REF] Hjort-Madsen | Institutional patterns of enterprise architecture adoption in government[END_REF] terminology, this local gov-ernment could be considered as accepters in which the e-Government implementation is mainly to comply with the regulation from an upper authority. As an example, implementing teleconference technology to facilitate meeting between various levels of government agencies without any organizational changes may follow this scenario.

Scenario 2: Organic systems, normative, organization-centric, improvers

Further, when e-Government as a system is perceived as an organic system in which the government seeks balance with the environment by adaptation, implementation model adopted may be life-cycle or evolution model [START_REF] Van De Ven | Explaining development and change in organizations[END_REF]. In Porra's terminology [START_REF] Porra | The history of Texaco's corporate information technology function: a general systems theoretical interpretation[END_REF], this is an adaptive process with fixed arrangement. Van de Ven and Poole [START_REF] Van De Ven | Explaining development and change in organizations[END_REF] consider life-cycle implementation model as organic growth. This model assumes that the change process progresses through a necessary sequence of stage linearly. Meanwhile, the evolution model assumes that implementation consists of a repetitive sequence of variation, selection, and retention events among members of an organization [START_REF] Van De Ven | Explaining development and change in organizations[END_REF]. The impact caused by the implementation process using these assumptions is incrementally progressive.

Using interpretation from Institutional Theory, when adaptation is carried out through feedback from the environment [START_REF] Scott | Institutions and Organizations[END_REF], normative pressures from other organizations, or in the context of e-Government implementation, from other local government may be very determining. This adaptation mechanism is similar with the organic paradigm that adds feedback and control, in addition to formal rule-based structures of the mechanistic systems [START_REF] Porra | Colonial Systems[END_REF]. In this stage, communication and contact among local governments intensifies. This process most probably adopted not in the beginning stage of e-Government implementation, but in a later stage when some e-Government systems have been put in place as foundations. In this stage of implementation, local governments may be considered as improvers [START_REF] Hjort-Madsen | Institutional patterns of enterprise architecture adoption in government[END_REF]. They do not merely automate the business processes, but they also improve them to some extent. In this sense, implementation may be considered as organizational change [START_REF] Keil | Managing MIS implementation: identifying and removing barriers to use[END_REF]. We may coin this implementation as organization-centric or government-centric approach. Implementation of ERP-like package to improve the decision making and controlling process in a local government is an example of e-Government that probably follows this scenario.

Scenario 3: Colonial systems, mimetic, community-centric, transformers

Lastly, when assumptions in colonial systems are used as points of departure, e-Government implementation process may follow a different path. Colonial systems assume the existence of feedback and feedforward control between an organization and its environment. Over time, changes consist not only of stasis but also punctuations [START_REF] Porra | The history of Texaco's corporate information technology function: a general systems theoretical interpretation[END_REF]. In this context, dialectic model described by Van de Ven and Poole [START_REF] Van De Ven | Explaining development and change in organizations[END_REF] may accommodate the process. Dialectic models assume that the emergence of thesis and antithesis will create a conflict as a pre-process to produce a synthesis. In the dictionary of Institutional Theory, this conflict may produce confusion. This confused situation should be resolved by developing common beliefs that produce a shared un-derstanding. This shared understanding is similar with the conception of shared evolutionary history and shared local context in colonial systems paradigm [START_REF] Porra | The history of Texaco's corporate information technology function: a general systems theoretical interpretation[END_REF].

By integrating the two theories, we may postulate that colonial systems are built on cultural-cognitive conception of organizations; an organization is seen not only from technical aspect (as in mechanistic systems) or merely as social construction (as in organic systems), but from the understanding that social and technical aspects are intertwined, and the resulted changes are not only linear progression but also punctuations. In this context, mimetic pressures may dominate over coercive and normative pressures, since the role of culture building is very important [START_REF] Scott | Institutions and Organizations[END_REF]. Using Keil's [START_REF] Keil | Managing MIS implementation: identifying and removing barriers to use[END_REF] conceptions, this implementation may be considered as organizational problem solving involving mutual adaptation. Here, external environment gains a more substantial influence through a more intensive interaction and communication.

e-Government implementation that adopts the colonial systems and culturalcognitive conceptions may generate more radical changes. e-Government will not only automate or improve the business process, but goes beyond by transforming the local government. The governments are transformed, and hence they become not only accepters or improvers, but transformers [START_REF] Hjort-Madsen | Institutional patterns of enterprise architecture adoption in government[END_REF]. In this stage, the government implementation is community-centric [START_REF] Sahraoui | E-inclusion as a further stage of e-government? Transforming Government: People[END_REF] or people-centric [START_REF]United Nations: Global E-government Readiness Report 2005: From E-government to Einclusion[END_REF], beyond techno-centric and government-centric. In the context of e-Government, the government treats "citizen as a partner" ([14] -cited in [START_REF] Sahraoui | E-inclusion as a further stage of e-government? Transforming Government: People[END_REF]) or e-Government is considered as "transferring power to the people" ([26] -cited in [START_REF] Sahraoui | E-inclusion as a further stage of e-government? Transforming Government: People[END_REF]).

e-Government initiative that follows this implementation scenario may include establishment of one-stop services in various levels of government involving a variety of government agencies to improve the public service quality and transparency. In many cases, the implementation process is not straightforward, but is going through a rather long process involving a dialogue, and in some extent a political conflict, between various government agencies that worry about losing their power [START_REF] Furuholt | e-Government challenges and the role of political leadership in Indonesia: the case of Sragen[END_REF]. At the end, the process will transform government business processes that very much put the public service quality and transparency improvement at the highest priority.

Concluding Remarks

GST and Institutional Theory have been briefly presented in this paper. An analytical framework to explain e-Government implementation that is built upon the two theories has also been proposed. The main contribution of this paper is the introduction of three scenarios of e-Government implementation. Each of these scenarios in the analytical framework is with different departing worldview, isomorphic mechanism, implementation model, and possible impacts.

One possible approach would be to view these scenarios as adjustable analytical tools. In practice, these three scenarios most likely are not mutually exclusive, but they are interdependent and intersect in some extent, though a scenario may be predominant over the other two. This integration that preserves the distinction of each theory yields a richer theoretical framework that can be used as lenses to explain e-Government implementation. However, to get a better understanding of the process of e-Government implementation over time, the framework should not be used mechanistically as a simple checklist.

Although the scenarios are theoretically supported, they need to be empirically examined. Possible expected result from the empirical studies is new understanding to evolution of the e-Government initiatives over a certain period of time. For instance, some e-Government implementations may have evolved organically or colonially and others, especially in the context of developing countries, may simply have been mechanistic. If these scenarios gain empirical support, then we can conclude that the departing worldview used in the process of e-Government implementation will partake in giving explanation to the e-Government success or failure. But, we should note here that definition of failure or success is dependent on the intended strategic purpose in the outset for a certain initiative [START_REF] Aral | IT assets, organizational capabilities, and firm performance: how resource allocations and organizational differences explain performance variation[END_REF]. A clear statement of the intended strategic purpose in the outset of each e-Government implementation then is very crucial in determining a scenario that may fit best. For example, in some cases [START_REF] Morgan | Images of Organization[END_REF], mechanistic systems are more preferable than organic and colonial systems. This new understanding, then, can be utilized as a basis to increase the success rate and to maximize the benefits of the e-Government implementation, especially in the developing countries which experience most e-Government implementation failures as reported by Heeks [START_REF] Heeks | Most e-government-for-development projects fail: how can risks be reduced?[END_REF] and others, without closing the possibilities of applying the analytical framework in the context of developed countries.

1

 1

Table 1 .

 1 Theoretical framework of analysis

		Scenario 1	Scenario 2	Scenario 3	Reference
	Departing worldview	Mechanistic systems	Organic systems	Colonial systems	[31, 37,
					38, 57]
	Control	Unchanging	Adapting through	Feedback and feed-	[31, 38]
		Built-in	feedback from	forward
			the environment
	Change	Constancy of essence Linear adaptive	Punctuated equilib-	[28, 37]
			change	rium
	Institutional concep-	Regulative	Normative	Cultural-cognitive	[43]
	tions
	Basis of legitimacy	Legally enforced	Morally governed	Culturally support-	[43]
				ed
	Isomorphic mecha-	Coercive	Normative	Mimetic	[9, 43]
	nism
	Institutional carriers	Rules	Values	Typifications	[43]
		Power systems	Authority systems	Identities
		Standard operating	Roles
		procedures
	Implementation mod-	Teleology	Life-cycle	Dialectic	[55]
	el		Evolution
	Implementation focus Techno-centric	Government-	Community-	[22, 41]
			centric/	centric/
			Organization-	People-centric
			centric
	Implementation per-	Technology ac-	Organizational	Organizational	[22]
	spective	ceptance	change	problem solving
				involving mutual
				adaptation