Rajeev Mukundan
email: rajeevmukundantampa@gmail.com

Sam Thomas

Indian IT Industry firms: Moving towards an Active Innovation Strategy

Keywords: Innovation Strategy, Indian IT industry, Open Innovation, Non-Linear Growth 1

This paper aims to describe the changing innovation strategies of Indian IT industry firms. Indian firms are responding to global technological discontinuities proactively and faster, compared to the past. Innovations continue to be process driven, however, there is significant focus on non-linear, products & platforms-led growth strategies. There has been an upward shift in R&D/IP emphasis, as empirical data suggests, and emphasis on collaborative innovation. Firms are willing to make riskier investments compared to past. The paper also discusses some of the challenges the players face, as they build the next generation innovations and offerings. Nature of emerging technologies provides further scope for firms to come up with innovative products, services and solutions. Key conclusion is that the innovation strategy of Indian IT industry has changed from 'reactive' to 'active'.

Introduction

The Indian IT industry has been a remarkable success story for the country in the last 2 decades, growing from $150 million in 1990 to $100 billion in size in 2012. The industry has secured its own place in the global map of Information Technology players, comprising product vendors, consulting firms, system integrators, and services providers. This growth has been facilitated by the ability of the industry to continuously move up the outsourcing value chain.

When it was set up, the industry was a disruptive innovation as defined by Clayton Christensen [START_REF] Christensen | The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies cause great companies to fail[END_REF]. The offshore business model served an existing customer need, through a different, low-cost based value proposition. However, in recent times, need for non-linear revenue models, changing customer expectations, challenges in talent availability and competitive pressures are forcing the Indian IT firms to shift their innovation strategies.

How do you define innovation strategy? As defined by Dodgson, Gann and Salter, the Innovation Strategy of firms can be categorized into 4 types (figure 1). The Key Research Proposition to be investigated here is that the Indian IT industry is advancing its innovation strategy from 'Reactive' to 'Active' mode. As can be seen from recent adoption of emerging technologies (such as Big Data Analytics and Mobility) by Indian firms, the time lag between emergence of a new technology (in a developed market like the US) and development of services/solutions based on the same by Indian IT firms is decreasing. Additionally, smaller Indian IT companies are building solutions of their own, reducing their dependency on the dominant Indian firms for expertise and ideas.

Hence, the Innovation Objectives (quick-to-follow strategy) and the Nature of Innovation (still incremental, primarily) point to an 'Active' stage of Innovation in the Indian IT industry. Therefore, it may be concluded that Indian IT firms, in their endeavor to achieve non-linear growth models, have increased the willingness to take calculated risks. It may be argued that the firms have not yet taken bets on radically new, unproven technologies and business models. This 'Medium' level risk-taking willingness corresponds to an 'Active' Innovation strategy.

Key Challenges

The industry faces the following challenges.

Leveraging internal collaboration & knowledge:

This will be a key challenge for the large and medium sized firms. The pioneering firms have all been in the industry for over 2 decades, and some of them have more than 100000 employees. Past research has highlighted the need for Technology firms to share internal knowledge, and that internal knowledge flows has an inverse relationship with organization size [START_REF] Serenko | Organizational size and knowledge flow: a proposed theoretical link[END_REF]. The large IT companies have huge amount of internal knowledge that can be leveraged to create disruptive and breakthrough ideas and innovations. A recent survey done among a sample of IT companies indicated that about 80% of companies identified 'achieving competitive advantage' as the key objective of Knowledge Management [START_REF] Chaudhuri | Knowledge Management in Indian IT industries[END_REF]. Despite the fact that Indian IT firms have higher awareness and adoption levels of Knowledge Management vis-à-vis other industries [START_REF] Sanghani | Knowledge Management: Inter Industry Comparison in India[END_REF], challenges remain. Internal collaboration challenges include the following: (a) collaboration between various vertical/industry service groups (b) collaboration between vertical and horizontal competency groups (c) and structure and the operating models of the new competency development teams. These collaborations are important, considering the trend of convergence of technologies such as Analytics, Big Data, Mobility and the Cloud [START_REF] Griffin | Analytics and the Cloudthe Future is Here[END_REF]. The large firms could look at limiting the number of employees within a business unit to a certain level, so as to facilitate better knowledge flows [START_REF] Serenko | Organizational size and knowledge flow: a proposed theoretical link[END_REF].

Taking Innovation capacity to the next level:

Companies such as 3M, Google and Apple are considered among the most innovative global firms. One of the reasons for their success is their ability to create and sustain unique corporate cultures that foster innovation. Infosys and TCS have made it to the list of top 50 most innovative companies globally, as ranked by Forbes [START_REF] Forbes | The World's Most Innovative Companies List[END_REF]. Most of the scalable innovations in the industry pertain to process improvements. It may be argued that services-driven model that the Indian IT industry follows fosters process excellence than breakthrough innovations [START_REF] Deodhar | How to Encourage Innovation @ Work[END_REF]. The business models of the successful Indian IT companies are based on offshore cost arbitrage, ability to recruit and train thousands of skilled employees, program and project management capabilities, quality & productivity benefits offered to customers, and proven global delivery models. Large, successful organizations are built to support repeatable processes that are part of their core business model [START_REF] Govindarajan | The Other Side of Innovation: Solving the Execution Challenge[END_REF]. Having focused on process-led innovations for several years, the challenge for the large, established IT companies is to create the right organizational culture that would take their innovation capacity to the next level.

Managing the Innovation Process: Innovation process 'consists of an idea that comes from some recognized need that is developed into a concept, followed by invention, and then taken through development, production, and diffusion and adoption by end users' [START_REF] Gaynor | Innovation by Design: What it Takes to Keep Your Company on the Cutting Edge[END_REF]. Globally proven models exist for managing the innovation process. Consider IBM, which was issued 6478 patents in 2012 for a variety of inventions across technology areas [START_REF] Ibm Tops | Patent List for 20th Consecutive Year[END_REF]. The company topped the list of US Patent recipients in 2012. The company, of course, has a large base of R&D scientists and PhDs. Since 2001, IBM famously introduced the concept of 'Innovation Jams' (collaborationjam.com platform, which is open to its employees). In 2006, IBM brought a massive 150000 employees and stakeholders together in its Jam platform, to successfully take several of its technologies to market [START_REF] Bjelland | An Inside view of IBM's 'Innovation Jam[END_REF]). This is an example of a structured innovation process. In recent years, Indian firms have evolved their innovation processes significantly, as evident from the Innovation literature available on company web sites. The challenge would be to build the right processes that support the nonlinear, products & platforms-based strategy.

6

What is ahead in the next decade?

The president of India declared 2010-2020 as the 'Decade of Innovation' for India [START_REF] Dst | Decade of Innovation[END_REF].

IT industry players see themselves amongst the drivers of this innovation wave. The following trends will influence the innovations in the IT industry, and the direction it will take in the coming years.

Cloud Computing: Cloud computing is disruptive in nature. Global Cloud market is expected to grow from $40.7 billion in 2011 to more than $241 billion by 2020 (InformationWeek, 2011). It levels the playing field to an extent, by providing medium and small firms the opportunity to develop and deploy innovative solutions that can be accessed by customers in the global market, at attractive price points. For instance, Zoho Corporation, with operations in Chennai, has a suite of award-winning Business/Collaboration/Productivity applications (Source: www.zoho.com) that can be deployed over cloud environment.

Mobility:

The proliferation of wireless devices & smart-phones and mobile platforms, along with the emergence of concepts such as Enterprise Mobility, BYOD (Bring Your Own Device), MDM (Mobile Device Management) has revolutionized the Mobility space. This provides huge opportunities associated with any General Purpose Technology Transition [START_REF] Lalvani | SMARTPHONE: Smart Opportunity. The Hindu, Survey of the Indian Industry[END_REF].

Innovators have the opportunity to build breakthrough products and solutions, as well as solutions for the bottom-of-the pyramid markets. The other emerging areas include Big Data Analytics and Green IT. The opportunity lies in the fact that all these areas offer tremendous innovation potential for firms of all sizes.

Business Analytics & Knowledge

Conclusions

The Indian IT industry is at an inflection point of innovation, as it progresses towards a more 'active' innovation strategy. This is evident from an upward shift in R&D/IP emphasis, adoption of collaborative innovation, faster pace of reacting to technology discontinuities, and willingness to make riskier investments. The next few years will separate the innovation leaders from the rest. Emerging areas such as Cloud Computing and Mobility offer huge opportunities for firms to innovate, where Small and Medium size firms will have an equal opportunity.

This study has the following limitations. Firstly, some of the generalizations are based on analysis of select firms, and not based on empirical analysis. Secondly, the study focuses primarily on the large, established firms. Future work should focus on smaller sized firms and start-up firms to understand trends in innovation within those segments. The study has practical implications, particularly to medium/small sized firms looking to understand the innovation trends being set by the dominant firms. Findings of the study will find utility among academic community interested in the strategies of IT industry firms.

Figure 1 :

 1 Figure1: Innovation Strategies -Adopted from[START_REF] Dodgson | The Management of Technological Innovation[END_REF]

Figure 2 :

 2 Figure 2: Quick-to-follow strategy of Indian IT firms (Source: Own Research)

  Supplier linkages with educational institutions and students (human resources are the key input to IT companies) now incorporate faculty/student training, industry sponsored labs, R&D partnerships & Research sponsorships. IT companies have also forged several strategic partnerships with third party product vendors, which have contributed in technology transfer. For instance a few years back, Wipro launched its ambitious 10x initiative, to train 10000 faculty members across 1500 engineering colleges. The company is involved with more than 1000 schools across the country, and is an active education ecosystem player including periodic meetings and discussions, regular e-mail exchanges, Annual Education Forum, Faculty Workshops, and interactions on the Mission 10x collaborative portal (Source: about Innovation strategies and strategic alliances. This is a clear indication that the industry perceives and has adopted open innovation as a beneficial strategy. Barclays, one of the leading global Investment Banks, interacted with several industry experts to compile its 'India Tech Tour Report (2013)'. One of the key findings of this study was increasing willingness of Indian Tech firms to take on more risk on their Balance Sheets(Economictimes.com, 2013).A report jointly done by consulting firm KPMG and CII (Confederation of Indian Industry) in 2012 elaborates on the emerging trends of the leading Indian IT firms adopting new, 'non-linear' pricing models compared to the traditional Fixed-Price and Time-and-Material models (KPMG/CII, 2012). The non-linear pricing models (outcome, usage, license based) are inherently riskier compared to the traditional pricing models.Many of the leading firms are making substantial investments in 'Products & Platforms', in an attempt to generate non-linear revenue models. Infosys, in its Annual Report (2012) mentions accelerating growth in products, platforms and solutions, doubling investments in Product Research & Development Center, and strategic acquisitions of domain-specific platforms. TCS Annual Report (2012) discusses elaborately on the firm's investments in platforms, products, Research (in areas such as Green Energy & Social Media), Sponsorship of PhDs, and the Co-Innovation network. An analysis of web sites of TCS, Infosys, Cognizant, HCL Technologies and Wipro Technologies suggests that all 5 companies have invested in the emerging areas of Cloud Computing, Big Data Analytics, Mobility, Knowledge Services and Green IT/Sustainability.

	Collaborative Innovation: The Indian IT firms have a long history of collaborating with industry actors. However, in recent times, the linkages have grown stronger, with more emphasis on leveraging the linkages for innovation. Linkages with customers have evolved from transactional relationships to collaborative partnerships, joint IP creation, joint value discovery and revenue sharing agreements. A case in point is Infosys' strategic relationship with P&G that started in 2007 in achieving business transformation and co-creation of innovation (Source: Infosys 2011 2010 2009 2008 2007 2006 TCS Patents 460 223 87 58 26 25 17 R&D Expenditure (Rs Cr.) 405.06 281.78 77.58 43.92 38.78 33.64 32.04 R&D Intensity (R&D Expenditure/sales) % 0.83 0.75 0.26 0.16 0.2 0.22 0.28 Infosys Patents 143 91 31 79 10 38 20 R&D Expenditure (Rs Cr.) 660 527 440 267 201 167 102 R&D Intensity (R&D Expenditure/sales) % 2.1 2.1 2.1 1.3 1.3 1.3 1.1 Wipro Patents 15 7 7 13 17 13 3 R&D Expenditure (Rs Cr.) 190.4 165.5 99.3 49 40.5 26.77 20.23 R&D Intensity (R&D Expenditure/sales) % 0.60 0.63 0.43 0.23 0.23 0.19 0.20 HCL Technologies Patents NA NA NA NA NA NA NA R&D Expenditure (Rs Cr.) NA 93.16 40.53 40.86 19.44 12.07 4.13 R&D Intensity (R&D Annual Report 2012). 2012 Expenditure/sales) % NA 1.37 0.8 0.87 0.42 0.32 0.14

Wipro Technologies Annual Reports 2008, 2012)

. TCS has a trademarked co-innovation platform known as COIN for collaborating with several network actors, and also supports (through Research Scholarship) 80 PhD students from about 25 educational institutions (Source: TCS Annual Report 2012, company web site). Web sites of many IT companies have dedicated sections that talk Figure3: R&D and Patenting of Large Indian IT companies

[START_REF] Mukundan | Innovation Strategies of Large Indian IT companies: A study based on the Industry Life Cycle Theory[END_REF]

Hence, the Knowledge Sources of the Indian IT firms (R&D, collaborations) today correspond to an 'Active' Innovation strategy.

4 Risk Acceptance

There are several industry trends that indicate the willingness of Indian IT firms to accept more risks. These include cross-border acquisitions, flexible pricing models (linked to value delivered to clients), and investments in products, platforms & emerging technologies.

  BPO services players have already established Business Analytics and Knowledge Services as a value-added offering. However, the niche nature of the business also provides a window of opportunity for the medium/small sized players. Evalueserve with more than 2600 employees and significant presence in India (Source: www.evalueserve.com ), Mu Sigma with over 2500 professionals and operations in Bangalore (Source: www.mu-sigma.com) and AmbaResearch (www.ambaresearch.com) are examples of focused players in this space.

	Services: It is estimated that Business Analytics market will
	grow at a CAGR of about 9.8% during 2011-2016, to become a $50 billion market by 2016
	(eWeek.com, 2011). Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO), which includes Research &
	Analytics outsourcing, is expected to reach a $17 billion global market by 2014 from $9 billion
	in 2011, and India is expected to garner 70% share of this (informaticsoutsourcing.com, 2012).
	Several large IT/


Participatory Approach versus Bureaucratic 'Pressure': The Case of Health Information Systems Programme

Keywords: Health Information Systems [HIS], Participation, Public Healthcare, Design, Implementation

Implementation of Information Systems in Public Healthcare in India has been a very complex undertaking. Participation of the end-users during design and implementation is important. Participation within bureaucratic settings poses unique challenges, due to hierarchical, centralized, authoritarian and formalistic practices. Even where State agencies have experimented to bring in imaginative changes, participation have not been voluntary, but have been enforced. This short paper attempts to analyse less know and less understood aspect of participatory approach entangled within bureaucratic systems. This paper attempts to analyse the issues around participation in order to identify two key areas: [1] How to encourage public sector employees to participate during design, development and implementation of IS? [2] How can public sector institutions encourage effective participation? Discourses on Participatory Approach is drawn upon to analyse the case of Health Information Systems Programme.

Introduction

Information and Communication Technologies [ICTs] offer tremendous potential to improve and transform many facets of public healthcare delivery. Yet the reality of ICT projects most often does not match the general optimism surrounding the grand notion of bringing about transformations through the introduction of technology. There are various reports of 'total', 'partial', 'sustainability', and 'replication' failures [Heeks, 2000a]. Projects fail due to 'design-actuality' or 'design-reality' [Heeks, 2003a] gaps, or lack of commitment on the part of the political leadership and public managers [START_REF] Bhatnagar | Information Technology in Development Communication: Key Issues', Information & Communication Technology in Development Communication: Cases from India[END_REF].

While Health Information Systems are being actively introduced by international agencies, national and local governments as a part of various health reform efforts, what is often found is that the focus of such efforts is primarily on the means (computerization) rather than the ends, or what needs to be achieved (i.e., strengthening information support for health management) [START_REF] Ranjini | Computer-based Health information Systems -Projects for Computerization or Health Management?: Empirical Experiences from India in Information Communication Technologies and Human Development: Opportunities and Challenges[END_REF]. Over the years, research has emphasized that the critical issues to be addressed in the implementation of information systems are social and organisational, not solely technical [START_REF] Anderson | Evaluating The Impact Of Health Care Information Systems[END_REF][START_REF] Walsham | Interpreting Information Systems in Organizations[END_REF]. Institutionally, HIS in developing countries are situated in rather centralized structures [START_REF] Braa | A Study Of The Actual And Potential Usage Of Information And Communication Technology at District And Provincial Levels In Mozambique With A Focus On The Health Sector[END_REF][START_REF] Braa | District Level Information Systems: Two Cases From South Africa[END_REF] in which local use of information is not encouraged [START_REF] Opit | How Should Information On Healthcare Be Generated And Used?[END_REF].

This article seeks to examine the relationship among participatory practices during the design and implementation of HIS and that of bureaucratic practices, with a view to analyze the potential role of ICTs in furthering the e-governance agenda and how it can be achieved in practice. This question is analyzed based on an examination of the literature around participatory approach in order to identify what makes it problematic to achieve participation in public sector institutions and what can be done about it.

Participatory Approach

Participation of people, end-users and more importantly by beneficiaries/stakeholders themselves has been emphasized during the design and use of ICT projects. Participation is considered a key issue not only for understanding existing capabilities but also for developing new ones among different users [START_REF] Quraishy | Implications Of (Non) Participation Of Users In Implementation Of The Health Information System Project (HISP) In Andhra Pradesh: Practical Experiences[END_REF]. In Information Systems, participatory design [Kuhn. S & Muller. M.J, 1993] has been emphasized to duly consider the social context in which the system is to be embedded [START_REF] Avgerou | Information systems and global diversity[END_REF], potentially contributing to better designed systems. In Scandinavia, the collective resource approach [START_REF] Ehn | The collective resource approach to systems design[END_REF] emphasized union empowerment, not merely to oppose induction of new technologies [including ICTs], but also to develop innovative ways in which technology could be harnessed in the workplace to further workers' interests through democratic participation [ibid]. Mumford, E [2006a] developed a system design methodology, that she called ETHICS (Effective Technical and Human Implementation of Computer-based Systems) to help design a system primarily from the perspective of the user(s) and advocates that it is paramount that they work closely with developers to specify sociotechnical requirements. Users be allowed to change work practices and organizational structures so as to enable the smooth transition of the new system. Participative design is seen as being consultative, democratic and responsible in nature, thus fitting with the ethical stance that individuals have an inherent right to take part in changes that take place within their own work situation.

3

Case Study: Health Information Systems Programme

The Health Information Systems Programme [HISP] is a global research and development network initiated in 1994 by researchers in the Department of Informatics, University of Oslo, in collaboration with universities and health authorities in South Africa. The stated goals of HISP [START_REF] Braa | Networks of action: sustainable health information systems across developing countries[END_REF] are to develop an open source, not-for-profit District-based Health Information Software [DHIS], strengthen health information management at district and community levels, assist in local analysis and use of data, conduct training programmes, standardize primary healthcare data and maximize end-user participation. Most distinctively, HISP is committed to a bot-tom-up design and system development approach to support decentralised health management.

In India, HISP was started in December 2000 in Andhra Pradesh. HISP India sought to strengthen information practices within the primary healthcare sector, with the larger aim of improving processes of healthcare delivery for the rural community. The HISP in Andhra Pradesh had the following key aims:

1. To develop a district-focused computer-based health information system; 2. To develop capacity for information management among staff at various levels of the health system; and 3. To integrate the health information system with other ongoing egovernance initiatives in the State.

Pilot Phase

Kuppam, in Chittoor district of Andhra Pradesh was chosen by HISP as a locale offering adequate infrastructural and government support, and also because the area is relatively small. During situational analysis, the HISP team undertook a study of the reporting processes and analysed the existing technological and physical infrastructure. The situational analysis found that health assistants went out into the communities served by their sub-centres and collected data on several health programmes, including some programmes that had long been discontinued by the department! The quality of data was poor and all the data were recorded manually in different registers for different health programmes. Together, these registers contained about 1,500 data elements, all of which were collected by the health assistants and entered manually week after week, month after month. The Health Supervisor at each health centre compiled aggregate reports from the registers obtained from all the health assistants of the sub-centres under the health centre and sent these reports, numbering about 25, to the District Office every month. Each District Office, in turn, aggregated the reports from all the health centres into district reports and sent them to the State office in Hyderabad, called the office of the Commissioner of Family Welfare.

HISP began its activities by rationalizing and constructing Minimum Data Sets for the sub-centres and health centres. It adopted a participatory approach involving health assistants and staff at the health centres and district office during the construction of these minimum data sets [START_REF] Puri | Contextuality Of Participation In IS Design: A Developing Country Perspective[END_REF]. The data sets were subsequently discussed with the Commissioner of Family Welfare, and this effort was aligned with similar efforts at streamlining data sets undertaken by the office of the Commissioner. This was followed by customization of the district health information software package that was originally developed in South Africa to suit the local needs of the health staff in Andhra Pradesh. The software package allowed entry, validation and analysis of routine data of the health service rendered [monthly, quarterly and annually], semi-permanent data [population estimates, equipment, and personnel numbers] and survey data. Routine and analysis reports were customized. The HISP software also enabled automatic generation of reports.

Computers were installed in six health centres and the minimum data sets and the database were then set up there. Health assistants began to enter the data and generate reports.

HISP trainers were involved in implementing the project. Training health centre staff was an important aspect of the implementation process, and HISP team offered both on-site and off-site training. The content of the training included practical sessions on how to use the software application and generate analysis reports, and lectures on the use of information for local action.

Expansion Phase

After the pilot phase, the project was extended to 37 health centres in Madanapally, Andhra Pradesh, thus taking the project to 46 health centres in all. In Madanapally, however, a different approacha hub strategywas adopted, with one computer serving a cluster of health centres. Twelve health centres with adequate physical infrastructure and facilities were selected as hubs. Trainers were stationed in the twelve hubs. They trained the staff from three or four nearby health centres. The hubs became the location for their regular data entry work and report generation.

Simultaneously, HISP also created a computerised health database for Chittoor district. The database was put together at the district office by manually entering health data from all 84 health centres in Chittoor district into DHIS. A team member did this at the end of each month. HISP also began to integrate routine data with maps, using Geographical Information Systems. The aim was to provide spatiallybased information on the health status of the district; for example, with regard to the prevalence of diseases in certain regions. The HISP team was later involved in developing a web interface, and in translating the interface into Telugu, the local language.

4

Participation versus 'pressure' With reference to above described case study the author attempts to analyse participation from two standpoints: [1] How to encourage public sector employees to participate during design, development and implementation of IS? [2] what is the role of institutions in enabling effective participation.

Influenced by the Scandinavian discourse of Participatory Approach, the HISP focused not just on the development of DHIS, but also involved health workers, doctors and other health staff during the design, development and implementation of the HISP. Participation of the health staff and assistants was essential for HISP as it had adopted an approach committed to bringing about changes from the grassroots level, at sub-centres and health centres. However, in order to introduce new ways of working and change the existing practices at the sub-centres and health centres, participation of the health staff had to be facilitated by the district and State officials. Only when they received instructions from their higher officials did the staff at the health centres and sub-centres participate in these activities. When I asked Prof Sundeep Sahay, who had initiated the HISP programme in Andhra Pradesh, to what extent the health assistants had participated in the design of HISP software and how the health staff had participated in the implementation, he said: It has been very different from the way it has been done in Scandinavia… It is not that they, health assistants have said they want the system. We have gone with the system. We have gone to Kuppam because the Chief Minister asked us to go to Kuppam. In that sense, the decisions were taken very much from the top.

However, he added that health assistants participated during the system development process and particularly during the creation of the minimum data sets. Health assistants regularly collected about 1,500 data elements for different health programmes. The HISP team adopted a participatory approach, involving health assistants, to rationalise the data set. This effort resulted in eliminating redundancies and construction of a minimum data set with about 400 elements [START_REF] Ranjini | Computer-based Health information Systems -Projects for Computerization or Health Management?: Empirical Experiences from India in Information Communication Technologies and Human Development: Opportunities and Challenges[END_REF]. Prof Sahay explained:

During the creation of the minimum data sets we got together all the forms and data items from sub-centres and health centres and gave them to the health assistants and asked them to use this form to collect the data. Then the next month, the HISP team went and saw what data had been collected and what problems they have had. This process was repeated three or four times. Then we had a workshop. There were some 70-80 people. We created small heterogeneous groups of doctors and health assistants. We gave them the forms we had re-designed and asked them to comment on them. We got lots of comments on that day. Then we sat with the district officer in the evening. We went through all the suggestions people had made and the district officer gave his comments on what should be accepted and what should not. Then we created new set of forms and I went to Hyderabad [the State capital] with that. … The Commissioner then made more changes… It was quite an interactive process at different levels. From health assistants to… the Commissioner].

Achieving local participation, although not impossible, is extremely difficult in practice, particularly in a bureaucratic organisation such as the Family Welfare Department. This is because work activities within government organisations are tied to rigid hierarchical structures, strong adherence to complicated rules, procedures and norms, differential power relations and frequent delays. Besides these institutional constraints, there is also corruption. This environment undermines local innovation based on the reflection and learning.

A recurring theme that emerged during my discussion with trainers was that of 'pressure'. HISP trainers felt that to initiate these changes at the grassroots, a push from the top was necessary. Attempts to institutionalise these new systems resulted in putting pressure on the end-users to participate and to learn. [START_REF] Quraishy | Implications Of (Non) Participation Of Users In Implementation Of The Health Information System Project (HISP) In Andhra Pradesh: Practical Experiences[END_REF] recall that during the initial stages of HISP: "A majority of health staff, mostly women and those working at the community level, attended the training pro-gramme… they participated in the training programme because there was pressure from their immediate superiors, the District Manager and Health Officer at the district and the Special Officer at the constituency level." HISP trainers also admitted that health assistants attended classes only because of the pressure from the Special Officer. The HISP trainers saw the strategy of applying pressure as necessary for sustaining the project. One trainer said: "The project will be successful only if there is pressure from higher authorities. Only if it is made compulsory will the whole exercise be useful." Higher authorities had to be involved in encouraging as well as enforcing participation of health assistants during the development of the system as well as during its adoption into use. However, one doctor was critical of HISP's approach and commented: "They brought in a lot of pressure from higher officers. There was pressure from the Special Officer. Out of fear they (health assistants) have learnt computers. That has added to our stress." That is, unless there was pressure from the higher officials to regularly enter data or to generate computerised reports or to attend computer training, the health assistants, supervisors and doctors did not participate in the project. There was pressure also because it was the then Chief Minister's political constituency and the performance and implementation of projects were regularly monitored. To a certain extent health assistants did yield to these pressures and began data entry. However, supervisors and doctors resisted these kinds of pressures during the stage of data collation and report generation. A system developer said that the supervisors and doctors resisted using the HISP system to generate health reports [Ranjini.C.R: 2007]. He commented:

I think the direction has to come directly from the top to generate these [computerized] reports. Until then it won't happen. Now a trainer is going, and because of him everyone is entering data. Everything must be institutionalised. Only then health staff will generate the reports. Puri et al [2004:48] in a paper on user participation in HISP's Andhra project write:

The course of health informatics in India has been strongly influenced by differential power relations arising from rigid hierarchical structures and strong bureaucracy. In starkly different historical, political and social contexts such as India, participatory processes will not arise naturally as a result of democratic aspirations or reasoned argumentation, as may be the assumption in formal workplace settings of Western countries like Scandinavia or the UK. Paradoxically, however, participatory processes often need to be initiated by government officials in-charge, rather than these emerging idealistically from grassroots as a bottom-up process… and then be gradually nurtured over time.

In such a scenario, How can public sector institutions encourage effective participation? Mumford's [2006a] advocates: "Participation can take many forms but at the lower levels it is increasingly concerned with the relationship between individuals and their work environment. It must be stressed, however, that if employees are to be able to exercise some control over this then they need opportunity, confidence and competence and methods for achieving this need careful thought. One prerequisite for a participatory community… is the development of some shared values and objectives concerning participation." But an approach primarily focused on building grassroot level participation, without the permission from the top, would arguably end in a failure in the Indian context [Braa & Sahay, 2012].

In the case of HISP, the Family Welfare Department could have individually as well as collectively encouraged participation both through in-house training activities, during monthly meetings as well as official visits by officers. Internet and mobile technology can be innovately harnessed to enroll participation of staff, even in remote area. It can be suggested that participation at different levels is necessary and that it should be ongoing during implementation leading to instituitonalisation. Institutionalisation can be seen as necessary for the sustainability of information systems. Silva and Backhouse [1997:390] characterise stabilisation of an information system as institutionalisation: "Information systems become institutionalised when they are no longer considered as innovations, but as unnoticed and unremarkable tools that people take for granted in doing their work." That is, use of analytical reports or schedules or reporting through health information systems can be possible in practice only if it is institutionalised over time through official procedures and practices. Institutionalisation, arguably becomes a necessity for sustaining information systems, but the challenge is to involve the health staff by encouraging participation, rather than coercion.

Conclusion

One of the main reasons for the failure of HISP in Andhra Pradesh was that top bureaucracy was only partially involved in this initiative. Even today, most of public sector e-governance projects, initiated by different government departments do not encourage individual and collective participation by heterogeneous groups of employees. In bureaucratic settings, neither top-down nor bottom-up approaches succeed. There need to be an integrated participation effort, where-in both officials at the top and staff at the bottom of the hierarchy are enrolled. Continuous participation from a heterogeneous group has to be attempted, not through pressure and coercion, instead by facilitating 'genuine' participation. For Simonsen and Robertson (2012) 'genuine' participation, refers to the fundamental transcendence of the users' role from being merely informants to being legitimate and acknowledged participants in the design process. Further, this role is establishedfor examplewhen users are not just answering questions in an interview about their point of view or knowledge of a particular issue, but are asked to step up, take the pen in hand, stand in front of the large whiteboard together with fellow colleagues and designers, and participate in drawing and sketching how the work process unfolds as seen from their perspective. This is a big challenge both for leaders and employees in public sector.


Lewin Sivamalai
email: lewin.sivamalai08@iimb.ernet.in

Using the lens of "Social Shaping of Technology" to understand the design and implementation of Aadhaar (UID) Project

Keywords: Social Construction of Technology, Aadhaar, E-government, Stakeholders

Extant Research on e-government projects has shown that multiple stakeholders are at play always, each with their own divergent interests. And many a time, differences in stakeholder expectations from a project has resulted in projects failing or being abandoned after initial usage. Social Construction of Technology (SCOT) studies look at the development history of a technology in order to understand how that particular technology has evolved, based on the interpretations of various stakeholders involved. This short paper looks at the Aadhaar project (Unique Identification Project) of India through a constructivist lens and tries to present the current understanding of the Aadhaar project, as seen by the various stakeholders, using publicly available data.

1 Introduction -Building E-government systems.

Building a e-government system involves multiple stakeholders which can be classified as both demand side (the citizen users or even the businesses and government officials) and supply side (primarily the stakeholders responsible to conceiving, funding, implementing and maintain the systems) and it is important to have a framework that looks at both sides to determine the design or outcome of the system [START_REF] De | E-Government Systems in Developing Countries:Stakeholders and Conflict[END_REF]. The field of egovernment research has seen a lot of growth over the past few years but research has largely been restricted to analyzing the impact of e-government and ICT4D projects and scholars have worked on philosophical and methodological issues related to that narrow aspect of e-government research (Heeks & Bailur, 2007) . The studies so far mainly look at post implementation scenarios. So the researchers tend to emphasize on collecting data from the end users or the demand side. Hence a study which looks at the supply side and the decisions taken during the design, development and implementation of an e-government project would add key insights to the field of ICT4D related to how an e-government system evolves over time.

Currently Aadhaar (or the Unique ID project) project in India is in the news for its ambition of generating an unique Identity Number(ID) for each and every resident of the country. The main purpose, as claimed by the UIDAI, is to enable a number and an accompanying set of biometric details which will sufficiently prove the identity of a person. And the grander aim is to integrate this ID into systems and processes that facilitate the delivery of government services to Indian residents.

Since various stakeholders will have different intentions for promoting or impeding the implementation of such systems, the design of the e-government system will be influenced by the dominant stakeholders (e.g: some authorities would prefer that the e-government system aids centralized decision making it order to take some powers away from the regional authorities.) [START_REF] De | E-Government Systems in Developing Countries:Stakeholders and Conflict[END_REF] Such a situation reinforces the notion that e-government systems can be inherently political and this argument has also been emphasized by scholars who have argued that any technology can be inherently political and each technology has to be seen in its historical and social context, in order to understand its evolution better [START_REF] Winner | Do artifacts have politics[END_REF]. And the role of politics can be more significant in cases where a particular technology enables a user to interact with the State for his regular needs.

It would be of interest to scholars, practitioners and policy makers if studies could include research on whether the user perception of these systems are influenced by some decisions taken during the design of the system itself. There are a lot of decisions to be made when a e-government system is to be implemented: identifying a need; conceptualizing a solution; convincing stakeholders that there is a problem and there is solution for it too; putting together a team; getting the requirements ready; making a detailed design; then testing the project and then taking this to implementation; taking feedback and acting on them. Now all this requires multiple decisions to be made at various levels and it is important to understand how these decisions are made and how all this impacts this future use of the system. The user perception varies also depends a lot on how the system has been designed. The involvement of multiple stakeholders, each having their own perception of technology, results in ontological differences between stakeholders on the nature and purpose of a technology and thus a consensus need to emerge, over time, on what the meaning of technology is and how it evolves and eventually accepted by all stakeholders. [START_REF] Bijker | How is technology made? -That is the question![END_REF] . SCOT studies (Social Construction of technology) attempt to address the above concern.

Social Construction of Technology

Social construction of Technology or Constructivist studies are based on the premise that any system evolves over time due intervention by various social actors and so the historical and social shaping of this system has to be considered to determine how a system is perceived by the users [START_REF] Bijker | The social construction of facts and artefacts: or how the sociology of science and the sociology of technology might benefit each other[END_REF]. The proponents of social shaping of technology argue that social and political relations, either directly or indirectly, shape the way technologies evolve [START_REF] Mackenzie | Introductory Essay[END_REF] and using this background, it would be interesting to study the design, implementation and evolution of e-government systems.

For e.g. The SCOT framework which is used to study the evolution of bicycles [START_REF] Bijker | The social construction of facts and artefacts: or how the sociology of science and the sociology of technology might benefit each other[END_REF], first looks at the various social groups which try to define the problem (for e.g. deciding on how the bicycle is to be designed). After identifying the relevant social groups, an Empirical program of relativism (EPOR) was adopted by [START_REF] Bijker | The social construction of facts and artefacts: or how the sociology of science and the sociology of technology might benefit each other[END_REF], to study how the 'idea' of the bicycle evolved over the years, due to multiple interpretations by the relevant social groups and they suggested the following stages of changes in technology:

Stage 1: This is the stage where the various relevant social groups interpret the technological artifact and the problems it tries to address, in ways they see appropriate to their social setting. This is the stage of interpretive flexibility. So the SCOT framework necessarily takes into account on how multiple groups, each having its own perceptions of a problem or technology, arrive at a common understanding of the problem at hand. Thus, the SCOT framework depends on the existence of multiple stakeholders and interplay of ideas between them. This calls for a more multidisciplinary approach to decide on the future path of science and technology as suggested in the paper on "Technologies of humility" [START_REF] Jasanoff | Technologies of humility: Citizen participation in governing science[END_REF] , where the author refers to setting up of environments and processes where experts from multiple fields will interact to create science and technology that can go towards betterment of society. The papers also points out that progress should not be decided by Politics(policy) alone or by scientists alone but that they all should work together along with the public and produce work of good quality and adhere to ethics. The underlying notion is that is it not possible to predict the outcome of an event but if experts and users to interact, many antecedents and consequents of a change in technology can be debated upon.

In another paper which looks at how some commonly used artifacts have been designed, interpreted and used [START_REF] Latour | Where are the missing masses? The sociology of a few mundane artifacts[END_REF], the author suggests that no system can be artificially intelligent and hence there has to be a human actor to take calls. And thus, the strength and weaknesses of a system may be correlated to the strengths and weaknesses of the human actor. This paper draws some ideas from Structuration theory where agency influences structure and structure influences agency. The term 'Agency' is broad enough to include human and non-human actors. This again emphasizes that technology can only aid a human process but not solve every problem. Here is a statement from the paper that further emphasizes this view: "It is not that society and social relations invade the certainty of science or the efficiency of machines. It is that society itself is to be rethought from top to bottom once we add to it the facts and artifacts that make up large sections of our social ties" [START_REF] Latour | Where are the missing masses? The sociology of a few mundane artifacts[END_REF]. The author explains that the missing link is that we tend look at things in black and white due to which we miss the shades of grey where a part of the non-human actors manifest in human actors and vice versa.

Another example of studying the evolution in the design and production of a technological artifact, through the SCOT framework, is the design of cars [START_REF] Kline | Users as agents of technological change: the social construction of the automobile in the rural United States[END_REF] in the United States. Initially the car was resisted and seen in a very negative light in rural America but later various groups like manufacturers, the male and female users, new business entrepreneurs etc, each tailored the car for their own purposes. This serves as a very good example on how the technological artifact was interpreted in multiple ways and it exposed many new interpretations of an artifact and finally closure was reached upon agreeing to use different vehicles for different purposes, rather than using the same car for multiple purposes. [START_REF] Kline | Users as agents of technological change: the social construction of the automobile in the rural United States[END_REF].

In another seminal paper, relevant to SCOT, the author looks at how politics plays a role in technological development [START_REF] Winner | Do artifacts have politics[END_REF]. The author brings forward two aspects of politics in technology: One which is explicitly political (which seeks to exclude or include certain stakeholders directly during planning and implementation) and one which is implicitly political (e.g. -solar power can decentralize power generation whereas building nuclear power plants transfers more power to the government in electricity generation). The author sums up his paper saying "To understand which technologies and which contexts are important to us, and why, is an enterprise that must involve both, the study of specific technical systems and their history as well as a thorough grasp of the concepts and controversies of political theory." [START_REF] Winner | Do artifacts have politics[END_REF] Based on the above SCOT studies, to apply the SCOT framework to study an e-government system, the following characteristics should be seen in the development of the system:  Existence of multiple stakeholders, each having a different expectation from the system  A situation where there is no consensus on what or how the system has to deliver  Possible complications caused by the forces of 'politics'.

It would be relevant to apply this framework to any system which is a work-in-Progress, because from an academic point of view, one can see how the system is built and how the differences between stakeholders are resolved and this can contribute to the theory of design and development of e-government systems. And from a practitioner perspective, application of this framework offers a check point where in the practitioners and policy makers can review the progress and make changes to keep development on track. And since the Aadhaar project is at an earlier stage of implementation and pilot tests, this project is an ideal candidate to be subject to SCOT studies.

Possible example of looking at an Evolving ICT4D System: Aadhaar (UID) project

The Aadhaar(Unique ID) Project is being implemented in India, the purpose of which is to create a unique Identity for all Indian residents 1 . The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) site clearly states that this card will be just be a proof of Identify but not a proof of citizenship or entitlement to any facility 2 .

The unique ID project was launched by the UPA government as it hoped that creating a large registry would help it in implementing many schemes -MNREGS, PDS, Health schemes etc as evident from the documents on the UIDAI site. So the government created a Core Team, headed by Mr. Nandan Nilenkani, and through an executive order, and entrusted them with the responsibility of delivering this project.

1 "Aadhaar is a 12 digit individual identification number issued by the Unique Identification Authority of India on behalf of the Government of India 1 ."http://uidai.gov.in/what-is-aadhaar-number.html 2 http://uidai.gov.in/what-is-aadhaar-number.html There are four clear groups who have different ideas about Aadhaar. The primary group is The Government of India (The United Progressive Alliance Government headed by the Congress party) which flagged off this project and is projecting this initiave as the basis of solutions to some of India's critical social issues. Then there is the UIDAI team itself, headed by Mr. Nandan Nilekani, which states that Aadhaar is just an ID proof which can lead to potential benefits, if leveraged properly by the public and private service providers. Finally, there are the residents at whom this project is targeted. Some of the questions that arise are -Do the residents know what they are signing up for? Have they been involved in any of the decision making process? Is there a feedback mechanism which helps in the review of the implementation process? So the citizens believe that Aadhaar will make many facilities available to them. The Government thinks the Aadhaar would help in the implementation of its social schemes. The UIDAI itself states that this is only an ID proof and if this ID proof helps anyone to get some facilities then it would have served its purpose. Now these three contrasting situations would only lead to a big 'cycle of confusion' as each of these stakeholders have no clue where this project is heading. And this could lead to negative consequences as far as e-government projects are concerned. After the Aadhaar numbers have been generated, it is up to the various other systems like the banking systems, Public Distribution System, Oil and Marketing companies(LPG distribution) etc. to make use of the Aadhaar database. This adds a new dimension to the above questions as to how the how the ecosystem can be enabled. So the agencies looking to use the Aadhaar numbers will now become a relevant social group. Clarifying the link between India's problems and the issue of a lack of identity.

The Aadhaar ecosystem stakeholders.

The PDS shop owners perceive this as a loss. Not willing to go into details. Perhaps due to stringent monitoring.

The users do not see it as a hassle but in some cases the issue of Identity make people lose benefits. These are people from the Economically weaker sections. Issues are deeper than identity.

Conclusion -Does SCOT offer answers?

Using Social Construction of Technology to study an ongoing project (like the Aadhaar project) can help the various stakeholders to reach a consensus on what the current problems and help them work towards an effective solution. And these problems can be addressed at the design stage itself. Now the any design decision taken should be analyzed using questions on the following lines: Will this decision favour a particular stakeholder? Is this design inclusive or is it exclusive for certain type of users? Is this design sustainable or does it have a short term political motive? Can we draw inspiration from history or from other examples around the world, as to what the probable impacts of these design decisions are? So a SCOT study on finding the set of stakeholders, who use interpretive flexibility to look at an artifact and the final terms of closure they agree upon, is a good framework to apply to the UID project. Given that there are multiple stakeholders in such studies, the SCOT framework can reveal interesting explanations and solutions for the challenges identified.

Stage 2 :

 2 Consensus stage: After multiple iterations on what a particular technology means, the groups try to arrive at a consensus on what the problem is. Stage 3: The Closure stage -Once a common ground has been established on the 'state' of the problem, this is the stage where the technological solution to the problem is implemented in a larger social context.

Table 1 .

 1 Summary of relevant social groups

	Relevant social group	View point of the group	Contradictory views	Resolution point
	The Government at the	Aadhaar is being	India's problems is an	Aadhaar to be used as a
	Centre	projected as a solution to	amalgamation of socio-	tool. Not a 'solve-all'.
		many of India's key	economic issues. Not just
		challenges	a technical one.
	UIDAI Team	Aadhaar is just an ID.	The various pilot studies	The UIDAI's duty is not
		The emphasis is on	indicate other multiple	clearly defined to the
		technology.	forces at play other than	public
			just technology.
	Public	Aadhaar can solve	Talk about Aadhaar not
		problems. Seen as a novel	being a "proper ID card".
		thing. A symbol of hope	Aadhaar seen as another
			card like ration card. Seen
			as an entitlement.

Acknowledgement:

The author would like to thank Prof. Rahul De, Prof. Rajendra Bandi and Prof. Sourav Mukherji for their inputs on this area of research. The author is also grateful to the constructive comments through the IFIP WG 8.6 review process of this short paper.


Zhenbin Yang
email: zhenbin@comp.nus.edu.sg

Atreyi Kankanhalli
email: atreyi@comp.nus.edu.sg

Innovation in Government Services: The Case of Open Data

Keywords: Open data, eGovernment, open innovation, open government data 1

Governments are initiating open data initiatives as a new approach where external stakeholders can play an increased role in the innovation of government services. This is unlike previous approaches of e-government service innovation where services are solely initiated and developed by the agencies themselves. However, despite public agencies actively promoting the use of their data by organizing events such as challenge competitions, the response from external stakeholders to leverage government data for innovative activities has been lacking. This raises the question about the reasons inhibiting the interest to innovate using open data. Yet, the existing literature points to a lack of understanding about external stakeholders' willingness to innovate with the data provided. Motivated thus, this paper aims to identify the antecedents of the willingness of external stakeholders to innovate with open data. We propose the use of the case study methodology for this purpose.

Introduction

Since the launch of the first open data portal (data.gov) by the United States government in 2009 to provide a single point of access to data from multiple public agencies, an increasing number of countries have launched similar open data initiatives (e.g., UK, Singapore, Australia, Chile). Open data involves the disclosure of raw data by government agencies that they have collected for public consumption. By leveraging the advancements in ICT and the Internet, government agencies which are commonly viewed as among the largest creators and collectors of data have the potential to share a multitude of information across many domains, e.g., finance, transport, environment [START_REF] Janssen | The Influence of the PSI Directive on Open Government Data: An Overview of Recent Developments[END_REF]. For example, data.gov currently hosts more than 450,000 datasets, up from the 47 datasets when the site was introduced.

Previous studies have emphasized the opportunities afforded by open data [START_REF] Huijboom | Open Data: An International Comparison of Strategies[END_REF]. By promoting data openness, governments hope to enhance transparency, public participation, and collaboration [START_REF] Nam | Government 2.0 Collects the Wisdom of Crowds[END_REF]. Essentially, these initiatives can serve to reduce information asymmetry between public agencies and their external stakeholders for the innovation of government services. Although datasets are in their raw form and may not have much value on their own, public agencies can leverage on businesses and citizens to contribute to the innovation of government services through the reorganizing, repackaging, and synthesizing information from various sources [START_REF] Difranzo | The Web is My Backend: Creating Mashups with Linked Open Government Data[END_REF].

The role of government agencies in open data initiatives does not lie solely in the release of data. Other than increasing the variety and improving the quality of data made available to the public, there have been concurrent efforts by public agencies to motivate the use of open data for innovation activities by external stakeholders [START_REF] Lee | Open Innovation in the Public Sector of Leading Countries[END_REF]. A commonly used approach is through challenge competitions, where participants compete to provide the best idea or develop the most useful application with the available data. Winners are awarded prizes or other incentives such as recognition for their effort. For example, an European Union-wide open data competition was held for two months in 2011, which gathered a large number of entries aiming for the prize of 20,000 euros1 .

However, beyond the buzz created through these ad-hoc initiatives and even with the efforts to improve data availability, it appears that the full potential of massive participation and collaboration to achieve innovation in government services has yet to materialize. Unlike the interest from the supply-side, the situation on the demand-side seems to be less positive [START_REF] Huijboom | Open Data: An International Comparison of Strategies[END_REF]. Overall, it appears that there is a lack of external innovators making use of open data. As achieving a critical mass of such innovators is essential for a sustainable initiative, there is a need to understand what influences participation in open data.

Research Question

Following the increasing pace of open data initiatives globally, researchers are starting to investigate different aspects of this phenomenon in recent years. These include identifying the challenges of implementing open data [START_REF] Huijboom | Open Data: An International Comparison of Strategies[END_REF][START_REF] Janssen | Benefits, Adoption Barriers and Myths of Open Data and Open Government[END_REF], key success factors of open data initiatives (European Commission, 2011), principles of open data (e.g., Sunlight Foundation, 2010), and proposing stage models for open data [START_REF] Kalampokis | Open Government Data: A Stage Model[END_REF]. However, most prior research in the area of open data has been either conceptual or practitioner-focused in nature and not based on theoretical foundations. Moreover, the majority of prior studies were conducted from the perspective of government agencies (supply-side), with little focus on external stakeholders (demand-side). Among the exceptions, [START_REF] Kuk | The Roles of Agency and Artifacts in Assembling Open Data Complementarities[END_REF]

Background and Previous Studies

In this section, we provide a review of the relevant literature on open data. The search for relevant studies was conducted in several online journal databases (e.g., EBSCOHost, Science Direct), Google Scholar, and AIS Electronic Library. Terms such as "open data", "open government data", and "government 2.0" were used for the search with a period spanning from 2009 when the initiative first began to 2012. Subsequently, we review the past studies on open innovation and suggest how they apply to the study context.

Open Data

Open data initiatives involve making data produced or commissioned by government freely usable, reusable, and redistributable by anyone. Government agencies often embrace open data initiatives with the aim of promoting transparency, participation, and co-innovation [START_REF] Nam | Government 2.0 Collects the Wisdom of Crowds[END_REF].

In particular, public agencies seek to leverage their external stakeholders e.g., businesses and citizens, to further innovations in the area of electronic service delivery [START_REF] Davies | Government 2.0 and Access to Information: 2. Recent Developments in Proactive Disclosure and Open Data in the United States and Other Countries[END_REF]. Contributing to this trend is the increasing government recognition of the economic potential of open data. [START_REF] Vickery | Review of Recent Studies on PSI Re-Use and Related Market Developments[END_REF] [START_REF] Kuk | The Roles of Agency and Artifacts in Assembling Open Data Complementarities[END_REF] identified several elements that facilitate and impede the use of open data among innovators. Respondents highlighted that most data provided by government agencies were of poor quality that had little value. Some of these issues relates to bad data formats, data releases that were not timely, or a lack of data granularity. However, despite the poor data quality, innovators were motivated by factors such as a desire for access to specific facts, having direct relevance and appeal to their needs, or the prospects of monetary rewards. Based on interviews with representatives from various ministries in the Netherlands, [START_REF] Janssen | Benefits, Adoption Barriers and Myths of Open Data and Open Government[END_REF] surfaced several other factors inhibiting public use of open data such as the lack of explanation of the meaning of data, and the lack of knowledge to make sense of data.

The release of government data can spur the development of new services by external stakeholders, which is a recent way for governments to engage external parties in open innovation [START_REF] Rossel | Mobile e-Government Options: Between Technology-Driven and User-centric[END_REF].

Open Innovation

Organizations can perform open service innovation by engaging external stakeholders to contribute in developing new services or enhancing existing services based on ideas they generate or from the problems they encounter [START_REF] Hertog | Capabilities for Managing Service Innovation: Towards a Conceptual Framework[END_REF]. The concept of open innovation was introduced by [START_REF] Chesbrough | Open Innovation. The New Imperative for Creating and Profiting from Technology[END_REF] to describe the shift from the closed innovation paradigm to a model where innovation ideas reside both internal and external to an organization. According to the closed innovation paradigm, organizations rely on internal R&D functions for discovery of new business opportunities. They attempt to achieve competitive advantage by utilizing internal knowledge for staying ahead of the competition and raising the barrier to entry for competitors. However, towards the end of the 20th century, the foundations of the closed innovation paradigm started to erode. With the blurring of boundaries between an organization and the environment, the open innovation paradigm has emerged acknowledging the increased porosity of knowledge flow. Open innovation is defined as the use of purposive inflows and outflows of knowledge to accelerate internal innovation and expand the markets for external use of innovations, respectively [START_REF] Chesbrough | Open Business Models -How to Thrive in a New Competitive Landscape[END_REF]. With escalating R&D costs and shortening product life cycles, organizations have come to realize that relying on internal innovation would negatively affect their competitive position [START_REF] Keupp | Determinants and Archetype Users of Open Innovation[END_REF]. Organizations can also benefit from adopting open innovation to achieve economies of scope and scale [START_REF] Chesbrough | Open Services Innovation -Rethinking Your Business to Grow and Compete in a New Era[END_REF].

Three main strategies can be seen in open innovation [START_REF] Gassmann | Towards a Theory of Open Innovation: Three Core Process Archetypes[END_REF]. First, open innovation can be achieved with an inside-out strategy where firms bring ideas to the market by externalizing knowledge and transferring assets beyond the firm to stimulate external innovation. An example of this approach is the licensing of firms' intellectual property to external parties to gain additional revenue. Second, firms can engage in the outside-in strategy where the focus is to reach out to the external environment for acquiring resources such as knowledge. This is often performed with the realization that the abundance of external knowledge should be tapped to develop better products or services instead of relying on internal R&D [START_REF] Boudreau | How to Manage Outside Innovation[END_REF]. A popular approach here is crowdsourcing, where firms can post challenges online for external knowledge workers to tackle for a reward [START_REF] Ye | Knowledge Brokering for Open Innovation: A Case Study of Innovation Intermediaries[END_REF]. Last, as a hybrid strategy, firms can adopt the coupled approach that combines both the outside-in and inside-out strategies to achieve synergy among different parties. This strategy often entails firm-level cooperation for the joint development of knowledge through arrangements such as joint ventures or alliances.

Subsequent Work

Although open innovation research has focused on the shift towards this paradigm in the private sector, governments are also getting involved in open innovation initiatives (Assar et al. 2011). However, unlike the private sector that is concerned with profits, the public sector aims to increase the benefits to its stakeholders and improve service delivery. To identify and validate the influential factors, we plan to conduct multiple case studies of open data efforts at public agencies in Singapore. A multiple-case study design is preferred over a single-case study design for obtaining more compelling and robust data [START_REF] Herriott | Multisite Qualitative Policy Research: Optimizing Description and Generalizability[END_REF]. As an initial guide, we will review the suitability of previously found factors in prior literature of similar areas (e.g., [START_REF] Kuk | The Roles of Agency and Artifacts in Assembling Open Data Complementarities[END_REF][START_REF] Janssen | Benefits, Adoption Barriers and Myths of Open Data and Open Government[END_REF]. Singapore is chosen for this study because of its leading status in eGovernment. In June 2011, the Singapore government announced data.gov.sg as its first-stop portal to search and access publicly-available data. The portal brings together over 5000 datasets from 50 government ministries and agencies. One of its key aims is to create value by catalysing application development by external parties. We intend to conduct in-depth case studies of such efforts to identify factors influencing participation in innovation activities. This research potentially has significant implications for both eGovernment researchers and practitioners in identifying the motivators and inhibitors of open data innovation.

  observed various motivations of innovators participating in open data challenge competitions, but not for open data innovation in general. We contend that despite the potential of using open data to promote co-innovation between government agencies and external stakeholders, there is a lack of understanding of the perceptions of potential and current open data innovators. Specifically, research in open data has not explored what factors influence external stakeholders' decision to develop new applications and services with open data. Motivated thus, this paper seeks to answer the research question: What determines external stakeholders' behaviour to innovate with open data? to contribute to research in open data by developing a model to provide insights into the factors that determine the innovation behaviour of external stakeholders e.g., businesses and citizens. It will examine the effects of different motivators and inhibitors that influence peoples' willingness to innovate with open data. For government agencies, this study is expected to highlight important factors leading to the innovation of new services with open data, and if there are ways that they can help mitigate the barriers faced by their external stakeholders.

Table 1 .

 1 suggests that the economic value from the exploitation of open government data surpasses government investments in collecting and disseminating the data. From open data portals users will be able to access datasets generated for application development. In addition, government agencies may post a challenge online for users to solve. Table 1 lists a sample of open data initiatives and innovations developed with open data. Sample of Open Data Initiatives and Innovations

	Name	Link	Country	Description
	Government initiatives to promote innovation through data openness
	Data.go.kr	data.go.kr	South Korea Provides services allowing the public to take
				advantage of the country's variety of public
				information
	Data.gov	data.gov	USA	Allows the public to access datasets that are
				generated and held by the Federal
				Government
	Data.gov.au	data.gov.au	Australia	Provides an easy way to find, access and
				reuse public datasets from the Australian
				Government and state and territory
				governments
	Open Kenya	opendata.go.ke	Kenya	Allows the public to obtain core government
				development, demographic, statistical and
				expenditure data available in a useful digital
				format
	Overheid.nl	data.overheid.nl	Netherlands	Allows the public to obtain open government
				data from the national registry with
				references to existing open datasets
	Portal de	datos.gob.cl	Chile	Allows the people to have access to
	Datos Públicos			information based on which the government
				makes decisions for public policy
	Business or citizen-driven innovations with government-released data
	BUSit London data.gov.uk/apps/busit-	UK	Uses London Bus data from Transport for
		london		London to plan your multi-leg bus journey in
				the capital
	CrimeReports www.crimereports.com USA	Offers a family of affordable, easy-to-use
				software tools for law enforcement agencies
				to understand crime trends and share current
				neighbourhood crime data with the public
	Dunny	data.gov.au/apps/dunny-	Australia	A location based mobile application, which
	Directories	directory/		provides the ability to easily locate public
				toilets throughout Australia.

  [START_REF] Lee | Open Innovation in the Public Sector of Leading Countries[END_REF] examined open innovation initiatives in the some of the world's most innovative countries (e.g., USA, Canada, Singapore) and noted that they can either be government-led or community-led. In particular, open data initiatives were classified as government-led and adopting the inside-out open innovation strategy. The release of internal data assets by government agencies allows the leveraging of resources possessed by external stakeholders that agencies may not have in abundance. Open data facilitates open innovation in services because external parties now have access to government data to build useful applications for the public. Therefore, by adopting the open service innovation approach, new or enhanced services developed externally can benefit government agencies and the public alike. Despite the potential,[START_REF] Lee | Open Innovation in the Public Sector of Leading Countries[END_REF] noted that initiatives using the inside-out strategy deserve more investigation, as they have received less research interest. Therefore, in response to this call, this study takes a deeper look into the factors influencing external stakeholders' decision to innovate with open data.

http://opendatachallenge.org/


Anand Jeyaraj
email: anand.jeyaraj@wright.edu

Facilitators and Inhibitors in the Assimilation of Complex Information Systems

Keywords: Complex information systems, assimilation, stages, facilitators, inhibitors

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

Introduction

Complex information systems include enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, supply chain management (SCM) systems, customer relationship management (CRM) systems, product lifecycle management (PLM) systems, and business-to-business (B2B) systems (e.g. [START_REF] Wang | Innovate with complex information technologies: A theoretical model and empirical examination[END_REF]. Such complex information systems may cut across functional boundaries within an organization or even organizational boundaries, pose significant knowledge barriers for assimilation, take considerable time for implementation, need coordination between internal and external actors of the organization, and require reengineering of cross-functional and inter-organizational business processes [START_REF] Attewell | Technology diffusion and organizational learning: The case of business computing[END_REF][START_REF] Fichman | The illusory diffusion of innovation: An examination of assimilation gaps[END_REF][START_REF] Gallivan | Organizational adoption and assimilation of complex technological innovations: development and application of a new framework[END_REF][START_REF] Roberts | Absorptive Capacity and Information Systems Research: Review, Synthesis, and Directions for Future Research[END_REF]. Often times, organizations enlist the assistance of external consultants or other professionals to ensure the successful implementation and deployment of such complex information systems.

When dealing with complex information systems, organizations may not completely assimilate or routinize them and sometimes even abandon them midway through the assimilation process. Such stories are well-documented in the popular press (e.g., failed projects, cancelled contracts, abandoned implementations). Consider, for example, two high-profile cases. The United Kingdom government scrapped a £12 billion National Program for IT in 2011 that was aimed at providing electronic health records for citizens after having been in the works for more about 10 years (PCWorld 2011). The United States Air Force terminated the Expeditionary Combat Support System (ECSS) with its provider after more than 7 years of effort and costs totaling more than $1 billion (IEEE Spectrum 2012). However, insightful explanations of the accompanying assimilation process in such implementations are often missingwhich are crucial for understanding why projects succeed or fail.

Conceptualizing assimilation as a process by which organizations move through various stages from initiation through routinization, this research strives to explain how and why the implementation of complex information systems may become unqualified successes or spectacular failures. Moreover, this research aims to uncover facilitators that enable an organization to move to the next stage in the assimilation process and inhibitors that may force organizations to remain in the current stage or even completely abandon the assimilation process.

Assimilation

Assimilation may be defined as the process by which organizations identify, adopt, and routinize complex information systems for their operations. [START_REF] Ettlie | The Adoption Time Period for Some Transportation Innovations[END_REF] described six different stages of assimilation: awareness, interest, evaluation, trial, adoption, and implementation. [START_REF] Fichman | The Assimilation of Software Process Innovations: An Organizational Learning Perspective[END_REF] and [START_REF] Fichman | The Role of Aggregation in the Measurement of IT-Related Organizational Innovation[END_REF] proposed six stages of assimilation: awareness, interest, evaluation/ trial, commitment, limited deployment, and general deployment-the evaluation and trial stages were combined into a single stage, while the implementation stage was split into the limited deployment and general deployment stages. [START_REF] Kwon | Unifying the Fragmented Models of Information Systems Implementation[END_REF], [START_REF] Cooper | Information Technology Implementation Research: A Technological Diffusion Approach[END_REF], and [START_REF] Gallivan | Organizational adoption and assimilation of complex technological innovations: development and application of a new framework[END_REF] argued for six stages of assimilation as well: initiation, adoption, adaptation, acceptance, routinization, and infusion. [START_REF] Rogers | Diffusion of Innovations[END_REF] introduced five different stages of assimilation for organizations: agendasetting, matching, redefining/ restructuring, clarifying, and routinizing.

Figure 1 identifies the assimilation stages employed in this study, which have been formulated based on descriptions of assimilation in prior literature. These stages are designed to accommodate organizational activities from the early phases when the organization may evaluate its needs or identify opportunities for complex information systems to the late phases when the organization may routinize the usage of complex information systems for various business processes.

Methods

This research employs a multiple case-study approach to examine the assimilation process at organizations that dealt with complex information systems. Multiple key informants knowledgeable of the organizations' assimilation activities are targeted for discussion. The interviews with key informants are semi-structured in that they deal with a specific set of broad questions on an interview guide but allow the informants to describe the assimilation process in as much detail as they possibly can in their own words consistent with how the process transpired within the organization. The interview guide includes questions that may elicit responses on how the organization initiated its journey with complex information systems, the sequence of activities that may have taken the organization through evaluation, commitment, commitment, implementation and deployment stages, and how it routinized the usage of complex information systems within its boundaries. The data analysis will involve two phases: a) a within-case analyses that illuminates the specific assimilation process within the organization and b) a cross-case analysis that identifies patterns in the assimilation processes across organizations. The combination of within-case and cross-case analyses would enable the extraction of facilitators and inhibitors that drive the assimilation of complex information systems by organizations. The research would provide usable knowledge on assimilation of complex information systems for both researchers and practitioners.

Fig. 1 .

 1 Fig. 1. Assimilation stages