Abstract
This paper presents a qualitative and quantitative study on the role of policies in Denmark and Germany in shaping the adoption of open standards and software in government. A comprehensive functionality test, surveys and interviews with suppliers and users in local authorities of both countries have been conducted, together with policy document analyses. While in Denmark open document standards have been bindingly introduced by legislation, Germany adopts a blended top-down and bottom-up approach, only providing recommendations. Although, as a result, it seems that Denmark ranks much higher in the adoption of open document standards, the overall picture is blurrier, as for instance only a small minority of public employees use open source software. The authors also suggest that the need for open standards might actually be overstated, as the rapid adoption of e.g. the PDF document format has made it in practice almost irrelevant.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Zhu, K., Kraemer, K.L., Gurbaxani, V., Xu, S.X.: Migration to Open-standard Interorganizational Systems: Network Effects, Switching Costs, and Path Dependency. MIS Quarterly 30, 515–539 (2006)
IDABC. Promotion of Open Document Exchange Format (2007), http://ec.europa.eu/idabc/en/document/3428/5644
IDABC. TAC Approval on Conclusions and Recommendations on Open Document Formats (2008), http://ec.europa.eu/idabc/en/document/2592/5588
Andersen, K., Beck, R., Wigand, R., Bjørn-Andersen, N., Brousseau, E.: European E-commerce Policies in the Pioneering Days, the Gold Rush and the Post-hype Era. Information Polity 9, 217–232 (2004)
Damsgaard, J., Lyytinen, K.: The Role of Intermediating Institutions in Diffusion of Electronic Data Interchange (EDI): How Industry Associations in the Grocery Sector Intervened in Hong Kong, Finland, and Denmark. The Information Society 17, 195–210 (2001)
Henriksen, H.Z., Damsgaard, J.: Dawn of E-government – an Institutional Analysis of Seven Initiatives and their Impact. Journal of Information Technology 22, 13–23 (2007)
Rogers, E.M.: Diffusion of Innovations, 5th edn. New Press, New York (2003)
Andersen, M.B., Hørlück, J., Kristensen, J., Andersen, K., Pedersen, M.K.: Rapport om implementeringen af ODF og OOXML i offentlige myndigheder fra 1. National IT and Telecom Agency, Ministry of Science, Technology, and Innovation, Copenhagen (January 2008), http://www.itst.dk/regeringens-it-og-telepolitik/abne-standarder/rapport-fra-ekspertudvalg-vedrorende-abne-standarder-for-dokumentformater/Rapport%20v%201.9%20endelig%20til%20tryk.pdf
Veit, D.J., Parasie, N.P.: Can National E-Government Standards find Acceptance? In: Proceedings of the 42nd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS), E-Government Track (2009)
Muir, A., Oppenheim, C.: National Information Policy Developments Worldwide: Electronic government. Journal of Information Science 28, 173–186 (2002)
King, J.L., Gurbaxani, V., Kraemer, K.L., McFarlan, F.W., Raman, K.S., Yap, C.S.: Institutional Factors in Information Technology Innovation. Information Systems Research 5, 139–169 (1994)
Andersen, K. (ed.): EDI and Data Networking in the Public Sector: Governmental Action, Diffusion, and Impacts. Kluwer, Amsterdam (1997)
Andersen, K., Bjørn-Andersen, N., Wareham, J.: Using the Public Sector as a Locomotive for Electronic Commerce: The case of Denmark. In: Bled International Conference on Electronic Commerce, Slovenia (1998)
Eckhoff, T.: Statens styringsmuligheter, Tanum-Nori, Oslo (1987)
German Federal Ministry of the Interior: Standards and Architectures for eGovernment Applications, Office of the IT-Beauftragten der Bundesregierung, CIO (2008), http://www.cio.bund.de/cae/servlet/contentblob/77116/publicationFile/3995/saga_4_0_download.pdf
Veit, D.J., Parasie, N.: Umfrage zu E-Government Standards: Empirische Studie in deutschen Kommunen. Fachbericht 20070329 (2007), http://tinyurl.com/332mux8
Reifsteck, A., Parasie, N., Veit, D.J.: Gemeinschaftliche Entwicklung von E-Government Anwendungen: Empirische Studie in deutschen Kommunen. Fachbericht 20090131 (2007), http://tinyurl.com/38pa5yg
Statistics Denmark: Den offentlige sectors brug af IT. Annual reports. Statistics Denmark, Copenhagen (2005-2009)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Andersen, K.N., Veit, D., Medaglia, R., Henriksen, H.Z. (2010). One Inch Wide and One Inch Deep: The Role of Policies in Shaping the Adoption of Open Standards and Software in Government. In: Andersen, K.N., Francesconi, E., Grönlund, Å., van Engers, T.M. (eds) Electronic Government and the Information Systems Perspective. EGOVIS 2010. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 6267. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-15172-9_10
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-15172-9_10
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-15171-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-15172-9
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)