Abstract
If a region or nation is to make the best use of its information assets and reduce duplication in gathering data, information sharing across the public sector is essential. For example, from tracing the origins and spread of foot and mouth disease to locating crime hot spots for law enforcement, geographic information systems have become indispensable for effective knowledge transfer within both the public and private sector. The potential importance of GIS is indicated in recent studies. For instance a recent US study showed that projects, which had adopted and implemented geospatial interoperability standards had an ROI (return on investment) of 119%, which means that for every dollar invested, there were annual cost savings of more than a dollar (Cabinet Office, 2005).
TopIf a region or nation is to make the best use of its information assets and reduce duplication in gathering data, information sharing across the public sector is essential. For example, from tracing the origins and spread of foot and mouth disease to locating crime hot spots for law enforcement, geographic information systems have become indispensable for effective knowledge transfer within both the public and private sector. The potential importance of GIS is indicated in recent studies. For instance a recent US study showed that projects, which had adopted and implemented geospatial interoperability standards had an ROI (return on investment) of 119%, which means that for every dollar invested, there were annual cost savings of more than a dollar (Cabinet Office, 2005).
Integrating information resources governments are challenged by several important issues, such as data information quality, information asymmetry that cause imbalance, and identity management (i.e. privacy of data about natural persons and legal entities). These topics are cover in the beginning of this chapter. These issues are followed by examples of inter-organizational information integration in emergency medical services, urban planning, and a regional E-Procurement project. In this chapter we also discuss several theoretical approaches to inter-organizational integration. Managing integration projects is an important issue because many E-Government initiatives have a project orientation. At the end of the chapter two cases–the case of state funded tourism marketing and the case of national registers–are presented.