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May 28, 2005
Enterprise architecture "Expert" on Computerworld
Yesterday my review of the enterprise architecture for all electronic healthcare record systems in Danish hospitals made it to the front page of Computerworld. Journalist Lisbeth Egeskov interviewed my about my review a couple of days ago. And yesterday my comments were then used to launch a debate about EA work in the Danish health sector. The article also included comments from Morten Elbæk from sundhed.dk, Arne Kverneland from The National Board of Health and Mikkel Hemmingsen from The Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation.
It was fun to see my picture on the front page of Computerworld. But, I also hope that my input will stimulate the discussion in the Danish health sector (and other sectors) about the need for IT-governance and EA-coordination in general.
Posted by khm at 04:25 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 23, 2005
Pictures and sound from Magleaas published
Ward Eagen has now published pictures from the the DMIT course at Magleaas and the "Are you ready to die" story by Ojelanki Ngwenyama. Both can be found here.
Posted by khm at 07:49 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 19, 2005
Extended enterprise architecture work in the Danish health sector
I have just returned to the office after an interesting conference with the Danish Regions about a common enterprise architecture for electronic healthcare record systems for all Danish hospitals. I reviewed the architecture for the working group a couple of weeks ago and the report is now published. The report – and my review – can be found in Danish here.
The interesting thing about the EA report is that all hospitals now agree on the general EA-principles for developing electronic healthcare record systems across all 14 Danish regions and their institutional domains. The EA process has just been started, but in eGov terms this initiative is really exiting – and a potential case in my PhD :-)
Posted by khm at 06:00 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
May 13, 2005
STOP and read!
The principal feedback that I got from the DMIT course this week (mainly from my senior advisor Ojelanki Ngwenyama) was to stop my empirical investigations at this point and read much more. I need to define my concepts more detailed and I need to define the artefacts that I will be looking for when studying enterprise architecture in public institutions.
Based on my EEAG macro-framework (at least!) two approaches could be adopted. I am currently trying to both – but I need to select one level of analysis. With institutional theory from political science I can see the institutions involved as aggregated actors and understand how EA affects them (EEAG: the sector level or the national level). But, I can also study the EA-implementation process in 3 or 4 organizations and look at the affect on individuals and rules in the institutions (EEAG: the institutional level). Whatever I do, I will be sitting at my desk for a while now ;-)
Posted by khm at 10:53 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
May 08, 2005
IS legitimacy, standards and interoperability by John King
As part of the he 11th Annual PhD Summer School in Design and Management of Information Technology I have now finished my preparations for John L. King’s lecture tomorrow. The first part of the lecture will be about the IS discipline. The papers here have been great for my understanding of my own reference community in the IS / eGov field and the use of theory / methodology in the field.
The other part of King’s lecture will be about interoperability and standards. There was only one article in this category by Joel West about seeking compatibility between technical, economic and organizational perspectives when dealing with standards in IS. The paper is only a draft version and I am therefore not able to quote it – BUT, I can say that its an excellent paper!
For me, the session about interoperability will be great. John King is a real expert in the area and he has worked extensively with IT in government. What I hope to discuss during the session tomorrow is:
Does the traditional standards discussion also apply to organizational aspects of typical enterprise architecture (EA) work? Here, I am very interested in the perspectives for standards for organizational interoperability! Can the theories about technical standards be used at the higher levels of EA or do we need new (or other existing) theories to explain the coordination and alignment of business processes and information that span both intra and inter-organizational boundaries?
Can we use EA as the “silver bullet” for enforcing standardization decisions – how is EA integrated with the IS strategy and what does traditional IS concerns like power, centralization and strategic alignment have to add to this discussion?
Are open standards preferable – or is the future based on competing (proprietary) standards where we must “seek rent” for the vendor lock-in that this creates?
How has IS dealt with the coordination of computing or communications activities of a group of firms / public agencies in industries / sectors?
What institutional forms for standard setting organizations should be preferred – standard development organizations, trade or professional associations, industry consortia or virtual organizations (e.g. IETF or W3C) ?
What is happening with the semantic web? Berners-Lee et al. (2002) wanted to supplement the WWW with a semantic web of meaning – but where are we now?
Internal adoption of a specific systems architecture based on standard enables reuse and economics of scale for developed applications, databases and systems integration (Ross, 2004). But, does it mean when we are talking about entire industries / sectors – do the same principles apply or is the picture blurred because of the many stakeholders? What are the perspectives for the future and how can IS be governed in industries / sectors without imposing rigidity and decreasing performance?
Posted by khm at 03:04 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 06, 2005
Are we still dot.conned?
Preparing for the 11th Annual PhD Summer School in Design and Management of Information Technology, I have spent the last couple of days reading eight papers for Jan Ljungberg’s lecture about the dot-com era and open source software in the public sector.
Especially, I found an article by Andrea H. Tapia (2004) about the power of myths during the dot-com bubble from 1996 to 2001 very interesting. Tapia states that several IT companies used the myths that were readily available during the dot-com bubble in the wider American culture of the time to motivate and manipulate their employees. The managers motivated their employees to put in long hours at the worksite, to be continually on-call, to intensify their work pace, and to self police their co-programming teams. The myths used were 1)the Silicon Valley myth, 2)the circumventing rules myth, 3)the future downtime myth and 4)the engineer managers myth.
But are we still dot.conned? I see many of the trades that Tapia noticed during the dot-com bubble in software companies and public agencies today. Are we not still obsessive compulsive, socially stunted and easily duped? We are working like newer before – but what is the driving force today? According to Tapia, the myths from the dot-com era have no legibility anymore – but what is then driving us to work long hours, to always be on-call via our mobiles and e-mail and to intensify our work pace?
Posted by khm at 11:39 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack