Review: What are the strategies for and benefits of effective it standardization in government?

Information technology (IT) has led to a transformation in the practices of government agencies, especially regarding the way they exchange information and provide services. This chapter reviews pertinent literature and IT standardization projects and derive an analysis framework that comprises: determinants, process stages and strategy types and expected benefits. It defines a standard as "a uniform set of measures, agreements, conditions or specifications between parties". The chapter distinguishes three types of strategies for developing new standards: anticipatory standardization, integrated solutions, and flexible generification. It also reviews extant literature on IT standardization in government based on a list of relevant context-specific outlets as well as information systems outlets. The chapter analyses the specific patterns based on research framework in order to provide deeper insight for theory and practice of standardization in the government domain.