Toward an it-strategy approach for small and mid-sized municipalities in a federal system

Progressing digitization or, less tersely expressed, the efficient use of existing technology is still an issue facing public administrations. Despite the implementation of laws and regulations at different federal levels in Germany or regulations from the European Union, the associated requirements are still not satisfied as desired. Previous work and studies on both the scientific and practical sides as well of our own empirical work reveal the reasons for, and barriers contributing to, this situation. Issues exist at every institutional level of the German federal state. Even big cities face the related challenges. However, additional difficulties confront small and mid-sized municipalities because they lack enough personnel having the technical knowledge to cope with the challenges. One of the main issues is uncertainty about how to address the situation. Most administrations at the local level lack a strategy for dealing with the concerns surrounding information technology or digitization. We therefore developed an approach to developing IT strategy for smaller municipalities, which takes the public sector’s special goals into consideration. We first conducted a literature review of IT-strategy research in general. We subsequently analyzed the scientific literature as well as documents from public administration to identify specific challenges that public-sector personnel face when developing an IT strategy. The combination of both leads us to a representative process for developing an IT strategy. We then adopted the design-science paradigm and developed an IT-strategy approach for small and mid-sized municipalities. Among others, the issue of municipalities’ “corporate goal” has to be addressed, which is a key process step when developing a strategy in the private sector. Furthermore, the requirements imposed by currently existing e-government laws governing the affected federal levels have to be incorporated into the process along with structural or political characteristics. This paper addresses the issue of developing a blueprint for an IT strategy, because a structured, well-organized approach to finding and implementing solutions to current and future requirements increases the chances of success.