Assessing the applicability of GIS in a health and social care setting: planning services for informal carers in East Sussex, England.

Decision making at the national level in both developing and developed countries requires the integrated use of information from a multitude of sources. Both local and national governments in many developed countries have found geographic information systems (GIS) to be a critical tool in resource management, regional planning, and economic development. Unfortunately, the practical use of GIS in many developing countries is hampered by the lack of accurate and detailed spatial and demographic data, political considerations, and management issues. To highlight importance of these issues, we present a framework for GIS adoption in less developed countries and discuss these and other constraints in the context of this framework. We also offer ideas for technical, managerial, and policy initiatives that should be helpful in addressing impediments to GIS adoption. These ideas are summarized in a set of propositions and a related framework that shows our expectations about the impact of these initiatives on implementation success.

https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1007&context=scm_pubs

Geographic Information Systems in Developing Countries: Issues in Data Collection, Implementation and Management

Case study: The case of EAI in facilitating e-Government services in a Welsh authority

Local Government Authorities (LGAs) are responsible for providing reliable services and information to their citizens. However, literature indicates that LGAs have problems in meeting citizens demands. This may be attributed to the Information Technology (IT) infrastructure limitations in LGAs that are not integrated and do not allow them to deliver end-to-end integrated services. The reason is that legacy Information Systems (IS) are usually tailored to support specific business processes and functions and are difficult to integrate. This gives rise to a need for an integrated IT infrastructure that facilitates reuse of existing applications and flexibly implementing business processes. Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) has emerged to address the intra- and interorganisational integration in a more flexible and manageable way. Nevertheless, its application in LGAs is limited. Thus, the authors demonstrate that it is of high importance to investigate this area within LGAs and result in research that contributes towards successful EAI adoption. In addressing the relative void, this paper proposes and validates a novel model for EAI adoption in LGAs and contributes to the body of knowledge by extending the literature. The proposed model can be used by LGAs as a tool for decision making while adopting EAI.

Justifying the Decisions for EAI Adoption in LGAs: A Validated Proposition of Factors, Adoption Lifecycle Phases, Mapping and Prioritisation of Factors

Purpose – The application of enterprise application integration (EAI) technologies in integrating heterogeneous information systems (IS) has been pursued by several private and public organisations. However, where EAI has added effectiveness and strengthened the information technology infrastructures in the private domain, local government authorities (LGAs) have been slow in adopting cost‐effective EAI solutions to significantly expand the capabilities of their conventionally inflexible IS. Despite EAI represents an attractive proposition to LGAs and offers the opportunity to leverage the IS into a seamless chain of processes, EAI has not been widely investigated in LGAs. Literature indicates several research studies mainly focusing on a number of different factors (e.g. benefits, barriers) influencing EAI adoption. However, due to plethora of different factors, it may not be sufficient for LGAs to take decisions by merely focusing on factors. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to assess and prioritise t...

Investigating the importance of factors influencing integration technologies adoption in local government authorities

Justifying GIS in local government is a complex task for two main reasons: first, a GIS implementation can range from a single, well-defined application in one department to a corporate multi-purpose GIS; and, second, local authorities are complex organizations currently facing major pressures for change, and considerable uncertainty about their future structure and role. The purpose of this paper is to review the potential use of cost-benefit analysis, to explore tangible and intangible benefits, to identify the costs involved, to explore the effect that a robust GIS strategy can have on the relationship between costs and benefits, and to review some of the published material on the cost-justification of GIS in local government.

Les Worrall

Papers

Justifying investment in GIS: a local government perspective