Measuring interoperability maturity in government networks.

The purpose of this paper is to create a model that describes the development of interorganisational collaboration in government networks that apply eGovernment. Contrary to several models that describe eGovernment from a government-to-citizen perspective, and primarily emphasise on the front office of eGovernment services, this paper focuses on the collaboration that takes place in the back office to enable successful eGovernment services. A maturity model was developed to describe and assess the level of interorganisational collaboration in government networks that apply eGovernment. Through a structured literature review, 19 existing maturity models related to interorganisational collaboration and eGovernment were identified. These models were subsequently analysed on their dimensions and on the stages that were used to define maturity. Furthermore, the authors of this paper studied the characteristics of each stage and the preconditions for increasing maturity. Based on this literature review and their analysis, the authors propose a new maturity model in which existing concepts are integrated and extended from a network perspective. This model describes the levels of interorganisational collaboration in government networks on three dimensions: system, information and process. Five levels of increasing interconnectedness describe how the interorganisational collaboration in government networks unfolds across these three dimensions. The model is empirically applied through case studies of three government networks. Medium- to large-sized networks of municipalities and their cooperating partners that apply eGovernment services in their permit application procedure have been studied. The model appears to be suitable for assessing the development of interorganisational collaboration among government networks that implement eGovernment in their service provisioning. Further research could focus on the use of this model in order to analyse additional growth strategies, aiming to create successful roadmaps. (aut.ref.