Collaborative development of public information systems: A case study of “Sambruk” e-services development

Today, public e-services provide essential and efficient tools for municipalities to serve their citizens. However, the development can be quite complex, and in order to efficiently develop solutions, municipalities need to collaborate with many actors and stakeholders such as IT-vendors and developers, as well as government agencies. In this paper collaboration with various stakeholders in different scenarios, comprising four different information systems development projects are analysed, and the pro's and con's in the various approaches are described. Furthermore, there are important lessons learned and identified in the three alternatives of user involvement in the projects covered in the paper. Sambruk, ie the Swedish Association of Municipalities for Joint Development of eServices, has in several projects challenged the existing near monopolistic market and business models in Sweden by carrying out significant development projects, utilising new approaches in user involvement and setting up a new collaborative arena for Swedish municipalities, working together in creating new e-service solutions.