Planning for Public Sector Software Projects Using Value-Based Requirements Engineering Techniques: A Research Agenda

The introduction of e-Government enabled services has resulted in the public- sector wide integration of different software applications, often scaled up to a national level. Out of observation, the way these initiatives are handled differs in the way software-development projects are managed in the private sector. The anticipated value of these projects tends to differ significantly in the long run. We have particularly picked interest in the health sector in which e-Health initiatives have been defined. Our focus aims at understanding how value proliferation can be understood and quantified from the onset on such large-scale projects using requirement engineering techniques. In this work we infer that effective planning of large scale ICT initiatives, such as e-Health, should be long term driven so as to ensure effective sector management. Novel approaches in this realm should strive at linking strategy, measurement and operational decisions from the onset. In here we examine what has been done, key opportunities, challenges and gaps that can be addressed by the research community. In bridging these gaps, we propose an agenda by formulating key research questions which both the industry and academia can address as future direction to align this view.