In the post 9/11 environment, a new form of organization has spawned in which public sector agencies and private organizations collaborate in designing complex IT-enabled infrastructures - systems that provide shared service delivery. This research will study and recommend design elements essential for architecture and governance structures that promote interorganizational success in using these systems. This project will draw on relevant knowledge from public administration, organizational theory, and information systems. It will focus on: (1) the design of collaborative systems that explicitly address the organizational needs of the technical infrastructure and (2) interactions among the system design elements and participating organizations that can best leverage such systems. Public safety collaborations currently use either packaged or open-standards systems to support interoperability among police, fire, rescue, homeland security and other public safety agencies. Examples of the packaged software systems include those from COPLINK and Motorola. Examples of open standards systems include Pennsylvania's Justice Network (JNET), the D.C. area's Capitol Wireless Integrated Network (CapWIN) and the San Diego area's Automated Regional Justice Information System (ARJIS). The current proposal will expand upon initial empirical and theoretical work conducted by its investigators based on CapWIN, ARJIS and JNET, and other interorganizational collaborative settings.
Expected contributions: The researchers identify three key reasons to focus on infrastructures for interorganizational collaboration in the public safety domain. First, such systems are exemplars of how future networked organizations that exist because of IT, and effectively use it, might look. Second, they represent some of the most innovative thinking in digital government. Third, these systems, in their design and use, have direct benefits relative to public safety. These include improved homeland security, better delivery of governmental service and safer communities, while they impart substantial scientific value relative to design principles for both collaborative systems and the organizations using them. In furthering such research, the United States will provide leadership addressing current challenges that national and international public safety organizations face. The project will employ a design-centered approach in order to achieve improved and more robust IT infrastructures to support interorganizational information sharing. It will combine detailed empirical investigation using several field-based data collection methods, and will analyze extensive secondary data available on public safety in the United States. It will synthesize existing literature across a range of relevant disciplines to support theoretical and practical design recommendations for collaborative IT infrastructure and supportive organizational governance principles and structures.
The intellectual merit of the work derives from: 1. Interdisciplinary insights drawn from public administration and political science, organizational information systems, and information technology. 2. Empirical research design that leverages the best aspects of intensive case study and a large-sample survey. 3. Focus on technical design features and architectural principles that are essential to collaborative success. 4. Analysis of institutional governance structures and processes that are critical for support of successful implementation and operation of collaborative systems. 5. Emphasis on building theory that can be generalized to many domains in which IT supports public-private collaborations.
The broader impact of the work is to improve: 1. Public safety and homeland security via better systems design to support information sharing. 2. IT-enabled public-private collaborations, regardless of context.
