Open Source Deployment in Local Government: Rapid Innovation as an Occasion for Revitalizing Organizational IT

Purpose – This paper aims to present a theory of the perceived outcomes of open source software adoption for an organizational IT department.Design/methodology/approach – The paper is an interpretive case study of three open source pilot projects in local government, based on interviews with IT management, IT staff, and users. Data analysis based on constructivist grounded theory is used to generate theory about the perceived organizational outcomes of open source adoption.Findings – Open source adoption is perceived as an occasion for rapidly developing effective new business applications, even in the context of shrinking IT resources and a poor relationship between IT and the rest of the organization. IT management and staff see the potential to improve their strained relationship with users, and improve their image of themselves as product developers and explorers. Disruptive project strategies, that keep open source adoptions outside of normal resource allocation processes, are consistently associated...

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