Government inter-organizational information sharing initiatives: Understanding the main determinants of success

In an era of wicked social problems, a smarter, more responsive, more efficient governance structure is necessary to take advantage of the enormous capability of the public to congregate, interact, and collaborate in finding solutions to intricate sociotechnical challenges. The bedrock for such a structure is open and shared information; the key to opening and sharing information lies in interagency information sharing and integration. With the objective to supplement previous research based on rich qualitative data, this study systematically identifies and tests some important determinants of the success of inter-organizational collaboration and information sharing initiatives through quantitative empirical analysis. Based on a national survey of government managers from two policy domains (criminal justice and public health) in the United States, this study found four statistically significant predictors of inter-organizational information sharing success. From those, we found compatibility of technical infrastructure and formally assigned project managers as the two most important predictors explaining the success of inter-organizational information sharing initiatives.