The back-office of e-government (managing information domains as political economies)

Many governmental organizations are setting up e-government initiatives to improve the delivery of services to citizens. Often, these initiatives require information exchange in networks of various governmental organizations in so-called back-offices. In this article, resource dependence theory and information property rights theory are used to analyze the complex mixture of cooperation and conflict that arises in these networks. The authors conclude that the use of novel process management techniques is a promising and fruitful alternative to the use of more 'traditional' project management techniques in the development of interorganizational, back-office information systems.