Building Collaborative Digital Government Systems

Abstract

Successful digital government policies and applications often depend on the ability of multiple organizations to collaborate toward shared objectives. Despite compelling benefits, these efforts are fraught with problems, and often fail. The developmental experiences of 18 collaborative digital government initiatives in New York State reveal five systemic constraints that account for the common difficulties: divergent roles, multiple missions, operational diversity, changing technology, and limited ability to adapt to change. The project experiences also offered ten guiding principles that can help make collaborative systems more successful. These focus on purpose, stakeholders, partnership, leadership, managing complexity, skills, resources, communication, work processes, and explicit design methods.