A collaborative decision framework for managing changes in e-Government services Dimitris Apostolou a , Gregoris Mentzas b, ⁎, Ljiljana Stojanovic c , Barbara Thoenssen d , Tomás Pariente Lobo e a University of Piraeus, Karaoli & Dimitriou 80, 18534 Piraeus, Greece b National Technical University of Athens, 10682, Athens, Greece c Forschungszentrum Informatik, Haid-und-Neu-Str. 10-14, 76131 Karlsruhe, Germany d University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland, Riggenbachstrasse 16, CH-4600 Olten, Switzerland e Semantics, Software & Service Engineering ATOS Research & Innovation, Spain abstract article info Available online 12 October 2010 Keywords: e-Government services Change management Ontologies Decision support Developing and maintaining e-Government services that can effectively deal with changes is a challenge for public administrations. In this paper, we address this challenge by presenting an ontology-based approach that: (i) enables systematic response of e-Government systems to changes by applying formal methods for achieving consistency when a change is discovered; (ii) enables knowledgeable response of service designers and implementers to changes by utilizing design rationale knowledge. We argue that such a synthesis of systematic response to changes with knowledge to deal with them has a positive impact on the change management process. Evaluation of the proposed approach in three case studies let us develop useful propositions for practitioners, discuss policy implications and identify future research topics. © 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction In a continuously changing political and societal environment, e-Government services need to be continually improved in order to reflect political and societal changes. Changes that affect e-Government services may be caused by changing citizens' needs, changing legal regulations, availability of new technologies, outsourcing opportunities, and new service provision models. Although changes encompass several dimensions of Government service provision (e.g., people, processes, and technologies), most of them are reflected on its software infrastructure. For example, the establishment of a new department in the organization will require changes in business processes which will in turn have an impact on the delivery of e-Government services. Building and maintaining long-living, e-Government services that are “open for changes” is a challenge. Change management in general refers to the task of addressing changes in a timely, planned and systematic manner. Change management has been widely acknowledged as a critical success factor in software systems (Rajlich, 2006). Business process change management theory (Scheer, Abolhassan, Jost, & Kirchmer, 2003) poses the following conditions for successful resolution of changes: (a) necessary actions are initiated after the change has happened; (b) necessary actions are executed in a fast and effective way; and (c) all reactions and actions are initiated and executed in a controlled manner. E-Government services pose unique challenges to change manage- ment because they require the co-evolution of the front-office service along with the related back-office IT infrastructure. E-Government services are frequently distributed over different IT systems and organizations. Even if they are provided and managed by a single organization, their design, development, and operation relies on the collaboration of many people with different roles (Anthopoulos, Siozos, & Tsoukalas, 2007). Moreover, business processes of different public administrations that are often physically distributed and with different levels of formality and structure, need to be seamlessly integrated in order to maximize usefulness for the citizens in the form of “one-stop services”. Changes affecting e-Government services may originate within public administrations. Frequently changes are caused by organizational re-structuring or due to the possibility to organize services in a better way. Moreover, changes may be triggered by events originating outside the public administration such as changing laws and regulations. Hence, change management must take into account the response to changes, such as changing legislation, over which public administrations exercise little or no control. Taking into account a wealth of e-Government services and an even larger number of dependant back-office business processes and relationships between them as well as the complexity of interpreting and implementing changes in government regulations, it is highly complex to reconfigure e-Government services. It is necessary to provide support for propagating changes to all dependent service artifacts, for Government Information Quarterly 28 (2011) 101–116 ⁎ Corresponding author. Fax: + 30 210 7724042. E-mail addresses: dapost@unipi.gr (D. Apostolou), gmentzas@mail.ntua.gr (G. Mentzas), stojanovic@fzi.de (L. Stojanovic), barbara.thoenssen@fhso.ch (B. Thoenssen), tomas.parientelobo@atosresearch.eu (T. Pariente Lobo). 0740-624X/$ – see front matter © 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.giq.2010.03.007 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Government Information Quarterly journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/govinf