DEVELOPING E-GOVERNMENT INTEGRATED INFRASTRUCTURES: A CASE STUDY Marinos Themistocleous and Zahir Irani Department of Information Systems and Computing Brunel University, Uxbridge, UB8 3PH, UK {Marinos.Themistocleous; Zahir.Irani}@brunel.ac.uk Peter E.D. Love We-B Centre, School of Management Information Systems, Edith Cowan University, Joondulap, WA 6027, Australia p.love@ecu.edu.au Abstract The Public Domain (PD) always serves as an agent to provide better and reliable services and information to citizens. Recent advancements in technology, citizen-demand and new public management initiatives, have all contributed to the advent of Electronic Government (eGov). Much emphasis has been given in achieving this objective through the development of Electronic Government Information Systems (eGov-IS). The authors support that an eGov platform should not been seen as a stand-alone system but as a solution that communicates with back office applications through an integrated infrastructure. An integrated eGov-IS can efficiently automate the business processes of the public domain and increase citizens’ satisfaction. However, to achieve such a solution, PD and Local Governments (LG) need to bridge together their disparate systems to provide a common and shared view of their information and services. Many LGs have encountered difficulties in incorporating their systems, and have turned to the adoption of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software packages to improve their services. Nonetheless, many legacy systems have not been replaced and thus, the need for integrating their eGov applications with their front desk and back office systems still exists. Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) can be used to piece together eGov applications with packaged and legacy systems. Although, the application of EAI is flouring in the private sector, its adoption by the public domain is underutilised. The authors investigate EAI and demonstrate, through a case study, how EAI can be used to develop an integrated eGov infrastructure. In doing so, allowing others to relate their experiences to those reported herein as well as to aid public sector organisations on how they can integrate their disparate systems more efficiently and extend their lifecycles. Keywords: e-Government, EAI, CRM 1. Introduction Organisations have adopted Information Technology (IT) to support their business processes and increase their productivity. However, the lack of common enterprise-wide IT architectures has resulted in the development of a diversity of disparate applications. Most of these Information Systems (IS) were based on the latest technological advances and thus, implemented on different platforms, using various technologies and standards. The disadvantages of such heterogeneous IT infrastructures are analysed in the literature and include among others high maintenance cost and data redundancy. Bureaucracy and the low rate of change in the PD have caused much criticism of government services and the resulting outcomes in terms of government and citizen relationships. This has often led to a low public participation and trust in government services. Public organisations have realised the limitations of their IT infrastructures and are seeking ways to improve their efficiency, to provide better services to their citizens. During the last decade, LGs have started to view eGov as a solution to improve their services and relationships with citizens. According to Prins [15], eGov applications support the delivery of online services, reduce government bureaucracy 0-7695-2268-8/05/$20.00 (C) 2005 IEEE Proceedings of the 38th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences - 2005 1