INVESTIGATION OF E-GOVERNMENT

INFORMATION SYSTEMS AGILITY

Aggoune Soumia

, Imache Rabah

LIMOSE laboratory, Computer Science Department, Faculty of Sciences, UMBB, Boumerdes, Algeria

Mezghiche Mohamed

, Khadraoui Abdelaziz

MATIS Geneva Team - CUI - Université de Genève, Genève, France

Keywords: Agility, Agile software development, Agile methods, e-Government, e-Government information systems,

Information technology.

Abstract: Since their appearance around ‘90s, agile software development methods have gained significant attention

in the software engineering community. What about the application of these methods in the electronic

government (e-government) field? This paper aims to explore the possibility of applying these methods in e-

government projects development, especially for developing agile e-government information systems.

1 INTRODUCTION

The emergence of RAD (Rapid Application

Development) in the late 80s has marked the

beginning of a methodological revival upsetting the

traditional methods of software development and IT

project management. In fact, past practices (V life

cycle, waterfall life cycle, UML ...) were forced to

give way to approaches more adapted to changes

and new technologies, quality-conscious and based

on iterative processing. Thus, agile methods have

emerged in the 90s and were derived, almost all,

from the industrial world. They were born in

response to the new economic context, in which,

software products are becoming larger and more

complex. At the same time, stronger market

pressures are forcing software engineers to develop

projects rapidly with maximum profit. Furthermore,

customers are demanding more with better quality,

and requirements keep changing (Juha 2003).

In e-government, the concept of agility is new,

but seems attracting, due to the permanent changes

in the environment (economy, technology, social…)

which in turn cause changes in the governments’

regulations that may affect public administration

processes and systems. The objective of engineering

e-government information systems is to support

human activities efficiently, to clarify processes and

to make decision making more transparent. The

development of agile information system for

agile public institutions requires consideration of

evolutionary aspects and involves development of

methods and techniques supporting agile responses

against the various changes.

This work aims to investigate the possibility of

applying agile software development methods in e-

government projects development, especially to

develop agile information systems dedicated to e-

government. Hence, it is organized as follows:

Section 2 introduces the concept of agility. Section 3

describes the main existing agile methods. Section 4

explores the possibility of applying these methods in

e-government projects. Section 5 gives some

conclusions and future work.

2 AGILITY CONCEPT

Agility is defined as the ability of an organization to

respond quickly to market changes and adapts and

reacts flexibly to unpredictable changes in order to

face the threats of its environment (Breu et al. 2001).

For some ones, agility is more synonymous with the

ability of reconfiguration, and for others it is more

synonymous with flexibility, reactivity and

sometimes with adaptability. Kidd (1994) argues

311

Soumia A., Rabah I., Mohamed M. and Abdelaziz K..

INVESTIGATION OF E-GOVERNMENT INFORMATION SYSTEMS AGILITY .

DOI: 10.5220/0003085603110314

In Proceedings of the International Conference on Knowledge Management and Information Sharing (KMIS-2010), pages 311-314

ISBN: 978-989-8425-30-0

 2010 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)

that agility is not only the flexibility and reactivity,

but it is a broader concept that incorporates both

flexibility (which measures the ability of an

enterprise to be aligned, with equivalent technology,

to a given level of production); reactivity (which

corresponds to the speed at which an enterprise

responds to the changing demands of its customers,

including unanticipated requests) and even

adaptability (which is the ability to cope with

newness which is often translates as positive and

flexible attitude to meet needs for change ).

3 AGILE METHODS

Agile methods are a set of methods of IT project

management and software development that are

characterized by their adaptability to the context

(Guillaume 2005). They focus on generating early

releases of working products and on delivering

business value immediately from the beginning of a

project (Juha 2003).

A key difference between agile methods and past

iterative methods is in the length of iterations. In the

past, iterations might have been three or six months

long. With agile methods, iteration lengths vary

between one to four weeks, and intentionally do not

exceed 30 days. Research has shown that shorter

iterations have lower complexity and risk, better

feedback, and higher productivity and success rates.

The various existing agile methods and

techniques they propose are relatively similar within

a common trunk from the RAD (first agile method

developed). Nevertheless, they all offer technical

complement each other or more appropriate

depending on the type and the size of project.

3.1 RAD

The RAD (Rapid Application Development) method

is the first agile method developed in 1991 by James

Martin (Ducept 2002) and consists of a short

development cycle based on three phases within 90

days of ideal and 120 days maximum.

3.2 DSDM

DSDM (Dynamic Software Development Method)

was developed in 1994 as a framework of controls

for RAD, supplemented by guidance on how to

apply those controls.

3.3 SCRUM

SCRUM has been developed in 1996. SCRUM’S

main idea, is that systems development involves

several environmental and technical variables

(requirements, timeframe, resources and technology)

that are likely to change during the process.

3.4 XP

XP (eXtreme Programing) has been invented for the

first time in 1996. XP process can be characterized

by short development cycles, incremental planning,

continuous feedback, reliance on communication

and evolutionary design (Beck 1999).

3.5 RUP

RUP (Rational Unified Process) method was

developed in 1998. It is an iterative approach for

object oriented systems and it strongly embraces use

cases for modeling requirements and building the

foundation for a system.

3.6 FDD

FDD (Feature Driven Development) was developed

in 1999 (Williams 2007). It is a highly iterative agile

software development process that is focused on

delivering frequent, tangible and working results.

3.7 ASD

ASD (Adaptive Software Development) was

developed in 2000 (Pekka et al 2002). It focuses

mainly on the problems in developing complex large

systems. The method encourages incremental,

iterative development, with constant prototyping.

3.8 CRYSTAL

More than a method, Crystal is a family of

methodologies developed by Alistair Cockburn in

2000 (Pekka et al 2002). Crystal family includes

different methodologies for selecting the most

suitable methodology for each individual project.

Agile methods are increasingly used in the

industrial world and respond better to the problems

of software development and IT project

management. The practical benefits they bring to the

field of controlling time, cost and quality explain

their growing success. In this next section, we

explore the possibility of applying these methods in

e-government projects.

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4 AGILE METHODS IN

E-GOVERNMENT

4.1 e-Government

E-government is simply defined as the use of

information and communication technologies (ICTs)

to improve the processes of government. Professor

Denis Tsichritzis defines E-government in

(Khadraoui et al 2005) as “the application of

information technologies and the adaptation of the

processes and structures in order to improve

information, communication and cooperation

between the government authorities and the

companies, the citizens and the nongovernmental

institutions, thus with the centre even of the

government”. Many other definitions have been

proposed. They can be grouped into three main

categories (Finger 2004): in the first, is the

satisfaction of citizens which constitutes the major

axis of the development of E-government. The

second category defines the e-government as a

process of interaction, while the third and last

category includes definitions which estimate that

they are the technological tools and the possibilities

that they offer to the users who dictate the

development of E-government. The first category is

illustrated by the definition given by (Deloitte

Research 2000). The second category is illustrated

by the definition given by (Schedler et al. 2001),

while the third category is illustrated by the

definition given by (Gordon 2002).

4.2 Need of Agility in e-Government

The need for agility within government is mainly

due to the permanent changes in the environment

(political, economical, social and ecological) which

in turn cause changes in the governments’

regulations that may affect public administration

processes and systems. To reduce “time-to-market”

with regards to new decisions, regulations, and laws,

it is necessary to equip public administration with

tools supporting agile response to changes. A change

in one activity in a process or in one part of an e-

government system may cause many problems in

other parts of the same process or system. Therefore,

there is a need for resolving changes in an agile

manner (Mentzas 2007).

For these reasons, we are convinced that agility

must be integrated as a quality of e-government

information systems. To achieve this objective, it is

important to promote technologies supporting the

agility. It is necessary to be able to modify more

quickly and more surely the systems in order to take

into account the different evolutions (Bonnet 2008).

For that purpose, It is necessary to return to

fundamental composition of an e-government

information system and investigate the different

sources of agility production in each part, mainly the

agility of the front office (citizens), the agility of

middle office (institution information system) and

the agility of the back office (institution), from the

points of view tools of development, technologies,

involved people and context.

4.3 Agile Methods for Agile

e-Government Information Systems

Development

The goal of Agile Methods in developing e-

government information systems is to allow an

institution to be agile, but what does it mean to be

Agile? Jim Highsmith says that being Agile means

being able to “Deliver quickly. Change quickly.

Change often” (Highsmith 2000). While Agile

techniques vary in practices and emphasis, they

share common characteristics, including iterative

development and a focus on interaction,

communication, and the reduction of resource-

intensive intermediate artifacts. Developing in

iterations allows the development team to adapt

quickly to changing requirements. Working in close

location and focusing on communication means

teams can make decisions and act on them

immediately, rather than wait on correspondence.

Until today, there is no study proves that the use of

an agile method for development, guarantees an

agile solution. However, it is extremely probable

that the combination of agile development methods

with agile tools, techniques, and agile team

contribute to obtain agile solutions. This is

theoretically true because agile development

methods are adaptive to the change, thus it

guarantees the agility of developed solution, at least

during the development process of the project. In

addition, once the project is finished, the agility of

the developed solution, in terms of interoperability,

integration and evolutitivity depend on the agility of

the used tools, such as IT infrastructures, middle -

wares, and organizational aspect of the IS.

The development of an agile e-government

information system by applying one of the agile

development methods must pass firstly by the choice

of the most suitable method. Among all the agile

methods seen in the preceding section, there is not

an applicable method in all the types of projects.

This means that the choice of the appropriate

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method depend strongly on the size, of the project

and the internal constraints imposed by each

method.

The comparative studies of the principal existing

agile methods according to the project size, the

internal and the external constraints imposed by each

method given in (Benard 2002), makes it possible to

visualize graphically that in spite of the advantages

offered, each one of these methods has its limits that

are related mainly to the size of the project in which

the method is applied, the internal constraints like

external imposed by the latter. To this end, the idea

to combine several agile methods in order to

generate a new agile method having more

advantages and fewer disadvantages to develop the

same information system dedicated to the E-

government can be better solution.

5 CONCLUSIONS

This paper presented a state of the art on the concept

of agility as well as the principal existing agile

software development methods. Since their

appearance, these methods are used and being more

popular, mainly in the software development

community and prove their effectiveness (in terms of

controlling time, cost and quality) compared to the

traditional methods of software development and IT

project management. Being convinced of the

benefits of agile methods; actually, we are

investigating the possibilities of using these methods

individually or collectively, at the different levels of

e-government information systems development in

order to create agile solutions. However, questions

such as: what are the necessary adjustments allowing

to integrate these methods efficiently in e-

government projects? What are the pitfalls to avoid

for their successful use? And what significant

contribution in producing agility can these methods

provide in e-government projects development and

maintenance compared to traditional development

methods? Constitute specifications of the theoretical

and practical works that are actually under

investigation in our research laboratories.

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