A collaborative decision framework for managing changes in e-Government services

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.