Towards end-to-end government performance management: Case study of interorganizational information integration in emergency medical services (EMS)

A recent line of e-government research has emphasized the importance of interorganizational information sharing in the public domain. This research extends these information-sharing dimensions to explore information sharing relative to service performance. It utilizes a time-critical information services (TCIS) conceptual framework as an analytical lens. TCIS highlights multiple dimensions of information sharing, including operational, organizational, and governance factors as well as timeliness and quality as key performance metrics. A case study approach was employed to examine the exchange of performance-related information in a key time information critical service: a county-wide emergency medical services (EMS) system. The paper first explains the theoretical foundations for the study, stemming from interorganizational systems (IOS) literature, e-government IOS, and even more specifically, IOS in emergency medical services (EMS). The paper discusses performance measures in EMS, describes the TCIS analytical lens, the study methodology, and the case study under investigation. Case study findings are reported along operational, organizational, and governance dimensions. In general, the case study illustrates promising factors that can enhance information sharing across organizations, while noting that considerable gaps remain in achieving an end-to-end IT-enabled performance approach. Future research should aim to better understand how to overcome these gaps, including addressing the usability constraints that can confront professionals working in time information critical circumstances, such as trauma conditions.