Summary of case study 1

This section summarises ICT change agents’ activities within ICT projects in Australian state agencies. In the meantime, state agencies have transformed ICT reforms into community-level change through the identification of project management standards, which are framed primarily around the public sector requirements. These standards within technology projects assist state agencies to achieve their objectives and represent themselves in a positive manner. This kind of project management strategy is also reflected in project documents. In particular, state agencies’ project documents illustrate that project management is a planned and formal process. That approach does not include any learning processes or any of the issues that have been raised during an ICT project.

Apart from the project management standards, state agencies adopt the best practice technology approaches from the private sector settings, for example, N-Tier application architecture. Usually, in pilot projects the ICT technology is customised to reconcile with the state agency environment. Often, external change agents who are temporarily engaged in state agency ICT projects encourage the public sector change agents to introduce new technologies into their organisations. Also, some of the private sector change agents become permanent employees of state agencies with the aim to implement new technologies in public sector settings using the technology experiences from their previous companies. However, in many cases, the public sector management of the target state agency requires an external practitioner recommendation before commencing with a new ICT project. An effect of this policy is that some change agents from state agencies visit banks and participate in lunch networking meetings to gain more insights, on an informal basis, into the best private sector technology practises.

These approaches reveal Australian state agencies as followers of private sector company projects when it comes to ICT innovation.

The transfer of best practice knowledge into state agencies on an informal basis and also the employment of private sector professionals within higher organisational structures enable Australian state agencies to complete ICT projects with predominately internal change agents. However, the internal and external change agents need to accomplish their work in accordance with organisational regulations such as government purchasing guidelines and set technology and project management standards which impact on project management stages and change agents activities. Therefore, the initiation and execution stages take longer than the other two stages.

In ICT projects, different types of change agents are involved, such as directors, project managers, managers and managing lawyers. A director performs a principal role of a

“Governor” for several reasons. Firstly, ICT projects are initiated on a temporary basis and require a higher hierarchical structure role to provide the official recognition for the project. Secondly, in many ICT projects organisational processes are adjusted simultaneously and need to be in accordance with government guidelines. Therefore, the project manager urges an advocate at the higher hierarchical level to enforce the organisational change. Apart from a governor role, some directors portray themselves as sponsors, diagnosticians, team builders and relationship builders. However, their influence is more clearly evident in the early stages of the project.

On the other hand, a project manager is responsible for an ICT project. Consequently, a project manager is more involved in day-to-day activities such as diagnostician, designer of a business model, resource planner and knowledge promoter until an ICT project is completed.

Further formal roles involved within state agencies in ICT projects refer to the manager and managing lawyer. Both offer the specified knowledge required temporarily in

technology projects. Therefore, the role of a manager is reflected in an analyst, a quality manager and risk manager, whereas a managing lawyer acts as a trainer for the target professional audience. Those formal job titles of change agents are sometimes specified through a particular extension reflected in a unit or project name.

Apart from these formal roles, very often the internal and external change agents also play informal roles. These informal roles stem from informal contacts. Over time, the informal contacts in many cases precipitate the formation of an informal network. An informal network is free of hierarchical structure and can be formed at any time and any place. Change agents play significant informal network roles such as central connectors, knowledge promoters, bridges, boundary spanners and gatekeepers. These informal network roles serve multiple purposes. Change agents use internal informal networks to accelerate the diffusion of new technologies which need to be adopted by different stakeholders. By comparison, the external networks are used to gain new ICT knowledge quickly. The internal and external informal communications and networks are distinct processes which take place in Australian state agencies.

Depending on the formal and informal change agents’ roles, organisational settings and ICT innovation, the time frame of diffusion and adoption processes all differ. It emerges that in every project management stage ICT diffusion occurs. However, many ICT innovations were not adopted by some stakeholders’ groups even though a particular project management stage was completed. So, this indicates a mismatch between project management and diffusion. The standard project management framework measures the completion of particular tasks embedded in distinct stages without considering different adopters who will use the ICT technology within state agencies.

5.3. Case study 2