EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Information sharing and interoperability: the case of major incident management

David K Allen, Stan Karanasios and Alistair Norman

European Journal of Information Systems, 2014, vol. 23, issue 4, 418-432

Abstract: Public sector inter-organisational information sharing and interoperability is an area of increasing concern and intense investment for practice and an area of increasing scholarship. This paper focuses on one particular set of public sector organisations (emergency services) and illuminates the key technological and organisational issues they face concerning information sharing and interoperability. The particular contexts in which these are studied are ones where decisions are non-trivial and made in high-velocity environments. In these conditions the problems and significance of inter-organisational information sharing and interoperability are accentuated. We analyse data gathered from two studies: the first focused on ‘first responders’ (police, fire and ambulance services) in the United Kingdom. The second, a follow on study, with emergency service managers and interoperability project managers in the United Kingdom and the European Union. Using activity theory as a conceptual framework we describe the informational problems critical emergency responders face in their initial response to, and management of, an incident. We argue that rather than focusing on interoperability as a primarily technological issue it should be managed as an organisational and informational issue. Second, we argue that rather than designing for anomalous situations we should design systems, which will function during both anomalous and routine situations. Third, we argue for focus on harmonisation of policies, procedures and working practices.

Date: 2014
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1057/ejis.2013.8 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:tjisxx:v:23:y:2014:i:4:p:418-432

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/tjis20

DOI: 10.1057/ejis.2013.8

Access Statistics for this article

European Journal of Information Systems is currently edited by Par Agerfalk

More articles in European Journal of Information Systems from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().

 
Page updated 2025-04-12
Handle: RePEc:taf:tjisxx:v:23:y:2014:i:4:p:418-432