An enterprise application integration methodology for e‐government

Purpose Achieving goals of better integrated and responsive government services requires moving away from stand alone applications toward more comprehensive, integrated architectures. As a result there is a mounting pressure to integrate disparate systems to support information exchange and cross‐agency business processes. There are substantial barriers that governments must overcome to achieve these goals and to profit from enterprise application integration (EAI). Design/methodology/approach In the research presented here we develop and test a methodology aimed at overcoming the barriers blocking adoption of EAI. This methodology is based on a discrete‐event simulation of public sector structure, business processes and applications in combination with an EAI perspective. Findings The testing suggests that our methodology helps to provide insight into the myriad of existing applications, and the implications of EAI. Moreover, it helps to identify novel options, gain stakeholder commitment, let them agree on the sharing of EAI costs, and finally it supports collaborative decision‐making between public agencies. Practical implications The approach is found to be useful for making the business case for EAI projects, and gaining stakeholder commitment prior to implementation. Originality/value The joint addressing of the barriers of public sector reform including the transformation of the public sector structure, gaining of stakeholders' commitment, understanding EAI technology and dependencies between cross‐agency business processes, and a fair division of costs and benefits over stakeholders.