COMMENTARY on Information Systems.

The in-context assessment approach for information systems is an improvement over normative evaluation or evaluation with unspecified criteria. The process has the danger of justifying the current structure and operations, but this did not appear to be a major problem in the case study. The approach has been refined in an action research setting. The in-context assessment approach is defined in terms of three stages with 11 steps. The three stages are: • Analysis of the host organization • Assessment of information architecture • Assessment of organizational structure and activities within the information systems function The results of action research provided strong evidence for the usefulness of the in-context approach.