Towards Interoperability in Municipal Government: A Study of Information Sharing Practices

Municipal governments rely heavily on the sharing of data between departments as a means to provide high-quality and timely service to its citizens. Common tasks such as parcel renovations require the involvement of multiple departments such as Building, Planning, Zoning, Assessment and Tax to achieve the ultimate goals. However, the software applications used to support the work of these departments are provided by independent software vendors and are not integrated with one another. Therefore, municipal employees rely heavily on manual methods for data sharing. We conducted a study of 12 municipal governments to understand their information sharing needs and practices. We focused on the interaction and information sharing within and between municipal departments. Our findings can be used to shape future research on e-government initiatives and interoperability of municipal applications.