Adapting for Inertia
Delivering Large Government ICT Projects in Australia and New Zealand
Authored by: Grant Douglas
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Description
Despite much learning and research over many decades, large ICT software projects have continued to experience poor outcomes or fallen short of original expectations—some spectacularly so. This is the case in the Australian and New Zealand public sectors, even though these projects operate within historically developed institutional frameworks that provide the rules, guidelines and controls, and aim to consistently improve outcomes.
Something is amiss. In Adapting for Inertia, Grant Douglas questions the effectiveness of these institutional frameworks in governing large ICT software projects in the Australian and New Zealand public sectors. He also gauges the perspectives of a large number of actors in projects in both sectors and examines two case studies in detail.
The main narrative to emerge is that the institutional frameworks are in a state of inertia: they are failing to adapt, owing to various institutional factors—all of which have public policy implications. Sadly, Douglas finds, this inertia is likely to continue. If there is difficulty in changing the capacity to govern, he proposes, policymakers should look to change the nature of what is to be governed.
Details
- ISBN (print):
- 9781760466091
- ISBN (online):
- 9781760466107
- Publication date:
- Oct 2023
- Imprint:
- ANU Press
- DOI:
- http://doi.org/10.22459/AI.2023
- Disciplines:
- Engineering & Computer Science: Computer Science & Information Systems; Social Sciences: Social Policy & Administration
- Countries:
- Australia; Pacific: New Zealand
PDF Chapters
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- Preliminary pages (PDF 110 KB)
- List of illustrations (PDF 78 KB)
- Abbreviations (PDF 62 KB)
- Acknowledgements (PDF 68 KB)
- Preface (PDF 62 KB)
- Governance doesn’t seem to be working too well (PDF 2 MB) doi
- Understanding the sponsor, project management, and forecasting roles and disciplines (PDF 1 MB) doi
- The sponsor: The career-limiting role (PDF 293 KB) doi
- Project management: Superhumans required (PDF 297 KB) doi
- Forecasting: A ‘ridiculous nonsense of a process’ (PDF 393 KB) doi
- Novopay case study: Alone and set up to fail (PDF 259 KB) doi
- EPDP: Doing things differently (PDF 1 MB) doi
- Change the nature of what is to be governed (PDF 218 KB) doi
- Appendix 1: The concepts and their relevance (PDF 87 KB)
- Appendix 2: Part one interviewee data (PDF 99 KB)
- Appendix 3: Novopay interviewee data (PDF 59 KB)
- Appendix 4: EPDP interviewee data (PDF 66 KB)
- Appendix 5: Comparison of Novopay findings with part one findings (PDF 91 KB)
- Appendix 6: Comparison of Novopay findings with EPDP findings (PDF 97 KB)
- Bibliography (PDF 367 KB)
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