Inter-agency information sharing for Chinese e-government development: a comparison between vertical and horizontal dimensions

ABSTRACT

Effective inter-agency information sharing can facilitate the internal administration and external service delivery of government agencies, as well as help them address some complex social issues and then promote social development. Thus, how to promote the success of inter-agency information sharing has attracted the attention of researchers and public administrators. A lot of research has investigated the influential factors of inter-agency information sharing; however, few studies have taken account of the governmental administrative systems, which may influence the collaborations among agencies. Given the composition of the Chinese governmental administrative systems, this study investigated and compared the factors that influence the inter-agency information sharing in vertical and horizontal dimensions. An extended technology–organization–environment (TOE) framework was used to organize the influential factors. The results show that marked differences in influential factors between vertical and horizontal inter-agency information sharing indeed exist.

KEYWORDS:

• Inter-agency information sharing
• vertical dimension
• horizontal dimension
• e-government development
• senior care services
• social development

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 After the issue of ‘the State Council of the People’s Republic of China Institution Reform Plan’ in 2018, the Health and Family Planning Commission was renamed to the Health Commission. However, when we did the interviews, the institutional reform has not been completed at the district-level in Beijing. Therefore, in this paper we still use ‘the Health and Family Planning Commission’ (HFPC).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China: [grant number 71771210 and 71501062]; Natural Science Foundation of Beijing Municipality: [grant number 9182008]; Ministry of Education Key Projects of Philosophy and Social Sciences Research: [grant number 19JZD021].

Notes on contributors

Dan Ma

Dan Ma is a Ph.D. candidate in the Research Institute of Smart Senior Care and School of Information, Renmin University of China. She received her Bachelor’s degree in Information Management and Information Systems from the Renmin University of China. Her research interests include IT governance in government, inter-agency information sharing, and smart senior care.

Junjie Zhou

Junjie Zhou is an Associate Professor in Business School, Shantou University. He received his Ph.D. degree in Management from the Renmin University of China. He has published papers in scholarly journals, including International Journal of Medical Informatics, Supportive Care in Cancer, Journal of Cancer Survivorship, Australasian Journal on Ageing, Internet Research, etc. His research interests include smart senior care, online health community, and knowledge management.

Meiyun Zuo

Meiyun Zuo is a Full Professor and the Director of Research Institute of Smart Senior Care and an Associate Dean of School of Information, Renmin University of China. He is also the Associate Chair of Chinese Information Economics Society (CIES) and Associate Secretary-General of China Association for Information Systems (CNAIS). His work has been published in Journal of AIS, International Journal of Information Management, Information System Journal, Internet Research, Information Technology and People, Journal of Medical Internet Research, International Journal of Medical Informatics, Information Systems, etc. His research interests include smart senior care, IT impact on the older adults, information systems adoption, knowledge management, and etc.