Critical Success Factors from a Social Insurance Project in Sweden

• After 30 years holding the same course, a new pension scheme and IT system was introduced in Sweden. It is described as one of Sweden�s largest IT projects with approx. 1 800 000 lines of code produced by the IT department of the Swedish social insurance administration. The administration uses a purchaser-contractor model for systems development where the IT department supervises the development and management of the IT facilities used by the national social insurance system. The project has been evaluated several times pointing out critical success factors for future large-scale projects. This study examines the critical success factors in relation to the purchaser-contractor model and the administration�s e-government efforts. Many factors refer to the roles in the purchaser-contractor model suggesting comprehensive views from all dimensions and communication and collaboration between the parts in the model. Another important factor is the project management. This suggests joint projects over the purchaser-contractor boundaries, uniting of overall leadership, overall planning, an operative project management, strong focus on goals and continuous follow-up. Other factors refer to the development process and it�s contents, suggesting a clarifying �baseline� after initial capturing of requirements not allowing more than regulated changes after the baseline. Special organisational structures are suggested for handling changes in requirements, for planning deliverables and for installation. Lastly, priority and support from top management was considered important. Furthermore the administration is on a path towards e-government, changing the organisation and processes in the customer front-line. A general process for management of the case workflow has been introduced, where the workflow is being managed in a general and similar way. A case management system has been developed that supports the general process. Web services for e-government will be ... (shortened)

Subject headings

NATURVETENSKAP  -- Data- och informationsvetenskap -- Datavetenskap (hsv//swe)

NATURAL SCIENCES  -- Computer and Information Sciences -- Computer Sciences (hsv//eng)

Keyword

Critical success factors

E-government

Systems development

Social insurance

Sweden

Computer science

Datavetenskap

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

kon (subject category)