Measuring the effectiveness of information technology management: a comparative study of six UK local authorities

Abstract

Evaluating and managing the effective delivery of IT services is an issue which has been brought into sharper relief recently. This has been particularly prevalent in the UK public sector where the growing emphasis on formalised client-contractor relationships, outsourcing and benchmarking (both between local authorities and between local authorities and private sector organisations) has meant that the definition of service standards and agreeing performance criteria has attracted considerable practitioner attention. This research is based on 300 interviews conducted in six UK local authorities. The investigation used both gap analysis and perceptual mapping techniques to develop an understanding of the aspects of IT service delivery that users' value most in conjunction with an assessment of how well they perceive their IT department is performing on these criteria. The paper exposes considerable differences in the relative performance of the six local authorities from both the gap analysis and the perceptual mapping elements of the investigation. The methodology is shown to provide an effective way of identifying key performance issues from the user perspective and benchmarking service performance across organisations.