A Stakeholder Analysis of Business-to-Government Information Sharing: The Governance of a Public-Private Platform

ICT enables business-to-government (b-to-g) information exchange, which can be used to enhance control and compliance by businesses. However, sharing information can cause resistance by businesses, as for them information is key to competitive advantage, whereas governments need this information to conduct their tasks at lower costs. In this paper, the adoption of a b-to-g information-sharing platform is analyzed from a stakeholder theory perspective. The analysis shows that for stakeholders not the information-sharing infrastructure itself is their primary concern, but it is the governance thereof. A successful adoption and stakeholder management strategy was that companies have the sense-of-urgency and clear requirements to develop a public-private governance model. Governments can set the conditions to ensure that public functionality is also developed. The authors argue that stakeholder analysis should be used in developing adoption and implementation strategies.