Information system and information infrastructure deployment: the challenge of the Italian e-justice approach

Information systems development methodologies are still mainly concerned with the research of better ways to provide technical solutions for given organizational problems. The paper challenges the appropriateness of this scope of development methodologies when system development deals with the deployment of information infrastructures. The attempt of the Italian Ministry of Justice to deploy ejustice, a new information infrastructure for the judiciary, is taken as explanatory case. The research data suggests that development methodologies supporting information system development that focus on the solution of technical problems result appropriate to match design and adoption processes in simple organisational context, such as in the case of the automation of bureaucratic procedures supporting judicial activities. When the involved context and adoption process is more complex and challenging, as in the e-justice case, it seems necessary to change the aim and scope of the chosen system development methodologies. The conceptual shift from information systems to information infrastructures allows to grasp this growing complexity and to propose development methodologies, such as cultivation, that ease the deployment of such initiatives.