Data Sharing Issues and Potential Solutions for Adoption of Information Infrastructures: Evidence from a Data Pipeline Project in the Global Supply Chain over Sea

Information infrastructures have gained significant momentum in today’s information economy. They are defined as shared, open and evolving socio-technical systems providing distinct IT capabilities. The Cassandra EU project aims to enhance visibility of the international flow of goods over sea with an electronic data pipeline as an information infrastructure. This paper presents data sharing issues that could prevent adoption of the Cassandra Pipeline. Potential solutions are provided regarding access restriction and data sharing. In addition solutions are derived from the design theory for dynamic complexity in information infrastructures of Hanseth and Lyytinen (2010), proposing to gain momentum by starting small, focusing on immediate benefits for supply chain partners and obtaining experience using simple prototypes. This paper underlines that designers of the Cassandra Pipeline as an information infrastructure need to think carefully about the implications of restricting access and non-obligatory or obligatory data sharing, both allowing for generativity and trust while preventing potential abuse at the same time.