Experimenting with ICT-intensive public and private collaboration projects: The canadian experience

This research examines nine ICT-intensive and innovative projects involving both public and private sectors in the delivery of public services and attempts to identify their main critical success factors (CSFs). Several respondents from both sectors were interviewed. Results show that political leadership, thorough planning and communication stand out as the first necessary conditions to the success of ICT-intensive public and private collaboration projects, assuring projects the legitimacy, the direction and the implication most needed to attain success. When reflecting on some of the major issues confronting ICT-intensive projects, research results point to political, operational and technological issues such as lack of regulatory framework, deficit of technological expertise in public organizations or problems of integration of numerous governmental information systems. Canada’s overall experience with ICT-intensive public and private collaboration projects is still at the experimentation stage.