Van Engers and Boer on Public Agility and Change in a Network Environment

Dr. Alexander Boer and Professor Dr. Tom van Engers, both of the Leibniz Center for Law at the University of Amsterdam, have published Public Agility and Change in a Network Environment, JeDEM: Journal of eDemocracy and Open Government, 3(1), 99-117 (2011). Here is the abstract:

Preparing for change is increasingly core business for governmental organizations. The networked society and the increasing connectedness of governmental organizations have as much impact on the complexity of the change process as the complexities of the corpus of law. Change is not only driven by changes in the law; changes in the organization’s environment often create a need to redesign business processes, reallocate roles and responsibilities, and reorder tasks. Moreover, preparations for change are not limited to the internal processes and systems of these organizations. Propagation of changes to network partners and redesign of network arrangements can be an enormous challenge. In the AGILE project, we develop a design method, distributed service architecture, and supporting tools that enable organizations – administrative and otherwise – to orchestrate their law-based services in a networked environment. This paper explains the Agile approach and describes some of its key principles.