THE IMPACT OF IT DECISION-MAKING AUTHORITY ON IT PROJECT PERFORMANCE IN THE US FEDERAL GOVERNMENT

Many information technology (IT) projects in the U.S. federal government have been plagued with failures and overruns in recent years, wasting a large amount of tax revenues and undermining the public's confidence in the government's ability to manage such resources and deliver on its commitments. What affects the performance of IT projects in the federal government? We find that prior literature on IT project management from the private sector setting is inadequate to answer this question. In addition, to the best of our knowledge, information systems (IS) research thus far has not considered how the decision-making authority of an IT unit influences IT project performance at the organizational level. We leverage several unique characteristics of the public sector, vis-a-vis for-profit firms, in developing our theory and hypothesis. Utilizing official datasets on IT projects and human resource records, we find that the more IT managerial officials and supervisors a federal bureau has, the lower time overruns it experiences in its IT projects. Interestingly, this relationship is weakened when the bureau has a larger number of ongoing IT projects. Our findings offer new theoretical insights for the IT project management literature and provide meaningful policy insights into government IT management.

Automated summary

Many IT projects in the U.S. federal government have faced failures and overruns, causing wastage of tax revenues and eroding public confidence. Existing research from the private sector and information systems field has not sufficiently addressed the factors influencing IT project performance in the federal government. By analyzing official datasets, we find that federal bureaus with more IT managerial officials and supervisors experience lower time overruns in their IT projects, although this relationship weakens when there are more ongoing projects. These findings contribute new theoretical insights and policy implications for IT project management in the government.