Joint IT Platforms as X Factor for Efficiency Gains?

The purpose of the article is to discuss how large-scale ICT central infrastructure projects (so called IT platforms) effect productivity and capacity development in the public sector. On the one hand, the development of such infrastructures consolidates expertise, creates preconditions for advancing public services and, in many cases, advances integration of private and public services; but on the other hand, such infrastructures start to pace technological development within the public sector and to act both technologically and institutionally as frameworks for new public service solutions. Hence, we ask if such consolidated central ICT infrastructure projects bring considerable efficiency gains to the public sector in so much as it outweighs the possible losses occurring from diminished capacity for agile, bottom-up development, and what are the key factors to balance the both. This brings the traditional consolidation-productivity literature into the 21st Century, and into the field of ICT. The theoretical discussion is exemplified through the Estonian Data Exchange Layer X-Road case study that is a technical and organizational environment, which enables secure Internet-based data exchange between public (as well as private) information systems and forms the backbone of Estonian e-Government.