SISP (Strategic information systems planning) is the process of understanding what
the business goals are and identifying how IS can support those goals by delivering
benefits. [1] Any organization when they run their businesses they need to interact
with the internal as well as with the external environment. Many researches have
done researches about the impacts on SISP from external environment. But it has
been identified that there is a gap or the difference between the perspectives of
researchers and actual SISP practitioners about the impact of external environment.
This research paper tries to clarify this gap by doing an analysis on the two views
(views of researches and the practitioners).
Review of the external environment and SISP
At the beginning of this paper (2.LITERATURE
REVIEW) it shows how researches
look at SISP and external influences on it. According to the literature review SISP is
made up of 7 categories and they are –

Planning Resources – Resources (information, human, financial and technical)
reacquired for carrying out the planning process. E.g. Management and user
input and involvement.

Internal Environment – These are the factors that can be seen within the
organization itself that affect on SISP. This environment includes internal
business environment and the internal IT environment.

External Environment – comprises with external business environment and
the external IT environment. Environmental uncertainty is one major factor
of planning.

Planning Process - Set of steps for developing a strategic information plan

Information Plan – Tangible outputs of the SISP process are included in the
information plan. Normally it contains overall information architecture for the
organization.

Plan Implementation – The rate, extent and performance of plan
implementation.

Alignment – This includes the outcome of the planning E.g. up to which extent
the key planning objectives have been fulfilled.
Review of SISP process
According to the researches done by three researches (Segars et al. 1998, Doherty
et a. 1999) as in Brown (2004) characteristics of SISP have been summarized in this
paper. Those characteristics are

Comprehensiveness

Flow

Focus

Formalization

Frequency

Participation

Ownership

Alignment

Implementation

Comprehensive focus

BP-ISP Integration (BP-ISP – Business planning and Information System
Planning)

Alacrity
Apart from the above characteristics Earl (1993) have identified five distinct
approaches to SISP business-led, method-driven, administrative, technological and
organizational. Those approaches have been identified according to some case
studies of UK and according to Earl organizational approach was the most successful.
According to Segars et al. 1998 to be most successful high comprehensiveness and
formalization, top-down in flow, focused on control, adaptation ,broad participation
profiles and frequent planning meetings are vital factors.
According to Doherty et al. (1999) also organizational approach is the most
successful approach while Salmela et al. (2000) presents comprehensive approach as
to be more successful .
Review of external environment
According to this paper less amount of researches have been done about external
environment of SISP. The research done by Lederer and Salmela (1996) shows that
stability of external environment should be examined for its impact on SISP.
Environmental uncertainty can be described in three main dimensions – dynamism,
heterogeneity, and hostility
Dynamism - the rate and unpredictability of change in the environment. It has
negative impact on SISP.
Heterogeneity - the number and diversity of external factors in the environment. This
has positive impact on SISP.
Hostility - the threat posed by elements of the environment such as tough
competition and dwindling markets (Sabherwal and King, 1992).
Uncertainty of the external environment is one of the major problems in SISP and
according to some research articles SISP can be used to reduce the uncertainty.
Along with Salmela et al., 2000, comprehensive approach to SISP has been found to
be more successful than an incremental approach in the context of a confused
environment (Salmela et al., 2000).
The amount of studies done on external IT environment and its impact on SISP is
also very less. Rapid modification of IT environment leads many changes in the
organization IS functionalities and the papers shows the need of conducting more
researches on this topic.
The methodology of this research is analyzing e-government public web sites based on
web based business models. At first the research examines sample e-government web
sites and tries to understand their underline business models. Then those models are
compared with atomic business models in e-commerce which are described above and
finally drew references to business models. Survey has been conducted for 3 months and
within that period the examined web sites were limited for changes.
This research has limited its analyzing the e-government web sites belongs to Rotterdam
region of Netherlands. Reasons for choosing that region are as follows
 Many private and public initiatives are located in that area.
 It is the second largest city in the Netherlands it was often considered as a
forerunner in comparison with other cities
 It has the largest port in Europe
 It consisted of several small city councils and was involved in a number of
innovative projects
 The past has proven that developments in the Rotterdam region influenced
developments in the other areas in the Netherlands.
As additional information was needed for further analysis of e-government web sites,
interview had been conducted with the people who are in charge of those websites to
clarify about the business models of those sites.
According to the research paper it is very hard to find literature on e-government business
models and because of that the researches have used an iterative approach as described
above.
Reference:
[1] http://www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~nkm/sisp/WHATIS.html
Also referred:
Advanced Topics in Information Resources Management by Mehdi Khosrowpour
Next part of the research paper discuss the views of IS professionals who had
experience of SISP in large organizations.
According to their views, there are two concepts can be seen in external business
environment. They are environmental dynamism and environmental hostility
Views of IS professionals on environmental dynamism are used to create following
relationship propositions

Environmental dynamism leads to a more flexible, adaptive SISP process.

Environmental dynamism results in shorter SISP horizons.
According to the views of IS professionals on environmental hostility IT can give very
short term competitive advantage. Because what ever the newest technology your
organization used will be followed by your competitor within very short time period.
In the review of external IT environment IT dynamism, IT munificence, and IT hype
are the concepts that has been discussed.
At the end of this research it has been identified that normally IS professionals are
tend to concern more about external IT environment while researches tend to focus
more on normal external environment. This fact was described as follows. Normally
IT managers and seniors of IS professionals perceive the role of IS as a service and
hence focus on IT and researchers on the other hand researches perceive IS more
loftily as a strategic business driver, hence the focus on environmental business
impacts.
It is obvious that external and internal environments heavily impact on any
organization and their activities. Although there are lots of stakeholders in SISP their
view points about SISP and external and internal environments are different
according to the experiences and their subjects of expertise.