Information systems and partnership in multi-agency networks: An action research project in crime reduction

Partnership working is becoming an increasingly common methodology in the public sector for addressing complex social issues such as poverty, economic development and crime. Information systems have a vital role to play in enabling such inter-organisational networks and in facilitating the multi-disciplinary collaboration that is essential to joint working. This paper reports a UK-based action research project in the field of community safety. The practical aim was to develop a multi-agency data exchange (MADE) to support 14 crime reduction partnerships in the county of Lancashire in the preparation of their crime reduction strategies, as required by recent government legislation. From a research perspective, the project afforded an opportunity to explore the role of information systems in supporting public sector partnerships, and hence to open up a relatively unresearched element of the broader eGovernment agenda. From a practitioner perspective, MADE has been highly successful; it has provided substantial help to partnerships in the production of their strategies and there is strong demand for the project's continuation. On the research side, the work has provided valuable insights into the design and development of information systems to support multi-agency collaboration and on the barriers to information sharing. The concept of a "partnership decision support system" emerges from the work, and a number of profitable directions for future research are adumbrated. Methodologically, it is concluded that action research is a valuable research tool for developing relevant and holistic theory in IS. © 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.