Four paradigms of information systems development
Communications of the ACM
Florida 2002: sluggish systems, vanishing votes
Communications of the ACM
Government: a better ballot box?
IEEE Spectrum - The amazing vanishing transistor act
Information Systems Research
Editor's comment: theoretically speaking
MIS Quarterly
Citizen empowerment and participation in e-democracy: Indian context
Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Theory and Practice of Electronic Governance
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This paper discusses the relationship between ontology, seen as the doctrine concerned with the nature of reality, and the management of technology. It introduces two ontological positions: realism and constructivism. Realism is the position that holds that reality is objectively given and independent of the observer. Constructivism stands for the belief that reality is constructed by the observer. The implications of this ontological debate are explored using the example of the Irish attempt to introduce e-voting. In order to understand the mistakes made during the Irish e-voting project, it is helpful to consider the ontological position taken by the responsible decision makers. It is argued that only a realist conception of technology can give rise to the sort of mismanagement that was observed in the case study. In conclusion, the paper suggests that following a constructivist ontology would have helped avoid some of the serious mistakes that were made.