Engaged Problem Formulation of IT Management in Danish Municipalities

Municipalities’ effectiveness in managing information technology (IT) is increasingly important in adhering to their responsibilities for providing services to citizens. While the municipalities’ difficulty in managing IT has been well documented, it is more elusive what specific problems are most relevant in contemporary municipal IT management practice. On this basis, we present an engaged scholarship approach to formulate IT management problems together with municipalities - not for municipalities. We have come to understand such engaged problem formulation as joint researching and defining of a contemporary and complex problem by researchers and those who experience and know the problem. We present the formulated IT management problems and discuss the engaged problem formulation process in relation to engaged scholarship. Furthermore, we discuss how engaged problem formulation may contribute to action research when making sense of ill-structured problems by involving multiple stakeholders.