Information System ad Information Infrastructure Deployment: the Challenge of the Italian e-Justice Approach

Information systems development methodologies are still mainly concerned with the research of better ways to provide technical solutions for given organisational problems. The paper challenges the appropriateness of this scope of development methodologies when system development deals with the deployment of information infrastructures. The attempt of the Italian Ministry of Justice to deploy e-justice, a new information infrastructure for the judiciary, is taken as an explanatory case. The research data suggests that development methodologies supporting information system development that focus on the solution of technical problems result that are appropriate to match design and adoption processes in simple organisational contexts, such as in the case of the automation of bureaucratic procedures supporting judicial activities. When the involved context and adoption process is more complex and challenging, as in the e-justice case, it seems necessary to change the aim and scope of the chosen system development methodologies. The conceptual shift from information systems to information infrastructures allows one to grasp this growing complexity and to propose development methodologies, such as cultivation, that eases the deployment of such initiatives.