Scheduling Meetings across Organizational Borders : Collaboration and Interoperability between Government Agencies and External partners

Abstract: Swedish agencies are obligated to collaborate in order to fulfil their respective missions. One of the largest agencies, The Social Insurance Agency, collaborates with several agencies, employers and care providers. Collaboration that needs synchronous dialogues andexchange of information, requires people to coordinate calendars, but since the organizations’ technical systems are separated, problems occur. The meeting organizers have to face the time-wasting problem of searching for suitable meeting occasions, without access to the calendars of their external meeting participants. Meetings across organizational borders are, therefore, difficult to arrange. This study has enlightened this problem, using methods for deeper understanding of the user’s point of view, searching for alternative solutions and with an experimental approach evaluated four different alternatives, all with their own unique pros and cons. One solution based on a WebDAV/CalDAV concept is recommended, due to its potentials. It is superior to the other alternatives, because of its strength in functionality. Moreover, it has great potential to develop into a broader collaboration service, offering a digital work space with functions for document sharing, discussion boards etc.