A Complex Adaptive System Thinking Approach of Government E-Procurement in a Cloud Computing Environment

The main focus on e-Procurement in this chapter will be the public (government) e-Procurement, which is part of a larger whole, namely e-Government. e-Procurement and e-Government are very important tools for the government to act in this fast changing society. But as for must business, the tools may be important, but the vision and the strategy to use these tools are much more important. Therefore the chapter discusses e-Government and e-Procurement in their strategic contexts, in which intelligence (contextual integrated information) is a key factor to survive. The reason is because the government is a Complex Adaptive System (CAS). Without intelligence and the agility of its structure and processes, the government will not survive, or at least it will be less efficient and effective in developing strategies and in executing these strategies. The game theory discussion will show that the flexibility and agility of the e-Procurement system (together with a good strategy) are key factors for a successful system; otherwise e-Procurement is more of weakness in the government’s value chain of procurement of goods and services. In the last part of the discussion on Cloud Computing and e-Procurement, the author argues that ERP systems (so called best practices) are not well adapted to other contexts than the simple context of the Cynefin Framework. Service Oriented Architecture solutions can provide better (adapted) solutions for e-Procurement. Cloud Computing in combination with SOA may be the next generation solution.