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International Conference on Electronic Government

EGOV 2020: Electronic Government pp 121–137Cite as

Technical Debt Management: A Systematic Literature Review and Research Agenda for Digital Government

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 12219))

Abstract

Technical debt is created when software engineers knowingly or unknowingly introduce shortcuts or unsuitable choices in the development or maintenance of the software system, that will have a negative impact on the future evolution of the system until corrected. Therefore, it is crucial to manage established debt particular in the public sector. The aim of this study is to introduce Technical debt to the field of Digital Government. We create an overview of the state of the art of the knowledge on technical debt management, the methods applied to gain this knowledge, and propose a research agenda to Digital Government scholars. We conduct a systematic literature review, which focuses on the concept of technical debt management. Forty-nine papers published within 2017–2020 are selected and analyzed. We identify several gaps in the existing literature: 1) an absence of theory explaining the relation of events, 2) a shortage of studies conducted in the public sector, 3) and an absence of specific techniques such as observation to study actual technical debt management behavior.

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Acknowledgement

This study is funded by the Research Centre for Government IT, which is a collaboration between the IT University of Copenhagen, the Danish Digitization Agency and the self-owned institution ATP. The Research Centre’s external funding partners were not involved in the research presented herein, or its dissemination.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. The IT University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Mille Edith Nielsen, Christian Østergaard Madsen & Mircea Filip Lungu

  2. Research Centre for Government IT, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Mille Edith Nielsen & Christian Østergaard Madsen

Authors
  1. Mille Edith Nielsen
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  2. Christian Østergaard Madsen
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  3. Mircea Filip Lungu
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Mille Edith Nielsen .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Danube University Krems, Krems, Austria

    Gabriela Viale Pereira

  2. Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands

    Marijn Janssen

  3. Brunel University London, Uxbridge, UK

    Habin Lee

  4. Linköping University, Linköping, Sweden

    Ida Lindgren

  5. University of Granada, Granada, Spain

    Manuel Pedro Rodríguez Bolívar

  6. University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA

    Hans Jochen Scholl

  7. Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands

    Anneke Zuiderwijk

Appendices

Appendix A: Previous TD Literature Reviews

figure a

Appendix B: The Pool of Papers Analyzed in the Literature Review

figure b
figure c

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Nielsen, M.E., Østergaard Madsen, C., Lungu, M.F. (2020). Technical Debt Management: A Systematic Literature Review and Research Agenda for Digital Government. In: Viale Pereira, G., et al. Electronic Government. EGOV 2020. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12219. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-57599-1_10

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-57599-1_10

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-57598-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-57599-1

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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