Software Público Brasileiro

\section{Introduction}

E-government projects differ from others due to their complexity and extension
\cite{anthopoulos2016egovernment}. They are complex because they combine
development, innovation, information \& communications technologies, politics,
and social impact. Their extension, on the other hand, is related to their
scope, target audience, organizational size, time, and the corresponding
resistance to change. Government-academia collaborative projects may be treated
as an alternative to create novelty for e-government projects and to meet the
needs of society. This collaborative work has challenges, such as organizing
the collaboration project, aligning goals, synchronizing the pace of between
government and academia \cite{anthopoulos2016egovernment}, and overcoming the
failure trend of e-government projects \cite{goldfinch2007pessimism}.

One of the main causes of e-government project failure is poor project
management \cite{anthopoulos2016egovernment}. When government and academia
combine efforts to develop an e-gov solution, it becomes a critical issue.

 
Academia commonly works on cutting edge technology while the government
still relies on traditional techniques. Changing the development process in
large-size institutions represents an organizational disturbance with impacts
on structure, culture, and management practices \cite{nerur2015challenges}. As
a result, government and academia have to harmonize their view to increase
the chances of success in projects with tight deadlines and short budgets.

We believe that recommended community standards from Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) and
agile values may be an option for harmonizing different management approaches,
due to the plurality of FLOSS ecosystems and the diversity favored by agile
methodologies. Open communication, project modularity, the community of users,
and fast response to problems are just a few of the FLOSS ecosystem practices
\cite{capiluppi, warsta}. Individuals and interactions, working software,
customer collaboration, responding to change \cite{beck} are the values agile
development. With this in mind, FLOSS and agile practices may improve the
process management and the cooperation of distinct teams.

In this work, we investigate the empirical method developed during 30 months of a
government-academia project that helped to harmonize the differences between
both organization management cultures. We present both quantitative and
qualitative analyses of the benefits of FLOSS and agile practices in an
e-government project. We identify and trace the best practices based on FLOSS
ecossystems and agile methodology. We collect and analyse data from the project
repository. Finally, we conducted a survey target at projects participants to
find their perception around the set of best practices, and which of them are
effective to government-academia collaboration. In doing so, our aim is to help
academia better understand key issues they will be confronted with when engaging
in a government-academia software project.