Critical IS Issues in the Network Era

A survey of IS academics and practitioners was conducted to identify key IS issues. The list of key IS issues used in the survey includes five new issues that were not present in previous surveys. These issues are Software Reengineering and Maintenance, Client/Server Computing, IS Education and Training, the Internet, and IS Ethics and Legal Issues. Due to the transition of IT platforms from mainframes and microcomputers to network computing, telecommunications and network-related issues are ranked high in the survey. The long-term trends in the ranking of issues over prior surveys indicate that the percentage of technical issues in the top ten is rising while the percentage of managerial issues is declining. A comparison of practitioner and academic rankings of IS issues reveals that academics rank managerial and emerging issues higher than practitioners.