Abstract Managing system outsourcing remains a significant challenge, particularly in fragile environments such as Afghanistan. This paper reports on a case of outsourcing the implementation of the national identification system (eNID) in Afghanistan to an international vendor. From ten different stories related to people, system and infrastructure, and services and policies, we derived 25 patterns of system outsourcing in fragile environments. The stories show how these patterns are connected into a pattern language that can be used to build or improve other cases of system outsourcing in fragile environments and beyond. This work contributes to structuring system outsourcing knowledge in public-sector fragile environments. It supports long-term software reuse, improved handover, and local ownership. Validation results indicate that the patterns are relevant and useful beyond the Afghan case in similar public-sector outsourcing contexts, although further validation in other countries and domains is needed.
Wahaj et al. (2026) studied this question.