This volume of Information System Development, Towards a Service Provision Society is the published proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Information Systems Development (ISD2008) that was hosted by the Department of Computer Science of the University of Cyprus at the Annabelle Hotel, Paphos, Cyprus from August 25-27, 2008. The theme of the conference was "Towards a Service Provision Society". In total, 131 delegates from 34 different countries registered for the conference, making it a truly international event. Papers presented at the conference strongly reflected the conference theme. Of 165 papers submitted, 99 were presented at the conference, representing an acceptance rate of approximately 60%. All papers were peer reviewed by three or four referees (a total of 543 review reports were submitted, corresponding to an average of 3.29 reviews per paper). Over the course of three days, 28 paper sessions were held, covering a range of areas such as: "Information Systems Engineering & Management", "Business Systems Analysis & Design", "Intelligent Information Systems", "Agile and High-Speed Systems Development Methods", "Enterprise Systems Development & Adoption", "Public Information Systems Development", "Information Systems Development Education", "Information Systems Development in Developing Nations", "Legal and Administrative Aspects of Information Systems Development", "Information Systems Research Methodologies", "Service-Oriented Analysis and Design of Information Systems", "IT Service Management", "Philosophical and Theoretical Issues in Information Systems Development", "Model-driven Engineering in ISD", "Human Computer Interaction (HCI) in Information Systems Development". The book is organised by order of the conference sessions. While all the presented papers were of high quality, we have selected two of them to share the Best Paper Award. The first one is: "Modeling the contribution of enterprise architecture practice to the achievement of business goals" by Marlies van Steenbergen & Sjaak Brinkkemper. The second one is: "Why can't we bet on ISD Outcomes?: ISD "Form" as a Predictor of Success" by Mike Newman, Shan L Pan & Gary Pan. Furthermore, to acknowledge the quality of the reviews he completed, the quality of the paper he submitted, his role as a track and session chair, and his general participation in the conference, we have awarded an Ovreall Contribution Award to Michael Lang of the National University of Ireland, Galway. Details of these awards can be found on the conference Web site at http://isd2008.cs.ucy.ac.cy. Our gratitude is extended firstly to all those who attended and authored work for the conference. The contribution of the International Program Committee was invaluable in identifying track chairs and reviewers to commit to doing vital work. While volunteering to host a conference is a highly personal undertaking, without support it would be impossible. Thus, we wish to thank our sponsors for their financial support and other aid. The ISD conference community has developed over the years a real sense of collegiality and friendliness, perhaps unusually so for a conference. At the same time it has been a stimulating forum where a free exchange of views and perspectives is encouraged. Perhaps what brings the community together is a belief that the process of systems development is important; whether it is systematic or structured or improvised or spontaneous, there is something about the process and the outcomes that excites us. We form a spectrum of thought from those who see the activity as somewhat scientific to others that see it as wholly sociological; we span a divide between abstract and conceptual, to hard code and artefacts - somewhere in-between lies the truth. If our work is to make a meaningful contribution to both practice (by teaching students) and research (by sharing our experiences and studies with others), then hopefully this conference will have done a little of the former and much for the latter.