The involvement of senior government leadership is important at all stages of an e-Government project, but senior leadership is particularly critical in the planning stages. A “top-down” approach to planning can facilitate close cooperation and coordination among various units of central government and may also serve to draw in regional and local institutions as well. Strong leadership can ensure the long-term commitment of resources and expertise and the cooperation of disparate factions. Leadership can also articulate a unifying theme that can propel the e-government initiative through all the necessary steps. For example, by declaring Internet access a “human right,” the Estonian leadership created strong national support for the implementation of the Tiger Leap Forward Initiative, a multi-sectoral program that has made Estonia a highly e-literate society. In Egypt, the e-Government program got a significant boost when the former program manager (from the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology) was appointed Minister of State for Administrative Development in 2004. Responsibility for e-Government moved with him to his new ministry, thus putting the e-Government program at the Cabinet level.

One approach for achieving top-level support is to designate a lead agency that is given responsibility for design and oversight. In Chile, this was the Communications and Information Technology Unit (UTIC), created in 1998 and given the mandate of coordinating e-government efforts. In taking the lead role in developing an e-procurement system, it garnered support at the cabinet level, lobbied the political parties and labor unions, and lined up private backing from a consortium of companies that included the nation's telecom companies, a well-known consulting firm, and the leading Chilean Internet-based applications company.

In Sweden, IT procurement and the development of e-Government are overseen by Verva, the Swedish Administrative Development Agency. In 2006, Verva released an updated version of the National Guidelines for 24/7 Agencies, with the aim of supporting public administrations in the development and design of their websites and other services needed to meet the national goal of 24/7 availability.

Case Study on Organization for e-Government: Italy

Another approach is to create a new single-purpose high-level coordinating body, with senior staff drawn from key ministries. It may be effective to set up such a body in the President or Prime Minister’s office, where it will have a clear view across Ministries and divisions. In either case, the top level leaders could take responsibility for the e-Government planning process, including commissioning an e-Government strategy, scoping and prioritizing projects, ensuring that resources are in place, and monitoring both individual projects and overall progress in e-Government programs.

Also, a coordinating body may promote information exchange and encourage inter-operability between independently developed e-Government applications. It could facilitate the sharing of lessons learned across e-Government projects, becoming a repository for institutional knowledge about e-Government, and it could also encourage the broader use of existing applications to avoid “reinventing the wheel.”

It is possible to identify five different models of organizing leadership for any kind of e-Development (including e-Government):

1. The shared responsibility model, in which each ministry or department develops and implements its own strategy;
2. The policy coordination model, in which a policy coordination body situated in the office of the head of state provides policy guidance and coordination;
3. The lead ministry model, in which one ministry develops plans;
4. The ICT (or e-Government) agency in civil service model, in which a special purpose agency is created outside of any ministry;
5. The ICT (or e-Government) agency as PPP (public-private partnership) model.

As Richard Hicks has found, consensus seems to be forming around the concept that centralized planning and de-centralized administration provide the best model for planning and managing e-Government. Under this approach (some variation of models 2, 4 or 5 above), strategists at the Cabinet or Prime Minister level may define the overall concept of e-Government, mandate processes for stakeholder consultation, and address issues such as records compatibility, technical architecture, and data security standards, but the design and implementation of specific projects could be delegated to individual ministries or departments.

Whichever model is pursued, leadership has certain key functions:

• Developing strategy and defining objectives.
• Overseeing design, management and monitoring and evaluation.
• Ensuring coordination.
• Advocating for the enabling legal, regulatory and policy environment.
• Promoting digital inclusion: connectivity, e-Literacy. 
• Mobilizing resources.
• Chief Information Officers

Since one of the goals of e-Government is to utilize ICTs across government, a government may appoint a Chief Information Officer (CIO), with responsibility for planning and overseeing the implementation of IT integration. (Some countries have a position with the same capacity but a different title.) Increasingly, the role of CIOs is seen as a vital strategy to bridge the gap between management and technology. See Waseda University Institute of e-Government, “2006 World e-Government Ranking.”  The CIO could participate in, or lead, the process of periodically refining and updating the e-Government strategy.

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