Successful implementation of e-Government requires careful planning, consultation with end users (citizens, business people, and civil servants), the development of professional skills in a range of disciplines (systems design, project management, policy, and content creation) and the formation and management of interdisciplinary teams.  Also, experience has shown that support from top leadership is very important.

At the outset, a distinction may be drawn between e-Government “programs” and “projects,” in that the term “programs” refers to government-wide (or agency-wide) activities associated with defining a strategy, setting goals, and building a conceptual, institutional and technical framework for e-Government, while “projects” may refer to individual services or applications such as websites or  public access points.  That said, many of the issues discussed here – planning, leadership, budgeting, training, and others – arise at both the program level and in individual projects, and many of the resources cited in this Toolkit have relevance to both “programs” and “projects.”  Often in this Toolkit we use the terms program and project interchangeably. 

Governments have adopted different approaches to build e-Government. Some have created comprehensive long-term plans. Others have opted to identify just a few key areas as the focus of early projects. Many countries identified as most successful have begun with smaller projects and have built an e-Government structure in phases.  Conversely, it seems that a leading cause of failure of unsuccessful e-Government initiatives was the gap between the political and technological realities and the design of the e-Government project.  Designers of failed projects had not based their plans on the realities of government processes and the capabilities or needs of intended users

Accordingly, to improve chances of success, an e-Government strategy should be based on a realistic assessment of a nation’s e-Readiness and should respond to local needs. This is not to say that a country must reach a high state of e-Readiness before launching any e-Government initiatives.  To the contrary, e-Government can be appropriate to almost any stage of development.  However, as Dr. Richard Heeks notes, there is a growing consensus behind modularity (automating one function at a time, in a way that allows expansion) and incremental approach (taking a stepped approach to functionality).  Stakeholder consultation can identify user needs and guide the design of developmentally appropriate e-Government projects. 

An emerging concept in e-Government planning is the “whole government approach,” which seeks to organize online services not according to the silos of individual ministries, departments and directorates but according to the issues faced by citizens and businesses on a day-to-day basis, cutting across organizational boundaries.  The “whole government” approach can economize on investments in infrastructure and applications development. It counsels in favor of some centralized planning of e-Government reforms, coupled with decentralized implementation.

Theme II of this Toolkit examines issues associated with planning e-Government programs and projects: 

• planning and leadership (Chapter 4)

• costs, budgets and financing (Chapter 5)

• working with donors (Chapter 6)

• public-private partnerships (Chapter 7)

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