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Chapter 4: Planning and Leadership
In this Chapter:
e-Government involves far more than putting computers on the desks of government officials. The deeper goals of e-Government are efficiency, accountability and democratic participation. Achieving these involves changing both internal processes and the ways in which governments interact with citizens and businesses. Promoting and managing this kind of change requires careful and concerted planning. Senior leadership can be crucial in overcoming barriers; many of the most successful e-government programs have had the personal support of a Minister, Prime Minister or President.
Furthermore, e-Government in and of itself cannot achieve efficiency or other reform goals. E-Government is better understood as a tool for carrying out reforms that are supported by government leadership and are beneficial to citizens. Therefore, e-Government initiatives are likely to have the widest impact when planned within the context of broader strategies for governmental reform, improved access to ICT, and human and economic development.
Users – citizens, businesses and civil servants -- will be the ultimate factor in e-Government success or failure. Planning efforts should start from the premise that citizens and businesses are the focal point of e-Government activities and that civil servants must be supportive in order for e-Government initiatives to succeed. Accordingly, effective planning is based on consultation with citizens, businesses and civil servants to identify needs and capabilities. Parallel attention should be given to ensuring a match between the projects being planned and the level and type of access to ICTs available to the target audience.
The planning and design phases of e-Government require the consideration of a complex range of factors and should include the following elements:
- Objectives have been clearly defined and publicly articulated.
- Key policies governing the development of e-Government are formulated.
- Attention is given at the earliest stages to interoperability and the integration of back-end functions with public facing services.
- Both the overall strategy and individual projects are based on an assessment of available resources, ranging from funding to personnel to national ICT capacity.
- Senior leadership visibly supports e-Government – the more senior, the better.
- Stakeholders are involved in the planning processes, leading to user support - draw on the ideas of those who will use the system and enlist their support.
- Strategy and projects are responsive to local needs - emphasis on technologies suited to the target audience.
- A centralalized office or committee for e-Government provides coordination or guidance and promotes cross-agency cooperation and integration.
- Priorities are established, resources are identified, and projects are funded accordingly, with attention to interoperability and a reliance on incrementalism.
- Off-the-shelf solutions are favored.
- Process reform: don't automate inefficiencies - eliminate them; streamline and consolidate offline processes before putting them online.
- Human resources needed to implement e-government are identified and a capacity building plan (including partnerships and outsourcing) is adopted to develop them.
- Dispel resistance of civil servants by training and incentives to support reform.
- A realistic budget and funding strategy, with plans for long-term sustainability.
- Measurable performance targets are specified and progress is monitored.
- Feedback is encouraged from target audiences.
- Mechanisms are in place and utilized for making corrective adjustments in light of actual experience, changing conditions, and new ideas and opportunities.
The planning process involves a range of issues discussed in greater depth elsewhere in this Toolkit, including budgeting [Chapter 5], interoperability and data integration [interoperability], and the legal framework [Chapter 11]. For example, the design and implementation of an interoperability framework requires careful planning in its own right and will require a multi-year strategy, backed up by an institutional structure that can ensure government-wide compliance. All of these issues need to be considered in the early stages of the planning process; their placement later in this Toolkit is not to suggest that they can be left to later phases of the planning and implementation cycle. To the contrary: the challenge of planning e-Government is that so many issues need to be addressed early on.