"It is estimated that approximately 35 per cent of e-government projects in developing countries are total failures, approximately 50 per cent are partial failures -- only some 15 per cent can be fully seen as successes", a senior World Bank official told a seminar on e-governance here today. Delivering the keynote address, the World Bank’s Lead Informatics Specialist Robert Schware also said: "There are equal numbers of very sad statistics about the number of failed implementations in the US and Europe."
In a response to reporters questions later, Schware said there are around 200 e-government projects in India; of them he believes about 110 are "scalable". Governments should draw lessons from failures so that resources are not wasted.
The WB is currently completing a study of national e-strategies across a group of 40 regionally representative countries with a view to mapping common policy focus areas and interventions across countries.
"There is consensus in the strategies that e-government can provide realistic and immediate benefits in terms of improved government productivity, effectiveness and cost savings," he said.
Examination by the WB of failed e-government initiatives in different parts of the world revealed that a major contributory factor is the lack of a compelling business case which has been designed to take into account affordability, opportunity costs, long-term benefits and short run trade-offs.
The second contributory theme for failure involves the addition of resources to a project with the expectation that timescales will be reduced accordingly, Schware added at the Confederation of Indian Industry-organised seminar.
He said one common reason for these deficiencies in e-government projects is an over-reliance on technology as the driving force behind success.
"Examination of failed initiatives helps explode the common myth of technological determinism: that technology alone will enable successful e-government", he said. "The fact is, technology is simply a tool, albeit an essential one, for creation of new or improved processes for the delivery of government services."
According to him, e-government project funders and project managers could approach things differently by adopting a formal learning approach to e-government.
"The most effective way...is a structured monitoring and evaluation system of progress made in achieving the objectives of the e-government programme, with a strong focus on inputs and indicators," the WB official suggested.
Quelle: Sify, 05.11.2004
