"We are seeing more and more failures," Robert Schware, the bank's lead information technology specialist told delegates at a seminar on e-governance in the Indian technology hub of Bangalore. About 85 per cent of all such projects in developing countries have failed in some respect, Mr Schware said. Of those, 35 per cent failed completely, he said, and the statistics in the United States and Europe were just as grim.
The Irish government doled out €48.6 million ($82.6 million) to test electronic voting technology but an expert group early this year recommended against using it, due to doubts about its accuracy and secrecy. The government is still trying to fix the problems so the project can be resurrected.
Uganda spent $US22 million ($29 million) on e-voting technology, which did not perform well when elections were held in 2001. In the United Kingdom, an online university project cost $US23.5 million, but attracted only 900 students.
In some countries, politicians speed up e-governance projects just before elections to win votes, but end up harming the projects, he said.
Mr Schware said one European Union country, which he didn't name, has asked the monopoly telecommunication service provider to put citizen services online in time for elections in 2005.
In India, there were about 200 pilot projects for online services, but nearly half of them were designed in such a way that they only work for a handful of the country's more than one-billion people, Mr Schware said.
"Now, the challenge is to identify which of those projects can be scaled up and replicated," he said.
Autor: S. Srinivasan
Quelle: Australian IT, 08.11.2004
