e Governance Projects

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e-Governance Projects:Exploring the Way to Success

By Sam Felix Pradeep Kumar and N Vijaykumar

Revamped policies, efficient managementand right technology form the magic concoction

to the success of e-Governance

Today, e-governance is no more an option

or something to be experimented with.

It is an important tool for transformation,

as is evident with the growing number of

e-governance initiatives. The last decade saw a

urry of e-governance projects being identied

and initiated, but only a few of them have

been successful and launched. Most projects

though have the dubious distinction of being

delayed and a few of them were shelved too.

This paper is an attempt to search for the rightmix of technology and management that makes

e-governance initiatives successful.

MAKING AN e-GOVERNANCE

PROJECT SUCCESSFUL

e-Governance projects generally fall under the

category of very large projects and thus the

cost involved is signicant. Large overlays,

clarity in governance vision and political will

and commitment characterize the success

parameters of e-governance projects. Failure

to foresee implementation challenges will most

likely cost the governments dearly as inferred

from the data below.

A single cancelled e-government project

on smart cards resulted in a loss of 698

million to the British government [1].

The National Programme for IT (NPfIT)

overran in cost by 450% to 10.4 billion

(approximately US$17 billion [2].

The Libra courts management system

overran by 237% to 341 million [2].

C-NOMIS of fender m anagem ent

IT system overran by 119% to 279

million [2].

In a study conducted by United States

Government Accountability Office, it was

identied that 585 e-governance investments

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2011


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out of 810 were problematic and placed themunder watch list in 2009. The astonishing fact

is that 72% of major federal IT projects were

on the management watch list. Table 1 shows

a 42 percent decline in the number of major

federal IT projects executed during the period

2004-2009. However, the average budget per

project doubled during the same period, from

$42 million in 2004 to $87 million in 2009 [3].

The key difference between an

e-governance project and any usual IT project lies

in the source of funds. When a project initiated

by a private enterprise fails, the funds of the

company are at stake. Whereas in e-governance

projects, the taxpayers money is at stake.

Implementing a successful e-governance project

will take care of the interest of all stakeholders

of a nation. There is thus a need to analyze

the factors that could lead to the failure of an

e-governance project. Analysis of these factors

and identifying the key learning elements will

definitely ensure that obvious mistakes are

not committed and projects are successfully

completed.

FACTORS FOR FAILURE OFe-GOVERNANCE INITIATIVES

e-Governance can be dened as leveraging the

benefits of information and communication

technologies to improve effectiveness and

efciency of government activities. This results

in the empowerment of citizens and an increased

transparency of government ofces. Thus, the

success of an e-governance project is dependent

on the applicability of technology so that it

benets all the stakeholders. The projects are

also dependent on external factors like political

landscape, management control, etc. Factors

that could lead to failure of e-governance project

can be broadly classied into business factors

and technological/project factors.

Business Factors

Polity

Political and administrative climate is the

top contributor to failures and delays in

implementing most e-governance projects.

Since e-governance projects often span multiple

departments and agencies, cross-department

bureaucracy is another key factor that leads

to delays and failures. Every department

has its own agenda, objectives and decision

criteria. An accommodating interaction amongst

the departments is hard to find. Workflow

automation is still at the lower level of maturity indeveloping countries. More often, e-governance

initiatives are governed by political compulsions

rather than by social compulsions and needs. But

political gures often do not own up initiatives

end-to-end. Also, constant bickering and frequent

buck passing amongst various departments and

agencies further contribute to delays.

Organizational Change

e-Governance is all about bringing a change,

being transparent in transactions and reducing

Year

Major

Federal IT

Projects

(associated

budget inbillions)

Management

Watch List

Projects

(associated

budget inbillions)

Percentage

of Federal IT

Projects on

Management

Watch List(percentage

of budget)

2004 1400 ($59.0) 771 ($20.9) 55% (35%)

2005 1200 ($60.0) 621 ($22.0) 52% (37%)

2006 1087 ($65.0) 342 ($15.0) 31% (23%)

2007 857 $64.0) 263 ($9.9) 31% (15%)

2008 840 ($65.0) 346 ($14.0) 41% (22%)

2009 810 ($70.7) 585 (27.0) 72% (38%)

Table 1: Delay Trend: e-Governance ProjectsSource: GAO Analysis of OMB Data


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the wait time for approvals and clearances.Information technology is one of the key

catalysts to bring about such a change. Moving

from a traditional operating model to an

e-enabled model calls for wide ranging changes

to be made at the operational levels. This calls

for additional training, skill upgrade and

bringing in more automation. A Herculean task

in the e-governance initiative is to re-train the

staff to face the new challenges. Resistance to

change is the key impeding factor. Imparting a

training program on any change management

program across the public sector undertaking

is a daunting task.

Process Re-engineering

e-Governance is all about change and making

things easier for government transactions. The

first step toward a successful e-governance

initiative is process re-engineering. This aims to

simplify the existing processes and procedures,

reduce the manual touch points and make the

entire transaction cycle citizen-friendly. For

e-governance to succeed, it is imperative that

the processes are simplied and understood

by all stakeholders. It necessitates a consensus

across bureaucracy, political class, government

bodies and private sectors. Of course, it is

easier said than done. Process re-engineering

in a complex and diverse society is much morechallenging as it is difcult to make all dots

converge on the same place and obtain buy-in

from all stakeholders. It is a time consuming

affair to design to be processes and get them

approved by the respective departments.

Difculties in horizontal integration include

assimilating activities of multiple departmental

processes and delivering an integrated solution.

For instance, a single window concept means

that the services will still be delivered in a

fragmented fashion and consumers have to

approach multiple departments. This is anotherkey reason for the failure of some e-governance

projects [4].

Business Model

Attractive and benecial programs have been

conceived for e-governance projects. But the

way such programs have been implemented

and rolled out is one of the major causes of

concern in developing countries. Given the

scale and the reach of such programs, a proper

implementation model is a critical factor for

their success or otherwise.

Funding Sources: There is no proper and

consistent funding source for such projects. As

e-governance programs span a long duration

of time, it is absolutely essential that such

programs are funded continuously to keep

them on track. Many of the projects that have

failed have been victims of non-funding by

the governments. It is often due to changed

priorities mid-course, budget and financial

constraints, political compulsions, etc., that

lead to a change in the funding pattern. Such

projects are either not successful or die a

premature death. One prominent alternative

to keep such programs funded for a long time

is to have public-private partnerships (PPP)

that help private enterprises fund the program(partially or fully) and at the same time enjoy

the results. Models like build-operate-transfer

(BOT) are very successful in implementing such

programs.

Vendor Driven Initiatives: e-Governance

initiatives need external agencies to participate.

Typical examples are BOT models. But these

bring in their own set of complexities. The

entire implementation and business model is

left to private players. Making government


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Category of ReasonsPercentage of

Times Reported

Change in project requirements,objectives or scope

55%

Change in funding stream 44%

Original baseline was inaccurate 14%

Cost or schedule overruns due toproject performance

4%

Cost or schedule overruns due tocontractor performance

4%

Other 41%

Table 2: Analysis Indicating Reason for FailureSource: GAO Analysis of Agency Survey responses

departments work with the private playersis the first hurdle to cross. Secondly, not

many vendors/concessionaires are ready to

implement such initiatives. Though there are

sufcient controls laid out by the government

in PPP models, vendors have their own agenda

to drive and nancial targets to achieve. Often,

this is in collision with the overall objectives

and mediations result in loss of precious time.

There are cases where PPP model projects have

been shelved solely due to failure of the vendor.

Management

It is just not sufcient to roll out e-governance

programs. Success of these programs lies

in managing them effectively and ensuring

that the implementation reaches all levels

of the society. Currently there are no proper

monitoring mechanisms to track the progress of

the project and take course corrections. Scope

change is very frequent in such programs.

Though an initial scope is defined, it often

evolves over a period of time. The baseline is

always a sliding window. Gaps in scope are

common and these are often not accounted in

when they are dened. The problem is more

pronounced as government departments do

not have the scope dened all at once. Due to

the very manner of working, departments are

slow in dening the scope.

Technological Factors

Stakeholder Identifcation

When an e-governance project fails to identify

the stakeholders correctly, it puts itself in the

path of failure. One such project in India was

aimed at creating management information

system (MIS). It failed as it lacked user

involvement right from the beginning. It further

resulted in lack of interest in other stakeholders

and after years of existence it was prematurely

terminated. If a project is to be successful,different stakeholders should be identied in

the beginning and they should be involved from

the initial stages and should be kept involved

throughout development and implementation.

Requirements Mismanagement

Government policies change frequently.

This has a direct impact on e-governance

initiatives. Changing processes and policies

affect e-governance projects as this translates

to modied business requirements. Sometimes,

this might require a revamp of various features

that are already built into the system. While it

is agreeable that change is inherent in all public

systems, the extent of this unaccounted change

during the initial planning phase often results in

short-closed projects and bloated budgets. Even

a small change in the requirements can lead to

major changes in IT structures.

Change in pro ject requirements,

objectives or scope is the most important

factor that often leads to re-baseline the project

numbers [Table 2]. Any government project

where the baseline changes frequently indicates

a lack of clarity or focus on requirement. It is

a known fact that the cost of xing a defect is

more in later stages than during the requirement


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elicitation phase. So in e-governance projects,it is often seen that emphasis is not laid to

elicit complete requirement within the dened

schedule and scope. This explains why most

e-governance projects skip schedules or result

in products that do not have all the essential

functionalities built into the system.

Costing and Budgeting

Estimation is always a nightmare and it is more

so when the resources are limited and time

bound but expectations are high. This happens

in e-governance projects. e-Governance projects

are unique where estimation or budgeting is

done before starting requirements analysis. It

means that the government identies the fund

requirement for a certain period and projects

are identied in the order of importance based

on available funds. In the case of e-governance

projects that are characterized by changing

requirements, changing IT policy, complexity,

lack of domain support, dis-economies of scale

and complex feedback loops, even the most

advanced estimation tools and techniques fail

to live up to the expectations. e-Governance

projects are characterized by various types

and degrees of uncertainty and thus it is quite

possible that these projects run out of control

leading to a failure. In a scope triangle, if any

one side of the triangle is adjusted, the othertwo sides are affected. Cost is just one side

of the scope triangle and if the project has to

complete within the estimated cost, then the

result might be longer.

Schedule Planning

Scheduling is an art and it requires skill and

expertise to arrive at a schedule that takes into

account all factors. In e-governance projects,

most often the project deadline is not arrived

at using project management best practices but

based on the governments desire to rollout theinitiative in the shortest timeframe possible.

Project Planning

Most e-governance projects are not properly

planned as often there is resistance from the

government to spend on the preparation of

project plans [5]. Sometimes, denite project

plans exist, but they fail to perform what

they are expected to do. They have vague

or unachievable objectives with lack of role

clarity and expectations. Effective planning

and monitoring are necessary to help achieve

the goal.

Figure 1 overleaf highlights the various

factors that lead to failure of e-governance

projects, impact of failure and steps necessary to

handle failure. These are indicative factors that

are common across all e-governance projects.

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR A

SUCCESSFUL e-GOVERNANCE PROJECT

A few recommendations can be jotted down for

e-governance projects to be successful

New Business Models

There could be inherent problems within the

government structures that delay program

execution. These cannot be changed in a matter

of days and it needs a Herculean effort to bringabout a change. However, there are other models

like PPP in which private players partner with

the governments to design, implement and

run these agship programs. Various types of

PPPs like, build-operate-transfer (BOT), build-

operate-own-transfer (BOOT) provide attractive

propositions for the private sector to work

closely with the governments. It is assumed that

the inherent issues faced within the government

departments will be reduced, if not eliminated

completely, when involving private players.


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Capacity Building

The success of e-governance emanates from

the fact that sufficient capacity to handle

transactions is already available and can be

leveraged immediately. The success of an

integrated e-governance program depends on

a unied backend infrastructure and sufcient

capacities planned at every next level. Without

a proper infrastructure e-governance programs

should not be planned.

Project Contract Selection

Contracts with vendors or the service providers

play a major role in the success of such

programs. Traditionally, governments have

been following the xed price contract model

that provides the government with a predictable

cost outflow model and to a certain extent

transfers the associated risks to the vendor.

The other traditional model of time and material

are seldom used in e-governance projects.

However, utmost care has to be taken and strict

controls, checks and balances have to be in place

as the private parties will also have access to

critical data of governments.

Regular Skill Updates

Government sector is one of the largest sectors

to conduct trainings for its staff. While most

such trainings focus on the business and

process aspect of it, there is a visible paucity oftechnical and soft skill trainings. In developing

countries, IT skills are not visibly updated

while e-governance projects require the staff

to be IT aware and be trained to use the ICT

features. Given the rate at which technology is

changing by the day it is imperative that the

trainings be conducted periodically. Soft skill

training is another area where the government

staff need help. Regular training sessions and

evaluations will help scale their user interfacing

skills and also appreciate business values.

Figure 1: Potential Areas of Failure of an e-GovernanceInitiative

Source: Infosys Research


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However, there are new contractualmodels that have been developed to provide

incentives to vendors to take up and pursue such

projects vigorously. Transaction-based pricing

models that provide a share of the revenue

against each transaction is one such model.

License fees, risk-reward programs, etc., are

some of the contractual methods that can provide

the necessary boost to third party in committing

to project execution in a timely manner.

Pilot the e-Governance Initiative

Failures cost a lot to any government. One

way to understand the success (or the failure)

of such projects is to pilot the e-governance

initiative that will provide valuable insights to

governments and enable them to understand

the feasibility of implementing the initiative.

Once the system/application development is

complete, the usage/efficiency of the system

can be monitored by piloting the initiative

and rolling them out in phases. This will

help incorporate the lessons learnt from early

implementations into the later ones. Also, it

will enable the government to identify the

critical areas, work on them and ensure that

they are not taken by surprise when there is

a large scale implementation. The pilot phase

will be less complicated due to the size of the

project and will also offer more insights andlearning and act as feasibility study for large

complex projects. If the federal government

decides to go ahead with an initiative, it can

start with one of the states as a pilot initiative.

The key learning of this initiative can then be

incorporated before going with nationwide

implementation.

Project Size

Project size is a factor that makes e-governance

projects unique. Success rate is higher for

small projects [5]. Small projects are easier tohandle, require fewer people, estimation errors

are smaller and lead to tangible results faster.

In any e-governance project, stakeholders

involved are numerous, costs run into millions

and requirements are vast . One way of

handling the size of the e-governance project

is to opt for small projects that enable better

tracking and control. The context of a project

being small will depend on many factors. But

the basic factor is to define the project size in a

way that ensures better control. This will avoid

situations where projects go out of control. It

will also enable the government to bring it back

to normalcy with certain corrective actions as

they are characterized by better tracking and

control. To illustrate, the government can take

a decision that it will only execute projects that

involve the following: (a) timeframes of less

than nine months, (b) simple and innovative

technology, and (c) effective change in business

process. This can be achieved by breaking large

projects into smaller components that can be

handled separately.

Governments have started recognizing

that an effective way to reduce risk is to break

large projects into smaller and more manageable

components. When governments attempt to

bring radical change to a business process

all at once, the probability of success is less.This can be avoided by working through a series

of small steps. This will enable more control

and accommodate the changes in technology,

political or financial environment without

impacting the project in a big way. One way

of handling the size of the project is to break

down the business processes into modules

that can provide value to citizens, even if other

modules are not completed. The deliverables,

milestones and project tasks can be broken

down into smaller and independent tasks that


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that cause the e-governance projects to failor get delayed. The success of e-governance

depends largely on the interplay between

man and machine. More often it is the man

part that predominantly contributes to delays

and failures. Unless a new breed of thought is

ushered in, the trend of failures and delays will

continue. Organizational change management

and efcient project management concepts need

to be applied right through the entire lifecycle

and a constant and effective monitoring and

management are some of the key strategies to

make such programs a success.

REFERENCES

1. Choudhari, R. D., Banwet, D. K. and

Gupta, M. P. (2007), Identifying Risk

Factors in for e-Governance Projects.

Available at http://www.iceg.net/2007/

books/1/28_411.pdf.

2. Swabey, P. (2009), IT Projects among

Governments Biggest Failures. Available

at http://www.information-age.com/

channels/management-and-skills/

news/1095512/it-projects-among-

governments-biggest-failures.thtml.

3. http://www.gao.gov/new.items/

d081051t.pdf.

4. Mahapatra, A. K. and Mohanty, N.

B. (2010), NICEG - A SDLC ModelSpecifically Designed to Address the

Challenges of e-Governance Projects in

Sahu, G.P. (ed) Emerging Technologies

in e-Government. Available at www.

csi-sigegov.org/ emerging_pdf/21_194-

202.pdf.

5. Sachdeva, S.(2006), Twenty Five Steps

Towards e-Governance Failure. Available

at http://indiaegov.org/knowledgeexch

g/25stepsegovfailure.pdf.

can help save time in the long run and thusensure adherence to project schedule. When

the tasks are smaller and denite deliverables

are dened, it helps the project team to know

where they stand and thus guide the project

to keep it on course. Yet another way could

be to develop IT components with limited

initial functionalities. Later this can be used

as a base on which enhancements can be made

to improve the functionality to address the

concerns/needs of the citizens.

Requirements Management

Instead of sticking to an assumption that

e-governance projects are always characterized

by changing and incomplete requirements,

efforts should be taken to manage them better.

A proper change management process can

accommodate changes. But it has to be ensured

that the change management process does not

alter to suit any additional requirement. Any

addition in requirements that will impact the

efforts spent so for in the system should be

kept on hold and shall be considered for any

subsequent release. The change management

process shall be well-defined, since the

inability to manage change properly is one of

the key reasons for the failure of e-governance

projects.

CONCLUSION

e-Governance projects are strategic to the

economic and social development of any

society. e-Governance implementations usually

span a long time and touch a large spread of

stakeholders. The success or failure of such

projects largely depend on the co-ordination

between various stakeholders, effective

management and optimal use of technology.

Usually it is a combination of all such factors


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and forecasts constitute our judgment at the time of release and are subject to change without notice.

This document does not contain information provided to us in condence by our clients.

Authors Profile

SAM FELIX PRADEEP KUMAR

Sam Felix Pradeep Kumar is a Senior Consultant with Infosys Banking and Capital Markets Division.He has good exposure to reuse and mortgage models and their implementation. Sam can be reached [email protected].

N VIJAYKUMAR

N Vijaykumar is a Principal Technology Architect with the Systems Integration unit in InfosysTechnologies. He has around 18 years of experience in the IT Infrastructure domain. He has vastexpertise in IT Strategy, IT Infrastructure Design, Technology Migration and Program Management. Hecan be contacted at [email protected].

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