Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Assessment
Government of Pakistan has felt it necessary to create a rational framework for assessing e-
Governance projects on various dimensions. E-government is still in its infancy all over the
world. The e-governance is electronic delivery of government services to the people whereas
the potential for e- governance is beyond electronic delivery, which is explained in detail in
this research paper. Government can improve the system as well as economic conditions of
our country, by focusing on e-governance. Nowadays, the wealth of a nation is not judged by
its physical assets. It is determined by the technological gaps between the 'haves' and the
'have-nots'. We can say that the e-governance would be the first step toward modernizes
governmental administrative structures. The challenge of transformation and the increasing
need to modernize administrative practices and management systems has become a major
goal to Governments Worldwide. This is more so in the last one-decade and especially the
last four years in Pakistan. The paper puts across the key issues and challenges in assessing e-
Gov projects and proposes a model which has been piloted in one of the assessment studies at
the national level in Pakistan.
Keywords
E-Government, assessment, framework, stakeholders, best practices, results, enablers.
Internal political desire has been defined as a drive from key government official
including relevant ministers for reform and for achievement of e-government goals.
Overall vision and strategy stands for the overall vision and master plan for good
governance and for e-government, identifying the target and viewing IT as the means
not the end, and integrating IT with broader reform objectives
Dominance of politics/ Self interest: the change agents who will take the project
forward may have self interest and/or politically dominant situation favorable to the
project initiative.
Strong change management which includes but not limited to leadership with a
project champion, use of incentives to create commitment to and ownership of e-
government project, and stakeholder involvement to build support and minimize
resistance.
Effective project management includes defining clear responsibilities, having good
planning and consideration of risk, good monitoring and control system putting in
place, good organization of resources, and well-managed partnerships between public
agencies, and public-private joint initiatives.
Competencies among the officials involve with this project is the issues of the
capacity and knowledge level among the government officials about e-government
concepts and practices.
Adequate technological infrastructure includes computerization system, telecom
policies, ICT policies etc. Other factor, being the last, was given to list any factor that
respondents believe important but not presented as option.
Absences of success factors are presented as the reasons for failure of e-government
projects in Pakistan. For example, lack of internal political desire was the first option
as the failure factor.
Moreover, number and pattern of options specified as the failure factors were same as
success factor including others as the last option. Assumption here were factor which
may contribute for success may not be the main reason for failure due to its absence.
For example, political desire along may not be enough to successfully implement e-
government. However, lack of political desire may work as a high barrier to
implement e-government.
Constraints/Challenges:
Human resource loads . Human resource issues have also been a constraint to Pakistan
progress because of the massive HR requirements the project imposes. Lack of staff/skills and the
difficulties of hiring short-term staff have led to some delays.
Equipment shortage: Shortage of equipment (i.e. computers, scanners, sensors and other
related accessories) has also been a major constraint in deriving maximum benefit from this
exercise and in meeting timescales.
Political instability: Although not a current issue for NADRA, large-scale information
systems projects in Pakistan have often faced the challenge of political instability. Changes of
governments have been frequent in Pakistan. Often, one government starts a project and
when the next regime takes over, it immediately stops the project more on political than on
cost/benefit grounds.
An external agency should do the assessment in order to get an unbiased view. This agency is
primarily dependent on the project owners for all the project related information. The issue is,
why not develop a self assessment Framework? In fact, by providing a self-assessment tool
the project owners shall be in a better position to assess the projects on an on-going basis.
Moreover they have the assessment indicators and attributes as yardstick for assessing the
projects right from the project conceptualization phase; thereby developing efficient and
holistic e-Gov projects.
Replication of similar kinds of projects has to be undertaken across the country, it calls for a
greater need for the assessment frameworks that help one to learn the factors resulting in the
success or a failure of a project. This also provides for a feedback to the stakeholders
involved in the project regarding the health of the project
Assessment exercise involves a tedious process if the intention is to assess an e-Government
project thoroughly, meeting the desired objectives, like: the success as defined by the extent
to which it achieved the purpose it was designed, whether the project is replicable or not,
among others. This is because each of the e-Government projects involves a number of
stakeholders from whose perspectives the project needs to be looked at, and further it
involves a number of parameters and attributes which adds to the amount of effort required in
order to make for a reasonably comprehensive assessment.
Challenges and Issues in Project Assessment in Pakistan:
The different dimensions and perspectives of e-Gov project assessment:
Service user’s point of view, in terms of
• Cost of availing the Govt. service
• Time for delivery of service
• Convenience of availing the service
• Compliance of RTI Act
• Transparency in Govt. functioning
Government point of view, in terms of
• ROI
• Immediate impact on service users
• Internal efficiency – process reforms
• Impact on internal employees
• Sustainability
• Long term overall impact
Funding Agency point of view, in terms of
• ROI
• Business model
• Immediate impact on service users
Public Private Partner (if it is a PPP model), in terms of
• Business model - ROI
• Compliance to Service Levels
• Enhancement of service and reach
Others
• At National level from replication perspective
• Academics - in terms of understanding the patterns and see the intricate details
of assessment
Who is interested to learn from assessment?
One of the major objectives of assessment is to learn and develop on the weak areas.
However, in reality the assessment results are taken merely to showcase if the project is
found to be a good one. It is observed that if the project has not been assessed as a good
project, no one looks into the report for improvements in the project. If we have a self-
assessment framework, which will be done out of self interest, the project owners’ will
always strive to understand and strengthen the weak areas of the project.
Time
Lack of comprehensive assessment framework:
Non-availability of base-line data
Lack of high visibility for assessment reports
Funds required for holistic assessment
In that fashion and for the purposes of this research programmed this
paper proposes the following high level classification of risk factors that
surround e-Government projects:
Recommendations
Concluding Remarks
Coming up with effective assessment methods for e-Government projects in the presence of
practical constraints is of great importance and is also a need of the hour. We explain various
meta-theoretic considerations that one must keep in mind while thinking of the assessment
methodologies in this paper. Given the challenges and issues for assessment as explained in
this paper, identification of the broad parameters of evaluation must be done with a definite
goal in mind. Our effort is towards locating that definiteness with the idea of “what is
achieved” or Results and “what is done to achieve” or Enablers. We feel that this is a
reasonable approach to form a base for comprehensive assessments frameworks in the future.