The Impact of eGovernment FailureMany
e-government projects in developing/transitional countries fail. What
are the costs of failure? And can failure have any benefits? The Potential Costs of eGovernment FailureSix categories of potential costs of e-government failure can be identified. - Direct Financial Costs . The money invested in equipment, consultants, new facilities, training programmes, etc.
- Indirect Financial Costs . The money invested in the time and effort of public servants involved.
- Opportunity Costs . The better ways in which that money could have been spent, if it wasn't spent on the e-government failure.
- Political Costs . The loss of 'face' and loss of image for individuals, organisations and nations involved in failure.
- Beneficiary Costs . The loss of benefits that a successful e-government project would have brought.
- Future Costs .
An e-government failure increases the barriers for future e-government
projects. It does this in two main ways. First, through loss of morale
of stakeholders, particularly e-government champions, who may 'defect'
to the private sector or overseas. Second, through the loss of
credibility and loss of trust in e-government as an approach to change.
This increases risk aversion in some stakeholders; and provides support
for others with vested interests in the status quo.
A key
problem among e-government practitioners is a lack of awareness of these
costs. Most costs are intangible; few are ever measured in the event of
e-government failure; e-government failures are often "hushed up". This
may explain why, despite the high costs of failure and the high
prevalence of failure, many officials and politicians are still very
keen on e-government. The Potential Benefits of eGovernment FailureFive categories of potential benefits of e-government failure can be identified. - Knowledge Generation 1: Application Learning .
Failure can be a kind of very costly prototyping: filtering out
unworkable ideas in the e-government application, and pointing the way
for a better design of version 2.
- Knowledge Generation 2: eGovernment Learning .
Failure can develop some valuable lessons about e-government for those
involved; e.g. that ICTs are not a magic wand to solve all government
problems.
- Knowledge Generation 3: Situational Learning .
Whether a project succeeds or fails, the process of analysis and design
can help those involved understand their organisation's processes,
structure and culture.
- Skills Acquisition . Even failures
typically involve training and skills development; this might be formal
training (e.g. ICT skills) or on-the-job learning (e.g. project
management skills).
- Laying Infrastructural Foundations .
The specific e-government application may not be used, but projects
often leave behind their ICT infrastructure (PCs, networks, operating
systems). These can lay the foundation for later e-government projects.
We
should be clear, though, that there are more efficient, more effective
ways of generating most of these benefits. Most are just 'making the
best of a bad job'. Many e-government failures do not even
generate these benefits. The key problem here is that - in most
e-government project failures - there is no learning because knowledge
about the failure is not captured, transferred or applied. As a result,
mistakes are wastefully repeated. eGovernment project funders and
project managers could approach things differently by adopting a
learning approach to e-government failure. A Learning Approach to eGovernment FailureA learning approach to e-government failure involves four steps. - Recognition . Recognise that failures exist, and that they provide opportunities for generating knowledge.
- Capture Knowledge .
Find ways to capture the knowledge generated by the project. Ways of
doing this include regular review meetings during the project;
post-project evaluation meetings; and commissioning specific 'learning
reports'. However, stakeholder motivation is critical. Those involved
will ask themselves, "Why should I tell you that?". Unless there is a
good answer, they will keep their knowledge to themselves and not allow
it to be captured. You can find an evaluation tool for e-government
projects here. You can find a more general guide to questions to ask in project "post-mortems" here. You can find a more general process approach to learning about ICT projects in developing countries here. This site provides a specific guide to understanding (i.e. capturing knowledge about) the causes of e-government project failure.
- Transfer Knowledge .
Find ways to move the knowledge from where it is captured to where it
is needed. Ideas include: have project staff train others; hold informal
'lessons learned' meetings that mix staff from the failed project with
others (e.g. an 'eGovernment Champions' group); create an email
discussion list about e-government success and failure. Think of the
transfer process as a 'knowledge market' with buyers and sellers of
knowledge (the sellers being those who have learned from the
e-government failure). Motivation will again be critical. Sellers must
want to sell their knowledge, and buyers must want to buy that
knowledge. Are suitable incentives in place to encourage buying and
selling?
- Apply Knowledge . This is hard to organise.
Staff will apply knowledge if it is useful to them; and won't if it is
not. Some governments build into new e-government project some
ring-fenced time that is allocated solely to 'learning lessons from the
past'.
But . Why Is Learning From eGovernment Failure So Rare?Two reasons. 1. Because Stakeholders Don't Want To Learn.Why don't they want to learn: - Irrelevance of success/failure .
For example, some stakeholders might only be interested in association
with the high-profile inception of the e-gov project, not with the
implementation and outcomes. Others might see the project as a means of
directing investments to local IT firms, not as a means to achieve
e-government goals. In these and similar cases, the outcome - whether
the project succeeds or fails - is of no importance to the stakeholders,
so they have no interest in trying to learn in order to do better next
time.
- Fear of exposure . Some stakeholders fear
that a learning process will expose their shortcomings: their ignorance
about ICTs, their self-serving behaviours, their corruption, etc. They
will thus resist a learning process.
- Cultural inappropriateness .
In some organisational or national cultures, it is acceptable to admit
and learn from failure. In others, it is not: failures are to be ignored
or denied, and are certainly not to be discussed for the purposes of
learning.
- Skewing of incentives . In some
situations, there may be incentives for ongoing failure. For example,
with some e-gov applications, "success" can mean that the public agency
is downsized or loses financial resources because of its efficiency
gains. By contrast, failure may mean maintenance of resource levels, or
even continuing investment in renewed e-gov efforts. Likewise, vendors
and consultants may see ongoing income from failures in a way they won't
if an application succeeds. In these cases, stakeholders don't want to
learn how not to fail; they want to continue failing. Alongside this may
be a lack of incentives - such as audit, censure, litigation - that
encourage learning from failure.
- Stakeholder absence .
By the time an e-gov project ends, key stakeholders have often moved on
to other jobs/projects and have no continuing interest in the original
project.
- External ownership . Related to a number
of the above causes, e-gov projects are sometimes driven from outside
government and even from outside the country - e.g. by foreign donors or
by foreign consultants or by multinational vendors - and are not owned
by local stakeholders, who therefore feel disempowered or disinterested
in any learning process.
- Environmental instability/uncertainty .
A characteristic of developing/transitional countries is the relative
instability of the social, economic, political environment. Such a
situation reduces the value of, and incentives for, learning since often
the 'goalposts will have moved' from one e-gov project to the next.
2. Because Learning Is HardLearning per se costs
time and money - often a lot of time and money if it's to be done
properly. Public services lack both those resources. eGov systems may
cost more than most because they are so complex, involving so many
stakeholders in a situation that is typically very politicised. Thanks to all those who contributed their ideas to the discussion of costs and benefits of e-government failure. |