Proceedings of 4th International Conference on e-government

Transcription

1 Proceedings of 4th International Conference on e-government RMIT University Melbourne Australia October 2008 Edited by Dan Remenyi Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland

2 Copyright The Authors, All Rights Reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission may be made without written permission from the individual authors. Papers have been double-blind peer reviewed before final submission to the conference. Initially, paper abstracts were read and selected by the conference panel for submission as possible papers for the conference. Many thanks to the reviewers who helped ensure the quality of the full papers. Further copies of this book and previous year s proceedings can be purchased from ISBN: book Published by Academic Publishing Limited Reading UK

3 Failed Revolution? Exploring e-government Barriers in the Arab States Fadi Salem and Yasar Jarrar Dubai School of Government, Dubai, UAE Abstract: During the last decade, it was obvious on a global scale that a considerably large percentage of e- Government projects failed, despite the rosy promises of electronic government positively transforming the public sector. In what has been described as the post-new Public Management era, the actual causes of e-government failures are still to be explored in more detail to improve our understanding and increase future successes. This paper discusses prevailing views of e-government failures in earlier literature and explores the causes of such failures in the context of the Arab states. Based on a survey of senior e-government practitioners in nine Arab states, our findings indicate that the underlying roots of failure in e-government initiatives in the Arab countries (which we classify in nine main categories) are entwined with multifaceted social, cultural, organizational, political and technological factors. We argue that, despite their many similarities, e-government initiatives in the Arab states would be better equipped for avoiding failure when a local right fit is established between leadership commitment, sustainable cross-government vision, appropriate planning, rational business strategy, suitable regulatory framework, practical awareness campaigns and rigorous capacity building for the public administrators and society at large. It is improbable that a successful e-government strategy in a specific environment would equally be successful in a different context; therefore e-government projects will continue to have a relatively high failure probability until a local maturity level is reached. Based on our study findings, we argue that replicable best practices in a complex and developing field such as e-government rarely exist in the regional context of the Arab countries. We conclude with a proposal to nurture a culture more tolerant to failure and risktaking in the relatively new area of e-government in the Arab states. Such culture should be accompanied with a home-grown e-government risk management approach as well as effective mechanisms of knowledge management to locally extract relevant lessons from failures. Keywords: e-government, Failure, Barriers, Arab States 1. Introduction By the turn of the century, an ever increasing interest in electronic government was building-up globally; a digital government revolution was in the making. The advocates of this revolution were cheering e-government as the panacea; a solution to all public sector predicaments. Most Arab states jumped on the bandwagon and the e-excitement swept regional governments. The promise that electronic government (hereafter e-government) initiatives will address public administration dilemmas captured the imaginations of policy makers and attracted citizens and businesses alike. Very few years later and after massive public investments, many of the promises put forward by e- Government advocates to obliterate corruption, cut red-tape, reduce government costs and deliver more participatory governance systems have cooled down (Ciborra, 2003, World-Bank, 2006). Debates started and the core questions were what went wrong? Has the revolution failed the people? Failed e-government initiatives have been documented in most countries around the globe, see for example: (Akther et al., 2005, AP, 2004, Ciborra and Navarra, 2005, Cloete, 2004, Davenport and Horton, 2004, Eynon and Dutton, 2007, Pardo and Scholl, 2002, Salem, 2007, Titah and Barki, 2006). There is a wide agreement that e-government projects fail in high percentages worldwide. For example, UNDESA estimated that more than 60% of e-government projects in developing countries fail (UNDESA, 2003). The World Bank estimate was even more alerting. Robert Schware, a lead information specialist at the bank, put the percentage of failed e-government projects in developing countries at 85%, from which 35% are total failures (AP, 2004). There is no solid estimate on the percentage of failed e-government projects in the Arab countries, but one could safely argue that the failure ratio had followed the same trend. Following the general trend in the information systems body of knowledge, IS research focusing on the public sector has primarily followed a positivist approach (Pardo and Scholl, 2002). The result has arguably been unsatisfactory in explaining failure in socio-technical systems development. However, literature viewing e-government from a socio-technical perspective managed to explore these predicaments from an arguably more realistic point of view. For example, Heeks categorized success 363

4 and failure in information systems in the government context into total failures, partial failures and successes (Heeks, 2002). A total failure in e-government projects would be described as a planned initiative that never gets implemented or an implemented e-government project that is directly abandoned almost immediately after implementation. Partial failure in the same context would describe the case in which a system is successfully implemented without achieving its key objectives. Partial failure also could describe e-government projects that achieve the intended goals but also deliver considerable undesirable results with significant implications. Success of e-government projects on the other hand is widely perceived as the case where most stakeholders would achieve most of the main objectives of the project without major unwanted outcomes. Given the many stakeholders with usually conflicting interests, assessment of total or partial failure of e-government initiatives and implementations as well as their success tends to be an issue of subjectivity. e-government barriers have also been explored from various cultural and social perspectives. For example, cultural barriers to e-government were discussed in the literature, including the common myths among public administrators regarding technology, which could contribute to creating actuality gaps between expectations and realities (Eynon and Dutton, 2007, Margetts and Dunleavy, 2002). The researchers categorized cultural e-government barriers into supply side and demand side barriers within European societies. While such exercises are generally useful for extracting lessons from different cultural orientations, their applicability to other societies and cultures require rigorous cultural contextualization (Hofstede, 2004). From a social science perspective, Dunleavy et al. evaluated e-government implementations failures on three fronts: the extent of project failure, competitiveness of IT government contracts, the status of public sector information technology systems compared to the private sector. Such research highlights the dynamics of the relationship between powerful IT corporations and the public sector, in which governments are weekly placed, which in turn can foster an environment where e-government failure is more probable (Dunleavy et al., 2004, Heeks, 2006). There is a general agreement however, that the consequences of e-government projects failures are usually immense but are mostly intangible. Arguably, the less developed the country s public administration system is, the more damaging the consequences of failed e-government projects to citizens trust, economic development prospects and to the potential contribution of the private sector to the public good. The tangible consequences of e-government projects failure incorporate direct financial losses, such as the investments made for consultancies, equipments and training. In addition, there are indirect losses, such as the lost costs and efforts of public administrators involved in the failed e-government project. Other than just losing the promised benefits of the e-government project, losses would most likely incorporate political or reputational damage to individuals and organizations involved and to government at large. There is also the cost of the lost opportunity of alternatively spending the funds on development projects urgently needed in developing countries. Perhaps the most overlooked loss of a failed e-government project is when political leadership looses faith in future e-government projects as well as citizens loosing trust in government promises. This damage to government credibility usually has even more severe implications, the clearest of which is the migration of e-government champions and skillful human resources to the private sector or to other countries (Heeks, 2006). In the absence of rigorous ex-post analysis to such failed projects, the opportunities created by the failure usually attract opportunistic behavior and contribute to the increase of corruption levels (Ciborra and Navarra, 2005). It may also strengthen the position of the old guards in government and those who have vested interest in the status quo. Most public administrators and e-government practitioners are less aware of the intangible costs of a failed e- Government project. The aim of the paper is twofold: First, it contributes to the relatively limited body of research on e- Government projects failure in developing countries by exploring the perceptions on failure roots held by e-government practitioners. Secondly, it seeks to enrich the literature focusing on e-government in the Arab states from a critical perspective, with an end goal of contributing to discussions on reform and modernization in the region. Based on our findings, the discussions section explores the following research questions: Why do e-government projects repeatedly fail in the Arab states? What are the key barriers and constraints to e-government development? 364

5 2. Methodology and framework Fadi Salem and Yasar Jarrar The research was conducted through a combination of a survey and semi-structured interviews. Invitations to take part in the survey were sent through and followed up by phone calls to a specifically selected list of respondents. The intended survey audience consisted of the senior e- Government officials in fifteen Arab governments; namely: Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Palestinian Authority, Qatar, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, UAE and Yemen. The list of respondents included directors of e-government initiative at the national level as well as advisors to ministers involved in the national e-government development in those countries. Part of the findings of this paper is based on a survey conducted under the Good Governance for Development in the Arab Countries Initiative (GfD); an initiative launched in collaboration between the OECD and the UNDP since One of the six working groups in this initiative focuses primarily on e-government and Administrative Simplification and consists of practitioners and country experts from the OECD and Arab countries. The findings are also partially based on the proceedings of a series of high level forums for e-government practitioners held in Dubai between September 2005 and March 2007 under the GfD initiative as well as other e-government focused policy forums held in the Dubai School of Government during the same period. The findings in this paper are mainly based on the results related to nine of the participating countries, where the targeted response rate was achieved; namely: Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestinian Authority, Tunisia and the UAE. Follow-up semi-structured interviews with the same respondents were conducted during forums and meetings held in Dubai in 2006 and Data collected through the discussions, presentations, transcripts and proceedings of the meetings were also considered as a quality control method. 3. e-government barriers in the Arab states The key findings of the research indicate that Arab governments viewed e-government as one of the key focus areas for achieving public sector reform objectives. However, e-government is viewed with different levels of importance in Arab countries. For example, while its urgency is still debated in some Arab states, the Palestinian Authority officials considered e-government development as almost the only way for businesses and citizens to interact with the government (because of the Israeli-built segregation wall and travel difficulties inside the occupied territories as well as between the two separated population areas of Gaza and West Bank). Another main outcome of the study was the broad realization among Arab states that they, as most developing countries, face common barriers and challenges in e-government initiatives design, implementation and development. There was also vast acknowledgment among participants that there is no single right approach to e-government development. We categorized the common challenges faced by e-government directors in the Arab countries in the nine main areas shown in Table 1. The following paragraphs present the findings of each category in detail. Table 1: e-government barriers in Arab states 1. Political Instability 2. Fragmented Development Strategies 3. Underdeveloped Institutional Frameworks 4. Poor Technical Infrastructure and Lack of Interoperability 5. Outdated Legislative and Regulatory Frameworks 6. Digital Divide 7. Capacity Deficit 8. Funding Shortage 9. Low Take-up of Services 3.1 Government instability The Middle East is one of the most politically turbulent regions in the world. Most Arab states face numerous external and internal challenges as well as increasing threats to their stability and security. As is the case of most other national development projects, e-government initiatives suffer greatly from the prevailing unstable political environment in the region. Furthermore, e-government is widely viewed in many Arab states as a complimentary governance trend rather than an essential reform and 365

6 modernization approach. Many governments adopt e-government as a form of a cosmetic tool; sometimes in response to international pressure (Ciborra, 2003). It is this view of e-government that makes it one of the first government projects to be sacrificed when major security or financial threats pressure the government. In our research, e-government practitioners confirmed that lack of political stability and security are a key barrier to e-government development in several Arab countries. For example, the governments in Lebanon and the Palestinian Authority considered regional conflicts as the key barriers to e-government development. Frequent government changes and reshuffles and politically motivated commercial or technological embargos are few other examples of the political factors that contributed to e-government failures in many Arab states. Many Arab governments lack sustainable planning and development during government changes, which in many cases take an abrupt form. While this impact is not limited to Arab states, changes in senior government positions closely related to the e-government development plan usually hinder its development severely, or worse, halt it all together. The notion of handing-over the management of government projects is lacking in many Arab governments. This causes development projects to abruptly end without reaching the designated objectives. However, despite their agreement on the damaging effect of abrupt governments change in the Arab states to e-government development, officials referred to this barrier differently. Some referred to it as an excuse for the modest status of e- Government development in the country. Others put the blame on external political factors for government instability which hampered e-government development as an outcome. A third group acknowledged the disruptive effect of government changes and reshuffles in the Arab region on e- Government development as one cause for failure complimenting other challenges. 3.2 Development strategies The unbefitting positioning of e-government initiatives in the national reform or development plan is one main barrier to e-government progress in the Arab states. Several Arab countries have hastily developed their national e-government strategies and visions earlier this decade. Since then, many countries have revised and re-launched them over the last few years (for example: Jordan and Bahrain). The main cause of this planning disappointment was missing the link in the first place between the e-government plans and the national public sector reform or modernization plans. This was most obvious in countries where public sector reform was under a specialized Ministry of Public Sector Development (or its equivalent) while e-government was under the Ministry of ICT (or its equivalent), with little or no coordination. Since then, some governments have bridged that gap, but some are yet to do so. For example, in Palestine, officials highlighted the lack of coordination between the ministerial administrative reform committee and the e-government committee, while in Egypt both responsibilities fall in the jurisdiction of the Ministry of State for Administrative Development. Our findings also highlight two related factors: Lack of e-government authority: In earlier plans, several governments placed the e-government portfolio in the hands of a single ministry or government department that lacked the overall authority required for national level e-government development (for example: Jordan, Lebanon and Morocco). Single-sided view of e-government: Initially, e-government was merely perceived as a technological mission. This made several earlier unrealistic e-government plans being deemed null and void. In contrast, many new plans realize the socio-technical nature of e-government and view it as a policy tool for advancing effectiveness and efficiency of the public sector. Newer -and the renewed- e- Government plans in Arab states established this missing link and position the e-government national plan in the core of the overall public sector modernization and reform plan. The findings also highlight different views and levels of acceptance of e-government among different government departments and ministries. For example, despite its advanced e-government initiative, Bahrain s e-government directors viewed the completion of building a common (e-government) vision and strategy as the key requirement for e-government development. In Jordan and Lebanon, resistance to change, lack of single e-government authority and low acceptance levels are perceived as the main barriers to e-government dissemination. Similarly, ineffective change management is seen in Bahrain as one of the areas posing key challenge to the e-government development. In most countries, the majority of e-government plans are set centrally for different departments. Occasionally, different departments have different agendas that trigger resistance to changes presented by e-government plans. In many cases, this is usually caused by lack of adequate inter- 366

7 governmental communication strategies. Concluding his answer, an e-government official in Bahrain confirmed this, indicating the need to have a nationwide concerted e-government effort: If we had begun with this concerted effort [of involving all the parties in building the e-government strategy] then much more progress could have been realized. 3.3 Underdeveloped institutional frameworks e-government development in most Arab states has so far been largely project-based. The findings indicate that the lack of appropriate e-government institutional structure, sometimes coupled with inadequate financial resources, construct a major barrier to e-government development in the Arab region. For example, participants indicated that one of the most important challenges to e- Government implementation in Bahrain is the lack of inter-ministry partnership and alignment on objectives, a view also shared in Lebanon. In Jordan, e-government practitioners acknowledged the need for common inter-government technological standards. In Morocco, Palestinian Authority and Lebanon, e-government practitioners highlighted the fractioned or limited political support for e- Government initiatives on certain political levels which hinders the e-government development. Even in more successful examples like the UAE, the lack of such intra-governmental coordination and joint planning mechanisms have caused miss-alignment in systems and approaches and wasted valuable resources as each individual local or federal department built their own system separately. 3.4 Poor technical infrastructure and lack of interoperability Proper ICT infrastructure in the public sector is a key prerequisite for e-government dissemination. The absence of efficient telecommunication infrastructure is a global barrier to e-government development (UNDESA, 2005). Despite a few good performers, most Arab countries suffer from inadequate ICT infrastructure within their public sector agencies. Our research highlights different approaches to IT infrastructure development followed by regional governments and the lack of interoperability among different systems. While all countries in the region have established Internet access at different levels of sophistication, most countries are still in the early stages of developing other components of their ICT infrastructure (WEF and INSEAD, 2007). Furthermore, most governments in the region are facing challenges to developing a collaborative approach for facilitating interoperable ICT infrastructure among government departments (for example: Jordan, Palestinian Authority, Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco.) A collaborative approach to the public IT infrastructure would ensure setting common standards for critical infrastructure components such as digital signature and authentication, secure data exchange and shared applications. 3.5 Legislative and regulatory frameworks Establishing proper legislative and regulatory e-government frameworks is an integral part of successful e-government initiatives (OECD, 2005). Replacing paper-based processes with their legally-accepted electronic counterparts is still in its early stages in most Arab countries. Collectively, participants widely agreed that the lack of appropriate legal frameworks has slowed down the provision of many e-government services in their respective countries. The levels of available regulatory frameworks differ among the Arab states. For example, Egypt identified regulatory constraints as the top challenge to e-government implementation in the country, a common view shared in Algeria. In Jordan, e-government related laws are all temporary laws that lack sufficient authority. e-government directors in Morocco and Lebanon considered the slow processing and application of e-government related decrees a main barrier. Interestingly, challenges caused by administrative processes that become norms by convention (without regulation) and the problems that arise from changing them through legally accepted e-government processes were highlighted by several countries. 3.6 Digital divide The digital divide is one of the key global barriers to e-government development and adoption (Cloete, 2004, EC, 2006, OECD, 2005). In developing countries, low internet and PC penetration levels have even more impact on e-government adoption because of the wider digital divide and the more urgent need for reform in the public sector. In general, Arab states suffer from low PC and Internet penetration. UNDESA put the number of Arab Internet users at 10 millions (UNDESA, 2005) while other reports put the number at around 26.3 million with 8.5 penetration rate in 2005 (Madar, 2006b). According to UNCTAD s Digital Divide report, the average ranking of Arab states in the 367

8 middle east is 105 among 180 countries while Arab states in North Africa rank 123rd on average (UNCTAD, 2006). Annual internet growth rate is relatively high (55%) and the number of internet users in the Arab states is expected to reach 52 millions by the end of 2008, with 15% penetration rate (Madar, 2006a). Nonetheless, computer illiteracy and low Internet and PC penetration are still relatively widespread. The findings of our study indicate that all Arab states realize the gravity of the problem. For example, Algeria considers PC and internet penetration the primary priority for e- Government development, while Egypt considers it one of the top three key challenges to e- Government development. Similarly, Jordan considers low internet penetration a key barrier to e- Government development. While in Lebanon, the society s unwillingness to learn ICT skills is seen as a main challenge. Given these findings, most Arab governments officials interviewed have indicated that priority would be given to increasing internet accessibility and the effective development of essential ICT skills among the citizens. 3.7 Capacity deficit According to our finding, a vast percentage of civil servants in the Arab countries lack the proper ICT knowledge required for successful e-government implementation. In addition to ICT skills, key skills acknowledged as a required for successful e-government development are project management and business process redesign. For example, the UAE government considers capacity building the biggest constraint (for e-government development) on both federal and local levels. The key skills required for successful e-government implementation in the UAE (as underlined by the UAE government) are project management, business process redesign and technology related skills, a view shared in part by Jordan, Algeria and Tunisia. Additionally, despite the broad realization of the importance of capacity building in the public sector, resistance to change is a common problem that hinders such efforts, thus posing one major barrier to e-government development. Brain drain is another related constraint for most Arab governments, specifically in sectors closely associated with e-government. While Arab governments with more developed economies, such as the UAE, suffer from the migration of significantly knowledgeable employees from public to private sectors due to better compensation packages (a problem also highlighted by Morocco), other Arab countries such as Lebanon, Iraq and the Palestinian Authority suffer from brain drain on a wider national level. A phenomenon not limited to e-government and ICT sectors. The main deterrents for public sector talented workers are perceptions of widespread favoritism, patronage networks, the prevalent rentseeking model and the general lack of meritocracy (Solimano, 2006). These are national problems rather than e-government specific ones and they should be dealt with on a national level. 3.8 Funding shortage Financial resource are required for planning and coordinating projects, building infrastructure, developing and managing new information systems as well as for training and capacity building projects. All respondents other than those in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries identified funding as a main barrier to their e-government plans (For example, Egypt, Palestinian Authority, Jordan, Morocco, Tunisia and Lebanon). Some countries also depend on aid from international donors for most of their development projects, which is usually fragmented and heavily dependent on political decisions by international powers. The international donor community has identified e- Government as a valid area for aid to assist public sector reform in the many countries in the Arab world. Many of these initiatives have not been successful in driving e-government development, even in countries that managed to secure sustainable funding for their e-government projects. For example, Jordan has received a relatively substantial amount of aid for e-government development in comparison to other countries in the Arab world. Nonetheless our findings confirm earlier research suggesting that the approach that international development agencies followed so far is not necessarily helping in accelerating the development of the e-government initiatives (Ciborra and Navarra, 2005). As a result, many funding initiatives in Arab countries have not been successful in driving e-government development, primarily because they tend to dictate e-government best practices from developed countries, ignoring the specific context of Arab states. Additionally, our findings indicate that only few countries have conducted analysis and evaluation of their e- Government investments in terms of costs and benefits. 3.9 Take-up of services Ensuring the take-up of e-government services by citizens and businesses is one of the most common barriers to e-government dissemination (Eynon and Dutton, 2007, Titah and Barki, 2006). 368

9 This is clear even in leading e-government initiatives in the Arab states such as the UAE s which is ranked 32nd worldwide in terms of e-government readiness (UNDESA, 2008) and even in cities such as Dubai which usually even rank higher on e-government development (Geray and Al-Bastaki, 2005, Holzer and Kim, 2008, Salem, 2003). In Bahrain, officials stated that changing public perception on the value of e-government is perceived as one of the main challenges. Similarly, one of the top priorities in Egypt s e-government development objectives is to provide innovative incentives to encourage current internet users to become heavy users of e-government online services. The Egyptian government indicated a need to increase public awareness and trust of e-government services as the usage of e-government services is less than expected, a view shared also by Morocco. As an incentive, the Egyptian government decided to make the cost of many online services less than their manual versions, but citizens kept opting for the manual ones. In another example, officials in Jordan stated that despite the low level of public awareness of e-government advantages, financial resources allocated to e-government development do not take into consideration marketing of e-government services adequately. Findings confirm that in majority of Arab states, citizens and businesses are provided with limited information on the services available online. They also have limited understanding of the ways to access these services and make use of them. Our research also indicates that electronic service development in the Arab states has not followed a uniform approach. Some countries have followed the quantitative approach of making available as many online services as possible, while others focused mainly on utilizing ICT primarily for reducing the costs and increasing efficiency of back office government procedures. Such approaches have been dubbed as narrow as they not take into consideration the information flows in government, which arguably could lead to wider impact of e-government investments and take-up (Mayer-Schönberger and Lazer, 2007). 4. Conclusion The global adoption of e-government and the promised accompanying changes have been hailed as a revolution of the public sector. History suggests though that many revolutions tend to start with idealist intentions but end up with disappointing realities related to mismanagement and opportunistic exploitation of the original objectives. In most cases this renders such attempted revolutions to failed ones. Our research indicates that the e-government revolution in the Arab countries is at risk of following the same trend. Based on our study findings and consistent with prior e-government research, we argue that replicable best practices in a complex and developing field such as e- Government rarely exist in the regional context of the Arab countries. Such practices are always helpful tools for triggering ideas and developing innovative ways of overcoming e-government barriers and avoiding failures, but good practices should not be copied or cloned. In many cases, the if it works for them, it will work for us approach would be the formula of failure in e-government projects (Ciborra and Navarra, 2005, Heeks, 2002). Instead, studying failed e-government projects in countries sharing similar public sector environment on the cultural, political and social levels might be a better learning approach for avoiding such pitfalls. We argue that nurturing a culture for learning from failures is generally required in the Arab states. In the rapidly developing e-government field where failures are more probable, such culture should be promoted. This would have to go hand in hand with a systematic assessment of the hidden costs of failures of e-government projects. Country-specific e-government risk assessment and management approaches could also be developed and implemented throughout the design and implementation phases of e-government projects. This should limit the impact of failed projects as well as make the process of learning from failure more systematic. Senior public managers in the Arab states should accept the high probability of partial and total failures in e-government projects more openly as a first step for overcoming them and understanding the associated challenges. Moving forward, if this is accompanied with a vision for knowledge management where failed projects are perceived as valuable learning processes, failures would be increasingly perceived as common risks that could be alleviated in advance. Based on our regional research findings, we conclude that e-government projects in the Arab states would have a higher probability of success and would be better equipped for avoiding repeated failure only when the right fit is achieved between leadership commitment, sustainable development, a clear cross-government vision, appropriate planning, rational business strategy, suitable regulatory framework, practical awareness campaign and rigorous capacity building for the public administrators and society at large. This right fit is very much contextual. Despite the many similarities and the 369

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