The E-Government Hype Cycle Meets Web 2.0

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1 Industry Research Publication Date: 2 October 2007 ID Number: G The E-Government Hype Cycle Meets Web 2.0 Andrea Di Maio E-government and government transformation are not delivering their intended results. Web 2.0 technologies can help overcome some of the difficulties encountered so far, but they also pose significant risks. Key Findings Although a solid enterprise architecture (EA) process is key to sustain government transformation, most whole-of-government EA efforts are collapsing due to excessive ambition, wrong scope and excessive focus on the current state, rather than the future state. The community angle of Web 2.0 has the potential to distract government organizations from their objectives and lead them into uncharted territory where accountability cannot be properly exercised. Business models supported by Web 2.0 and based on creating mashable services and content have the potential to overcome some of the issues that e-government programs and portal initiatives are struggling with today. Recommendation E-government strategic planners and CIOs in government must urgently reflect on why transformation are not proving effective and why most whole-of-government EA efforts are failing. They need to embrace the architectural shift brought by Web 2.0, focus on how to make services and information more easily mashable by external organizations as well as other government organizations, and begin implementing mashable services with a cautious, iterative approach. Reproduction and distribution of this publication in any form without prior written permission is forbidden. The information contained herein has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable. Gartner disclaims all warranties as to the accuracy, completeness or adequacy of such information. Although Gartner's research may discuss legal issues related to the information technology business, Gartner does not provide legal advice or services and its research should not be construed or used as such. Gartner shall have no liability for errors, omissions or inadequacies in the information contained herein or for interpretations thereof. The opinions expressed herein are subject to change without notice.

2 ANALYSIS In 2004, we published the last edition of our E-Government Hype Cycle (see "Hype Cycle Shows E-Government Overcoming Disillusionment"). This was not one of the several Hype Cycles that we publish on a yearly basis, where we track the level of maturity of technologies in a given domain (see "Hype Cycle for Government Transformation, 2007"), but rather a historical view of how e-government has evolved and how we predicted it would go. At the time, we highlighted a set of crucial technologies and processes that would allow e-government to get out of its Trough of Disillusionment. Figure 1 suggests how the situation is likely to evolve in the next three to five years. Figure 1. E-Government Hype Cycle, 2007 Visibility Surveys and benchmarking Virtual government Government portals Loss of revenue Low uptake Governments in E-government Second Life Government e-id irrelevant Security issues Wireless Broadband for all Mashups access for all prevail Failures and Blogs and WOA "To-be" no ROI wikis approach EA Retire E-government Information stagnates sites New regulatory frameworks Interoperability frameworks Transformation EA too complex Integration efforts fail Back to silos As of October Source: Gartner (October 2007) What has happened since is that moving out of the Trough of Disillusionment has proven even more difficult than we had predicted. Many have recognized that e-government really is about government transformation (see "Moving From E-Government to Government Transformation"), and therefore have shifted the emphasis from electronic service delivery to a deeper focus on the impact of technology on processes and organization. However, most initiatives are failing to master what is probably the most critical process to enable sustainable transformation, which is EA. The Failure of Whole-of-Government Architecture In most instances, expectations about a whole-of-government enterprise architecture for major government transformations are misplaced. Some believe that this can provide the blueprint for Publication Date: 2 October 2007/ID Number: G Page 2 of 5

3 integration and service redesign, and they focus on EA as a framework rather than a process. On the other hand, many who emphasize the EA process do not exercise the proper caution in defining a sufficiently narrow scope for a first iteration of the EA to lead to manageable results. In other cases, the focus goes on modeling existing architecture rather than cooperatively building the future-state architecture that is key to transformation: This inevitably reduces EA to an inventory process that does not help overcome inconsistencies and duplication. EA efforts are not contributing to overcome existing silos and are not proving their value as the foundation for sustainable transformation. Therefore, most transformation efforts will fail to achieve their objectives within the expected time frames, and others will enjoy partial success but will not be sustainable over time. The New Web 2.0 Hype At the same time, government organizations that cannot trigger a robust and sustainable transformation process are faced with the new opportunities offered by Web 2.0 technologies. The hype around the relevance of communities and the new business models made possible by Web 2.0 is creating excitement for some politicians and senior executives in government. The paradigm shift, highlighted by books such as "Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything," seems to open new avenues to better ways to engage constituents. The constant press coverage of modern phenomena such as YouTube, Facebook and Second Life raises many questions about how governments should catch this wave without being left behind. The consequence is a number of mostly adventurous initiatives with blogs, wikis or islands in Second Life. Moreover, some infrastructural initiatives, such as public wireless access, have received further stimulus from the assumption that governments have a clear responsibility to facilitate the creation and success of virtual communities. However, rolling the clock back to a few years ago, at the dawn of e-government, one finds a comparable degree of unsubstantiated enthusiasm in the role that new technologies would play in changing the interaction paradigm and vastly improving service delivery and constituent participation. Recent history shows that, in many cases, those promises have remained unfulfilled and e-government has succeeded only where it solved a clear problem or provided visible value. Today, several portals, Web sites and online services remain underutilized, mostly due to a fundamental misunderstanding about the wants and needs of constituents. Actions such as jumping on the wiki bandwagon, leveraging technologies such as Ajax for richer user interfaces or diving into virtual worlds to entice the so-called "digital natives" will result in a sudden awakening for governments. We expect several governments in developed economies to establish virtual government that define how to participate in a variety of virtual communities, ranging from internal ones that engage employees, to external ones where they will reach out to constituents. Such efforts will provide value only if they are very well-focused and conducted at least initially in the context of gated communities where governments can exercise some degree of control. Larger-scale efforts are considerably more risky, as they raise important questions about what attitudes governments should take regarding crime, taxation, jurisdiction and so on. Communities will play a crucial role in peer-to-peer exchange (including loans and other taxable transactions), creation of valuable (hence, taxable) virtual goods, services and virtual estate, and partial or total resolution of cases (such as peer support to obtain welfare benefits or other forms of nonfinancial assistance). All this will create serious issues in terms of accountability, applicable legislation, crime prosecution and so forth. The increasing complexity of applying real-world legislation to virtual communities, as well as the occurrence of high-profile incidents, will lead the majority of governments that have established a presence in virtual communities to pull out of those that cannot be kept under their control. Publication Date: 2 October 2007/ID Number: G Page 3 of 5

4 Only in the longer term, when regulatory frameworks will be extended to address some of the current ambiguities, will governments be able to look at communities as a safe alternative channel for service delivery and institutional constituent engagement. This does not mean that governments should not experiment with innovative means to better serve and engage constituents. However, such pilots have to remain very well-focused and somewhat isolated from mainstream processes for at least the next two years. The Lower-Hanging but Less Visible Fruits of Web 2.0 While most of the attention about Web 2.0 goes to communities and the ability to engage constituents in contributing to services and information, the architectural approach that Web 2.0 promotes and the shift from service-oriented to Web-oriented architectures (WOAs) have a much greater potential effect on the ability to transform government than anything else in the Web 2.0 world. As part of their e-government efforts, and often in conjunction with (suboptimal) enterprise architecture activities, government organizations are restructuring their legacy application assets, as well as developing new ones in terms of Web services, that should be ideally usable and reusable by other services. However, the design principles adopted today lead to the definition of relatively specific, hence less reusable, Web services. The concepts at the basis of WOA lead to the development of smaller, more generic and more reusable services. This implies that they are designed with the minimum number of assumptions about the context in which they will be utilized: They have to be self-contained and as "stateless" as possible (that is, state information will be transferred as data through the service interface, rather than being embedded in the service itself). This leads to much greater composability of services in a variety of different contexts. The same applies to information: Designing it in a more-granular fashion and taking into account its "mashability" with content that is created, owned and administered by others increase the chances of use and reuse of that content (see also "Government and Web 2.0: The Emerging Midoffice"). Therefore, the crux of the matter is to design services and information for (partially) unintended use, rather than making too-rigid assumptions about the context in which they will be accessed. This is going to have a major impact both on interoperability frameworks and government gateways. The latter constitute the only conduit for services and applications run by an agency to access to services and applications operated by others. In a Web 2.0 world, the gateway also needs to provide nongovernment entities with the ability to access services and information. Of course, identification and security will remain essential to ensuring that only authorized entities can compose and mash up government services and information. However, the very role of a single government gateway will be challenged, as it may constitute a constraint to the many different and unpredictable ways in which service delivery can take place in the future. RECOMMENDED READING "Enterprise IT Departments Must Prepare for the Impact of 'Mashups'" "'Mashups' and Their Relevance to the Enterprise" "Understanding and Applying the Design Differences Between WS-* Based Architecture and Web-Oriented Architecture" Publication Date: 2 October 2007/ID Number: G Page 4 of 5

5 "Moving From E-Government to Government Transformation" This research is part of a set of related research pieces. See "Web 2.0 in Government: Blessing or Curse?" for an overview. REGIONAL HEADQUARTERS Corporate Headquarters 56 Top Gallant Road Stamford, CT U.S.A European Headquarters Tamesis The Glanty Egham Surrey, TW20 9AW UNITED KINGDOM Asia/Pacific Headquarters Gartner Australasia Pty. Ltd. Level 9, 141 Walker Street North Sydney New South Wales 2060 AUSTRALIA Japan Headquarters Gartner Japan Ltd. Aobadai Hills, 6F 7-7, Aobadai, 4-chome Meguro-ku, Tokyo JAPAN Latin America Headquarters Gartner do Brazil Av. das Nações Unidas, andar World Trade Center São Paulo SP BRAZIL Publication Date: 2 October 2007/ID Number: G Page 5 of 5