Management Structures and Strategies for Successful e‐ Government Deployments
Arthur Riel, Denisa Popescu and Luisita Guanlao The World Bank, Washington, DC, USA ajriel @ worldbank. org dpopescu @ worldbank. org lguanlao @ worldbank. org
Abstract: There is a considerable body of research that has been published in the areas of e‐Government prerequisites, e‐ Government deployments, Interoperability models and Enterprise Architecture frameworks / approaches. One important facet of successful e‐Government adoption, e‐Government management structures, has not been well researched, analyzed or explored. This paper establishes a baseline discussion on the current strategies for management structures from both a theoretical as well as pragmatic viewpoint. An analysis of the advantages and disadvantages of each strategy is presented against a backdrop of case studies relevant to the various management structures. The analysis continues with theoretical, optimal strategies for various e‐Government initiatives. Three main management strategies are examined, including centralized management / centralized funding, decentralized management / decentralized funding, and decentralized management / centralized funding. The advantages, disadvantages and challenges of each are presented alongside illustrative case studies.
Keywords: e‐government management structures, e‐government management strategies, e‐government cio, e‐ government policy, e‐government case studies
1. Introduction
Governments around the world are defining, architecting and executing e‐Government strategies. The motivations for government interest in this exciting area are varied but invariably include one or more of the following: better governance, more efficient government service to a country’ s citizens, more efficient government service to business( particularly small business), reduced bureaucracy especially between various government ministries, trade facilitation, and enhanced transparency. There is a considerable body of research that has been published in the areas of e‐Government prerequisites, e‐Government deployments, Interoperability models and Enterprise Architecture frameworks / approaches. One important facet of successful e‐Government adoption, e‐Government management structures, has not been well researched, analyzed or explored. This paper establishes a baseline discussion on the current strategies for management structures from both a theoretical as well as pragmatic viewpoint. An analysis of the advantages and disadvantages of each strategy is presented against a backdrop of case studies relevant to the various management structures. The analysis continues with theoretical, optimal strategies for various e‐Government initiatives and concludes with a blueprint to match management structures with various types of e‐ Government initiatives.
Three main management strategies are examined, including centralized management / centralized funding, decentralized management / decentralized funding, and decentralized management / centralized funding. The centralized management / funding model is presented as the most efficient, and most elusive, of the three models. Unlike the private sector in which such models are the most prevalent, government ministries / facets tend to gravitate towards autonomy of technology management and budgeting( i. e. decentralization). The most common government organization is a decentralized management and funding model in which each government ministry / facet has its own IT department, data architecture / implementation and management hierarchy. In this most common management structure the research focuses on techniques such as virtualized central control and“ coalition of the willing” techniques to establish a consistent vision, data architecture / implementation and interoperability model.
The third management strategy( decentralized management / centralized budgeting) is viewed as the most useful structure as it accomplishes many of the efficiencies of a centralized model while being pragmatic in avoiding disruptions to the typical decentralization of government ministries / facets. A separate group is created outside of any government ministry / strategy and given a budget of which only 5 to 20 percent is available for that group’ s administration. The remaining budget must be dispersed to other government ministries / facets or returned to the general fund. This provides maximum incentive for the outside group to
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