Shawren Singh
between stakeholders is a feature of both the private and public sector. It is well established that in ICT development problems often stem from the original challenge or opportunity not being adequately defined( Murer, Bonati, & Furrer, 2011; Pressman, 2009). This in turn may be seen as a result of inadequate corporate communication as to what is required. It has been suggested that one way of improving this situation is to employ an IS / IT benefits realization process( Lin, Pervan, & McDermid, 2007).
2.5 Managing stakeholders
Citizen‐orientation which in some instances is still being referred to as customer‐orientation has been proposed as a way in which governments have attempted to improve the quality of services offered to business and citizens( Bannister, 2000; Helbig, Gil‐García, & Ferro, 2009). There is a debate in the literature as to which is the most appropriate term to use in describing the individuals who obtain the direct benefits from ICT systems in the e‐Government environment and the terms customer or citizen are used( Brewer, 2007; Mintzberg, 1996). The term customer suggests a number of issues, one of which has to do with the organisation satisfying a particular need and service. The term customer also suggests the possibility of the person receiving the service has some degree of freedom to choose the service provider. In the majority of e‐ Government systems the person who utilises the service does not have any choice. We argue that the term customer is inappropriate and the term citizen serves to better describe the relationship between the provider and the user of the service.
In government departments there appears to be internal inefficiencies in terms of ICT and human resources( Farelo & Morris, 2006). According to Abrahams( 2009) e‐Government applications face challenges because of the fragmented nature of government administration and its communications processes. The use of silo structures can optimize the efficiency of individual parts of government but it does so at the expense of understanding organisation as a whole and seeing how it can relate to the environment in a more effective and holistic manner. It is proposed that a holistic approach be adopted were public service agencies work across portfolio boundaries to achieve a shared goal and an integrated government response to particular issues. These approaches can be formal and informal. They can focus on policy development, program management and service delivery simultaneously( Australian Public Service, 2004). 1
3. Setting up the Delphi Study
The Delphi method has been used in Information Systems research since the 1980 ' s( Päivärinta, Pekkola, & Moe, 2011). There are various approaches to conducting a Delphi study. Some researchers would commence by distributing an open‐ended questionnaire to a group of experts( Remenyi & Sutherland, 1993). However, in this study, the open‐ended questionnaire was not considered to be necessary since we conducted a literature review( Hsu & Sandford, 2007; Watson, 2008) and a brainstorming( Geist, 2010) session with four e‐ Government experts. The brainstorming session consisted of three Skype conference calls, several one‐on‐one Skype calls and e‐mails. Error! Reference source not found. 1 outlines the approach that was used for the Delphi study.
After conducting the literature review and brain storming session, we identified 20 statements. The statements were pre‐tested at the University of South Africa with six academics and with three practitioners. This led to the refinement of the statements. The final list of twenty statements that was send to the expert panel were:
The success of e‐Government systems is affected by: ‐ 1. The pressure to modernise government. 2. The need to contain government expenses and thus keep tax from increasing. 3. The short time horizon of a government i. e. 5 years. 4. Lack of knowledge within government departments as to how to justify governments investment. 5. Complicated internal bureaucratic policy requirements by government departments. 6. Attitude of outsourcers to government contracts. 7. Civil servants struggle to manage outsourced contracts. 8. Governments ' outsourcing processes are complicated. 1
The language used in this sector moves rapidly, various terms“ one‐stop government,”“ joined‐up government” and“ whole‐of‐government,” have been used with the latest term now being t‐Government meaning transformed government. Of course ICT is the main tool used to facilitate the transformation.
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