Master of Business Administration in e-Governance

Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://192.248.9.226/handle/123/48

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item: Thesis-Full-text
A Framework for evaluating the effectiveness of eGovernment initiatives
Waduge, LPH; weerawarana, S
The Government of Sri Lanka has embarked on the e-Sri Lanka Re-Engineering Government program, which is an Information and Communication Technology (ICT) road map, with the intention of providing efficient and effective services to its stakeholders, mainly, the citizens of the country. The implementation of e Government solutions necessitates organizational readiness in terms of structure and human capacity as conventional practices have failed to achieve institutional objectives desirable in today's context. E Government can transform the way the traditional public sector organizations work. However, the success of the program. is contingent upon 'several factors such as leadership commitment, competent staff, financial and other resources. In this backdrop, this research study presents an interesting Analytical Model that public-sector institutions may adopt, in evaluating the effectiveness of e Government implementations within government organizations in Sri Lanka. The objective of this research was to find critical factors that influence the effectiveness of e Government initiatives in the solution implementation stage as well as in the solution operation stage, and to then formulate an evaluation model to analyze those factors at the organizational level. The key e Government projects and initiatives under the Ministry of Public Administration and Home Affairs have been included as the sample space to test the effectiveness factors in the analytical model. The development of this analytical model was done after extensive literature review in related areas with respect to developing countries, and through a pilot study done in the Sri Lankan organizational context. The proposed analytical model can be used by any government agency to evaluate E Government projects prior to deployment and more importantly, during the operational stage. Based on this factor analysis, appropriate recommendations can be proposed to enhance and strengthen the e Government initiatives by considering all related factors in the implementation stage such as organizational ,surrounding environmental and other enabling factors pertaining to government organization in Sri Lanka. The model features built-in iterations and feedback loops which enables systematic analysis of operational effectiveness, thereby enabling the implementation of timely corrective measures leading to continuous improvement and enhanced positive operational impact of the e Governrnent solutions.Furthermore, since the model was conceptualized and designed with Sri Lankan government organizations as the focus , it is highly relevant in the local context in comparison to the existing evaluation models that are in use elsewhere in the world. Clearly, this model would also be useful in other developing countries with government organization and government process profiles that. Are similar to Sri Lanka, for the purpose of evaluating their e Govemment projects systematically in order to improve their solution effectiveness.
item: Thesis-Abstract
An Assessment on suitability of e-procurement for Sri Lanka Railways
Samarasinghe, ATLP; De Silva, C
The level of maintenance of locomotives and other engineering systems of the Sri Lanka Railways : SLR does not meet, the system availability levels, demanded by the train operation and the problem persists even after receiving new rolling stock in recent years. This has been revealed by Railway Performance Reports. One of the main reasons is the non-availability of spare parts and other maintenance items, at the time when they are really required. The railway procurement process is not geared to cater to the requirements of the maintenance departments of SLR. The research was designed, to identify the current problems of railway procurements, including problems experienced by maintenance departments, suppliers and by the procurement (stores) department. It examines how other similar organisations have overcome such problems through application of technology. The existing railway procurement process was deeply studied while studying the procurement processes of other Sri Lankan Organisations in the same manner. Related literature review revealed that carrying out organisational procurements electronically brings many advantages and the current procurement problems of Sri Lanka Railways ' SLR ' can be overcome through implementation of electronic procurement within railways. The survey identified fourteen problem faced by the three groups of stakeholders of the railway procurements. Furthermore, it was found that the other Sri Lankan Organisations who have implemented electronic procurement, also have had similar problems and have overcome those problems through e- P implementations. Based on the survey findings and as per literature review, it is recommended to implement electronic procurement within Sri Lanka Railways and a phased implementation starting from Restricted e- Tendering is recommended. Furthermore, a few improvements and reforms such as, classification of procuring items, with the intension of diversifying procurement strategies and formation of Procurement Circles to expedite the current processes, are recommended.
item: Thesis-Abstract
An Empirical study of the critical success factors for business process re-engineering (BPR) in the employees' provident fund
Athukorala, NA; Weerawarna, SM
The Employees' Provident Fund (EPF) is an organization to which Sri Lankan private sector and semi-government employees contribute a percentage of their monthly income and the employer contributes a percentage of employees monthly income throughout the employees working career. The administrative aspect of the fund is handled by the Department of Labour, whilst the management of the fund is handled by the EPF department of the Central Bank. The total amount contributed with the accrued interest is reimburse to EPF member qualified to claim as per the section 23 of the EPF Act. Statistics of the EPF revealed that there are 7000 - 8000 applications received per month by the Labour Department from the members for EPF withdrawals. The EPF IT enabling project was launched covering the EPF refund section in 1998 n order to improve staff productivity and provide a more effective service to its principal clients the employees who call over at the head office of the department or its sub offices island wide. Until the year 1998, all EPF claims were handled by the Management Assistants manually. Now all existing member records are computerized and all manual procedures of record retrieval are supposedly abandoned. The Management Assistants and Staff Officers have been provided personal computers with on-line data retrieval facilities from the central employees' master database as well as the Central Bank member accounts' database in a networked environment. However, the trade unionists and members still complain about the delay of their EPF claims. There are complaints about mal- practices in various claim units in district offices. Although claim flies are handled by the computer system and a large amount of records are retrieved electronically, the record keeping staff still retrieves member records manually leading to corruption in the system. This research study is focused on identifying the problems of existing IT enabling systems of the EPF with the intention of making suggestions for a member centric solution for the EPF refund system.
item: Thesis-Abstract
An Exemplar approach for government process re-engineering in Sri Lanka
Gunawardana, PIMA; Weerawarna, S
Sri Lanka is at a stage where it has begun implementing or is about to legin implementation of many large-scale e-go\ernment solutions under the e-Sri Lanka Re Engineering Government program of the ICT Agency of Sri Lanka. Most of the e government projects under the e-Sri Lanka program have been designed to first have a Business Process Re-engineering stage, before the commencement of the usual system study stage. Business Process Re-engineering (BPR) is a major, important, and time-consuming activity that includes identifying and then making changes to existing management processes, routines and workflows to enhance the efficiency and productivity of the institution and its management. Performing such a BPR activity before the design and implementation of an e- government solution is highly important since most government departments tend to have historically inefficient and highly ingrained management processes, routines and workflows which prevent the execution of government services in an efficient manner. Clearly, the success of a proposed e- government solution is critically dependent on the success of such a BPR endeavor, which would span across all the government entities involved in the e- government solution. This research work focuses on the many major e- government initiatives of the e- Sri Lanka Re- Engineering Government Program in order to study the impact of the different BPR approaches adopted in these initiatives on the final outcomes of the solutions. The research effort is targeted towards identifying the BPR approaches bestsuited for a developing country such as Sri Lanka, which still has significant remnants of historical, colonial government processes. This study discusses an innovative exemplar model for government process reengineering. This exemplar model can also be utilized to evaluate BPR approaches used in e- government initiatives. By leveraging this model, the author intends to clearly identify and categorize different BPR approaches, and then determine the BPR approaches that would be most appropriate in the re-engineering government contexts, of Sri Lanka and similar developing countries.
item: Thesis-Abstract
Business process re-engineering of the emergency treatment unit at the Colombo South Teaching Hospital
Karunatilaka, MN; Weerawarana, MS
With the emergence of information and communication technology (ICT), health care institutions too, commenced incorporating new technologies, aimed at efficient delivery of health services. Initiatives of this nature, categorized as 'e -health'- have become an important activity area, resulting in many advanced total software solutions, for health care institutions worldwide. Unfortunately the acquisition costs of such solutions are too high, for developing countries such as Sri Lanka, and they continue to be challenged, in trying to overcome this financial barrier. Furthermore, most such solutions are not tailored for the specific needs of health care institutions in developing countries, which themselves, have evolved towards providing affordable health care, with highly limited resources in challenging environments. In response, developing countries could consider adopting alternate approaches to achieve the efficiency goals of e- health, by first, systematically studying and identifying the unique features associated with the hospital sectors in these countries and then, by providing innovative e- health solutions that would specifically address the challenges and issues common to health care systems in developing countries. The objective of this research was to find a practical methodology to systematically study a Sri Lankan health care institution with the view of re-engineering the related processes by utilizing the same limited resources in an efficient and effective manner. A clinical unit - the Emergency Treatment Unit (ETU) of the Colombo South Teaching Hospital - which is one of the largest teaching hospitals in Sri Lanka, was chosen as the sample space to test the theories generated by this research. Following an extensive study to identify the essential processes required for the functioning of the ETU, the researchers formulated a well-structured and iter atively applicable framework to re-engineer the processes in Sri Lankan health care institutions. The proposed framework, defines a methodology to perform a detailed analysis of the existing workflows, in a clinical unit and to then re-engineer, those process-level as well as policy-level workflows. Since every clinical unit of hospitals in Sri Lanka carry out more or less the same functions in different contexts, the fundamental Coriperts- KL the Sri Lanka. The model features built-in iterations and feedback loops which enables systematic analysis of operational effectiveness, thereby enabling the implementation of timely corrective measures leading to continuous improvement and enhanced positive operational impact of the E Government solutions. Furthermore, since the model was conceptualized and designed with Sri Lankan government organizations as the focus, it is highly relevant in the local context in comparison to the existing evaluation models that are in use elsewhere in the world. Clearly, this model would also be useful in other developing countries with government organization and government process profiles that are similar to Sri Lanka, for the purpose of evaluating their E Government projects systematically in order to improve their solution effectiveness. iii
item: Thesis-Abstract
Stakeholder perceptions of online learning programmes of national online disttance education service
Liyanage, L; Jayasena, S; Gunawardena, C
According to the statistics of the University Grants Commission of Sri Lanka, every year about 125,000 G.C.E(A'L)qualified students fall into the category of "higher education Oppertunity less' due to the simple fact that the conventional university system does not have the capacity. Similarly, there is a large number of professionals scattered around the country who eek higher education opportunities as well as continuing professional development for which no opportunities are found in their respective areas. In addition, most of the employers operating out of Western Province need to train and re-train their employees in various disciplines which also need to be addressed. All these issues constrain opportunities available for continuing education, n this context online learning has been viewed as a way to increase access to higher and ontinuing education. Presently, a state-of-the-art network has been established by the National Online Distance Education Service (NODES) in order to facilitate the delivery of online post secondary level programmes developed by the universities and other private and public sector post-secondary educational institutions. The aim of the study is to find out the perceptions of stakeholders (students, teachers, administrators and experts) on effectiveness of online learning programmes of NODES in Sri Lanka. The study will examine the perceptions of stakeholders drawn from around 17 online programmes of disciplines like Medicine, Information Technology, Accounting, Culinary Arts, Agriculture, Business and Disaster Management, Quantity Surveying, Teacher Education, Library Science. It will also try to find out whether there is a relationship between demographic characteristics of stakeholders like gender, age, marital status, education, employment, income, district and effectiveness of online programs in terms of Accessibility and Quality. Significance of the study stems from the effort taken to evaluate an initiative taken to address one of the major problems of the country which is to increase access for post secondary education. Also, it would help to improve quality/effectiveness of online distance education programmes to cater to the current demands from the labour market for employees with technical and employable skills. x The research utilized the survey approach and questionnaires were used to collect data from 216 students and 20 tutors/administrators/experts interviewed. Qualitative analysis of interview data and statistical analysis of questionnaire data are presented as the final output of the research. The findings of this study indicates factors which facilitate and/or obstruct the effective implementation of online programmes to enable feasible strategies for effective implementation to be identified and shared with providers of online learning. Finally, recommendations are made on resolving the identified issues and to extend and improve the effectiveness of online distance education. xi

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