A Framework for evaluating the effectiveness of eGovernment initiatives

Abstract

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.