Like most projects, e-governance ventures are vulnerable to failure because nobody champions them. To work around a lack of leadership, J. Satyanarayana, CEO, National Institute for Smart Government (NISG), has embarked on several workshops to train key people who will take charge and drive e-governance projects.
Satyanarayana: The figure of 60 percent to 85 percent of partial-to-total failure is a global estimate, and India is no exception. The low 15 percent success rate is due to various reasons. These include poor project conceptualization, a lack of process reengineering and hardware-driven efforts, a shortfall in professional project management, a lack of institutional and individual capacities, and a lack of change management among others reasons.
The National eGovernance Plan (NeGP) launched by the Central Government seeks to address these gaps and enhance the success rate substantially. NISG has also been laying emphasis on these aspects.
How can government CIOs ensure greater success of e-governance projects?
One of the ways CIOs can ensure more success is by studying and replicating successful projects, with modifications to suit local requirements. They also need to plan and conceptualize their projects properly in association with a team of professionals and department employees. Process reengineering, legal reforms, user training, capacity building and professional project management are other areas that need to be tackled to ensure successful e-governance projects.
Project development and management call for diversified skill sets. How does NISG help identify these and then train bureaucrats accordingly?
Project development and project management demand two different skill sets. Project development calls for individuals who can think out of the box and suggest innovative solutions. Project management requires the ability to repeat a set of activities with the expertise that manages development with time and experience. In short, project development requires people with innovation, and project management requires people with experience. Within NISG, both sets of individuals are given opportunities in their areas of specialization. We have run a few project management programs in project-specific settings. We also train people in project development skills with the e-Champions program. The program entails training 100 senior administrators in e-governance skills for 14 weeks. Currently, 13 administrators from different states are undergoing training with us in the first batch of the program. It is too early to comment on its outcome. However, a mid-term assessment of the program has been highly encouraging.
Do participants in the NeGP need specialized management training?
As I mentioned earlier, the participants in the NeGP need not have expertise in the above areas — but they need to understand all the areas of management, governance, and technology and information management. The e-champions program is designed to cater to such requirements. The Department of IT is piloting a major initiative on capacity building across all states, with assistance from the Planning Commission.
In order to ensure successful e-governance projects, the bureaucracy needs to overcome internal resistance and learn to take risks. Have practitioners imbibed these critical capabilities?
Given the high degree of failure in e-governance projects, taking a decision to start an e-governance project is itself tantamount to taking a risk. However, taking a risk and taking a calculated risk are two different things. Recognizing the risks inherent in a project is the first big step to risk mitigation. It comes with the experience of working in an environment where small failures are seen as stepping stones to larger successes.
Internal resistance can be overcome only by dialogue and explaining to employees the benefits of an initiative and its rewards and by training. change management is an important aspect in e-governance and must not be overlooked. Employees in a department must feel ownership of a project; it is only then that they will participate.
Is there a case for creating a distinct cadre of government CIOs? Or, for increasing the tenure of IT leaders in the government?
The need of the hour today is individuals who are equipped with skills in management, information technology and governance. It is very difficult to create such a combination through a separate cadre. Insofar as e-governance being as ubiquitous and pervasive as governance itself, the right answer is to sensitize all civil servants to the benefits of e-governance and to promote a few among them as e-Champions.
The need for increasing the tenure is felt, not only with respect to IT leaders, but for all civil servants working in other important sectors. Civil service reform is the long-term solution.
How should a government CIO look at ROI?
The return on investment in an e-governance project is difficult to measure in the short-term. It is only in the long run that true return on investment can be measured. In projects where a PPP (public private partnership) model is used, the financial return is one parameter to measure the ROI of a project. But, in order to measure real ROI, a CIO has to return to the original vision of his department and then measure how e-governance has facilitated that vision. Various measures of ROI can include customer satisfaction, cost and time savings, service improvement, political returns, employee satisfaction, and more.
What do you think of public-private partnership in e-governance projects?
The adoption of a PPP model in e-governance projects combines the accountability of the public sector with the efficiency, cost-effectiveness and customer-centricity of the private sector. NISG has developed specific service level agreements for use in e-government projects.
How well have they stood up to the test of time?
The concept of service level agreements is recent in the e-governance sector. Bangalore One and the MCA21 projects are two cases in point. I believe that this is the right direction to take. More time will answer this question better.
The institute has prepared roadmaps for 12 states and designed e-procurement for three states. What are the learnings from this?
The biggest learning for NISG in working on e-governance roadmaps is that adopting a consultative approach while developing vision, strategy and a blueprint serves the powerful purpose of change management. It creates the right environment for an implementation that is to follow.
With regards to e-procurement, there is definitely a business case for public-private-partnership, and NISG’s engagements with various states have proved that it has a sustainable business model that can be easily replicated.
What has the CADS methodology for e-governance achieved?
The adoption of CADS (conceptualization, architecture, design and support) has enabled NISG to streamline its engagements with client-departments. It has also helped clients to see the different activities and deliverables, which are needed in various development stages, in the right perspective. For instance, the need for process reengineering, change management and best practice survey have gained the right importance with policy-makers now, something that was needed long ago.
Can you shed light on other initiatives like the National e-Government Gateway and National Mission Mode project for Municipalities?
The Gateway is designed to act as a standards-based routing and messaging switch. It seeks to provide five distinct benefits. These are: enabling the establishment of joined-up government (various government departments working together to tackle issues that no single department can); promoting inter-operability between disparate e-governance applications; facilitating the delivery of same or similar e-services through multiple service providers and providing choice to departments and consumers; promoting standards-based implementation of e-governance projects; and, finally, working to integrating services across centre, state and local governments.
The mission mode on municipalities has brought to the fore different PPP models applicable to e-governance in urban local bodies (ULBs) and has provided a comprehensive plan for capacity building. The Ministry of Urban Development is taking up a comprehensive scheme to transform over 400 ULBs in the next five years.
Which is the best e-governance project you have seen in India and elsewhere?
There are several examples of successful e-governance projects globally. The e-Citizen and Tradenet projects of Singapore are among the best I have seen. I consider the Passenger Reservation System of the Indian Railways one of the most successful e-governance projects, not only in India but across the world because of the number of citizens it has impacted. Bhoomi and e-Seva are also projects that I should mention. Their success is in terms of the convenience they provide to large sections of the population.
NISG was created in 2002 to develop architectures and standards, provide high-level consultancy services and capacity building at the national level. Looking back, how many of your objectives have been fulfilled?
NISG has gone several steps in the direction of realizing its vision. As far as providing high-end consultancy is concerned, it is assisting many government projects like MCA21, Envision, ILIS, Bangalore One, eBiz, e-Procurement and the ICTD project. With regard to capacity building at the national level, NISG has already trained over 200 policy-makers. We have conducted training programs for political leaders in Manipur, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh. We have recently established a program management unit for the department of IT as part of our initiative towards institutional capacity building.
To drive architecture and standards, we are working on projects like the National Service Delivery Gateway with the department of IT. NISG is contributing through its representative on four committees on standards recently formed by the Government of India.
Autor(en)/Author(s): Balaji Narasimhan
Quelle/Source: CIO India, 15.06.2006
