Why e-govt failed

By Christelle du Toit, ITWeb senior journalist

Johannesburg, 27 May 2008

More work has been done on e-government in the last six months than in the last six years, says government CIO Michelle Williams.

Nonetheless, government now wants to move at least 100 services online, starting with six that affect the poor the most.

Williams addressed an industry briefing on the Department of Public Services and Administration's (DPSA's) next-generation e-government platform, in Johannesburg, yesterday.

The briefing was compulsory for companies wanting to respond to the DPSA's request for bids for the IT architecture and services tender. It also introduced stakeholders to the requirements related to the DPSA's decision to move six services online "as soon as possible".

According to Williams, there are several reasons why e-government has failed so far, primary among them the sheer complexity of the task.

"Departments, within themselves, have challenges" with regards to disparate IT infrastructures, she says. She explains that it is, therefore, all the more complicated when trying to create functionality across different government departments.

Other reasons put forward by Williams for e-government's failure include a lack of internal governance mechanisms, a shortage of ICT access, a dearth of accountability, and an absence of alignment between back- and front-office processes.

Big dreams

E-government refers to the provision of services to citizens via electronic platforms, as well as the alignment of government processes through the use of ICT. It has been a pipedream of government since the 1990s, but has failed to take off time and time again, she explains.

Last year, the State IT Agency (SITA) acceded the e-government targets it had set itself were "over-ambitious". The year before, then chief of strategic services at SITA admitted the body had failed to deliver on its e-government strategy.

Williams says it is sad to see that, 10 years down the line, e-government has not sufficiently progressed.

"We have done something towards aggregating content and have gone some way towards available information through the Batho Pele Web site. It is not such a bad Web site, but it's just that - a Web site."

Three months

According to Williams, transactional capability will be the key driver for e-government's success in SA going forward.

This is where she sees the DPSA's next-generation platform stepping in, referring to a transversal, scalable IT platform through which government services can be delivered.

The first services to be moved online are ID book applications, registering births, foster child-grant applications, old-age pension applications, maintenance order applications, and death notices.

The six service initiatives will be delivered in partnership with SITA and the value of the project is not yet known.

The department wants to move the end-goals of 100 services online by 2014 and for this reason the IT solution delivered by the current request for bids would have to be scalable. It would also have to include smart card and biometric technology.