Explaining History of eGovernment Implementation in Developing Countries: An Analytical Framework

Abstract

Abstract. The paper proposes an analytical framework to explain history of eGovernment implementation over a certain period of time in the context of developing countries. The framework is built upon General Systems Theory (GST) and Institutional Theory enriched with literature from organizational changes, and information systems/e-Government implementation. Three scenarios of implementation are proposed, each with its own departing worldview (i.e., mechanistic, organic, and colonial systems), isomorphic mechanism, implementation model, and possible impact.

Issues and Guiding Principles for Opening Governmental Judicial Research Data

“…The process of opening up public sector data demands considerable changes in the public sector, such as changes in the funding and reward systems of organizations. However, it is usually not possible to explain how those types of e-Government initiatives evolve over a certain period of time by the current e-Government linear progression models [12] and the development of composite e-Government services is usually ad-hoc [13]. Avgerou and Wahid propose to use institutional theory to study the implementation of information systems (IS) within organizations [14] and to explain how collective awareness or isomorphic change occurs [12,15].…”

Factors for success and failure of e-government projects

“…Ray [3] noted that there is a 70% failure rate of information systems in developing countries due to lack of proactive user engagement in system development and deployment processes. Wahid [9] noted that stakeholder involvement builds support and minimizes resistance leading to designs that meet real user needs and match real user contexts. o Skilled staff: Heeks [1] noted that IT designers understand technology but not the realities of government.…”

“…Others given include: use of incentives to create commitment to and ownership of e-gov projects, stakeholder involvement to build support and minimise resistance leading to designs that meet real user needs and match real user contexts; an incremental/piloting approach with feasible objectives and quick, scalable outcomes,; presence of the necessary skills and knowledge, especially within government itself and adequate technological infrastructure [8], [9], [10].…”

Contextual-Participative e-Government Implementation Model: A Case Study of the Office of Demographic and Citizen Data Records of Makassar

“…Although Boulding's conceptualization of the General Systems Theory is very useful in developing fundamental understanding of the essence of systems, dividing levels of systems in such detail is too complicated for the purpose of this research. Therefore, the researcher adopted a simpler conceptualization by Porra (2005) as seen in Wahid (2011) using only three metaphors from General Systems Theory (mechanistic, organic and colony). Each system metaphor will be elaborated below.…”