'Connected thinking', need of the hour

BANGALORE, INDIA: The world has witnessed several information revolutions in the past: Writing was invented 6000 years ago; the first written book was published in 1300 BC. The printing press was invented in 1455 AD; the information technology (IT) revolution took shape in the late 19th century. The IT phenomenon has brought companies closer to their customers and suppliers and governments closer to their citizens. This has cut product-cycle time and also improved productivity. Consumers can now buy commodities at a lower cost by avoiding intermediaries. Thanks to IT, governments are getting more responsive to citizens, but the question still remains of being responsive.

The first imperative of effective e-governance is a robust model that links strategy and implementation. Effective e-governance rests on three pillars, namely: leadership, organization structure and process alignment. Strong leadership provides clear and consistent direction, and it establishes organization structure and reporting relationships that, in turn, ensure better-aligned processes that productively manage the back pressure of the e-business on the heritage organization or on alliance partners.

In essence, governance in business is about decisions concerning critical elements of strategy and implementation. It requires an increased capacity to anticipate and effectively deal with the multiple consequences of a decision within the complex adaptive system of an e-business

Many government jurisdictions have the superficial belief that "e-governance" is created through a catchy citizen portal. Unfortunately, promised successes have proved vague. Going forward, successful e-governance strategies will increasingly focus on other key elements:

•  Creating a need for alignment between Strategy and Implementation stakeholders
• Getting a Buy-in from the Government by creating a fool proof Business case
• Challenge for the Information Technology department of the Government
• Adopting to a more rigorous Multi-channel strategy
• Adopting to more sophisticated approaches like enterprise architecture and service oriented architecture (SOA) for proper delivery and implementation of the project

New technology adoption: Each year, there are new technologies and systems that require advanced understanding. Emerging areas, such as radio frequency identification and biometrics, will require new technical expertise and will push the envelope of knowledge within existing staffs.

New mandates: Issues such as homeland security continue to pressure government organizations to manage ever-changing requirements and systems. In many instances, these new mandates are not supported by increased funding to implement and maintain the new systems.

Maintenance of legacy systems: State and local governments must be able to respond effectively to the growing and divergent requirements of maintaining existing systems. Management of internal systems can often take away staff resources and limit the ability to focus on larger, more strategic issues.

Integrated Data and Information Management: Data and Information needs to flow across agency boundaries, as well as across tiers of government, but legacy systems and solutions, as well as turf issues, have made that level of integration difficult, if not impossible.

Enterprise Architecture: the establishment of enterprise architectures will provide the agility needed to integrate government functions and processes across agencies and tiers of government, SOA have made their inroad in mainstream applications as well as in a variety of vendor products enabling individual agencies to set interoperability standards,

Performance Metrics: Government agencies will need to intensify their efforts to quantitatively state objectives and measure the results of IT investments,

In all, 70 percent or more of today's IT expenses are spent to keep the box running. By decreasing the maintenance and delivery costs of the current environment, new business value will be created and a shift to at least a 45 percent spend on new capability will be needed to support the business. This means DO MORE WITH LESS.

References -

* Building a Robust Model, Article posted in the http://www.accenture.com

* Executing e-Government projects by Barry Ridgeway

* An SOA approach to e-governance improves delivery article published in economic times, http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Interviews/An_SOA_approach_to_egov_improves_delivery/articleshow/2234743.cms

* Citizen usage of e-gov services by Lin Whei Yee, Development and evaluation commission Taiwan