Creating an innovative and enabling environment through egovernance

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Creating an innovative and enabling environment
through e-governance

• Theodore P. Venter
• Potchefstroom
• 2002

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Mbekis first law of E-governance.....
What politicians shouldnt do!
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Reinventing Government
Because they dont measure results, bureaucratic
governments rarely achieve them . With so little
information about results, bureaucratic
governments reward their employees based on other
things their longevity, the size of budget and
staff they manage, their level of authority. So
their employees assiduously protect their jobs
and build their empires, pursuing larger budgets,
larger staffs, and more authority (Osborne and
Gaebler, 1992 Reinventing Government p.139)
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Roadmap

• Our present period in history is widely referred
  to as the Information Agein contrast to the
  Agricultural and Industrial Ages that preceded
  itbecause new capabilities for managing
  information are creating fundamental changes in
  the structure and functioning of society. How
  will you and the next administration respond to
  the challenges that these changes present?

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What is digital government?

• Complex change efforts intended to use new and
  emerging technologies to support a transformation
  in the operation and effectiveness of government
• AND
• Maintaining a primary focus on the business of
  government and not on the technologies

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Current types of digital government

• Integrated services
• Self-service government
• Deliver services electronically
• Tap into the private sector
• Create imaginative partnerships
• Put a new face on government reinvention
• Offer around-the-clock service
• Get more feedback
• Manage in all directions

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Digital government initiatives

• Citizen access to government information
• Facilitating compliance with rules
• Citizen access to personal benefits
• Procurement including bidding, purchasing and
  payment
• Government to government information and
  integration
• Citizen participation (Such as voting)
• Online Democracy

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E-government The next American Revolution

• When technology, imagination, and leadership
  converge, powerful results follow. From
  Copernicus and Galileo to Gutenberg, Edison, and
  beyond, history is filled with breakthroughs that
  forever changed the way we live and think. The
  Internet, created by a government research
  agency, is another revolutionary advance.
• It is profoundly changing the way our society
  communicates, works, and learns. It is touching
  lives in ways that would have seemed a utopian
  dream just a decade ago, enabling a sick patient
  in rural Kansas to have her X-rays read instantly
  by a radiologist a thousand miles away, or a U.S.
  Navy sailor in the Indian Ocean to check nightly
  on children back home.
• The dot.gov revolution is next.

E-government The next American Revolution. 2001
Council for Excellence in Government, Washington
D.C.
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IT as Catalyst

• Deployment of IT as a strategic enabler must
  include the base framework to

• Automate
• Informate
• Transformate

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Eight imperatives to Transformate . . .

• For the transition to electronic services
• Focus on how IT can reshape work and public
  sector strategies
• Use IT for strategic innovation, not simply
  tactical automation
• Utilize best practices in implementing IT
  initiatives
• Improve budgeting and financing for promising IT
  initiatives

Eight Imperatives for Leaders in a Networked
World, 2001, Harvard Policy Group, John F.
Kennedy School of Government
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Eight imperatives to Transformate

• For emerging challenges to governance
• Protect privacy and security
• Form IT-related partnerships to stimulate
  economic development
• Use IT to promote equal opportunity and healthy
  communities
• Prepare for digital democracy

Eight Imperatives for Leaders in a Networked
World, 2001, Harvard Policy Group, John F.
Kennedy School of Government
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What citizens want

• Crossing the digital divide
• Renewing car and drivers licenses as well as
  other licenses
• Voter registration
• General information and reservations
• Voting on the internet
• One-stop shopping
• Ordering and renewing birth, death and marriage
  certificates
• Doing taxes

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What should e-government be?

• Easy to use, connecting people with federal,
  state, regional, local, tribal, and international
  governments according to their preferences and
  needs.
• Available to everyone, at home, at work, in
  schools, in libraries and other convenient
  community locations.
• Private and secure, with the appropriate
  standards for privacy, security, and
  authenticationgenerating trustrequired for
  e-government to grow and serve the public.
• Innovative and results-oriented, emphasizing
  speed and harnessing the latest advances in
  technology.

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What should e-government be?

• Collaborative, with solutions developed
  collectively and openly among public, private,
  nonprofit, and research partners, on the basis of
  their experience and expertise.
• Cost-effective, through strategic investments
  that produce significant long-term efficiencies
  and savings.
• Transformational, harnessing technology through
  personal and organizational leadership to change
  the way government works, rather than merely
  automate existing practices.

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Seven Goals towards IT Transformation in the
Public Service

• Develop a personal network of information,
  advice, and support
• Use the technology in your personal routines
• Develop support in a networked worldthe advocacy
  role
• Identify how information technology can be used
  to add value the analytic role
• Build capacity as a learning organizationthe
  managerial role
• Pursue investments that scale up infrastructure,
  standards, and cross-boundary opportunities
• Reorganize work with fewer and/or remote and/or
  asynchronous hand-offs

Eight Imperatives for Leaders in a Networked
World, 2001, Harvard Policy Group, John F.
Kennedy School of Government
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e-Government Leadership

• Reality is catching up with rhetoric
• Government online is moving up the maturity
  curve, but still a long way to travel
• Portals are emerging as new e-Government single
  points of access for citizens and businesses
• The e-Government landscape will be unrecognisable
  in two to three years time

e-Government Leadership. Rhetoric vs Reality
Closing the Gap. 2001. Accenture
(www.accenture.com)
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E-government What is at stake?
Economic productivity
Service effectiveness and efficiency
Constitutional balance between individual
liberties and civil order
Privacy and security
Social justice
Equity and community
Governments legitimacy and accountability.
Participatory governance
Governance
Eight Imperatives for Leaders in a Networked
World, 2001, Harvard Policy Group, John F.
Kennedy School of Government
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Efficiency effectiveness
Performance of a system has two dimensions 1.
Efficiency (doing things right) and 2.
Effectiveness (doing the right things),
but These should be taken together because the
righter we do the wrong thing, the wronger we
become
Russell Ackoff 1999 Re-creating the
Corporation, p.10
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Systems Thinking

• Designing a solution
• Produce an order-of-magnitude improvement in the
  throughput of the system
• Create a shared understanding among critical
  actors
• Generate ownership and commitment
• Dissolve conflict and create win/win solutions
• Convert obstructions into opportunities!

(Gharajedaghi, 1999129)
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Frustrating transformation
Unfortunately, prevailing organizational
structures are designed to prevent change.
Dominant cultures, by default, keep reproducing
the same non-solutions all over again. This is
why the experience with corporate transformation
is fraught with frustration. The implicitness of
the organising assumptions, residing at the core
of the organisation's collective memory, is
over-powering. Accepted on faith, these
assumptions are transformed into unquestioned
practices that may obstruct the future. Unless
the content and implications of these implicit
cultural codes are made explicit and dismantled,
the nature of the beast will outlive the
temporary effects of the intervention, no matter
how well intended". (Gharajedaghi, 19999-10)
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Innovation

• Revolution is conceptual innovation. It comes
  from the mind and soul of a dreamer, a smart-ass
  and not from some bespectacled boffin or besuited
  planner!
• Can you break the hard, parched soil of ignorance
  and dogma?
• Can you escape the dead hand of precedent?
• Organisations fail to create the future not
  because they fail to predict it, but because they
  fail to imagine it.
• Seeing over the horizon, finding the
  unconventional, imagining the unimagined
  innovation comes from a new way of seeing and a
  new way of being.
• A fresh way of seeing is often more valuable than
  sheer brainpower
• Unlock your own imagination before you can unlock
  your organisations imagination

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The future is different

• The problem with the future is not that it is
  unknowable the problem is that it is different.
• Challenge the dogmas.
• Never stop asking why.
• Celebrate the stupid In organisations the
  premium placed on being right is so high, that
  there is virtually no room for speculation an
  imagination.
• Find the big story search for transcendent
  themes
• The real challenge is not long-term thinking, but
  unconventional thinking

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Start a new conversation
Analogue mind-set
Digital mind-set

• Present focus
• Certainties
• Real
• Knowledge confirmation
• Static language
• Set within a context
• Implicit assumptions
• Advocacy
• Authoritative
• Reach for closure
• Need for experts
• Get a decision

• Future focus
• Possibilities
• Play
• Knowledge development
• Dynamic language
• Creating a context
• Explicit assumptions
• Dialogue
• Hypothetical
• Open new conversations
• Need for generalists
• Keep learning

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Creating the future
Where a company is going is more important than
where it is coming from. As industry boundaries
get erased, corporate birth certificates won't
count for much.
The crucial strategic questions

• Does management have a clear and broadly shared
  understanding of how the organisation may be
  different ten years from now?
• Are its "headlights" shining further out than
  those of competitors?
• Is its points of view about the future clearly
  reflected in the short-term priorities?

Hamel Prahalad, 1996, Competing for the Future
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Creating the future

• How influential is the organisation in setting
  the new rules of the game within the industry/
  sector?
• Is it regularly defining new ways of doing
  business, building new capabilities and setting
  new standards of customer satisfaction?
• Is the organisation more a rule-maker than a
  rule-taker, within its field?
• Is it more intent on challenging the
  sector/industry status quo than protecting it?
• How often does management lift its gaze out of
  the rut and consider what's out there on the
  horizon?

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Key drivers of e-government
What beliefs and values guide us?
WHAT/WHY
PHILOSOPHIES
Who is our customers and how do we want
e-government to be perceived?
What do we offer what is our difference, and
why does it matter?
POSITIONING
PRODUCTS
E-governance
PEOPLE
PARTNERS
Who do we employ and how do we manage them?
PROCESSES
Who will help us reach our goals - and how do
we manage these relationships?
HOW
What do we do - and how do we do it?
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Cyber-city 2010
Transformate
Informate
Automate
Potchefstroom 2002
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Conceptual model for e-enablement
Voters Roll
Organization Chart
Contact management
Personnel system Employment history Disciplinary
record Pay history Training/Skills Medical Leave
Geographic Information System
Ward management
Financial system General ledger Budget
control Purchase/ Procurement Assets/
Stores Creditors Invoicing / Debtors Comprehensive
reports Banking/ Cash book
Citizen Relationships
Vehicle system Fleet management
Management information system
Forums bulletin Boards
Mobile working Cell phone linkage
Works order management (IDP)
Document management
Call centre