eGovernment for Development - Case Summaries of Success and Failure in eGovernment Projects in Developing/Transitional Countries

In the Overview section:

Success and Failure Rates of eGovernment in Developing/Transitional Countries: Individual Case Summaries

Location & Year	Type of eGov System	Success or Failure	Description of Outcome
Caribbean 2002	Operational support system - automated radio play and billing system; state radio station	Success	System assists with selection and playing of commercials and music; creates automated logs and billing for commercials; and generates statistical reports as intended; system is incompatible with subsequently-installed government-wide accounting system, required duplicate billing.
Caribbean 2002	Decision support system - budget preparation system, Ministry of Finance	Partial Failure	Has enabled budget to be delivered in a timely manner and is seen as a success by developers and politicians; but seen as inadequate by users: updating of figures is not automated and, after three years of development work, cash management component is still unused because it fails to meet local needs; system also over-ran budget by 50%/US$10m.
Caribbean 2002	Basic data system - handling customs data; Customs department	Success	Cut time for customs processing, reduced cost, increased revenue and generates trade statistics used in policy formulation; clerical staff who were redeployed or lost overtime because of the system are unhappy, as are staff who lost opportunities for private income gain.
Caribbean 2002	Management information system - student performance reporting system; state high school	Partial Failure	IT component of system works as intended, so those who commissioned the system see it as successful, but system has failed to address a key purpose of getting more students and parents to be aware of, and take action on, their performance: c.half of students are unaware of their performance rating, especially for gradings on effort and behaviour.
Caribbean 2002	Basic data system - planning application tracking system; Planning Department	Partial Failure	System has reduced time to retrieve information to answer queries from over half-an-hour to c.5 minutes, allows equitable distribution of staff workloads, and reports on employee performance; but goal was to get information in roughly one minute, and some file data is not regularly updated, causing important inaccuracies in the system.
Caribbean 2002	Functional information system - health accounting and budget; Ministry of Health	Partial Failure	Accounts payable component works, accounts receivable component does not work fully; middle-level staff do get most information they need; senior managers feel it has failed to meet their reporting and statistical needs; problems have arisen partly due to use of foreign consultant who, because of short time frame, was unable to meet local staff to get specification of needs.
Caribbean 2002	Document management system - file tracking system; Registry, Ministry of Finance	Partial Failure	Technically does all it should: holds scanned, indexed images of all relevant documentation; but intended for use by all MoF officers yet used by only a tiny handful outside the Registry itself: great majority of staff send all requests via Registry. IS developers see system as a success and blame Ministry staff for problems.
Caribbean 2002	Management information system - human resource management; Ministry of Planning	Partial Failure	Does not provide all of the services it was supposed to; for example, it produces salary schedules but not job classification schedules or calculations of leave entitlement; also suffers from technical problems.
Caribbean 2002	Decision support system - debt management system; Ministry of Finance	Partial Failure	Allows accurate projections for debt servicing and evaluation of reserves and borrowings; but two of five main reports have to be undertaken manually, and cannot deal with fact that debt is issued in foreign currency.
Caribbean 2002	Basic data system - online national register; Registrars Department	Total Failure	System is unused except by a very small percentage of potential clients. Has failed to improve response times or free up staff time.
Caribbean 2002	Management information system - expenditure monitoring and control; Ministry of Finance	Partial Failure	Budget/audit reports are produced on time and used by managers; but format of reports is more limited than in manual system; some key elements of budget are 'off-system' and have to be incorporated manually; system has been very high cost; there are delays in producing reports.
Caribbean 2002	Decision support system - budget preparation system, Ministry of Finance	Partial Failure	Has reduced time for calculations, and produces some useful information for budget decisions; is claimed as a success by vendor and politicians. But, time spent generating information has actually increased over manual system, partly due to poor interface design, partly due to lack of staff training.
Caribbean 2001	Basic data system - planning application tracking system, Planning Department	Success	Tracks applications as required, though some users still sceptical of its utility.
Central America 2001	Functional information system - budgeting and accounting; municipal government	Partial Failure	System works at an operational level, recording budget lines and expenditure and producing reports, but has been of little value in supporting decision making because staff lack budgeting skills and because budgeting is a heavily-politicised, centrally-controlled process.
Central America 2000	Management information system - community investment project management system, Central Fund Organisation	Success	Judged successful by donor, by central government, and by most communities. Has enabled improved targeting of poor communities; rapid reorientation in times of national emergency; and ongoing fund monitoring. But, has failed to achieve additional objectives of improved inter-ministerial coordination, or of community involvement.
Central Asia 2002	Functional information system - health data; Department of Epidemiology	Success	System provides epidemiological data in a timely manner, allowing health decisions about programmes to combat disease, and about allocation of other health resources.
East Africa 2000	Management information system - debt management; Ministry of Finance	Success	In use for more than five years, and is able to support automated debt transaction recording and reporting to both public sector and external donor organisations; has improved the rationality and quality of decision making.
East Africa 2002	Decision support system - budget; Ministry of Finance	Partial Failure	System produces data to support the budget process in a timely manner; however, system was only introduced three years after initial deadlines and at far higher cost than expected, with continuing reliance on external consultants and significant quantities of unused, obsolete hardware; it has not been able to instil rational decision-making, as intended, with budgeting still a highly politicised process (following kickbacks to civil servants who awarded the system's own contract).
East Africa 2002	Decision support system - child-related data; government parastatal	Partial Failure	System has been able to provide data on certain aspects of child welfare; but data set is significantly incomplete, inaccurate and untimely; some government departments refuse to share data; government officials vet and amend information releases if they are politically sensitive.
East Africa 2002	Decision support system - IS for managing aid budget; Ministry of Finance	Partial Failure	Does provide information that is used for budget decisions, investment plans, and identification of project funding gaps; but data from donors can be late, incomplete and insufficiently detailed so impact on decision-making is limited; some donors and decision makers lack easy access to system; frequent programming needed to produce reports.
East Africa 2002	Project management information system - Ministry of Environment	Partial Failure	Usage of information in decision making, but poor quality of data from some districts.
East Africa 2002	Decision support system - natural resource strategic planning; Ministry of Natural Resources	Total Failure	System captures and stores data from local sources, but information outputs do not form an input to strategic decisions, which are made on the basis of informal information, external pressures, and political considerations.
East Asia 2002	Functional information system - human resource management; Ministry of Finance	Partial Failure	Payroll component of the HR information system works as intended; other components (relating to recruitment, selection, appraisal, staff development) either do not work at all, or contain inaccurate and incomplete data and/or are not used to support HR decision making.
East Asia 2002	Decision support system - regulatory control; Office of Regulation	Total Failure	Computerised system is too limited in capacity and too inflexible to handle regulatory data and documents effectively, and has therefore been bypassed by continuing use of manual system.
East Asia 2001	Intranet - Law Department	Partial Failure	Saves time and money in accessing online data. But, some online data is irrelevant to user needs, and some users needs are not met by online data.
East Asia 2002	Decision support system - city twinning projects; municipal government	Total Failure	Computerised system has been created, but is unused - it has inaccurate, incomplete data, and decision making is made entirely without recourse to the computerised system.
Eastern Europe 2001	Intranet - Department of Statistics	Partial Failure	Email facility is widely used; online phone directory is used by a few staff; other parts of the internal Web site are not used: they are poorly designed, there are awareness, skill and bandwidth constraints to access, and they lack up-to-date data.
Eastern Europe 2002	Basic data system - refugee camp data; government committee	Success	Produces the required data on refugee numbers, movements and shelter requirements, to help support committee understanding.
Eastern Europe 2002	Management information system - aid funds management; Ministry of Trade and Cooperation	Partial Failure	System - designed by foreign consultants - produces aid fund information for managers, but information is only used to a limited extent, with decision making reliant more on informal information and political factors.
Eastern Europe 2001	Management information system - computerised property register, Housing Ministry	Partial Failure	Database works and holds data as required. Is claimed by political authorities as a tangible sign of commitment to housing issues; is marketed as a success by the vendor. But, data is inaccurate and incomplete; fails to produce management reports of value; has failed to speed up rehousing process.
South America 2002	Decision support system - for ministerial council decisions; Office of the President	Partial Failure	Information provided by the system is used to support the decision-making agenda, but cannot support the entire decision process as intended: much information used by ministers is provided informally; ministers circumvent the entire IS on issues of particular political sensitivity.
South-East Asia 2002	Management information system - budget, Provincial Department of Health	Partial Failure	Data is recorded on the system and used; but a significant number of financial processes and reports still have to be undertaken manually because system cannot do this.
South-East Asia 2002	Management information system - management of schools, Ministry of Education	Partial Failure	Is used for some policy and administrative decisions; but data is inaccurate, incomplete and often delayed.
Southern Africa 2000	Functional information system - inventory; Government Computer Centre	Partial Failure	System provides stock level details on network-related parts; but no other sections in the Computer Centre use the system and no other stocks are listed in the system, and the system is only used at the operational not the management level; during development there was a lack of end-user involvement and a lack of senior management ownership causing system design to be captured by the Network Section.
Southern Africa 2000	Management information system - budget; Ministry of Finance	Total Failure	System data is inaccurate and incomplete, based on outdated technology with high cost given use of foreign contractor that suffered continuous staff turnover; after three years of development, system did not get beyond the pilot stage.
Southern Africa 2001	Functional information system - human resource management; Department of Public Administration	Partial Failure	System has produced some information that is fed into decision-making processes; however, staff in the recruitment section did not support the system and do not supply it with appropriate data; similarly, the individual ministries are supposed to use the system, but they do not.
Southern Africa 2001	Management information system - Ministry of Trade and Industry	Partial Failure	Some IT lying idle; data is stored on the system but incomplete, unstructured, inconsistent and duplicated. Has automated some clerical functions, but fails to effectively support management planning and control.
Southern Africa 2000	Management information system - land licensing system, City Council	Total Failure	System is unused, largely because it conflicts with pre-existing corrupt system. Has helped to develop computer literacy among staff.
Southern Africa 2002	Management information system - health data; Ministry of Health	Partial Failure	Health data is handled by the system, and reports are produced, but data output is often not timely and is partly inaccurate, leading to decisions being made without MIS data; decisions often ignore MIS data (e.g. distribution of drugs in an area of low disease prevalence that is home to a powerful politician); MIS duplicates some other data systems.
Southern Africa 2002	Decision support system - project budget and planning; Ministry of Planning	Partial Failure	System does record project data as made available and is used at times; but suffers from intermittent technical breakdown, is ignored by some planning staff who find it does not match their planning approach, is poorly used by other planners who lack necessary analytical skills to use system outputs, and is ignored by some decision makers who make project decisions on political rather than rational grounds.
Southern Africa 2002	Management information system - monitoring departmental performance; Government Performance Unit	Partial Failure	System does record some performance details, but data is incomplete and not timely, and does not interface with systems in the decision makers' offices.
West Africa 2001	Database management system - drug information; health parastatal	Partial Failure	Users to make use of database and some give positive feedback on its content; but some of the data is of poor quality (including listing of drugs subsequently found to contain banned ingredients), much of the data is never used, some data is entered too late to affect relevant decisions, and some intended users lack the skills to use the system.