eGovernment for Development

Techniques

Assessing Your Own Project

To assess your own e-government project's success or failure, you should ideally wait at least one year after implementation, to ensure the main impacts have truly emerged.

Then, follow these steps.

• Step 1: Identify the Stakeholders
• Step 2: Identify Each Stakeholder's Goals for the eGovernment Project
• Step 3: Measure the Achievement of Each Goal
• Step 4: Identify Other Impacts
• Step 5: Classify the Project Outcome

Step 1: Identify the Stakeholders

Who are the main individuals and groups affected by the e-government application? Use the following stakeholder checklist if necessary:

• Project manager/team : those who will analyse, design and build the e-government system.
• Supplier(s) : those who will supply the technology and other resources required by the e-government system.
• Operators : those who will be carrying out the activities/processes that make the e-government system work.
• Clients : primary clients are on the immediate receiving end of what the e-government system does or outputs; there may also be secondary clients (possibly outside the organisation) who will be affected indirectly by the system since they are served by the primary clients.
• Champion(s) : the person (or group) who drives the project on and seeks to justify its implementation.
• Sponsor(s) : the person (or group) who pays for the expense and effort required to develop the new e-government system.
• Owner : the manager of the organisation or department that will own and use the system, who is ultimately responsible for the system.
• Other stakeholders : who have a significant influence on the project or on whom the project will have a significant influence.

You don't need as many stakeholders as this: the top four or so will probably do.

Step 2: Identify Each Stakeholder's Goals for the eGovernment Project

For each stakeholder (group or individual) in turn, find out what they wanted the e-government project to achieve. This may be written down, e.g. in project documents. Or it may require conversations/interviews with stakeholders. As with stakeholders, don't go overboard with numbers of goals - ten or a dozen is probably more than enough - but they should represent the range of different stakeholders.

Step 3: Measure the Achievement of Each Goal

For each goal in turn, gather evidence to find out whether or not it has been achieved. Using this evidence, you can then categorise the goals: e.g. wholly achieved; partly achieved; not achieved. This step is easy to state, much harder to do. You have to ask yourself "How can I really show whether or not this goal has been achieved?". This will often mean gathering in-depth evidence that is both quantitative and qualitative.

Step 4: Identify Other Impacts

Have there been any other impacts associated with the e-government project that were not anticipated or not covered by the goals? If so, have these impacts been desirable or undesirable for the various stakeholder groups? Again, this will require work: at the very least, talking to each stakeholder about project impacts.

Step 5: Classify the Project Outcome

You can use either one of the following classifications:

• Total failure : the initiative was never implemented or was implemented but immediately abandoned.
• Partial failure : major goals for the initiative were not attained and/or there were significant undesirable outcomes.
• Success : most stakeholder groups attained their major goals and did not experience significant undesirable outcomes.

or:

• Total failure : the initiative was never implemented or was implemented but immediately abandoned.
• Mainly unsuccessful : some goals were attained but most stakeholder groups did not attain their major goals and/or experienced significant undesirable outcomes.
• Partial success/partial failure : some major goals for the initiative were attained but some were not and/or there were some significant undesirable outcomes
• Mainly successful : most stakeholder groups attained their major goals and did not experience significant undesirable outcomes.
• Total success : all stakeholder groups attained their major goals and did not experience significant undesirable outcomes.

Confused? Follow this link for some basic definitions of e-government success and failure.