icegov2012 proceedings

From Failure to Success: Using Design-Reality Gap
Analysis as a Mid-implementation Assessment Tool for
e-Government
Lemma Lessa
School of Information Sciences
Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia
(+251) 911683805
lemma.lessa@gmail.com
ABSTRACT
e-Government implementation failure in low-income countries is
reported to be as high as 85% where 35% being classified as total
failures - the project never started or was started but immediately
abandoned, and 50% are partial failures - major project goals are
not attained or there were undesirable outcomes [5]. Given this
rate of failure we wanted to investigate a project with partial
failure and draw lessons learned that can be replicated in other
projects. This paper looks at a Land Management Information
System (LMIS) in Ethiopia that facilitates citizen’s request for
land information. The project is credited for reducing the delay in
retrieving land information, simplifying the process, and reducing
the potential for corruption.
We use Design-Reality gap model [5] as a theoretical framework
to assess the project status. Primary data were collected from four
different groups involved in the project including agency
representatives from the Federal Government of Ethiopia, officials
from the capacity building office of Diredawa City
Administration, municipality representatives, and IT
professionals. Our analysis revealed the main contributors for the
success of the e-Government project and also show the
implementation gaps which need due attention in the future to
maximize the success of the project. Based on the implementation
experiences of this project, list of recommendations are provided
for successful execution of possible related initiatives in the
future.
Categories and Subject Descriptors
J. [Computer Applications] J.1 [Administrative Data Processing]
- Government; H.4 [Information systems Applications] H.4.m
[Miscellaneous]
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ICEGOV '12, October 22 - 25 2012, Albany, NY, USA
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1200-4/12/10...$15.00
Solomon Negash
Department of Information Systems
Michael J. Coles College of Business
Kennesaw State University, USA
770-420-4312
snegash@yahoo.com
210
Mesfin Belachew
Ministry of Communications and
Information Technology, Ethiopia
(+251) 911791462
mesfinbelachew@gmail.com
General Terms
Management, Measurement, Performance
Keywords
e-Government, implementation success, Design-Reality gap
model, ITPOSMO model, developing countries, low-income
countries
1. INTRODUCTION
It has been said a lot about the tremendous role of e-Government
to improve and more importantly transform the public sector
especially in developing countries context. Although there are
significant investments on e-Government initiatives in spite of
limited budget, there are only few success stories recorded
whereas majorities of those efforts end up in a failure. It is of the
interest of all respective governments if those e-Government
initiatives can be ideally successful as well as sustainable. In line
with this there is also emerging keen interest to evaluate the
contributions of such initiatives on the effectiveness and
efficiency of their public services as it is natural to evaluate
whether benefits out weight costs or not and as they ideally expect
very much positive impacts in this regard.
An e-Government project is said to be successful if most
stakeholders attain their major goals and do not experience
significant undesirable outcomes. Considerable amount of
research has been carried out on the use and positive role of ICTs
in low-income countries in areas such as health, public
administration, and education [9]. And some studies have pointed
out information systems project failure in low-income countries
([7]; [4]). Researchers have also argued that most of these projects
fail either totally or partially due to ‘design-actuality’ [4] or
‘design-reality’ gaps [5], long-term sustainability problems [1], or
lack of commitment on the part of political leadership and public
managers [2].
According to a study curried out by Heeks (in [4, p.2]) who has
done substantial research in the subject area, most
implementations of e-Government in low-income countries fail,
with 35% being classified as total failures (project was never
started or was started but immediately abandoned), and 50% are
partial failures (major goals are not attained and/or there were
undesirable outcomes). Similarly, in a study by [6], it was
estimated that US$3 trillion will be spent on information