icegov2012 proceedings

4.1.1 Goals for the e-government initiative. The results of the
questionnaire show that establishing multiple goals for the
initiative creates confusion. Few but well-defined and clear set of
objectives generates certainty and perspective about the adoption
of the initiative in the organization. Figure 1 presents an opinion
from respondents over the perceived goals of the PbR-SED
initiative. Only 35.2% of respondents believed that the main
purpose of the PbR-SED is to develop administrative capacity.
32.8% of respondents believe that the goal of the initiative is to
comply with a legal mandate from the Executive or the ministry
of finance. Only 21.9% of participants agree that the goal of the
PbR-SED is to provide a specific solution for a problem in
government through the use and analysis of performance
information. Approximately 10% of opinions present "other"
goals such as improving the planning, assessment, and budgeting
operations of public spending. The lesson is that the establishment
of multiple objectives for e-government creates confusion among
the participants on the terms, scope and purpose of the initiative in
their organization.
Figure 1. Goals of the initiative (210 responses)
4.1.2 Inter-disciplinary collaboration. Results from the
questionnaire show the presence of collaboration between actors
from different staffs than just information technology. Figure 2
shows that the 22.4% of respondents involved in the adoption of
the PbR-SED belong to budget staffs. However, the vast majority
of participants come from different professional areas or staffs
such as: planning (27.4%), management of public programs
(18.4%), information systems (13.87%), and internal controls and
audits (8.4%). The results of the questionnaire also identify staff
from "other" areas such as evaluation, public investment, public
works management, and other administrative officers. These
results present evidence of the importance of the inter-disciplinary
nature of collaboration among the different staffs involved in the
adoption of the PbR-SED.
This interdisciplinary collaboration also varies along the process
of adoption. Table 2 shows different types of staffs collaborating
across the stages of adoption of the e-government initiative. For
example, staff members of planning areas have a very active role
in all stages of adoption, followed by project leaders and budget &
finance staff members. Members from information systems and
management of programs staffs engage more actively at the stages
of project planning, project design, development of information
systems, and implementation. The results also identified members
from "other" staffs, such as training, evaluation, internal controls,
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and monitoring. On average, participants of the PbR-SED
initiative spent 34.4% of their weekly time for the adoption of the
PbR-SED. This is an important finding due to the need of
recognition that initiatives like the PbR-SED consume
considerable amounts of time and effort during the different
phases of the project.
Figure 2. Staffs involved in the initiative (206 responses)
Table 2. Number of participants by type of staff and stage of
adoption (204 responses)
4.1.3 Inter-organizational collaboration. The literature has
been predominantly aimed at studying the role of the legislative
branch members and the executive office in e-government success
[18,19,34,39,40]. Figure 3 shows that the first level of
collaboration was given at the interior of the organizations rather
than at the exterior. The first manifestation of collaboration of the
PbR-SED initiative occurs across different staffs within the
organization (inter-disciplinary collaboration). The second layer
of collaboration happens between various organizations from
federal, state or local levels of government (inter-organizational
collaboration). After the internal level of collaboration, the
collaboration between organizations and control agencies was
critical. Our respondents also identified other levels of
collaboration with different levels of government, private
organizations, and international organizations such as the World
Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the
Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLAC), the Latin