Authorized Authorized

166 WORLD DEVELOPMENT REPORT 2016
Box 3.5 The high failure rate of e-government projects
(continued)
of e-government projects. e Another points to the “dangerous
enthusiasms” of technological infatuation and faddism
in large IT projects. f Many studies also point to the rigidities
in government procurement rules, IT vendors’ lack of
understanding of government processes, and a failure to
understand the country context. g In the private sector, executives
can choose vendors based on personal experience
and jointly determined guidelines that are deliberately kept
vague to allow flexibility during implementation. Ministers
and senior officials, by contrast, are explicitly forbidden by
government rules to exercise this level of discretion and
instead must purchase on the basis of detailed specifications.
Surveys of technology professionals and executives
in both the public and private sectors underline user
involvement, leadership support, and a clear statement of
project requirements as critical factors for success. h
a. These estimates are based on the various reports issued by the Standish Group and Heeks 2008.
b. Lemieux 2015.
c. Standish Group 2014.
d. Budzier and Flyvbjerg 2012.
e. Heeks 2008.
f. Gauld and Goldfinch 2006.
g. Dunleavy and Carrera 2013; Fountain 2001; Heeks 2006; Bhatnagar 2009.
h. Standish Group 2014.
Figure 3.11 More complaints were resolved more
quickly in the Nairobi water utility after the
introduction of digital customer feedback
Days to resolve
120
100
80
60
40
20
0
June
2013
MajiVoice
introduced
December
2013
June
2014
Resolution time
Complaints submitted
Complaints resolved
0
December
2014
60,000
50,000
40,000
30,000
20,000
10,000
Source: World Bank 2015d. Data at http://bit.do/WDR2016-Fig3_11.
Note: Days to resolve represents the three-month trailing average; numbers of complaints are cumulative.
Number of cumulative complaints
reported problems, improvements in customer satisfaction,
and a reduction in reported corruption. 30 This
improved tracking is also triggering improvements in
human resource management. In EDE Este, the feedback
is systematically used to inform sanctions (such
as administrative procedures) and rewards (such as
salary increases) based on worker performance. In
the Nairobi utility, data from monthly management
reports are also used as a basis for performance incentives
for staff.
Property registrations, welfare payments, and
licensing services are also private goods that are easy
to monitor, and citizens have an incentive to give
feedback on them. With multiple agencies usually
delivering these services, citizen-initiated feedback is
more likely to have impact if the services are consolidated
in one-stop service centers that make it easier
for citizens to provide feedback and for governments
to integrate the feedback in administrative systems
and to monitor the responsiveness of agencies. Onestop
centers in Azerbaijan, in Brazil’s Minas Gerais
state, and in Moldova show how automating the
service delivery chain with citizen feedback can drive
service improvements. 31
By contrast, it is much more difficult for citizens
to determine the quality of education or curative
health care and to attribute poor outcomes to the precise
cause—whether, for example, their child’s poor
learning (to the extent that it is assessed through
standardized tests) or their poor health is due to poor
service providers, their own negligence, or environmental
factors. Beyond issues like provider absenteeism,
complaints are less likely to be actionable. And
citizens have fewer incentives to complain about the
weak provision of public goods like roads and municipal
services because of free-riding.