This document proposes a simple procedure for implementing e-government projects in developing countries. The procedure involves 4 steps: 1) project preparation including understanding the project and preliminary considerations, 2) identifying case studies from other countries, 3) implementation, and 4) measuring the project maturity. Case studies from several countries are analyzed to identify issues and solutions to inform requirements. An agile approach is recommended. The procedure is intended to provide guidelines rather than a strict methodology given the variability across countries.

1. First International Seminar on eDemocracy and eGovernment. Quito - Ecuador
E-Government
Denys A. Flores, MSc.
National Polytechnic School,
Ecuador
A Simple Procedure for its Implementation inA Simple Procedure for its Implementation in
Developing CountriesDeveloping Countries

2. Topics
• E-Government
- Brief Concepts, Issues, Solutions
- Procedure
‣ Project Preparation
• Understand the Project
• Preliminary Considerations
• Research Approach
‣ Identify Case Studies
‣ Implementation
‣ Measure Maturity
• Conclusions
• References for Further Study

3. E-Government
• Deploying public information and services on the Internet for the
commodity of citizens as well as the general society
• But...
- Technical and communication issues arise
- E-Government is not a built-in solution
- Plug-and-Play misconception

4. E-Government - Issues
• Implementations are quite challenging in developing countries:
- Poor quality of IT infrastructure, political issues, resistance to
modernization
- Interaction between government and citizens are difficult to define
during the requirement specification
- Technical considerations and stakeholder commitment are
required to be enhanced

5. E-Government - Solutions
• Starting points, especially for developing countries must be
taken
• Simple steps to define, implement, and measure the results of an
e-government project
• Analyzing study cases in developing and developed countries,
prior implementation

6. E-Government – The Procedure
• This study proposes a simple procedure for the e-government
project life cycle
• The procedure was built considering:
- Best practices
- Theoretical approaches
- Study cases from developing and developed countries

7. E-Government – Procedure

8. 1. Project Preparation

9. 1.1 Understanding the Project
• An e-government project is more than publishing governmental information on the
Internet
• It is a communication media to provide accurate information, and fast access to public
services.
• Scope:
- Government to Citizens (G2C) - citizens can access to public services such as
social security, ID registration, e-vote
- Government to Businesses (G2B) supports businesses inside the country with
services like custom declarations, company registration, public sales, public auctions,
and corporate tax payment
- Government to Government (G2G) communicate the central government with
other governmental institutions. ,It also shares certain information with foreigners

10. 1.2 Preliminary Considerations
• Quality of the Internet service in the country
- High quality broad band connection – Throughput is expected to be high
- Internet penetrationInternet penetration - Deploy and protect Public Internet Access
- Cyber knowledge and cyber security awareness - ‘Lend me you key please and print your social security records’ - HighHigh
risk of cyber fraudrisk of cyber fraud
• Social and political realm
- Implementation approach depends on each country’s needs
- E-Government is not a built-in software package or pre-built software solutionE-Government is not a built-in software package or pre-built software solution
- Research groups or communities of practiceResearch groups or communities of practice comprised of business representatives, the government, and the academia
- The goal is foreseeing, manage and overcome design issues
• Provision of multi language content and high-availability services
- Government services accessed from outside
- Inter governmental collaboration networksInter governmental collaboration networks – UNASUR, MERCOSUR,ALBA
• Enable accessibility options for the disabled
- Public Sector is required to include the disabled as human resources (Organic Law for the Disabled in Ecuador)
- W3C –WorldWideWeb Consortium has proposed tools and approaches to overcome design barriers
- http://www.w3.org/standards/webdesign/accessibility

11. 1.3 Selecting the Research Approach
• Managing the definition of the requirements to clarify the
government’s needs and the technology
• Identify the interactions between society and the government
• Reflect the interactions as requirements of the project
• Explaining and understanding the social changes on the e-
government implementation
- Structuration Theory
- Actor-Network Theory.

12. 1.3 Selecting the Research Approach

13. 1.3 Structuration Theory
• A sociological approach to explain the duality between human
actions and social structures to build societies
• Abstract protocols of behaviour that changes continuously, through
language
- Structures of legitimationStructures of legitimation - e-government portal legitimate and
understandable for citizens
- Structures of dominationStructures of domination - identifying social hierarchies to define
a parent-child relationship to reflect the governmental structure
within the portal
- Structures of significationStructures of signification – defining how significant is the
implementation (cost and benefit)

14. 1.3 Actor-Network Theory
• Technology is defined according with the actors’ interestsTechnology is defined according with the actors’ interests, not backwards
• Define the relationshipDefine the relationship of people, organizations, and technological bodies to identify different
levels of power with common interests
• Apply the enrolment and persuasion conceptApply the enrolment and persuasion concept to create a new network of actors by persuading
them to become part of it. E.g., when designing a portal for a specific group of citizens like
youngsters or elderly
• Identify delegates -Identify delegates - software or hardware (IT infrastructure) that belong to a group of actors. E.g.,
Ministries, Secretariats, Departments
• Apply the irreversibility conceptApply the irreversibility concept; an e-government project cannot change the actors’ behaviour (the
process remain)
- If the process change, the portal must reflect the changes
- The portal has to be scalablescalable at back-end level and customization permissiblecustomization permissible at front-end level.

15. E-Government – Procedure

16. 2. Identify Case Studies
• It is better to find patterns to reinforce the requirement
specification
• Identify Issues and Solutions from experiences in Developing
and Developed Countries
• Propose non-functional requirements based on them

17. 2. Identify Case Studies
• The US had difficulties on defining informationdefining information
exchangeexchange within its G2G
- They created the National Information ExchangeNational Information Exchange
Model (NIEM)Model (NIEM)
• Ensuring high-quality serviceshigh-quality services with high availability on-
demand
- The availability of servicesavailability of services was included as a non-
functional requirement

18. 2. Identify Case Studies
• France had issues with standards, data protection
policies, and regional conventions
- They defined a national policy to standardize portalsnational policy to standardize portals
- They enforced a policy for data protection to avoidavoid
storing personal information on centralized databasesstoring personal information on centralized databases
- Additional centralized services to store sensitive data
were created (replicationreplication)
- France is regulated by the EU legislation - e-governmente-government
becomes a regional concernbecomes a regional concern

19. 2. Identify Case Studies
• The United Kingdom had migration issues, poor web
performance, and the lack of standardization
- All the web sites were migrated to a centralizedcentralized
directorydirectory (www.gov.uk)
- Interface tests were carried out to reduce usabilityusability
impactimpact
- A national standardizationnational standardization policy was set to improve
user experience

20. 2. Identify Case Studies
• Argentina and Chile used Web 2.0 StandardsWeb 2.0 Standards
• South Africa assessed the technology available in the countryassessed the technology available in the country
- Mobile phones and mobile portals
- HIV medicine distribution - iDART project
- Measuring the quality of potable water - Aquatest project.
- Used evolutive prototypes during the SDLC
• The Maldives had to improve poorimprove poor portal maintainabilityportal maintainability

21. 2. Identify Case Studies
Country
Non-Functional Requirements to Be Included in the Project
Requirement Observations Priority
United
States
NIEM Adoption
Availability Considerations
France
Design Standards
Data Protection Compliance
Regional Legislation Compliance
United
Kingdom
Realistic Goals
User Experience Tests
Single Entry Point for Services and Information
Argentina Web 2.0 Compliance
South Africa
Previous Assessment of the Technology
Available
Agile Software Methodology Adoption
Maldives Maintainability Considerations

22. E-Government – Procedure

23. 3. Implementation
• The most suitable technology solution for satisfying the e-
government requirements should be chosen
• The portal must be scalable at all levels:
- Purchasing preconfigured e-government applications may be
restrictive
• Consider using evolutive prototypes and agile development
methodologies

24. E-Government – Procedure

25. 4. Measuring Project Maturity
• 5 general stages of evolution (Faniran & Olaniyan, 2009):
- Emerging stageEmerging stage - a single web site with or without links to other
governmental portals. Static information.
- Enhanced stageEnhanced stage - important documents and useful public
information are public
- Interactive stageInteractive stage - dynamic web sites and web applications with
basic services like tax declaration.
- Transactional stageTransactional stage - G2C scheme with specific services fully
available.
- Connected stageConnected stage - G2B and G2G schemes with full online features

26. 4. Measuring Project Maturity
Levels
Proposed Maturity Model – Results-Oriented
Characteristics
Well-Designed a
The portal helps citizens to find information fastly.
The portal provides good disposition of links to on-line services, public
information, and other government’s web sites.
The portal complies with W3C specifications for accessibility options .
Transactional a The portal allows secure transactions in on-line services.
The portal protects the user’s privacy.
Consolidated a
One portal is implemented as single entry point for all the other
governmental services and information.
The Single-Sign-On feature is available to access the other web sites .
Matured
Service-Oriented Architecture for G2C and G2G schemes is implemented .
The portal is integrated with Business Intelligence solutions to measure the
quality of the services based on the citizen interaction and the service
satisfaction .
a. The characteristics of these levels were proposed by Sagheb-Tehrani (2007)

27. E-Government – Procedure

28. Conclusions
• A procedure has been featured not a methodology
• A set of simple guidelines; the implementation requirements are different on
each country
• An e-government portal is not just a governmental web site
• The portal must facilitate the access to governmental services and
information
• Design conventions must be set
• Internet access, socio-political issues in the country, and accessibility
constraints for disabled citizens must be considered

29. Conclusions
• Devise an implementation path through case-study analysis
• Agile software methodology is recommended to solve communication issues
with stakeholders using informal meetings and evolutive prototypes
• The non-functional requirement chart can be used as a template to consider
key points within the project
• A proper sample of countries should be considered
• The proposed maturity model shows technological evolution instead of the
traditional five stages

30. References
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