Story tools

Print this article

Email to a friend

Your feedback

HR functions within the public sector play a pivotal role in delivering change associated with eGovernment argues Samia Melham.

It has been now widely acknowledged that egovernment projects are usually complex and lengthy undertaking. Contemporary research on the topic is now focusing on egovernment critical success factors, which include specific organizational, structural and human resource requirements in terms of leadership, culture, knowledge and skills The egovernment team composition and set of common skills is now deemed even more critical to project success than the regulatory landscape surrounding egov initiatives - as the latter is often a consequence of the leadership, and human resource core competencies in the egovernment policy and strategy team. Most readers of public sector reform literature will see a shift from discussions on systems and processes to that of team dynamic, incentives, and civil services reform, and creation of a customer oriented culture.  We will assume for the sake of this article that our readers are quite familiar with the notion of egovernment.

The above statement applies for most, to countries from the North. By today, most of these have absorbed technology and process simplifications started in the 80s and 90s. These nations have now the luxury of experience, and are now taking the time to reflect on the impact of their transformation efforts. Developing countries, especially the lower income countries, have still a long way to go in that process. While we can see some medium income economies such as Philippines, Tunisia, Chile and South Africa amongst others look back into impact of government computerization and agency modernization efforts, several of the lower income economies are still at the drawing board stage, elaborating on eGovernment strategies, sometimes awaiting for donors support  before starting the transformation effort.

At a time where off the shelf software applications exist for almost any agency application, and where the top 500 world wide IT companies already have solutions for customer relationship management, billing, payroll, pension management, taxes and customs, etc. we can see the research focus shift from technology – demystified nowadays - towards the human element and the transformation process itself, as governments start to treat citizens as customers. We can now see within developed countries’ government agencies that the human resource skills, competencies and incentives already aligned with the transformation process itself. This is mostly due to the fact that Human Resource functions have caught up with the reform efforts, and after having lagged for decades, HR is starting to lead, at least in several developed countries, the change management efforts. Which brings us to the specific question we are trying to solve in this article, where is HR when you need it in developing countries’ public sector reforms, specifically, in the midst of preparing eGovernment projects? The answer is not too obvious as HR role and mission itself is not as properly valued and leveraged as it should in the above contexts. My hypothesis is that educating, valuing and leveraging public sector HR, then providing HR a lead role in eGovernment transformation strategies would provide for a greater chance of success for these strategies’ implementation.  Developing countries’ governments and their consultants are starting to realize that basic assumption. It had not been the traditional way of approaching egovernment  in the last decade, at least not in the cases I am familiar with.

Recognition of digital signatures, validation of online transactions are critical legal steps in implementation and rollout of egovernment applications; but these are usually the result of egovernment advocates successfully pushing for legal reform with parliament members Similarly, availability of affordable infrastructure, let it be privately owned by the citizen or business (such as an individual  PC connected to the Internet via a broadband connection leased from an Internet Service provider) or provided as a service to a set of citizens (such as through a privately owned telecenter or PC users club, where citizens access the Internet and pay a fee based on the time used for connection) depends on the degree of liberalization, and on the number of  private operators in the market competing for the consumers' business.

It is no wonder, in developed countries with an established governance culture, competition in telecommunications provision, and a legal framework for institutional functionality of government agencies, that focusing on the CIO role, as leader of change for the public service providers has been a reason for the sustained success of egovernment services rollout. In fact, based on several impact studies, the public services are improving because of their availability on the Internet to all viewers. Heads of agencies are listening to what their customers (citizens) are saying through the generic "contact us" button - now a fixture on most government portals - and innovations and improvement ideas are collected for free from the grassroots. A similar argument is used in anti-corruption research, where public and media access to a specific project’s budget allocation and implementation status has proven to reduce the amount of graft related to that project, and to increase the chance for that project’s success and completion.

The model is inspired after the private sector model,  where the corporation's information management function (CIO) has become in the last decades as critical as the financial accounting function (CFO). In fact in most of the private sector 500 companies, the CIO reports to the board and has executive vice presidential functions. Amex is one of the latest fortune 500 companies who just institutionalized that structure, giving its CIO decision making powers almost equivalent to the corporation’s CEO.  Soft infrastructure (leadership, human resources, knowledge and culture of an information-based workplace) has been dominant in the North and has helped create the egovernment consumers segment. These are usually educated, middle class, busy citizens who attend to their taxpayers duties from home computers at night, paying taxes through e-filing portals, registering vehicles with their local government's department of motor vehicle databases, registering a child or a change of address electronically. The contrast with a developing country’s hard and soft infrastructure for egovernment is striking.

In developing countries, we see a link between the speed of adoption of Internet in doing daily business; and that of rollout of egovernment services. This link is simple to explain: government is the largest employer in many developing countries; so a government which computerizes its agencies and provides ICT training for its public servants is in fact helping create an information society nucleus, and is contributing to the expansion of  its information society pyramid. These same civil servants will also familiarize their spouses, children, extended family, communities, etc.  on computer usage. They will start using email and demanding electronic transactions from their own service providers (utilities, local government, schools, banks, etc.) and will play a vital role in spill-over effects. Several researches done by MIT, as well as usage statistics compiled by US-based research firms such as Gartner Group, IDC and Forrester have shown that the adoption of ICTs in daily life is an irreversible process: With time, most citizens use email more, not less than in their earlier stage of adoption. Usage and focus may change, but the fact is that in the US and Europe, people spend more time on Internet and email every year.

Similarly, government plays a critical role in liberalization and introducing competition in the telecommunications provision. These policies bring the cost of data telecommunications down; and allow more small and medium size enterprises (SMEs) and private citizens to have access to Internet from the SME location or from home. In fact, in countries where the government has taken an interventionist role in broadband provision (Korea, Chile, Sweden, etc.); the percentage of citizens using the internet for transacting with government and businesses is amongst the highest, looking at the latest World Bank Group, ITU and EU reports on ICT4D ranking the networked economies based on usage and adoption indexes.

Having carefully looked at the impact of each of the above factors on egovernment strategies’ success: Existence of a governance framework, high commitment and leadership,  liberalization of telecoms sector, introducing competition in service provision, establishing the legal framework, and transforming government and the civil servants’ culture; we will return to our main thought, which is the role of the Human Resource specialists in the success of the egovernment-induced transformation process.

Teamwork and well functioning communication and hand-over processes amongst the team is a necessity. Coordinating the team members with different backgrounds, frames of reference, and priorities is a complex management task and requires excellent project and people management skills for the interdisciplinary teams. The team also needs to understand the agency processes, objectives, clients and users and technology. The team's head of strategy and implementation also needs to see the forest from the tree; and position a particular project in the context of a broader system for the federal government or towards a local application for a municipality. Finally the system's first tests and pilots have to be tightly managed and supervised by a top notch team who would address technical, procedural, governance and political issues as they arise. Anybody who ever worked on such projects would understand the complexity of such tasks, especially in transformation efforts where the civil servant is not totally on board; due to insufficient communications,  fear of change, or vested interests in the political economy.

But perhaps foremost, the successful implementation of e-Government projects is dependent on the formation and application of governance, and the culture of governance, accountability and due process.

Thus the United States’ Office of Personnel Management (the US federal government’s HR agency) advocates multi-agency governance, participation and support; streamlines technical carriers based on agencies business lines, provides rotations and staff exchanges across the 50 states and has been investing intensively in staff training and reskilling  Similarly, the agency is rewarding staff for overcoming traditional organizational barriers, being innovative, and adding value to a single federal IT enterprise architecture.

Similarly, the UK’s philosophy on modern public service servants includes an HR system that empowers the civil servant and rewards these for outstanding customer services.  This implies, naturally, that the Human Resource systems are able to capture and retain these types of indicators; and that professionals with a track record in customer service are recruited and retained into the civil service system.

This would be something for donors and developing countries governments to look into, and translate into their ongoing egovernment strategies and resource allocations. Current HR capabilities should be assessed, critical requirements outlined, gap analysis made, and a realistic plan for transforming HR should be a priority, in parallel with the technical business process re-engineering and other procedural tasks. In this type of scenario, the eGovernment leaders and champions will have the Personnel folks on their side actively helping them achieve the transformation objectives, instead of opposing the effort, or simply passively witnessing it.

******************************************************************

Disclaimer: The findings, interpretations and conclusions expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Board of executive directors of the World Bank or the governments it represents. The World Bank does not guarantee the accuracy of the data included in this work"

For more information, or comments, email: smelhem@worldbank.org