The what, why, when and how of E-gov

E-government— the term has been evolving for years and it is increasingly key to how agencies accomplish their mission. But there aren’t universal best practices. For example a successful program in a town in California is not being applied to a similar situation in Mexico.

The new book from Ramon Gil-Garcia explores the problem. The book is called Enacting Electronic Government Success. Gil-Garcia is an Associate Professor and the Director at the Data Center for Applied Research in Social Sciences at the Centro de Investigacion y Docencia Economicas in Mexico City.

I’ve always thought that e-government… gov 2.0… whatever we call it… ends up being a bit of a rorschach word: People all have their own definition of what it is.

But Gil Garcia says e-government is basically delivering IT services to the public sector.

“It’s not a new phenomenon that has been around for decades. But new emerging technologies cause this phenomenon to change and evolve all the time,” said Gil-Garcia.

Measure Success:“You can either look at the final results and find the main outcomes or and this is the preferred option you can look at the improvements to process, information efficiency and real time data,” said Gil-Garcia.

Does it help?: “The lesson is to not think of IT as an end but as a catalyst for change. You have to actually improve other parts of government in order for the IT improvements to be the most beneficial,” said Gil-Garcia.

Biggest Challenge:“IT changes take time and you need to be patient. You also need to look at the big picture. This is not a case of a single solution for an entire array of problems,” said Gil-Garcia.

Below find an excerpt on the Indiana Case Study Gil-Garcia examines in his book. (Click to enlarge)

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