Abstract
This chapter presents findings of a study devoted to investigating the factors that influence successful implementation of e-Government at a local level in a developing country context. The study is based on the case study of Yogyakarta Local Government, Indonesia. Using qualitative methods of data gathering, the study developes a conceptual model with 27 items that were used for developing the questionnaire distributed into conducting in-depth interviews with 200 government officials in Yogyakarta, who adopted Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) as a platform for their daily work activities. The study also conducted desk research that explored many documents on ICT implementation in the public sector. The results reveal that the most significant factors that influence success in e-Government projects are corporate culture and e-Governance competency. The other factors, in order of importance were users’ willingness and competency in using ICTs, Information quality and human resources competency, and system quality, which was moderated by information quality and human resources competency.
TopIntroduction
ICTs influence the way government and citizens interact throughout the world. Even in developing countries, many governments have been trying hard to implement ICTs in order to meet the needs of citizens. In developing countries, the impact of ICT projects, especially in the public sector, is not commensurate with the amount of ICT infrastructure investment (Heeks, et al., 2002; Ferran, et al., 2005). Even, recent survey reports on e-Government readiness also place many developing countries in the lower ranks compared to developed countries (UNDESA, 2008; EIU, 2009).
A lot of approaches designed to improve implementation of ICT projects in the public sector in developing countries have been developed. But most of these approaches are based on the experiences of developed countries where the technology was developed. Heeks (2002) has revealed that there are gaps, related to infrastructure, information culture, procedure, management and human resource competence between developing and developed countries with regards to ICT project implementation. This has correspondingly negatively impacted on the level of penetration of e-Government in developing countries.
In developing countries, success in implementing an ICT project will not be achieved if the focus is on just making improvements to the technology (Ferran, et al., 2005; The Local Government of Yogyakarta, 2006).The approach developed by Mcconnel International (2001) shows that many factors including e-Leadership, human resources competence, business climate and ICT infrastructure influence the success of ICT implementation in developing countries. Similar findings in Indonesia, in 2007, show that although a lot of local governments have invested a lot to improve the ICT infrastructure, the quality of public services did not improve significantly (Kompas, 2007). Futhermore, other studies conducted in Indonesia emphasized that there were many factors, similar to the findings of the study conducted by Mcconnel International (2001), that influence the uptake and effective development of e-Government (Wijaya & Surendro, 2007). It is for this reason that this study sought to take a different approach in developing a framework that can be used to study factors that may influence successful implementation of ICT projects from the perspective of developing countries. The chapter attempts to address the question: Why does the implementation of e-Government in developing countries not improve the public services significantly?
Key Terms in this Chapter
Structural Equation Modelling (SEM): A new concept employed in factor analysis and multivariate analysis in situations where the impact of multi-dimensional factors on a concept is being investigated.
Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs): Used as an umbrella term for all the technologies and platforms used in the generation, storage, retrieval, access, manipulation and transmission of information in various scientific, technology, socio-economic, and political frameworks.
Jogja Cyber Province: Provincial model which transformed its services into citizen-centric service delivery to reach based on business process, information, and knowledge by using ICT as a development accelerator to reach better competitive advantage, convenient, independent, efficient, and effective.
E-Government: The use of ICTs in government business processes in a view to interact with the citizens and business in the realm of business opportunities exchange and for e-Inclusion in the government processes.