A few months before launching this book, we learned with great sorrow about the death of the late Senator Mohamed Titna Alaoui, a man who played an important role in the success of the eFez Project. We believe that without his total support and dedication, this project would never have had the same impact nor the same fate as it has now. In order to express a late thank you to Senator Titna Alaoui and to pay him the tribute he well deserves as a major contributor to the success of the eFez Project, we decided to conclude this book with his own words. In fact, a few months before the death of Titna Alaoui, the journalist Rachid Jankari met him to discuss the secrets or “magic recipe” of the eFez Project. Rachid has always been interested in our project which he has amply covered in many articles in the national and international press. When he learnt that we were writing this book, three years after the deployment of the system and the outcomes and the changes that followed, he proposed to enhance its contents with a testimony of Titna Alaoui. We agreed on his proposal with the intention to include some highlights about Titna Alaoui throughout the book to support our proposals and ideas.

A few months later, Rachid provided us with the results of his work with Senator Titna Alaoui and, indeed, it is very interesting.

Introduction

In relation to the assessment of e-government projects in developing countries. Heeks (2003) estimates that:

1. • “35 percent of projects are total failures: the system was never implemented or was implemented but immediately abandoned;

2. • 50 percent are partial failures: the major goals of the system were not attained and/or there were significant undesirable outcomes; and

3. • 15 percent are successes: most stakeholder groups attained their major goals and did not experience significant undesirable outcomes.”

More generally, considering software development projects, Sommerville (2006) estimates that:

1. • Software bugs, or errors, are so prevalent and detrimental that they cost the US economy an estimated $59.5 billion annually, or about 0.6 percent of America's GDP;

2. • 23 percent of all projects undertaken by internal information system organizations are cancelled before their completion;

3. • 49 percent of projects cost 189 percent of their original estimates;

4. • Only 28 percent of projects are completed on time and within budget; and

5. • Completed projects have only 42 percent of the originally proposed specifications or functions.

The UN Report (2003), E-Government at the Crossroads, confirms that despite very limited data on e-government failures, “some analysts estimate the rate of failure of e-government projects in countries with developing economies to be very high, at around 60—80 percent, with the higher rate of failure characteristic of Africa.”

Introduction

In the preceding chapter, we showed that ICT4D/e-government projects are transformation processes that should be managed as such to favor a successful transformation of the institutions in which they are implemented. We emphasized the importance of launching a Transformation Pilot Process (TPP) to:

1. • Involve all stakeholders;

2. • Help decision makers identify clear goals and create favorable conditions for the project;

3. • Create a Pilot Team and assign its members clear responsibilities and adequate resources;

4. • Involve champions at all levels of the institution to support the transformation process;

5. • Find a solution and implement it in a part of the institution which is welcoming to the transformation (the pilot cell); and

6. • Develop initial methodological guidelines in order to prepare the institution's transformation at a larger scale.

If the TPP has been successful and well received by all stakeholders, the institution might want to spread the transformation to the whole institution. This is often called the “scaling-up” of the solution. Spreading the transformation to the whole institution can be thought of as a project in itself (or even a series of projects) that must also be carefully managed.

In developing countries, the additional important challenge that arises is to make the transformation sustainable (Kendall 2010). Indeed, a large number of ICT4D projects are developed with external help and support (international funds, external teams such as the External Advisory Team (EAT) and External Development Team (EDT)) that will not be available after the project's completion.

Introduction

There has been an evolution in the concept of good governance. First appearing in the twentieth century, the notion of good governance began in the discussions of business analysts and economists who were highlighting the structures and strategies of corporate management which succeed in increasing productivity and profits (IDRC 2005).

In the late 1980s, scientists in the field of social and economic development also began to consider the notion of good governance, focusing on the role of government. The World Bank presented good governance as a requirement, at a national level, to enable and facilitate the success of economic development reform (Haldenwang 2004). The UNDP followed, embracing the notion by the 1990s and further extending the idea that good governance would enable countries to achieve human development.

The ascendancy of good governance has occurred through long-term public administration reform. Toffler, cited in Denthardt and Grubbs (2003), proposed that there is a specific chronological order to the evolution of “human organizations,” and that this order includes three waves of organizations:

1. • “First-wave preindustrial organizations,” built to serve the preindustrial agricultural societies in their harvesting activities;

2. • “Second-wave industrial organizations” which developed centralized, hierarchical, bureaucratic mechanisms operating with uniformity principles in order to serve the growing urban populations emerging as a result of the industrial revolution;

3. • And finally “third-wave decentralized organizations” which had matured from bureaucracy to more flexible structures to address the needs of postindustrial societies.

Introduction

In Chapter 6, we proposed a generic project roadmap based on our experience in managing a number of ICT4D projects in different situations and countries. The eFez Project has been an important source of inspiration for us in the creation of this generic roadmap. In this chapter, we describe the instantiation of this roadmap specific to the case of the eFez Project and other related projects in Morocco. This specific roadmap that we call the “eFez Approach” was created and refined during the eFez Project. Our goal is to share the experience that we gained while using this roadmap to develop and successfully deploy e-government systems at a municipal level.

The creation of the generic roadmap (presented in Chapter 6) is chronologically subsequent to the eFez Project, since the conceptualization effort that it required was built on the course of events, knowledge, successes and set-backs of the eFez Project along with a number of other similar projects including the LOGIN Africa Project (Waema & Adera 2011). While the global roadmap was inspired by the eFez Approach, it is very different, with an enhanced structure, content and dynamics. In this chapter, we chose to present the eFez Approach in a narrative manner to enable the reader to feel as close as possible to the way in which things actually occurred in the eFez Project.

Introduction

In this chapter, we present some important issues related to the design and implementation of e-government systems from the viewpoints of both nontechnological decision makers and the public administration at once. Key technology enablers for e-government systems such as hardware, base software, databases, application servers, heterogeneous network interconnections and security enablers will be discussed in such a way as to help nontechnologists to understand the role of each component in the e-government system. Whenever possible, the advantages and risks pertaining to a particular technology or choice are highlighted.

The topics covered hereafter extend beyond technology enablers to encompass key issues that arise before, during and after the rollout of e-government systems, such as project management and IT service operations, in order to provide a complete view of the “ecosystem” that surrounds the successful deployment of e-government systems. We want to show that the use of e-government technology enablers introduces specific constraints and risks that must be managed in an e-government project.

Not only does the use of these technologies require proper integration and administration to ensure efficient processing, availability, scalability and performance, but it also requires stringent security measures such as personal data protection, strong access control (including citizen identification, authentication and authorization), identity management, confidentiality, integrity, compliance with legal aspects and compliance with government technology standards, guidelines and procedures.

One of the goals of this book is to provide the reader with a better understanding of the many diverse and related factors that influence the possible success or failure of an ICT4D/e-government project. Our six years' experience in developing such systems for local government institutions in Morocco enabled us to draw a parallel between the observations and recommendations provided by different authors about the development of e-government programs at a national level and what we observed when we developed and deployed ICT4D/e-government systems at a local governance level. There are strong similarities between the two types of situation that had to be managed and actions that had to be taken (see Chapter 5).

In practice, decision makers, managers of governmental institutions and project managers of ICT4D/e-government projects need to consider numerous related issues and deal with such a large variety of challenges that they may feel overwhelmed. In order to help them grasp “the big picture,” we offer in this appendix a detailed view of what we consider to be the main elements that influence the transformation affecting a governmental institution when it adopts and integrates new business policies and practices based on ICT4D/e-government techniques and good governance principles.

Indeed, the institution evolves in a complex context related to its organizational, economic, political, cultural, social, technological, legal and local environments. When this context changes, the institution may no longer be able to deal with it adequately, especially if it does not master ICT or associated business practices.

Introduction

As we have previously stated in Chapter 1, the contrast between DC and D/LDC in terms of ICT exploitation and proliferation has led to a worrying phenomenon that is known as the digital divide. This phenomenon refers to the gap between countries with effective access to digital and information technology and those with very limited or no access at all. It includes the imbalances in physical access to technology as well as in the resources and skills needed to effectively participate in a digital society. From this perspective, technology has, undoubtedly, two contradictory facets: a “positive” facet enabling the growth of the economy, business and public administration, and a “negative” facet consolidating the digital divide, the isolation of regions/populations and the degradation of living conditions. The digital divide is closely related to the knowledge divide since the lack of access to technology creates a challenge to obtaining useful information and knowledge.

One consequence of these two contradictory facets of technology is that decision makers and politicians in D/LDC countries are left with only two choices: to accept and use technology as an enabler of development and prosperity, or to ignore it and run into the risks associated with the digital divide. Indeed, not making a choice (or trying to keep to the status quo!) is a deliberate action that is equivalent to ignoring technology.

A Journey through the Evolution of ICT

Throughout time, humans have invented ingenious calculating machines.