Centers of Excellence in e-Government:

The focus of this videoconference was on the elaboration of different models for the implementation of e-Government Excellence/Competence Centers.Kazakhstan aims to establish such a Center, which will be responsible for making best practices in e-government available for the implementation of the national e-Government program.

 

While there is no single best practice model of anExcellence Center, several models are interesting in different ways and deserve a special look. There appears to be a continuum of models in terms of the extent of public-private partnerships: from fully government owned and managed agencies to fully private owned and operated agencies, and many intermediate models. These models also differ in terms of main focus (e.g. training, research, analytics/M&E, communications/PR etc) and in terms of breadth of scope of functions (from only one to many). In this VC a closer look at models implemented in three countries: India, Sri Lanka, and Estonia was taken, supplemented by discussions related to the experiences of Russia andGhana.

 

The evolution of Centers of Excellence came about as an outcome of the key problems experienced in the implementation of e-government in Asia Pacific, such as:

• Many governments try and reinvent the wheel by recreating existing e-government solutions, rather than re-using or re-engineering them.
• There is insufficient institutionalization of e-Government initiatives, which are driven from the outside world, i.e. from vendors – rather than through innovative solutions from within the organization itself
• There are issues with finding sustainable models for e-government applications in different agencies
• Often, there are no service level agreements in place across agencies
• Many governments have tried to get things done quickly, often automating arcane manual processes, rather than undergoing necessary Business Process Re-engineering.
• A lot of governments do not have appropriate legislation in place to tackle privacy and security aspects related to e-government implementation.

Centers of Excellence, therefore, help to reduce the cost of ownership of e-government  solutions, by short-circuiting a lot of the work that would take a long time to accomplish. They make available the expertise and know-how of other countries that have initiated e-Government, learning from the pitfalls and successes from best practices around the world. In addition, they help to build capacity in government by building the knowledge base of people charged with driving e-government initiatives.

 

The key aim and functions of a Center of Excellence are:

• To have a strategic rather than operational focus
• To avoid actual implementation of initiatives, but instead, should enable government to do things
• To become a knowledge organization of global standard – government and other organizations domestically should look to this institution for knowledge on all e-government  matters
• To promote the cross-fertilization of ideas and best practices – in order to prevent reinvention of the wheel.

A critical factor in the success of such Centers is the involvement of the private sector – governments must, it was concluded, move away from trying to develop in-house complex e-government solutions, and use the expertise and systems available outside.

 

Models of Centers of Excellence:

 

Ghana

 

Estonia model (The e-Governance Academy) is a non-governmental, non-profit organisation, founded for the creation and transfer of knowledge concerning e-governance, e-democracy and the development of civil society. The e-Government Academy is a joint initiative of the Government of Estonia, the Open Society Institute (OSI) and the Regional Support Centre of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). Their main focus is on training. http://www.ega.ee/?id=26212

 

Sri Lanka (e-Government Centre of Excellence) model is  further along the public-private continuum and although seems to be 100% owned by government, it was created and is operated via PPP between the ICTA and Sri Lanka Institute of Development Administration (SLIDA)  from government and Oracle Corporation, SUN Microsystems, Cisco and Millennium Information Technologies (MIT) from the private sector. The Center will aim to provide capacity building for CIOs, raise general awareness on e-governance and showcase e-governance best practice, case studies and solutions relevant to Sri Lanka.  http://www.egovcoe.gov.lk

 

India (National Institute for Smart Government (NISG) model is even further along the public-private continuum being majority private sector owned. NISG has been incorporated as a not-for-profit Company under Section 25 of the Companies Act, at Hyderabad. Major share (51%) of NISG is held by the private sector currently NASSCOM and the rest by the Government of India and Government of Andhra Pradesh. They focus on Architecture & Standards,  Consultancy Services and Training. http://www.nisg.org/vision.htm

 

Russia (e-Government Competence Center) offers the most extreme model on the continuum from public to private. The e-Government Competence Center is an independent think tank which was originally funded by American Chamber of Commerce (esp. Russian branches of US IT majors) and now seems to be sailing in the open seas. There is no government ownership or participation in this Center. They focus on e-gov analytics/research. Russian experience is interesting however since they had been discussing the idea of a comprehensive regional network of e-government competence centers for several years and then decided not to move forward with it.

 

There are also many other examples of e-government excellence/competence centers, mostly owned and operated by specific vendor (e.g., IBM, Oracle, Sun, Cisco etc) or academic institution, but they are not as relevant in this case.

 

Speakers:

 

• J. Satyanarayana, CEO, the National Institute for Smart Governance, India
• Vickum Senanayake, Manager,  e-Government Centre of Excellence, Sri Lanka
• Ivar Tallo, Director, e-Governance Academy, Estonia

Discussants:

·       Dorothy Gordon, Director General, Kofi Annan Centre of Excellence in ICT, Ghana

·       Irina Zadirako, Ministry of Economy and Trade and Vladimir Drozzhinov, President, e-Government Competence Center, Russia

 

VC Coordinator/Moderator: Oleg Petrov, E-Government Practice, World Bank

 

Chair:  Deepak Bhatia, Manager,  E-Government Practice, World Bank

 

For more information and to access the videoclip and detailed summary, please email at opetrov@worldbank.org or contact Oleg Petrov at 202-4738861