Development of E-Government Applications

Conclusions

This chapter has addressed practical issues concerning the development of applications for government. We formulated our recommendations in four groups: 1) maturation of the organization, 2) technology and frameworks for government IT projects, 3) organization of software development projects, and 4) interaction with purveyors and consultants. We stressed here the interaction with the purveyors and consultants although this is not suggesting that the three other set of recommendations are less important. Also, the obsession to perform contract regulation is stressed as a key area for change.

The two perspectives - or scenarios - can take future e-government applications in very different directions. The supply and formal organizational perspective has its strength in cashing in benefits from IT applications in the short run and the ongoing capacity to monitor and manage IT projects. In the e-procurement area case explored in Chapter 7 of this book there are elements of this perspective. The customer and activity driven approach (which is in some aspects more of a complement than substitute to the formal organizational perspective), is more risky and a potential source for cost increases since the formal control of the project is downplayed in favor of alignment with changing customer needs. Yet, there are clearly also elements in the PPR-perspective that could help reduce the costs, namely the reduction in applications that serve administrative purposes only, the explicit goal to reduce overhead costs, and rapid development and prototyping. Subsequently, we will most likely see the two approaches co exist and complement each other but in the long run we propose that the PPR approach will be more prevalent and dominant for the networked generation of future e-government applications.