E-government project prioritisation in Zimbabwe : a public value perspective

Abstract

Governments the world over spend billions of dollars on e-government initiatives with the intention of improving the efficiency and effectiveness of service delivery to their constituencies. Despite the large amounts of money that is spent on these projects, lured by the array of potential benefits that can be delivered, the list of failed projects is long, mainly because the complexity of undertaking such projects is often understated and the demands of a public value approach make e-government projects even more complex. Public value theory suggests that citizens value those services they authorise, whose creation they participate in and whose outcomes they relate to. This study seeks to understand how governments prioritise e-government initiatives in order to maximise public value. This study is based on an interpretive case study of an e-government program in Zimbabwe, a country in Southern Africa, consisting of a number of projects that have to be prioritised. Using public value theory as a theoretical lens, six interviews were conducted with senior managers involved in the program, complimented by a review of various project related documents and followed by a focus group of thirteen managers which was used to rank the relative importance of various criteria that relate to the delivery of public value. Using a prioritisation framework developed as part of this study, a mock prioritisation of a menu of projects was conducted and this was compared to the actual prioritisation that had beencarried out during the implementation of the program. The study finds that public managers believe that seeking public authorisation is undesirable, unnecessary and that governments are often ill equipped to undertake this task. Co-creation of services with the public is seen as desirable, mainly because government does not have the resources to undertake all the initiatives they have to and appear to welcome any assistance that is available. Public managers appear to struggle to relate the projects they undertake to outcomes that citizens relate to, but seem to be focussed on more immediate measures, a likely throwback to new public management thinking. The study concludes that the lack of citizen participation in project conceptualisation and service creation and delivery can be overcome by the use of more and more commonly available technologies such as social media and the increasing proliferation of the internet even in fairly remote parts of Africa to not only better understand citizen priorities but to engage the citizen in creating the services they consume and deliver on the outcomes they value.