A review of the successes and challenges of coordination and collaboration in the implementation of e-government programmes: a case of Zambia.
Date
2021
Authors
Chilembo, Zondi
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
The University of Zambia.
Abstract
Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have significantly changed the way citizens interact across society and how governments operate and deliver services to its citizenry. The concept of e-Government has brought about efficiency and transparency in service delivery by working towards ensuring inter-government coordination and collaboration are attained in the context of New Public Administration. Developing countries, Zambia inclusive, have undergone widespread deployment of e-Government initiatives, but experienced high failure rates because some projects never got implemented. In some cases, projects were abandoned immediately after implementation or never achieved the intended outcomes requirements. One of the major challenges encountered in implementation of e-Government is coordination and collaboration among government agencies due to barriers associated with sharing information and integration across their traditional organisational boundaries, with preference to working in silos resulting in duplication and over investment in implementation. The objective of this study was to review the successes and challenges of coordination and collaboration in the implementation of e-Government programmes – A case of Zambia. The summary of the research findings shows that Zambia has adopted an administrative model for institutional coordination. However, the structure of this model has drawbacks and the study proposes a structural design for e-Government institutional coordination to better coordinate and collaborate e-Government programmes. 75% of the respondent indicated that Zambia does not have an interoperability framework in place while 25% indicated its availability thereby making it difficult for systems to integrate in the absence of standards. Secondary data reviewed in this study shows that Zambia scored 0.2588 in 2020 compared to 0.4792 in 2018 on the Online Service Index, which was far below the global average of 0.5620 and a regional (Africa) average of 0.3704. The study looked at e-Government coordination models, inter-agency collaboration among government agencies in the context of e-services and how other countries have successfully implemented e-Government programmes in a coordinated manner using institutional coordination models In Zambia, several researchers and scholars have reviewed e-Government implementation. However, there has been no study that has sought to review the role of coordination and inter-agency collaboration in implementing e-Government programmes in Zambia. This study therefore was intended to fill that knowledge gap. The results of this study will inform policy makers, ICT heads, and academia to come up with policies, strategies and legislative interventions as well as provoke research that will make e-Government coordination and collaboration of government agencies more effective, efficient, and transparent.
Description
Thesis of Master of Engineering in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) - Regulation, Policy and Management.