Can information technology promote new public management (NPM) in Africa? Can e-government projects improve public sector effectiveness and bureaucratic efficiency? How should e-readiness for e-government be measured? How can we close the gaps between project design and African public sector reality that have caused most e-government projects to fail?

A report from the University of Manchester’s Institute for Development Policy and Management (IPDM) seeks lessons from past failures. It suggests ways to ensure that projects are relevant to African needs and circumstances and that they are developed in a spirit of partnership.

Amid widespread sentiment that systems of governance in Africa are in crisis, ICTs are being hyped as a component of New Public Management (NPM). Donors, the consultants they employ, IT vendors and elite Western-trained civil servants together create powerful leverage for e-government. Yet initiatives are started without consultation or understanding. Experienced IT companies are often in a position to dictate the direction and content of e-government. The report equates the imbalanced interactions that occur between African public servants and IT vendors as that of a virgin marrying Casanova.

As in the industrialised countries, ICTs in Africa have been used within governments to replace clerical labour with its digital equivalent. Whether these initiatives achieve their financial cost-cutting goals is questionable – even in the north, efficiency gains have been exaggerated. In Africa, where public sector wage costs can be less than a tenth of those in the West and average ICT costs can be two to three times higher, there is a risk that e-government automation means replacing cheap civil servants with costly ICTs.

Though the paper cites many examples of failed initiatives, not all is doom and gloom. Some e-administration schemes have proven sustainable and efficiency-promoting:

• In Egypt, multi-sectoral conflicts between six different ministries around issues of tariff reform were speedily resolved by the computerisation of customs tariffs for imported goods – thus reducing the burden on low income groups, increasing state revenue and creating a homogeneous and consistent tariff structure.
• ICTs have helped South Africa’s Independent Electoral Commission to win accolades for running free and fair elections.
• In Mauritius, a private partnership initiative has provided a single electronic channel for all income and VAT tax payments Mauritian firms need to make to various government departments.

But any successes have come when e-government projects bridge the gap between application design and current African realities. The report therefore urges policy-makers and donors to:

• adopt best practice in design-reality gap closure and learn from other African states
• work to close the knowledge gulf between IT professionals and public officials
• appreciate the need to identify and nurture those staff members in government facilities, community centres, NGOs and commercial cybercafés who are skilled to act as intermediaries between citizens – forever doomed to remain on the wrong side of the digital divide – and the growing digital infrastructure of e-government
• abandon the arrogant assumption that e-government experience, knowledge and ideas are a one-way traffic from the north to Africa
• reject the one-size-fits-all approach to African needs: e-government solutions that work in one country cannot simply be transplanted into others on the continent.

Source(s):
‘eGovernment in Africa: promise and practice’, iGovernment Working Paper No 13, Institute for Development Policy and Management, University of Manchester, by Richard Heeks, 2002 Full document.

id21 Research Highlight: 14 August 2003

Further Information:
Richard Heeks
Institute for Development Policy and Management
University of Manchester
Precinct Centre
Manchester M13 9QH
UK

Tel: +44 (0)161 275 2800 / 2804
Fax: +44 (0)161 273 8829
Contact the contributor: richard.heeks@man.ac.uk

Contact the contributor: idpm@man.ac.uk

Institute for Development Policy and Management, The University of Manchester, UK

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