Impact

The tool enables an appropriate modernisation strategy to be defined, plus a strategy for the development of high-performance e-government services. The specific benefits of this tool are:

• Picture of the progress in eGovernment implementation

• Funding opportunities, based on tangible data
• Economies of scale by using the same eGovernment components instead of developing their own ones
• Reusable methodology for dashboard at department level
• Identification of best practices and replicability in other departments.

The indicators allow to prove, based on tangible data, the impression that there is a lack of ICT resources in the Federal administration. Between 2004 and 2009, the ICT budget slightly increased (+6.5%), but the ICT manpower strongly decreased (-16%). The ICT Managers have identified furthermore that 1,025 additional people would be needed for an optimal operation, that is to say 22% more than at present. The problem of civil servant ageing, already identified in 2004, was confirmed here: the over-fifties in 2009 represent 20% of the ICT manpower, but this proportion is still however less than those concerning the other departments or general directorates of the Federal administration. Perhaps this personnel reduction has an effect on the level of the services rendered: it can be seen that although the level in terms of Project Management has increased, the level of the use of methods for Service Management has decreased overall. The available resources would as a priority be allocated to the development of new applications and less to the supply and support of existing services.

Two thirds of the administrations in 2009 have an e‑government strategy with a back office relatively well integrated into those of the other administrations. These most advanced administrations on the matter also in general have an ICT strategy that is well aligned with their administration’s mission. Compared to the least advanced organisations in terms of e-government, they are more often implementing good governance techniques (in particular evaluation tools, and project/service management processes) and have a higher-than average ICT budget. These administrations also have high levels of ICT personnel, but the inhouse self-capacity is lower, because they call - much more than the other organisations - upon external seconded personnel. It is extremely probable that e‑government implementation requires new skills that are not always easily available in-house.

There is therefore a link between the back office integration level, the maturity level of the various processes and good IT governance and the level of the budgetary and human resources. The Fed-eView/A tool’s objective is not to identify the causality of this link, nor to check whether the most advanced administrations in terms of e‑government are also the ones that are the most efficient and effective. There is undoubtedly a virtuous circle effect, but this could be the subject of other surveys, either overall or specific to a sector.

Track record of sharing

This is one of the first measurement tools of the development of the back-office. The scoring methodology can be used to monitor the progress either at the level of one single ICT department either at a more global level for a set of ICT departements in Belgium or in other countries. The transferability is twofold: the methodology is reusable and the results of the measurements can be disseminated in order to allow comparison.

The methodology and results of the tool have been communicated at various occasions (ePractice workshop, preparatory meeting for the European DG Infso benchmark, OECD Workshop on E-Government Indicators and meeting of the MENA working group E-Government and Administrative Simplification). Project team is always ready to communicate on it. Interested people can contact us by email, telephone or by visiting us in Brussels.

The deliverables - list of indicators and scoring methodology - can be provided. They are available in English.

The innovative nature of this tool is to take account of the administrations' back office aspect, which is in the main ignored by international e-government-related benchmarks. The institutions responsible for those benchmarks are starting to draw inspiration from it in order to refine their measurements.

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Lessons learnt

Comparison is difficult over time : When the tool was created in 2004, the Federal administration was undergoing reorganisation (Copernic reform - horizontal services and managerial mandate system) and many ICT Managers had only recently been appointed as ICT Department heads. Indicators were chosen at that time where the type of response left room for interpretation (e.g. scale of responses of the “Not Implemented” to “Being Implemented” variety). Five years later, for the second measurement, the organisational context and the technological context had obviously advanced. Certain adaptations therefore had to be made to the tool:

• Conservation of the basic definitions and method of collecting the information
• Conservation of a maximum of global indicators, but adaptation of the specific indicators that constituted them
• Addition of some global and specific indicators
• Objectivation of the responses: “yes/no” answers were preferred

Moreover, some new departments had appeared, and measuring the development in absolute figures would have been meaningless. In order to enable comparison between the two measurements, like-forlike calculations were made by discarding the administrations that were measured only once.<-->