Abstract
After years of substantial investments of public funds, the potential benefits of eGovernment can no longer be assumed, but must be demonstrated. What frameworks, methods, and metrics are needed to appropriately monitor, evaluate, and communicate the costs and benefits of these investments? What internal and external factors influence the value of eGovernment for different stakeholders?
Keywords
ICT investment criteria, measurement frameworks, value of ICT in government
Description
Grounding the research on Assessing the value of government ICT investments
A value assessment is central to any government ICT initiatives and investment decisions, whether prospective or retrospective. Initially, metrics and methods were often limited to financial and economic perspectives, and were often too narrow for eGovernment. For example, government ICT initiatives can encompass outcomes and goals as diverse as enhanced public safety, economic opportunity or environmental quality.
In more recent times however, the need for more appropriate assessment methods and reporting tools to fit these broad outcomes has been addressed by a number of organizations, for example AOEMA provides a comprehensive list of benchmarking and assessment tools, and AGIMO has an investment framework guide and spreadsheet software.
Any assessment of the value of an eGovernment system should consider the use of methods and standards which provide developers with ways to consider the requirements and values of all stakeholders, at the requirements and design stages of system development. Value Sensitive Design is one such method which could be considered.
Research question
- Whose, and which values might we want to assess? (For example, financial values and other economic factors throughout the full system life-cycle; and human values such as privacy, accessibility, and user friendliness)
- How do we ensure that the requirements and values of all stakeholders are considered?
- What measurement frameworks, standards, measures and tools are required to assess these values? What are currently available and/or in development?
- For human values, are methods such as value sensitive design (VSD) good enough to develop and support systems with human values?
Link to the final eight scenarios
This research theme of assessing the value of IT in government is applicable to all scenarios, but in each scenario there will be differences in the types of values to be assessed, and the emphasis placed on them. Of course there will be basic values to be assessed in each case, focussing, for example, on the value for taxpayers? money, and the efficiency and effectiveness of the services provided. However, there could be a different emphasis on the assessment of effectiveness when the services are provided by the private sector (scenarios Orchestrating government , Individual society, Transition period). In a very cooperative and confident society (scenario ambient government), the focus on assessment could be to ensure that these high standards are maintained and improved. Where security (scenarios Incident politics, Transition period) or privacy (scenario Government Keeps on trying) are important issues, the assessment could focus on these values to a greater extent. Where there are serious gaps in society (scenario Incident politics) or gaps in the delivery of services (scenarios Government Keeps on trying, Social state), then the focus of an assessment could be to measure and reduce these gaps.
Link to the gaps and gaps storyline
The process of assessment and the particular values to be measured are important aspects of any gap analysis exercise. The assessment process, and any measurement framework which is used, would help to identify any mismatches between the issues in the state of play and future storylines and scenarios, or any lack of issues required in those future storylines and scenarios.
Link to the roadmapping workshops
The Brussels Workshop identified a number of values to be considered. The efficiency of eGovernment systems is one aspect to assess, as are public values and the impact of government policies, but there are still uncertainties with how to measure these aspects. Another aspect to consider is the contribution to value of user driven services in eGovernment applications. A measurement framework is needed to facilitate any value assessment.
The Australian Workshop identified the work being done in the Australian Government (AGIMO2007) in relation to the identification of values of ICT in government when preparing a business case. The ICT Investment Framework aims to enhance business case development by assisting agencies to develop transparent and auditable assessments of business case propositions for government ICT programs.
The discussion group considered the question - Value for whom? Typically IT capital is replacing labour, to improve the efficiency of the government agency. A more holistic view should be taken, that assesses all of the overall impacts of ICT. All stakeholders should get value, not just the agency. However, agencies do not budget for projects that bring benefits to other stakeholders, generally they only budget for themselves. This raised another question ? Should those who benefit from a system contribute to the costs in proportion to their benefit, or be recompensed for their loss?
