Challenges of Implementing eGovernance in NGOs

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Challenges of Implementing e-Governance in NGOs

• Prof M Abdus Sobhan

Independent University, Bangladesh
WCID-2009 at Beijing, China, September 11, 2008
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Outline

• Introduction
• What is eGovernance ?
• Three aspects of eGovernance
• Relationship among public, business, and
  government
• Models of eGovernance
• Criteria of the models of eGovernance
• Evolution of e-Governance
• eGovernance Framework and Standards
• Principles of NGO Governance
• eGovernance and NGO
• eGovernance Applications for NGOs
• Current Status of e-Governance in Bangladeshi
  NGOs
• An e-Governance Framework for NGOs
• Prerequisites of the framework
• Features of the Framework
• Challenges of Implementing eGovernance in NGO
• Conclusions

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Introduction

• Current economic, social and global context
  has caused important changes at the competitive
  base of the countries
• Led to the creation of different governmental
  functions, in terms of external and internal
  relationships.
• Reinforced the demand for new skills, in order to
  incorporate quick changes both in organizations
  and in society in general.
• NGOs play important roles by complementing the
  government to accommodate these changes.

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Introduction (cont)

• Question What roles NGOs play?
• Answer
• NGOs play a strategic role in economic and social
  development of the country and of the regions
  where they are located.
• NGOs are relevant actors in the social system
• Empowering common people through social safety
  net and micro credit
• Contributing to employment generation and
  economic activities.

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Introduction (cont)

• Question How these Roles fulfill social and
  public responsibilities?
• Answer
• NGOs can fulfill their social and public
  responsibilities, by achieving the following
  objectives
• Implementing social safety net programs
• Cooperation and partnerships with the government
  and/or industry
• Imparting education
• Conducting research
• where good governance is a prerequisite to
  achieve these objectives.

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Introduction (cont)

• Question Can e-Governance ensure better
  governance for an NGO?
• Answer
• Answer to this question is YES. But before
  telling how, let us understand briefly the
  e-Governance first.

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What is e-Governance?

• e-Governance can be defined as giving citizens
  the choice of when and where they
  access government information and services.
• e-Governance involves the automation or
  computerization of existing paper-based systems
  that will prompt new ways of
• styles of leadership
• debating and deciding strategies
• transacting business
• listening to common people
• serving the citizens
• organizing and delivering information
• It entails the processes used to provide services
  to the public and other stakeholders using ICT
  in as many government functions as possible.
• When the organization is Government, it is termed
  as e-Government, and when
  applied by organizations other than government,
  it is termed as e-Governance

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Three aspects of e-Governance

• ICT enabling of government functions - something
  similar to back-office automation.
• Web enabling of government functions - so that
  the citizens will have direct access to
  information and services.
• Improving Government processes - so that
  openness, accountability, accuracy, speed of
  operations, effectiveness and efficiency may be
  achieved.
• Typically, this would mean web-enabled
  applications but e-Governance would
  also cater to automated applications for the
  government sector, which helps in achieving SMART
  governance which some define as Speed, Moral,
  Accountable/Accurate, Responsive and Transparent
  Governance.

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Relationship among Public, Business, and the
Government
Currently, they also talk about G2E (relationship
among Govt. and its Employee), in many cases
which is embedded in G2G
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Models of e-Governance
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Criteria for the Models of e-Governance
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Evolution of e-Governance
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Evolution of e-Governance (Cont)
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e-Governance Framework and Standards

• Control Objectives for Information and Related
  Technology (COBIT)
• One of the popular eGovernance frameworks and
  standards
• IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) and Capability
  Maturity Model (CMM) are available to help
  organizations in improving their accountability,
  governance, and management.
• COBIT is designed by the eGovernance Institute
  as a high-level "umbrella" framework for
  eGovernance and it works well with ITIL which
  focuses on specific aspects of e-Management.
• Uses of ERP can also contribute to eGovernance
  adoption.

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Principles of NGO Governance

• Good governance is a key issue for efficiency of
  an organization and NGOs are no exception.
  Quality of governance of an NGO is significantly
  affected by the principles such as
• Legitimacy
• Direction
• Performance
• Accountability
• Fairness
• Availability of sustainable resource
• Adherence to regulations, etc.

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e-Governance and NGO

• e-Governance can be applicable to NGOs for the
  benefit of NGOs themselves, Donors,
  Regulator/state, People, and other
  stakeholders. e-Governance can effectively
  enhance quality in both the external and internal
  services of an NGO reflecting its mission and
  vision.
• External services of NGOs focus on fulfilling
  external stakeholders needs and expectations
  satisfactorily and facilitates speedy,
  transparent, accountable, efficient and effective
  interaction with external stakeholders like
  donors, suppliers, regulatory authorities, peer
  NGOs, people, etc.
• Internal services are focused on better
  management and reduced operational costs of the
  NGO through speedy, transparent, accountable,
  efficient and effective processes performing
  administrative activities.

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e-Governance Applications for NGO

• NGO to Public (N2P) Applications
• NGO to Business (N2B) Applications
• NGO to NGO (N2N) Applications
• NGO to Donors (N2D) Applications
• NGO to Regulators (N2R) Applications
• NGO to Employee (N2E) Applications

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Current Status of e-Governance in Bangladeshi NGOs

• In this paper, we also investigate the current
  governance practices of Bangladeshi
  NGOs and discuss the significance of potential
  adoption of e-Governance practices by them in
  providing quality service to their stakeholders.
• How and up to what extent the e-Governance
  practices can be adopted and implemented within
  the NGOs
• What is the significance of e-Governance
  practices in ensuring quality service empowering
  the people.

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Current Status of e-Governance in Bangladeshi
NGOs (cont)

• As case studies, three leading NGOs BRAC,
  PROSHIKA, and ASA) in Bangladesh having strong
  web presence and engaged in moderate usage of ICT
  infrastructure and services for their everyday
  operation and decision making, are selected.
• Data collected were primarily qualitative in
  nature. The data were gathered from
  semi-structured interviews with ICT and strategic
  decision makers as well as from relevant
  information obtained from the website of the
  NGOs.
• Selection of concerned NGOs is done based on
  their stake in the NGO sector and by the authors
  own experience and judgments.

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Current Status of e-Governance in Bangladeshi
NGOs (cont)

• BRAC, ASA and PROSHIKA are chosen for data
  collection and analysis. All the chosen NGOs have
  documented governance structures and financially
  capable of implementing eGovernance
  infrastructure.
• The financial activities of these NGOs amount to
  several billion Taka, though not much have been
  spent on ICT development. The NGOs are approved
  by the Ministry of Social Welfare, the government
  of the peoples republic of Bangladesh and is
  under the regulatory jurisdiction of NGO Bureau,
  Bangladesh.

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Current Status of e-Governance in Bangladeshi
NGOs (cont)

• NGOs in home and abroad (those who adopted)
  are in the form of Bureaucracy Model up to
  Participation Model of e-Governance.
• However, we could not identify NGO with
  Governance Model of e-Governance.
• e-Governance services are mostly focused on
  external services (instead of equally emphasizing
  both internal and external services).
• Spends approximately 5-15 of their revenue on
  ICT development.

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Proposed e-Governance Framework for NGOs

• Here we propose a framework suitable for
  simulating Governance Model of e-Governance by an
  NGO.
• Perquisites of the Framework
• Components of the Framework
• e-Governance Structures
• e-Governance Processes
• Relational Mechanisms in eGovernance

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Proposed e-Governance Framework for NGOs (cont)

• Perquisites of the Framework
• Senior ICT decision-makers need to agree that,
  low staffing levels should not be a deterrent in
  adopting available practices and each NGO needs
  to implement eGovernance practice based on its
  organizational needs and available resources.
• Improved communication between central and
  departmental ICT groups across the NGO.
• Communication between ICT personnel, top
  management and other stakeholders for gradual
  acceptance of ICT as a valued service provider
  rather than just a cost of doing business.
• Improved planning and designing of Information
  Systems considering immerging technologies as a
  key issue.

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Proposed e-Governance Framework for NGOs (cont)

• Perquisites of the Framework (cont)
• Reduce challenges in measuring performance of
  eGovernance services, by following suggestions
  like a) multiple learning management (CMOS 17)
  and email systems causes duplication of efforts
  and consolidation of systems is required for
  reduce operational cost b) as COBIT (or other
  framework) requires the use of project management
  methodology, formal training is suggested for ICT
  stuff.
• The NGO should have well defined code of
  conducts/ethics for customer handling, RD
  (conducting survey, etc), and administration.
• There must be well defined provision of budget
  for eGovernance adaptation. In doing so, funding
  may need to be subsidized and projection of
  enough justifications and necessary modifications
  to statutes/ordinances/acts of NGOs may be
  necessary.

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Proposed e-Governance Framework for NGOs (cont)
Functional Units of NGO/Govt and Interactivities
among them
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Proposed e-Governance Framework for NGOs (cont)
Functional Framework of eGovernance for NGOs
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Proposed e-Governance Framework for NGOs (cont)
N2P Component of NGO eGovernance
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Challenges of Implementing eGovernance in NGO

• Infrastructure Development
• Establishing PKI for Secure and Authentic
  Electronic Transaction and Document Exchange
• Identification of Services
• Availability of Requisite Human Resources
• Formation of ICT Committees
• Selection of Project Management Framework
• Benchmarking of eGovernance Framework

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Challenges of Implementing eGovernance in NGO
(cont)
Infrastructure Development

• To proper and effective adaptation of
  eGovernance by NGOs, apart from implementing
  eGovernance platform, it is also important to
  build necessary infrastructure for a) Power, b)
  Internet, c) Public Key Infrastructure (PKI), d)
  Legal Framework, e) HumanResource Institutes,
  etc.
• There should be cohesive master plan among
  various agencies responsible to built, manage and
  operate these infrastructures.

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Challenges of Implementing eGovernance in NGO
(cont)
Establishing PKI for Secure and Authentic
Electronic Transaction and Document Exchange

• The major security issues that must be addressed
  when considering e-Commerce are a)
  Authentication, b) Integrity, c) Non-repudiation
  and d) Confidentiality. Authentication ensures
  identity and/or credentials of communicating
  parties to each other.
• Challenges in establishing such infrastructure at
  national level need to face major challenges such
  as a) Formulation of PKI enabling
  act/law/regulations, b) Accrediting and
  licensing local Certificate Authority for issuing
  digital certificates, c) Existence of local
  payment processors and/or payment gateway, d)
  Establishing strong legal framework and separate
  human resources teams dedicated in enforcing PKI
  related laws.
• In countries like Bangladesh, PKI dose not exist
  at national level and may be extremely difficult
  for NGOs to implement all the eGovernance
  components.
• However, the NGOs may establish an
  organizationwide PKI. Having such a PKI
  conforming to legal regime of the land is a
  challenging task in terms of technical as well as
  legal viewpoint

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Challenges of Implementing eGovernance in NGO
(cont)
Identification of Services

• One of the challenging tasks before adoption of
  eGovernance is to identify all the relevant
  external and internal services (digital/online).
• The feasibility of chosen services also needs to
  be evaluated.
• Services can be classified according to
  participating stakeholders
• Services to public
• Services to employees and management
• Services to other stakeholders

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Challenges of Implementing eGovernance in NGO
(cont)
Availability of Requisite Human Resources

• An important trait of eGovernance implementation
  is to identify required human resources and their
  roles in implementing eGovernance services.
• Typical human resource required may include
• Director, eGovernance implementation project
• Content development team
• Content manager
• Legal officer
• Cryptanalyst
• Network management team
• System analysts
• Web service team, etc.
• For an NGO, it may be difficult to find and
  accommodate all these necessary human resources
  within the NGO itself.

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Challenges of Implementing eGovernance in NGO
(cont)
Formation of ICT Committees

• EGovernance is not implemented as a whole at the
  first phase.
• As time goes on, new services are chosen and
  incorporated.
• Thus, formation of ICT committees is inevitable.
• Many of the cases, it may not be possible to
  identify and justify exhaustive list of necessary
  ICT committees and sequential implementation of
  eGovernance components and services.

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Challenges of Implementing eGovernance in NGO
(cont)
Selection of Project Management Framework

• Issues like
• whether the eGovernance services need an ERP
  system or not,
• which software development life cycle to be
  followed (for implementation as well as for
  contentious development),
• what would be the extent of security measures
  (cryptography, digital signature), etc
• may pose as serious challenges for the
  management to resolve.

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Challenges of Implementing eGovernance in NGO
(cont)
Benchmarking of eGovernance Framework

• Jackson and Lund defined benchmarking as, A
  learning process, structured to enable those
  engaged in the process, to compare their
  services, activities, products in order to
  identify their comparative strengths and
  weaknesses as a basis for selfimprovement and/or
  selfregulation.
• Therefore, benchmarking is an important and
  challenging aspect in justifying a new proposal.
  In case of eGovernance framework, the challenge
  lies in setting parameters for criterion such as
  
• Competitiveness of the regional influence area
• Development of the human resources
• RD activities including development, innovation
  and transfer of knowledge
• Good governance and sustainability of the NGO,
  etc.

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Conclusion

• Web presence is the most powerful means for an
  NGO to attract and serve larger segment of
  the stakeholders, globally.
• Incorporating more and more web based services
  will increase peer competition among the NGOs,
  which eventually lead them towards e-Governance.
• Some of the critical issues for adapting
  e-Governance by an NGO are
• Infrastructure
• Including Public Key Infrastructure
• Local technical expertise
• Cultural barrier
• Security of information
• Secured e-Payment, etc.
• Current representative status of e-Governance
  practice at Bangladeshi NGOs are observed and
  found to be at a low acceptance level
• Thus, importance and necessity of web-based
  services led to e-Governance initiative
  particularly suitable for NGOs is suggested and
  their implementation challenges are highlighted.

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• Thank You

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• Thank You.