Learning from Failure

Large-scale electronic government projects had mixed results over the past decade. A considerably large percentage of such projects effectively failed. The over-ambitious promise of e-governance positively transforming public sectors in developing nations didn’t fully materialize. The actual causes of e-government failures are still to be explored in more detail to improve the understanding of the phenomenon by practitioners and scholars alike. This chapter explores the causes of e-government failures within the context of Arab states and discusses prevailing views of such failures in earlier literature. Based on a survey of senior e-government practitioners in nine Arab countries, our findings indicate that the underlying roots of failure in e-government projects in Arab countries (which we classify in nine main categories) are entwined with multifaceted social, cultural, organizational, political, economic and technological factors. We argue that, despite their many similarities, e-government initiatives in the Arab states would be better equipped for avoiding failure when a local ‘fit’ is established between leadership commitment, sustainable cross-government vision, appropriate planning, rational business strategy, suitable regulatory framework, practical awareness campaigns and rigorous capacity building for the public administrators and society at large. Based on our findings, we argue that replicable “best practices” in a complex and developing field of e-government rarely exist. We conclude with a proposal to nurture a culture more tolerant to risk-taking and failure in the relatively new area of e-government in the Arab states. Until a local maturity level is reached, such culture should be accompanied with home-grown e-government risk management approaches as well as effective mechanisms of knowledge management to enable extracting relevant local lessons from failed projects and partial successes.

Towards a Dynamic Font Respecting the Arabic Calligraphy

To justify texts, Arabic calligraphers use to stretch some letters with small flowing curves; the kashida instead of inserting blanks among words. Of course, such stretchings are context dependent. An adequate tool to support such writing may be based on a continuous mathematical model. The model has to take into account the motion of the qalam. The characters may be represented as outlines. Among the curves composing the characters outlines, some intersections are to be determined dynamically. In the Naskh style, the qalam‘s head behaves as a rigid rectangle in motion with a constant inclination. To determine the curves delimiting the set of points to shade when writing, we have to find out a mathematical way to compare plane curves. Moreover, as the PostScript procedure to produce a dynamic character, should be repeated whenever the letter is to draw, the development of a font supporting a continuous stretching model, allowing stretchable letters with no overlapping outlines, without optimization would be of a high cost in CPU time. In this chapter, some stretching models are given and discussed. A method to compare curves is presented. It allows the determination of the character encoding with eventually overlapping outlines. Then a way to approximate the curves intersection coefficients is given. This is enough to remove overlapping outlines. Some evaluations in time processing to confirm the adopted optimization techniques are also exposed.

Mapping and Data Base Modeling for Public Sector Strategic Enterprise Resource Planning

This Enterprise Resource Planning database model provides a systematic, logical and regular basis for the collection, collation, dissemination and mapping of strategic Enterprise Resource Planning data. Selective access to this accurate and timely data will improve public sector strategic Enterprise Resource Planning performance, accountability and administration. It will assist the public sector to be more effective and efficient in resource allocation and investment outcomes measurement, is transparent, and will encourage the development of trust, networks and social capital amongst public sector employees and their suppliers. The model has been successfully demonstrated through the establishment and analysis of an Enterprise Resource Planning data base with the Australian Department of Defence (ADoD). The Australian ADoD is a Federal Government Department with a FY 2008/9 spend of AU$9.3bn on products (goods and services), their support and maintenance, from almost every industry sector, on a global basis. While the implementation of Enterprise Resource Planning is usually viewed as a means of reducing transaction costs, in practice such implementation often increases transaction costs. Public sector bureaucratic hierarchies and their governance systems contribute to transaction costs. This research provides an Enterprise Resource Planning database model so that the public sector can achieve improved field mapping and strategic Enterprise Resource Planning using existing data and resources at lowest transaction cost.

Efficient Implementation of E-Government Interoperability in Labour Market Information Systems based on Service Oriented Architecture

In many countries, governments have been developing electronic information systems to support in labour market in form of on-line services, web-based application as well as one-stop service. One of the biggest challenges is to facilitate the seamless exchange of labour market information (LMI) across governmental departments. This chapter introduces an efficient implementation of Thailand’s e-government interoperability project in LMI systems using service oriented architecture (SOA) based on XML web service technology. In Thailand, the Ministry of Labour (MOL) has developed a Ministry of Labour Operation Center (MLOC) as the center for gathering, analyzing and monitoring LMI to assist the policy makers. The MOL consists of four departments: department of employment, department of labour protection and welfare, department of skill development, and social security office. Thsse departments utilize electronic systems to manage LMI such as employment, labour protection and welfare, skill development and social security. Provincially, MOL has 75 branches called “labour provincial offices” located at 75 provinces in Thailand. Each office has developed a “Provincial Labour Operation Center or PLOC” as the operating center in the province where the information system called “PLOC” system has been developed to analyze and monitor the localized labour information for the provincial policy-makers. Since these systems differ, it requires the process of data harmonization, modeling and standardizations using UN/CEFACT CCTS and XML NDR for achieving the common XML schema standard, with the implementation of SOA to integrate efficiently all those systems. We apply TH e-GIF guidelines for interoperable data exchanges and the XML schema standardization. In Thailand, the first Thailand e-Government Interoperability Framework – the TH e-GIF - came into being in November 2006. This chapter illustrates main concepts of TH e-GIF, the project background and methodology as well as key leverage factors for the project.

An Approach to Formal Specification of Component-Based Software

Current research on software reuse in Component Based Software Engineering (CBSE) covers a variety of fields, including component design, component specification, component composition, component-based framework. CBSE is quickly becoming a mainstream approach to software development and most researchers are hoping that it will be solutions to all the problems that led to software crisis. The software engineering techniques specific to this discipline, in phases such as modeling, verification or validation of component based software systems still insufficient and need more research efforts. ECATNets (Extended Concurrent Algebraic Term Nets) are frameworks for specification, modeling and validation of concurrent and distributed systems. They are characterized by their semantics defined in terms of rewriting logic. The objective of this article is to propose a formal specification of software components by using ECATNets formalism. The expected benefits of this work are: Offer a formal notation for describing the different features of concurrent and distributed software components; Defining a formal unambiguous semantic to describe behavior of the composed system.

Voice-Based e-Learning Approach for e-Government

Government establishments are most times highly involved in different reorganization programs. The processes in e-Government are diversified and complex, hence the need for an appropriate training and learning strategy for governmental employees. Changing business processes and organizational structures always mean that the personnel have to be familiar with the changed procedures. Consequently, the employees need to be trained to develop capacity for new responsibilities. Existing methods of learning and training do not make provision for certain category of employees such as the visually impaired. They do not provide an alternative learning platform for government of employees that are not physically challenged. Many studies have demonstrated the value of several learning platforms, including mobile learning (m-Learning) but with the problems of access barriers and streamlined participation of most learners. The purpose of this chapter is to propose a voice-based e-Learning system, also known as voice-learning (v-Learning) as a variant of the m-Learning with particular relevance for the visually and mobility impaired learners. V-Learning makes possible ubiquitous learning in e-Government and provides additional capacity and speed of response to help facilitate change. Cost reduction is also achieved and there is no shortage of teachers.

A Global Comparative Analysis of Digital Governance Practices

The literature shows that governments around the world have sought to improve their governing capabilities by developing and implementing strategic information and communication technologies (ICTs). The use of ICTs can provide citizens with greater access to government services, can promote transparency and accountability, and also streamline government expenditures. This research provides a comparative analysis of the practices of digital governance in large municipalities worldwide in 2005. Digital government includes both e-government and e-democracy. The research is based on an evaluation of a sample (n=81) of city websites globally in terms of two dimensions: delivery of public services and digital democracy. The official websites of each city were evaluated in their native languages. Based on the analysis of the 81 cities, Seoul, New York, Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Sydney represent the cities with the most effective e-governance systems.

Building Semantic Webs for E-Government with Wiki Technology

E-government webs are among the largest webs in existence, based on the size, number of users and number of information providers. Thus, creating a Semantic Web infrastructure to meaningfully organize e-government webs is highly desirable. At the same time, the complexity of the existing E-government implementations also challenges the feasibility of Semantic Web creation. We therefore propose the design of a two-layer semantic Wiki web, which consists of a content Wiki, largely identical to the traditional web and a semantic layer, also maintained within the Wiki, that describes semantic relationships. This architectural design promises several advantages that enable incremental growth, collaborative development by a large community of non-technical users and the ability to continually grow the content layer without the immediate overhead of parallel maintenance of the semantic layer. This chapter explains current challenges to the development of a Semantic Web, identifies Wiki advantages, illustrates a potential solution and summarizes major directions for further research.

E-Business

This chapter outlines the important of e-business in today‘s world and how one thinks it affects decision making. In today‘s world e-business is extremely important for many reasons, some of which are due to the fact that it can speed up the whole process of ordering. This means that the lead time can be decreased because the ordering of products can be done much more quickly because the Internet is a fast running wide area network. This chapter shows how better procurement and supply chains make sales teams more effective. The ability to outsource functions such as, accounting, remote access to systems, linking management teams in different locations, being able to locate the lowest cost supplier improve customer services, improved collection of customer information for databases and more effective management of remote manufacturing sites.

Design Principles for E-Government Architectures

This chapter describes a holistic approach for the design of e-government platforms. It defines principles for architecting a system which must sustain the entire e-government activity of a mid-level public authority (Geneva). The four principles are: Legality, Responsibility, Transparency, and Symmetry. The principles speak to policymakers and to users. They also lead to usable and coherent architectural representations at all levels of responsibility of a project, i.e. the client, the designer and the builder. The approach resulted in deploying multipartite, distributed public services, including legal delegation of roles and the outsourcing of non mandatory tasks through PPP on an e-Government platform that will support a threefold increase in services yearly until 2012. In this sense, as well as in its daily operation, the system is a success.