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Measuring e-Governance as an innovation in the public sector
Government Information Quarterly 27 (2010) 41–48
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Government Information Quarterly j o u r n a l h o m e p a g e : w w w. e l s e v i e r. c o m / l o c a t e / g o v i n f
Measuring e-Governance as an innovation in the public sector Devendra D. Potnis College of Computing and Information, State University of New York at Albany, 7A Harriman Campus, Suite 220, Albany, NY 12222, USA
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Available online 17 October 2009 Keywords: e-Government Innovation United Nations e-Government Readiness Index e-Participation Index Percentage normalized scores
a b s t r a c t Since 2001, the United Nations (UN) and affiliated organizations have measured e-Government initiatives of more than 178 Member States of the UN, by devising “e-Government Readiness Index” (e-GRI) and “eParticipation Index” (e-PI). The UN has published rankings for its Member States in terms of e-GRI and e-PI, through e-Government Readiness Assessments (Surveys). Member States of the UN and digital government research community as well as academicians and practitioners regularly use the e-GRI and e-PI as a point-ofreference; this fact alone signifies the importance of evaluating the existing UN methodologies assessing eGovernance. Since e-Governance is one of the greatest innovations in the public sector, this research uses conceptual content analysis on the Surveys using the Innovation Management Measurement Framework (IMMF), which is one of the most widely accepted theoretical frameworks for measuring innovation initiatives. The resultant percentage normalized scores (PNS) lead to a set of recommendations for developing better informed, more balanced, and more powerful e-GRI and e-PI for the future. © 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
1. e-Governance: An innovation in the public sector The United Nations (UN) defines e-Government as “utilizing the internet and the World Wide Web for delivering government information and services to citizens” (United Nations, 2001, p.1). Government services can be managed and offered through a variety of different forms of information and communication technology (ICT) platforms and applications (United Nations, 2001, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2008). Due to the inherent nature of governance, e-Government initiatives are often collaborative in nature, bringing together various units of government, private sector, nongovernment organizations, and citizens as key stakeholders. Various attributes of e-Governance can be mapped onto characteristic features of innovation, thereby equating e-Governance with an innovation in the public sector. An innovation is “an idea, practice, or object that is perceived as new by an individual or other unit of adoption” (Rogers, 1995, p.14). Until the end of the 20th century, offering government services to citizens through electronic media was essentially a very new idea, and hence a new practice in the public sector. In other words, eGovernment was a new trend then and not a regular practice (United Nations, 2001). Web portals, kiosks, and mobile technologies were some of the emerging means of offering government services, with dissemination of relevant information in the electronic mode (Kushchu and Kuscu, 2004). Gradually, government units all over the world started taking initiatives for adopting e-Government practices (The Advisory Committee, 2008). Thus, in the first decade of the 21st century, offering and managing government services
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through information and communication technologies (ICTs), that is, e-Government, has undoubtedly emerged as one of the greatest innovations in the public sector (Committee, 2008; Fose, 2002). In the context of the UN's definition of e-Government which is an innovation in the public sector, e-Governance can be referred to as an innovation management process in the public sector. Since 2001, in order to evaluate e-Governance, the United Nations Public Administration Network (UNPAN), the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA), and the United Nations Division for Public Economics (UNDPE) collaboratively devised their own e-Government Readiness Index (e-GRI) and e-Participation Index (e-PI) (United Nations, 2004, 2005), collectively referred to as the Indices, hereafter in this paper. These Indices are a composite measurement of capacity and willingness of Member States of the UN for e-Governance. The UN's evolving understanding for e-Governance periodically informs the design of the Indices (Potnis and Pardo, 2009). The UN calculates values for the Indices using the UN eGovernment Readiness Assessments. These are issue-based surveys; hence, they are referred to as Surveys hereafter in this paper. The Surveys assess “how willing and ready the governments around the world are to employ the opportunities offered by ICT to improve the access, and quality, of basic social services to the people for sustainable human development” (United Nations, 2004, p. ix). The UN has used the Indices as metrics for evaluating more than 50,000 online features and government services of more than 178 Member States across six economic and social sectors. Since these Indices are used regularly as a point-of-reference by Member States of the UN, the digital government research community, academicians, and practitioners, it becomes necessary to evaluate the Surveys (Potnis and Pardo, 2008). Governments around
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the world perceive e-Readiness assessments as enablers for decisionmakers from both the private and the public sectors, for devising appropriate levels of investments and policy formulations required for e-Government initiatives (DIT, 2004). The Surveys also have the potential to serve as a complementary methodology to measure the UN Human Development Index. Importantly, the Surveys offer “insights into the different strategies and common themes in eGovernment development among regions and across them” (United Nations, 2005, p.13). The global outreach of the impacts generated by the UN e-Readiness assessments signifies the necessity of valuating the advancing Indices. Milestones in the development of the Indices make it possible to track the UN's evolving understanding for eGovernance, reflected through the Surveys (Potnis and Pardo, 2009). Hence, the Surveys are chosen as a medium to analyze the composition of the Indices which rank willingness and capacity of Member States of the UN for e-Governance. Resources invested in any innovation can be managed optimally only if innovation management process is evaluated effectively (Adams et al., 2006). The Surveys assess e-Governance, which is an innovation in the public sector; as a result, a comprehensive methodology that could assay innovation management process in the form of e-Governance is required. Value and need for measuring innovation management processes are heavily desired by both the public and private sectors (The Advisory Committee, 2008). To assess e-Government initiatives of Member States of the UN, a holistic innovation measurement methodology in the form of Innovation Management Measurement Framework (IMMF) (Adams et al., 2006) is applied. The IMMF is one of the most widely accepted, the most updated, and one of the most comprehensive frameworks available in the literature on assessing performance of innovations. By running a conceptual content analysis on the Surveys, the IMMF measures the degree to which the existing Surveys assess innovation in eGovernment initiatives run by Member States of the UN. The results of measuring e-Governance as an innovation in the public sector, if incorporated with the existing e-Government readiness assessment practices, could lead to better informed and more balanced Indices, thereby allowing us to measure e-Readiness of Member States of the UN in a more powerful fashion. The second section synthesizes scholarly research in the field of innovation, which has been used by Adams et al. (2006) as a foundation for developing the IMMF. The third section depicts the overall research design of this research study and various precautions taken in running the conceptual content analysis. The fourth section presents results obtained by processing all the 5 Surveys with the help of Concordance Software. The fifth section proposes possible ways for improving the existing practices of evaluating e-Readiness of Member States of the UN. Finally, the conclusion section illustrates the benefits of improving the Indices, using recommendations based on this study. 2. The Innovation Management Measurement Framework (IMMF) This section delineates the composition of the IMMF in terms of its seven constructs and contributions of each construct in measuring the performance of any innovation. The term innovation is inherently ambiguous and has been defined differently by a number of scholarly research studies. For the purpose of defining innovation, Adams et al. (2006) considered the United Kingdom Department of Trade and Industry's (Department of Trade and Industry, 1998) broad definition of innovation, which considers the successful exploitation of new ideas as the central theme for any innovation. In order to manage innovations, many organizations often struggle to define the scope of innovations, quantify the measures of innovations, create benchmarks for the innovation management processes, and, finally, evaluate innovation management processes (Frenkel et al., 2000). Innovation management literature consists of conforming as well as contradic-
tory opinions, approaches, and practices of innovation. The innovation management measurement is a uniquely synthesized framework grounded in the diverse literature on innovation, innovation management, and measurement of innovation in the public as well as the private sectors. The IMMF is a product of theoretical saturation of analytical review of all the possible innovation measurement-related theories from myriad of academic backgrounds (Adams et al., 2006). The IMMF offers a unique opportunity for public as well as private sector managers to evaluate innovative activities in their organizations against proposed framework of innovation management measurements. The IMMF measures innovation management using the lens formed by seven inductively derived constructs: inputs, knowledge management, innovation strategy, organization and culture, portfolio management, project management, and commercialization (see Table 1). Management of Inputs, the first construct, focuses on resource management with resources ranging from human and physical resources, financial resources, and the process of generating innovative ideas (Miller and Friesen, 1982; Adams et al., 2006). Factors related to research and development are also used as input variables (Parthasarthy, 2002; Deeds, 2001; Greve, 2003). The IMMF defines Knowledge Management, the second construct, as “obtaining and communicating ideas and information that underlie innovation competencies, and includes idea generation, absorptive capacity and networking” (Adams et al., 2006, p.8). Knowledge management is comprised of idea generation, knowledge repository, and information flows (Davis, 1998; Nonaka, 1991; Blackler, 1995). Accumulated tacit and explicit types of knowledge in organizations, and knowledge absorptive capacity of organizations contribute significantly to the abilities of organizations to carry out innovation (Chen, 2004; Cohen and Levinthal, 1990; Cooper, 1984; Koen et al., 2001; Tsai, 2001). Organizations' new products, and evolving management and business-related processes often represent their innovation strategy, the third construct from the IMMF, in the context of competitive environments (Dyer and Song, 1998). In many areas, governments hold a monopoly in offering their services to citizens; this underplays the role of innovation strategy in the context of government services. Risk-taking, pro-activeness, and persistent commitment to innovation are the three approaches taken by any organization while devising innovation strategy (Saleh and Wang, 1993). Strategy adopted by top management largely decides the success of innovation (Cooper, 1984). Buy-in from the top management is absolutely essential for
Table 1 Seven constructs from the IMMF (adapted from Adams et al., 2006). No.
7 constructs from the IMMF
Subconstructs
1
Inputs
2
Knowledge Management
3
Innovation Strategy
4
Organization and Culture
5
Portfolio Management
6
Project Management
7
Commercialization
• People • Physical and financial resources • Tools • Idea generation • Knowledge repository • Information Flow • Strategic orientation • Strategic leadership • Culture • Structure • Risk/return balance • Optimization tool use • Project efficiency • Tools • Communications • Collaboration • Market research • Market testing • Marketing and sales
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providing consistent resource allocations for innovation in organizations. The interrelationship between innovation strategy and business goals, which is known as strategic orientation, in addition to a vision demonstrated by leaders in organizations, determines the success of strategic orientation and innovation strategy (Pinto and Prescott, 1988). Characteristics of organizations following innovation strategy approach tend to be different than the characteristics of those which do not. Organization and Culture is the fourth construct from the IMMF. The IMMF addresses Cultural and Structural elements associated with organizations that practice innovation and those which do not. Inherently, the organizational structure is strongly associated with its context (Pugh et al., 1969). The key factors that influence outcome of innovation efforts in any organization are as follows: perceived work environment in organizations, situational and psychological factors (Amabile et al., 1996; Ekvall, 1996), special task forces dedicated to implement innovations in organizations (Ernst, 2002), perceived significance of innovations (Tidd et al., 1997), nature and features of organizational work culture (Dougherty and Cohen, 1995), interaction frequency of various units in organizations, organizational policies to respond back to different types of competitions in the market (Volberda, 1996) issues related to assigning tasks, and, finally, staffing in that particular organization. Portfolio Management, the fifth construct from the IMMF, is the most recently realized construct and therefore presents an emerging theme in innovation research literature. Strategic, technological, and resource-related choices are mainly focused due to their abilities to shape research and development as well as the overall innovation process (Bard et al., 1988; Cooper, 1984). Scoring models, return on investment, break-even analysis, constraint optimization models, balance sheets between high- versus low-risk projects, a match between proficiency level of employees and the types of tasks assigned to them, balance sheets between high-gain versus lowgain projects, and project evaluation models are the key elements considered for portfolio management under the IMMF (Schmidt and Freeland, 1992; Hall, 1990; Szakonyi, 1994). The degree of efficiency associated with a process directly affects its ability to manage innovation management (Globe et al., 1973). Project Management, the sixth construct from the IMMF, focuses on the process of converting inputs into a marketable innovation. Despite innovation processes being depicted as a series of events, social interactions are viewed as a series of transactions coordinated by seamless communication (Zaltman et al., 1973). Some of the key themes that are commonly recognized as intimate aspects of any innovation include project efficiency, tools, communications, and collaboration (Adams et al., 2006). Project management takes into consideration these four common key themes under the IMMF (Adams et al., 2006). Commercialization, the seventh construct from the IMMF, mainly involves taking innovation to markets (Chakravorti, 2004). Successful launching of new products and services resulted as an outcome of innovation, is absolutely required for the survival of organizations. This essentially involves marketing, sales, distribution, and other relevant activities (Calantone and di Benedetto, 1988; Globe et al., 1973). The commercialization process can also be used to bring changes into various internal processes, while evaluating efficiencies of organizations' units. In this research study, all of the above described seven constructs from the IMMF that are used to evaluate the Surveys. 3. Methodology This section explains the research approach used to evaluate the Surveys. In order to measure the extent to which the Surveys assess eGovernance as an innovation in the public sector, seven constructs and their subconstructs proposed by the IMMF are conceptualized.
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Conceptual content analysis is used for analyzing corpus of data that consist of five Surveys namely: a) Benchmarking e-Government: A Global Perspective (United Nations, 2001); b) The UN Global e-Government Survey 2003 (United Nations, 2003); c) Global e-Government Readiness Report 2004: Towards Access for Opportunity (United Nations, 2004); d) Global e-Government Readiness Report 2005: From e-Government to e-Inclusion (United Nations, 2005); and e) The UN e-Government Survey 2008: From e-Government to Connected Governance (United Nations, 2008). Typically, a dictionary of items is defined to measure the occurrence of constructs (McNabb, 2002). Various words, their segments, and combinations relevant to all seven constructs and subconstructs of IMMF are known as concepts. The process of defining those concepts is known as conceptualization. Human coding was used to derive codes that represent concepts. Content analysis is a very well established, quantitative technique, which is used to transform and analyze communication content or messages through the systemic application of constructs or rules (Kassarjian, 1977). Conceptual content analysis makes use of categorization rules clustered around the central theme to process information content of any communication. Outcomes of content analysis are typically summarized and compared to better describe communication data (Paisley, 1969). As a part of this qualitative research method, computer aided conceptual content analysis was carried out, using a software named Concordance 2.0. It was used to calculate the frequency count for all of the concepts in all of the Surveys. Conceptualization was carried out by forming pick lists. The “pick list” feature from Concordance was used to store concepts for all seven constructs and subconstructs from the IMMF. As a result, seven pick lists were developed for collecting concepts based upon seven constructs from the IMMF (see Table 2). Due to a large variation in the sizes of the Surveys that were published over a period of 8 years, frequency counts of concepts that were derived from IMMF could not be compared directly. Therefore, percentage normalized scores (PNSs) were calculated based upon occurrences (frequency counts) of various concepts from the IMMF, in the Surveys (see Fig. 1). The PNSs enable this research to compare all seven constructs and subconstructs from the IMMF longitudinally. The details about PNSs are explained in the Results section. 3.1. Precautions taken for conceptualization process As a part of the conceptualization process, there were many special precautions taken while populating pick lists with concepts. Overarching terms such as e-Government, agency, country, government, ministry, nation, organization, sector and state, as well as any of their possible combinations were avoided (Neuendorf, 2002). The wildcard character (⁎) was used for covering all the string ramifications with common preamble. For example, “innovat⁎” was used for covering all the words such as innovate, innovation, innovated and innovative, which have “innovate” as a preamble. Knowledge management under the IMMF addresses organizational capabilities and capacities to absorb new knowledge, and puts them to work, thereby introducing reforms into organizations. Higher levels of absorptive capacity appear to be positively related to innovation and performance (Chen, 2004; Tsai, 2001). Hence, the words related to reforms, changes, capacity, and capability were encoded as concepts under knowledge management. The research interprets the notion of culture for organization as a set of general key characteristics of different societies in Member States of the UN. Economic, political, social, educational, and cultural features were considered while creating concepts for culture of
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Table 2 Pick lists formed using Concordance Software. No. Constructs from the IMMF 1
2
3
4
5
6
7
Pick lists Representing representing concepts
Inputs
formal system⁎, develop⁎ tool⁎, design⁎ tool⁎, resource⁎, research and development, RandD, government expenditure⁎, government expenses, input⁎, funding⁎, fund, funds, investment cost, investment costs, implementation team⁎, workforce employee⁎, government employee⁎, staff⁎, government investment⁎, implement⁎ software⁎, implement⁎ hardware⁎, infrastructure⁎, skill⁎, proficienc⁎, training⁎ Knowledge Idea, ideas, intellect⁎, intelligen⁎, knowledge⁎, Management information⁎, data⁎, feasibility⁎, reform⁎, capacity⁎, capabilit⁎, chang⁎, informed, informat⁎ Innovation allocat⁎, strateg⁎, objective⁎, goal⁎, policy⁎, decision⁎, Strategy commitment⁎, commit, commite⁎, innovat⁎, leader⁎, plan⁎, planning⁎, orient⁎, vision⁎, manager⁎, conflict, resolution⁎, managerial, attitude⁎, champion⁎, frame⁎, mechanism⁎, manner⁎, control⁎ Organization and cultur⁎, environment⁎, flexible organization⁎, democra⁎, Culture autocrat⁎, authorit⁎, admin⁎, centraliz⁎, decentraliz⁎, interaction⁎ frequenc⁎, social⁎, political⁎, tradition⁎, economic⁎, education⁎, scope for creativity, autonom⁎, incentive⁎, in-house, structure, structures, office integration⁎, integrat⁎, office⁎, context⁎ Portfolio Competitive advantage⁎, selection of technolog⁎, Management resource⁎ optimiz⁎, allocation⁎, allocation of resource⁎, strategic choice⁎, technological choice⁎, return⁎ on investment⁎, returns, risk⁎, evaluation⁎, merit⁎, demerit⁎, internal rate⁎ of return⁎, net present value⁎, optimization tool⁎, align⁎ Project Information and Communication Technologies, ICT⁎, Management portal⁎, website⁎, site⁎, technology, technologies, web, electronic, internet, online, form, forms, digital, digitized, digit⁎ Commercialization Publicity, popular⁎, commercial⁎, market⁎, new service⁎, new product⁎, sale⁎, distribution⁎, joint⁎, combined⁎, delivery, function⁎, consumer⁎, customer⁎, buy⁎, provid⁎, service⁎, governance, access, application⁎
organization as one of the constructs. The word “R&D” is synonymous with research and development in the Surveys. Similarly, the term information and communication technologies, is also referred as “ICTs.” The research took into consideration “double conceptualization” of concepts for the IMMF; this ensured the unique counting of the concepts that appear in more than one form for the same construct of the innovation management measurement.
Fig. 1. Research design.
Since the probability of increasing ambiguities is directly proportional to the inclusion of number of concepts that are common to more than one construct or subconstructs, the concepts which do not exclusively belong to the constructs and subconstructs were avoided. For example, while conceptualizing for the Innovation Strategy construct, the term conflict resolution was used instead of just conflict. Encoding for a concept such as “attitude,” an ambiguous term which is common to more than one word was avoided, instead “managerial attitude⁎,” a precise innovation strategy leadership concept was used. A concept such as “manage⁎” is common to more than one word, hence it was avoided, but specific forms such as “project management” and “managerial attitude” were used to avoid ambiguities. Collocations (first right word and first left word) and correlation of various concepts were considered, while counting each concept. For example, if a word “information” has “communication” and “technologies” as the first and second words in the right, respectively, then the concept labeled “information” was not counted as a separate concept, but as a part of the concept “information and communication technologies.” The concept labeled “inform⁎” was avoided for capturing words such as information, informative, and informed because “inform⁎” could also capture unintended words such as informal and informally. Similarly, “idea⁎” was used for conceptualizing a word idea because “idea⁎” can also fetch words like ideal and ideally. Concepts such as “physical resources” and “financial resources” were avoided to make sure that words representing the same concept of resources were not counted twice. In such cases, only “resource⁎” was used. Office integration is associated with structure rather than collaboration, because collaboration is explained as exchanging information between suppliers and customers (Adams et al., 2006). It is essential to note that while conceptualizing Inputs construct from the IMMF, inputs by only service providers; that is, government agencies were considered for the analysis, and not by service receivers such as citizens, customers, or users. The next section presents results obtained from the conceptual content analysis which was carried out with the above explained precautions. 4. Results In the context of the UN e-Readiness assessments, the interrelationships among all seven constructs from the IMMF provide an innovative way to evaluate the existing methodologies of assessing eReadiness. The frequency counts for all seven constructs and subconstructs from the IMMF represent the degree of innovation assessed by the Surveys, in e-Government initiatives of more than 178 Member States of the UN. From all five Surveys published in 2001, 2003, 2004, 2005, and 2008, the concepts representing different aspects of innovation in terms of the seven constructs from the IMMF are summed up in Fig. 2. Out of all seven constructs from the IMMF, Project Management scores the highest; hence, it has the highest influence on the process of evaluating e-Government initiatives. According to the IMMF, major components of Project Management construct are project efficiency, tools, communications, and collaborations (Adams et al., 2006). This construct from the IMMF, takes into account speed with which customers are served, communication modes with internal as well as external stakeholders for organizations, communication required to bridging assembled inputs at the back-end, and delivering commercially viable products and services to customers (Adams et al., 2006). Offering government services through websites is one of the most popular and financially feasible solutions adopted by governments all around the world; government websites serve citizens with government products and services assembled at the back-end, and also act as a medium of communication among stakeholders of e-Governance. The UN tracks e-Readiness through more than 50,000 online features
D.D. Potnis / Government Information Quarterly 27 (2010) 41–48
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Fig. 2. Frequency count reflecting the degree of innovation measured by the UN e-Readiness assessments.
and services for more than 178 Member States across six economic and social sectors, with an acknowledged understanding that websites around the world constantly evolve with high speed (Potnis and Pardo, 2009). Based upon the definition and elements described for project management (see Table 1), the highest score for Project Management construct reveals the strong focus of the Surveys on the digitization of governments through ICTs with websites as an interface. On average, almost equal importance given by these Surveys to Organization and Culture construct from the IMMF, reflects the UN's significant attention towards organizational environment, administration type, government structures, and work culture practices for offering government services electronically. Due to extraordinarily complex ways of measuring return on investments in the public sector, and complexities involved in assessing the degree of competitive advantage for one technology over other, the Surveys seem to be scoring the lowest on Portfolio Management construct from the IMMF. For comparing frequency counts of all seven constructs in each Survey, the frequency counts are treated with percentage normalized scores (PNS). 4.1. Percentage normalized scores (PNS) There is a large variation in terms of the content size of all five Surveys. Out of all five Surveys, the one published in 2003, is the shortest in size with just 81 pages, whereas the largest in size was published in 2004 with 270 pages. Due to this significant variation in the size of the Surveys, direct comparison of frequency count would introduce error, and could challenge the internal validity of this research. Hence PNS were calculated. For example, in the 2008 Survey, frequency count of Inputs summed up to 482. The total frequency count for all seven constructs from the IMMF equaled to 10,738. The percentage normalized score for Inputs in the 2008 Survey: ¼ ðFrequency Count of Inputs=Total Frequency CountÞ⁎100 ¼ ð482 =10; 738Þ⁎100 ¼ 4:4887 N N N N N N N N N N N N N Approximated to 4:489 Similarly, PNS for the IMMF in all five Surveys are shown in Table 3. The above set of PNS projects a comparative overview of all the 7 constructs from the IMMF for all the 5 Surveys. Since e-Governance can be equated to innovation in the public sector, varying PNS reflect the degrees to which all seven constructs from the IMMF are being measured, while evaluating willingness and capacity of Member States of the UN for e-Governance. Pictorially, PNS can be depicted as in Fig. 3. PNS can be interpreted differently by different researchers; however, this research demonstrates that PNS emerges as a new
toolkit for analyzing the existing methods of assessing e-Governance. Interpretations of PNS proposed by the author exemplify just one way of analyzing the existing practices of measuring willingness and capacity of Member States of the UN, when implementing eGovernance. According to the IMMF, without idea generation, information flow, and knowledge repositories, which are subconstructs of Knowledge Management, it is impossible for organizations to introduce and practice innovation into existing e-Government practices. High correlation between PNS for Knowledge Management and Innovation Strategy are indicative of the above mentioned natural interdependence of knowledge management and innovation on each other. Steadily rising PNS for Commercialization construct is evidence of increasing trends of considering citizens as customers as well as various commercialization efforts taken up by Member States while offering e-Government services to their consumers. In the 2008 Survey, the degree to which ICTs are deployed and the level of digitization of government services through website did not remain heavily emphasized criteria for scaling willingness and capacity of its Member States. There is a sharp drop in PNS for Project Management construct. This could be due to the fact that after 2003, the UN has shifted its focus from investments in ICTs and deployment of ICTs to building human skills and human capital for allinclusive growth. Since ICTs represent Tools, a subconstruct from Project Management construct, the plummeting Project Management PNS score could be interpreted as the UN's waning focus on equating success of e-Governance with technologies and hardware. In the most recent survey of 2008, waxing PNS by 25% for Organization and Culture construct confirms the UN's evolving approach towards assessing context of e-Governance, organizational environment and culture for promoting creativity, and innovation in e-Governance. The following section enlists a set of recommendations based upon the author's interpretation of PNS. It is possible that future researchers Table 3 PNS for all the 7 constructs from the IMMF after processing e-Government readiness assessments surveys using conceptual content analysis. Year 7 constructs from the IMMF 2008 Inputs Knowledge Management Innovation Strategy Organization and Culture Portfolio Management Project Management Commercialization Total PNS for each report
2005
2004
2003
2001
5.929 4.220 4.926 4.298 4.802 9.607 10.243 9.954 13.188 11.971 10.973 6.861 8.805 7.429 12.309 30.618 24.273 24.548 23.664 23.909 0.861 0.321 0.001 0.000 0.44 21.773 35.033 31.917 30.091 28.914 20.236 19.047 19.745 21.327 17.653 100 100 100 100 100
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Fig. 3. PNS representing the degree of innovation measured by the UN e-Readiness assessments.
might propose completely different recommendations using the same PNS, since there could be multiple sets of interpretations possible for the same set of PNS. 5. Recommendations for more powerful indices The main objective of the UN e-Government readiness assessments is to measure capacity and willingness of Member States of the UN to offer government services through the internet (United Nations, 2003, 2004, 2005). The term “capacity” refers to financial, infrastructural, human capital, regulatory, administrative, and systemic capabilities of Member States for improving knowledge and information in government services, using ICTs as media (United Nations, 2004), and the term “willingness” refers to the willingness of Member States in empowering citizens with knowledge and information required for participating in e-Governance, which is particularly known as e-Participation (United Nations, 2004). The comparison of all the PNS for all seven constructs from the IMMF led to the following recommendations. They are as follows: a. In light of the fact that one-sided, heavy deployment of ICTs for e-Governance leads to digital divide, the paper recommends that the assessment of hardcore technical component such as ICTs be balanced with soft components of e-Governments such as people, information, and processes. This could be achieved by narrowing the gap between PNS for Project Management and Knowledge Management. The PNS for the Project Management construct emerges to an average of 29.546%, which is in contrast with the PNS for Knowledge Management construct, which has an average of 10.993%. According to the IMMF, the Project Management construct consists of project efficiency, tools, communications, and collaborations required for executing any innovation. ICTs represent the Tools subconstruct of the Project Management construct. ICTs being an engine for deploying e-Government initiatives, they have a major share in increasing project efficiency of any e-Government project. ICTs also act as efficient tools for effective communication and collaboration, which is required for the success of any eGovernment initiative. Thus, in the future, instead of heavily paying attention to ICTs, the UN could balance its focus by paying attention to interrelationships between people, process, and information. For example, interorganizational information sharing and back-office information integration are some of the key elements of knowledge management, which could be assessed thoroughly as a part of the Surveys. In addition, for improving emphasis on assessment criteria representing Knowledge Management, the UN could also incorporate the
following criteria to the existing ones—the degree of communication setup among various government agencies, level of interorganizational efforts demonstrated to build e-Government initiatives, types of interorganizational communication patterns, and collaboration efforts for information sharing among various groups and government agencies. The inclusion of the above mentioned factors into existing methodologies being used to measure e-Government initiatives could generate better balanced and more informed rankings in terms of the Indices. b. The second recommendation aims to better equip the UN for assessing capabilities of Member States shaped by their willingness for empowering their citizens with knowledge and information required for e-Participation. The UN could achieve the goal set by this recommendation by better gauging human capital for eGovernance, and physical and financial resources that act as inputs for any e-Government initiative. For all the previous e-Government assessments by the UN, the PNS for Inputs from the IMMF is close to an average of 4.835%, which is in contrast to Project Management construct from the IMMF with an average score of 29.546%. More specifically, the UN needs to mark the following criteria for evaluating e-Readiness: types of software and hardware used to develop web portals and e-Government interfaces, level of expertise, skills, and education levels of employees who design and develop e-Government web portals and kiosks, the degree of outsourced e-Government projects, and the features associated with public-private partnerships in the context of e-Governance. Understanding interrelationships among the above mentioned inputs of e-Government could help the UN to better capture the degree of knowledge sharing and information sharing among various stakeholders of e-Government. This, in turn, could further increase the UN's grip over measuring knowledge management in e-Government. c. The third recommendation relates to bringing greater equity to eReadiness rankings assigned to Member States of the UN. For example, there needs to be a significant factor of consideration to take into account vast differences among Member States in terms of the contexts, hurdles, and constraints created by differences related to e-Governance. The size of the information technology (IT) workforce and related taskforces that are deployed for design and development of e-Government initiatives act as some of the most significant constraints as well as controlling factors for the success of e-Government initiatives. The existing e-Government assessments take into account only the end products, that is, websites which represent just one type of e-Government initiatives; but the UN assessments do not attempt to quantify unique dynamics among social, economic, political, and cultural contexts and obstacles created by those multidimensional
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contexts for Member States while offering e-Governance. For example, the amount of $100,000 invested in an e-Government initiative demonstrates very different levels of capacity and willingness of governments in the U.S., a developed nation, and Ghana, one of the least developed nations in Africa. For the equal amount of investment made by the U.S. and Ghana, there is a very high likelihood that the Ghanaian government's willingness and capacity for e-Government exceeds as that of U.S. Thus, ranking of governments from Member States of the UN, based upon only end products such as number of features on websites, number of televisions per 10,000 people, or number of people with primary education, may not necessarily reflect the real willingness and capacity demonstrated by governments of those Member States. d. The research proposes the fourth recommendation to assist the Surveys for measuring the degree of success in terms of efficiency of e-Government initiatives, using a set of advanced techniques. The level of efficiency of an e-Government initiative could be achieved by paying more attention to the Portfolio Management construct, which has a PNS of 0.34% on average, the lowest scores in all five assessments when compared to the rest of the constructs from the IMMF. The IMMF describes Portfolio Management as a combination of risk-to-return ratio and optimization tools. In order to gauge the true capacity of governments from Member States of the UN, future assessments could associate “financial metrics” proposed by the IMMF with the existing methods. For example, the efficiency of e-Government initiatives can be measured using tangible as well as intangible factors. Typically, return on investment (ROI), breakeven values (BEV) for investments in e-Government efforts, and net present value (NPV) of ICTs infrastructure make the list of tangible criteria to evaluate efficiency of e-Government initiatives. Information gathered to calculate at least one of the above mentioned criteria measuring tangible aspects of portfolio management would also shed light upon the value of an eGovernment initiative as an investment. e. Since effective and efficient knowledge management is a backbone for any Knowledge-based Society—an idea proposed by the UN (United Nations, 2005)—the fifth recommendation is that the UN Surveys build a metric for assessing effectiveness and efficiency of knowledge management achieved through e-Governance in more than 178 Member States of the UN. The Knowledge Management construct from the IMMF is comprised of three subconstructs— knowledge repository, idea generation, and information flow—that take place in any innovation initiative. Gradual increment in PNS for Knowledge Management construct in all five Surveys reflects an incremental awareness in the UN's approach towards either one of the three subconstructs of knowledge management or a combination of the subconstructs. In the future, the UN e-Government readiness assessment practices could evaluate Member States on the basis of each subconstruct from Knowledge Management. In light of the fact that findings and views expressed in the Surveys act as imperatives for Member States of the UN, assessments recognizing knowledge management for e-Governance would certainly promote innovative ideas related to knowledge repository, idea generation, and information flow for e-Governance. The UN's increasing awareness for knowledge management could also be interpreted as its attempts to gauge Member States' efforts to create a knowledge-based society, using e-Government initiatives as a vehicle to achieve it (United Nations, 2004). Also, knowledge accumulated in government employees, due to their prolonged experience and service, plays a key role in cross-boundary information sharing among various government units, the Surveys need to build the metrics of knowledge management as a part of the Indices. f. The sixth recommendation focuses on maintaining a consistency in longitudinal Surveys. Significant fluctuations in PNS for Project
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Management and Portfolio Management constructs from the IMMF could act as impediments to considering the Indices as a point-of-reference. By avoiding such inconsistencies in the future, the UN e-Readiness rankings could create more validity and generalizability for political, bureaucratic, and socioeconomic applications of the Surveys. Since the above set of recommendations is based upon PNS which represent scientific, qualitative evaluation of the Surveys, if followed, these recommendations could lead to better informed and more powerful Indices in the future. 6. Conclusion The research study proposes that e-Governance is an innovation in the public sector. Resources invested in any innovation can be managed optimally only if innovation management process is evaluated effectively (Adams et al., 2006). In the context of the UN's definition of e-Government, e-Governance can be referred to as an innovation management process in the public sector. Since 2001, in order to evaluate e-Governance, various UN agencies collaboratively devised the Indices to assess capacity and willingness of Member States of the UN, practicing e-Governance. Since these Indices are used regularly by Member States of the UN, the digital government research community, academicians, and practitioners as a point-of-reference, it becomes necessary to evaluate the assessments of e-Government initiatives of Member States of the UN (Potnis and Pardo, 2008). With the help of Innovation Management Measurement Framework (IMMF), one of the most widely used and comprehensive framework to evaluate innovation, the research runs a conceptual content analysis on the Surveys, to measure the degree to which the existing Surveys assess innovation in e-Government initiatives of Member States of the UN. Thus, this study demonstrates a new way of analyzing the existing e-Readiness assessment practices of the UN, and proposes a set of recommendations to improve the existing UN practices. The first recommendation underlines the need to balance criteria assessing hard and soft components of e-Governance and proposes a solution to achieve it by narrowing the gap between PNS for Project Management and Knowledge Management from the IMMF. The second recommendation offers a solution to better equip the UN for assessing capabilities of Member States, which are shaped by their willingness for empowering their citizens with knowledge and information required for e-Participation. The third recommendation has a message of elevating the equity in the UN e-Readiness rankings. The fourth recommendation includes applications of NPV, BEV, and ROI as criteria to evaluate the success in terms of efficiency of e-Government initiatives. Since effective and efficient knowledge management is the backbone for any Knowledge-based Society, the fifth recommendation expects the Surveys to build a metric for assessing effectiveness and efficiency of knowledge management achieved through e-Governance in more than 178 Member States of the UN. The sixth recommendation focuses on maintaining a consistency among a series of Surveys in order to maintain the current position of the Indices as a point-of-reference in the digital government community. Since the UN's ways of measuring e-Government initiatives set a benchmark for many nations' efforts to offer e-Governance, all Member States of the UN would benefit, if the UN refines its existing e-Readiness assessment practices. This could be partly achieved by considering the above set of recommendations, which are derived with the help of IMMF (7 constructs and 19 subconstructs). In the future, incorporation of PNS based on IMMF, with the existing eGovernment readiness practices could play an instrumental role in developing better informed, more balanced, and more powerful Indices, potentially benefiting all the stakeholders involved in the pervasive movement of digital governance.
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Acknowledgments The author would like to thank Dr. Terry Maxwell, Dr. Theresa Pardo, and Dr. Jagdish Gangolly for their valuable comments and guidance. The author also appreciates unknown reviewers' constructive feedback and Stephanie Graham's editorial assistance. References Adams, R., Bessant, J., & Phelps, R. (2006). Innovation management measurement. A review. International Journal of Management Reviews, 8, 21−47. Amabile, T. M., Conti, R., Coon, H., Lazenby, J., & Herron, M. (1996). Assessing the work environment for creativity. Academy of Management Journal, 39, 1154−1184. Bard, J. F., Balachandra, R., & Kaufmann, P. E. (1988). An interactive approach to R and D project selection and termination. IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, 35, 139−146. Blackler, F. (1995). Knowledge, knowledge work and organizations: An overview and interpretation. Organization Studies, 16, 1021−1046. Calantone, R. J., & di Benedetto, C. A. (1988). An integrative model of the new product development process: An empirical validation. Journal of Product Innovation Management, 5, 201−215. Chakravorti, B. (2004). The new rules for bringing innovations to market. Harvard Business Review, 82, 58−67. Chen, C. J. (2004). The effects of knowledge attribute, alliance characteristics, and absorptive capacity on knowledge transfer performance. R and D Management, 34, 311−321. Cohen, W. M., & Levinthal, D. A. (1990). Absorptive capacity: A new perspective on learning and innovation. Administrative Science Quarterly, 35, 128−152. Cooper, R. G. (1984). The strategy–performance link in product innovation. R and D Management, 14, 247−259. Committee on Computing and Communications Research to Enable Better Use of Information Technology in Government. (2008). Information technology research, innovation, and e-Government Washington, D.C.: Computer Science and Telecommunications Board, Division on Engineering and Physical Sciences. Davis, M. C. (1998). Knowledge management. Information Strategy: The Executive's Journal, 15, 11−22. Deeds, D. L. (2001). The role of R and D intensity, technical development and absorptive capacity in creating entrepreneurial wealth in high technology start-ups. Journal of Engineering and Technology Management Science, 18, 29−47. Department of Trade and Industry Board of Members. (1998). An audience with innovation: Innovation in management. London: Department of Trade and Industry. DIT. (2004). India: e-Readiness assessment report 2004. Government of India: Department of Information and Communication Technologies. Dougherty, D., & Cohen, M. (1995). Product innovation in mature firms. Redesigning the firm. New York: Oxford University Press. Dyer, B., & Song, X. M. (1998). Innovation strategy and sanctioned conflict: A new edge in innovation? Journal of Product Innovation Management, 15, 505−519. Ekvall, G. (1996). Organizational climate for creativity and innovation. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 5, 105−123. Ernst, H. (2002). Success factors of new product development: A review of the empirical literature. International Journal of Management Reviews, 4, 1−40. Fose. (2002). Adobe recognizes e-Government innovation: Internal Revenue Service employees honored for excellence in electronic tax form programs. Washington: B. W. G. Group. Frenkel, A., Maital, S., & Grupp, H. (2000). Measuring dynamic technical change: A technometric approach. Journal of Technology Management Science International, 20, 429−441. Globe, S., Levy, G., & Schwartz, C. (1973). Key factors and events in the innovation process. Research Management, 16, 8−15. Greve, H. R. (2003). A behavioral theory of R and D expenditures and innovations: Evidence from shipbuilding. Academy of Management Journal, 46, 685−702. Hall, D. L. (1990). An interactive approach for selecting IR and D projects. IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, 37, 126−133. Kassarjian Harold, H. (1977). Content analysis in consumer research. The Journal of Consumer Research, 4(1), 8−18. Koen, P., Ajamian, G., Burkart, R., Clamen, A., Davidson, J., D'Amore, R., et al. (2001). Providing clarity and a common language to the fuzzy front end. ResearchTechnology Management, 44, 46−55. Kushchu, I., and Kuscu, M. H. (2004). From e-Government to M-government: Facing the inevitable. Mobile Government Lab, Japan, Retrieved from http://www.mgovernment. org/resurces/mgovlab_ikhk.pdf on December 2008.
McNabb, D. E. (2002). Research methods in public administration and non-profit management: Quantitative and qualitative approaches. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe. Miller, D., & Friesen, P. H. (1982). Innovation in conservative and entrepreneurial firms: Two models of strategic momentum. Strategic Management Journal, 3, 1−24. Nonaka, I. (1991). The knowledge-creating company. Harvard Business Review, 69, 96−104. Neuendorf, K. (2002). The content analysis guidebook. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Paisley, W. J. (1969). Studying style as deviation from encoding norms. In Gerbner et al. (Eds.), The analysis of communications content: Developments in scientific theories and computer techniques (pp. 133−146). New York: Wiley. Parthasarthy, R. A. (2002). Product innovation input and outcome: Moderating effects of the innovation process. Journal of Engineering and Technology Management, 19, 75−91. Pinto, J. K., & Prescott, J. E. (1988). Changes in critical success factors over the stages in the project life cycle. Journal of Management, 14, 5−18. Potnis, D., & Pardo, T. (2008). e-Readiness indicators. Paper presented at the 3rd International Conference on E-Governance (ICEGOV), Cairo, Egypt. Potnis, D., & Pardo, T. (2009). Evolution of e-Readiness assessments: The UN Perspective, Working paper, State University of New York – University at Albany, New York, USA. Pugh, D. S., Hickson, D. J., Hinings, C. R., & Turner, C. (1969). The context of organization structures. Administrative Science Quarterly, 14, 91−114. Rogers, E. M. (1995). The diffusion of innovations, 3rd ed. New York: The Free Press. Saleh, S. D., & Wang, C. K. (1993). The management of innovation—Strategy, structure, and organizational climate. IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, 40, 14−21. Schmidt, R. L., & Freeland, J. R. (1992). Recent progress in modeling R and D projectselection processes. IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, 39, 189−201. Szakonyi, R. (1994). Measuring R and D effectiveness. Research-Technology Management, 37, 27−32. The Advisory Committee on Measuring Innovation in the 21st Century. (2008). Innovation measurement, tracking the state of innovation in the American economy. Washington D.C. Tidd, J., Bessant, J., & Pavitt, K. (1997). Managing innovation: Integrating technological, market and organizational change. Chichester, UK: John Wiley. Tsai, W. (2001). Knowledge transfer in intraorganizational networks: Effects of network position and absorptive capacity on business unit innovation and performance. Academy of Management Journal, 44, 996−1004. United Nations Division for Public Economic and Public Administration, and American Society for Public Administration, (2001). Benchmarking e-Government: A global perspective: Assessing the progress of UN member states. United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, and the Civic Resource Group, (2003). UN global e-Government survey 2003. United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, and Division for Public Administration and Development Management, (2004). Global e-Government readiness report 2004: Towards access for opportunity. United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, and Management, Division for Public Administration and Development Management, (2005). Global eGovernment readiness report: From e-Government to e-Inclusion. United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, and Management, Division for Public Administration and Development Management, (2008). UN e-Government survey 2008, From e-Government to connected governance: Economic and social affairs. Volberda, H. W. (1996). Towards the flexible form: How to remain vital in hypercompetitive environments. Organizational Science, 7, 359−374. Zaltman, G., Duncan, R., & Holbek, J. (1973). Innovations and organizations. New York: John Wiley. Devendra Potnis is a doctoral candidate in Informatics, College of Computing and Information, State University of New York – University at Albany. He holds Masters in Public Administration from Rockefeller College, State University of New York – University at Albany, Masters in Computer Science from University of Louisiana at Lafayette, and Bachelors in Computer Engineering from University of Mumbai, India. His main research interests are e-Government, Information, and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in Developing Nations, ICTs and Disadvantaged Populations, and ICTs in Microfinance. His dissertation research studies the role of mobile technologies in shaping information behavior of disadvantaged women, who own and use mobile cell phones, and earn less than $1 by working at a domestic business setup run by women in rural India. He has taught in School of Business, Informatics, Information Studies, and Computer Science, in the U.S. and abroad. He also has an extensive experience in facilitation, consultation, website designing, and project management.
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Government Information Quarterly j o u r n a l h o m e p a g e : w w w. e l s e v i e r. c o m / l o c a t e / g o v i n f
Measuring e-Governance as an innovation in the public sector Devendra D. Potnis College of Computing and Information, State University of New York at Albany, 7A Harriman Campus, Suite 220, Albany, NY 12222, USA
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Available online 17 October 2009 Keywords: e-Government Innovation United Nations e-Government Readiness Index e-Participation Index Percentage normalized scores
a b s t r a c t Since 2001, the United Nations (UN) and affiliated organizations have measured e-Government initiatives of more than 178 Member States of the UN, by devising “e-Government Readiness Index” (e-GRI) and “eParticipation Index” (e-PI). The UN has published rankings for its Member States in terms of e-GRI and e-PI, through e-Government Readiness Assessments (Surveys). Member States of the UN and digital government research community as well as academicians and practitioners regularly use the e-GRI and e-PI as a point-ofreference; this fact alone signifies the importance of evaluating the existing UN methodologies assessing eGovernance. Since e-Governance is one of the greatest innovations in the public sector, this research uses conceptual content analysis on the Surveys using the Innovation Management Measurement Framework (IMMF), which is one of the most widely accepted theoretical frameworks for measuring innovation initiatives. The resultant percentage normalized scores (PNS) lead to a set of recommendations for developing better informed, more balanced, and more powerful e-GRI and e-PI for the future. © 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
1. e-Governance: An innovation in the public sector The United Nations (UN) defines e-Government as “utilizing the internet and the World Wide Web for delivering government information and services to citizens” (United Nations, 2001, p.1). Government services can be managed and offered through a variety of different forms of information and communication technology (ICT) platforms and applications (United Nations, 2001, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2008). Due to the inherent nature of governance, e-Government initiatives are often collaborative in nature, bringing together various units of government, private sector, nongovernment organizations, and citizens as key stakeholders. Various attributes of e-Governance can be mapped onto characteristic features of innovation, thereby equating e-Governance with an innovation in the public sector. An innovation is “an idea, practice, or object that is perceived as new by an individual or other unit of adoption” (Rogers, 1995, p.14). Until the end of the 20th century, offering government services to citizens through electronic media was essentially a very new idea, and hence a new practice in the public sector. In other words, eGovernment was a new trend then and not a regular practice (United Nations, 2001). Web portals, kiosks, and mobile technologies were some of the emerging means of offering government services, with dissemination of relevant information in the electronic mode (Kushchu and Kuscu, 2004). Gradually, government units all over the world started taking initiatives for adopting e-Government practices (The Advisory Committee, 2008). Thus, in the first decade of the 21st century, offering and managing government services
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through information and communication technologies (ICTs), that is, e-Government, has undoubtedly emerged as one of the greatest innovations in the public sector (Committee, 2008; Fose, 2002). In the context of the UN's definition of e-Government which is an innovation in the public sector, e-Governance can be referred to as an innovation management process in the public sector. Since 2001, in order to evaluate e-Governance, the United Nations Public Administration Network (UNPAN), the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA), and the United Nations Division for Public Economics (UNDPE) collaboratively devised their own e-Government Readiness Index (e-GRI) and e-Participation Index (e-PI) (United Nations, 2004, 2005), collectively referred to as the Indices, hereafter in this paper. These Indices are a composite measurement of capacity and willingness of Member States of the UN for e-Governance. The UN's evolving understanding for e-Governance periodically informs the design of the Indices (Potnis and Pardo, 2009). The UN calculates values for the Indices using the UN eGovernment Readiness Assessments. These are issue-based surveys; hence, they are referred to as Surveys hereafter in this paper. The Surveys assess “how willing and ready the governments around the world are to employ the opportunities offered by ICT to improve the access, and quality, of basic social services to the people for sustainable human development” (United Nations, 2004, p. ix). The UN has used the Indices as metrics for evaluating more than 50,000 online features and government services of more than 178 Member States across six economic and social sectors. Since these Indices are used regularly as a point-of-reference by Member States of the UN, the digital government research community, academicians, and practitioners, it becomes necessary to evaluate the Surveys (Potnis and Pardo, 2008). Governments around
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the world perceive e-Readiness assessments as enablers for decisionmakers from both the private and the public sectors, for devising appropriate levels of investments and policy formulations required for e-Government initiatives (DIT, 2004). The Surveys also have the potential to serve as a complementary methodology to measure the UN Human Development Index. Importantly, the Surveys offer “insights into the different strategies and common themes in eGovernment development among regions and across them” (United Nations, 2005, p.13). The global outreach of the impacts generated by the UN e-Readiness assessments signifies the necessity of valuating the advancing Indices. Milestones in the development of the Indices make it possible to track the UN's evolving understanding for eGovernance, reflected through the Surveys (Potnis and Pardo, 2009). Hence, the Surveys are chosen as a medium to analyze the composition of the Indices which rank willingness and capacity of Member States of the UN for e-Governance. Resources invested in any innovation can be managed optimally only if innovation management process is evaluated effectively (Adams et al., 2006). The Surveys assess e-Governance, which is an innovation in the public sector; as a result, a comprehensive methodology that could assay innovation management process in the form of e-Governance is required. Value and need for measuring innovation management processes are heavily desired by both the public and private sectors (The Advisory Committee, 2008). To assess e-Government initiatives of Member States of the UN, a holistic innovation measurement methodology in the form of Innovation Management Measurement Framework (IMMF) (Adams et al., 2006) is applied. The IMMF is one of the most widely accepted, the most updated, and one of the most comprehensive frameworks available in the literature on assessing performance of innovations. By running a conceptual content analysis on the Surveys, the IMMF measures the degree to which the existing Surveys assess innovation in eGovernment initiatives run by Member States of the UN. The results of measuring e-Governance as an innovation in the public sector, if incorporated with the existing e-Government readiness assessment practices, could lead to better informed and more balanced Indices, thereby allowing us to measure e-Readiness of Member States of the UN in a more powerful fashion. The second section synthesizes scholarly research in the field of innovation, which has been used by Adams et al. (2006) as a foundation for developing the IMMF. The third section depicts the overall research design of this research study and various precautions taken in running the conceptual content analysis. The fourth section presents results obtained by processing all the 5 Surveys with the help of Concordance Software. The fifth section proposes possible ways for improving the existing practices of evaluating e-Readiness of Member States of the UN. Finally, the conclusion section illustrates the benefits of improving the Indices, using recommendations based on this study. 2. The Innovation Management Measurement Framework (IMMF) This section delineates the composition of the IMMF in terms of its seven constructs and contributions of each construct in measuring the performance of any innovation. The term innovation is inherently ambiguous and has been defined differently by a number of scholarly research studies. For the purpose of defining innovation, Adams et al. (2006) considered the United Kingdom Department of Trade and Industry's (Department of Trade and Industry, 1998) broad definition of innovation, which considers the successful exploitation of new ideas as the central theme for any innovation. In order to manage innovations, many organizations often struggle to define the scope of innovations, quantify the measures of innovations, create benchmarks for the innovation management processes, and, finally, evaluate innovation management processes (Frenkel et al., 2000). Innovation management literature consists of conforming as well as contradic-
tory opinions, approaches, and practices of innovation. The innovation management measurement is a uniquely synthesized framework grounded in the diverse literature on innovation, innovation management, and measurement of innovation in the public as well as the private sectors. The IMMF is a product of theoretical saturation of analytical review of all the possible innovation measurement-related theories from myriad of academic backgrounds (Adams et al., 2006). The IMMF offers a unique opportunity for public as well as private sector managers to evaluate innovative activities in their organizations against proposed framework of innovation management measurements. The IMMF measures innovation management using the lens formed by seven inductively derived constructs: inputs, knowledge management, innovation strategy, organization and culture, portfolio management, project management, and commercialization (see Table 1). Management of Inputs, the first construct, focuses on resource management with resources ranging from human and physical resources, financial resources, and the process of generating innovative ideas (Miller and Friesen, 1982; Adams et al., 2006). Factors related to research and development are also used as input variables (Parthasarthy, 2002; Deeds, 2001; Greve, 2003). The IMMF defines Knowledge Management, the second construct, as “obtaining and communicating ideas and information that underlie innovation competencies, and includes idea generation, absorptive capacity and networking” (Adams et al., 2006, p.8). Knowledge management is comprised of idea generation, knowledge repository, and information flows (Davis, 1998; Nonaka, 1991; Blackler, 1995). Accumulated tacit and explicit types of knowledge in organizations, and knowledge absorptive capacity of organizations contribute significantly to the abilities of organizations to carry out innovation (Chen, 2004; Cohen and Levinthal, 1990; Cooper, 1984; Koen et al., 2001; Tsai, 2001). Organizations' new products, and evolving management and business-related processes often represent their innovation strategy, the third construct from the IMMF, in the context of competitive environments (Dyer and Song, 1998). In many areas, governments hold a monopoly in offering their services to citizens; this underplays the role of innovation strategy in the context of government services. Risk-taking, pro-activeness, and persistent commitment to innovation are the three approaches taken by any organization while devising innovation strategy (Saleh and Wang, 1993). Strategy adopted by top management largely decides the success of innovation (Cooper, 1984). Buy-in from the top management is absolutely essential for
Table 1 Seven constructs from the IMMF (adapted from Adams et al., 2006). No.
7 constructs from the IMMF
Subconstructs
1
Inputs
2
Knowledge Management
3
Innovation Strategy
4
Organization and Culture
5
Portfolio Management
6
Project Management
7
Commercialization
• People • Physical and financial resources • Tools • Idea generation • Knowledge repository • Information Flow • Strategic orientation • Strategic leadership • Culture • Structure • Risk/return balance • Optimization tool use • Project efficiency • Tools • Communications • Collaboration • Market research • Market testing • Marketing and sales
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providing consistent resource allocations for innovation in organizations. The interrelationship between innovation strategy and business goals, which is known as strategic orientation, in addition to a vision demonstrated by leaders in organizations, determines the success of strategic orientation and innovation strategy (Pinto and Prescott, 1988). Characteristics of organizations following innovation strategy approach tend to be different than the characteristics of those which do not. Organization and Culture is the fourth construct from the IMMF. The IMMF addresses Cultural and Structural elements associated with organizations that practice innovation and those which do not. Inherently, the organizational structure is strongly associated with its context (Pugh et al., 1969). The key factors that influence outcome of innovation efforts in any organization are as follows: perceived work environment in organizations, situational and psychological factors (Amabile et al., 1996; Ekvall, 1996), special task forces dedicated to implement innovations in organizations (Ernst, 2002), perceived significance of innovations (Tidd et al., 1997), nature and features of organizational work culture (Dougherty and Cohen, 1995), interaction frequency of various units in organizations, organizational policies to respond back to different types of competitions in the market (Volberda, 1996) issues related to assigning tasks, and, finally, staffing in that particular organization. Portfolio Management, the fifth construct from the IMMF, is the most recently realized construct and therefore presents an emerging theme in innovation research literature. Strategic, technological, and resource-related choices are mainly focused due to their abilities to shape research and development as well as the overall innovation process (Bard et al., 1988; Cooper, 1984). Scoring models, return on investment, break-even analysis, constraint optimization models, balance sheets between high- versus low-risk projects, a match between proficiency level of employees and the types of tasks assigned to them, balance sheets between high-gain versus lowgain projects, and project evaluation models are the key elements considered for portfolio management under the IMMF (Schmidt and Freeland, 1992; Hall, 1990; Szakonyi, 1994). The degree of efficiency associated with a process directly affects its ability to manage innovation management (Globe et al., 1973). Project Management, the sixth construct from the IMMF, focuses on the process of converting inputs into a marketable innovation. Despite innovation processes being depicted as a series of events, social interactions are viewed as a series of transactions coordinated by seamless communication (Zaltman et al., 1973). Some of the key themes that are commonly recognized as intimate aspects of any innovation include project efficiency, tools, communications, and collaboration (Adams et al., 2006). Project management takes into consideration these four common key themes under the IMMF (Adams et al., 2006). Commercialization, the seventh construct from the IMMF, mainly involves taking innovation to markets (Chakravorti, 2004). Successful launching of new products and services resulted as an outcome of innovation, is absolutely required for the survival of organizations. This essentially involves marketing, sales, distribution, and other relevant activities (Calantone and di Benedetto, 1988; Globe et al., 1973). The commercialization process can also be used to bring changes into various internal processes, while evaluating efficiencies of organizations' units. In this research study, all of the above described seven constructs from the IMMF that are used to evaluate the Surveys. 3. Methodology This section explains the research approach used to evaluate the Surveys. In order to measure the extent to which the Surveys assess eGovernance as an innovation in the public sector, seven constructs and their subconstructs proposed by the IMMF are conceptualized.
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Conceptual content analysis is used for analyzing corpus of data that consist of five Surveys namely: a) Benchmarking e-Government: A Global Perspective (United Nations, 2001); b) The UN Global e-Government Survey 2003 (United Nations, 2003); c) Global e-Government Readiness Report 2004: Towards Access for Opportunity (United Nations, 2004); d) Global e-Government Readiness Report 2005: From e-Government to e-Inclusion (United Nations, 2005); and e) The UN e-Government Survey 2008: From e-Government to Connected Governance (United Nations, 2008). Typically, a dictionary of items is defined to measure the occurrence of constructs (McNabb, 2002). Various words, their segments, and combinations relevant to all seven constructs and subconstructs of IMMF are known as concepts. The process of defining those concepts is known as conceptualization. Human coding was used to derive codes that represent concepts. Content analysis is a very well established, quantitative technique, which is used to transform and analyze communication content or messages through the systemic application of constructs or rules (Kassarjian, 1977). Conceptual content analysis makes use of categorization rules clustered around the central theme to process information content of any communication. Outcomes of content analysis are typically summarized and compared to better describe communication data (Paisley, 1969). As a part of this qualitative research method, computer aided conceptual content analysis was carried out, using a software named Concordance 2.0. It was used to calculate the frequency count for all of the concepts in all of the Surveys. Conceptualization was carried out by forming pick lists. The “pick list” feature from Concordance was used to store concepts for all seven constructs and subconstructs from the IMMF. As a result, seven pick lists were developed for collecting concepts based upon seven constructs from the IMMF (see Table 2). Due to a large variation in the sizes of the Surveys that were published over a period of 8 years, frequency counts of concepts that were derived from IMMF could not be compared directly. Therefore, percentage normalized scores (PNSs) were calculated based upon occurrences (frequency counts) of various concepts from the IMMF, in the Surveys (see Fig. 1). The PNSs enable this research to compare all seven constructs and subconstructs from the IMMF longitudinally. The details about PNSs are explained in the Results section. 3.1. Precautions taken for conceptualization process As a part of the conceptualization process, there were many special precautions taken while populating pick lists with concepts. Overarching terms such as e-Government, agency, country, government, ministry, nation, organization, sector and state, as well as any of their possible combinations were avoided (Neuendorf, 2002). The wildcard character (⁎) was used for covering all the string ramifications with common preamble. For example, “innovat⁎” was used for covering all the words such as innovate, innovation, innovated and innovative, which have “innovate” as a preamble. Knowledge management under the IMMF addresses organizational capabilities and capacities to absorb new knowledge, and puts them to work, thereby introducing reforms into organizations. Higher levels of absorptive capacity appear to be positively related to innovation and performance (Chen, 2004; Tsai, 2001). Hence, the words related to reforms, changes, capacity, and capability were encoded as concepts under knowledge management. The research interprets the notion of culture for organization as a set of general key characteristics of different societies in Member States of the UN. Economic, political, social, educational, and cultural features were considered while creating concepts for culture of
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Table 2 Pick lists formed using Concordance Software. No. Constructs from the IMMF 1
2
3
4
5
6
7
Pick lists Representing representing concepts
Inputs
formal system⁎, develop⁎ tool⁎, design⁎ tool⁎, resource⁎, research and development, RandD, government expenditure⁎, government expenses, input⁎, funding⁎, fund, funds, investment cost, investment costs, implementation team⁎, workforce employee⁎, government employee⁎, staff⁎, government investment⁎, implement⁎ software⁎, implement⁎ hardware⁎, infrastructure⁎, skill⁎, proficienc⁎, training⁎ Knowledge Idea, ideas, intellect⁎, intelligen⁎, knowledge⁎, Management information⁎, data⁎, feasibility⁎, reform⁎, capacity⁎, capabilit⁎, chang⁎, informed, informat⁎ Innovation allocat⁎, strateg⁎, objective⁎, goal⁎, policy⁎, decision⁎, Strategy commitment⁎, commit, commite⁎, innovat⁎, leader⁎, plan⁎, planning⁎, orient⁎, vision⁎, manager⁎, conflict, resolution⁎, managerial, attitude⁎, champion⁎, frame⁎, mechanism⁎, manner⁎, control⁎ Organization and cultur⁎, environment⁎, flexible organization⁎, democra⁎, Culture autocrat⁎, authorit⁎, admin⁎, centraliz⁎, decentraliz⁎, interaction⁎ frequenc⁎, social⁎, political⁎, tradition⁎, economic⁎, education⁎, scope for creativity, autonom⁎, incentive⁎, in-house, structure, structures, office integration⁎, integrat⁎, office⁎, context⁎ Portfolio Competitive advantage⁎, selection of technolog⁎, Management resource⁎ optimiz⁎, allocation⁎, allocation of resource⁎, strategic choice⁎, technological choice⁎, return⁎ on investment⁎, returns, risk⁎, evaluation⁎, merit⁎, demerit⁎, internal rate⁎ of return⁎, net present value⁎, optimization tool⁎, align⁎ Project Information and Communication Technologies, ICT⁎, Management portal⁎, website⁎, site⁎, technology, technologies, web, electronic, internet, online, form, forms, digital, digitized, digit⁎ Commercialization Publicity, popular⁎, commercial⁎, market⁎, new service⁎, new product⁎, sale⁎, distribution⁎, joint⁎, combined⁎, delivery, function⁎, consumer⁎, customer⁎, buy⁎, provid⁎, service⁎, governance, access, application⁎
organization as one of the constructs. The word “R&D” is synonymous with research and development in the Surveys. Similarly, the term information and communication technologies, is also referred as “ICTs.” The research took into consideration “double conceptualization” of concepts for the IMMF; this ensured the unique counting of the concepts that appear in more than one form for the same construct of the innovation management measurement.
Fig. 1. Research design.
Since the probability of increasing ambiguities is directly proportional to the inclusion of number of concepts that are common to more than one construct or subconstructs, the concepts which do not exclusively belong to the constructs and subconstructs were avoided. For example, while conceptualizing for the Innovation Strategy construct, the term conflict resolution was used instead of just conflict. Encoding for a concept such as “attitude,” an ambiguous term which is common to more than one word was avoided, instead “managerial attitude⁎,” a precise innovation strategy leadership concept was used. A concept such as “manage⁎” is common to more than one word, hence it was avoided, but specific forms such as “project management” and “managerial attitude” were used to avoid ambiguities. Collocations (first right word and first left word) and correlation of various concepts were considered, while counting each concept. For example, if a word “information” has “communication” and “technologies” as the first and second words in the right, respectively, then the concept labeled “information” was not counted as a separate concept, but as a part of the concept “information and communication technologies.” The concept labeled “inform⁎” was avoided for capturing words such as information, informative, and informed because “inform⁎” could also capture unintended words such as informal and informally. Similarly, “idea⁎” was used for conceptualizing a word idea because “idea⁎” can also fetch words like ideal and ideally. Concepts such as “physical resources” and “financial resources” were avoided to make sure that words representing the same concept of resources were not counted twice. In such cases, only “resource⁎” was used. Office integration is associated with structure rather than collaboration, because collaboration is explained as exchanging information between suppliers and customers (Adams et al., 2006). It is essential to note that while conceptualizing Inputs construct from the IMMF, inputs by only service providers; that is, government agencies were considered for the analysis, and not by service receivers such as citizens, customers, or users. The next section presents results obtained from the conceptual content analysis which was carried out with the above explained precautions. 4. Results In the context of the UN e-Readiness assessments, the interrelationships among all seven constructs from the IMMF provide an innovative way to evaluate the existing methodologies of assessing eReadiness. The frequency counts for all seven constructs and subconstructs from the IMMF represent the degree of innovation assessed by the Surveys, in e-Government initiatives of more than 178 Member States of the UN. From all five Surveys published in 2001, 2003, 2004, 2005, and 2008, the concepts representing different aspects of innovation in terms of the seven constructs from the IMMF are summed up in Fig. 2. Out of all seven constructs from the IMMF, Project Management scores the highest; hence, it has the highest influence on the process of evaluating e-Government initiatives. According to the IMMF, major components of Project Management construct are project efficiency, tools, communications, and collaborations (Adams et al., 2006). This construct from the IMMF, takes into account speed with which customers are served, communication modes with internal as well as external stakeholders for organizations, communication required to bridging assembled inputs at the back-end, and delivering commercially viable products and services to customers (Adams et al., 2006). Offering government services through websites is one of the most popular and financially feasible solutions adopted by governments all around the world; government websites serve citizens with government products and services assembled at the back-end, and also act as a medium of communication among stakeholders of e-Governance. The UN tracks e-Readiness through more than 50,000 online features
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Fig. 2. Frequency count reflecting the degree of innovation measured by the UN e-Readiness assessments.
and services for more than 178 Member States across six economic and social sectors, with an acknowledged understanding that websites around the world constantly evolve with high speed (Potnis and Pardo, 2009). Based upon the definition and elements described for project management (see Table 1), the highest score for Project Management construct reveals the strong focus of the Surveys on the digitization of governments through ICTs with websites as an interface. On average, almost equal importance given by these Surveys to Organization and Culture construct from the IMMF, reflects the UN's significant attention towards organizational environment, administration type, government structures, and work culture practices for offering government services electronically. Due to extraordinarily complex ways of measuring return on investments in the public sector, and complexities involved in assessing the degree of competitive advantage for one technology over other, the Surveys seem to be scoring the lowest on Portfolio Management construct from the IMMF. For comparing frequency counts of all seven constructs in each Survey, the frequency counts are treated with percentage normalized scores (PNS). 4.1. Percentage normalized scores (PNS) There is a large variation in terms of the content size of all five Surveys. Out of all five Surveys, the one published in 2003, is the shortest in size with just 81 pages, whereas the largest in size was published in 2004 with 270 pages. Due to this significant variation in the size of the Surveys, direct comparison of frequency count would introduce error, and could challenge the internal validity of this research. Hence PNS were calculated. For example, in the 2008 Survey, frequency count of Inputs summed up to 482. The total frequency count for all seven constructs from the IMMF equaled to 10,738. The percentage normalized score for Inputs in the 2008 Survey: ¼ ðFrequency Count of Inputs=Total Frequency CountÞ⁎100 ¼ ð482 =10; 738Þ⁎100 ¼ 4:4887 N N N N N N N N N N N N N Approximated to 4:489 Similarly, PNS for the IMMF in all five Surveys are shown in Table 3. The above set of PNS projects a comparative overview of all the 7 constructs from the IMMF for all the 5 Surveys. Since e-Governance can be equated to innovation in the public sector, varying PNS reflect the degrees to which all seven constructs from the IMMF are being measured, while evaluating willingness and capacity of Member States of the UN for e-Governance. Pictorially, PNS can be depicted as in Fig. 3. PNS can be interpreted differently by different researchers; however, this research demonstrates that PNS emerges as a new
toolkit for analyzing the existing methods of assessing e-Governance. Interpretations of PNS proposed by the author exemplify just one way of analyzing the existing practices of measuring willingness and capacity of Member States of the UN, when implementing eGovernance. According to the IMMF, without idea generation, information flow, and knowledge repositories, which are subconstructs of Knowledge Management, it is impossible for organizations to introduce and practice innovation into existing e-Government practices. High correlation between PNS for Knowledge Management and Innovation Strategy are indicative of the above mentioned natural interdependence of knowledge management and innovation on each other. Steadily rising PNS for Commercialization construct is evidence of increasing trends of considering citizens as customers as well as various commercialization efforts taken up by Member States while offering e-Government services to their consumers. In the 2008 Survey, the degree to which ICTs are deployed and the level of digitization of government services through website did not remain heavily emphasized criteria for scaling willingness and capacity of its Member States. There is a sharp drop in PNS for Project Management construct. This could be due to the fact that after 2003, the UN has shifted its focus from investments in ICTs and deployment of ICTs to building human skills and human capital for allinclusive growth. Since ICTs represent Tools, a subconstruct from Project Management construct, the plummeting Project Management PNS score could be interpreted as the UN's waning focus on equating success of e-Governance with technologies and hardware. In the most recent survey of 2008, waxing PNS by 25% for Organization and Culture construct confirms the UN's evolving approach towards assessing context of e-Governance, organizational environment and culture for promoting creativity, and innovation in e-Governance. The following section enlists a set of recommendations based upon the author's interpretation of PNS. It is possible that future researchers Table 3 PNS for all the 7 constructs from the IMMF after processing e-Government readiness assessments surveys using conceptual content analysis. Year 7 constructs from the IMMF 2008 Inputs Knowledge Management Innovation Strategy Organization and Culture Portfolio Management Project Management Commercialization Total PNS for each report
2005
2004
2003
2001
5.929 4.220 4.926 4.298 4.802 9.607 10.243 9.954 13.188 11.971 10.973 6.861 8.805 7.429 12.309 30.618 24.273 24.548 23.664 23.909 0.861 0.321 0.001 0.000 0.44 21.773 35.033 31.917 30.091 28.914 20.236 19.047 19.745 21.327 17.653 100 100 100 100 100
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Fig. 3. PNS representing the degree of innovation measured by the UN e-Readiness assessments.
might propose completely different recommendations using the same PNS, since there could be multiple sets of interpretations possible for the same set of PNS. 5. Recommendations for more powerful indices The main objective of the UN e-Government readiness assessments is to measure capacity and willingness of Member States of the UN to offer government services through the internet (United Nations, 2003, 2004, 2005). The term “capacity” refers to financial, infrastructural, human capital, regulatory, administrative, and systemic capabilities of Member States for improving knowledge and information in government services, using ICTs as media (United Nations, 2004), and the term “willingness” refers to the willingness of Member States in empowering citizens with knowledge and information required for participating in e-Governance, which is particularly known as e-Participation (United Nations, 2004). The comparison of all the PNS for all seven constructs from the IMMF led to the following recommendations. They are as follows: a. In light of the fact that one-sided, heavy deployment of ICTs for e-Governance leads to digital divide, the paper recommends that the assessment of hardcore technical component such as ICTs be balanced with soft components of e-Governments such as people, information, and processes. This could be achieved by narrowing the gap between PNS for Project Management and Knowledge Management. The PNS for the Project Management construct emerges to an average of 29.546%, which is in contrast with the PNS for Knowledge Management construct, which has an average of 10.993%. According to the IMMF, the Project Management construct consists of project efficiency, tools, communications, and collaborations required for executing any innovation. ICTs represent the Tools subconstruct of the Project Management construct. ICTs being an engine for deploying e-Government initiatives, they have a major share in increasing project efficiency of any e-Government project. ICTs also act as efficient tools for effective communication and collaboration, which is required for the success of any eGovernment initiative. Thus, in the future, instead of heavily paying attention to ICTs, the UN could balance its focus by paying attention to interrelationships between people, process, and information. For example, interorganizational information sharing and back-office information integration are some of the key elements of knowledge management, which could be assessed thoroughly as a part of the Surveys. In addition, for improving emphasis on assessment criteria representing Knowledge Management, the UN could also incorporate the
following criteria to the existing ones—the degree of communication setup among various government agencies, level of interorganizational efforts demonstrated to build e-Government initiatives, types of interorganizational communication patterns, and collaboration efforts for information sharing among various groups and government agencies. The inclusion of the above mentioned factors into existing methodologies being used to measure e-Government initiatives could generate better balanced and more informed rankings in terms of the Indices. b. The second recommendation aims to better equip the UN for assessing capabilities of Member States shaped by their willingness for empowering their citizens with knowledge and information required for e-Participation. The UN could achieve the goal set by this recommendation by better gauging human capital for eGovernance, and physical and financial resources that act as inputs for any e-Government initiative. For all the previous e-Government assessments by the UN, the PNS for Inputs from the IMMF is close to an average of 4.835%, which is in contrast to Project Management construct from the IMMF with an average score of 29.546%. More specifically, the UN needs to mark the following criteria for evaluating e-Readiness: types of software and hardware used to develop web portals and e-Government interfaces, level of expertise, skills, and education levels of employees who design and develop e-Government web portals and kiosks, the degree of outsourced e-Government projects, and the features associated with public-private partnerships in the context of e-Governance. Understanding interrelationships among the above mentioned inputs of e-Government could help the UN to better capture the degree of knowledge sharing and information sharing among various stakeholders of e-Government. This, in turn, could further increase the UN's grip over measuring knowledge management in e-Government. c. The third recommendation relates to bringing greater equity to eReadiness rankings assigned to Member States of the UN. For example, there needs to be a significant factor of consideration to take into account vast differences among Member States in terms of the contexts, hurdles, and constraints created by differences related to e-Governance. The size of the information technology (IT) workforce and related taskforces that are deployed for design and development of e-Government initiatives act as some of the most significant constraints as well as controlling factors for the success of e-Government initiatives. The existing e-Government assessments take into account only the end products, that is, websites which represent just one type of e-Government initiatives; but the UN assessments do not attempt to quantify unique dynamics among social, economic, political, and cultural contexts and obstacles created by those multidimensional
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contexts for Member States while offering e-Governance. For example, the amount of $100,000 invested in an e-Government initiative demonstrates very different levels of capacity and willingness of governments in the U.S., a developed nation, and Ghana, one of the least developed nations in Africa. For the equal amount of investment made by the U.S. and Ghana, there is a very high likelihood that the Ghanaian government's willingness and capacity for e-Government exceeds as that of U.S. Thus, ranking of governments from Member States of the UN, based upon only end products such as number of features on websites, number of televisions per 10,000 people, or number of people with primary education, may not necessarily reflect the real willingness and capacity demonstrated by governments of those Member States. d. The research proposes the fourth recommendation to assist the Surveys for measuring the degree of success in terms of efficiency of e-Government initiatives, using a set of advanced techniques. The level of efficiency of an e-Government initiative could be achieved by paying more attention to the Portfolio Management construct, which has a PNS of 0.34% on average, the lowest scores in all five assessments when compared to the rest of the constructs from the IMMF. The IMMF describes Portfolio Management as a combination of risk-to-return ratio and optimization tools. In order to gauge the true capacity of governments from Member States of the UN, future assessments could associate “financial metrics” proposed by the IMMF with the existing methods. For example, the efficiency of e-Government initiatives can be measured using tangible as well as intangible factors. Typically, return on investment (ROI), breakeven values (BEV) for investments in e-Government efforts, and net present value (NPV) of ICTs infrastructure make the list of tangible criteria to evaluate efficiency of e-Government initiatives. Information gathered to calculate at least one of the above mentioned criteria measuring tangible aspects of portfolio management would also shed light upon the value of an eGovernment initiative as an investment. e. Since effective and efficient knowledge management is a backbone for any Knowledge-based Society—an idea proposed by the UN (United Nations, 2005)—the fifth recommendation is that the UN Surveys build a metric for assessing effectiveness and efficiency of knowledge management achieved through e-Governance in more than 178 Member States of the UN. The Knowledge Management construct from the IMMF is comprised of three subconstructs— knowledge repository, idea generation, and information flow—that take place in any innovation initiative. Gradual increment in PNS for Knowledge Management construct in all five Surveys reflects an incremental awareness in the UN's approach towards either one of the three subconstructs of knowledge management or a combination of the subconstructs. In the future, the UN e-Government readiness assessment practices could evaluate Member States on the basis of each subconstruct from Knowledge Management. In light of the fact that findings and views expressed in the Surveys act as imperatives for Member States of the UN, assessments recognizing knowledge management for e-Governance would certainly promote innovative ideas related to knowledge repository, idea generation, and information flow for e-Governance. The UN's increasing awareness for knowledge management could also be interpreted as its attempts to gauge Member States' efforts to create a knowledge-based society, using e-Government initiatives as a vehicle to achieve it (United Nations, 2004). Also, knowledge accumulated in government employees, due to their prolonged experience and service, plays a key role in cross-boundary information sharing among various government units, the Surveys need to build the metrics of knowledge management as a part of the Indices. f. The sixth recommendation focuses on maintaining a consistency in longitudinal Surveys. Significant fluctuations in PNS for Project
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Management and Portfolio Management constructs from the IMMF could act as impediments to considering the Indices as a point-of-reference. By avoiding such inconsistencies in the future, the UN e-Readiness rankings could create more validity and generalizability for political, bureaucratic, and socioeconomic applications of the Surveys. Since the above set of recommendations is based upon PNS which represent scientific, qualitative evaluation of the Surveys, if followed, these recommendations could lead to better informed and more powerful Indices in the future. 6. Conclusion The research study proposes that e-Governance is an innovation in the public sector. Resources invested in any innovation can be managed optimally only if innovation management process is evaluated effectively (Adams et al., 2006). In the context of the UN's definition of e-Government, e-Governance can be referred to as an innovation management process in the public sector. Since 2001, in order to evaluate e-Governance, various UN agencies collaboratively devised the Indices to assess capacity and willingness of Member States of the UN, practicing e-Governance. Since these Indices are used regularly by Member States of the UN, the digital government research community, academicians, and practitioners as a point-of-reference, it becomes necessary to evaluate the assessments of e-Government initiatives of Member States of the UN (Potnis and Pardo, 2008). With the help of Innovation Management Measurement Framework (IMMF), one of the most widely used and comprehensive framework to evaluate innovation, the research runs a conceptual content analysis on the Surveys, to measure the degree to which the existing Surveys assess innovation in e-Government initiatives of Member States of the UN. Thus, this study demonstrates a new way of analyzing the existing e-Readiness assessment practices of the UN, and proposes a set of recommendations to improve the existing UN practices. The first recommendation underlines the need to balance criteria assessing hard and soft components of e-Governance and proposes a solution to achieve it by narrowing the gap between PNS for Project Management and Knowledge Management from the IMMF. The second recommendation offers a solution to better equip the UN for assessing capabilities of Member States, which are shaped by their willingness for empowering their citizens with knowledge and information required for e-Participation. The third recommendation has a message of elevating the equity in the UN e-Readiness rankings. The fourth recommendation includes applications of NPV, BEV, and ROI as criteria to evaluate the success in terms of efficiency of e-Government initiatives. Since effective and efficient knowledge management is the backbone for any Knowledge-based Society, the fifth recommendation expects the Surveys to build a metric for assessing effectiveness and efficiency of knowledge management achieved through e-Governance in more than 178 Member States of the UN. The sixth recommendation focuses on maintaining a consistency among a series of Surveys in order to maintain the current position of the Indices as a point-of-reference in the digital government community. Since the UN's ways of measuring e-Government initiatives set a benchmark for many nations' efforts to offer e-Governance, all Member States of the UN would benefit, if the UN refines its existing e-Readiness assessment practices. This could be partly achieved by considering the above set of recommendations, which are derived with the help of IMMF (7 constructs and 19 subconstructs). In the future, incorporation of PNS based on IMMF, with the existing eGovernment readiness practices could play an instrumental role in developing better informed, more balanced, and more powerful Indices, potentially benefiting all the stakeholders involved in the pervasive movement of digital governance.
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