The full benefits of digitization could be huge, but to realize them, McKinsey Insights show that governments need to tackle the factors that make many e-government efforts fall short of their promise.In the report, Cem Dilmegani, consultant in McKinsey’s Istanbul office, where Bengi Korkmaz is a principal and Martin Lundqvist, principal in the Stockholm office, wrote that, citizens and businesses now expect government information to be readily available online, easy to find and understand, and at low or no cost.McKinsey is a global firm, comprising more than 9,000 consultants and nearly 2,000 research and information professionals. It has office more than 60 countries, including Nigeria.According to McKinsey, governments have many reasons to meet these expectations by investing in a comprehensive public-sector digital transformation.The analysis suggests that capturing the full potential of government digitization could free up to $1 trillion annually in economic value worldwide, through improved cost and operational performance.Shared services, greater collaboration and integration, improved fraud management, and productivity enhancements enable system-wide efficiencies. At a time of increasing budgetary pressures, governments at national, regional, and local levels cannot afford to miss out on those savings.Dilmegani, Korkmaz and Lundqvist, wrote, “Indeed, governments around the world are doing their best to meet citizen demand and capture benefits. More than 130 countries have online services. For example, Estonia’s 1.3 million residents can use electronic identification cards to vote, pay taxes, and access more than 160 services online, from unemployment benefits to property registration. Turkey’s Social Aid Information System has consolidated multiple government data sources into one system to provide citizens with better access and faster decisions on its various aid programs. The United Kingdom’s gov.uk site serves as a one-stop information hub for all government departments.“Such online services also provide greater access for rural populations, improve quality of life for those with physical infirmities, and offer options for those whose work and lifestyle demands don’t conform to typical daytime office hours”.The trio, however, asserted that, despite all the progress made, most governments are far from capturing the full benefits of digitization.“To do so, they need to take their digital transformations deeper, beyond the provision of online services through e-government portals, into the broader business of government itself. That means looking for opportunities to improve productivity, collaboration, scale, process efficiency, and innovation,” the report showed.The public-sector challenge, they listed include that digital transformations require changes, to both processes and IT systems, that are more challenging to implement in the public sector than in the private sector.Also, joint study by McKinsey and Oxford University found that “public-sector IT projects requiring business change were six times more likely to experience cost overruns and 20 percent more likely to run over schedule than such projects in the private sector”.The public sector must cope with additional management issues, including multiple agencies, a range of organizational mandates and constituencies, longer appropriations timelines, and the challenge of maintaining strategic continuity even as political administrations change.“Therefore, it is important that private-sector companies supporting public IT transformations understand that the public sector operates in a different context. For example, it can be challenging to set a specific target, build consensus, align on a leadership structure, secure funding, and meet implementation timelines.“Similarly, when systems and data are owned by different departments and functions, on a range of platforms and with differing taxonomies and access requirements, it can be difficult to invest at scale and generate sufficient economies. Silos, fragmentation, and the absence of a central owner for nationwide IT infrastructure and common components can make it hard to connect the internal “plumbing” to create a seamless experience for the end user, be it a government worker, a business user, an average citizen, or another intergovernmental office. It doesn’t make the task easier when the complexity of large-scale digital projects requires specialized skills and expertise that come at a high price and are often in short supply. In consequence, many e-government efforts fall short of their promise”.Achieving comprehensive public digitization, McKinsey believes that while digital transformation in the public sector is particularly challenging, a number of successful government initiatives show that by translating private-sector best practices into the public context it is possible to achieve broader and deeper public-sector digitization.
Posted on: Tue, 13 Jan 2015 05:33:05 +0000