PROJECT LIFE CYCLE CHALLENGES OF

INDIAN e-GOVERNMET PROJECTS

WHITE PAPER BY
Prof. Rajnish Das, IIMA,
Mohan Datar, Gov3 Ltd.
This White Paper prepared as an outcome of the Issue Process
launched specifically for ICEG-2007 is an attempt to document
the issues currently plaguing the entire gamut of Project Life
Cycle of eGovernment projects in India.

3-Mar-08

Determining Priorities of eGovernment Mohan Datar

AGENDA

Background and Objectives

Learning from Developed Countries
Current Challenges in India
Summary

BACKGROUND & OBJECTIVES

Globally, The early leaders in this area have made many
mistakes wasting literally billions of dollars.
These countries are now trying to learn from their mistakes
Yet no country has yet got this completely cracked[
In India, We see:
Sharp increase in scale and scope of some of the projects,
Increased complexity of the proposed solutions and
Steep increase in the overall expectation from these projects,

Leading to the increasing levels of challenge of delivery and

acceptance.
Meanwhile, IT suppliers are grappling with the demands of
winning contracts of an increasing scale and complexity, and of
working ever more closely in partnership with the public sector
to deliver huge change programmes.
Such partnership is a major challenge for industry as well as
government.

Learnings from Deeloped Countries

The Seven Deadly Sins.
1.

Lack of strategic clarity

A strong business case, driven by a clear set of benefits owned be the
key stakeholders, should be an essential pre-condition of any public
sector ICT investment.

2.

Lack of sustained leadership at political and senior

management level
projects fail to achieve the sustained leadership attention they need at
the highest levels in government, or
those in leadership positions do not have the skills they need to
exercise effective leadership of ICT-enabled change.

3.

Poor understanding and segmentation of user needs

Failure to engage closely with users and failure to understand user
needs on a sufficiently segmented basis

Source: Gov3 analysis, drawing on research published by the UK government (Successful IT: Modernizing
Government in Action, Cabinet Office, 2000; Common Causes of Project Failure, OGC, 2005) and by the
European Commission (through its Breaking Barriers to e-Government research programme
http://www.egovbarriers.org/ )

Learnings from Deeloped Countries

The Seven Deadly Sins.
4.

Lack of effective engagement with stakeholders

eGovernment Projects involve complex sets of stakeholders users, suppliers, delivery
partners elsewhere in the public, private and voluntary sector, politician and the media
stakeholder management activity gets squeezed on both Time & Budgets

5.

Lack of skills
In addition to standard IT delivery and programme/project management skills,
transformational e-Government programmes require a rich mix of broader skills

6.

Poor supplier management

Evaluating proposals primarily on immediate price
Management of the supplier relationship being undertaken at too junior a level within the organisation
Lack of effective project team integration between client, supplier and the supply chain

7.

Big Bang implementation

Projects seek to deliver too much technological and organisational change at once.

Source: Gov3 analysis, drawing on research published by the UK government (Successful IT: Modernizing
Government in Action, Cabinet Office, 2000; Common Causes of Project Failure, OGC, 2005) and by the
European Commission (through its Breaking Barriers to e-Government research programme
http://www.egovbarriers.org/ )

CURRENT CHALLENGES IN INDIA

1.

Change in Policy to provide adequate funding support for Project

Preparation &Planning.
there is hardly any support to departments and implementing agencies for
Project Preparation and Planning.

2.

Objectivity in Selection and Scoping of Projects

What is needed is a tool or framework which will enable the decision makers to
determine what is most required and what is most likely to succeed.
There needs to be a priority list of government departments for automation
based on size and spread of the departments

3.

Change in Governments Transfer Policies to ensure sustained

leadership throughout Project Life cycle.
A host of initiatives in the country have fallen by the wayside due to arbitrary
change in leadership.
There is a need to have clear policies on the continuity of the personnel
involved with IT

This White Paper prepared as an outcome of the Issue Process launched specifically for ICEG-2007 is an
attempt to document the issues currently plaguing the entire gamut of Project Life Cycle of eGovernment projects
in India.

CURRENT CHALLENGES IN INDIA

4.

Emphasis on Redesigning Services with citizen Focus

The in depth study and re-engineering of existing business processes should
be made an intrinsic part of the Project Preparation and Planning phase.

5.

Policy and Process changes in Governments Project Procurements.

the age-old procedures of approval through SFC, EFC, CNE, etc is causing
interminable delays.
ECs have to be made all-powerful in respect of the MMPs.
Hardware life cycle management in Government projects is very poor
strong partnership relationships with suppliers are essential.
It is necessary to devise policy to enable procurement of Product and
Services.

6.

Avoiding poor estimation of project scope and completion schedule.

the poor estimation is a result of lack of detailed project scoping,
understanding end-user requirements and identification of mandatory BPRs,
The unrealistic schedule is the result of combination of
a) the attempt to cover up the delays in initial decision making process
leading to award of contract, and
b) lack of understanding of the importance of Organisational change
management in implementation of any eGovernment project.

CURRENT CHALLENGES IN INDIA

7.

Evolution from project management to program management for MMPs

Barring a few, none of the programs deserve to be called MMPs because there is no
sense of urgency or missionary zeal in the respective ministries.
What is required is evolving an organization structure and framework for effective
Program Management.

8.

Technology to be seen from the services perspective and not from the point
of commodity to be purchased: Thinking on PPP models .
Cutting across majority of the projects,they have dedicated resources and made RFPs
to the finest details of specifying hardware capabilities
It is important that the decision makers are made aware to rather focus on technology
projects as modes of services to be delivered. .

9.

Understanding road map for effective change management effective intraorganization communication channels to be set up.
The identification of the BPRs and emerging Citizen Services should be the two
main prerequisites for an eGovernment project. They also lay the foundation for
drawing a road map for effective change management.
NISGs Methodology of creating e-Champions. However, its experience so far is
not very encouraging, atelast with respect to MMPs.
the Change management, which essentially aims at breaking the barriers, requires
establishment of new yet formal channels of communications. There is a need for
institutionalisation of such channels.

CURRENT CHALLENGES IN INDIA

10. Skills updating and focus reorientation of employees:
capacity building of skills
It is necessary to augment the government departments capability to
absorb the complexity of managing these technology decision making
and execution.
Projects get started with enthusiasm but are stuck in between due to
many issues. Some of them are lack of reward, motivation incentive to
Government employees.

11. Vendor Relationship Management.

Lack of clarity on the role and responsibility of the customer / tenderer

in the tender or RFP document.
Lack of standard payment terms which would remunerate vendors
proportionate to their initial investments / deliveries / efforts at every
stage of project life cycle.
A lack of understanding of the concept of Change Request and hence
non mitigation of associated risks and conflicts.

SUMMARY

The challenges for successful project implementation for an

egovernment project are manifold.
Moreover, each phase of the project life cycle poses substantial
challenges posing as a hindrance to project implementations.
Drawing from experiences of countries that had started earlier, the
project implementation pitfalls becomes easier to appreciate.
Albeit, given the scope, scale, culture and the context, successful
implementation the said projects seem to add up couple of
contextual challenges for India.
In this white paper we have tried to capture some of these
challenges in the project life cycle, specific to the Indian context.
The paper is based on inputs from different individuals involved in
the execution of these projects successfully.
The authors would like to have more views (or observations) being
incorporated in this document such that this white paper evolves as
an important check-list for decision makers at different levels of the
government to ensure that these challenges may be somehow
bye-passed.

THANK YOU

MOHAN DATAR
mohan.datar@gov3.net

3-Mar-08

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