New Perspective for E-Governance Performance

E-governance initiatives are common in most countries as they promise a more citizen-centric government and reduce operational cost. Unfortunately most of these initiatives have not been able to achieve the benefits claimed. Often the reason for this failure is a techno-centric focus rather than a governance-centric focus. The aim of this paper is to explore the necessary attributes of a governance-centric initiative under the banner "excellent e-governance", and describe a methodology for ensuring such excellence in e-governance implementations. The paper follows a case study approach for developing the concept of excellent e-governance. It first conceptually differentiates between e-government and e-governance and describes the status of e-governance in developing countries. It then differentiates between the two approaches to e-governance: techno-centric and governance-centric. Next, the attributes of excellent e-governance are explored in detail, the major issues for bringing excellence to e-governance initiatives are identified. Last, a methodology under development, called "e-governance engineering", is described, which when applied to an e-governance initiative, will ensure excellence.