This document discusses e-administration in developing countries, analyzing challenges and best practices. It defines e-administration as using ICT to support back-office administrative tasks within government. Key challenges include lack of political will, resources, and internal collaboration. Best practices involve strong e-leadership, managing resources through training and open source software, and effective outsourcing through partnerships. The conclusion emphasizes that successful e-administration requires overcoming political problems and the digital divide while maintaining good relationships between stakeholders.

1. Analysing e-Administration in
Developing Countries : Challenges &
Best Dyah Anggunia
Sofiarti
Practices
West Kalimantan Provincial Government, Pontianak
ICT for Development (ICT4D), The University of Manchester, Manchester

2. Introduction
• This paper discusses e-government application which
has role on improving internal administration processes
as known as e-administration.
• The objective of this essay is to analyse the challenges
and good practices of the changes from manual
administrative jobs to electronic application.
• Essay structure:
- PART I : e-Administration & Key Driver
- PART II : Key Challenges
- PART III : Best Practices
- PART IV : Conclusion

3. PART I. e-Administration
e–GOVERNMENT
• eGovernment: the use of information and communication
technologies in the public sector.
• E-government drives the New Public Management
(NPM) which adopts private sector techniques.
• Nevertheless, as a refinement of NPM, Digital Era
Governance (DEG) offers future public management
which involves flexible principles, i.e. reintegration,
holism and digitalization (Dunleavy et al 2006).
• The main aim is to enhance better public management.

4. PART I. e-Administration
• Focal Domains for e-Government Initiatives

5. PART I. e-Administration
• e-Administration is a part of e-Government which
handles internal administration within government
instead of external users such as citizens and
businesses.
Definitions:
• European Commission (2007b) defines e-administration
as an application using Information and Communication
Technology (ICT) to support back-office administrative
tasks.
• Sánchez (2006) point out that e-administration is the use
of communication technology to support information flow
either in or outside the public authority.
• Heeks (2010) describes that e-Administration covers
G2G relation to improve administrative processes in
hierarchical organisation.

6. PART I. e-Administration
• In autonomy era, decentralisation
divides government into two level
organisations, i.e. central and local
government (Bache and Flinders,
2005). Each level has different
authorities. Nevertheless, they are
interconnected (House of Commons
2009). They have strong coordination
to deliver national development goals.
• However, both levels consist of many
departments those are divided into
minor jobs in certain areas. These
hierarchical structures typically lead to
complexity of administration and
specific duties within the organization
(Niskanen 2007).

7. PART I. e-Administration
Drivers of Change:
• economic factors
cost savings, increase efficiency of work processes, the overall benefit and
cost impact can be measured not only from government side, but also by
user side, such as better service quality and savings of user time.
• organisational issue
organisational cost reduction, it cuts bureaucratic within government by
breaking down organisational boundaries (Fang 2002), modern bureaucracy
(Dunleavy et al, 2006), streamline processes, reduce duplication and
inconsistencies.
• political driver
for example, it stimulates implementation of health management in Ecuador
(Salazar, 2001). Despite focus on central operation, the Ministry of Public
Health of Ecuador also enforced local level by central diktat.
• technological driver
electronic networks allow cross-matching and integration of data in different
places and different departments. They also enable flexibility and
connectivity to acquire much more autonomy which can be break down as
e-Organisations or e-Agencies (Fang 2002).

8. PART I. e-Administration
ICTs and Public Processes
Automating Processes: ICTs Replace
• Processes that are Cheaper
• Processes that do More
• Processes that are Quicker
Optimising Processes: ICTs Support
• Processes that are Better
Reengineering Processes: ICTs Innovate
• New Processes

9. PART I. e-Administration
e-Fez in Morocco: provide citizen certificates
Replace
• Cheaper : saving transportation cost, less pay
• More : 80–1500/day to 100–2000/day
• Quicker : ±48 hours to 6 hours
Support
• Better : increasing quality improvement of certificate delivery
from poor (58%) to excellent (83%).
Innovate
• New : capability to predict the service delivery

10. PART II. Key Challenges
Policy and Political Will
• A regulation may become an impediment when it failed to support
the goals of e-government (Greenhill 2010a), including e-
administration projects.
• Administrative law, copyright law, and liability law are some
examples of legal areas that underpin e-administration barriers (EC
2007a).
• A weak policy may also caused by political leadership failures. It
involves the failures in favouring e-government initiatives, minor
prioritisation of resource allocation, poor senior management
understanding of e-government and the lack of political will (EC
2007a).
Examples:
• Participatory Information System (PIS) in Balochistan Province in
Pakistan: In making decision, senior officials did not use the formal and
rational information generated by the system. Their decisions have been
based on informal and political information (Qazi 2008).
• Pakistan’s National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA):
Changes of governments often follow by changes in regulations.

11. PART II. Key Challenges
The Lack of Resources
• The resources encompass infrastructures and human skills.
• To take benefits of the new information and communication
technologies, the development of basic infrastructure is crucial for
implementing e-government (InfoDev 2002; Greenhill 2010b),
especially in small local authorities (Sánchez et al. 2006).
• Even though the infrastructures are available, uneducated workers
cannot access the application because they lack for ICT skills (Dada
2006).
Examples:
• (PIS) in Balochistan: The lack of IT access has constrained the project,
particularly in rural areas. The lack of IT skills were still exist.
• NADRA Project: A lack of staff skills and the problems of hiring short-term
staff caused delays in producing outputs (Ahmed 2002). the shortage of
computer equipment was also a barrier to gain maximum benefit from the
system.
• National Data Bank (NDB) project in Bangladesh: Inappropriate
technical, strategic and project capabilities within government had become a
barrier for its implementation.

12. PART II. Key Challenges
Sourcing and Internal Collaboration
• Governments have to maintain partnerships with other
organisations, either private sectors or non-profit organisations, as
well as relationships within departments (infoDev 2002).
• On the one hand, a poor coordination between central, regional and
local agencies may leads to ineffectiveness of e-government (EC
2007a), especially for implementing e-administration.
• On the other hand, the large demand of e-administration systems
requires external vendors to provide high quality products and
services (Greenhill 2010c).
Examples:
• NDB’s failure in Bangladesh: $440,000 project fell to the one of main
local IT provider. The poor coordination between government and suppliers
then caused the withdrawal of the agent from the process.
• Computerise Programme in MoFA in a West African state:
Politicisation and personalisation tendering was an obstacle on its
implementation.
• e-Government Projects in Abu Dhabi: a problem of internal government
collaboration caused failures. This unsuccessfulness due to the lack of
cooperation within government (Ng, 2009).

13. PART III. Best Practices
e-Leadership
• e-leadership means the changes of attitude, behaviour, thoughts,
performance of people in organisations as an impact of the use of
information technologyAvolio et al. (2001).
• Regarding the e-government transformation, every level of officials
and administrators should have enough understanding of the
technology to push the administrative reform (infoDev 2002).
• Strong leadership, both from executives and legislatives, can
enhance confidence of a program. Chief Information Systems (CIO)
need to be established in all government bodies to support IT
initiatives (EC 2007a).
Examples:
• Birth Registration Information System (BRIS) in Rajshahi,
Bangladesh: The Mayor of local government influenced the BRIS
sustainability. It has made a contribution on motivating senior
commissioners to support this application for accepting their advantages of
being re-elected.
• Colombia’s Government Portal (PEC) : The PEC was extremely
success because of high supports from the President directly. He launched
the project with the presidential decree, namely Directiva 02.

14. PART III. Best Practices
Resource Management
• A good resource management is prioritising the most important
elements, for example basic hardware and software, and employee
training.
• Government may implement open source application in order to
reduce the high cost of buying licence software (Sánchez 2006).
• A constant and intensive employee training should be provided
(Holmes 2001), both direct and distance learning, to make sure the
sustainability of the system.
Examples:
• Open Source Software (OSS) in Malaysia: Malaysia has been identified as
90% success rate for adopting OSS in government (Tiemann 2010) . OSS
not only helps government to improve its job, but also enhances national
economic development.
• Mobile Phone to connect health workers to the ministry of Rwanda
Government: A monthly report about expectant mother and infants has been
delivering directly by the employees, thus the central government could
monitor and administering medicine availability to the people.
• Education Project for The Public Servants in the Government of Moldova: It
was success in teaching the government employees to know how to operate
computers, the Internet and office applications.

15. PART III. Best Practices
Outsourcing and Effective Collaboration
• A strong partnership has to be managed efficiently.
• Communication is a key point to build an effective collaboration with
other third parties, such as academics and private sectors (2010).
• It is almost impossible for government to develop an integrated system
without providing a larger market (Greenhill 2010c), considering the
huge responsibility that the government has to deal with.
• Cooperation and integration within government also have to be
strengthened with encouraging agencies and departments (infoDev
2002).
Examples:
• eFez application by Morocco’s government: Bureau d’Etat Civil (BECwith
researchers from Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane, the government has built
a pilot project to delivery formal certificates for citizen purposes.
• Rwanda e-Health case: The government together with its technology
partners, i.e. MTN and Voxiva, provided 2,500 mobile phones to the health
workers in villages.
• Government Electronic Network (GovNet) in Albania: The project was
extremely success because a constant communication between government
and other stakeholders has been developed from the beginning.

16. PART IV. Conclusion
• E-administration as a G2G application is a key
point to success back-office within agencies.
• Many electronic public administrations have
been deployed, due to forcing from political,
economic, organisational and technological
factors.
• These three drivers enable development of
government performances on doing cheaper,
more, quicker, better and new capabilities.

17. PART IV. Conclusion
• Political problem in executives as well as legislatives has
to be minimised with e-leadership initiatives, such as
providing or enhancing Chief Information Officer.
• The digital divide, as never end problem, can be
managed by infrastructure strategies and capacity
building programme in each level government.
• Finally, outsourcing and partnership barriers may be
broken by maintaining good relationship either within
internal government or between government and other
third parties.
• The most important lesson is that a successful e-
administration project needs strong commitment from all
stakeholders.