Success and Failure in eGovernment Projects

Success/Failure Case Study No.5

Using Information Systems to Support a Social Investment Fund in South America

Case Study Authors

Piers Merrick (pmerrick@worldbank.org) and Richard Heeks ( richard.heeks@manchester.ac.uk)

Application

Social investment funds (SIF) are new institutions that conceive, finance and manage large numbers of small-scale community projects. The fund example here is drawn from the mythical South American country of "Asturia". Asturia's SIF is a public body that works alongside public sector organisations to support government goals of poverty alleviation and social sector development; in many ways it can be seen as an autonomous arm of government. Asturia's SIF operates in a complex, multi-stakeholder environment, and required a strong management support system (MSS) - a combination of decision support system for planning, and management information system for monitoring, evaluation and reporting. A geographical information system component allows map-based presentation of data. The MSS runs on a small computerised network with a database at the heart of the system. There is a GIS interface and various budgeting and accounting modules.

Application Description

As described, the MSS application has two main functions, some of which are computerised, some of which are not:

First, a planning/decision support function to help identfy and target project investments to those communities and those social services that are considered priorities. This was done using a database of social data (community locations, demographics, economic/poverty profile, social service and infrastructure access, etc.); and an explicit set of targeting criteria.

Second, a monitoring and evaluation function that reports on project expenditure, project progress, and project achievement to the various different SIF stakeholders. 48 qualitative and quantitative performance indicators were developed against which projects could be evaluated. The indicators covered project appraisal, targeting, procurement, supervision, administration, finance, outreach, and evaluation.

Application Purpose

The MSS was introduced to increase the developmental impact of project investments in two main ways:

improving the targeting of project investments in several ways: by making them match community needs better through greater community involvement; by enabling them to be refocused from short-term employment generation to longer-term social investment (e.g. extending basic schooling and health facilities to the poorest communities); by enabling selection of those projects likely to best meet social development goals; and by increasing the speed of investment decision-making.

improving coordination with local/national government ministries over project selection, implementation, operation and maintenance; particularly improving coordination with line ministries over provision of funds and staff for ongoing project operation. Coordination included an element of greater accountability to government through better understanding of project impacts.

Stakeholders

The main stakeholders are:

Impact: Costs and Benefits

A total of US$75,000 was invested for design, development and implementation of the Asturian SIF's management support system, including costs for consultancy, equipment and staff training. Following implementation of the MSS, an evaluation survey revealed that SIF project investments were being targeted more at the poorest communities; that the key performance indicators were used by SIF managers to improve their planning, monitoring and reporting of projects; and that the MSS was particularly supportive during a short-term crisis experienced by Asturia that required a rapid reorientation into emergency reconstruction projects. The MSS also contributed to broader organisational changes. Before its introduction, all project decisions were made at the very top of the SIF hierarchy. After the MSS arrived, top managers could trust that the contribution of projects to SIF/government targets could be understood more broadly within the organisation. The spread of management information therefore paralleled a spread of management skills and responsibilities. The SIF also changed towards a more rational, analytical style of decision making, since it acquired for the first time the data to support such a style. This had a knock-on in increasing the ability of the SIF to challenge political interventions in project decisions: now the Fund had some sound data that could be used to support such challenges.

Evaluation: Failure or Success?

This is a partial success. The positive benefits have been listed above. On the other hand, the MIS was not able to improve coordination with government, which has impacted the quality and sustainability of projects. Nor was it able to support any improvement in community involvement, as intended. Some key objectives were therefore not achieved.

Enablers/Critical Success Factors

  1. Powerful performance indicators . The old adage is "what gets measured, gets managed". This has dangers if there are important critical success factors for the organisation that do not appear in the performance indicators. However, for the SIF, the 48 indicators were essential to the delivery of benefits (including the broader organisational changes). A lot of thought went into the indicators, to ensure that they did cover most of what the SIF required in order to meet its development mandate.
  2. Process mapping . Four consultants spent a good deal of time mapping all of the SIF processes, in order to ensure that they fully understood what the Fund did before attempting to computerise its activities.
  3. Staff participation . A broad range of Fund staff participated in the design of the MSS. For example, both staff and managers were partners with the consultants in process mapping, and in development of performance indicators. This meant the MSS design met the needs of the Fund. It also meant that staff were far more willing to accept something they saw as 'their' information system, rather than as something foisted on them by outsiders.

Constraints/Challenges

  1. Complexity . eGovernment applications increasingly arise in complex, multi-stakeholder situations like that faced by Asturia's Fund. This brings several challenges. There is the IS challenge of ensuring that the right information flows to the right stakeholders at the right time. There is also the political challenge of dealing with the contradictory expectations of the various stakeholders. This requires lengthy negotiation. It also needs the continuing presence of informal, unstructured information systems that allow exchanges about values, beliefs and objectives; such exchanges cannot be supported by formal information systems.
  2. Continuing politics . The MSS has allowed the Fund to challenge political interference. It has not allowed the Fund to eliminate political interference. Social Investment Funds are political creations that have an important political role, and that also spend a lot of money with contractors on development projects in various politicians' home areas. As such, they have to deal continuously with the undercurrent of politics.

Recommendations

  1. Keep it simple . Introduction of the management support system in this public body did not try to change too much at once. It did not try to reengineer Fund processes; it did not try to restructure Fund relationships. Instead, it tried to support the existing activities of the Fund with information and ICTs. This did subsequently lead to broader organisational changes, but as a later impact of the MSS, not as planned simultaneous change. Perhaps paradoxically, the failure of the MSS to alter relationships with government and relationships with communities is part of its success. It focused only on a subset of its intended objectives, and so succeeded in meeting those few. Had it tried to meet all its objectives, it might have failed with all of them. The motto might be "Aim lower and succeed; aim higher and fail".
  2. Rationality is a guiding star, not a destination . This e-government application worked because it made the organisation more rational; not because it made the organisation totally rational. It still allowed room for informal exchanges and informal data flows. The same lesson applies elsewhere in the public sector: totally rational, formalised organisations are brittle and inflexible. Most public agencies in developing countries need ICT-based information systems to help them make steps toward rationality; but they should not be pushed too far down this road.
  3. Participation is critical . One main reason this public agency information system succeeded is that it was built on the participation of organisational staff. Without that participation, it is quite possible that the system would have computerised the wrong processes, delivered the wrong information, and met with staff resistance. In developing participation within an e-government application, designers need to go beyond just involvement of staff (e.g. communicating with them) to commitment of staff (e.g. getting them to actively work on the application and devote themselves to it). The difference between involvement and commitment can be illustrated by a bacon-and-egg breakfast: a project in which the chicken is involved, but to which the pig is committed.

Further Information

n/a

Case Details

Author Data Sources/Role : Funding/Oversight Role
Outcome : Partial Success/Partial Failure. Reform : eAdministration (managing process performance).
Sector : Social Services (Community Development).
Region : South America. Start Date : 1995. Submission Date : August 2002

Last updated on 19 October, 2008.
Please contact richard.heeks@manchester.ac.uk with comments and suggestions.