eGovernment for Development

Evaluation

Benefits and Costs of eTransparency Projects

• Potential Benefits
• Potential Costs

"Why proceed with my e-transparency project?"

In rational terms, your e-transparency project should go ahead if its expected benefits are greater than its costs. If, on the other hand, the expected costs are greater than the benefits, you should not proceed or should only proceed if your project is redesigned.

Two problems, though, with this simple analysis. First, it is hard to identify all project costs and even harder to quantify project benefits. Therefore, it is almost impossible to say which is bigger: costs or benefits. Second, e-transparency project "go/no go" decisions are determined largely by political factors which may or may not be linked to objective benefits and costs.

Despite these problems, it normally makes sense to at least roughly sketch out likely costs and benefits of your e-transparency project. The details below give you a checklist for this.

Checklist of Potential Benefts of eTransparency Projects

Below are listed the potential benefits of your e-transparency project. The word 'potential' is important: in practice, few e-transparency projects have managed to deliver these benefits; most e-transparency projects have so far failed to deliver these benefits (follow this link for case evidence). Some of the example links below thus give potential, expected or hoped-for rather than actual benefits. However, you can still use all the items as a checklist to identify potential benefits on your project.

Process-Level Benefits

These are benefits at the level of individual public sector processes:

• Cost savings : for example, lower transaction costs for citizens or businesses to access government information; lower costs for citizens/businesses to send information to government; lower costs for government to provide information.
• Time savings : faster government processes - both internal and processes dealing with external clients.
• Boundary-breaking : anywhere, anytime access to government information and services.
• Better decisions : for example, by managers about their staff's performance; by public officials about project funding; or by suppliers about procurement

Governance-Level Benefits

These are benefits at the level of organisations and groups:

• Changed behaviour of public servants : acting less in their personal interests and more in rational/national interests. Examples include less corruption; less fraud ; more efficient and effective working; and more equal treatment of clients.
• Changed behaviour of public sector clients : greater participation in government processes. Examples include higher demand for services; greater scrutiny of public processes; greater number of complaints about improper actions since these are now more easily brought to light and clients have more confidence they will be resolved; and a broader range of suppliers taking part in procurement. Examples beyond the cases listed here would include greater public participation in priority setting and in policy-making.
• Empowerment : changing the balance of power between groups, sometimes to the benefit of those who previously lacked power. This happens because empowered groups get new information they did not have before. Examples include citizens empowered through access to information about government; public servants empowered through access to information about themselves; suppliers empowered through access to information about procurement; and managers empowered through access to information about their staff.

Overall, if delivered, these benefits should, in turn, help to facilitate socio-political and economic development.

Informal, Personal Benefits of eTransparency Projects

Self-interest and politics play an important role in e-transparency projects; as in all projects. Therefore, you should recognise the informal, personal benefits that an e-transparency project can bring. In some cases, these will support the formal benefits; but in other cases there may be a conflict:

• Imagery : an ICT project can give an appearance that something concrete is being done even if, behind the scenes, nothing is changing.
• Spotlight and shadow : senior officials sometimes use e-transparency projects to highlight the corruption of junior officials, hoping that spotlight will cast their own misdeeds even deeper into the shadows.
• Kudos : there is personal prestige to be gained from being associated with a successful, modernising project.
• Competencies : there are career benefits both inside and, especially, outside the public sector of picking up ICT-related skills and knowledge.
• Control : e-transparency projects can give managers greater access to workflow and performance data; some may use this to exert greater control over their staff.
• Resources : projects bring money, staff, travel opportunities, etc that are beneficial to those who can access them.

Checklist of Potential Costs of eTransparency Projects

Benefits of an e-transparency project are often potential rather than real. Costs, though, are very real and typically fall into the following categories that can be used as a cost checklist for your e-transparency project:

• ICTs : the hardware, system and applications software, and network/telecommunications infrastructure that make up the e-transparency system.
• Information systems staff costs : for analysis, design, development, operation, maintenance, support and upgrade of the e-transparency system.
• Other staff costs : all the time invested by managers, administrators, professionals, clerical staff, etc in the planning, implementation and use of the e-transparency system.
• Training : direct costs plus opportunity cost of staff time lost.
• Other implementation costs : including site equipment, preparation and installation.
• Other operational costs : ongoing recurrent costs for running the e-transparency system, and for maintaining and upgrading it.

Costs estimates provided in the e-transparency cases reported on this Web site vary enormously: from US$20,000 to US$3m. The variation depends on a) whether or not the underlying ICT infrastructure is costed in; b) whether or not digitisation of underlying public sector data has been costed in. Where these things are costed in, costs tend to run into millions of dollars; where they are not costed in and projects are just an incremental addition to an existing digital infrastructure, costs tend to be just a few tens of thousands of dollars.

Downsides of eTransparency

In addition to financial costs, there are also "dis-benefits": downsides that can emerge when you use ICTs to support public transparency:

1. Failure : most projects fail either totally or partially and that includes most e-transparency projects. In addition to the wasted costs, and inability to achieve benefits, failure brings additional costs. Follow this link for more details on eGovernment failure.
2. Spotlight and shadow : already mentioned above, this refers to the danger that e-transparency projects help conceal further those wrongdoings that they do not expose. Examples include exposing project budgeting but concealing project appraisal and approval), and exposing small-scale procurement but concealing project funding decisions).
3. Computer crime : ICTs change the landscape of behaviour making some types of wrongdoing harder, but making other types of wrongdoing easier. ICTs can make it easier to access confidential data, and easier to play anonymous pranks. ICTs can also conceal fraudulent actions from those public officials - a large majority - who lack ICT-related competencies.