In the Techniques section:
Techniques
Avoiding eTransparency Failure: Ideas About Competencies
This page offers ideas about how to address one factor identified as important to the success or failure of e-transparency projects. Follow this link for more information about such factors (and some related case examples).
Idea 1: Address The Whole Range Of Needed Competencies
Competencies required for an e-transparency project cover three things - skills, knowledge and attitudes. All three of these must be addressed in planning the e-transparency project. Development of skills and knowledge can be undertaken through relatively straightforward training. Training to change attitudes is much harder but ultimately probably more important. Examples of attitude training could include: case study analyses of e-transparency failure and/or best practice; role-play exercises to highlight the gap between users and IT staff; group-forming activities for key stakeholders; and demonstrations of functioning e-transparency systems to highlight system benefits. A broader example of attitude training includes helping users do whatever they want with ICTs until they feel comfortable with, and positive towards, the new technology.
(From: Richard Heeks & Moshtaq Ahmed)
Idea 2: Identify And Develop The Needed Competencies
In many contexts, the needed competencies can be divided into four main components:
Systems Development Competencies
eTransparency projects in developing countries have frequently - and often to their cost - had to rely on the import of external ICT personnel in order to develop new systems. The indigenous information systems development capacity must be strengthened, both within user organisations in the government and NGO sectors, and within private sector vendor organisations.
Project/Change Management Competencies
The public sector particularly has been poor at managing e-transparency projects and at managing change. That capacity needs to be strengthened. As well as techniques for managing the non-human resources, e-transparency project managers particularly need help with managing the human components of projects and change. They especially need a greater capacity to manage the issue of motivation; to be able to make use of external drivers, of internal rewards and punishments, of their own negotiation and influencing skills in order to help answer the "what's in it for me?" question for all key e-transparency project stakeholders.
Intelligent Customer Competencies
Public sector organisations especially have been poor ICT customers, unable to raise the finance for projects, unable to specify their needs, unable to manage the procurement process, and unable to manage vendors. All of these capacities need to be addressed to change a client-vendor relationship that, to date, has been too combative, too corrupt or too vendor-driven. Whilst not a panacea, the corruption within procurement may be partly addressed by broader anti-graft, transparency and accountability initiatives.
Operational Competencies
Finally, the ability of the public sector and other governance-related organisations to operate and maintain e-transparency systems must also be strengthened. For almost all developing countries this will still initially include (but not be limited to) a need to build basic computer literacy skills within user communities.
(From: Richard Heeks)
Idea 3: Ask The Key Training Questions
In planning training to help develop competencies for e-transparency projects, five main questions need to be asked: Who is to be trained? Why are they being trained? Who will deliver the training? When and where will training be delivered? What will be the specific content of training sessions?
(From: Richard Heeks)
Idea 4: Address The Haemorrhage Of Specialist Staff
eTransparency is easily undermined by the loss of specialist staff from the public sector. Here, more than anywhere, there are no panaceas, but possible approaches that can be taken to the problem include:
Improved Recruitment and Retention Practices
A summary of valuable practices includes: emphasise job security and public service job content; cut back on recruitment bureaucracy; develop short-term assignments for outsiders; use up-to-date recruitment techniques; offer recruitment bonuses; recruit non-IT staff; articulate and promote a clear development path for specialist staff; improve the handling of training opportunities; provide challenging projects and other non-financial incentives; improve remuneration; strengthen HR practices.
eGovernment 'Hit Squad'
An autonomous central unit, paid at market or market-and-above rates, responsible for implementing e-governance (including e-transparency) projects.
Public-Private Partnership Models
If the public sector cannot retain sufficient capacity for e-transparency, it must look elsewhere. Alongside intelligent customer capacity-building, the public sector should investigate the potential for greater use of models such as outsourcing. PPP models like outsourcing and private finance initiatives cannot just be picked up and dumped on developing countries; they must always be viewed through a DC lens, and adapted or rejected in line with developing country realities.
(From: Richard Heeks)
Idea 5: Develop 'Hybrids'
The gulf between IT professionals and 'mainstream' public servants/politicians is one root cause of failure in e-transparency projects. More successful projects are those where key stakeholders cross this gulf by being 'hybrids' (see figure): those who understand the technology and the 'business' of transparency (i.e. its role within governance and reform) and the role of information in transparency. The e-transparency hybrid should not be thought of as a single entity. For example, IT professionals for e-transparency need to be hybridised into broader change agents who combine IS and ICT skills with an understanding of public sector transparency and of change management. Public sector managers need to be hybridised towards a broader skill set that includes an understanding of information systems and ICTs.
(From: Richard Heeks & Mr A.M.S.K. Chandrasena)
Idea 6: Adopt Alternatives To Conventional Training
Conventional training approaches, which have tended to dominate training institutions in developing countries, have relatively limited value. More innovative approaches include:
- Funding and advisory inputs for pilot 'learning projects' adopting more learner-centred acquisition of skills and knowledge: learning diaries, learning sets, work shadowing, job exchanges, and secondments.
- Funding and advisory inputs for pilot 'training projects'. Donor-funded consultancy has been heavily criticised for too often creating inappropriate e-transparency solutions whilst simultaneously failing to develop local human capacities. An alternative approach is the training project. Training projects turn conventional consultancy on its head, taking the external role from core to periphery and from consulting to training and facilitation. Local staff, ideally from within the target organisation, undertake the work for the e-transparency project. External staff do not undertake the work directly, but are responsible for training and facilitating local staff as necessary. Given the advances in ICTs, some of this external role can be undertaken off-site. This ensures that local capacities are built and that local staff - who may have a better understanding of local realities - take the lead.
(From: Richard Heeks)
Idea 7: Build Awareness
Higher-level competencies are important, but there is often a much more basic competency problem for e-transparency projects: intended client groups are simply not aware of the e-transparency application's existence. Plans for competency-building must therefore give a central role to a marketing-type campaign that targets internal or external users and that let's them know about the e-transparency application and its functions.
(From: Miguel Solana)