e-Government in Jordan

Aligned with the National Agenda, e-Government strategy (2006-2009), as a continuation to the e-Government Program launched in 2001 by the Ministry of ICT, aims ― to manage the transformation of the government towards a more customer-centric approach in the delivery of services by means of appropriate technology, knowledge management and skilled staff to implement eGovernment initiatives and programs that are relevant and affordable to the citizens of Jordan. The eGovernment services were designed to complement traditional service delivery channels targeting different customers:

citizens, businesses, government entities and government employees. They were classified into three main categories; e-services, managed services and support services.

E-services are further divided into vertical, cross-organizational, shared and composite services.

Managed services encompass hosting services while support services include eGovernment program support services and public sector department support services.

The eGovernment program was designed to fulfill several responsibilities. These responsibilities include establishing the e-Government‘s strategic direction in Jordan and operating its services. It also includes developing and maintaining standards, providing consultancy services, managing cross-organizational services as well as implementing shared components and services.

The program also aims to support government entities through budgeting for the e-government needs,conducting performance assessments and periodically reporting the e-Government implementation progress.

The e-government strategy identified four pillars upon which its success is contingent; institutional framework, legal framework, ICT infrastructure and Business.

The government established a set of priorities and requirements for each pillar:

Connecting business & technology

Business transformation: The e-government program adopted a two-direction approach to enable the government‘s business transformation. It first focused on the program‘s internal business transformation and then moved forward to sharing business transformation methodologies and best practices externally across ministries.

It also focused on six fields to ensure that it is has a strong business pillar.

These fields include project lifecycle management, communication and marketing, eGovernment program performance reporting, capacity building and human resources, technology management,and business processes and change management.

Measurement of progress and effectiveness and accountability are key elements of the Jordan‘s e-government program.

The strategy has already identified two types of key performance indicators (KPI) to evaluate the e-Government Program implementation (technical, standards and support services), and to measure the e-services delivery at the national level (availability and quality). Moreover, the eGovernment strategy has selected the key success factors as well as the main risks involved in the program implementation.

Some progress has been made. For example, the eGovernment information portal, Secure Government Network (SGN) which connects 18 ministries, Operations center that hosts the SGN, e-mail and contact center which supports those ministries have been launched and established Capacity Building).

A security assessment project was conducted resulting in the development of the Information Security Roadmap (technology management).

A communication plan, basic literacy training ― Cambridge and ICDL and other programs providing 7,900 training opportunities for ICT literacy, project management, IT professionals and vendor certified training were completed (change management)

Furthermore,fast track vertical services were launched and cross-organizational services were defined and prioritized as part of the eGovernment program‘s 2nd wave for 2006-2009. E-procurement has been identified as one of the key priorities.

The e-procurement project (2008-2010) was initiated with the support of the UNDP.

By deploying e-procurement the government aims to streamline the acquisition processes by increasing their transparency, increasing competition between vendors and reducing transaction costs. Streamlining the procurement process will thus reduce the prices for goods and services that the government is procuring.

These benefits will be passed to citizens who will benefit by receiving more services and better quality at a lower price. The project is hosted by the NITC and uses open source software and open standards.

Challenges

Challenges facing e-government stem from three main domains; the government, culture and the economy, which are interrelated.

There is a lack of coordination between ministries which has resulted in the issuance of conflicting decisions among governmental departments.

Since there is a lack of a national eGovernment prioritization action plan and interoperability standardization,individual ministries and governmental departments are using many different architectures and systems that are not interoperable in most cases. Furthermore, there is no visual and content standardization in governmental websites.

Finally, there is a variation of ICT Training enforcement in the ministries; where according to ―The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan e-Readiness Assessment, only 4% of governmental employees actively use the internet. Delays in the introduction of services are common in eGovernment programs. For example, fast track projects have lasted more than 4 years. These delays are due to several reasons. The cost of implementing is high so the government is facing challenges in financing the initiative given its limited resources and is thus dependent on FDI.

Furthermore, local suppliers are unable to provide certain high-end application needed for the e-enablement of government service development and as such must be imported from other countries.

All these dependencies have made the eGovernment initiative vulnerable to external factors. Since stakeholders in Jordan have high expectations of the initiative, implementation delays are reducing the stakeholders‘ buy-in and support of the initiative especially when it does not satisfy some stakeholders‘ political agenda.

There is also a general resistance to change in the Jordanian culture.

In addition eGovernment‘s stakeholders are not fully aware of the program‘s benefits and generally mistrust electronic transactions derived from fear of its effectiveness and risk to privacy especially with the lack of cyber-crime, data protection and privacy laws.

Further, although the Knowledge Station Project (2001) allowed citizens access to the internet, PC and internet penetration is low in Jordan due to affordability issues thus making these services inaccessible to many citizens. Therefore, traditional methods should also be made available as an alternative.

Finally, many government employees are not sufficiently trained to have the necessary skills to support the initiative‘s development. Those employees with the necessary skills are attracted more to the private sector that offers better compensation packages; public sector has a high turnover in ICT personnel

Findings and Analysis

Second,although it has low PC and internet penetration rates, mobile phone are highly wide spread and the ISP market is highly competitive as an alternative e-government accessibility channels.

Furthermore, there is a high internet connection rate in public institutions where 80% of government institutions are connected to the internet through the National Broadband Network. Jordan has highly qualified, ICT proficient work force that can move the initiative forward.

The Jordanian population is young and computer savvy so will be able to effectively use the e-services.

E-leadership is one of the government‘s strongest fields. There is buy-in and support from his Majesty King Abdulla and many awareness campaigns are in progress to increase e-government awareness. Furthermore, although there is a lack of cooperation between ministries, individual ministries are powerful in leadership as a structure.

The initiative has strong vision and objectives along with a citizen centric mission that is based on international best practices.

A comprehensive eGovernment action plan is in place; however, the actual implementation deviates from the plan for various reasons. Funds are limited and the e-government action plan does not clearly specify the allocated budget per e-government deployment stream.

There is also a lack of project management and implementation skills and citizens centricity in implementation.

There is a lack of coordination between ministries and thus the benefits of ICT utilization in business processes and their success stories are not being shared across the structure. As a result, there are some governmental departments and ministries that lack the organizational capacity and operational leadership to successfully implement and follow up on the e-government initiatives.

Furthermore, although there is buy-in from senior management, there is a lack of motivation and incentives for ICT utilization among government employees.

On the user side, the low GDP per-capita hinders the dissemination of ICT equipment and services. PCs and internet services are relatively expensive making their penetration low due to affordability issues.

There are four main opportunities that enable e-government implementation. First, there is strong buy-in, support and motivation on the part of His Majesty King Abdulla, IT department heads and senior management in general.

Second, Jordan is becoming increasing attractive to FDI due to its relationships with other countries in terms of economic agreements and its political and economical stability. Thirdly, there is a global reduction in PC production costs.

Finally, the National Broadband Network is a high capacity infrastructure that acts as a viable alternative to the market fixed line infrastructure.

Some threats to eGovernment implementation stems from outside The Kingdom. There are limited resources; being dependent on FDI, there other markets in the region that are becoming increasingly attractive withdrawing possible funds from Jordan.

Furthermore, there is a shortage of qualified personnel due to brain drainage to neighboring countries. The Jordanian government‘s current structure and some existing practices also pose a threat to successfully implementing e-government.

Establishing an eGovernment unit and a collaboration unit between ministries within the government‘s vertical structure is challenging. Furthermore, there was limited participation in the preparation of the eGovernment strategy on the part of NGO‘s and the private sector which increases the risk of not fully satisfying the industry and the users‘ needs.

There is also limited utilization of open source software thus increasing operational costs.

Finally, government employees are resistant to the change which presents a risk of slowing down the eGovernment‘s momentum.

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