Drawing from the experience of others, OASIS, the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards, has produced theTransformational Government Framework (TGF), a guide for governments in e-government planning and implementation. Jianggan Li catches up with two of OASIS’ leading members, John Borras and Chris Parker, to learn about the TGF and its advice for government.
OASIS is a not-for-profit consortium that drives the development, convergence and adoption of open standards for the global information society. “A lot of the standards that drive e-business across the Internet are OASIS standards,” explains John Borras, chair of
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Drawing from the experience of others, OASIS, the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards, has produced the Transformational Government Framework (TGF), a guide for governments in e-government planning and implementation. Jianggan Li catches up with two of OASIS’ leading members, John Borras and Chris Parker, to learn about the TGF and its advice for government.
OASIS is a not-for-profit consortium that drives the development, convergence and adoption of open standards for the global information society. “A lot of the standards that drive e-business across the Internet are OASIS standards,” explains John Borras, chair of the OASIS Transformational Government Framework (TGF) Technical Committee (TC).
Based on empirical analysis of what has worked in e-government initiatives around the world, OASIS has produced the TGF, a practical “how to” standard for the design and implementation of an effective programme of technology-enabled change at the national, state or local government level. This is detailed in two documents, the
TGF Primer, which describes the rationale and detail of the TGF in plain English, and the
TGF Core Pattern Language, a formal specification of what needs to be done to succeed. Both documents have just been out for public review, which attracted a significant number of constructive comments and will be updated before a second round of public review.
“Chris and I worked in the UK, in the Prime Minister’s Office back in 2004 when we first started the e-government programme,” said John. “[Since then] we’ve learnt a lot of lessons. Essentially we are using that experience as saying there is a better way of doing e-government in terms of getting services online and joining up government. We’ve come together and promoted this concept of transformational government using the OASIS standardisation process to drive through a new framework on how to do that.”
“We are trying to address the ‘elephant in the room’ of e-government, which I think is that largely it has not delivered the benefits everybody hoped for,” explains Chris Parker, a member of the OASIS Technical Committee and principal of
CSTransform a UK company. “Over the last 10 - 15 years, we’ve had governments investing huge amounts of money in e-government. I saw one estimate recently of $3 trillion in the past decade, so huge investment is going in there.”
Whilst e-government has provided significant improvements in service delivery and citizen engagement, Chris argues that e-government initiatives commonly lack coordination and value for money. “We’ve not really transformed the nature of citizens’ experience with government. It’s still pretty much a frustrating and silo-based sort of beast. However you’re trying to engage with government, typically you still need to work out how to do that for yourself, to understand which bits of government you need to engage with.” In an effort to address this, one-stop government portals have appeared yet the silo model of e-government services remain and it is here that, according to Chris and the TGF, the inefficiencies reside. To deliver more cost effective benefits from the investments being put into technology, governments are beginning to realise that significant levels of organisational change are needed. The TGF Primer is, however, fully aware of the difficulty in this strategy.
“Delivering this degree of change is not straight-forward for government. Indeed, government faces unique challenges in delivering transformational change, notably:
1. The unparalleled breadth and depth of its service offering;
2. The fact that it provides a universal service, engaging with the whole population rather than picking and choosing its customers; and
3. Structures, governance, funding and culture are all organised around specific business functions, not around meeting citizen needs in a holistic way.”
Therefore, to assist governments in this effort, the OASIS community and the TGF brings together global best practices and gives advice on how to manage IT costs, interactions, schedules and business on a whole government basis, in a way to keep costs to the minimum and optimise results.
Having worked with 40 governments including developed economies, emerging economies and some of the least developed countries in the world, the OASIS community has identified a correlation in the common steps to success and failure. Chris explains that “what we’ve done is set five clear business principles that if you’re running an e-government programme in which you’re looking to achieve really transformational impact for your organisation, then you need to follow these principles. They are things that we believe apply just as much in China, as in Spain and as in Malawi.”
1. Develop a detailed and segmented understanding of your citizen and business customers
2. Build services around customer needs, not organisational structure
3. Citizen Service transformation is done with citizens, not to them
4. Grow the market
5. Manage and measure the nine critical success factors, which include strategy clarity, stakeholder engagement and achievable delivery and are further detailed in the TGF
Underpinning the aforementioned business principals are four areas which the TGF designates to be managed in a whole government way. This means having an overall strategy rather than managing technology entirely within the existing structure of government. Not only that, but that they must also be refocused in a citizen-centric way in order to deliver genuinely transformational impact.
1. Business Management
2. Customer Management
3. Channel Management
4. Technology Management
And lastly, Chris explains that in his experience, “So often you go into a government and people are doing things that you know are going to fail, are going to under-deliver and not achieve its benefits. Mistakes are absolutely transportable between countries.” For this reason, the final element of the TGF is about managing risk and avoiding the factors that contribute to IT disasters and failed projects. These are the nine critical success factors, touched upon in point five of the business principals, which must be managed and measured through the life of the programme.
The TGF in its entirety “is the global community in a sense coming together, trying to pull the knowledge and experience of the 10 – 15 years of delivering e-government around the world and putting it in a pragmatic and actionable framework for others to use,” remarks Chris. With the forthcoming improvements made by the first round of public review, and a second round to follow, the TGF will continue to be refined and offer support to government.
John Borras concludes, pointing out that, “What we’re trying to do with the TGF is not to say you need to change your government all it once, because clearly that’s not feasible. It is about an organic approach, an incremental approach, one where success builds in a mild way, rather than in a command and control way. That’s wrapped up with the idea of how do you move to a different business model of government, where it needs to be managed as an evolutionary process over a time. This a journey, not a quick fix.”
To find out more about the OASIS TGF please visit the LinkedIn Group: “
OASIS - Transformational Government Framework”.