TOWARDS NEW ICT BASED ADMINISTRATIVE CULTURE

We have already discussed the Nature and Concept of Administrative Culture in a previous post of this blog.

So, today we will discuss the case for ICT based change and how to implement and blend it into an organisation's existing Administrative culture.

One sees the immense public interaction that govt. offices have to do day in and out and that is very burdening on the staff if they are using primitive & inefficient systems to carry out these heavy transactions. Such inefficiency leads to degraded service delivery and also corruption resulting from non-transparency.

The solution to this issue is - ICT implementation.

STEPS TO ICT IMPLEMENTATION:

1)Gain high level management support for the project;
2) Undertake a pilot project
3) Ensure that all users have access to the networks to provide an adequate population of users
4) Make sure the networking is integrated with the organisation core office automation applications.
5) Have the central IT unit coordination
6) Tackle difficult questions of security cost and ownership
7) Demonstrate possibilities to those interested
8) Provide the organisation with a presence on the internet
9) Provide a way to receive information from internet
10) Create an internal process to guide internet use
11) Provide positive role models for users
12) Provide new mechanisms to support rhetoric of organisation
13) Use technology to implement and administer technology


MECHANISMS TO BE USED FOR ICT IMPLEMENTATION:

1) Identify ICT applications that can provide improved services to citizens and help public administration in improving planning,monitoring and administrative processes.

2) Demonstrate feasibility of implementing such applications by specifying broad architecture, detailed design and creating prototype application software (wherever feasible); and

3) Disseminate the work to public administrators that promote and use e-governance.

REFORM ACTIVITIES THAT THE GOVT. NEEDS TO PERFORM TO IMPLEMENT ICT:

1) Lay emphasis on 'new governance' concept and its implications to accountability,management and democratic control

2) Instructional materials to acquaint both policy scholars and practitioners with these alternative tools and with the 'tools approach' that focuses attention on them. More than that,it is needed to establish an agenda for future action that might improve the operation of public programmes by sensitising policymakers and policy administrators to the distinctive features and operating demands of the various tools that public programmes embody;

3) Develop conceptual papers on strategies that governments can follow to introduce e-governance.

4) Work with specific departments/programmes to identify opportunities for developing ICT applications

5) Design ICT applications and identify hardwares and software resources that would be required to implement such applications

6) Develop the software or prototypes(wherever feasible) to demonstrate the feasibility of building such applications.

7) Conduct cost-benefit analysis of e-governance projects and preparing comprehensive evaluation reports.

8) Document case studies of successful e-governance applications already developed in the field.

9) Design workshops for sensitising senior echelons of public administrators.

10) Develop papers,reports and films to disseminate the output.


LIMITATIONS TO THE ABOVE IMPLEMENTATION OF ICT:

1) Bureaucracy is ever so reluctant to open up and give away the power of secrecy that they wield over the information they control through the internet that will expose their inefficiency.

2) Paucity of funds with the public bodies.

3) Many public administrators and office staff understand e-governance as mere 'computerisation' for calculations and typewriting thus 90% of the computers' processing and storing and information delivering capacities are lying unutilised/underutilised.

4) Non compilation of data bases and even if there is a database, it is rarely updated thus reducing the computer networks to no use at all.

SUGGESTIONS FOR CUTTING BACK ON THE LIMITATIONS:
1) Make a compelling case for change - The people who have a stake in the outcome see the need to change as it has been proved via research that as the employees' understanding of a need for change went down, the failure rate went up.

2) Communicate formally and informally

3) Personalise the Message - What does it mean for me?

4) Acknowledge the unknowns

5) Surface rumours and Fill in the blanks

6) Practice what you preach

7) Acknowledge and build on what employees value

8) Re frame resistance

9) Employees resist coercion, not change

10) Empathise