eGovernment

Background

The States embarked on an ambitious eGovernment (eGov) programme as a cornerstone of their programme of Public Sector Reform. Governance arrangements, including an eGov Board were put in place. The States commenced a procurement process to retain a ‘Senior Supplier’ for the eGov programme. However, the response to the tender did not provide decision makers with sufficient clarity to proceed and the procurement was terminated in January 2015.

Under the leadership of a new Senior Responsible Officer and as part of the relaunched approach to eGov:

• the eGov Board was renamed the Sponsoring Group; and
• the eGov Programme team became the eGov Programme Board.

Scope

This review considers:

• how effective has learning been (including from the initial procurement)
• how clear and embedded is the vision and strategy
• how effective is the governance, business model and organisation to support the programme; and
• how effective is the management of change?

Conclusions

There has been some learning from the past but much needs to be done if eGov is to be successfully and cost effectively implemented in Jersey.

Many of the problems that the States have faced – and continue to face – in delivering eGov arise from corporate issues that the C&AG has referred to in previous reports:

• a lack of documentation and common understanding of clear principles for Public Sector Reform
• the absence of effective corporate planning at a States-wide level
• the operation of a substantial volume of legacy systems
• an absence of a strong culture of programme and project management
• weaknesses in the understanding and application of risk management
• a strong sense of departmentalism as opposed to corporate working; and
• an absence of the culture of a ‘learning organisation’.