E-Government for good governance : barriers to the implementation of digital workflows in the Namibian public service

[摘要] ENGLISH SUMMARY : E-Government implementations aim to streamline the public service to essentially automate their processes, with the aim to improve service delivery to citizens and businesses. Digital workflows are one aspect of such streamlining by enabling workflow management with the help of computers, so allowing for fine-grained control over steps in work processes leading to consistency and error prevention,whilst at the same time allowing for measurement and reporting. Digital workflows promise to enable governments to accelerate service delivery, reduce costs and improve the quality of its services at all levels. However, the implementation of the digital workflows often fails to live up to this promise. The thesis investigates the implementation of various digital workflows in various Government Offices, Ministries and Agencies (OMAs) in the Namibian Public Service. It describes how the Office of the Prime Minister, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Information Communication and Technology, and the Office of theAuditor managed and implemented their e-government projects and applications.The investigation was conducted through direct observation, document analysis andface-to-face interviews. The thesis aimed to determine how well digital workflow areembedded in the various e-government projects and applications, to what degreethese digital workflows are used by the officials, and in particular whether digitalsignatures are used in the workflows. In addition, the thesis tries to outline thecapacity and experience of the officials responsible for the implementation of theselected e-government projects to show what capacity challenges hinder fullimplementation in a developing country context like Namibia. It is concluded that proper implementation and usage of the e-government digital workflows falls far short of its promise and at a cost of inefficiency and ineffectiveness towards service delivery. The thesis summarizes the status of digital workflows through the e-government projects and applications, highlights the elements from the context that stifled full implementation and makes recommendations of how to improve future implementations and practices for egovernment projects in similar developing country contexts.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University