Analyzing Strategic Gaps of Digital Divide Projects Based on the Balanced Scorecard

Academic researches, government reports, and international organization surveys have indicated that outcomes of many digital divide projects fail to accomplish their strategic goals, and so that more exertions of strategic management in the government project planning process are expected. In order to ensure the achievement of bridging digital divides, governments need to be aware of their absence and weakness in strategy formulation and implementation in addition to simply launching projects towards strategic visions and objectives. However, the literature shows little help for the governments to detect the shortcomings of their strategies and to identify gaps between strategic objectives and performance measures. The goal of this research is to propose generic strategic gaps models based on the balanced scorecard framework for identifying and analyzing the strategic gap situations. Both horizontal and vertical strategic gaps regarding project efforts for reducing digital divides will be determined and discussed. The proposed approach and analysis models are then applied to the case of Taiwan for demonstrating their feasibility and usefulness.