A Project Framework for eGovernment

The paper presents a rigorous framework to plan, perform and manage foundational e-government projects. Each project aims to establish a government-wide direction for e-government and create an initial impetus in this direction within individual agencies. The framework identifies five kinds of tasks – survey, development, training, research and dissemination, and prescribes how they can be planned, performed and managed to achieve the stated objectives. The general focus is on support for strategic planning and capacity development. The technical focus is on middleware infrastructure development. We also outline how the framework was applied to carry out an e-government project in Macao, China. Tomasz Janowski is the Head of the Center for Electronic Governance United Nations University International Institute for Software Technology in Macao (UNU-IIST-EGOV) and a Senior Research Fellow of UNU-IIST. Tomasz Janowski is the author or co-author of numerous publications in Computer Science, Software Engineering and Foundations. He has been a Program Committee member at many international conferences, supervised a number of international students and staff, and led several research, development and capacity-building projects. These include the e-Macao Program to build a foundation for Electronic Government in Macao and the UNeGov.net initiative to building a global community of practice for Electronic Governance. As part of the UNeGov.net initiative, he organized many workshops and schools on Electronic Governance in developing countries. His current research interests include foundations of Electronic Governance, tools and applications of formal methods, and rigorous development of enterprise software, particularly software for the public sector. Tomasz Janowski holds a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Warwick, England, and an MSc in Mathematics from the University of Gdansk, Poland. Elsa Estevez is a Project Staff at the Center for Electronic Governance United Nations University International Institute for Software Technology in Macao (UNU-IIST-EGOV). She is also an Assistant Professor at the Universidad Nacional del Sur (UNS) in Bahia Blanca, Argentina where she teaches subjects related to Software Engineering. Prior to joining UNS, she has been working as a Project Leader, Project Manager, System Analyst and Programmer in Information Technology for major industries, including banking, in Argentina. While in UNU-IIST-EGOV, Elsa Estevez contributed to various tasks of the e-Macao and UNeGov.net projects, from research and development, through training, to networking. Her current research interest include: Electronic Government, developing software infrastructure for Electronic Government, and Component-Based Software Development. Elsa Estevez holds an MSc degree in Computer Science from UNS and a Licenciado Degree in Computer Science from Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina. Adegboyega Ojo is a Research Fellow at the Center for Electronic Governance United Nations University International Institute for Software Technology (UNU-IIST-EGOV) in Macao, on leave from the Department of Computer Sciences, University of Lagos, Nigeria where he is a Senior Lecturer. Before his affiliation with UNU-IIST, he led major software development projects involving large multinationals in Nigeria. He has been involved in e-government research and development activities since 2004 at UNU-IIST as a member of the project team working on the e-government development in Macao. His research interests include Software Infrastructure for Electronic Government, E-Government Measurement, Ontology, Semantic Interoperability, and Applications of Computational Intelligence. He holds a doctorate degree in Computer Science from the University of Lagos in Nigeria. He is also a member of the Computer Professionals of Nigeria. Copyright © 2007 by UNU-IIST, Tomasz Janowski, Elsa Estevez and Adegboyega Ojo