Explain the characteristics of maturity levels.
CHARACTERISTICS OF MATURITY LEVELS
The characteristics exhibited by the organizations at various levels of maturity facilitate assessing the current level of e-governance attained by the organization. The following points describe the characteristics of the organizations at various levels:
Level 1: Closed
- Organizations are closed to e-governance. No plans or vision is available. They continue with fully manual and conventional operations.
Level 2: Initial
- The organization lacks strategic thinking and direction for e-governance at top level.
- There are unorganized and isolated efforts of automation in some areas.
- Automation efforts are a result of individual's initiatives.
- The effort sustains as long as the enthusiasm of the individual, who initiated it, remains and is often abandoned due to lack of direction.
- Such organizations generally accumulate hardware without any planning and much of it goes unutilized or underutilized.
Level 3: Planned
- E-governance is a part of an organization's agenda.
- Strategic thinking and leadership guide the e-governance initiatives. A clear understanding of e-governance needs as projected by the external and internal customers/users.
- An extensive plan is prepared for implementing e-governance, addressing all Key Focus Areas (KFAs) and other related issues.
- All the necessary documents for e-governance planning are in place. These documents include Vision and Scope document for e-governance, Need Assessment Survey document, Policy guidelines, and Action Plan and Outsourcing guidelines
Level 4: Realized
a) Retrospected
Business processes are attuned to the vision and overall e-governance objectives. There is awareness about e-governance among all concerned-the stakeholders as well as the customers/users.
b) E-ready
The organization has a sound infrastructure (technological, institutional, legal, and human) in place, for implementing e-governance. The customers/users are oriented and motivated to use e-governance services.
c) Partially open
- Some of the e-governance services are deployed, leading to partial information exchange among the entities.
- Partially open organizations sometimes focus only on their internal or backend processes, allowing an information exchange within the confines of the organization thus remaining insulated from its external entities. In such cases, Government-to-Employee (G2E) interface is visible, whereas Government-to Citizen (G2C), Government-to-Government (G2G), and Government-to-Business (G2B) interfaces are not yet established.
- Another case of partial deployment of e-governance services results in a conspicuous G2C interface with no emphasis on building G2E, G2B, or G2E interfaces. In an enthusiasm to quickly open up its front-end, the organization negligibly focuses on computerization of the supporting backend processes, thus creating hollowness behind the face of static websites.
- A hybrid of the above two cases is characterized by building interfaces with external entities and simultaneously focusing on computerizing the corresponding backend processes, thus opening a balanced information exchange among the internal as well as the external customers of the organization.
d) Open
- The organization has an integrated system, reflective of smooth information exchange within and outside the organization, i.e. Government-to-Employee (G2E), Government-to-Citizen (G2C), Government-to-Government (G2G) and Government-to-Business (G2B) interfaces are well established over a sound foundation of e-governance building blocks (the e-readiness essentials).
- The organization focuses on satisfying the users of e-governance services. The internal and external customers/users of the organization start utilizing the e-governance services and become dependent on them.
Level 5: Institutionalized
- The e-governance system of the organization is driven by a well-established Knowledge Management System that generates an ability in the organization to evolve with time in view of new requirements.
- E-governance becomes an effortless exercise for the organization and it becomes a way of life for the stakeholders and customers/users. The organization at this level is completely paperless.
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