Strategic Planning: An Enabler of E-Governance
In India, most of the past or ongoing e-governance initiatives have been undertaken as part of the conventional planning and implementation framework. Due to inherent limitations in the system, an effective approach for strategic planning is generally fou
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Strategic Planning: An Enabler of E-Governance
5.1
Introduction
Most of the past or ongoing e-governance initiatives in India have been undertaken as part of the conventional planning and implementation system. The traditional top-down system, however, does not seem to be suitable for handling the dynamic context of e-governance. In government setup, organizations at centre as well as state levels generally rely upon the experience of a few senior officers for the purpose of planning and strategy formulation. The operational level staffs are mostly not involved in strategic discussions. These functionaries, who possess rich knowledge about ground realities, usually avoid contradicting the views of seniors even when they are asked to participate in the strategic discussions. As such, the prevailing hierarchical setup does not encourage free exchange of ideas among employees. For strategic planning to be effective, it is required to conduct extensive deliberations with various stakeholders. This should include even opponents of the proposed initiative to get divergent views. Such a structured approach is usually not followed in government organizations. If an e-governance initiative requires collaborative efforts between centre and state governments, the federal setup of government system in India adds further to the complexities. Due to inherent limitations of the system such as these, an effective approach for strategic planning is generally found wanting in most of the e-governance projects (Suri and Sushil 2012a, b; Suri 2016a). In the synthesized framework (Chap. 3, Fig. 3.1), strategic planning has emerged as one of the enablers of e-governance. It is viewed to be based on three macro-variables, viz. ‘Extent of Planning’, ‘Comprehensiveness of Strategy Formulation’ and ‘Flexibility of Processes’. These are defined as follows in terms of their corresponding micro-variables:
© Springer Science+Business Media Singapore 2017 P.K. Suri and Sushil, Strategic Planning and Implementation of E-Governance, Flexible Systems Management, DOI 10.1007/978-981-10-2176-3_5
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5.1.1
Extent of Planning
This variable captures depth of coverage of various elements in the plan as suggested by program planning methodology for complex projects (Hill and Warfield 1972), involvement of stakeholders in project planning, service orientation of project plan and possibility of modifying an approved project plan. Its constituent micro-variables are as follows: Coverage of program planning elements The micro-variable encompasses important aspects of project planning such as affected societal sectors, needs, constraints, alterables, objectives, objective measures, activities, activity measures and agencies involved. Involvement of stakeholders in planning This micro-variable covers extent to which project specific stakeholders are involved in the planning process. Timelines for services This micro-variable captures service orientation of the project plan, i.e. whether the timelines for progressively
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