Week 7 How do we evaluate the internal benefits of SA Government?

Week 7

How do we evaluate the internal benefits of SA Government?

In our EA project, Susi, our client, asked us to provide a recommendation to measure the internal benefits of SA government. However, Susi is not clear about the definition of internal benefits, which brought some difficulties to our project. We spent a few weeks studying cases of e government in other countries in order to find benefits they care about most, which leads to another problem: most of governments do not focus on the so called “internal benefit”. With Murli’s help, we decided to specify our SEPO program into three phases and further our research into the government related processes in each phase. The three phases are: input change, output change and process change. For every phase, we analyzed government related processes using five different dimensions which are effectiveness, efficiency, quality, timeliness and productivity.

Input Change

Before and after the SEPO, what are the input changes for the department?

For example, inquiry phones and emails are less than before because the website have detailed information.

Effectiveness: Effectiveness is raised because that the department staff have more time to do their job.

- What was/is the average time that the staff spent on their job.

- How many labor cost are saved?

Efficiency: People submit form with less mistakes, so the department staff make less mistakes.

-What was/is the average mistakes that the staff made/make?

Quality: Quality is raised because the department staff have their job done correctly on time.

- What was/is the number of delayed affair?

- What was/is the number of accepted/rejected report?

Timeliness:

- What was/is the average time of the process of a affair?

Output change

Before and after the SEPO, what are the output changes for the department?

For example, each department released their announcements and annual reports on their own website or by paper. But now they post the reports on the SEPO.

Effectiveness: Before SEPO, departments had to post their information on the different government websites which were related.

- How many times the department had to repeat posting the announcement? And how many times they have to post now?

Efficiency: If the department want some thing to be known by the public as soon as possible, the information spread speed could be important. For example, the National Tax Administration want everyone to report tax before June.

- How many people see the announcement before/after the SEPO?

- How many people report tax in time before/after SEPO?

Quality: All the information are collected on the website, so every department can refer to them, and lower the error in their own report.

- The average errors in the department’s reports.

Timeliness: Did the spread speed fit the department’s requirement? The National Tax Administration probably want 90% citizens see the announcement in one month.

- How many people see the announcement in one month on the SEPO?

Before SEPO, how many people in one month saw it?

Productivity:

There might be less report to write.

- How many report the department had/have to write before/after the SEPO?

Process Change

Before and after the SEPO, what are the process changes for the department?

For example, government departments can access the integrated information on the SEPO. The cross-department affair, which took days to process, now may take hours.

Effectiveness:

- How many departments are using this website?

- How many information they can get on each affair?

Efficiency: The department which uses SEPO might perform better than before.

- How long did it take to deal with a cross-department affair before there was SEPO? How long does it take now?

Quality:

- How much useful information can they get? (Useful information rate)

Timeliness:

- How many cross-department affairs were/are done right and on time before/after SEPO?

- How many cross-department affairs were/are done wrong and delyed before/after SEPO?

Productivity: The cross-department affairs might be done better.

- Measure the completeness of the affairs done.