Government ICT project failure factors: project stakeholders’ views

Information and communication technology (ICT) offers major transformational opportunities by contributing to the improvement of productivity, competitiveness, growth, wealth creation, poverty reduction and spur of knowledgebased economy. It should be a transformational force, a tool to enable government not only to improve public services but to also dramatically improve the relationship between citizen and state. In Malaysia, ICT was listed as the catalyst of economy growth under the Economic Transformation Programme (ETP). ETP is a focused, inclusive and sustainable initiative that will transform Malaysia into a high-income nation by the year 2020. However, there exist particular challenges for the success and sustainable ICT projects provision in such contexts that lead to low success rates. The purpose of this study is to identify and understand the failure factors and their symptoms of government’s ICT projects implemented in Malaysia through the eyes of its stakeholders. This study uses interview as a strategy to collect qualitative data of 7 stakeholders in ICT project implementation. 28 failure symptoms were discovered and mapped within 6 failure root causes and later classified according to 3 project failure types. We conclude that if weaknesses in project management are addressed, most of the symptoms identified in this study could be successfully overcome.