Transformation by Design: An Innovative Approach to Implementation of e-Government

A new approach is emerging for implementing e-Government. That approach draws on lessons learned by both "dot.coms" and brick-and-mortar (government and commercial) institutions in addressing challenges of the Digital Economy to enable "transformation by design". "Transformation by design" marries a step-by-step approach to changing existing business infrastructure with innovation to accelerate progression toward transformation in the Digital Economy. In doing so, it addresses the competing requirements facing government institutions for simultaneous incremental and radical change posed by e-Government implementation. Charles Lindblom (1959), noted Yale political economist, described an approach to decision-making in the public sector called "incrementalism". He characterized it as a process of "muddling through" to implement change in a step-by-step process. It continues to characterize the implementation of change in governance institutions today, especially among the industrial democracies. The process of incremental change fulfills the "checks and balances" requirement of democratic government institutions. A different approach to implementing change is evident in the commercial sector. To be sure, incrementalism is a key part of most approaches to change in existing businesses. However, the energy of nimble start-up businesses and competitors responding to new opportunities in the market creates a competitive imperative for innovation that drives leading businesses to move beyond incremental change. They study the innovations of new entrants and competitors to understand emerging opportunities and incorporate resulting insights into the more incremental change efforts required by their existing business infrastructure. The result is transformational change. Change in the public sector lacks this commercial market imperative. Unlike their commercial sector counter-parts, government leaders, by "checks and balances" design, cannot easily start up innovative enterprises or programs to capture emerging opportunities for improving the value provided by government to its customers. This difference is evident in assessing efforts by the two sectors to implement changes required to succeed in the Digital Economy. The e-Business challenge has been to change the enterprise to take advantage of digital technologies in order to improve profitability, market share, and customer value. The challenge of e-Government has involved a similar application of digital technologies to improve service delivery, productivity, and customer value. The pace of change, however, has been significantly different. E-Business implementation has outpaced e-Government implementation-- the competitive threats associated with start-up dot.com enterprises and new competitors have forced transformational change on leading business enterprises. Government enterprises, without this market imperative, have followed a more traditional approach to e-Government implementation--in the face of significant demand by the public for faster response, increased access, and improved service. The result has been transformational change in one sector and incremental change in the other. How can the outcry for transformational change in government coexist with the incrementalism demanded by the "checks and balances" inherent in government? The competition drivers that fuel value creation and define the innovation challenge for e-Business, and the very different cooperation drivers that fuel value creation and define the innovation challenge of e-Government, lead to