Why Has Project Management (PMBOK) Hindered Instead of Advanced Transformational e-Government?

Abstract

Transformational e-Government offered the hope and promise to revitalize and modernize public services; reinvigorate and improve services to citizens, business, and governments; and create an exciting environment for employees to work and contribute. Countries world-wide are inexorably engaged and urged forward by both push-and-pull motivational pressures to use technology to improve democratic participation, social harmony, and economic sustainability. While e-Government's first decade has been much more transactional than transformational, radical changes affecting e-Government are needed in this decade. But progress achieved thus far was not without struggle. The project failure rate is so high that transformational e-Government progress is stalling. This paper identifies a synergistic compendium of ten key challenges that prevent progress in transformational e-Government and assesses the effectiveness of the North American standard for project management, the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK), in managing these challenges - and finds it wanting.