McKinsey contributed its advice about what the future of e-government needs in its report
E-Government 2.0 (PDF) last week.
At times the report simply reads like the wish list of every government web professional. Yet, it is good to have McKinsey's reputation backing up the recommendations.
McKinsey mentions the need to elevate web sites and web applications to a strategic, essential element of each agency's business. The report recommends accomplishing this by holding the "line of business" managers accountable for web application successes or failures and supporting them with cross-functional teams.
This would be a huge step in the right direction.
The most common approach today is to hold the IT department alone responsible for the success or failure of web applications. IT departments are often expected to accomplish major web undertakings while receiving insufficient support from the agency management whose collaboration is essential.
Line-of-business managers hold the real power in agencies, and this approach would dramatically increase the rate of success for web initiatives.
However, the McKinsey report is surely underestimating the cost of web mismanagement. The latest estimate is about $7 billion will be spent on on e-government in 2009. But this only includes easily measurable costs, such as contracts; it does not include internal web development and maintenance costs. I'd guess internal e-government costs may double that figure.
But then again, no one truly knows how much the time and money agencies spend on their web efforts, except that it is one big number.
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