Evolving Role of the Project Manager in Government IT Projects - Research Proposal Example

Evolving Role of the Project Manager in Government IT Projects A Research Proposal By: Institutional Affiliation: Date Assignment is due: Evolving Role of the Project Manager in Government IT Projects Background Information The successive UK governments have aptly recognised that the pressing need to adopt information technology in government departments and the attempts so far registered have not been successful so far (Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology 2). The government had proposed to have adopted electronic public services by 2005, as a priority goal. To a large extent this has been so far, a pipe dream (Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology 2). The projects already commissioned to adopt IT systems in various public institutions have been plagued by numerous problems to the extent that a whopping 60% of them, in the last 15 years, have been confirmed as an absolute failure and waste of public resources (Heeks and Stanforth 165–177). Of special note are the recent high profile IT projects commissioned in the last five years including those of the Child Support Agency, the Passport Office, the Criminal Records Bureau, the Inland Revenue department, the Department for Work and Pensions and the National Air Traffic Services department among many others, all of which have been a disgrace to their conceivers and supporters (Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology 3; Holt and Graves 13–21). Seven years back (2003), the UK government commissioned Libra, a novel IT system to be used in the Magistrates Courts. The outcome was what the Public Accounts Committee’s chairman described as, "The worst IT projects I have ever seen" (Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology 3). The press, public officials and the public at large, have all criticized the government’s susceptibility to failure in adopting successful IT programs (Hemsley-Brown 103-117). And indeed, the government has a great track record of wasting public resources in projects that never come off the drawing board or implementation stages (Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology 5; Kassel 78-116). The pressure has therefore increased for the government to address the underlying causes of failure in IT development projects (Hemsley-Brown 103-117). The questions lie in either the planning of such projects, their implementation, their funding, their management or their feasibility. Somewhere between the time these projects are conceived and the time they are completed, something goes wrong and the projects backfire (Heeks and Stanforth 165–177; Holt and Graves 13–21). In this regard, any attempt to resolve the problems must assume an investigation into the three areas mentioned above (Holt and Graves 13–21). It is worth of note that when compared to the private sector’s rate of success and failure, the public sector is easily qualified as the worst performing. Out of every 10 projects started in the private sector UK since 2005; nine of the projects were immensely successful (Heeks and Stanforth 165–177). This is a success rate of over 90% (Heeks and Stanforth 165–177). When it comes to the public sector, out of every 10 projects started in the public sector UK since 2005, only four of the projects were successful. This is a success rate of 40%, needless to mention a failure rate of over 60% as mentioned earlier (Heeks and Stanforth 165–177). According to Heeks & Stanforth (165–177), there are an overwhelming number of IT implementation models in practice today, some of which have been recommended for the UK government, all of which have an explanation for the e-Government IT projects trajectories. Most of the trajectories, according to Heeks & Stanforth (165–177), feature frequent failures and rare successes. The government has been considerably sensitive to this failure of IT projects and has initiated attempts to trace the source of difficulties and problems (Heeks and Stanforth 165–177; Kassel 78-116). Some of these initiatives have diagnosed problems with the technology used, others with the management of the projects, others with government’s approval and supervision of the projects, and others still, a combination of all or some of the three areas (Heeks and Stanforth 165–177). Consequently, the solutions proposed over the years have tended to fall under these three areas (Office of Government Commerce, 56 – 87). In recent public debates over the issue, there has emerged a call to appraise both the successful and failed government IT projects for efficiency, effectiveness, costing, budgeting, appropriateness, management, success and failure (Heeks and Stanforth 165–177; Kassel, 78-116). This has been seen as the best way to resolve the inbuilt problems in a realistic, effective, feasible and long-term manner. For instance, a 2002 report compiled by the National Audit Office and the Office of Government Commerce helped to identify eight causes of government IT projects failure and on each, an overarching assessment of issues noted in particular projects (Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology 6; Luke 81-94). These issues, a resolution of which would lender most projects successful, include a need to model projects in a business-like model that insists on each project deliver quantifiable, predetermined benefits, committed, qualified and reliable/experienced project leadership and management, as well as an involvement of all the project users in and at all planning and implementation stages of a project (Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology 6; Holt and Graves 13–21). Further, the report recommended the establishment and maintenance of cordial relationships between the government, the users, the contractors and the suppliers, as well as the need to setup proper risk management protocols (Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology 6). It is from this background that this project as proposed herein, seeks to explore why a huge percentage of government IT projects are failing, what is causing their failure and how such failure can be resolved in a bid to safe public resources as well as realize the government-set target of automating service delivery in public departments. The problems underlying the highly publicized failure of government IT projects in the UK may accrue from three possible sources namely, the government’s way of handling such projects, the technology being adopted or the management of such projects (Heeks and Stanforth 165–177). Statement of the Research Problem The Public Accounts Committee received and endorsed a report in 2002, revealing that the UK government was by then funding 100 large IT at a total cost of over £10 billion (Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology 7). In the same year, the Spending Review Committee allocated £6 billion of public money to be spent in the next three years for the development of government automated service delivery systems (Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology 7). Last year, the Computing magazine published an audit that calculated the total cost of all cancelled and over-budget IT projects in a period of six years since 2003, at more than £1.5 billion (Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology 7). This is a devastating level of failure, with far reaching economic repercussions for the public. Not only is it foolhardy to continue spending such huge amounts for projects that end up as a failure, but also an abuse of public trust placed on the government to protect public resources from misappropriation (Hemsley-Brown 103-117; Luke 81-94). The right thing to, which as detailed in the project proposed herein has been initiated by the UK government, is to review the government IT projects that have failed as well as those that have successfully been completed, in a bid to diagnose inbuilt problems that cause such a high failure rate (Heeks and Stanforth 165–177). It is evident that the conception, planning, implementation and management of UK government UIT projects is faulty since it does not compare with the private sector projects implemented in the same duration, with less resources and lees time frames than the public projects (Kassel 78-116). The private sector has recorded a 90% success rate despite having a limit to the resources, manpower and goodwill that the public projects have enjoyed (Kassel 78-116). Someone needs to look into the problems that have made the public sector IT projects so susceptible to failure in the past, and how they can be made successful in future to the and beyond the extent achieved by the UK private sector (Kassel 78-116). There have been cases where government IT projects have overspent the time, cost and labour allocated to them during planning (Hemsley-Brown 103-117). Others have developed other requirements encourse their implementation. This has suggested faulty planning, execution and management. Other projects have been completed as planned but found to be inadequate or even useless in deliver the benefits needed by their users (Hemsley-Brown 103-117). This has suggested that the conception of the projects was not realistically adequate to serve the needs it was targeted at and that the project conception was itself faulty. A case in point is the Passport Agency IT project started in the summer of 1999 with the aim of introducing a novel computer system as a solution to the long waiting periods for the processing of passports in the UK (Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology 11). However, the project cost more than was budgeted in times of money and time and still ended up being insufficient to serve its objective (Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology 11). This lend to four months of unprecedented long delays in the issuing of passports, before the system was comprehensively reconfigured (Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology 11). This project will seek to document the causes of failure in the government IT projects initiated the past. This will be done by analysing the documentation of such failed projects and comparing the same of successful government IT projects in the UK and worldwide, with an aim of profiling what makes such the projects fail or succeed. This will facilitate the documentation of the potent solutions that if adopted, could resolve the mess of UK government IT projects so far recorded and improve the planning, implementation and management of the ongoing IT projects. The mandate of this paper as such, will spun across diagnosing problems of the UK government IT projects and recommending solutions to overcome those presiding problems as diagnosed. As noted in the introductory section of the proposal, there have been numerous enquiries and investigations conducted for each failed or successful IT project in the last 10 years, and another overwhelming number of studies done to appraise the entire sectors and its divergent set of issues. All of these studies have proposed that the failure was prompted by a wide range of causes and thus recommended as many solutions. One may not find his or her way around the perceive causes of failure or the proposed solutions. This study was conceived not because the causes of failure have not been documented elsewhere, but to the contrary, because there was too much literature on the issue. In this regard, the study seeks to shift through existing literatures, constituting of reports, studies, enquiries, commissions, appraisals, commentaries and an assortment of other literature, focus on the divergent issues and finding a set of the most viable, common and major problems that have triggered a high failure rate in all UK government IT projects in the last 10 years (Hemsley-Brown 103-117). This research therefore is based on other studies, a document analysis type of enquiry, which presents a conclusive gist of the issues as discussed by the current literature. This will help to find the salient points in the search for problems and solutions for the UK IT projects initiative. Aims of the Study As already noted, the research proposed herein is a document analysis research project that seeks to explore why a huge percentage of government IT projects are failing. The guiding question is what causes the high rate of failure in government IT projects and how such failure can be resolved in a bid to safe public resources as well as realize the government-set target of automating service delivery in public departments. The primary aim of this study is to investigate the documented major and common problems that make UK government IT projects susceptible to failure as has been the case in the last ten years. Further as it follows from the preliminary literature review as contained in this proposal, the problems underlying the highly publicized failure of government IT projects in the UK may accrue from three possible sources namely, the government’s way of handling such projects, the technology being adopted or the management of such projects. It is the aim of this paper to document the problems in two of these three areas namely, the technology being adopted and the management of such projects, and avoids the highly political one of government’s handling. These will help determine which among the two, and to which extent, the failed IT projects of the last 10 years can be attributed to. Based on the assumption that the diagnosed problems are resolvable, it is the objective mandate of this study to empirically identify specific solutions that can best serve in overcoming each of these problems. This main aim is then broken into three narrow objectives that help to focus the study into a more comprehensive venture and to help in distilling relevantly the findings of the study. The narrow objectives include: a) To identify the problems that have triggered failure of government IT projects in the UK for the last 10 years primarily due to the technology adopted. b) To identify the problems that have triggered failure of government IT projects in the UK for the last 10 years primarily due to the management of such projects. c) To identify the solutions that can sufficiently prevent failure of government IT projects in future, based on the findings of failed and successful IT projects in the UK for the last 10 years. Research Questions Given that the available literature has suggested so many possible problems and diverse issues as responsible for the high failure rate of government IT projects in the UK, and consequently as many solutions, there was the risk of including far too many issues than can be comprehensively covered by the research or far too less than would facilitate a good coverage. There is therefore a need to constrain the core interests of the study to those issues that could sufficiently be investigated. Consequently, three research questions were created based on the three narrow objectives of the study (identified above) to act as the guide posts for the exploration of this study and to consolidate the conclusive findings or convictions of the discussion. Answering these thee research questions sufficiently would in this regard be termed as a conclusive coverage of the study’s mandate. The three research questions thus formulated were: a) Which problems can be diagnosed in the failed government IT projects in UK for the last 10 years are due to the technology adopted? b) Which problems can be diagnosed in the failed government IT projects in UK for the last 10 years are due to the management of such projects? c) What solutions can prevent failure of government IT projects in future, based on the failed and successful IT projects in the UK for the last 10 years? Research Design The mandate of the research study proposed herein, is to explore why a huge percentage of government IT projects have been failing in the last 10 years, whether such failure is due to the technology adopted and or their management, and finally, how such failure can be resolved in a bid to safe public resources as well as realize the government-set target of automating service delivery in public departments. The study will employ both quantitative and qualitative method of enquiry. Qualitatively, the research will heavily rely on document analysis of the numerous enquiries and investigations conducted for each failed or successful IT project in the last 10 years, and the overwhelming number of studies done to appraise the entire sector and its divergent set of issues. All of these studies have proposed that the failure was prompted by a wide range of causes and thus recommended as many solutions (Hemsley-Brown 103-117). This study will shift through the existing literature, ranging from reports, studies, enquiries, commissions, appraisals, commentaries to an assortment of other literature, in a bid to find a set of the most viable, common and major problems that have triggered a high failure rate in all UK government IT projects in the last 10 years. The most common problems will be tabulated and then analysed as to either technology related or management related. Then for each tabulated problem, the most viable solution recommended will be analyzed for feasibility, practicality and applicability. Quantitatively, the study will sample 10 IT managers in government departments that have had an IT project in the last five years. Five members of the purposive sample (selected via a purposive sampling procedure) will be IT managers of government departments whose projects failed and five will be from the departments whose project succeeded. For each set of the purposive sample, a questionnaire will be designed and delivered to collect data on why their projects either failed or succeeded. Using these 10 questionnaires delivered to the ten IT managers in the government departments with failed or successful projects, the study will collect views of what makes a project fail or succeed, and what should be done to solve the high rate of failure in UK government UIT projects. The findings of the questionnaires will be analyzed, tabulated and accumulatively converged with the results of the data analysis for a conclusive list of problems and solutions. Works Cited Heeks, Richard and Stanforth Carolyne. “Understanding e-Government project trajectories from an actor-network perspective.” European Journal of Information Systems, 16.1 (2007): 165–177. Online. Hemsley-Brown, Jane. “Facilitating research utilisation: A cross-sector review of research evidence.” Conceptual Paper. International Journal of Public Sector Management, 17.6 (2004): 103-117. Print. Holt, Robin and Graves J. "Benchmarking UK Government Procurement Performance in Construction Projects." Measuring Business Excellence, 5. 4 (2001): 13–21. Print. Luke, Belinda. “Financial returns from new public management: a New Zealand perspective.” Research Paper. Pacific Accounting Review, 20.1 (2008): 81-94. Online. Kassel, David. Managing public sector projects; a strategic framework for success in an era of downsized government. London: CRC/Taylor & Francis, 2010: 78-116. Print. Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology (POST). Government IT Projects. Report 200. Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology, (2003): 1-38. PDF. Office of Government Commerce. Managing Successful Projects with PRINCE2. Fifth Revised edition. Great Britain: Stationery Office Books, 2005: 56 – 87. Print. Read More