Georgia on My Mind: A Study of the Role of Governance and Cooperation in Online Service Delivery in the Caucasus

Résumé En

Georgia’s achievements in public sector modernisation have been lauded, since 2004, for their ability to increase transparency, fight corruption, ease the way of doing business and improve public service delivery to citizens. Information Communication Technology (ICT) played an important role as an enabler of public sector reform. Despite this, research into the Georgian model of governance and inter-governmental cooperation is extremely limited. Similarly, literature reviews have, in recent years, pointed out limitations in the understanding of technology use in public service delivery and, particularly, the role governance, cross-governmental decision making, and cooperation play when introducing ICT solutions and online services to citizens. As part of a larger qualitative, multi-country comparison, this article analyses the Georgian approach to electronic governance (eGovernance). The analysis highlights the influence of politically motivated and driven public sector reforms underpinned by ICT use for better service delivery, transparency and a fight against corruption in the period 2004–2012. Despite early success in relation to ICT infrastructure, standards and roll-out to key enablers, the article finds that the electronic government (eGovernment) eco-system is fragmented and that the use of public and private online service (eService) is limited, despite high internet penetration and usage. The key barrier found is the lack of an effective governance and inter-governmental cooperation model to improve cooperation between government actors (e.g. data collection, quality and reuse, shared infrastructure, systems and service), build on existing infrastructure and enablers to optimize the value-added of earlier investments – particularly in relation to electronic identity management (eID), digital signatures (eSignature) and eServices. Georgia would benefit from a more formalized approach to ICT related programmes and projects by considering an IT-implementation model to effectively manage risk, improve benefit realization and link individual key performance measurements (KPI) to those of the eGovernment strategy and action plan.