e-government procurement implementation in India: two comparative case studies from the field

The turn of century saw ICT technologies making inroads into our lives. The governments world over are trying to use this medium for reaching out to their citizenry. This migration has been partly driven by transparency, efficiency and wider-access related benefits accrued by automation of government functions. E-Government Procurement (E-GP) is one such area which has drawn attention of politicians and researchers equally. However, studies bring out that E-GP project like any other e-Governance project has 70% chances of failure. Studies also underline that success of any E-GP system among other things, is affected by national culture, project environment (E-Readiness, IT literacy level and technological evolution) and regulatory framework which govern public procurement in a country. Indian government having realized the transparency and efficiency related benefits of E-GP system initiated an aggressive campaign to ensure its speedier implementation through National E-Governance Programme (NeGP) which was launched in 2006. However, recent review by Government of India (GoI) brought out that E-GP usage in the country has been less than satisfactory. In above perspective, this paper aims to undertake Template Analysis of stage-wise importance of 11 Critical Success Factors (CSF) (reported in literature) in E-GP project outcome in Indian context. For covering large landscape of E-GP implementation in India, two representative systems i.e. those implemented by Government of Andhra Pradesh and National Informatics Corporation were selected. The study concludes that out of 11 CSFs, five CSFs are not important at stage 2 of E-GP project evolution, while all 11 CSFs contribute to E-GP project success at Stage 3 and 4.