A Study of Information Technology Effectiveness in Select Government Organizations in India

Abstract

Achieving Information Technology (IT) effectiveness in government offices is a daunting prospect. This is because the bureaucratic structure, perceived (and often actual) laxity in the workplace, weak accountability and responsibility relationships, and cumbersome and conflated work processes act as serious inhibitors of IT effectiveness. There are many indirect influencers of IT effectiveness. The broad working propositions for this study have been formulated keeping in mind the working environment of the government organizations and the past studies that have looked at government organizations in the context of IT. In some of the organizations, the methodology of IT use is simple, while in some others, it is tedious and complicated. IT projects are often fraught with cost overruns and delays. Once deployed, many systems fail to meet functional requirements or are too complex to be feasible for many organizations. Hence we should expect to find that government organizations, in general, do not use IT effectively. This study specifically examines the effects of IT use, user satisfaction, organizational culture, top management, and IT management on the effectiveness of IT in government organizations in India. Further, the enablers for IT use are identified that enhances the organization's performance. A questionnaire survey was employed among the users in Indian government organizations situated in Delhi and surrounding areas for the collection of data. The descriptive and inferential statistical analyses result into the following conclusion: User satisfaction is the indicator of system success and the users like a friendly system. The users are influenced more by the information systems (IS) staff in comparison to non-IS staff. Top management involvement is relatively high in IT-related problems resulting in higher budget for IT, which in turn plays a positive role in increasing the satisfaction of users. However, the initiative to motivate IS staff is not enough and the computer training given to the users fails to take care of the latest needs. The users are required to be familiar with the latest technology and therefore be given the latest training for better IT use. The difficulty in effective IT use is also due to some resistance experienced from the employees of the organizations. This is further compounded due to the existence of workers� union problems. Correlation and regression analyses reveal that: the independent variables (viz., IT use, user satisfaction, top management, IT management, sand organizational culture) have significant positive effect on the dependent variable, i.e., IT effectiveness. leadership, managerial awareness of costs and benefits, centrality of IT business strategy, top management support, higher position of IS manager, easy accessibility to computer, enhanced connectivity capability, favourable cost performance trends, vendor push, and competitive pressure were found to be the IT enablers. The future scope of research lies in extending the study to all government organizations of India and also comparing state government organizations with those of the central government.