Abstract
The Objectives of this research is to raise the awareness of the leaders and executives, from both the Business/Management and IT, to the role of ICT in organizational e-transformation, specifically in UAE, to enable them better facilitate their roles and responsibilities.Global Information and Communication Technology (ICT) changes and their Business/Management consequences have their regional reflections, shades, and effects.
During the last few years, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) federal government in general, and Dubai government in particular, initiated and deployed progressive and ambitious steps towards the implementation of E-government. The main objectives being to better serve all government stakeholders, by enabling reductions in cost, time and effort.
Each department/directorate formed its own leading teams, to achieve the E-transformation projects. These teams, supported by International consulting firms, and starting with targeted attainable objectives developed solutions that achieved fast and encouraging results.
These results encouraged additional steps to be taken. The process continued, and many departments/directorates - having their Information Systems (IS) and Information Technology (IT) related solutions in place - believed that their goals had been achieved or almost achieved.
Upon execution of the next phase, which required connecting departments/directorates together (Government to Government: G2G stage), many serious technical problems were raised. Problems arose with respect to information exchange, database structures, file formats, uniformity and integrity of applications, hardware scalability and interoperability, and integration, accompanied with related management and financial problems. This produced IT islands of information that had to be managed and shared more efficiently.
This highlighted the following issues:
1) The absence of an enterprise detailed and integrated plan to:
A) Harmonically harnessing the best of Business and IT strategies, infrastructures, and processes (business-IT alignment)
B) Perfect Integration, Coordination and Cooperation inside and outside the organization, supported and facilitated by new Governance structure (business-IT alignment)
C) The need for Integrated Enterprise Architecture Framework (IEAF): characterized by Wholeness, Intel-connectedness, in addition to Multidimensional solution, maintaining Alignment, Standards, Scalability, Interoperability, and Integration characteristics
2) The absence of "conscious transformation" leadership, to transform leader and employee mindset and behavior, to develop supportive to change culture. This influenced the determination and support for self and organizational transformation.
This required revealing the implementation of E-transformation drivers in the UAE organizational E-transformation, and classifying them into two categories:
Major ICT based drivers: Technology, Business-IT alignment, Enterprise Architecture, Project management.
Minor ICT based drivers: Leadership, Vision and Strategy, Stakeholders, Continuity
This research focuses on the Major ICT based drivers, mainly, the business-IT alignment, and the need for an Integrated Enterprise Architecture Framework.
In order to prove the above, the researcher integrated the utilization of the "case study analysis" methodology, augmented by an "interview/questionnaire"
The research revealed that most of the UAE government organizations are in the second stage - with some traits of the third stage - on the level of five stages (levels of maturity) with respect to the Business/IT alignment. Meanwhile, the IEAF is either not formulated yet, or in its initial stages.
Additionally, the research revealed the following: Critical Success Factors, Identification of deficiencies, Areas for improvement, identified problem areas, and proposes a "Framework milestones for sustained E-Transformation".
Date of Award | Jan 2005 |
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Original language | English |
Keywords
- Information and Commincation Technology
- ICT
- Organizational change
- E-Transformation
- United Arab Emirates (UAE)