Rather than adding new systems on top of outmoded legacy systems, e-government planners should develop systems and record formats that work together and across departments.
Reliable e-government requires a comprehensive overhaul of legacy systems. Putting incompatible record formats online neither simplifies nor reduces the workload imposed on people and government officials, thereby saving no one time or energy in the long run. For example, in Chile, merely putting various incompatible government procurement functions online would not have solved the problems of an inefficient offline system. Instead, the development of online e-procurement had to include eliminating inconsistent procedures and requirements and adopting common formats so that all government agencies could use the same online system.
The Electronic Service Delivery (ESD) Scheme, Hong Kong: Connecting over 20 agencies to provide more than 70 services via a single web site.
When creating this infrastructure, policymakers were aware that there are multiple coding standards for Chinese characters. Therefore, they adopted ISO 10646 as their common Chinese Language Interface for message exchange between the front-end ESD system and the back-end systems.http://www.esd.gov.hk
Case-study: http://www.e-envoy.gov.uk./publications/reports/benchmarking/V2/interop_hkong.htm
CIO Council's Practical Guide to Federal Enterprise Architecture, US.
In the US, the Federal Government's Chief Information Officer Council put together a detailed guide to building and rebuilding government information technology structures to ensure interoperability and help achieve optimal performance of an agency's mission. The guide describes how to map the enterprise life cycle; obtain executive buy-in and support; establish management structures; develop a communications plan; develop a sequencing plan including identifying gaps and migrating systems; and benchmarks for these multiple pieces.
CIO Council's Guide Version 1.0 http://www.gao.gov/bestpractices/bpeaguide.pdf
US Government's E-Government Strategy http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/inforeg/egovstrategy.pdf
