Lessons Learned from an e-Government Implementation: The Case of Ethiopia

E-Government implementation failure in low-income countries is reported to be as high as 85% where 35% being classified as total failures, the project never started or was started but immediately abandoned, and 50% are partial failures, major project goals are not attained or there were undesirable outcomes (Heeks, 2003). Given this rate of failure we wanted to investigate a successful project and draw lessons learned that can be replicated in other projects. We use Design-Reality gap model as a theoretical framework to assess the project status. Primary data were collected from four different groups involved in the project. Our analysis shows lower gaps in ‘process’; ‘management systems and structures’ dimensions; and higher gaps in ‘information’, ‘technology’, ‘staffing and skills’, ‘objectives and values’, and ‘other resources’ dimensions. Based on the implementation experiences of this project, list of recommendations are provided for successful execution of possible related initiatives in the future.