Public Sector Governance and Administrative Power in Ireland:

Comparative Case Studies of Government-run ICT Projects

Roberta Stapleton
School of Computer Science and Statistics
Trinity College,
Dublin
stapler@tcd.ie

Keywords
Administrative power, e-government, governance, ICT, power, projects, public sector, turf wars,
sources of power, success

1. Introduction

This research will examine the relationship between administrative power, IT project
governance and difficulties with major public sector information and communications technology
(ICT) projects. It is anticipated that, resulting from this research, a framework for improving the
success rate and reducing the risk in public sector ICT projects will be developed.

By and large Irish government ICT projects have been successful, but there has been a number
of cases where major projects have seriously overrun on both time and budget. Some of these
projects have had to be terminated resulting in a large waste of taxpayers’ monies. The desired
outcomes for any government ICT project may include improved efficiency, reduced
administration time, lower process costs, improved communication or dissemination of
information, increased productivity and better quality customer service. But they may also
include compliance with legislation, responding to political pressure from stakeholder groups,
delivering certain public values (such as fairness or equality of access) and so on. This can
mean that the criteria that determine whether a project has been successful are often many and
sometimes conflicting.

Reasons cited for the failure of public sector ICT projects are numerous. They include poor
project management skills, the scale of public sector projects, the nature of the procurement
process, vulnerability to policy swings and ‘mission creep’ as well as the presence of a large
number of stakeholders. The latter can lead to power struggles and territorial game playing. This
research will focus on this latter phenomenon, i.e. administrative power as a constituent factor in
the difficulties and/or failure of government-run ICT projects. To date there has been little study
conducted into the reasons for these failures. This is in part because it can be difficult to
research as people don’t want to talk about failures. It is hoped that this research will go some
way towards closing this gap in our knowledge.

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This paper provides a brief background to the research question and then the tentative research
question is presented.

2. Background
 

While Ireland has, in comparison with some countries, a reasonably good track record with
public ICT investment there is a number of examples of government-run ICT projects in Ireland
that have either failed to deliver the expected return on investment, been abandoned, were
completed late or over budget. This research will focus on four such projects – PULSE, PPARS,
REACH and Mobhaile.

PULSE
PULSE (Police Using Leading Systems Effectively) is a computer system used by the Irish
police force (An Garda Síochána). The system was introduced in November 1999. The contract
for the system was awarded to Andersen Consulting (now Accenture) and is managed by a
directorate of three senior police officers (Gardaí) and an Accenture consultant. The system is
run by the PULSE Project teams of the IT section of An Garda Síochána. The original estimated
cost of Pulse in 1993 was in the region of €46.4 million, but by the time it was actually put in
place, it had risen to €61.3 million. Between 2001 and 2006, Garda authorities have spent an
average of €12.88 million each year on improving and maintaining this system which is currently
available in only 319 of 703 Garda stations.

PPARS
PPARS (Personnel Payroll and Related Systems) was a project that set out to develop
information support systems to underpin the Human Resource management needs of the Irish
Health sector. This system has the distinction of being the most expensive failure to date in Irish
public sector ICT. In December 2005, a report published by the Irish Comptroller and Auditor
General, Mr John Purcell, found that the total cost incurred on the project as of August 31 2005
was around €131 million.

Tracing the history of the PPARS system, which was first mooted in 1995, the report says a
fixed price contract for implementation services was awarded to the firm Bull Information
Systems Ltd in 1998 at a budgeted cost of just over €9 million. The system was abandoned in
2005 without fulfilling the requirements. Some estimates have put the final cost of this project in
excess of €180 million.

REACH
Reach was established by the Government to develop a strategy for the integration of public
services and to develop and implement the framework for electronic government. Reach was
mandated to procure and build the Public Service Broker, which was to have been an integrated
set of processes, systems and procedures designed to provide a standard means of access to
public services. In 2007 Reach also became the subject of an investigation by the Irish
Comptroller and Auditor General which found a variety of problems with the project. After a

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series of further setbacks and delays the project was finally abandoned by the government in
December 2009 and the €37 million invested to date was largely written off although a few
components of the system were salvaged, notably a system for Pay As You Earn taxpayers.

Mobhaile
Mobhaile is the Irish Translation for "my town" or "my community". The Mobhaile project
(www.mobhaile.ie) was launched in 2004 for local authorities to use as a portal for citizens to
access a wide range of local information. By the time Mobhaile was fully live, just seven
counties were actively using it. The Government spent more than €4 million developing the
citizen and community information website that was shut down in December 2009.

The site was intended to give citizens and businesses a single view of information relevant to
their locality based on three criteria: function, location and time. Many local authorities already
had this information – Mobhaile’s role was to make it easily accessible to the public on the
internet or by text message. It was also intended to act as a tool for the community and
voluntary sector to deliver information to citizens.

3. Research Objectives and Question

 

The research objectives are first to understand the lessons to be learned from these projects
and in particular the role of power and politics in the delays, overruns and failures; secondly, to
identify all stakeholders and develop an understanding of each stakeholder group; thirdly to use
these insights to develop a framework for government-run ICT projects. The primary focus of
the research will be on administrative power and the role that this plays in government-run ICT
projects and in particular in causing problems for project management and delivery. Apart from
the waste of public funds involved, delays and failures in the delivery of government ICT
projects cause inconvenience to citizens when their interactions with Government are negatively
affected. Such problems are important to politicians, public servants, public service bodies,
software vendors, users and most of all to the taxpaying citizen. Such an understanding will
help in planning and managing public sector ICT projects more effectively and reduce the risk of
delays or failures. The research questions are therefore as follows:

Main Question
To what extent are power in general, administrative power in particular and territorial games
factors in the success or failure of government-run ICT projects?

Sub-Questions
• In what ways are current ICT development models inappropriate and/or inadequate for
government projects?
• How can the negative impacts of administrative power battles and territorial games be
reduced or eliminated in government ICT?

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• What factors need to be considered/added-in/omitted in the design of an ICT development
model to be applied to government projects?

4. Literature Review
 

In this section, two literatures are reviewed. Firstly there is a brief review of the e-government
literature followed by a more detailed discussion of the power literature. There is a large
literature on e-government, but only limited research to date on the causes of public sector ICT
project failures. ICT failure is difficult to study for a number of fairly obvious reasons, not least
that people often want to put failure behind them and there is a tendency for post event
rationalisation. There is an extensive body of research on power generally, but relatively little
research conducted on the effect administrative power has on the outcome of projects. The
literature review will cover the areas of governance, project management and power.

4.1 Defining e-Government

The purpose of this section is to outline the various (and sometimes conflicting) definitions of e-
Government, as well as the benefits attributed to its use, and the potential risks for its failure to
achieve predetermined goals, particularly as a result of administrative power conflicts. There
has been a considerable volume of work written on e-Government, describing its origins,
adoption models, limitations, failures, and project management strategies; a number of differing
views on what e-government is have been expressed over the past two decades. There is for
example a division of opinion on the origins of e-Government, between the 1960s and the use of
computers by Government, and the early 1990s and the use of the internet. e-Government has
been around since the early 1990s according to some and at least the 1960s according to
others. For reasons of space, this section sketches out some of the key ideas of this topic
without getting into great depth. However the terminology is important.

There are many definitions of e-government. To make things even more confusing, the term e-
Government has a number of competitors. Amongst these are digital government, online
government, connected government, transformational government and sometimes (incorrectly)
as e-governance. Silcock (2001), for example, defines e-Government as the use of technology
to enhance the access to and delivery of government services to benefit citizens, business
partners and employees. She states that it has the power to create a new mode of public
service where all public organisations deliver a modernised, integrated and seamless service for
their citizens. A number of other definitions are discussed below.

The OECD in its 2003 report ‘The e-Government Imperative’ reported that there were, even at
that time, many definitions of e-Government, and the term itself is not universally used. They
found that the differences are not just semantic and may reflect priorities in government
strategies. They found that the definitions fall into three groups:

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• E-Government is defines as Internet (online) service delivery and other Internet-based
activity such as e-consultation.
• E-Government is equated to the use of ICTs in government. While the focus is generally on
the delivery of services and processing, the broadest definition encompasses all aspects of
government activity.
• E-Government is defined as a capacity to transform public administration through the use of
ICTs or indeed is used to describe a new form of government built around ICTs. This aspect
is usually linked to Internet use.

In the context of the OECD e-Government Project, the term ‘e-Government’ is defined as:
The use of information and communication technologies, and particularly the Internet, as a tool
to achieve better government.

Definitions and terms adopted by individual countries have shifted as priorities change and as
progress is made towards particular objectives. Whatever definition is used, there is general
agreement that its purpose is to aid in the creation of a transparent, efficient and inexpensive
interaction between government and citizens, government and business enterprises and the
relationship between governments (inter-agency relationship).

4.2 e-Government Research

A number of scholars have analysed the literature in an attempt to find patterns within the
research literature which would help define e-government as a research field (Gronlünd 2005,
2007; Andersen and Henriksen, 2006, Bannister and Connolly 2010). In one of these studies,
Heeks and Bailur, (2007), used a content analysis of 84 papers in e-government-specific
research outlets (two journals and one conference series) to better understand the topic of e-
Government. In their conclusions they list the positive and negative practices they have
identified:

Taking what they refer to as a normative perspective, they see some positive features – “good
practice”– within current e-government research:

• Significant recognition of human and other contextual factors that influence or mediate the
impacts of e-government.
• Use of a diverse range of ideas from other research domains, including information systems,
public administration, and political science.
• Reference to other e-government literature in almost all research work.
• Presence of a range of different research methods and broad use of primary data.

On the other hand, there is what they characterize as “narrow practice”:

• A strong theme of over-optimism, even hyperbole, and a consequent lack of balance in

considering the impact of e-government.

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• Dominance of positivist research approaches, alongside absence of statements on research
philosophy.
• Dominance of a-theoretical approaches that, simultaneously, often fail to provide any
significant practical recommendations.
• Little use of frameworks of knowledge from governance, and little use from within e-
government in order to encourage an accumulation of knowledge.
• Dominance of research methods that require no face-to-face engagement with the realities
of e-government, no statistical analysis, and no longitudinal engagement with e-government
projects.

Further, they believe there are too many instances of what they characterize as “poor practice”:

• Little recognition of underlying perspectives, with weak, confused or even contradictory

positions about e-government or about the underlying philosophy being espoused.
• Lack of clarity about underlying assumptions, about methodologies, and about how data
were gathered for the reported research.
• Lack of rigor in the collection and analysis of data, and in generalization from that data.
• Unsuitable promotion of a writer's own products or services.

Heeks and Bailur, 2007, also advise those working in the e-Government research domain to:

• Provide clear statements on research methodology and method, and on personal interests
in any research artifacts.
• Use research methods in a manner that strengthens the qualities (such as validity, reliability
and generalizability) of the research.
• Avoid inconsistent or weak use of perspectives and approaches, and invalid generalization
of findings.

4.3 Models of e-Government

The primary delivery models of e-Government are often divided into:

• Government-to-Citizen or Government-to-Consumer (G2C)

• Government-to-Business (G2B)
• Government-to-Government (G2G)
• Government-to-Employees (G2E)

Several studies suggest that within each of these interaction domains, four main types of activity
take place:

• pushing information over the Internet, e.g: regulatory services, general holidays, public
hearing schedules, issue briefs, notifications, etc.

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• two-way communications between the agency and the citizen, a business, or another
government agency. In this model, users can engage in dialogue with agencies and post
problems, comments, or requests to the agency.
• conducting transactions, e.g.: lodging tax returns, applying for services and grants.
• governance, e.g.: online polling, voting, and campaigning.

It is also worth noting that while e-government is often thought of as "online government" or
"Internet-based government," many non-Internet "electronic government" technologies can be
used in this context. Some non-Internet forms include telephone, fax, PDA, SMS text
messaging, MMS, wireless networks and services, Bluetooth, CCTV, tracking systems, RFID,
biometric identification, road traffic management and regulatory enforcement, identity cards,
smart cards and other Near Field Communication applications; TV and radio-based delivery of
government services, email, online community facilities, newsgroups and electronic mailing lists,
online chat, and instant messaging technologies.

4.4 Potential Benefits and Risks of e-Government

e-Government is almost universally considered to be beneficial. Some of the widely discussed

benefits are listed below. However there are some potential downside to e-government and
these are often overlooked.

Benefits:

E-government helps simplify processes and makes access to government information more
easily accessible for public sector agencies and citizens. The anticipated benefits of e-
government include efficiency, improved services, better accessibility of public services, and
more transparency and accountability, democratization, environmental bonuses, speed,
efficiency, and convenience, public approval.

The OECD in its 2003 report ‘The e-Government Imperative’ identified a number of reasons to
embrace e-Government as a means of reforming public management and contributing to
broader policy objectives:

• e-Government helps improve efficiency in government. Improving internal operating systems

– financial systems, purchasing and payment arrangements, internal communications and
sharing of information – and programme processing and delivery arrangements can
generate operating efficiencies and improve performance.
• Enhanced quality of service has been a major component of public administration reform
and the use of ICTs to generate improvements in services has been a primary driver for e-
Government activity.
• ICTs can support more effective outcomes in key policy areas such as health, welfare
services, security and education. Ultimately, governments and public administrations exist to
deliver policy outcomes, and ICTs are a major enabler across all major policy areas.

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• Better governance arrangements in themselves will promote economic policy objectives.
More specific effects may range from impacts on ICT production, e-commerce diffusion and
business productivity to indirect effects such as reduced fiscal requirements owing ot more
effective programmes and efficiencies flowing through to the broader economy.
• e-Government can help forward a reform agenda. When aligned with modernisation goals,
implementing e-Government can help administrations focus on the additional changes
needed to meet service delivery and good governance concerns.
• e-Government, by improving information flows and encouraging active participation by
citizens, is increasingly seen as a valuable tool for building trust between governments and
citizens.

Risks:
There are many considerations and potential implications of implementing and designing e-
government, including disintermediation of the government and its citizens, impacts on
economic, social, and political factors, vulnerability to cyber attacks, and disturbances to the
status quo in these areas, hyper-surveillance, cost, inaccessibility, false sense of transparency
and accountability.

It is hoped that the design of a model to limit the occurrence of turf wars during e-Government
projects will reduce the risk and extent of possible failures attributed to this factor. In order to
achieve this goal it is necessary to examine the topic of power.

5. Power

5.1 The complexity of Power

This section provides definitions of power, and presents a brief discussion on the sources of
power, with the focus on political power and administrative power.

The nature of power and the determinants for who can exert it is a subject matter relevant to a
cross section of fields. The variety of contexts in which power plays a role and the number of
disciplines in which it is defined and discussed make it a challenging topic to synthesise in a
short section. The role of power is a topical and relevant subject matter, for government,
industry and academia as well as e-government projects. The literature on this subject matter is
extensive and eclectic, authors have progressively added to the volume of knowledge,
analysing previous work to modify and add theories as the nature of organisations, networks,
States and personal power has evolved. This has ensured that theories remain relevant.

A useful definition of power (though far from the only one) is that it is a measure of an entity's
(e.g. person, organisation, country) ability to control the environment around itself, including the
behaviour of other entities. The terms authority and influence are often used for power. Often,
the study of power in a society is simply referred to as politics.

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As already noted, power has been defined in many ways. To take an arbitrary starting point,
Mechanic (1962) wrote that power was "any force that results in behavior which would not have
occurred if the force had not been present" (1962:351). This definition has its limitations. There
may be instances when a behaviour which is attributed to occurring due to a force being present
may have occurred due to another factor. As a result this definition has been further developed
by several scholars. Mechanic also notes that most categorizations of sources of power
distinguish between personal and structural sources. Personal sources of power can be
obtained from individual attributes such as experience, seniority, education, and professional
activity particularly for lower-level organization members lacking formal authority who obtain
power by making themselves difficult to replace. Structural sources, in turn, can be divided into
those derived from formal and informal structures.

All organizations function on, inter alia, the basis of the interdependent activities of various
departments. As such they have a formal power structure that is usually denoted in the
organizational chart. Hierarchies in these structures denote formal power or authorization given
to individuals as determined by their particular job designation. The higher up one is in the
structure, the more formal power one has. However in most organisations there is a parallel
organizational “chart” where the power structure may not necessarily be similar to the formal
one. This is the informal power structure, which may at times exercise considerably more
influence than the formal one. Hierarchical, or legitimate, power (French & Raven, 1959) is
based on formal authority, which corresponds, although not perfectly, to power, responsibility,
and discretion over a range of resources (Tushman & Romanelli, 1983).

Alternative forms of power depend on a variety of factors including personality, personal

relationships, extra organisational relationships (e.g. membership of the same golf club) and
control of certain resources which may be inside or outside the organisation. Galbraith (1983)
summarises the types of power as being "Condign" (based on force), "Compensatory" (through
the use of various resources) or "Conditioned" (the result of persuasion), and their sources as
"Personality" (individuals), "Property" (their material resources) and "Organisational" (whoever
sits at the top of an organisational power structure). .

5.2 Sources of Power

The source of power through a number of means, some of which are listed below. This list is
not exhaustive:

• Delegated authority (for example in the democratic process)

• Social class (material wealth can equal power)
• Personal or group charisma
• Ascribed power (acting on perceived or assumed abilities)
• Expertise (ability, skills)
• Persuasion (direct, indirect, or subliminal)
• Knowledge (granted or withheld, shared or kept secret)
• Celebrity

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• Force (violence, military might, coercion)
• Moral persuasion (including religion)
• Operation of group dynamics (such as public relations)
• Social influence of tradition
• In relationships (domination/submissiveness)

Power also derives from the horizontal division of labour; individuals may acquire power by
virtue of their membership in subunits that are instrumental either in providing resources that the
total organization values highly (Fombrun, 1983; Hinings, Hickson, Pennings, & Schnenk, 1974;
Pfeffer, 1981; Pfeffer & Salancik, 1978; Salancik & Pfeffer, 1977) or in coping with uncertainty
(Hinings et al., 1974). By contrast Ibarra (1993) quotes Astley and Sachdeva (1984) and divides
structural sources of power, into three categories: formal authority, subunit membership, and
network centrality.

5.3 Political Power

Political power is sometimes discussed in terms of politics with a large ‘P’ by which is meant
national or local politics in the public sense, and politics with a small ‘p’ by which is meant the
inter- and intra- politics of organisations (and by implication individual actors). The latter is the
area of interest in this research. An important contribution to this field is Grady (1989). In his
paper, Grady argues that absent from the current research on state economic development
policy is any systematic research on the agencies responsible for administering and
implementing the states’ development agenda. Grady suggests that this omission is not trivial
for it neglects an entire body of literature that places the administrative unit at the centre of the
policy process. A central tenet of this literature is that not all public agencies are equally
powerful; rather, agencies vary in their ability to influence public policy and this variation is tied
to particular features of the agency and its environment. This idea will be important in this
research which is very much concerned with the relative power of agencies and groups within
public administration.

The purpose of Grady’s research is to contribute to the debate about the effectiveness of state
development policy-making by drawing upon recent work of administrative power theorists in
comparing and contrasting the relative power of state development agencies (SDAs). The state
development agencies are responsible for allocating public resources (grants, loans, tax and
interest rate abatements, land and information) directly to individual firms and corporations and
indirectly through local development agencies in order to foster economic development. To the
extent that the policy performance is a function of the ability of the administrative agencies to
carry out policy objectives, conceptualising and measuring the variable nature of SDA power
will, Grady believes, add to the research on the efficacy of state development policy-making.

Grady’s analysis is divided into four parts. First, the organisational power literature is reviewed
and the research design is presented. Grady reviews the research of Rourke (1976), Meier
(1980, 1987) and Brudney and Herbert (1987). He asserts that their papers are central to the
understanding of variable agency power and influence within the public policy process. Relative

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power indicators are then operationalised and measured to compare SDAs. These measures
are then assessed against variable characteristics of the states to determine their utility as
comparative state policy indicators.

Data for his analysis was derived from both primary and secondary sources. Grady designed a
survey which he then sent to fifty state development agencies. As a reliability check the survey
responses were validated using interviews with state development officials in seven of the fifty
states. Finally, a suggestion is made on how these measures might be used to assess the
effectiveness of state economic development policy-making. Grady concludes that the evidence
collected during his study suggests that state political leaders have some independent influence
over their economic futures. He further concludes that a state lagging in economic performance
could address the problem by increasing its spending and programs in the economic
development policy area and consolidating its efforts into one administrative unit responsible for
policy area. While his conclusions are intuitive they are grounded in theory and backed up by
analysis of data collected during his study. Nothing in his conclusions is counter intuitive.

Rose and Miller (1992) set out another approach to the analysis of political power in terms of
‘problematics’ of government. They argue against an emphasis of the 'problem of the State' in
political debate and social theory. In their paper a number of conceptual tools are suggested for
the analysis of the many and varied alliances between political and other authorities that seek to
govern economic activity, social life and individual conduct. They conclude that modern political
rationalities and governmental technologies are shown to be intrinsically linked to developments
in knowledge and to the powers of ‘expertise’. In their paper the characteristics of what they
describe as liberal problematics of government are investigated, and it is argued that they are
dependent upon technologies for 'governing at a distance', seeking to create locales, entities
and persons able to operate a regulated autonomy. They argue that political power is exercised
through a profusion of shifting alliances between diverse authorities in projects to govern a
multitude of facets of economic activity, social life and individual conduct.

Kaufman (1969) also addresses the issue of political power and expands on a paper he wrote in
1956 in which he explored the origins of public administration. In his 1956 paper Kaufman
examined administrative institutions and the evolution of governmental structures which
developed through a process of experimentation. This experimentation resulted in a number of
different forms of governmental structures which academics disagreed upon how best to
categorise. In an attempt to produce a clear review of these forms Kaufman reviewed the history
of public administration.

Kaufman surmises that public administrations have been developed to fulfil three values or
“quests”: representation, neutral competence and executive leadership. Representation denotes
universal adult suffrage. Neutral competence was defined as the ability to do the work of
government expertly and to do it according to explicit, objective standards rather than to
personal or party or other obligations or loyalties. Executive leadership is the ability to govern
and make decisions to balance competing claims against each other for the available resources.
In his paper of 1969 Kaufman declares that over time government institutions have shifted the

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emphasis between these three values. Government institutions are made up of a number of
elements (civil servants, public servants, committees, public bodies, etc) each focusing on
different areas of public interest. As a result, each develops a priority for one of the three values
above that most benefits their remit. Each element of government institution then uses its centre
of power to optimise allocation of resources to its public function, such as healthcare, education,
welfare, etc. This results in a struggle for power which requires management and co-ordination
at a central level. Kaufman argues that this will result in ‘decentralisation’. In order to focus on
state affairs, government institutions delegate local decision making and resource allocation to
local authorities. This reduces the level of power of central government and increases power
available to local authorities. A similar strategy is adopted by large organisations which appoint
department heads to take responsibility for separate areas, allowing higher managers to focus
on the overall strategy for the organisation. While Kaufman’s arguments are well made, and
referenced, he draws only on America and as such it is not obvious that his theory can be
applied in other jurisdictions.

Whitt (1979) presents another view and outlines the characteristics of three competing models
of political power: pluralist, elitist, and class-dialectic.

• The Elitist Model: According to the elitist model, political power is held to be concentrated in
the hands of elites who occupy the top positions in large and increasingly centralized
institutional hierarchies.
• The Pluralist Model: The pluralist model starts with interest groups as the basic features of
organized political life. The power of private groups is based mainly on the effective political
organization of voluntary associations, but also is a function of such individual qualities as
the political strategies and leadership abilities of party and group leaders. A key concept is
competition.
• The Class-Dialectic Model: The class-dialectic model holds that political processes must be
understood in terms of the institutional structure of society and in terms of the relation of
social classes to each other. The manner in which the basic institutions of society (especially
the economy) are organized has crucial implications for not only the general character of
society but also for how classes relate to each other and how political and social power is
exercised. (1979:83)

Whitt argues that the latter model has been neglected by mainstream sociology, particularly at
the empirical level of the community. Using systematic case studies of five related political
decisions, his study assesses the relative explanatory power of the three models. The analysis
demonstrates that the class-dialectic model is highly useful and that it deserves to be treated as
a serious guide to studies of political power.

The elitist and class-dialectic models use much larger units of analysis than does the pluralist
model. These two models also hold that power is much more concentrated than does the
pluralist model. The pluralist model says that power relations are quite unstable while the elitist
model presents a stable picture of power relations. The class-dialectic model conceives of
power as much more stable than does the pluralist model, but somewhat less stable than does

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the elitist model. Differences concerning the role of the state are clearest between the pluralist
and elitist models: the pluralist state has autonomy, the elitist state does not. It is not possible to
classify the class-dialectic position on the issue of state autonomy in a simple way, although it is
held that the state serves the interests of the dominant class. Whitt suggests an integration of
the various levels of analysis of political power arguing that the class-dialectic model can
provide that integration.

Organisations and public institutions can benefit by understanding the nature of power and how
it can be exerted to maximise efficiencies. Long (1949) states that: “the lifeblood of
administration is power”. He argues that the theory of administration has neglected the problem
of the sources and adequacy of power. In his 1949 paper Long states that the difficulty of
coordinating government agencies lies not only in the fact that bureaucratic organizations are
institutions having survival interests which may conflict with their rational adaptation to over-all
purpose, but even more in their having roots in society. He argues that the integration of the
administrative structure through an over-all purpose in terms of which tasks and priorities can be
established is an emergency phenomenon as its realization, only partial at best, has been
limited to war and the extremity of economic depression. Long (1949) concludes that the
exploration of the needs and necessities of the present system of government should be a high
priority task of responsible scholarship. Long (1949) produced logical arguments, in a cohesive
format. However Long does not provide empirical evidence like a lot of early theoretical papers.

5.4 Summary

In summary, as even this brief and as yet incomplete survey shows, there are many
conceptualisations of power in general and administrative/political (with a small p) power in
particular. Further work remains to be done on developing a working model of power for this
research.

6. Research Design and Methodology

 

The proposed approach is qualitative and case based as suits the question. The research will
be conducted by way of a small number of case studies in the Irish public sector. Provisionally
it is intended to concentrate on the PULSE, PPARS, REACH and Mobhaile projects. The
research will include semi-structured interviews with civil servants, software vendors and end
users as well as studying documentary evidence and artefacts.

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7. Conclusion: Expected Contribution
 

This research will improve public sector management practice by providing a framework for
Government ICT projects, to ensure resources are effectively utilised and risks are minimised.
The research findings will help governments better manage large ICT projects and reduce the
risks of overruns and failures arising from power and administrative conflicts.

Power, its sources, the evolution of organisations and politics in the context of power struggles,
have provided researchers with considerable material over the last six decades. However there
has been little written on the area of administrative power or ‘turf wars’. It is hoped this research
will demonstrate that this can be identified as a factor in some e-Government project failures,
and as a result provide a model or theory to aid in future public sector project management.

  14
References

Power

John Allen, 2004, The Whereabouts of Power: Politics, Government and Space, Geografiska
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W. Graham Astley and Edward J. Zajac, 1991, Intraorganizational Power and Organizational
Design: Reconciling Rational and Coalitional Models of Organization, Organization Science,
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Research and the Management Sciences

Frank Blackler and Seonaidh McDonald, Power, Mastery and Organisational Learning, Journal
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Richard M. Emerson, 1962, Power-Dependence Relations, American Sociological Review, Vol.

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Neil Fligstein, 1987, The Intraorganizational Power Struggle: Rise of Finance Personnel to Top
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Eliot Freidson, 1984, The Changing Nature of Professional Control, Annual Review of
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Dennis O. Grady, 1989, Economic Development and Administrative Power Theory: A

Comparative Analysis of State Development Agencies, Policy Studies Review, Winter 1989,
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Tim Hallett, 2003, Symbolic Power and Organizational Culture, Sociological Theory, Vol. 21, No.
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D. J. Hickson, C. R. Hinings, C. A. Lee, R. E. Schneck and J. M. Pennings, 1971, A Strategic
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Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of The London School of Economics and Political
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(Aug., 1938), pp. 499-509 Published by: American Sociological Association

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e-Government

Atkinson, Robert D.; Castro, Daniel (2008) Digital Quality of Life. The Information Technology
and Innovation Foundation. pp. 137–145

Mary Maureen Brown. "Electronic Government" Jack Rabin (ed.). Encyclopedia of Public
Administration and Public Policy, Marcel Dekker, 2003. pp.427-432.

Deloitte Research – Public Sector Institute At the Dawn of e-Government: The Citizen as
Customer, 2000

Kaylor, C., Deshazo, R. and Van Eck, D. Gauging e-government: A report on implementing
services among American cities. Government Information Quarterly, 18 (2001), 293–307.

Gartner Group, “Key Issues in E-Government Strategy and Management,” Research Notes, Key
Issues, 23 May 2000

Koh, C.E., Prybutok, V.R. "The three-ring model and development of an instrument for
measuring dimensions of e-government functions", Journal of Computer Information Systems,
Vol. 33 No.3, pp.34-9, 2003

OECD. The e-government imperative: main findings, Policy Brief, Public Affairs Division, Public
Affairs and Communications Directorate, OECD, 2003

Shailendra C. Jain Palvia and Sushil S. Sharma (2007). "E-Government and E-Governance:
Definitions/Domain Framework and Status around the World". ICEG.

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