“e-Sri Lanka a trailblazer in e-development,” says WB’s first Senior Advisor on e-strategies

Sri Lanka achieved significant growth in the ICT sector during the last 10 years. Internet, email, mobile phones, e-services and automation are the norms in day-to-day life in today’s society. But 10 years ago, those were daydreams for an ordinary citizen. However, thanks to one visionary leader on development, Sri Lanka’s flagship e-Development Program was accommodated under the fullest financial support from the World Bank.

“Envisioning e-Sri Lanka was a challengeable assignment but a joyful and memorable one too,” main architect of the World Bank-funded ICT initiative ‘e-Sri Lanka’ Dr. Nagy K. Hanna says in an exclusive interview with the Daily FT.

Dr. Nagy, who was in Sri Lanka recently, embarked upon an unenviable task. “e-Sri Lanka achieved all the goals set by the Project Appraisal Document. But still we do need to continue the process for the next 10 years. It is only then that the maximum benefits can be gotten by Sri Lankan society, no matter what,” the experienced consultant emphasised.

Dr. Nagy, a leader and visionary on people-oriented development in various parts of the world, reminisced on his experience with e-Sri Lanka. “e-Sri Lanka was the first project of its kind. This was really a new concept for even the World Bank. I am glad all the stakeholders in e-Sri Lanka worked ambitiously towards its achievements,” he added.

In a six-chapter book by world specialists, ‘Seeking Transformation Through Information Technology,’ two chapters stand out as being of direct relevance to Sri Lanka. These two chapters are solely authored by Nagy K. Hanna, the World Bank’s first Senior Advisor on e-strategies. Chapter one is entitled ‘e-transformation as an Integrated Strategy’ and the other, chapter five, has the title ‘e-Sri Lanka as a Deliberate and Emergent Strategy Process.”

The second of these consists of a case study on Sri Lanka’s e-Sri Lanka initiative. This case study gives an overview of the experience of e-Sri Lanka. e-Sri Lanka has been subjected to several reviews by the World Bank and others, indicating overall satisfactory outcomes. In this interview Hanna addresses some of the salient points discussed under the two chapter titles of the book. At the outset, international development strategist Hanna focuses on what e-transformation is and lays emphasis on the importance of holistic approaches at national and regional levels.

Q: What is e-transformation?

A: e-transformation stands for e-development, ICT-enabled development, information society, and knowledge economy, collectively. It signifies deep changes in the economy and society brought about by the effective deployment and diffusion of ICT. These changes typically lead to increased production and use of information and communication; reduced cost and increased phase of transactions and interaction throughout the economy; empowerment of individuals, communities, and enterprises with connectivity and knowledge; and increasing the share of information-based production and services in the economy.

e-transformation is a process of fundamental structural change, a shift to a new techno-economic paradigm. As a general purpose technology, ICT is a transformative tool for all kinds of economic activities; financial services, manufacturing, transportation and logistics, education and health care, media and entertainment, public services, science and innovation, and more. Within organisations, e-transformation goes beyond automation of existing processes to encompass fundamental redesign and innovation of processes and practices and of organisations that carry them out.

Q: Why should a country have a national e-transformation strategy?

A: Most ICT for development literature has been also focused on single innovation, single application, single institution, single enterprise, or a micro-level intervention. The business and development literature tends to portray ICT as an endless stream of technological innovations or the ‘next best thing’ for consumers, businesses, or governments. At the national level, case studies are primarily focused on one element of e-transformation: telecommunications, IT industry, e-government, etc. Much of current development policy and practice treats elements of e-transformation in isolation yet.

Yet most of the documented failures of ICT applications in e-government, e-business, e-education, or rural development are traced to fragmented approaches that miss key enablers, operated within separate bureaucratic domains and ignored synergies for sustained transformation and ecosystems for sustained innovation.

Q: Why are case studies of e-transformation important?

A: In-depth country experiences are indispensable in learning new practices, capturing tacit knowledge and building frameworks and theories. Case studies of country experiences convey a more realistic picture of the messy, creative and emergent processes involved – providing researchers with a rich source for theory building and hypothesis testing and providing practitioners with examples that capture best or promising practices. Case studies can thus help engage scholars and thoughtful practitioners and enhance their dialogue on strategies for building the knowledge society. They also show the role of frameworks and conceptual models in guiding strategy design and implementation and the need for further elaboration or improvement on such models.

Q: The study starts with analysing the deliberate e-development strategy taken and the factors that shaped that design. It points out that this deliberate e-development strategy was not perfectly designed upfront, or guaranteed successful implementation. Why was this deliberate e-development strategy not perfectly designed upfront?

A: The design phase had to take account of political conditions, unknowns and uncertainties. The outcomes were expected to depend on many contextual factors that were beyond the control of the designers. Most critically, the outcomes were expected to depend on untested local capacity to adapt and learn during implementation so as to enable emergent strategies to reshape the original and deliberate strategy.

Q: Given the phenomenon that outcomes were expected to depend on untested local capacity to adapt and learn during implementation so as to enable emergent strategies to reshape the original and deliberate strategy , what steps did the strategy formulation take to best ensure that emergent strategies were enabled to reshape the original and deliberate strategy?

A: It was exactly to provide this assurance that strategy formulation assigned much attention to institution building and local capacity to learn, adapt, and innovate.

Q: How important is e-Sri Lanka as a case study?

A: Several challenges that e-Sri Lanka faced gave it broad relevance as a case study of e-development in action. The program was developed despite difficult initial conditions and political uncertainties. The Sri Lankan case study has shown that a coherent ICT-enabled strategy could be forged for Sri Lanka, and that a national consensus could be reached on that strategy. The case study raises hope that similar achievements are possible even in the most difficult environments.

Q: What role does ‘e-Sri Lanka’ play as a trailblazer in e-development in the world?

A: e-Sri Lanka is an integrated program and the first of its kind to be funded by the World Bank. The e-Sri Lanka model and experience have impacted on other World Bank assisted programs including e-Bharat (in India), e-Ghana, e-Pakistan, e-Rwanda and e-Brasil.