Bangladesh's e-government failures offer as many lessons as do others' successes

Vawn Himmelsbach is a freelance journalist and former TIG editor. You can contact her at vhimmelsbach@itbusiness.ca

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We spend a lot of time at government trade shows praising successful e-government projects. What doesn't seem to get a lot of attention are the flops -- or the partial flops.

Maybe they should. We could learn from these mistakes and avoid making the same ones in the future. Many developing countries -- and developed countries, for that matter -- set overambitious or unrealistic goals when it comes to e-government, which can be costly, time-consuming and demoralizing.

While there is no evidence to suggest that more projects fail in developing countries than developed countries, governments in developing countries face unique challenges that might make it more difficult to get a project off the ground.

Perhaps they don't have a skilled workforce or there is little transparency in government processes. Perhaps money is an issue.