Devolution in a virtual enterprise

Abstract

E-Government as a virtual enterprise, having many vertical portals, works in collaborative network to deliver e-services. The decentralization in e-governance depends on how much a governance structure decentralizes its political, fiscal and administrative powers. E-governance devolution areas may be planning, business process re-engineering, change management, enterprise architecture, networks, portals, back-offices, e-services, etc. Improper devolution in e-governance may affect cost, implementation, manageability, trust, outsourcing and localization. In this paper, we analyze a centralized web portal with its outcomes and derive a framework for devolution in e-governance. We propose an extension in the Soufflé theory of decentralization to calibrate suitable degree of devolution in e-governance. At the end we explain our approach by applying it to a real scenario. © 2008 International Federation for Information Processing.