PPP4e-Gov

Abstract

Although Public Private Partnerships (PPP) and e-Government have proven fruitful mechanisms for economic development, emerging economies seem to have difficulties during the preliminary assessment of a given e-Government portfolio, specifically regarding the decision of which project is suitable for a PPP arrangement. In order to tackle this problem, the present work pursued a comprehensive literature review to understand the concept of PPP as well as the decision making process criteria. In order to ensure that such criterion could match the conditions faced by developing countries, a qualitative meta-synthesis approach was followed and critical factors for PPP decision-making were filtered and selected. Using the input of the developing countries criterion, our research suggests a framework, named PPP4e-Gov (PPP4e-Gov: Public Private Partnerships for e-Government). The decision-making tool is a response to the need of a structured strategy to decide which e-Government project may be processed through a PPP model or through a traditional contracting mechanism. The framework, compares risk and value factors of e-Government PPP projects in developing countries and adopts a weighing scoring model to support practitioners estimate their project’s standpoint in terms of what kind of risks are to be considered and how much value a given e-Government initiative will generate if the PPP option is chosen. The final section analyzed 10 projects in Costa Rica using PPP4e-Gov and successfully showcased how the framework may be used by other developing countries when assessing e-Government portfolios.