Analysis of the Electoral Enrolment Centre's ICT Implementations
The Electoral Enrolment Centre's systems and processes represent what is essentially a very straightforward registry system. The electronic databases required to store and access the data are very straightforward. Core ICT system changes have been effected more in order to keep the database software and hardware technology up with current best practice at each investment point rather than necessarily implementing changes merely for the sake of capturing the benefits offered by a new technology. This is typical of computerisation in a mature and stable business model, where once the core system is established, system upgrades become iterative improvements on a well-established model.
System stability has been reinforced by the relative stability of the legislative environment in which the Registry operates. Indeed, what the case study illustrates is that technology has moved the capability of the Registry beyond the provisions of the legislation, and that the rigidity of the legislation is now imposing costs and inefficiencies on the system despite what ICTs can offer. Whereas a private sector Centre can make a strategic decision to refocus systems to capture the benefits offered by decreasing technology costs and increasing capabilities, the legislative constraints limit the ability of EEC management to make process changes. Even though innovations can be identified, management is subject to the need to communicate these potential innovations into policy action, incurring the costs of advocacy and limitations in the speed of political processes in implementing changes. The ultimate losers are taxpayers, who do not enjoy the cost savings as early as they might, and system users who use data that is less accurate than it might otherwise have been.
Nonetheless, in their latest system redevelopment, EEC management has gone beyond the impositions of legislation to design a system that is capable of utilising these features, in anticipation of future changes. And even though the core systems have not changed, management has continually sought to utilise new processes and technologies in the one area where they can apply some strategic investment - at the point of data identification and capture. Thus, innovation has been applied both to the human systems involved in promoting improved registration rates and data integrity (e.g. investment in human capital to market the register and maintain relationships), and electronic systems to support these activities (e.g. website development, electronic data matching).
The consequence, even if not deliberately planned, is the concurrent investment in human capital and development of human systems alongside the electronic ones that Brynjolfsson and Hitt identify yields the greatest potential for productivity improvements. However, the commitment present in the EEC philosophy of the organisational team, and the role of ICTs as supports to the organisational team, rather than the core of the organisation's function, have undoubtedly contributed to the successes of the system identified in the quantified and unquantifiable productivity improvements and system benefits catalogued above.
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