If You Build It Will They Come?

I had the opportunity to spend a few days in Pristina at the end of June to assess the viability of a planned legislative document management system for the Kosovo Assembly. NDI plans to help, but we needed to be sure the project was on a successful track and see how we could best assist.

Why the cautious approach?

In 2004, five years after the conflict ended in Kosovo, one of the big international organizations correctly identified the need to modernize the legislature. Funds were allocated and plans were drawn up for a DMS (document management system), a bill tracking and legislative document tracking system - a necessity for modern legislatures. However, in spite of best intentions and significant financial investment, the system was deployed but never adopted by the Assembly and now lies dormant as the staff continue to manage legislative business manually - paper, copy machines, re-keying documents, etc.

In 2004, they built it and nobody came.

According to Assembly officials, since late last year the Assembly has generated over 1 million pages of documents at a cost of over 35,000 Euros for paper alone - not to mention the staff costs of doing extra work, a valuable resource in an institution with very limited budgets.

So seven years later, Kosovo is in the ring for round two: the Assembly plans to deploy a new “e-parliament” system with assistance from NDI (through our USAID-funded  Kosovo Assembly Strengthening Program) and support from the OSCE and the GIZ. However, while this time around the project is much better positioned to succeed, like all tech and development projects - challenges lie ahead. And like many big tech projects, the challenges are not necessarily technical.

What were the lessons from the 2004 DMS experience, and how can another project fail be avoided? That was the question posed to me for my visit. I didn’t do a full assessment of the past project and don’t have all the information. However, I could see that the same bad outcome is not likely this time around – at least not for the same reasons. I could also see some common pitfalls in the making and had an opportunity to share thoughts on how to take corrective action in this early phase.

The biggest factor in the failure of the 2004 DMS project was that the project team did not include the Assembly IT department and in fact completely by-passed them in planning and implementation. Instead, the system was deployed in the data center of an adjacent government department (sound odd? does to me as well - and not just for technical reasons). Obviously, this unique situation alone will ensure a bad outcome.

The DMS project was also very donor driven and fully donor-funded. By contrast, the e-parliament project is being driven by the IT department with enthusiastic support from the Assembly leadership, and the majority of funding is being provided by the Assembly (estimated 60-70% of budgeted system costs in year one with recurring budgets for future years) with some top-up funding support from a few other partners and donors including NDI.  

Finally, from an organizational standpoint both the current IT Director and the IT Director who was in place in 2004 concurred that the Assembly was not ready back then - that the DMS may have been ahead of its time. Consensus now from the Speaker of the Assembly and the Secretary General down to key staff suggest the institution is ready for this modernization initiative now: it’s Assembly driven this time around and in fact if anything it is the donors who are the hard sell now.

So corrective action has been taken to address past problems. Unfortunately, there is more to the story than addressing past problems. Looking at the current plans, I believe the e-parliament project can succeed but is only likely to gain adoption by the Assembly if it is approached more holistically with a focus on helping create the required organizational change.

The technical track is going well and will probably succeed, but even if they build it themselves this time around, will they come?

Not necessarily. There is work to do in terms of ensuring that the institution takes ownership of the system not only from the technical and budgetary standpoints, but also from an organizational change perspective.  Adoption is not about technology, it’s about people.

Maintaining institutional leadership, vision and buy-in for the duration will require setting clear expectations and good communication and about the value of the new technology; a good communications strategy will be required to ensure that everyone involved from key non-technical staff to MPs and the public are brought along and understand the what, why, when and how as it pertains to their work; establishing good training and support services within the Assembly is critical so that staff and members of parliament can successfully make the transition to an electronic system to conduct their business; and importantly, an internal department outside the IT team needs to take ownership of the system and steward it’s development as the institution builds and evolves the platform over time. In the case of the Kosovo Assembly, that would be the Legal (and Legislative) Department. The project can be defined in phases and deliverables, but once the system gets adopted it becomes part of the fabric of the institution and must be maintained.

It’s not a question of building it and they will come, it’s about bringing them along so that when it’s built they’re already there.

So that was my report in a nutshell. As the project moves forward, NDI will carve out a suitable role that seeks to assist in building this broader program approach and ensuring the Assembly is positioned to succeed.

As with many ICT projects, the key to success isn’t technical or really about technology - it’s about people.  Future posts will chart progress to see if this assessment was correct and whether the Assembly successfully adopts their new technology this time around.