Egm report e-Government and New Technologies: Towards Better Citizen

Session Four: Strategies and Capacity-Building for 

Knowledge Management 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Looking simply beyond technology, Mr. Griffin examined the qualifications of civil 

servants within the context of e-government. Even with the best technology, there is an urgent 

need to build capacity by way of new competencies for e-government among civil servants. 

He noted that qualifications are input oriented while competencies are output oriented. This is 

an important distinction because up until recently there have been few scientific articles about 

competency requirements for e-government.  

Mr. Griffin reports on a study he conducted along with Professor Tino Schuppan who 

performed a number of semi-standardized interviews. In this study, they interviewed German 

state public administration officials and a smaller group of seasoned experts from among the 

scientific and consulting communities. The two groups were asked questions relating to 

existing e-government skills as well as future e-government skill requirements. The 

researchers found that there were considerable skill deficits in certain areas – especially in the 

areas of strategy, organizational change and process. In regards to developing new 

competencies, they identified attitude and awareness changes, and new networked thinking 

necessary as well as social and communicative competencies.  

The key to this study is that when it comes to the expanding role of e-government, more 

attention needs to focus on leadership and human resource management competencies among 

public administrators. The study also revealed the need for a kind of “emotionalization” and 

deeper understanding for e-government which in turn needs to be broadly incorporated into all 

activities of public administrations. This study essentially leads them to create a “map” where