Most eGovernance RFPs are solving the wrong problem.
They ask vendors to "digitise this department." The department was never the problem.
Across 50+ delivered projects, the scope in the tender was almost always the same: one department, one workflow, page after page of functional requirements.
What was missing: who owns the data once it has to cross a department boundary.
A citizen's record sits in one system. The approval sits in another. Each department is certain its version is the right one, and nobody in the tender is named to decide when they disagree.
So the software gets delivered, the forms get digitised, and the same file still travels between offices by hand or by email.
That isn't a technology failure. It's a scoping failure, and it's baked in before a single vendor bids.
Try this on your next tender: mark every data element that a second department also touches. Then check whether anyone is accountable for its accuracy.
If the answer is no, the data ownership gap is already in the contract.
PMU and procurement colleagues, what does your RFP say about cross-department data ownership?
