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E-Gov't Ecommerce Implementation Recommendations
Sandy Foote
The commitment to an Ecommerce capability is a significant undertaking that needs to be done in the context of a long term vision to make more added value product offerings and services available over multiple years. This would include an increase of descriptions available online; seamless access to these descriptions; and an increase in online digital content. To properly extend Ecommerce across all of an organization’s holdings and media there will need to be a commitment to increase the number of lower level descriptions available online and to improve the access to the search tools in which they reside.
The proper implementation of an Ecommerce capability requires a solid plan backed with significant resources. This will be a challenging undertaking for an organization and should be approached in a number of phases that address policy as well as product and service issues. The costs to establish an Ecommerce capability is significant especially if the institution were to implement its own infrastructure to support online ordering and selling of its products.
The evolution of the web has led to important improvements in online services. This has been coupled with the recognition that to provide a high value service you need to expend a considerable amount of resources to build and support the online environment.
The challenge facing an organization is how to start small but still meet the expectations of the public. The opportunity for an organization is to partner with another government entity to use their Online Store as the foundation for an organization’s phased implementation. In this way costs can be directed towards making products available and supportable without having to absorb the significant foundation costs to establish the capability.
RECOMMENDATIONS
The following are the recommendations for implementing an Ecommerce presence:
Confirm a governance structure for future services under which the Ecommerce Framework would be part of its mandate;
Select and put in place a core team to steward the Ecommerce framework;
As part of the broader requirements for an organization develop the necessary policies for pricing, products, and services;
Work with the appropriate working groups to develop a Rights Management Framework which includes copyright management and privacy;
Review and re-engineer identified processes that would be used in handling a multi-channel client interface model;
Develop a long-term partnership with another an Ecommerce organization to host the store front starting with the placement of products in the E-Store’s catalogue through to the joint development of a an organization branded store front hosted by the E-Store;
Identify a pilot to test the outcomes of the policy development, the creation of digital products, the placement of these products for sale and the relationship with E-Store; and
Finalize the Ecommerce Road Map based on the results of the pilot.
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