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This paper attempts to identify dominating factors that drive e-governance collaboration and propose a conceptual research framework for its testing and validation. A questionnaire-based survey has been conducted to obtain expert opinions. A qualitative research tool, total interpretive structural modelling (TISM), has been applied for conducting the analysis. Four TISM models namely, TISM-I, TISM-II, TISM-III and TISM-IV are developed. TISM-I contains three macro drivers of e-governance collaboration, i.e. 'Valuecreation', 'Cost-effectiveness', and 'Technology-usage'. The outcome of this model reveals 'Cost-effectiveness' as the dominating factor. TISM-II consists of six micro constituents of 'Value-creation' wherein 'Enhanced service delivery' has emerged as dominant constituent. TISM-III comprises four micro constituents of 'Cost-effectiveness' wherein 'Savings of money paid to middlemen' has emerged as the dominant one. TISM-IV comprises six micro constituents amongst which 'Usefulness of e-governance services' has emerged as dominant. The study has implications for practitioners as well as researchers.

Collaboration is widely practiced and the topic is well researched in corporate sector. However, relatively little research has been conducted on collaboration in e-governance context. Experiences from limited success of e-governance initiatives in India as well as in various other developing countries reflect upon lack of strategic collaboration within and across government organisations. The finding of the study indicates that e-governance users want their concerns to be addressed, while e-governance project implementers struggle with the inter- and intra-organisational collaborations. The National e-Governance Plan (NeGP), 2006 and its subsequent version, i.e., NeGP 2.0 termed as 'e-kranti' component of the Digital India programme of Government of India, has specifically emphasized upon collaboration to effectively unleash e-governance potential. This paper explores the role of collaboration competency in the context of a public organisation through a study of an e-governance project and it also throws light on possible linkage of collaboration competency with e-governance performance.