The World Bank has estimated that as high as 85 per cent of e-government projects in developing countries are either "total or partial failures."

"It is estimated that approximately 35 per cent of e-government projects in developing countries are total failures, approximately 50 per cent are partial failures -- only some 15 per cent can be fully seen as successes," a senior World Bank official told a seminar on e-governance in Bangalore on Friday.

Delivering the key-note address, the World Bank's Lead Informatics Specialist Robert Schware said, "There are equal numbers of very sad statistics about the number of failed implementations in the US and Europe."

Schware said there are around 200 e-government projects in India, of them, he believes, about 110 are "scalable".

Governments should draw lessons from failures so that resources are not wasted.

The bank is currently completing a study of national e-strategies across a group of 40 regionally representative countries with a view to mapping common policy focus areas and interventions across countries.