No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the author.
We-government: An anatomy of citizen coproduction in the information age
Abstract
This paper examines whether the tools of the Information Age---principally but not exclusively the Internet---make citizen coproduction of government services more viable and effective. The paper first discusses the re-emergence of citizen coproduction as a fashionable policy option in the face of persistent budget deficits, the rise of "government by network," and the advent of mass "peer-production." Finding a plethora of competing labels, models, and concepts for Internet-facilitated coproduction, the paper proposes a formal taxonomy to provide a more robust framework for systematic analysis. The paper then applies this framework to evaluate the impact of the tools of the Information Age on citizen coproduction. Its findings cautiously support the claim that the Information Age enables and advances new forms of citizen coproduction, namely large-scale "Do-It-Yourself Government" and "Government as a Platform." The paper concludes with a discussion of the potential implications for public administration, including the possible emergence of a new social contract that empowers the public to play a far more active role in the functioning of their government.
... This growing interest towards new and more participative governance models has emerged because of the failure of the traditional top-down system for providing public goods and services [27] and because of the recent socio-economic crisis and the related challenges public services are facing, such as increased demand, rising expectations and, in many cases, reduced budgets [12]. Linders [50] points out that the distribution of power and responsibility among public and private actors may vary significantly, giving rise to different governance models underlying co-production. Citizen Sourcing or Citizen to Government, C2G) happens when citizens help the government improve public performance and more effectively satisfy the public s wants and needs. ...
... Do )t Yourself Government or Citizen to Citizen, C2C) occurs when citizens help themselves and one another; in this case, the government plays no active role in day-to-day activities but may provide a facilitating framework. Different governance models imply different collaborative processes, which therefore can be facilitated and impacted by the introduction of ICT in a varied way [50]. ...
... They envisaged a co-production process involving the participation of PAs, civil servants, government stakeholders, and service companies [49]. The governance model underlying this use case is Government as a Platform (G2C) [50], a specific type of co-delivery, in which the government offers a digitally enabled governance framework for the delivery of services by other public bodies, citizens and private actors. 2. The Latvian Ministry of Environmental Protection and Regional Development (VARAM for short) was interested in investigating whether a co-production approach increases the usability of citizen sourced information for policy shaping. ...
This paper investigates the challenges of designing a computer supported collaborative environment aimed at facilitating co-production processes, i.e., those collaborative processes between Public Administrations, private stakeholders and citizens that aim at the design of public services, their implementation, and their shared delivery to the community. We argue that, for such a digital platform, different types of socio-technical requirements should be considered, i.e., those related to governance models and associated collaboration dynamics; requirements that may emerge from the specific type of public service to design; as well as user and technical requirements common to all e-government platforms. This research informed the development and testing of a digital collaboration platform that offers guidance on how to organize a co-production initiative and a network of stakeholders, functionalities to support collaborative work, and enablers (in the form of reusable knowledge and digital resources) to perform the sequence of steps to produce a public service. The lessons learned from the iterative platform development process and a preliminary evaluation study conducted with three Public Administrations in different European countries pointed at specific functionalities that are perceived as most crucial and at different appropriation practices that depend on the organizational structure of the involved Public Administrations and related multi-stakeholder networks. The innovation that is brought about with respect to general-purpose platforms for computer supported cooperative work is represented by the operationalization of co-production processes, with step-by-step guidance and potential reuse (with adaptation) of ready to use resources and processes. Based on the results of our research, general guidelines are also proposed for the design of future digital platforms supporting co-production.
... There are also barriers that are specific to the e-government context, such as the large, dispersed and heterogeneous user base constituted by citizens, and their potential lack of trust in government (Chan and Pan, 2008;van Velsen et al., 2009). The risk of not including all groups of citizens, especially disadvantaged ones, is particularly underlined (Linders, 2011;Axelsson, 2013). Furthermore, the absence of competition for e-government services does not provide any incentives for software developers and public servants to focus on the user-friendliness or inclusion of users. ...
... Some outcomes are related to the traditional IS school of user participation in system design: improved intention to use e-government services (Anthopoulos et al., 2007), better alignment between system and requirements (Olphert and Damodaran, 2007), gain in accuracy, usability, usefulness (van Velsen et al., 2009), capacity building (Olphert and Damodaran, 2007), industrial democracy (Axelsson et al., 2010;, improved user interface , and user satisfaction (Sørum, 2011). However, some articles state that participation has other e-government specific outcomes: trust in e-government services (Anthopoulos et al., 2007), enabler of civic and democratic participation (Oostveen et al., 2004;Olphert and Damodaran, 2007;Linders, 2011;, and promotion of innovation in society (Linders, 2011). ...
... Some outcomes are related to the traditional IS school of user participation in system design: improved intention to use e-government services (Anthopoulos et al., 2007), better alignment between system and requirements (Olphert and Damodaran, 2007), gain in accuracy, usability, usefulness (van Velsen et al., 2009), capacity building (Olphert and Damodaran, 2007), industrial democracy (Axelsson et al., 2010;, improved user interface , and user satisfaction (Sørum, 2011). However, some articles state that participation has other e-government specific outcomes: trust in e-government services (Anthopoulos et al., 2007), enabler of civic and democratic participation (Oostveen et al., 2004;Olphert and Damodaran, 2007;Linders, 2011;, and promotion of innovation in society (Linders, 2011). ...
Governments around the world now use Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) to improve the delivery of services and information to their users. In the literature, the application of ICT in this context is known as “e(lectronic)-government”. Similarly to other industries, governments have also seen the evolution of the governance model: ICT has empowered citizens to have more control of the decision-making process and more impact on the tasks of administrations. Therefore, e-government not only makes better service delivery possible but also enables citizen participation. However, despite the reported benefits of participation, challenges remain that impede its proper implementation, such as the lack of strategic view on citizen participation, the lack of consideration for all stakeholders and reluctance from practitioners towards participation.
Therefore, this thesis aims to develop three tools for practitioners to manage citizen participation: the CitiVoice Framework, the UParticipate Decision Support Guide and the SmartCity4All Workshop. First, we designed CitiVoice that structures and evaluates citizen participation in smart cities. Second, we developed UParticipate that enables project managers to make more sound decisions about the participation of citizens in the development of e-government services. Finally, we developed SmartCity4All that allows citizens to learn about the smart city concept, contribute their ideas and collectively build their solutions.
... This refinement is necessary to understand that participation is not only possible through the democratic process but also in the delivery process of e-government services. In this paper, we adapt the formalization of service delivery by Linders (2011) for e-government services. Table 1 summarizes these steps to better illustrate the service delivery concept and the impact of the participation of citizens on the two delivery steps. ...
... There are also barriers that are specific to the e-government context such as the large, dispersed and heterogeneous user base that constitutes the citizens and their potential lack of trust in government (Chan and Pan, 2008;van Velsen et al., 2009). The risk of not including all groups of citizens, especially disadvantaged ones, is particularly underlined (Axelsson, 2013;Linders, 2011). Furthermore, the absence of competition for e-government services does not provide any incentives for software developers and public servants to focus on the user-friendliness or inclusion of users. ...
... We adapt the typology of Linders (2011) to decompose the participation methods into service co-design and service co-execution. Regarding service co-design, an emerging Scandinavian body of research applies three user participation methods for e-government service design (Axelsson et al., 2010;Karlsson, 2012, 2014;Karlsson et al., 2012;Lindgren, 2014). ...
E-government is becoming a mature research field thanks to the proliferation of papers about this changing paradigm. Among this research, the participation of citizens in e-government is a topic that has particularly stimulated numerous discussions. This participation (referred to as " e-participation ") is often reduced to the democratic participation of citizens in decision-making and policy design (or " e-democracy "). However, this paper aims at reexamining the scope of e-participation by considering the under-investigated field of citizen participation in e-government service delivery. This participation can take place as the co-design and co-execution of these services. In order to examine the existing body of knowledge of the field, we conduct a Systematic Literature Review followed by a template analysis of the selected papers. This analysis allows us determining avenues for further research in this area about the following research themes: stakeholders involved, organizational and motivational preconditions , participation methods and outcomes of participation.
... Linders [35] highlights different ways of allowing online participation of citizens in co-producing value of public sector activities, including; consultation, cogovernance, citizen reporting, crowd sourcing delivery of solutions to issues, self-service, transparency, as well as other aspects. However, he also highlights that further research is needed regarding the desirability and usefulness of such activities [35]. ...
... Linders [35] highlights different ways of allowing online participation of citizens in co-producing value of public sector activities, including; consultation, cogovernance, citizen reporting, crowd sourcing delivery of solutions to issues, self-service, transparency, as well as other aspects. However, he also highlights that further research is needed regarding the desirability and usefulness of such activities [35]. Loukis & Wimmer [34] argue that electronic consultation requires relatively high levels of "sophistication" when done in a structured way. ...
... The social, emotional, and psychological barriers are important to consider when allowing for the inclusion of all citizens, as social and digital inclusion are interrelated. Digital and "offline" literacy have been highlighted as interrelated aspects that need to be addressed to avoid creating new barriers when adding technology [35]. It has been shown that "adaptation to the user's capabilities and available devices as well as physical and social environment" should play a major role in the planning of user interfaces [45]. ...
There are hopes that e-government will bring
many benefits, including efficiency, democratization,
participation, and emancipation of citizens. However,
despite some evidence that supports these claims there
are also cases that digitalization can exclude citizens
and build new barriers. This is a special challenge for
already disadvantaged groups falling outside the
norms. In this study we approach the notion of a normcritical
perspective in relation to e-government
through a review of literature in combination with
action research oriented workshops. From this we
conclude that there is a need for more norm-critical
perspectives in research on e-government, as most
research today focuses on socio-economic digitaldivide
issues. We also show that it is difficult for
involved actors to see beyond the norms and be normcritical
since the norms are embedded into the
practices, which in this case, e-government has
developed and used.
... Implicit is the integration of public sector agencies with full cooperation and understanding of the concept of collective decision-making, participatory democracy and citizen empowerment as a democratic right through interactive features such as the web comment form, and innovative online consultation mechanisms [15]. Citizen-to-Government service is also identified as "Citizen sourcing" [16], [17], where the citizens help the government to improve public performance and to better satisfy public needs. This concept is similar to Crowdsourcing, in which the capability of a network or community of people are termed as "crowd" [19]. ...
... That brings more innovation and an increased sense of community centered around government to solve government challenges [18], [20]. Another new way of collaboration is co-delivering the government services by citizens for a more engaging democratic process, involving citizens directly in government [21], to help public agencies in delivering and executing services on a day-perday basis [17]. Citizen to Citizen (C2C) service is a more recent service paradigm than C2G. ...
... Citizen to Citizen (C2C) service is a more recent service paradigm than C2G. The idea behind C2C or peer-to-peer services or "We government" or "Do it yourself Government" [16], [17], [22], is that citizens or communities of citizens can self-organize to present a substitute for traditional government responsibilities, when a citizen respond to a requested service from another citizen. The third form of collaborative service is Intermediary-to-Government (I2G) services in which Intermediary such as Non-Governmental in which non-profit organizations (NGOs) collaborate with government to deliver public services. ...
Governments are increasing reaching out beyond their organizational boundaries to engage citizens in policy design, co-created and co-delivered public services. While social media platforms have been largely used by government entities for communicating with and obtaining feedbacks on programs and services from citizens; traditional websites remain the primary interaction channel for emerging co-delivered services involving Citizen-to-Government (C2G) interactions. This work explores the affordances of the social media platform as a more natural platform to support not only C2G, but also Citizen-to-Citizen services (C2C) and Intermediary-to-Government (I2G) services. By considering a set of concrete C2C and C2G initiatives, we determine 1) the extent to which social media platform affordances support these initiatives, 2) the relative advantage of using these social media platforms over traditional government websites. Insights from this work should help in moving Government Social Media policies to cover the use of social media channels for C2C, C2G and I2G services.
... time, skills, etc.), and thereby problems to live up to the relevance, timeliness and directness that citizens expect may arise (Bryer and Zavattaro 2011). Using social media as public service further means delegation of some of the control over information and communication to citizens (Linders 2011). If the government is absent in these processes, false or negative pictures of the government may spread. ...
... Chesbrough 2006;Von Hippel 2005), and that they may be suitable platforms for citizen participation and engagement (Cf. Bonsón et al. 2015;Bonsón et al. 2012;Linders 2011;Saebø et al. 2009). ...
Governments are in need to innovate public service. They struggle with complex societal problems, decreased citizen trust and the work of adapting to new demands related to how service should be delivered to fit contemporary living. Inspired by success stories from the private sector’s “open innovation” approaches, governments are complementing internal competence with knowledge resources of external actors such as citizens. One increasingly growing strategy for knowledge expansion beyond government boundaries has been to use social media platforms, e.g. Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. This strategy has been shown to be especially effective at a local government level (henceforth municipality) where citizens are geographically close to the government and where government manages activities that citizens rely on in their daily lives.
Despite an expansive rise of social media use in municipalities, and efforts to see beyond a traditional and New Public Management approach to public service, there is little knowledge about the participatory and innovative capacity of social media in a government context. This knowledge gap is reflected in researchers’ and municipal administrators’ uncertainty as to how to make use of social media for improvement of public service and how to handle tensions about what is possible to do with social media and what is legitimate to do as a public servant.
The aim of the thesis is thus to map, unpack and conceptualize social media practice by municipal communicators to understand how tensions and dynamics between social media mechanisms and government rationales are shaping the practice and how new emerging practices can be understood as public service innovation. The research questions of the thesis are: RQ1: How are social media mechanisms supporting different public service rationales?; RQ2: How is public service enacted in the social media practice by municipal communicators?; RQ 3: How can social media practice by municipal communicators be understood as public service innovation?
... We then discuss the findings and implications for PD in a wider public sector governance and we-government context. The term "we-government," as we use it in the study, refers to the concept coined by Linders in which he embraces "the re-emergence of citizen coproduction -whereby citizens perform the role of partner rather than customer in the delivery of public services" [16] to "make citizen coproduction of government services more viable and effective" [27]. The study's major focus is thus on emerging we-government and civic engagement initiatives, but the results may also be relevant to more traditional forms of e-government and other collaborative forms emerging in the public sector, for example, crosssector, multi-agency collaboration. ...
... This means that they not only use authority-provided e-services and technical support but they must also be directly integrated into the authorities' own IT solutions, further complicating the issue of information systems development [17]. Linders [16], [27] refers to this engagement as a partial transformation from e-government to wegovernment, where the new types of citizen engagement include citizen sourcing, government platforms, and do-ityourself government. In we-government, the motives strongly relate to increased efficiency, but also to simply creating redundancy in societal systems as a means to maintaining public services. ...
In this study, we address the role of Participatory Design (PD) in emerging public sector governance forms and, more specifically, civic engagement and we-government initiatives. We achieve this by first providing a research overview of the development of PD approaches since they originated in the 1970s, identifying different PD generations and associated concepts, contexts, and challenges, and then relating them to current public sector trends. Next, we link the overview to a practical example by presenting a case of applying PD to a civic engagement project that takes place in the Swedish emergency response system. Our example findings sustain previously identified needs to return to broad change processes and balance this with ICT re-configuration and structuration of the collaborative processes, the related stakeholders, and their needs, this time in a context where work tasks and responsibilities are not yet defined, known or experienced among stakeholders. We then suggest methodological ways to handle this by (1) applying an interdisciplinary PD approach, (2) replacing the traditional design group with a combination of various qualitative methods and PD techniques, e.g., focus groups, modified scenario-based future workshops, exercises, and after-action-reviews, and (3) support PD activities with context-specific frameworks. We argue that applying PD concepts to the governance forms that are emerging in resource-constrained public sector organizations poses a number of challenges, many of them relating directly to the unknown character of the work setting and the practical difficulties of involving civil citizens as end-users. However, if they are addressed and handled adequately, making civic engagement initiatives work processes and ICT support to work smoothly, this can contribute to a re-politicization of PD in terms of space, action, and the empowerment of citizens both by enhancing their skills and by having them represented in design activities.
... Previous research has shown the potential impact of Twitter and provides some clues about the future use of this tool in several government tasks. Twitter has played a role in political activism and changing political systems in Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya (Linders 2011). Twitter can also help during crises and emergency situations (Curtin and Meijer 2006), along with other Web 2.0 features that complement it. ...
... In order to do research on Web 2.0 tools like Twitter, online research has become the best way to collect, compare, and analyze data. However, very few methodologies and research models have been developed to this end, creating confusion about validity and the degree to which we can trust research findings based on data collected online (Linders 2011). E-research may make tasks easier (or sometimes even automates them), but it also raises a whole range of methodological and epistemic issues (Estalella and Ardevol 2011). ...
Web 2.0 tools and applications encourage citizens to interact with government and they provide tools for government to communicate, collaborate, and engage with citizens. The distinguishing characteristics of some of these tools provide unusual opportunities for citizen participation in government decision-making and exercising influence on diverse policy domains. However, there is limited research on the role of specific tools and applications in government–citizen interactions. In fact, there are relatively few studies that attempt to understand how governments and citizens are using these tools to interact with one other. Based on three powerful stories from Mexico, this chapter focuses on one of these tools: Twitter. It analyzes both citizen and government use of this application, provides practical recommendations, and suggestions for future research about this topic.
... As Nabatchi, Sancino and Sicilia stated, co-production usually refers to the direct involvement of citizen 'lay actors' with government in voluntarily providing public services that create value for their communities (Nabatchi, Sancino and Sicilia, 2017;McGranahan, 2015;Ostrom, 1996;Linders, 2011). Co-production can involve citizens and community groups, who are better aware of local conditions and help to assure that interventions reflect specific needs and customs (Ostrom, 1990, p. 92). ...
Any large city mayor or public administrator has a sense that the world with which his/her city must interface is turbulent and changing exponentially faster. Advancing communication, transportation and other technologies have made the people of the world increasingly interconnected. Immediate cri-ses such as financial collapse, pandemics, climate change and military tensions bring the negative side of this global phenomenon to the fore. Nevertheless, even in their absence, other incipient, but persistent, and portentous issues are increasingly demanding of public action. Simultaneously, pressure to engage all citizens in public policy debates and decision making is growing and becoming central to trust in government and the survival of democracies. The collision of the two forces, turbulence v. demand for increasing public debate and involvement , gives further salience to the notion that science based technologies are charging ahead while the development of social technologies, such as democratic institutions, are lagging. This paper looks at several approaches to citizen engagement: co-production, asset-oriented public management, strategic planning, and participato-ry modeling. It then addresses various forms of e-governance and investigates how new technologies might be used to expand and improve citizen engagement while allowing the government to deal with the more turbulent environment. Some criticisms and cautions are listed. Finally, the paper investigates how well higher education in public administration is responding to the collision through the offering of specialized courses and programs. The methodology was to catalog the course offerings of the top ranked PA programs. The conclusion is that these programs are not adequately responding to the issues presented in this paper.
... C2C interactions being instrumental in leading or driving public service delivery to other citizens are examined in detail by Chouikh, Ojo, and Driss (2016). The authors (2016, p. 179) explained these C2C interactions by using "we government" (Linders, 2011), "Do it yourself government" (Dunleavy & Margetts, 2010), "peer to peer services or peer services" terms. They also defined C2C service interactions as "citizens or communities of citizens can self-organize to present a substitute for traditional government responsibilities when a citizen responds to a requested service from another citizen." ...
Advances in technology increasingly empowered citizens to become active seekers and even co-producers of e-government information and services rather than being only passive recipients. Citizens' interactions with each other reached such a point that they could contribute to the quality and quantity of e-government services. Examples of this citizen-to-citizen (C2C) interactions adding value to current e-government services or triggering new and innovative ones are increasingly observed worldwide. Although C2C interactions is not a new phenomenon , it is a relatively overlooked topic in e-government studies. Current e-government literature is insufficient in exploring and explaining the evolving nature, increasing occurrence, and various outcomes of these interactions. This article aims to fill the gap in the e-government literature by analyzing C2C interactions in detail and discusses how to regulate the C2C interaction processes and their useful and harmful outcomes. When C2C interactions get integrated into government activities and form e-government value chains (as in C2C2G or G4C2C), they contribute to the electronic provision of government information or services. C2C interactions also create beneficial (advantages of C2C) and harmful (disadvantages of C2C) outcomes. The main advantages of C2C interactions are their support for governments in making decisions, solving problems, and improving public services. Their main disadvantages are distributing misinterpreted or manipulative information , causing uncertainty, and even digital vigilantism. The article ends with suggestions for future research, such as different scenarios of government regulation for C2C interactions.
... The co-operation perspective The knowledge perspective [8] access to EU information [30] information provision consultation consultation active [6] managerial model consultative consultative consultative participatory participatory [23] e-enabling e-engaging e-engaging e-empowering [47] e-information e-information e-consultation e-consultation e-decision-making [13] listen as a spectator express preferences develop preferences aggregate and bargain deliberate and negotiate [53] consumer commentor commentor commentator contributor [29] reader contributor contributor collaborator collaborator leader [12] freedom of information law freedom of information law [54] constituency support collaborative democracy collaborative democracy citizen sourcing, ideation & innovation [17] inform consult involve collaborate collaborate, empower [19] provision of information provision of information consultation collaboration collaboration [27] data consumer data provider collaborator collaborator co-creator ideator [22] communication consultation collaboration engagement [55] E-informing E-consulting E-collaboration E-empowering [41] E-informing eConsulting eInvolving eCollaborating eEmpowerment [34] political participation in direct attempts to influence the decision-making the decision-making process [21] Government as Platform (G2C) Citizen Sourcing (C2G) ...
... C2C interactions being instrumental in leading or driving public service delivery to other citizens are examined in detail by Chouikh, Ojo, and Driss (2016). The authors (2016, p. 179) explained these C2C interactions by using "we government" (Linders, 2011), "Do it yourself government" (Dunleavy & Margetts, 2010), "peer to peer services or peer services" terms. They also defined C2C service interactions as "citizens or communities of citizens can self-organize to present a substitute for traditional government responsibilities when a citizen responds to a requested service from another citizen." ...
Advances in technology increasingly empowered citizens to become active seekers and even co-producers of e-government information and services rather than being only passive recipients. Citizens' interactions with each other reached such a point that they could contribute to the quality and quantity of e-government services. Examples of this citizen-to-citizen (C2C) interactions adding value to current e-government services or triggering new and innovative ones are increasingly observed worldwide. Although C2C interactions is not a new phenomenon, it is a relatively overlooked topic in e-government studies. Current e-government literature is insufficient in exploring and explaining the evolving nature, increasing occurrence, and various outcomes of these interactions. This article aims to fill the gap in the e-government literature by analyzing C2C interactions in detail and discusses how to regulate the C2C interaction processes and their useful and harmful outcomes.
When C2C interactions get integrated into government activities and form e-government value chains (as in C2C2G or G4C2C), they contribute to the electronic provision of government information or services. C2C interactions also create beneficial (advantages of C2C) and harmful (disadvantages of C2C) outcomes. The main advantages of C2C interactions are their support for governments in making decisions, solving problems, and improving public services. Their main disadvantages are distributing misinterpreted or manipulative information, causing uncertainty, and even digital vigilantism. The article ends with suggestions for future research, such as different scenarios of government regulation for C2C interactions.
... Los gobiernos pueden capacitar a los ciudadanos a ayudar a sí mismos dejando su infraestructura disponible para la acción colectiva dirigida por todos, como sugerido por Linders (2011). Los ciudadanos pueden se sentir motivados a contribuir cuando la coproducción es incentivada y no obligatoria. ...
La innovación social digital (ISD) desarrollada por las metaorganizaciones es una nueva oportunidad en el campo de la innovación social, explorando particularmente el uso de las nuevas tecnologías que la economía digital tornó posible. El proceso de construcción social de la tecnología por una asociación público-privada involucra tanto a las organizaciones como a los ciudadanos. Diseñar colaboraciones de organizaciones para crear metaorganizaciones podría ser una manera de resolver problemas empresariales y sociales. Desde esta perspectiva, la investigación analiza una metaorganización responsable por suministrar la ISD. La gestión de metaorganizaciones para proveer innovación social digital requiere tener en cuenta el contexto actual de los entornos dinámicos en nuestra sociedad. Esta investigación contribuye para el campo de la innovación abierta, explorando las ventajas de la gestión de innovaciones sociales digitales en las metaorganizaciones en comparación con los métodos clásicos de innovación abierta. Este trabajo presenta visiones útiles para los gestores y los responsables políticos interesados en la creación de mecanismos para fomentar la ISD con el fin de capacitar las asociaciones público-privadas a generar valor y crear un impacto más amplío en el ecosistema.
... Numerous researchers highlighted the positive impact of modern technologies and ICT applications in helping local and central governments to cultivate a culture for active citizen engagement. The role of ICTs includes the provision of timely information (Fuentes-Bautista 2014), creating effective platforms for citizens engage in public life (Linders 2011) and facilitating the formation of social networks (Bonsón et al. 2012) added to contributing to deliberative democracy (Astrom et al. 2012) and (Hong and Nadler 2012). It is worth mentioning that the first role mentioned above related to the provision of timely and reliable information for citizens to increase their awareness and enable them to make informed decisions has been progressing since the very first Web 1.0. ...
Smart Sustainable Cities is a concept regarded differently by various relevant stakeholders. This also applies to the concept of engagement throughout the design and planning of these cities to achieve smartness. The perspectives on the centrality of engagement vary between academicians, professionals, private sector, governments, and others. This research focuses on the significance of stakeholders’ engagement in designing and planning SSCs, mainly citizens engagement. It explores the characteristics of a SSC and the relationship between its dimensions, initiatives and projects which require interaction that can only be granted through proper engagement of citizens. It explores pathways of influence for SSCs and the engagement process through the Spectrum of Citizen Engagement. This paper argues that no smartness of cities is achieved without citizens empowerment. It concludes that smartness of cities is more than digital, technical, or technological; Smartness of cities is about People and SSCs are about providing the ability and opportunity for everyone to be an active citizen.
... Bu kapsamda e-katılım aracılığı ile vatandaş yalnızca hizmetlerin sunumunda değil, hizmetin veya politikanın planlama, tasarımı, devreye alınması, yönetimi, sunumu, izlenmesi ve değerlendirmesi faaliyetlerinde aktif roller üstlenmektedir (Bovaird, 2007: 847). Bir diğer deyişle, e-katılım, sadece kamu hizmetinin kalitesini, meşruiyetini güçlendirmenin ve maliyetini azaltmanın bir yolu (Meijer, 2011: 598) olarak değil, kritik kamu bilgi hizmetlerinin ortak üretilmesinde, etkin ve verimli bir şekilde sunulmasında, hükümet verimliliğinin artırılmasında, kamu değerinin yaratılmasında (sohbetfield vd., 2013), hizmetlerin planlanmasında, tasarımında, tesliminde, yürütülmesinde, izlenmesinde ve değerlendirilmesinde (Linders, 2011) vatandaşı en önemli girdi olarak kabul eden bir araç olarak kullanılabilir. Özetle dijital çağda, teknoloji geliştiği sürece, farklı araçlarla e-katılımın, kamu politikalarının ve hizmetlerinin planlama bilgilerinin yayılmasında, formüle edilmesinde, yürütülmesinde ve izlenmesinde vatandaş rolünü en üst düzeye taşımaya yönelik olarak kullanılması giderek artarak devam edecektir. ...
... These outcomes are related to traditional information systems outcomes: improved intention to use of e-government services (Anthopoulos et al., 2007), better alignment between system and requirements (Olphert and Damodaran, 2007), gain in accuracy, usability, usefulness (van Velsen et al., 2009), capacity building (Olphert and Damodaran, 2007), industrial democracy (Axelsson et al., 2010), improved user interface (Karlsson et al., 2012), user satisfaction (Sørum, 2011). However, other papers also state that the co-creation of egovernment services could also lead to more public-specific outcomes, and thus more related to public value: increased trust of e-government services (Anthopoulos et al., 2007), enabler of democratic participation and promotion of innovation in society (Linders, 2011). ...
As citizens have more and more opportunities to participate in public life, it is essential that administrations integrate this participation in their e-government processes. A smarter, more participatory, governance is a well-recognized and essential part of any city that wants to become “Smart” and generate public value. In this chapter, we will focus on the impact of this participatory approach on the development of e-government services by the city. Therefore, the goal of this chapter is to identify which methods administrations can apply to co-create their e-government services with citizens and to understand the gap between the methods used in practice and citizens’ preferences.
... Decidir quais os novos serviços devem ser implantados, identificar quais serviços precisam de melhorias e descobrir o motivo de alguns serviços não terem o volume de acessos esperado, são tarefas que são potencializadas se tiverem a participação participação conjunta dos cidadãos, da sociedade em geral, dos funcionários públicos e dos tomadores de decisão do provedor deste serviço. A inclusão das partes interessadas na digitização é uma boa prática para o sucesso do processo, uma vez que tratar o cidadão como parceiro das atividades de governo proporciona várias contribuições, tais como: economia de tempo, experiência em cima da real necessidade e grande interesse para alcance de resultados positivos [45]. ...
The digitization of services offered to citizens by the Federal Government is nowadays a common reality and an integral part of the modernization strategies adopted in Brazil, especially since 2016 when important decrees were published, defining a Digital Governance Policy and a Digital Citizenship Platform by the Federal Public Administration (APF). This work aims to characterize public services, especially Brazilian, in the context of digital transformation analyzing the strategies context of the Digital Platform and the Transformation Kit of the Brazilian Government. In addition, it will conduct a survey with the APF agencies seeking to identify the expectation of the citizen and/or the public servant with the Digitization of Public Services by the Brazilian Government. The focus of this research is to find results that can help to improve the quality of the offered services and to provide subsidies to develop a suitable tool to support the digitization of citizen services and their pricing. The main contribution of this work is the proposal of a digitization model of public services focused on the needs of the citizen. The Model may be used by any Government Agency that wishes to digitize its services, being adaptable and flexible, according to its needs.
... • Dispositivos móveis para acesso aos portais ou aplicativos de serviços [ A inclusão das partes interessadas na digitização é uma boa prática para o sucesso do processo, uma vez que tratar o cidadão como parceiro das atividades de governo proporciona várias contribuições, tais como: economia de tempo, experiência em cima da real necessidade e grande interesse para alcance de resultados positivos [21]. Além disso, a participação dos cidadãos aumenta a transparência, confiança, aceitabilidade e legitimidade das decisões tomadas pelos decisores políticos [6]. ...
This paper presents a systematic literature review of the digitization of services carried out by the governments of several countries. The main contribution of this work is the identification of the processes and methodologies adopted by these governments to provide their services to the citizen. These results serve as inputs to guide an analysis of the initial efforts of the Brazilian Government in the construction of a digital platform for the provision of its services directed to the citizen, seeking to analyze their needs and improving the services currently provided.
... Deciding which services are to be deployed, identifying which services need improvement and finding out why some services do not have the expected volume of access are tasks that can only be performed if they have the joint involvement of citizens, society at large, public servants and decision makers of the provider of this service. The inclusion of stakeholders in digitization is a good practice for the success of the process, since treating the citizen as a partner in government activities provides a number of contributions, such as: saving time, experiencing real need and great interest in achievement of positive results [19,24]. In addition, citizen participation enhances the transparency, confidence, acceptability and legitimacy of decisions taken by policy makers [7]. ...
The search for improvement and standardization of the digitization of government services has led governments around the world to focus on solutions that seek satisfaction, engagement and involvement of society in general. In addition, governmental systems are seeking constantly to renew the digital governance environment through good planning, use of best practices, and offering greater opportunities to establish collaborative and participatory relationships among all stakeholders (Government and Society). This paper presents a systematic literature review of the digitization of services contributing to the knowledge of the processes and methodologies adopted by these governments to provide their services to the citizen. The main contribution of this work is the proposal of a process mapping model that can be adopted during the stages of providing digital services by interested agencies in offering services focused on the needs of the citizens. The proposed model can be used by any government agency or private company interested in updating its processes, tools and methods of digitization and services automation according to their necessities.
... The inclusion of stakeholders in digitization is a good practice for the success of the process, since treating the citizen as a partner in government activities provides a number of contributions, such as: saving time, experiencing real need and great interest in achievement of positive results [5,30]. ...
Governments at all levels have a mandate to provide services, protect society, and make the economy prosper. While this is a long-term goal, citizens are now expecting greater and faster delivery of services from government. This paper presents a systematic literature review of service digitization carried out by the governments of several countries, which was motivated by the lack of primary studies in the literature related to the identification of the processes and methodologies adopted by these governments and private companies to provide their services to the citizen. This work also contributes to the identification of best practices, technologies and tools used for the provision and evaluation of digitized services provided and how governments are evaluating the gains from digitization. These results of this systematic literature review serve as inputs to guide current and future research of the Brazilian Government in the construction of a digital platform for the provision of its services directed to the citizen, seeking to analyze their needs and improving the services currently provided.
... Por otro lado, Linders (2011) propone un grupo de categorías para medir la coproducción de datos de los ciudadanos junto con el gobierno. Recientemente el ex alcalde de San Francisco publicó un conjunto de experiencias ciudadanas acerca del uso de los datos abiertos, que ha permitido mejorar los servicios gubernamentales, alentar la participación y la colaboración en aras de una mayor interacción entre ambas partes (Newsom y Dickey, 2013). ...
La confusión del término anglosajón open government así como del término transparency han traído consigo ambigüedades y creado falsas expectativas. Además de utilizar ambos conceptos como sinónimos, se han implementado políticas públicas para hacerlos realidad en distintos países latinoamericanos sin tener una dirección precisa o un objetivo claro. Esta investigación busca aportar elementos teóricos que ayuden a delimitar los principales caminos teóricos que se han seguido y proponer un concepto que distinga tanto la transparencia como el gobierno abierto. Para lograrlo se han revisado las principales revistas académicas y artículos de los últimos seis años y se han agrupado en tres corrientes de pensamiento para proponer un concepto sobre gobierno abierto. El objetivo es contribuir a la construcción de una teoría general más sólida, que ayude a entender mejor el gobierno abierto, la transparencia y la rendición de cuentas.
... The popular maxim that "power comes with responsibility" would suggest new responsibilities for the newly empowered citizen (Linders 2011). But this reworking of the social contract is not without controversy. ...
Policy informatics and Social Network Analysis are new set of theories seeking to explain how governments are embracing new technologies for improving policy making and relational links with citizens. Under this framework, local governments are now moving to the creation of networks for making public decisions and monitoring public actions. This chapter seeks to identify the perceptions of policy makers in Spanish municipalities about the influence of Web 2.0 technologies on: (a) the relational benefits among members of the networks; (b) the capacities of actors to lead these networks and their influence on the design, construction, and management of public sector services; and (c) the capacities of social networks for improving government legitimacy and accountability. Findings indicate that policy makers do not take advantage of the capabilities that have Web 2.0 technologies to enhance the participation of citizens in public sector management, and they only use social media tools as new channels for unidirectional communication and representation of the local government, which limits the capacity of these technologies for citizen engagement in public policies.
... The participation of citizens in a traditional e-government has already been researched [17] [18]. In the context of egovernment, participation of citizens can occur in the design, implementation, or evaluation of a project [19]. The emphasis on citizen participation is also stressed by the Open Government movement, which argues that citizens should be at the center of the public life via the transparency of government, participation and collaboration among citizens [20]. ...
During the last years, smart cities have attracted considerable attention because they are considered a response to the complex challenges that modern cities face. Smart cities provide new solutions in the domains of mobility, environment, economy, governance, quality of life, and education thanks to the innovative use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). However, smart cities often do not optimally reach their objectives if the citizens, the end-users, are not involved in their design. This article investigates how the citizens can transform a city into a smart city by being involved in the democratic process, by co-creating the smart city projects, and by proactively using the city's ICT infrastructure. This article contributes to the smart city domain in several ways. Firstly, a literature review from different research fields is performed in order to identify the different means to enable citizen participation in a smart city. Secondly, a framework to compare and evaluate smart cities as enablers of citizen participation is proposed, based on the findings of the preceding section. Finally , the framework is applied to the ongoing smart city design of Namur (Belgium), allowing drawbacks and flaws in citizens' participation to be discovered and improved.
... Numerous studies have analysed the use of social networks by governments, according to the type most commonly used, the number of followers, the number of messages sent or their content, among other parameters (Bortree and Seltzer 2009;Chi and Yang 2010;Rybalko and Seltzer 2010;Linders 2011;Rodríguez et al. 2011;Bonsón et al. 2012;Purser 2012;Towner and Dulio, 2012;Snead, 2013). However, few have examined the use of social networks by stakeholders and the benefits that accrue to society and public organisations, although such studies have been conducted with respect to the private sector (Hoffman and Fodor 2010;Moreno 2013;Peters et al. 2013). ...
Social media have changed how governments communicate with society, encouraging participation and the interaction of citizens in public affairs. The main aim of this study is to analyse the online practices of Spanish local governments, through Facebook, to examine the factors that influence these practices and to determine citizens’ mood in this respect. The results obtained show that the popularity and virality of municipal Facebook pages are greater than their followers’ degree of commitment. Users take a positive view of the pages, and the type of information most commonly shared on Facebook by Spanish local governments is of a social nature. Factors that influence local government’s Facebook practices include the level of internet use among the population, the level of municipal debt, the number of inhabitants and the economic capacity of the population.
... Online research has become a common practice nowadays; however, very few methodologies and research models have been developed to this end. This situation creates confusion and difficulty about validity and trust in research findings that collect data online (Linders, 2011). Using innovative data collection strategies, however, does not compromise the validity of the findings; Gallupe (2007) mentions that current information systems (IS) research seems more concerned with "how" the ISSN 1479-439X research is conducted than "what" research is conducted and "why". ...
... Online research has become a common practice nowadays; however, very few methodologies and research models have been developed to this end. This situation creates confusion and difficulty about validity and trust in research findings that collect data online (Linders, 2011). Using innovative data collection strategies, however, does not compromise the validity of the findings; Gallupe (2007) mentions that current information systems (IS) research seems more concerned with "how" the ISSN 1479-439X research is conducted than "what" research is conducted and "why". ...
The use of Web 2.0 features to increase the number of users on e-commerce sites is a trend that is even expanding to government sites. Web 2.0 features, such as blogs, wikis, forums, RSS, podcasts and videocasts, as well as social markers such as Del.icio.us, Technorati, Facebook and Digg have reached government sites. The purpose of this research is to assess the impact of this tendency on Mexican local government sites by asking the following question: To what extent have local eGovernment sites in Mexico adopted Web 2.0 tools? As a result of an evaluation of Mexican local government sites in 2009, we found that several Web 2.0 characteristics are being used; however, we also found that not all features are as equally well-developed or used on the local sites. Web 2.0 is only a starting point for innovation in eGovernment sites. This paper is organized into four sections: The first section introduces the trend of Web 2.0 over internet sites and how it is different from Web 1.0 and Web 3.0. The second section is dedicated to discussing the link between eGovernment and Web 2.0 according to the evolutionary model proposed by the authors. The third section describes the methodology used to collect data from local states in Mexico and the eGovernment ranking where this data was collected. The fourth and final section describes the findings of Web 2.0 and discusses the future of this trend in eGovernment sites.
... Twitter can help governments respond to crises and emergency situations (Kavanaugh et al., 2011) in conjunction with other Web 2.0 features that complement it. Citizen coproduction of ideas, content (Kloby & D'Agostino, 2012), and solutions for government problems are all part of a new participatory channel for legitimacy and government decision-making and have to be considered as a new feature of government interaction (Milam & Avery, 2012;Warner, 2011), with Twitter serving as one of the channels to promote the we-government idea (Linders, 2011). ...
More than other information technology, social media has the potential to improve communication, participation, and collaboration between governments and citizens. The widespread use of Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and blogs among citizens has forced government officials to use these technologies to reach citizens, interact with them, and legitimate policies and public decisions. Despite this great potential and the relevance of social media in today's society, there is still a relatively limited number of empirical studies that attempt to understand how governments are using these tools, particularly at the state and local levels. The main objective of this research is to understand how state governments are using Web 2.0 technologies and to provide some conceptual elements for future research in this area. Based on a longitudinal review of the 32 state Websites in Mexico and a more in-depth analysis of two cases, this chapter provides preliminary results on how state governments are using two of the most well known social media tools: Facebook and Twitter. The chapter highlights some differences and similarities among state governments. It also provides some initial ideas about how to develop a more comprehensive strategy for using social media tools and applications in state governments.
... However, very few methodologies and research models have been developed to this end. This situation creates confusion and difficulty about validity and trust in research findings that collect data online (Linders 2011). The e-research does not only make tasks easier or automates them, it raises a whole range of methodological and epistemic issues (Estalella et al. 2011). ...
Twitter has reached Mexican politics in the presidential election. Despite the fact candidates have a twitter account to send messages; we propose the question how they use it to communicate with citizens? This exploratory research provides evidence that Mexican presidential candidates are only sending messages for politicians and not for citizens. We collected and analyzed 618 tweets from the three most important political parties: PRI, PAN and PRD, from November 2011 to February 2012. Using a five category framework, we found that most candidates sent thank and regret messages, but very few messages to their militancy and citizens. We found that the lack of information about this technological tool has disabled Mexican politicians to take advantage of this tool. Finally we hope this research contributes to analyze the impact of social media in Mexican Politics in a more systematic way. © (2012) by the AIS/ICIS Administrative Office All rights reserved.
... Web 2.0 technologies contribute an inherent value, rejuvenating civil society and shifting the focus away from unsustainable entitlements toward personal responsibility and solidarity (Linders, 2012). The popular maxim that ''power comes with responsibility'' would suggest new responsibilities for the newly empowered citizen (Linders, 2011). But this reworking of the social contract is not without controversy. ...
The growing participation in social networking sites is altering the nature of social relations and changing the nature of political and public dialogue. This article contributes to the current debate on Web 2.0 technologies and their implications for local governance through the identification of governance models to be adopted by local governments if Web 2.0 technologies are implemented for providing public services. Also, this article analyzes whether the political competition could be an attribute that could explain the governance models to be adopted by municipalities. To achieve this aim, an e-survey during the period of May–July 2014 has been performed by policy makers responsible of strategies for e-government in Spanish municipalities. Findings indicate that policy makers are mainly prone to implement Web 2.0 technologies under the “Bureaucratic Model” framework, keeping the leading role in this implementation. Nonetheless, political competition seems to be essential to understand the findings of this article. Thus, majority governments are prone to implement collaborative models of governance, whereas minority governments are in favor to implement noncollaborative models of governance.
... Por otro lado, Linders (2011) propone un grupo de categorías para medir la coproducción de datos de los ciudadanos junto con el gobierno. Recientemente el ex alcalde de San Francisco publicó un conjunto de experiencias ciudadanas acerca del uso de los datos abiertos, que ha permitido mejorar los servicios gubernamentales, alentar la participación y la colaboración en aras de una mayor interacción entre ambas partes (Newsom y Dickey, 2013). ...
The idea of open government has spread across Latin American countries causing confusion and ambiguous interpretations. The concepts of "open government" and "transparency" have been used as synonyms and have created false expectations, but mostly they have been used to implement public policies and government strategies to accomplish the goal of creating a more open government. The purpose of this research is to provide some theoretical elements to clear this confusion. In order to achieve such goal, related papers of academic journals over the past six years have been reviewed and classified on three main paths of knowledge. From this point a concept of open government is proposed and discussed. The aim of this paper is to contribute with a theoretical framework that supports research on open government, transparency and accountability.
... Por otro lado, Linders (2011) propone un grupo de categorías para medir la coproducción de datos de los ciudadanos junto con el gobierno. Recientemente el ex alcalde de San Francisco publicó un conjunto de experiencias ciudadanas acerca del uso de los datos abiertos, que ha permitido mejorar los servicios gubernamentales, alentar la participación y la colaboración en aras de una mayor interacción entre ambas partes (Newsom y Dickey, 2013). ...
The idea of open government has spread across Latin American countries causing confusion and ambiguous interpretations. The concepts of " open government " and " transparency " have been used as synonyms and have created false expectations, but mostly they have been used to implement public policies and government strategies to accomplish the goal of creating a more open government. The purpose of this research is to provide some theoretical elements to clear this confusion. In order to achieve such goal, related papers of academic journals over the past six years have been reviewed and classified on three main paths of knowledge. From this point a concept of open government is proposed and discussed. The aim of this paper is to contribute with a theoretical framework that supports research on open government, transparency and accountability. Resumen: La confusión del término anglosajón open government así como del término transparency han traído consigo ambigüedades y creado falsas expectativas. Además de utilizar ambos conceptos como sinónimos, se han implementado políticas públicas para hacerlos realidad en distintos países latinoamericanos sin tener una dirección precisa o un objetivo claro. Esta investigación busca aportar elementos teóricos que ayuden a delimitar los principales caminos teóricos que se han seguido y proponer un concepto que distinga tanto la transparencia como el gobierno abierto. Para lograrlo se han revisado las principales revistas académicas y artículos de los últimos seis años y se han agrupado en tres corrientes de pensamiento para proponer un concepto sobre gobierno abierto. El objetivo es contribuir a la construcción de una teoría general más sólida, que ayude a entender mejor el gobierno abierto, la transparencia y la rendición de cuentas. Palabras clave: transparencia, gobierno abierto, teoría, conceptos, e-gobierno.
... Por otro lado, Linders (2011) propone un grupo de categorías para medir la coproducción de datos de los ciudadanos junto con el gobierno. Recientemente el ex alcalde de San Francisco publicó un conjunto de experiencias ciudadanas acerca del uso de los datos abiertos, que ha permitido mejorar los servicios gubernamentales, alentar la participación y la colaboración en aras de una mayor interacción entre ambas partes (Newsom y Dickey, 2013). ...
La confusión del término anglosajón open government así como del término transparency han traído consigo ambigüedades y creado falsas expectativas. Además de utilizar ambos conceptos como sinónimos, se han implementado políticas públicas para hacerlos realidad en distintos países latinoamericanos sin tener una dirección precisa o un objetivo claro. Esta investigación busca aportar elementos teóricos que ayuden a delimitar los principales caminos teóricos que se han seguido y proponer un concepto que distinga tanto la transparencia como el gobierno abierto. Para lograrlo se han revisado las principales revistas académicas y artículos de los últimos seis años y se han agrupado en tres corrientes de pensamiento para proponer un concepto sobre gobierno abierto. El objetivo es contribuir a la construcción de una teoría general más sólida, que ayude a entender mejor el gobierno abierto, la transparencia y la rendición de cuentas
... Technology to identify and use knowledge of citizens (Howe, 2009; Lathrop & Ruma, 2010); Business model for citizens in conditions of growing variety of government initiatives (Linders, 2011); Competence crowdsourcing system (Kazman & Chen, 2009); Digital ecosystem for e-participation of citizens in public life (Saad-Sulonen, 2010); Community of people and computers as a single ecological system that allocates different types of crowdsourcing, uses game theory and where participants can chose different strategies of behavior (Das & Vukovic, 2011); Basic concepts of crowdsourcing and examples of crowdsourcing projects based on platforms Maps Google, Wiki, Amazon's Mechanical Turk, Ushahidi (Greengard, 2011); Changing of citizens' behavior, users' active participation in the development of any system, not only in its use (Dick et al., 2011); The basics of environmental design of complicity, the organization of citizen participation in the development of a document or repository of knowledge (Hagen & Robertson, 2010); Direction to solution of semistructured social problems (Brown et al., 2010; Fitzpatrick, 2003); Technologies and techniques that solve complex social problems through public consultations, joint networking activities aimed at the creation and improvement of (Conklin, 2006; Munneke et al., 2007; Weber & Khademian, 2008). www.ccsenet.org/ass ...
The article shows the essence of crowdsourcing as a modern management technology, as the basis for innovative business models and as a way of expanding the resource base of business. It figures out the structural elements of crowdsourcing, the advantages and disadvantages of crowdsourcing and problems associated with the use of crowdsourcing technology. © 2015 Canadian Center of Science and Education. All rights reserved.
... As for these types, it is our point that they may be considered as attitudes towards different kinds of digital governance initiatives spanning from e-Government to open government. Thus, ''attitude'' is a concept we adopt to identify the current general profile of a given institution; whereas at the state of the art typologies have been provided, e.g., for categorising citizen co-production initiatives (Linders, 2011). In project planning, an identified ''attitude'' can provide evidence both at strategy and policy level of the alignment with AS-IS configuration of the proposed initiatives. ...
The article aims to investigate how key e-Governance dimensions related to openness, such as transparency and accountability, which are a necessary condition for reaching a high maturity of e-Government, may not be sufficient for open government. For this purpose, an interpretative framework to identify country attitudes towards Open Government is proposed and it is applied to two cases drawn from different legal, cultural and organisational backgrounds. Among the key findings of the article, the ‘attitudes mapping’ resulting from the application of the interpretative framework to the case studies points out the key role of different governance traditions in the path towards open government.
Given the multidimensional nature of e-participation, current studies in this field are fragmented, under-theorized, and dispersed. Understanding the primary issues under investigation is challenging, particularly for early career researchers. Despite citizens’ widespread use of e-government services, government agencies still face several challenges, particularly in providing feedback on the quality and effectiveness of these services. The existing challenges related to e-government services and citizens’ e-participation provide avenues for important research opportunities. Accordingly, the purpose of this systematic review is to (i) determine the problems and obstacles faced by citizens’ e-participation as end users of e-government services, (ii) determine the multidisciplinary elements that contribute to the success of e-participation in e-government services, and (iii) propose future research avenues. Following PRISMA 2020 guidelines, this systematic review is conducted by combining two methods: Kitchenham & Charters and Webster & Watson, focusing on studies from the period between 2010 and 2022. The findings show that while existing research models are helpful, their primary focus is on technical and political factors. Hence, a focus on psychological and social aspects is necessary, which could assist in providing a sound understanding of users’ experiences of using the different e-participation tools set by governments. This review provides a comprehensive synthesis of global e-participation challenges and success factors and presents a theoretical basis for future research endeavours.
In Sweden, a decade ago, digitalized co-production emergency response initiatives of a hybrid bottom-up type emerged. They targeted local efforts to recruit groups of citizens to provide first respons for other citizens in accidents. Benefits in terms of shorter response times, saved lives, reduced human suffering, and material damage have been demonstrated. Recently, national authorities recognized the need to support the initiatives to expand to all rescue services, and the potential to scale up the use of citizen first responders, also in large-scale crisis management and as part of civil preparedness. Previous research has studied the initiatives and developed three models aimed at supporting the implementation of digitalized co-production. In this study, we report from the initial phase of the nationwide effort, carry out an initial evaluation, and present revised models. The models are adapted to rural versus urban settings and complemented with a model providing national support. Information and communication technology plays a crucial role in all of them. We define the hybrid type as interdependent digitalized co-production where government citizen sourcing is not direct but includes the intermediate level of the rescue services. Implications are discussed, e.g., on how to achieve a balance between centralization and decentralization.
Digital technologies are changing the ways service users can cocreate value, thus rearranging relations between citizens and governments. However, research from a governance perspective is still in its infancy. Investigating 128 records, published until 2022, this article reviews and critiques the literature on digitalization and coproduction/co‐creation in public administration, offers an overview of the state of research, and outlines a future research agenda. The findings reveal four areas of concern that require more attention by researchers: the generation of public value; the analysis of the entire public service cycle; comparative studies; the mitigation of the risks arising from the implementation of digital technologies.
Over the past decade, e-government has evolved from providing static content and services to integrating user generated content and social media technologies. This allows citizens to participate and provide regular feedback on policies and programs, both of which promote public value through e-democracy. However, few studies continue to track their performance on a worldwide scale. This article discusses the results of a global and comparative survey of e-government performance, based on an assessment of municipal government websites around the world. Along with a longitudinal assessment, the study identifies best practices, highlights key findings, and provides guidance for future research.
This article examines the strategies used to foster citizens' interaction with government microblogs. While government agencies are urged to adopt social media, little is known about how citizens respond to those efforts. Using data collected from the publicity microblogs of prefecture-level municipalities in China, this article indicates that government microblogs can foster citizen-initiated interaction by acquiring microblog influencers as followers, diversifying the sources of government posts and posting more multimedia content. However, regularly updating a government microblog is not necessarily associated with citizen participation.
This article examines the strategies used to foster citizens' interaction with government microblogs. While government agencies are urged to adopt social media, little is known about how citizens respond to those efforts. Using data collected from the publicity microblogs of prefecture-level municipalities in China, this article indicates that government microblogs can foster citizen-initiated interaction by acquiring microblog influencers as followers, diversifying the sources of government posts and posting more multimedia content. However, regularly updating a government microblog is not necessarily associated with citizen participation.
Much of the current discussion of user and community co-production makes strong claims for its potential to improve outcomes. How much is actually known about the level, drivers, and potential effects of co-production? In this article, some of the key claims made for co-production are examined and an assessment is made of how they stack up against the empirical evidence. In particular, some areas are identified in which practice must be cautious about the potential contribution of co-production, and where further research is needed.
The traditional concept of the state, as represented by Max Weber’s model of bureaucracy, is characterized by hierarchical and rule-based decision making and by public service delivery through government agencies. However, hierarchical authority is no longer the dominant element of the state, as participatory structures and processes in public administration have emerged. Coproduction is a core element in the institutional order of the participatory state.
This work considers the Citizen-to-Citizen (C2C) service interaction, and shows how it could be implemented using a set of identified affordances and a decision model that considers social attributes. Specifically, we adapt the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to consider social attributes in choosing appropriate service provider for a C2C service request. In our opinion, insights from this work should help in moving Government Social Media policies towards the use of social media platforms for implementing C2C and other emerging services like C2G services.
The concept of value co-creation provides a new perspective in the research and the operation of service systems. In the literature we can find plethora of references to the significance of value co-creation and the disruptive impact it may have on research, the business practices and the social life. However, we still lack comprehensive frameworks of value co-creation that would help understanding deeply and in a systematic way the characteristics, the dimensions, the methods and the implications of value co-creation. This paper makes a step in this direction by presenting a classification framework for value co-creation in electronic and mobile services. The proposed framework is developed in three dimensions referring to the leading actor in the co-creation process, the domain of activities for value co-creation and the scale of customer participation and proposes ten types of value co-creation activities.
Purpose
– The purpose of this study is to analyse whether it is the Spanish urban environments that can be considered smart cities that are making the greatest efforts to ensure that citizens have better access to city information and, thus, participate to a greater degree in its governance.
Design/methodology/approach
– This analysis of the use made of social networks, as an integral part of democratisation, is divided into two phases: first, a descriptive study was made of the cities’ use of their social networks; we then examined, by multiple linear regression analysis, whether the urban areas classed as smart cities are those that make more or less use or application of social networks.
Findings
– Although, in general terms, the “smartest” smart cities are those which obtain the best overall results in terms of social networks, further improvements are needed, especially in the field of activity and interaction with citizens via these networks.
Originality/value
– The impact made by social media is one of the emerging research themes in the domain of smart cities, e-government and their information policies. Nevertheless, few studies have examined whether the smart cities are also those whose governments have achieved a greater degree of citizen participation through social networks. Therefore, this study contributes to our understanding of the importance of social media in the local government context, by establishing a relationship between democratic participation, through Facebook and Twitter, and the development of smart cities.
Introduction 2 Defining terms – engagement of individual citizens, not organised stakeholders 3 Policy context 3 Changing levels of supply and demand for engagement opportunities 4 Conceptual issues: the pros and cons of public engagement 5 Sharpening the existing tools for public engagement 10 Beyond public engagement: the move to user and community co-production 19 Co-governance innovations 22 Benefits and limitations to co-production 28 Conclusion: pointers to the way forward in public engagement and 31 co-production Acknowledgements 33 References 33
Scholars disagree about the impact of the Internet on civic and political engagement. Some scholars argue that Internet use will contribute to civic decline, whereas other scholars view the Internet as having a role to play in reinvigorating civic life. This article assesses the hypothesis that Internet use will contribute to declines in civic life. It also assesses whether Internet use has any significant effect on engagement. A meta-analysis approach to current research in this area is used. In total, 38 studies with 166 effects are examined. The meta-data provide strong evidence against the Internet having a negative effect on engagement. However, the meta-data do not establish that Internet use will have a substantial impact on engagement. The effects of Internet use on engagement seem to increase nonmonotonically across time, and the effects are larger when online news is used to measure Internet use, compared to other measures.
'Collaborative culture', 'mass creativity' and 'co-creation' appear to be contagious buzzwords that are rapidly infecting economic and cultural discourse on Web 2.0. Allegedly, peer production models will replace opaque, top-down business models, yielding to transparent, democratic structures where power is in the shared hands of responsible companies and skilled, qualified users. Manifestos such as Wikinomics (Tapscott and Williams, 2006) and 'We-Think' (Leadbeater, 2007) argue collective culture to be the basis for digital commerce. This article analyzes the assumptions behind this Web 2.0 newspeak and unravels how business gurus try to argue the universal benefits of a democratized and collectivist digital space. They implicitly endorse a notion of public collectivism that functions entirely inside commodity culture. The logic of Wikinomics and 'We-Think' urgently begs for deconstruction, especially since it is increasingly steering mainstream cultural theory on digital culture.
We propose an improved theoretical approach to the rich variety of collective action now present in public life. Toward this end, we advance a conception of collective action as communicative in nature, and offer a two-dimensional model of collective action space, comprising dimensions for (a) the mode of interpersonal interaction and (b) the mode of engagement that shapes interaction. We illustrate the perspective by describing the location of a variety of contemporary collective action groups within it and by an explication of the space that reveals its utility for making sense of modern collective action efforts. Specifically, we apply the collective action space to illustrate the changing presence of collective action groups over time, deviations in collective action groups through changes in size, shape, and location, and variations in the experiences and motivations of people engaged in collective action efforts. Finally, we show how our communicative approach to collective action can integrate the insights of several theoretical traditions, including collective action theory, social capital theory, and aspects of organization theory.
Billions of people participate in online social activities. Most users participate as readers of discussion boards, searchers of blog posts, or viewers of photos. A fraction of users become contributors of user-generated content by writing consumer product reviews, uploading travel photos, or expressing political opinions. Some users move beyond such individual efforts to become collaborators, forming tightly connected groups with lively discussions whose outcome might be a Wikipedia article or a carefully edited YouTube video. A small fraction of users becomes leaders, who participate in governance by setting and upholding policies, repairing vandalized materials, or mentoring novices. We analyze these activities and offer the Reader-to-Leader Framework with the goal of helping researchers, designers, and managers understand what motivates technology-mediated social participation. This will enable them to improve interface design and social support for their companies, government agencies, and non-governmental organizations. These improvements could reduce the number of failed projects, while accelerating the application of social media for national priorities such as healthcare, energy sustainability, emergency response, economic development, education, and more.
The “new public management” (NPM) wave in public sector organizational change was founded on themes of disaggregation, competition,
and incentivization. Although its effects are still working through in countries new to NPM, this wave has now largely stalled
or been reversed in some key “leading-edge” countries. This ebbing chiefly reflects the cumulation of adverse indirect effects
on citizens' capacities for solving social problems because NPM has radically increased institutional and policy complexity.
The character of the post-NPM regime is currently being formed. We set out the case that a range of connected and information
technology–centered changes will be critical for the current and next wave of change, and we focus on themes of reintegration,
needs-based holism, and digitization changes. The overall movement incorporating these new shifts is toward “digital-era governance”
(DEG), which involves reintegrating functions into the governmental sphere, adopting holistic and needs-oriented structures,
and progressing digitalization of administrative processes. DEG offers a perhaps unique opportunity to create self-sustaining
change, in a broad range of closely connected technological, organizational, cultural, and social effects. But there are alternative
scenarios as to how far DEG will be recognized as a coherent phenomenon and implemented successfully.
Some of the most difficult issues in public management revolve around making strategic choices for the future in an era of rapid social, cultural and technological change. In previous work we drew a contrast between new public management (NPM) approaches, which predominated in the period 1980-2002, and digital era governance (DEG) which grew fast in the 2000s. Since that time the rapid development of societal and technological uses of online processes has been matched by the seismic impact of the 2008 credit crunch and financial crisis, now mapping out as austerity regimes in many OECD countries. In this paper we review the current fortunes of NPM, which has not revived despite the pressure on public spending. By contrast, the first wave of digital-era governance changes have flourished and the importance of key DEG themes has increased – specifically reintegrating government services, pushing towards holistic delivery to clients and responding to the digitalization wave in public services. We also argue for the emergence of an influential ‘second wave’ of digital-era changes inside government, responding to the advent of the social web, cloud computing, apps development and many other recent phenomena moving advanced industrial societies further towards an online civilization.
The evolution of the New Public Management movement has increased pressure on state bureaucracies to become more responsive to citizens as clients. Without a doubt, this is an important advance in contemporary public administration, which finds itself struggling in an ultradynamic marketplace. However, together with such a welcome change in theory building and in practical culture reconstruction, modern societies still confront a growth in citizens’ passivism; they tend to favor the easy chair of the customer over the sweat and turmoil of participatory involvement. This article has two primary goals: First to establish a theoretically and empirically grounded criticism of the current state of new managerialism, which obscures the significance of citizen action and participation through overstressing the (important) idea of responsiveness. Second, the article proposes some guidelines for the future development of the discipline. This progress is toward enhanced collaboration and partnership among governance and public administration agencies, citizens, and other social players such as the media, academia, and the private and third sectors. The article concludes that, despite the fact that citizens are formal “owners” of the state, ownership will remain a symbolic banner for the governance and public administration–citizen relationship in a representative democracy. The alternative interaction of movement between responsiveness and collaboration is more realistic for the years ahead.
Researching and evaluating social media initiatives is essential to encourage usage, continually improve the tools and policies governing their use, and develop governance processes that incorporate social media participation in its many forms.
The provision and production of many public goods and services involve the joint effort of government officials and citizen-users. This paper examines the successful experience of irrigation governance and management in Taiwan as a means of understanding how joint efforts can be established and sustained through institutional arrangements. Several principles for institutional design, including a careful definition of the scope of farmers' participation, complementarity of interests between individuals, reduction of asymmetries involved in the use of authority, and the existence of domains of autonomy are identified as instrumental to the success in Taiwan.
Public management research has paid increasing attention to the third sector, especially to its role in the provision of public services. Evidence of this is the rising number of publications on the topic, as well as a growing number of sessions and papers on the topic in academic conferences of the EGPA and IRSPM. However, much of the discussion on its role is motivated at least as much by ideology as by fact. We still lack a comprehensive empirical understanding of what happens when the third sector is drawn into public service provision. This article is an introduction to a theme issue on Co-Production: The Third Sector and the Delivery of Public Services, which tries to enhance this understanding by presenting several new studies on the subject. It also introduces the concepts of co-production, co-management and co-governance as a conceptual framework that enables a better understanding of such developments.
Volunteers eager to help disaster victims have begun to draw on open source models of organization to mobilize and coordinate vast resources from around the world. This paper investigates two such groundbreaking efforts, involving responses to Hurricane Katrina and to the South East Asian tsunami. The study sheds light on how these organizations evolve so rapidly, how leaders emerge and confront challenges, and how interactions with traditional, more hierarchical disaster recovery efforts unfold. Lessons from these early efforts show how they can be improved, and also point to the need for more research on networked non-state actors that are playing increasingly prominent roles.
Civic engagement and collaborative public management are concepts that are defined broadly, making theoretical explication challenging and practical application of empirical research difficult. In this article, the authors adopt definitions of civic engagement and collaborative public management that are centered on the citizen and the potential for active citizenship. Following a historical review of civic engagement in the United States, a conceptual model of five approaches to civic engagement is offered. Citizen-centered collaborative public management is enhanced through these approaches. The authors suggest the need for further empirical research on collaborative public management that is grounded in citizenship action.
eDemocracy political parties are an emerging and radically new form of political party that enables citizen participation in the policy-making process using ICTs. This paper compares the eParticipation systems of four of the first eDemocracy parties (Senator On-Line, Knivsta.Now, Aktiv Demokrati and Demoex) using an eParticipation ontology that describes eParticipation systems according to 1) stages of policy-making, 2) levels of engagement, 3) stakeholders, 4) participation areas, 5) eParticipation tools and 6) emerging technologies. By applying this ontology a great diversity among eDemocracy parties' eParticipation systems was discovered. Two overall categories, proxy politician systems and deliberative community systems, are created to label the current variety of systems. However, even within these overall labels there are substantial differences and several subtypes of proxy politician eParticipation systems are suggested: individualistic systems, citizen-review systems and delegated-leaders systems. Additionally, a multi-channel system may be a variety of the deliberative community eParticipation system.
This article attempts to define "coproduction" in a manner useful to policy makers and to academics concerned with measuring the concept. Coproduction is considered the critical mix of activities that service agents and citizens contribute to the provision of public services. The involvement of the former consists of their work as professionals, or "regular producers," in the service process. Citizen coproductive activities, or "consumer production," are voluntary efforts of individuals or groups to enhance the quality and/or quantity of services they receive. Based on this definition, three types of coproduction are distinguished according to the nature of the benefits achieved: individual, group, and collective.
The key to understanding the nature of mutually empowering interaction between state and society is to distinguish two types of state power: infrastructural and despotic. While the state is always in zero-sum conflict with civil society when it seeks despotic power, the infrastructural power of the state can be enhanced by the development of strong and robust civil associations. Under certain circumstances, mutual empowerment can be used as both feasible developmental strategy and pathway to democracy once appropriate mechanisms are developed.
In the Philippines, one can send a text message to God and get a response. The President sends instructions to members of her Cabinet and other subordinates via SMS. Legislators send text messages instead of listening to their colleagues during legislative sessions. In the acknowledged SMS capital of the world, there is a poetry writing contest via SMS "to popularize and continue the tradition of one of the country's oldest forms of poetry by using modern technology". TV talent search contest allow viewers to vote for the winner using SMS. Science teachers can request for supplementary teaching materials using SMS. Farmers use SMS to find higher prices for their produce. The young use it to start and/or develop relationships: greeting a boyfriend "Gud AM"; courting a girl; expressing love/affection to parents. The cellular phone is now the Filipinos' digital device of choice. Consider the following: !" Over 22 million (of the total 80 million) Filipinos have cell phones; !" There are 6.7 million available landlines or wired telephones in the country but only half of these phones are subscribed; !" Only 5 million Filipinos have access to the Internet (six out of every 100); and !" There are only 1.53 million PCs (or about 2 PCs for every 100 Filipinos) in the country. Cell phones are popular because they are convenient, relatively inexpensive and easy to acquire. Their ubiquity also has something to do with their capability to send and receive short messages (popularly called text messages).
Citizen coproduction has its promise and its price.
This publication contains reprint articles for which IEEE does not hold copyright. Full text is not available on IEEE Xplore for these articles.
We propose an improved theoretical approach to the rich variety of collective action now present in public life. Toward this end, we advance a conception of collective action as communicative in nature, and offer a two-dimensional model of collective action space, comprising dimensions for (a) the mode of interpersonal interaction and (b) the mode of engagement that shapes interaction. We illustrate the perspective by describing the location of a variety of contemporary collective action groups within it and by an explication of the space that reveals its utility for making sense of modern collective action efforts. Specifically, we apply the collective action space to illustrate the changing presence of collective action groups over time, deviations in collective action groups through changes in size, shape, and location, and variations in the experiences and motivations of people engaged in collective action efforts. Finally, we show how our communicative approach to collective action can integrate the insights of several theoretical traditions, including collective action theory, social capital theory, and aspects of organization theory.
The public sphere is the space of communication of ideas and projects that emerge from society and are addressed to the decision makers in the institutions of society. The global civil society is the organized expression of the values and interests of society. The relationships between government and civil society and their interaction via the public sphere define the polity of society. The process of globalization has shifted the debate from the national domain to the global debate, prompting the emergence of a global civil society and of ad hoc forms of global governance. Accordingly, the public sphere as the space of debate on public affairs has also shifted from the national to the global and is increasingly constructed around global communication networks. Public diplomacy, as the diplomacy of the public, not of the government, intervenes in this global public sphere, laying the ground for traditional forms of diplomacy to act beyond the strict negotiation of power relationships by building on shared cultural meaning, the essence of communication.
Partnerships increasingly play a major role in determining and implementing major policy drives in localities. Under-standing how they may provide value is therefore essential to understanding modern governance principles. This article describes action research aiming to develop a conceptualization of fac-tors inherent in collaborative forms and, hence, about their practicality as governance tools. Different interpreta-tions of what collaborative governance is intended to achieve are first reviewed. Two areas that seriously affect the ability of collaborations to deliver their potential, structural complexity and diversity are then reviewed. The article concludes by considering what is needed to make collaborative governance work.
Citizen participation is commonly viewed as attempts to influence the formulation of public policy. In this paper, the author argues that citizens also can and do exert important influences on policy through their participation in the execution of public programs. This is particularly the case in human services where change in the client's behavior is the "product" which is supposed to be delivered. Citizens "coproduce" public services by requesting assistance from service agents, by cooperating with service agents in carrying out agency programs, and by negotiating with service agents to redirect agents' activities. Citizen participation in service delivery is, in fact, often critical to program success.
The Obama administration campaigned on the platform of increased transparency and access to government information after the limitations of the Bush years. As part of this focus on transparency, the Obama administration is emphasizing the use of e-government and new social media services to open up access to government. This paper explores the considerations and challenges of this approach, such as the inclusion of members of the public with limited access to the internet, the use of non-governmental channels to disseminate government information, the permanence of digital-born government information, and the design of e-government.
The governance of natural resources used by many individuals in common is an issue of increasing concern to policy analysts. Both state control and privatization of resources have been advocated, but neither the state nor the market have been uniformly successful in solving common pool resource problems. After critiquing the foundations of policy analysis as applied to natural resources, Elinor Ostrom here provides a unique body of empirical data to explore conditions under which common pool resource problems have been satisfactorily or unsatisfactorily solved. Dr Ostrom uses institutional analysis to explore different ways - both successful and unsuccessful - of governing the commons. In contrast to the proposition of the 'tragedy of the commons' argument, common pool problems sometimes are solved by voluntary organizations rather than by a coercive state. Among the cases considered are communal tenure in meadows and forests, irrigation communities and other water rights, and fisheries.
The heated controversy over “citizen participation,” “citizen control”, and “maximum feasible involvement of the poor,” has been waged largely in terms of exacerbated rhetoric and misleading euphemisms. To encourage a more enlightened dialogue, a typology of citizen participation is offered using examples from three federal social programs: urban renewal, anti-poverty, and Model Cities. The typology, which is designed to be provocative, is arranged in a ladder pattern with each rung corresponding to the extent of citizens' power in determining the plan and/or program.
What is the impact of the possibility of political participation on the Internet on long-standing patterns of participatory inequality in American politics? An August 2008 representative survey of Americans conducted by the Pew Internet and American Life Project provides little evidence that there has been any change in the extent to which political participation is stratified by socio-economic status, but it suggests that the web has ameliorated the well-known participatory deficit among those who have just joined the electorate. Even when only that subset of the population with Internet access is considered, participatory acts such as contributing to candidates, contacting officials, signing a political petition, or communicating with political groups are as stratified socio-economically when done on the web as when done offline. The story is different for stratification by age where historically younger people have been less engaged than older people in most forms of political participation. Young adults are much more likely than their elders to be comfortable with electronic technologies and to use the Internet, but among Internet users, the young are not especially politically active. How these trends play out in the future depends on what happens to the current Web-savvy younger generation and the cohorts that follow and on the rapidly developing political capacities of the Web. Stay logged on …
Conclusions about the impact of the Internet on civic engagement have been hampered by the unavailability of before and after measures, a shortage of varied and multiple indicators of attitudes and behaviors regarding engagement, and insufficient attention to generational differences. This article seeks to address these weaknesses by employing a quasi-experimental design that draws on the 1982 and 1997 waves of a panel study that began with a national sample of the high school class of 1965 and that also includes that generation's lineage successor. Comparisons between those using and not using the Internet demonstrated that the digital divide, the original pre-Internet gap in civic engagement, remained in place or increased slightly over time. Taking into account pre-Internet levels of civic engagement and key socioeconomic characteristics indicates that Internet access has positive effects on several indicators of civic engagement. Comparisons of civic engagement among Internet users according to how much they employ the Internet for political purposes revealed modest bivariate associations and very little independent effect at the multivariate level. The connection between the Internet and civic engagement differed across the two generations in some respects, explained in part by intergenerational divergence in the intersection between the stage of individual political development and incorporation of the Internet into a person's media repertory.
What follows is an exploratory examination of the current disengagement of young Americans from public life, some thoughts on the roots of this disengagement, and speculations on the ways in which new technologies such as the Internet might be used to improve this state of affairs. It is meant to be a starting point for discussion.
If the next Presidential administration really wants to embrace the potential of Internet-enabled government transparency, it should follow a counter-intuitive but ultimately compelling strategy: reduce the federal role in presenting important government information to citizens. Today, government bodies consider their own websites to be a higher priority than technical infrastructures that open up their data for others to use. We argue that this understanding is a mistake. It would be preferable for government to understand providing reusable data, rather than providing websites, as the core of its online publishing responsibility. Rather than struggling, as it currently does, to design sites that meet each end-user need, we argue that the executive branch should focus on creating a simple, reliable and publicly accessible infrastructure that exposes the underlying data. Private actors, either nonprofit or commercial, are better suited to deliver government information to citizens and can constantly create and reshape the tools individuals use to find and leverage public data. The best way to ensure that the government allows private parties to compete on equal terms in the provision of government data is to require that federal websites themselves use the same open systems for accessing the underlying data as they make available to the public at large.
For at least a decade, scholars have sought ways to remedy citizen dissatisfaction with representative democracy. Recently, the development and deployment of the Internet has been heralded as a technical solution to this problem. Observers often base their optimism on analysis of the Internet’s impact on elections and public comment processes. Yet elections do not generate the policies that people resent—policy processes do. So far, we know little about the Internet’s role in this critical social activity. This article provides a framework for locating the Internet’s impact on policy processes and presents findings from two case studies on “Internet-enabled” policy making. The cases suggest that the Internet will not fix what ails representative democracy. Indeed, the Internet may only reinforce the much-resented organizational dominance of politics. Reconnecting politics with society is still primarily the work of organizational and institutional reformers, not hardware and software engineers.
Liberal representative democracy models appear to have a built-in bias against citizens in disorganized or informal sectors that are not highly focused, in contrast to those driven by single issues. Powerful lobby groups are able to mobilize resources and influence government agendas for their own causes, while groups without resources or a single focus have no mechanism for influencing government policies and processes. The imbalance created by lobbying is probably one of the most serious issues confronting current liberal representative democracy models. —Kakabadse, Kakabadse, and Kouzmin (2003, 48)
Networks have assumed a place of prominence in the literature on public and private governing structures. The many positive attributes of networks are often featured—the capacity to solve problems, govern shared resources, create learning opportunities, and address shared goals—and a literature focused on the challenges networks pose for managers seeking to realize these network attributes is developing. The authors share an interest in understanding the potential of networks to govern complex public, or “wicked,” problems. A fundamental challenge to effectively managing any public problem in a networked setting is the transfer, receipt and integration of knowledge across participants. When knowledge is viewed pragmatically, the challenge is particularly acute. This perspective, the authors argue, presents a challenge to the network literature to consider the mind-set of the managers—or collaborative capacity-builders—who are working to achieve solutions to wicked problems. This mind-set guides network managers as they apply their skills, strategies, and tools in order to foster the transfer, receipt, and integration of knowledge across the network and, ultimately, to build long-term collaborative problem-solving capacity.
Collaborative public management research is flourishing. A great deal of attention is being paid to the process and impact of collaboration in the public sector, and the results are promising. This article reviews the literature on collaborative public management by synthesizing what we know from recent research and what we’ve known for quite some time. It addresses the prevalence of collaboration (both recently and historically), the components of emerging collaborative structures, the types of skills that are unique to collaborative management, and the effects of collaboration. Collaborative public management research offers a set of findings that contribute to an emerging knowledge base that supplements established public management theory.
In recent years, there has been a radical reinterpretation of the role of policy making and service delivery in the public domain. Policy making is no longer seen as a purely top-down process but rather as a negotiation among many interacting policy systems. Similarly, services are no longer simply delivered by professional and managerial staff in public agencies but are coproduced by users and their communities. This article presents a conceptual framework for understanding the emerging role of user and community coproduction and presents several case studies that illustrate how different forms of coproduction have played out in practice. Traditional conceptions of service planning and management are now outdated and need to be revised to account for coproduction as an integrating mechanism and an incentive for resource mobilization—a potential that is still greatly underestimated. However, coproduction in the context of multipurpose, multistakeholder networks raises important public governance issues that have implications for public services reform.
Privatization research lacks an understanding of the scope and nature of informal service delivery relationships between nonprofits and local government. This article reports on a study of local service delivery partnerships in Georgia using survey and interview data. In addition to assessing the frequency of noncontractual partnerships, this study builds on B. Guy Peters’s definition of public–private partnerships to delineate the control–formality dimensions of these partnerships more clearly. The agency theory notion that a trade-off occurs between formality and control is also tested. The findings show that most public–private partnerships involving nonprofits are led by government agencies, and they are only weakly collaborative in the sense of shared authority or resources. Often, community norms substitute for formal service agreements. The study concludes with suggestions for further research regarding trust and behavioral norms in public–private partnerships.
The adoption of electronic rulemaking by many federal agencies provides an opportunity for a greatly enhanced public role—both in terms of the numbers of people who might participate and the depth of their possible participation. This step towards E-governance poses several challenges for agencies: how they should structure their proceedings, how they can process the comments received and how they can foster and take part in the online communities of interest that will result from this activity. The online tools that may be applied to rulemaking and its ancillary activities—advisory committees, advanced notices of proposed rulemaking and enforcement—can also be used at earlier stages of the legislative process to increase public interest, involvement and commitment. This approach is relevant for all levels of government and for any issue on which public hearings are held or public comment solicited. It can provide an efficient and effective nonadversarial process in which officials and members of the public can mutually define problems and explore alternative solutions.
The Internet is often perceived as yet another technological innovation that causes a further widening of the gap between rich and poor. However, one of the most interesting phenomena to come out of the Internet revolution is its utilization as a channel for social development. Volunteers working in task forces who were recruited through the net, work to improve the lives of many millions of people in need throughout the world. Some of these volunteers are ‘field workers’, working in physical proximity to those they are trying to help, while others may be sitting at home, using their computers to help needy populations many thousands of miles away. This paper studies this trend and advocates a model to explain the potential and promise of online volunteerism from the perspective of the volunteer. It is suggested that understanding the characteristics behind Internet volunteering from the perspective of the volunteer may enhance the positive potential of the Internet.The model focuses on the unique informative and communicative aspects of net volunteering. It does so by separating this phenomenon into three separate subdivisions: the personal, the interpersonal, and the group. The personal subdivision refers to the advantages of volunteering on an individual level. The interpersonal subdivision refers to advantages in terms of dyadic interaction, and the group subdivision refers to the advantages as a result of being part of a task group. This paper concentrates almost exclusively on the positive, rather than negative, aspects of the Internet and Internet volunteering. This is because of the need for brevity, but more importantly, because the positive aspects of the Internet have been widely ignored by scholars. This paper aims to focus on these and to turn the spotlight on a fascinating combination of the affirmative harnessing of the Internet to increase social justice, and human well-being through unpaid volunteer work.
This article explores the theory and practice of society’s participation in strengthening government accountability. It argues that both “exit” solutions based in marketization and “voice” solutions grounded in “coproduction,” social protest or consultation are insufficient. The best way to tap into the energy of society is through “co-governance,” which involves inviting social actors to participate in the core activities of the state. By way of demonstration, the article examines case studies from a wide range of contexts (Brazil, Mexico, the United States, India) and policy areas (poverty reduction, infrastructure provision, school reform, electoral administration, police reform).
Recent developments in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) have improved the decision-making within the parameters of existing political tradition and can also challenge fundamental assumptions about the organization of democratic governments. The three broad categories of ICTs based on interaction between governments and citizens include communication component (CC), deliberation component (DC), and voting component (VC). It is found that improvements in CC can lead to a decrease in decision-making costs, and improvements in DC and VC can lead to a decrease in decision-making and external costs. Bodies Electric and Votia are examples of two private companies that specialize in developing and integrating ICTs to support government decision-making over the Internet.
"In this Lecture, I want to outline two fundamental social aspects of the emerging economic-technological condition of the networked information economy: the economic concerned with the organization of production and consumption in this economy, and the political concerned with how we pursue autonomy, democracy, and social justice in this new condition. We have seen over the past few years glimpses of this emerging economy and of its emerging political implications. We have seen the surprising growth of free software, an oasis of anarchistic production that is beating some of the world s richest corporations at their own game making reliable high-quality software. We have seen a Russian computer programmer jailed for weeks in the United States pending indictment for writing software that lets Americans read books that they are not allowed to read. These and many other stories sprinkled throughout the pages of the technology sections of our daily newspapers hint at a deep transformation that is taking place, and at an epic battle over how this transformation shall go and who will come out on top when the dust settles."