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Reference this paper: Falco, E., and Kleinhans, R., 2018. Beyond Information-Sharing. A Typology Of Government Challenges
And Requirements For Two-Way Social Media Communication With Citizens. The Electronic Journal of e-Government, 16(1),
pp. 18-31, available online at www.ejeg.com
Beyond Information-Sharing. A Typology Of Government Challenges
And Requirements For Two-Way Social Media Communication With
Citizens
Enzo Falco and Reinout Kleinhans
Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, Department OTB - Research for the Built
Environment, Delft University of Technology, Netherlands
E.Falco@tudelft.nl
R.J.Kleinhans@tudelft.nl
Abstract: Despite great advances in ICT, social media, participatory platforms and mobile apps, we seem to still be locked in
the one-way communication “paradigm” where information flows unilaterally from government to citizens and seldom
vice-versa. As a result, citizens are more receivers rather than conscious producers of information, data, ideas, solutions
and decisions in the context of public policies. By means of an extensive literature review, this paper aims to explore the
challenges on the part of government that prevent the transition to more dialogic governance and identifies the
requirements for a meaningful application of social media for this purpose. The paper contributes to the literature in three
ways: i) redefining a typology of social media-based citizens-government relationship; ii) clarifying the difference between
challenges and risks of social media application by governments and identifying a typology of government challenges; and
iii) identifying government requirements as a conditio sine-qua non for overcoming these challenges upfront, enabling more
effective two-way interactions between governments and citizens. The paper concludes with discussion of implications and
directions for further research.
Keywords: Social media, Social media-based collaboration, Government challenges, Government requirements, Citizen
engagement, Two-way communication, Citizens-government relationship
1. Introduction
Social media have become highly embedded in the daily activity patterns of many citizens. Digital and web 2.0
technologies (e.g. online forums, web-GIS, e-petition platforms, wikis, and social networking sites such as
Facebook and Twitter) are supposed to facilitate new forms of citizen participation in government activity
within the framework of concepts such as digital democracy, open and e-government, e-participation and co-
production (Conroy and Evans-Cowley, 2006; Silva, 2010; Meijer, 2011; Desouza and Bhagwatwar, 2014).
Collaboration between governments and citizens is sought in various policy domains, ranging from health care,
crime prevention, public service and information delivery to urban planning, transportation, corruption and so
on (Desouza and Bhagwatwar, 2012).
However, it is still unclear whether the aforementioned digital technologies are able to contribute significantly
to a more active engagement of citizens in policy-making, implementation and (public) service delivery. While it
is widely acknowledged that social media open up opportunities for improved government-to-citizens
interactions and communication (Bertot et al., 2012; Chun and Reyes, 2012; Lee and Kwak 2012, Linders, 2012;
Picazo-Vela et al., 2012; Skoric et al., 2016), some authors highlight the need for a change in government
culture, routines and resource management that also includes connecting in person and taking offline action to
effect change (ALotaibi et al., 2016; Evans-Cowley & Hollander, 2010; Slotterback, 2011; Magro, 2012; Casey
and Li, 2012; Kleinhans et al., 2015). The rise of social media use by governments appears not to have affected
the unilateral relationship between who provides information and takes decisions (playing an active role, the
government) and who receives the information or the consequences of a decision (playing a passive role, the
citizens). In fact, we seem to still be locked in the one-way communication “paradigm” where citizens are more
receivers rather than conscious producers or creators of information, data, ideas, solutions and decisions in the
context of public policies. The actual influence of social media (in general applications that allow creation and
sharing of user-generated content) on decision-making processes and their results is yet to be fully explored.
Many authors have emphasised that current practices have not reached the dialogic (two-way communication
and collaboration) ideal of governance (Desouza and Bhagwatwar, 2012; Zavattaro and Sementelli, 2014;
Afzalan and Evans-Cowley, 2015; Ertiö, 2015).
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The need for more effective and substantial two-way communication between governments and citizens is not
just a product of technological progress. Due to the prolonged economic crisis, many European countries have
installed austerity measures and severe cuts and reforms in public policy. To mitigate austerity regimes and
continuing welfare state retrenchment, governments promote active citizenship, citizens are invited to take
(more) responsibility and fill in gaps left by government spending cuts in health care, education, employment
and neighbourhood governance (Voorberg et al., 2015). This challenge for citizens does not require less but
rather more two-way interaction, or at least more effective dialogue between citizens and governments. They
need to make better use of each other’s assets and resources to achieve better outcomes and/or more
efficiency in (public) service delivery. In essence, this is a definition of co-production (Bovaird and Loeffler,
2012: 1121), implying that two-way communication and collaboration between governments and active
citizens, both offline and online, are a sine qua non for co-production.
Considering the growing importance of co-production and the widespread acknowledgement that social media
create opportunities for ‘better’ interactions between governments and citizens, the question is why current
practices of social media application have not reached the aforementioned transition to a dialogic ideal of
governance. Using an extensive literature review, this paper aims to explore the challenges on the part of
government that prevent such a transition and identify the requirements for a meaningful application of social
media that enables two-way communication between governments and citizens. While the literature on social
media challenges is abundant, this paper contributes to the extant literature through a clarification and
systematization of three issues:
1. the confusion regarding the nature and various intensity of citizens-government relationships due to
a proliferation of categorizations of these relationships in the literature that tend to overlook each
other;
2. the nature and types of challenges for governments because of a tendency to confuse challenges
and other elements such as requirements and risks, while we will show that they are different;
3. the essential initial requirements (from the government) to apply social media in a more dialogic
way.
Hence, the paper tries to answer questions such as: beyond the readily available technology, what steps do
governments need to take for two-way communication and meaningful collaboration with citizens? What
challenges do governments face in the application of social media for such purposes and what are the
necessary requirements that allow challenges to be addressed?
The paper is structured as follows. Section 2 identifies and clarifies the levels of social media-based interaction
between citizens and government that may lead to collaboration and/or co-production. In section 3, we
present the research design that has been utilised to conduct this research. In section 4, a specific typology of
government challenges is defined. Section 5 provides a typology of the requirements that governments need to
meet to address the challenges. Section 6 sets out the conclusions and the specific contribution of this work to
the wider literature and e-government activity.
2. Types of social media-based citizens-government relationship
The use of social media, defined as internet-based applications built on the ideological and technological
foundations of Web 2.0 that are designed to facilitate dissemination of information, interaction, and exchange
of user-generated content (Kaplan and Haenlein, 2010; Kavanaugh et al., 2012), allows new forms of
interaction and civic engagement to emerge and is adding on to other forms of communication, rather than
replacing them (Wellman et al., 2003; Wenger et al., 2009; Chun and Reyes, 2012; Lee and Kwak 2012, Linders,
2012; van Varik & van Oostendorp, 2013; Skoric et al., 2016). In this paper, we will refer to these forms as types
of the citizens-government relationship typology within which different types and levels of communication,
interaction and involvement can be found. These new types of citizens-government relationship have been
discussed by many authors, but categorizations available in the literature are often overlooked by authors
trying to develop their own categorization (McMillan, 2002; Suen, 2006; Linders, 2012; Khan, 2015; Mergel,
2013; Williamson and Parolin, 2013; De Souza and Bhagwatwar, 2014; Li and Feeney, 2014; Ertiö, 2015; Jones,
2015). This has increased rather than cleared confusion. Generally, three levels with an increasing degree of
interaction are identified:
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• Information sharing. One-way communication from government to citizens. McMillan (2002) calls
this Monologues whereas Linders (2012: 449) defines this level Government as a Platform.
• Interaction (two-way communication with dialogue between citizens and government
representatives flowing both ways). McMillan (2002) calls this mutual discourse.
• Civic engagement, involvement, collaboration: on this level, the two-way interactions go beyond
basic information exchange to ‘materialise’ in policy measures or other interventions. This level is
also known as co-production, i.e. the public sector and citizens making better use of each other’s
assets and resources to achieve better outcomes and improved efficiency (Bovaird and Loeffler
2012: 1121).
However, some authors (e.g. Desouza and Bhagwatwar, 2014; Ertiö, 2015) identify more levels and sub-levels
which further specify the role of and information flows between the actors involved in the citizen-government
relationship. Ertiö (2015) for example identifies consultation as a sub-level of information sharing where
information flows one-way from citizens to governments, and criteria power (ability of citizens to determine a
policy or service) and operational power (ability of citizens to determine how a policy or service is carried out in
practice) as the two sub-levels of civic engagement, involvement and collaboration (the author calls this level
empowerment). Interestingly, Desouza and Bhagwatwar (2014: 37) in their four archetypes of technology-
enabled participatory platforms identify the citizen-centric and citizen-sourced data archetype “as an
alternative medium for citizens to organize themselves to make a difference in their local communities.”
Linders (2012) calls this level Do it Yourself Government.
This, in our opinion, is the ‘top’ level of the citizen-government relationship typology in which citizens self-
organize to produce solutions. However, at this level there may be little or no interaction between citizens and
government as self-organization is predominantly effectuated by citizens. Interaction takes place only where
choice and implementation of the solution still requires some government action, as Desouza and Bhagwatwar
(2014) and Linders (2012) emphasise in their categorizations. However, in this Do it Yourself and citizen-to-
citizen relationship type, we also find self-organization among citizens about matters of private interest that
concern individual decisions (where to find the best plumbing service, or the best school for their children). In
such a case there is not necessarily a relationship between citizens and government. Hence, government action
is not by definition required. This kind of self-organization about private and individual matters may result in
two different kinds of output: in the first case they stay in the domain of private and individual choice without
impacting the public sphere. In the second case, they may develop into demands of public interest (new
playground needed, new kindergarten) that require some government action, for example in terms of building
permits. It is for this latter reason that we include them in the self-organization level. Based on the
international literature, the levels of the citizens-government relationship typology can be defined as in Table 1
below.
Table 1: Typology of social media-based citizens-government relationship
Levels Sub-levels
Information sharing Informing: One-way communication (‘broadcasting’) from government to citizens.
Consulting: One-way communication from citizens to governments.
Interaction Two-way communication with dialogue and feedback between citizens and government
representatives.
Co-production The public sector and citizens making better use of each other’s assets and resources to achieve
better outcomes and improved efficiency.
Self-organization Citizens create solutions independently that are to be recognised, facilitated or adopted by
governments and require some government action.
Citizens share information and self-organize for matters of private interest that may develop into
public demands requiring some government action.
However, despite a growing number of web-based and mobile-based platforms where people can express their
opinion, identify local problems and propose solutions, authors highlight persisting issues, including “little
evidence of social media being used to create mutual discourse communication” (Williamson and Parolin;
2013: 560), a model of “participatory sensing rather than participatory decision-making through apps” (Ertiö;
2015: 317), and “a large segment of the population (…) does not feel comfortable making use of emerging
social media (Linders, 2012: 452).
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In sum, while the technology is readily available, we find that government is not fully exploiting the potential of
such platforms, so there are probably issues and challenges that prevent governments from further developing
and using the communicative potential of social media. The challenges may relate to technical, organizational,
and online matters, but also to factors that are predominantly of an offline nature. While recent research has
explored those factors affecting citizens’ decisions to use social media platforms for communication with their
government (ALotaibi et al., 2016), we still lack a proper answer to the following question: what are the
challenges for government to application of social media platforms in ways that enable effective two-way
communication about ideas and solutions?
In the next section the research design is discussed. The aim of section 4 is to identify the challenges that can
hinder web-based two-way communication through social media.
3. Research Design
In order to perform our extensive review of government challenges and requirements we split our work into
two phases: the first one dedicated to the challenges and the second phase to the requirements. We decided
not to employ a systematic literature review method because of the extremely high number of articles on
social media use which would have included too many irrelevant sources (i.e. topics such as advertising,
healthcare, families and parenting). Instead, we decided to employ a snowball approach and built our body of
literature through this method. As far as the challenges are concerned, we started with a Google Scholar search
via the most relevant keywords to our study of social media challenges for government organizations:
“government social media” and “social media challenges”. In order to identify the most relevant research
articles among the Google Scholar search results, we started from those which contained in their title the term
social media in connection with either the word government/public sector or challenges and were cited more
than 100 times (according to Google Scholar) (e.g. Kaplan and Haenlein, 2010; Mergel, 2010; Bertot et al., 2010
& 2012; Kavanaugh et al., 2012; Linders, 2012; Macnamara and Zerfass, 2012; Magro, 2012; Picazo-Vela et al.,
2012; Khan et al., 2014. Zavattaro and Sementelli, 2014). We have mainly reviewed studies that focus on the
application of social media in government and highlight challenges specific to their case studies and surveys
(e.g. Evans-Cowley and Hollander, 2010; Landsbergen, 2010; Casey & Li, 2012; Kavanaugh et al., 2012; Picazo-
Vela et al., 2012; Mergel, 2013; Williamson and Parolin, 2013; Afzalan and Evans-Cowley, 2015; Alasem, 2015;
Bonson et al., 2015; Jukic & Merlak, 2017). The snowball approach used the reference lists of the
aforementioned studies to identify and further build up relevant literature. However, we did not limit our
search for challenges to government and e-government studies only. Literature from other fields was also used
such as business, management and corporate social media (Farhoomand et al., 2000; Kaplan and Haenlein,
2010; Kuikka and Akkinen, 2011; Poba-Nzaou et al., 2016) since some issues and challenges originating from
these fields (e.g. organization reputation, human resources, resistance to change) are relevant for the public
sector too.
As far as the requirements are concerned, we started from the concept of capabilities to which scholars
generally refer in the e-government literature (e.g. Layne and Lee, 2001, Gottschalk, 2009; Klievink and
Janssen, 2009; Lee, 2010; Valdes et al., 2011; Lee and Kwak, 2012; Fath-Allah et al., 2014; Khan, 2015) and
extended our review to the maturity models and maturity stages, and their inherent capabilities, of adoption
and implementation of social media and ICT in government (see Table 3 in section 5). The analysis of these
capabilities informs our identification of requirements that governments need to meet. We also look at
business literature since social media have been used in business for longer than in government and
requirements could potentially be drawn from here, especially with regard to financial, budget, analysis, and
monitoring elements (Lehmkuhl et al., 2013; Geyer and Krumay, 2015).
4. Challenges to application of social media by government
In this section we review and focus specifically on the challenges that make it hard for governments to engage
in two-way communication activities with citizens. However, before we start our review of challenges, it is of
utmost importance to define what we mean by ‘challenge’ to the use of social media by the government. Poba-
Nzaou et al. (2016: 4011) define challenges as “any issue an organization may have that may prevent them
from adopting social media.” However, this definition seems too general for our purposes. We feel that a clear
definition of challenges is lacking in the literature and there is a general tendency to include other elements,
e.g. risks, in the challenges category. We focus on challenges and try to clarify what is meant by challenges,
why they are different from risks and therefore cannot be included in the same category.
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4.1 Definition of challenges
Challenge is defined by the Oxford Dictionary as “a task or situation that tests someone’s abilities”. The
Cambridge Dictionary defines challenge as “(the situation of being faced with) something that needs
great mental or physical effort in order to be done successfully and therefore tests a person's ability.” As can be
seen, both definitions emphasise the ability of a person to do something (a task). For our categorization
purposes, it is necessary to further clarify what an ability is as a prerequisite to identify the challenges. The
Oxford Dictionary defines ability as the “possession of the means or skill to do something”. The Cambridge
Dictionary defines it as “the physical or mental power or skill needed to do something.” In our case the focus is
on government and so we can define the abilities (means, power and skills) of government as the set of human
and financial resources that the government possesses to do something. Thus, challenge can be defined as the
situation or task that tests the government’s abilities (resources, skills and expertise) to do something, namely
adopt, use and optimise social media for two-way communication and collaboration strategies with citizens.
On the contrary, risks are negative or unwanted consequences (Khan et al., 2014) that arise after the
government has started using social media. Risks differ from challenges in their nature and because they arise
usually at a later stage and as a consequence of not properly addressing challenges. It derives that the ability to
address challenges will reduce and mitigate risks. Examples of risks are related to intellectual property or
copyright infringement, psychological consequences, identity theft, public criticism, the amount of time that
government employees without social media duties and responsibilities spend on social media while at work,
system failures and downtime. Even though extremely important for the success of social media projects, risks
are not the focus of this section. Also, in this section we are not interested in the factors that influence the
usefulness of social media, the satisfaction of the general public with government social media, citizens’
adoption of e-government services, and the success of social media implementation (e.g. Creswell et al., 2006;
Hrdinova et al., 2010; Shareef et al., 2011). Some of them are of course interrelated (e.g. availability of a social
media strategy is fundamental for the success of social media projects), but our focus is explicitly placed on
challenges.
4.2 Typology of challenges
Different categorizations of challenges have been already attempted in the literature (e.g. Bertot et al., 2012;
Meijer et al., 2012; Picazo-Vela et al., 2012; Khan et al., 2014). We review the challenges that have been
identified through both empirical applications of social media in government (e.g. in urban planning) and
surveys and interviews with government officials. Two categorizations are particularly useful for our purposes.
First, Kuikka and Akkinen (2011) distinguish between challenges based on whether they are internal or
external to the organization. Second, Poba-Nzaou et al. (2016) distinguish between challenges directly
associated with social media and challenges not related to social media themselves. We will call these direct
and indirect challenges, respectively.
We will first discuss the challenges based on the internal/external categorization and then we will move on to
present whether they can be considered direct or indirect through the help of a matrix that defines a typology
of challenges for social media application by governments.
4.2.1 External challenges
As the name indicates, this kind of challenges comes from aspects that are external to the organization.
Therefore, the organization has little or no power to address the causes of these challenges in advance or to
influence their scope. Borrowing from the categorization and conceptual framework of Picazo-Vela et al. (2012:
507) (general context, institutional framework, inter-organizational collaboration and networks, organizational
structures and processes, information and data, technology), we found that external challenges fall within the
categories of general context, institutional framework, data and technology.
Generally, the main external challenge identified in the literature is related to the general context and concerns
Internet accessibility, digital illiteracy and the digital divide of the population. This is normally considered not to
be a major issue in the Western World where the majority of people have access to the Internet. However, as
many authors highlight (Burkhardt et al., 2014; Bertot et al., 2012; Picazo-Vela et al., 2012) if we broaden the
spectrum of countries and contexts, people and age groups, limited access to the Internet by the wider
population and their low ability to use social media can constitute a problem for government and complicate
the use of social media for the dissemination of information, provision of services, collaboration with citizens
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and so on. However, single government organizations have little power or too few means to overcome limited
access and citizens’ lack of abilities to reduce the digital divide.
Other external challenges come from the institutional framework. Bertot et al. (2012) provide an extensive
analysis of the impact of U.S. laws and regulations on the use of social media by government. Examples are
regulations on accessibility of social media by people with disabilities and in different languages, on privacy,
data protection and security. Availability of information in different languages and for the visually impaired
requires further work and expertise from the government. With regard to privacy and data protection, external
challenges also relate to the use of third party social media (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube) and ownership of
the data and information that is posted to them.
Finally, Poba-Nzaou and colleagues (2016) identify challenges related to data management and technology that
can be classified as external ones. These relate to the complexity and high speed of (global) technological
change of social media, and the completeness, accuracy, and format of data and information coming from the
public which test government’s abilities as consumer of this externally created information.
4.2.2 Internal challenges
Contrary to external challenges, internal challenges depend on aspects that are internal to the organization and
its structure (e.g. Voorberg et al., 2015), and which the organization can directly influence. Several internal
challenges are identified in the literature. Again, referring to the categorization of Picazo-Vela et al., (2012), we
can relate internal challenges to organizational structures and processes, information, data and technology. As
can be noted, we do not consider “inter-organizational collaboration and networks” since we believe that this
category gives rise to challenges that are included in the three previously mentioned internal categories (e.g.
uniformity of data, consistent technology between government agencies, and relationships between agencies
in terms of functions and hierarchy).
The first set of internal organizational and process-related challenges can be linked to the preparation of a clear
strategy and policy guidelines for social media use regarding purposes, target audience, what, when and how
often to post, announcing and publicizing social media use (Heeks, 2006; Landsbergen, 2010; Bryer and
Zavattaro, 2011). Macnamara and Zerfass (2012) in their study found that about 20 percent of surveyed
organizations had a broad social media strategy and about 35 percent had social media guidelines. As Mergel
(2013) stresses in her work, based on 25 interviews with US federal government agencies’ representatives,
there is little reflection to strategically plan out engagement activities beyond pushing government information
out through social media. The lack of a social media strategy and guidelines can depend on a second set of
internal challenges that relate to the structure of the organization and organizational culture. As Curtis et al.
(2010) suggest, organizations with a strong public relations department are more likely to adopt and use social
media. Farhoomand et al. (2000), Williamson and Parolin (2013), and Voorberg et al. (2015) emphasise that as
regards the organization culture, challenges concern lack of knowledge and understanding of the value and
benefits that could be gained from citizen input to public service delivery, lack of management commitment,
resistance to change, and negative attitudes. Meijer et al. (2012) stress the importance of availability of
transformational leadership as one of the main challenges to achieve institutional innovation.
Another important internal challenge comes from the management and business literature (Kuikka and
Akkinen, 2011) in terms of reputation of the organization. The reputation challenge is believed to apply to
government agencies too and can derive from public criticisms. Government agencies need to be able to
handle criticism on social media related, for example, to lack of political commitment to policy agenda and
social issues, episodes of corruption, unpopular decisions on public investment and so on. This challenge
depends on the organization’s decisions and can be managed and influenced by the organization itself. We
consider this as a direct challenge when it arises on social media channels. Other internal challenges relate to
availability of trained personnel and expertise, and cost justification to retrain public relations managers or hire
new personnel to guarantee timely responses to citizens’ comments and questions on social media to foster
two-way communication (Landsbergen, 2010; Bryer Zavattaro, 2011; Bovaird & Loeffler, 2012; Kavanaugh et
al., 2012; Lee and Kwak, 2012).
The last set of internal challenges regard data management and technology. The government agency needs to
guarantee the objectivity of data, its quality, integrity and openness (e.g. accessible formats, complete, reliable
and updated data) (Bertot et al., 2012). Hardware, software and infrastructure needs also represent a
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challenge and if not well planned could result in incompatibility of systems and use of untested technology (e.g.
all departments of an agency using the same social media platform) (Pica-Vela et al., 2012).
After having categorized the challenges in internal and external categories, Table 2 summarises the different
sub-categories and highlights whether a challenge can be considered direct or indirect. Based on this, the next
section discusses and identifies the requirements on the part of government that (if these are properly
satisfied) allow challenges to be overcome upfront.
Table 2: A typology of challenges: Direct-Indirect and Internal-External
Direct challenges Indirect Challenges
Internal challenges • Availability of social media strategy and
policy guidelines.
• Data management, technology and
proper understanding of benefits.
• Organizational reputation
• Organization structure and
culture.
• Availability of trained
personnel, expertise, cost
justification.
External challenges • Digital divide and inaccessibility
• Complexity and speed of social media
change (data protection, privacy and
ownership).
• Accuracy, completeness, and format of
social media data coming from the public.
• Institutional framework,
laws and regulations.
5. Organizational and technological requirements
After having reviewed the different levels of the relationship between citizens and government (see Table 1)
and defined the challenges that governments face in the adoption and use of social media for two-way
communication purposes, it is now important to focus and understand the actions, processes and
requirements that the government needs to meet for an application of social media that leads to meaningful
two-way communication with citizens. In the e-government literature, scholars generally refer to capabilities
rather than requirements (e.g. Layne and Lee, 2001, Gottschalk, 2009; Klievink and Janssen, 2009; Valdes et al.,
2011; Lee and Kwak, 2012; Khan, 2015). However, we feel that the term ‘requirement’ is able to express the
role of such conditions better than capability, since the latter gives the idea of something that should be part of
government’s abilities, skills and expertise. Instead, we believe that a requirement is a necessary condition, a
pre-requisite that however does not have to be necessarily part of what the government is able to do
(capability, skills, expertise). Certain requirements can be outsourced (e.g. analytics and use of metrics, as
discussed later). Hence, requirement refers to any necessary condition, i.e. a conditio sine qua non, for
application of social media in a way that allows two-way communication and perhaps the co-production level
of the government-citizens relationship to be reached. Taking the necessary actions to meet the requirements
would enable the government to get rid of, mitigate or more easily address the previously explained challenges
once they arise. Such requirements are very unlikely to be addressed all at once but rather in consecutive steps
over time. Hence, we are interested in stage models that conceptualise the capabilities (requirements) to
transition from less to more mature stages of social media use by governments. Such models are commonly
found in the literature on e-government.
For example, Lee (2010) carried out a qualitative review of 12 stage models of e-government and highlighted
the main concepts and themes (information, interaction, transaction, and so on) that are common to the
different models in different stages. Fath-Allah et al. (2014) carried out a review of 25 models developed over
time, focusing on the differences and similarities between models and the features of different stages. These
two studies, however, do not focus on the requirements needed to move from one maturity stage of e-
government to the next one.
We try to integrate these two reviews with models that were overlooked and seek to focus more on the
models that are dedicated specifically to social media (and their requirements) rather than e-government in
general. We include models that were produced in academic literature only, thus excluding those produced by
international organizations like the United Nations or consultancy firms like Accenture (UN, 2001 and 2012;
Accenture, 2003). Also, we focus on more recent models without the need to go back to the late 1970s (Nolan,
1979) and early 1990s (Galliers and Sutherland, 1991) when the internet and social media did not exist. Table 3
below summarises the relevant literature that we have reviewed in relation to e-government models and in
particular the needed capabilities to transition from a less mature to a more mature stage of social media use
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in government. We are not trying to integrate different models into a single model. Rather, the review of
capabilities informs our identification of requirements that governments need to meet in order to move from a
lower stage of social media use (information-sharing purposes) to a higher stage (interaction and co-production
purposes), as identified in Table 1. We focus our attention on the higher-stage capabilities found in the
literature (stages 3 to 5, see Table 3) as more relevant to identify the essential requirements for achieving two-
way communication between citizens and government.
Requirements also emerge from the analysis of the challenges carried out in the previous section. Different
from the challenges, we believe that there is no need to distinguish between internal and external
requirements here, since by definition government requirements need government (internal) action. Instead,
we adopt the same classification as Lee and Kwak (2012) who make a distinction between organizational and
technological capabilities and see it as fit for the concept of requirements. Moreover, we again distinguish
between direct and indirect requirements which, just as in the previous section on challenges, directly concern
social media and their features in the case of direct requirements and other elements such as the legal
framework, governance and interoperability, financial and budget management in the case of indirect
requirements.
Table 3: Review of e-government and social media (SM)-based Maturity Models capabilities
Models 1st Stage capabilities 2nd Stage capabilities 3rd Stage capabilities 4th Stage capabilities 5th Stage capabilities
E-government
Growth model
(Layne and Lee,
2001)
Create index website.
Link to other sites.
Site maintenance.
Allocate specific
resources.
Set privacy
arrangements.
Set roles and
responsibilities.
Set online transactions.
Define interactive
conversations.
Set security
mechanisms.
Organize
authentication and
confidentiality
arrangements.
Vertically integrate
systems at different
levels (federal, state,
local).
Horizontally integrate
different functions of
government services.
Determine a change in
the mindset of agency
director.
---
Public Sector
Process
Rebuilding
Maturity Model
(Andersen and
Henriksen, 2006)
Horizontal & vertical
integration within
government.
Change front-end
systems.
Adoption and use of
intranet.
Extensive use of
intranet.
Create personalized
web interface for
customer processes.
Assume end-user
orientation.
Create accountable
and transparent
processes.
Achieve data and
service mobility across
organizations.
Guarantee ownership
of data transferred to
customers.
---
E-Gov.
Interoperability
Maturity Model
(Gottschalk,
2009)
Integrate hardware,
software, information,
data.
Align work processes
(inter-organization)
Collect, store and
share knowledge.
Achieve inter-
organizational
collaboration.
Share values on
customer-oriented
products, services,
problems, solutions,
decisions,
implementations.
Create synergy on
strategies and goals.
Joined-up
Government
Maturity Model
(Klievink and
Janssen, 2009)
Develop applications
used and shared by
various organizations.
Set up system
integration.
Change commitment
and culture.
Networking and
relationship (within
organization).
Enable intra-
organizational
cooperation.
Organise service
management.
Develop generic
facilities.
Develop domain
expertise.
Achieve integration,
collaboration.
Assume external
orientation.
Manage system
project, service, and
portfolio.
Identify user
requirements.
System Architecture
integration,
improvement
development,
coordination.
Set up planning and
sourcing activities.
Arrange service level
agreements.
Obtain central
leadership and political
support.
Orchestrate service
delivery.
Define a management
program.
Establish inter-
organizational
collaboration.
Orchestrate service
delivery.
Set up service
governance.
Open Gov.
Maturity Model
(Lee and Kwak,
2012)
Publish online only
limited and not up to
date data.
Publish online high
value government
data.
Improve data quality
(accuracy, consistency,
and timeliness).
Develop data privacy
standards,
architecture,
governance, structure.
Build culture of
transparency.
Post and share user
created content.
Optimize data
governance structure
and processes.
Enhance data privacy
and security.
Set up data analytics
for new insights and
improving decision-
making.
Train government
employees to develop
data analysis skills.
Expand depth of data
transparency.
Make data accessible
easily by mobile
devices.
Achieve seamless
integration of data
analytics with
government activities.
Realize public value of
data.
The Electronic Journal of e-Government Volume 16 Issue 1 2018
www.ejeg.com 26 ©ACPIL
Models 1st Stage capabilities 2nd Stage capabilities 3rd Stage capabilities 4th Stage capabilities 5th Stage capabilities
Three-stage
Adoption Process
(Mergel and
Bretschneider,
2013)
Push for adoption of
SM (“intrapreneurial”
change agents).
Expand domain of use
(number of
applications and
individuals).
Set standard processes
for technology
adoption.
Set standards for
privacy, access, and
accuracy of
information.
Accept organizational
changes in culture and
operations.
Set standards, rules
and processes to
manage process and
resources associated
with SM adoption.
Formalize ICT
management.
Train and support SM
staff.
--- ---
Gov. 2.0
Utilization Model
(Khan, 2015)
Develop SM expertise.
Earmark financial
resources.
Develop e-government
infrastructure.
Establish dedicated SM
pages.
Collaborate with
citizens.
Achieve cross-agency
collaboration.
Provide online service
through SM.
--- ---
SM for
Organizational
Innovation
(Lehmkuhl et al.,
2013)*
Partially integrate SM
content with existing
communication
channels.
Use process measures
(number of
comments).
Define employees
directly involved with
SM.
Accept SM use (by
innovators).
Define SM objectives.
Develop and publish
dedicated SM
contents.
Assess performance
(number of responses,
amount of user
generated content).
Define SM budget.
Identify indirectly
involved employees.
Accept SM use (by
early adopters).
Define a centralised
perspective of SM.
Differentiate type of
information and
contents to publish on
SM channels.
Use qualitative
measures (customer
satisfaction).
Set up centralised SM
channels.
Identify management
collaboration between
functions.
Accept SM use (by
early majority).
Integrate SM entirely
into organization’s
operations.
Define a brand
strategy.
Assess user generated
content (sentiment
analysis).
Use budget only for
major adaptations
(operations are
integrated and run
smoothly).
Integrate external
partners into SM
communication.
Accept SM use (by late
majority).
SM as enabler of new
business/service
models.
Full align SM channels
and other media.
Link SM to organization
objectives.
Make SM part of
regular communication
(no specific budget
needed).
Identify all points of
interactions with
external users and
stakeholder.
Accept SM use (by
almost all staff).
SM Maturity
Model (Geyer and
Krumay, 2015) **
Define responsibilities
and flow of actions.
Define a SM strategy.
Align SM to other
communication
channels.
Set up privacy and
security guidelines.
Define SM related
roles.
Describe roles and
tasks.
Prepare SM guidelines.
Set up SM expert pool.
Define code of
conduct.
Establish dedicated ICT
support.
Monitor SM activity.
Understand and assess
relevant stakeholders’
sentiments.
Integrate SM across
different company’s
departments.
Align SM channels
across departments.
Arrange community
and crisis management
process.
Establish training
programs and career
paths for employees.
* From this table we are excluding the capabilities of Stage 0 of the model “no degree of maturity”.
**We have merged the capabilities from two different stages (SM integration and SM strategy) into stage 4.
5.1 Organizational requirements
Organizational requirements refer to the processes, roles, policies, resources, governance settings that the
government needs to meet if social media are to be used for two-way communication. Our analysis excludes
fundamental cultural elements such as a civic culture of openness, transparency and collaboration. These basic
and contextual elements are fundamental for leveraging social media in government. However, single (local)
government agencies usually have little or no power to influence and shape them.
One of the basic organizational requirements (generally found in the capabilities of stages 1 to 3 of Table 3
above) is to have in place a social media strategy and a set of guidelines (Valdes et al., 2011; Lee and Kwak,
2012; Picazo-Vela et al., 2012; Khan, 2015; Lehmkuhl et al., 2013; Geyer and Krumay, 2015). Through the social
media strategy the government agency determines whether it wants to use a push, pull or networking strategy
(Mergel, 2010), the type and purposes of social media it wants to use (e.g. relational, expressive, informational)
(Skoric et al., 2016), its objectives, the targeted audience, stakeholders and influencers (both private and
public), community and crisis/reputation management processes, monitoring and measuring activities. Slightly
different from the social media strategy is the preparation of guidelines which determine how often to post,
Enzo Falco and Reinout Kleinhans
www.ejeg.com 27 ISSN 1479-439X
the kind of information, responsiveness, acceptance of comments, and wording and behaviour guidelines
(Geyer and Krumay, 2015). As different authors highlight (Lee and Kwak, 2012; Meijer et al., 2012; Mergel and
Bretschneider, 2013) it is also essential to obtain political support, sponsorship and acceptance by the
organizational leadership of the social media initiative and develop mutual trust with citizens.
Another essential set of requirements relates to the structure of the organization and governance in terms of
interoperability and integration between departments of the same agency or of different agencies (these last
ones are generally found in the higher stages of Table 3). Dedicated departments, trained personnel, financial
resources in the budget, roles, tasks and responsibilities such as social media managers, experts, analysts and
consultants also need to be determined (Lee and Kwak, 2012; Lehmkuhl, 2013). Mergel and Bretschneider
(2013) emphasize the need for co-ordination and governance among different sub-units of an agency in order
to avoid for example the creation of multiple social media accounts. Gottschalk (2009) and Klievink and Janssen
(2009) place strong emphasis on this aspect also in terms of inter-organizational exchanges of best practices
and back-office coordination for joined service delivery.
The last set of organizational requirements concern the definition of an up-to-date regulatory framework in
terms of privacy, disclosure of confidential information, authentication, security, ethical issues and service
agreements with third-party social media providers (Layne and Lee, 2001; Lee and Kwak, 2012).
5.2 Technological requirements
As regards the technological requirements, which are closely linked to the organizational ones, we found that
these are mainly related to three areas: ICT infrastructure, data, and technological skills.
ICT infrastructure and architecture (lower stages of Table 3) (networks, information systems) need to be
aligned between different departments and with the technology that the agency has chosen for its social media
initiative. Standards-setting processes need to involve hardware as well as software to allow the different sub-
units of an agency to collaborate effectively (Gottschalk, 2009; Klievink and Janssen, 2009; Mergel and
Bretschneider, 2013). As far as data are concerned (higher stages of Table 3), we can distinguish two
dimensions: firstly, data and information created and published by the agency; and secondly, data and
information gathered from social media channels. Ownership and control over data produced and shared by
the agency is required as well as quality in terms of accuracy, timeliness, and consistency (Lee and Kwak, 2012).
The agency also needs to set up standards and guidelines for social media data and feedback collection,
archiving mechanisms and communication procedures (Geyer and Krumay, 2015).
The final set of requirements is linked with technological and analytical skills within the organization (higher
stages of Table 3). Moderating, monitoring and measuring social media activities and their impact on followers
is essential. Technological skills such as data crawling and mining, content and sentiment analysis are required
if the government intends to use the social media data and feedback to improve or create new services,
activities and decisions. As can be seen, this set of requirements is strictly related with organizational
requirements to train or hire skilled personnel. Geyer and Krumay (2015: 1865) call this set of skills “social
media listening and monitoring” as a fundamental element to understand and assess the opinions of relevant
stakeholders. Lee and Kwak (2012) distinguish between process-centric metrics and outcome-centric metrics.
While the former tend to focus more on quantitative aspects such as number of visitors, downloads, published
datasets, likes, retweets, shares and so on (for use of such metrics see for example Bonson et al., 2015;
Agostino and Arnaboldi, 2015), the latter focus more on intangible aspects such as learning, innovation,
creation of best practices, and continuous public engagement. Table 4 summarizes the requirements that we
have identified in the literature review through the analysis of the maturity models and classifies them on the
basis of whether they can be considered direct or indirect. In the concluding section, we present the discussion
and conclusions of this review paper. We also provide some directions for future research.
The Electronic Journal of e-Government Volume 16 Issue 1 2018
www.ejeg.com 28 ©ACPIL
Table 4: A typology of requirements: Organizational/technological and Direct/Indirect
Direct requirements Indirect requirements
Organizational
requirements
• SM Strategy.
• SM Guidelines.
• Trained personnel for technological skills
(see below).
• Political support and sponsorship.
• Governance and interoperability.
• Update of the legal framework to support
and regulate the use of SM in
government.
Technological requirements • Set metrics on how to measure, assess,
monitor activity and impact.
• SM feedback management, analysis and
interpretation techniques (data crawling
and mining; content and sentiment
analysis).
• ICT Infrastructure aligned between
departments and with chosen
technology.
• Ownership and control over data and
information published, data and storage
management.
6. Discussion and Conclusions
Since the turn of the millennium, we have witnessed the rise of popular social media and the associated wide
belief in their utility for facilitating new forms of citizen participation in government activity (Linders, 2012;
Picazo-Vela et al., 2012; Skoric et al., 2016). More recently, austerity regimes and post-crisis recovery policies
have resulted in multi-scalar government invitations that ask citizens to take (more) responsibility and engage
more with governments. Despite this twofold window of opportunity for stronger interaction, a one-way
communication “paradigm” where citizens are still receivers of public policy seems to prevail (Casey and Li,
2012; Mergel 2013; Kleinhans et al., 2015). It is highly unlikely that this lack of progress can be ascribed only to
technological issues. Rather, the evidence points at governments’ organizational and human resources as a
bottleneck. Instead of moving the field forward, confusion has been created by a proliferation of problem
categorizations in the literature that tend to overlook each other and a tendency to mix different elements that
may hinder government application of social media (e.g. confuse risks with challenges). Therefore, this paper
has set out to clear part of the confusion and to contribute to the literature by providing typologies of
government-citizen relationships, challenges and requirements, based on a review of literature from the fields
of public administration, urban planning, business, management and corporate social media. As such, it takes a
different viewpoint from papers that unilaterally delve into technological implications.
We have argued that clearing up confusion requires, first of all, integrating various definitions and intensities of
interaction between citizens and governments into a relatively ‘simple’ but comprehensive typology of social
media-based citizens-government relationship with four levels: information-sharing, interaction, co-
production, and self-organisation (Table 1). With each level, the complexity of relationships increases, creating
both challenges and requirements for governments to facilitate appropriate two-way communication.
Secondly, confusion can be reduced if we distinguish between challenges and risks, and focus on challenges on
the part of government that may prevent a transition to social media-supported interaction and dialogic
governance with citizens. We define challenges as situations or tasks that test governments’ abilities to adopt,
use and optimise social media for two-way communication and collaboration strategies with citizens.
Challenges are not to be confused with risks, which usually arise as a consequence of not properly addressing
challenges. The typology (see Table 2) distinguishes between challenges that are either internal or external to
an organization, and, in line with Poba-Nzaou et al. (2016), between challenges directly associated with social
media and challenges not related to social media themselves: direct versus indirect challenges.
Finally, this paper defines requirements as any necessary condition for the use of social media in a way that
allows two-way communication and/or the co-production level of the government-citizens relationship to be
reached. In line with Lee and Kwak (2012), our typology of requirements distinguishes between organizational
and technological requirements and between direct and indirect requirements (see Table 4). In brief,
requirements are conditions that must be met to improve two-way communication, whereas challenges reflect
situations that test governments’ abilities to use social media for this purpose. Key organisational requirements
relate to social media strategies, guidelines, structure of the organization, and governance. Key technological
requirements relate to ICT infrastructure, data management, and technological skills.
There are of course limitations to this research. Being grounded in literature reviews, the findings need
contextualisation, based on characteristics of specific settings, ranging from national contexts to local
organisational cultures. Moreover, considering the origin of the used literature, the findings may reveal a slight
Enzo Falco and Reinout Kleinhans
www.ejeg.com 29 ISSN 1479-439X
imbalance towards the situation in the USA, compared to Europe. Our typologies can be used as a starting
point for further refinement and empirical testing in specific situations. They are particularly useful to
systematically evaluate cases of ‘networked co-production’ of citizens and governments (Meijer, 2011), to
reveal to what extent governments have addressed all challenges and to what extent requirements towards
effective two-way communication can be met. Future research may also rank various challenges and
requirements according to their (relative) importance and target specific challenges or requirements for
governments in more detail. Finally, even if challenges and requirements for social media use are well
addressed, online two-way communication between governments and citizens requires offline follow-up
actions to make any changes in public policy or service delivery. Further research should reveal to what extent
government ‘back offices’ need to be adapted to implement ideas or solutions that arise from online dialogic
governance.
Acknowledgements
The research leading to these results is developed in the context of the SmartGov Project (Advanced decision
support for Smart Governance). It has received funding from the Joint Programming Initiative (JPI) Urban
Europe, i.e. the program ERA-NET Cofund Smart Cities and Communities (ENSCC), under the European Union’s
Horizon 2020 Program.
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