eGovernment

The Victorian Schools Ultranet – an Australian eGovernment Initiative

by Dr Eva Dakich

Tatnall, A., Michael, I. and Dakich, E (2011). The International Information Systems Conference (iiSC), Sultan Qaboos University, Muscat, Sultanat of Oman, October 11-12, 2011

Web services, IT integration and value generation in eGovernment: an exploratory case study

by Francesco Virili

Gov 2.0: Online engagement or neo-liberal trojan horse

by Peter John Chen

Chen, P, 2011, Gov 2.0: Online engagement or neo-liberal trojan horse, Paper presented at the Vital Issues Seminar, Parliament House, Canberra

This paper examines arguments about “gov 2.0” by looking at the underlying ideological
basis of the concept.... more This paper examines arguments about “gov 2.0” by looking at the underlying ideological
basis of the concept. While commonly framed in terms of civic empowerment and
participation, I argue that gov 2.0 rests on a particular model of the liberal state and
subject that reveals its roots in the political and economic culture of the United States.
These assumptions are largely unrecognised or undiscussed by advocates, which makes
their political implications opaque when taken out of context. In addition, the definitional
ambiguity of the term in popular use has limited lesson drawing from other government
ICT initiatives (e-service delivery and e-democracy). Viewing the transformation of
government from a set of institutions and processes to a “platform” is predicated on a
positive notion of liberty that shares little with the contemporary expectations of
government as a pro-active provider of services, and agent of last resort. The notion
draws uncritically on two traditions: that of Habermas's public sphere, and the free market
as an optimal regulator. Both have a improverised notion of human agency and capacity,
which stem from their bias towards an utopian notion of publicity and citizenship.

A Business Model Perspective for ICTs in Public Engagement

by Panos Panagiotopoulos

Paper in press for Government Information Quarterly

Public institutions, in their efforts to promote meaningful citizen engagement, are increasingly looking at the... more Public institutions, in their efforts to promote meaningful citizen engagement, are increasingly looking at the democratic potential of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). Previous studies suggest that such initiatives seem to be impeded by socio-technical integration barriers such as low sustainability, poor citizen acceptance, coordination difficulties, lack of understanding, and failure to assess their impact. Motivated by these shortcomings, the paper develops and applies a business model perspective as an interceding framework for analysis and evaluation. The underlying principle behind this approach is that it is not technology per se which determines success, but rather the way in which the business model of the technological artifact is configured and employed to achieve the strategic goals. The business model perspective is empirically demonstrated with the case of an online petitioning system implemented by a UK local authority. The case illustrates the importance of considering ICTs in public engagement from a holistic view to make them more manageable and assessable.

Modernising with purpose: a manifesto for a digital Britain

by Will Davies

Perception of E-Administration Versus ICT Attitude/Aptitude: A Statistical Exploratory Study

by Diego Cardona

Economía o Sociedad de la Información

by Diego Cardona

«El Gobierno Electrónico. Una revisión desde la perspectiva de la prestación de servicios»

by Diego Cardona

MuNet, Municipios Eficientes y Transparentes

by Diego Cardona

MuNet, a new way to improve municipalities

by Diego Cardona

El gobierno electrónico

by Diego Cardona

Complementarity, Integration, and Responsiveness: Making E-Government Work in Developing Nations

by Robert Richards

Public Administration Review, forthcoming

This is a review of: Nagy K. Hanna, Transforming Government and Building the Information Society: Challenges and... more This is a review of: Nagy K. Hanna, Transforming Government and Building the Information Society: Challenges and Opportunities for the Developing World (New York: Springer, 2010).

An Overview Assessment of ePetitioning Tools in the English Local Government

by Panos Panagiotopoulos

IFIP 8.5 3rd International Conference on eParticipation ePart 2011

According to legislation introduced in 2009, all English local authorities were expected to implement an online... more According to legislation introduced in 2009, all English local authorities were expected to implement an online petitioning facility by the end of 2010. This mandate offers a unique opportunity to assess the impact of a national eParticipation policy at such scale focusing on a particular engagement tool. A web content analysis methodology was used to collect data from the 353 English local government websites. Different variables measuring the implementation of this initiative were explored, including evidence of other eParticipation activities such as online consultations. The data were then cross-examined with institutional background factors such as political affiliation of the leading party. The study results question whether the legislation actually achieved its purpose since they indicate apparent efforts of minimum institutional compliance and low actual use of ePetitions. Among others, population density and previous experience with eParticipation were positively correlated with the implementation effort and actual use of those systems.

Supporting public decision making in policy deliberations: an ontological approach

by Panos Panagiotopoulos

In Operational Research: an International Journal, published by Springer

Volume 11, Issue 3, pp. 281-298

Supporting public decision making in policy deliberations has been a key objective of eParticipation which is an... more Supporting public decision making in policy deliberations has been a key objective of eParticipation which is an emerging area of eGovernment. EParticipation aims to enhance citizen involvement in public governance activities through the use of information and communication technologies. An innovative approach towards this objective is exploiting the potentials of semantic web technologies centred on conceptual knowledge models in the form of ontologies. Ontologies are generally defined as explicit human and computer shared views on the world of particular domains. In this paper, the potentials and benefits of using ontologies for policy deliberation processes are discussed. Previous work is then extended and synthesised to develop a deliberation ontology. The ontology aims to define the necessary semantics in order to structure and interrelate the stages and various activities of deliberation processes with legal information, participant stakeholders and their associated arguments. The practical implications of the proposed framework are illustrated.

eCitizen 2.0: the Ordinary Citizen as a Supplier of Public-Sector Information.

by Petter Bae Brandtzaeg

Brandtzæg, P.B. & Lüders, M. (2008). eCitizen 2.0: the Ordinary Citizen as a Supplier of Public-Sector Information. SINTEF report (60 pages), Oslo, Norway ISBN: 978-82-14-04655-7. On behalf of Ministry of The Government Administration and Reform in Norway.

The growth of new technologies and ways of using them has led to rapid changes in the public-sector information and... more The growth of new technologies and ways of using them has led to rapid changes in the public-sector information and services situation. Today, 17 percent of Internet users regularly download public-sector information from user-generated content sites on the Internet. This report has studied these changes with the aim of developing new ideas and perspectives for the eGov sector, in which citizens (eCitizen2.0) are also suppliers of services and producers of public-sector information. We have studied the following topics:
• The scope of and trends in social networking sites and user-generated content in Norway.
• Norwegian Internet users’ involvement in public-sector information in user generated content sites.
• The challenges of access to and re-use of public-sector information on the Internet.
• International trends in eGov services and user-generated public-sector services

Building the virtual state: Information technology and institutional change

by Jane Fountain

EGovernment Stage Model: Evaluating the Rate of Web Development Progress of Government Websites in Saudi Arabia

by Rayed AlGhamdi

Co-author with Osama Alfarraj and Steve Drew. Published in 2011 with the International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications(IJACSA)

This paper contributes to the issue of eGovernment implementation in Saudi Arabia by discussing the current situation... more This paper contributes to the issue of eGovernment implementation in Saudi Arabia by discussing the current situation of ministry websites. It evaluates the rate of web development progress of vital government websites in Saudi Arabia using the eGovernment stage model. In 2010, Saudi Arabia ranked 58th in the world and 4th in the Gulf region in eGovernment readiness according to United Nations reports. In particular, Saudi Arabia has ranked 75th worldwide for its online service index and its components compared to the neighbouring Gulf country of Bahrain, which was ranked 8th for the same index. While this is still modest in relation to the Saudi government’s expectation concerning its vision for eGovernment implementation for 2010, and the results achieved by the neighbouring Gulf countries such as Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates on the eGovernment index, the Saudi government has endeavoured to meet the public needs concerning eGovernment and carry out the implementation of eGovernment properly. Governments may heed the importance of actively launching official government websites – the focus of this study – as the main portals for delivering their online services to all the different categories of eGovernment (including G2C, G2B, and G2G). However, certain Saudi ministries have not given due attention to this vital issue. This is evidenced by the fact that some of their websites are not fully developed or do not yet exist, which clearly impedes that particular ministry from appropriately delivering eServices.

Download link: http://goo.gl/PYucU

The Internet, Projectization, and Science and Technology: Strategic Tools to Develop Caribbean Cultural and Creative Industries

by Ian Walcott

The Internet presents the single greatest opportunity for developing nations to increase their insertion into the... more The Internet presents the single greatest opportunity for developing nations to increase their insertion into the global economy by way of trade. However, this must be done by
developing strategic programmes in E-government, e-commerce and e-business which must be underpinned by national strategies that speak to developing Science and Technology as it relates to favorable insertion into the Digital Global Economy. With
these systemic features in place, then ‘projectization’ becomes the effective tool for planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation.
This paper is set within the conceptual framework of International Political Economy and examines, in particular, the Caribbean knowledge structure (as it relates to science and
technology) and cultural policy. A more narrow focus will be on the Caribbean island states and their strategies for developing the cultural and creative industries. A closer look at the region’s e-readiness will show that there is little evidence to support the
Caribbean’s willingness to seize the opportunities on the Internet as a global trading place for its cultural goods and services. Such limitations will therefore hinder the region’s attempts at global insertion.

State-of-the-art review: transparency indicators

by Ahmed Abdeltawab Abdelgawad

Co-authored with: Lasse Berntzen, Annika Nietzio, Morten Goodwin Olsen, and Mikael Snaprud.

This paper gives an overview of current state-of-the-art of research and practice in the area of eGovernment... more This paper gives an overview of current state-of-the-art of research and practice in the area of eGovernment transparency measurements. The paper is compiled as a starting point for further work to define ways to measure transparency of local governments and public agencies by use of automatic and semi-automatic tools, as well as through expert evaluations and surveys.

A survey of current measurement methods for eGovernment user-satisfaction (Position Paper)

by Ahmed Abdeltawab Abdelgawad

Co-authored with: Mikael Snaprud
Input to the 8th World Telecommunication/ICT Indicators Meeting (WTIM), Geneva, Switzerland, 24-26 November 2010.

A survey on eGovernment user-satisfaction measurement methods was conducted to enable a comparison among them, and to... more A survey on eGovernment user-satisfaction measurement methods was conducted to enable a comparison among them, and to facilitate a discussion on good practices. The collected pieces of information cover the methodologies in terms of their properties, and measurement practices. The analysis in this paper is based on the results compiled by a survey in the eGovMoNet project.
The main findings from our analysis are:
• The surveyed methods have not been standardised through an official standards organisation.
• Although there are established relevant standards, for aspects covered by the methodologies e.g. concerning usability or accessibility, the measurement methods rarely refer to them.
• Software vendors are mostly not included in the intended group of users of the measurement results.
• Assessment and evaluation of the current situation of measured objects to identify bottlenecks is not carried out frequently.
• 'Ex-post' measurements are far more popular among the surveyed methods. Although, 'exante' and 'in between' measurements are expected to save money, time and effort.
• Several of the surveyed measurement methods are not regularly updated or maintained in a transparent way.
• Only with one possible exception (UWEM) the surveyed measurement methods do not have an open process for the methodology development, nor an open document license for the methodology document.