Online service delivery models : an international comparison in the public sector

Governments around the world are facing the challenge of responding to increased expectations by their customers with regard to public service delivery. Citizens, for example, expect governments to provide better and more efficient electronic services on the Web in an integrated way. Online portals have become the approach of choice in online service delivery to meet these requirements and become more customer-focussed. This study describes and analyses existing variants of online service delivery models based upon an empirical study and provides valuable insights for researchers and practitioners in government. For this study, we have conducted interviews with senior management representatives from five international governments. Based on our findings, we distinguish three different classes of service delivery models. We describe and characterise each of these models in detail and provide an in-depth discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of these approaches

The Exercise of Mandate:How Mandatory Service Implementation- Promoted the Use of E-Government Services in Denmark.

Danish e-government has for two decades been considered a global leader. Among the various reasons for this Danish success, this article explores the mandatory online self-service and digital post initiative (2012-2015) as one of the effective, strategic contributions in increasing the wider penetration and use of digital public services in Danish society. Although the mandatory shift to digital service could have caused negative reactions from public servants and citizens, this was not the case in Denmark. By reviewing a set of mandatory digital public services in the Danish context, four key aspects are identified as essential drivers. That is: pride as citizens, high levels of trust and privacy, usability and accessibility of e-government services, and informal support by family and community. The article discusses the four supportive prerequisites as keys for enforcing the implementations, which could otherwise be seen as national coercive dirigisme

Fast and Federal—Policies for Next-Generation Federalism in Germany

Federalism and e-government are important to many countries across the globe but come up with two contradicting characteristics that are especially existent in Germany. First, citizens and businesses want to receive e-government services easily but the identification of government entities that are responsible for service delivery in federal states is difficult. Second, e-government has to react to fast developments but decision-making is distributed and rather slow in federal states. To address the area of tension between federalism and e-government, we suggest seven polices that raise internal efficiency and external simplicity of federalism in Germany. We transfer existing policies of e-government literature and practice to our research problem in the course of discussions in a research group of five people. The policies are evaluated in semi-structured interviews with eleven leaders from the German government. The evaluation reveals the appropriateness of the policies to address the issues of federalism in e-government

E-government perspectives : evolution, strategies and practices

The United States is one of the leading global leaders in e-Government and has consistently emerged as one of the top 10 countries from 2003 to 2012 on E-Government Development Index (EGDI). The paper focuses on theoretical insight and perspectives on different aspects of e-Government from the days of its evolution. The paper provides an insight of e-Government perspectives and discusses evolution of e-Governance, policy frameworks and strategies, dimensions of e-Government dominance at federal, state and local level, critical success and failure factors in the United States

Back to practice, a decade of research in E-government

E-government is a multidisciplinary field of research based initially on empirical insights from practice. Efforts to theoretically found the field have opened perspectives from multiple research domains. The goal of this chapter is to review evolution of the e-government field from an institutional and an academic point of view. Our position is that e-government is an emergent multidisciplinary field of research in which focus on practice is a prominent characteristic. Each chapter of the book is then briefly presented and is positioned according to a vision of the e-government domain of research.E-government, Case study, E-administration, Public domain

Towards a conceptual framework for developing embassy portals

In the past decades, Information and Communication Technologies have significantly changed diplomacy and the way countries manage their international relations through embassies, which are often also responsible for providing a wide range of services to increasingly technology literate citizens. This dissertation proposes a conceptual framework for developing embassy portals, comprised of the following four dimensions: 1) shared infrastructure, 2) integrated platform management, 3) templated content and 4) simplified online services delivery. To prove the feasibility of this conceptual framework, a prototype applied to the Embassy of Guinea-Bissau in Portugal was developed using an open source Content Management System and free Cloud Computing technology. The conceptual framework hereby presented is expected to be of value to governments interested in implementing state-of-the-art portals and websites based on open source technology for their embassies and similar organizations, simultaneously optimizing the resources available and delivering value to their stakeholders.Nas últimas décadas, as Tecnologias de Informação e Comunicação alteraram significativamente a diplomacia e a forma como os países gerem as suas relações internacionais através de embaixadas, que frequentemente são também responsáveis pela prestação de diversos serviços a um público cada vez mais conhecedor das novas tecnologias. Esta dissertação propõe um modelo conceitual para desenvolver portais para embaixadas, que é composto pelas seguintes quatro dimensões: 1) infraestrutura partilhada, 2) gestão integrada da plataforma, 3) conteúdo pré-definido e 4) prestação de serviços online de modo simplificado. Para comprovar a viabilidade do modelo conceitual proposto, um protótipo aplicado à Embaixada da Guiné-Bissau em Portugal foi desenvolvido com base num Sistema de Gestão de Conteúdos de código aberto ("open source") e com recurso a tecnologias gratuitas na "Cloud". Espera-se que o modelo conceitual aqui apresentado seja de valor para governos que tenham interesse em implementar portais e/ou "websites" modernos e baseados em tecnologias "open source" para as suas embaixadas e organizações de estrutura semelhante, simultaneamente otimizando os recursos disponíveis e melhorando a qualidade do serviço prestado

Evaluation and design of e-government: A holistic overview of e-government initiatives in Harrisonburg, and the challenges of adopting a citizen-centered design

In the past decade, e-Government has received a lot of attention from academia, policy agencies, and IT providers, all of whom attempt to assess and track the factors that lead to a successful e-Government service. I propose a top-level approach assessing e-Government in Harrisonburg as a whole, and then I explore project-level methods of design and implementation. More specifically, I identify 29 electronic services offered by the City and rank them according to a pre-defined four-stage ranking system. This assessment demonstrates that the majority of the services considered fall under the Interaction and Transaction stages (Stages 2 and 3 respectively). This organizational approach is followed by an analysis of the factors that may lead to failure and lack of use of e-Government initiatives, and how a citizen-centered design can be employed to avoid such failures. I then describe the challenges of using a citizen-centered design in e-Government based on my experiences working on the Resource Recovery Facility in Harrisonburg. Lastly, I examine future research topics that should be considered when discussing e-Government

A Review Of Interoperability Standards And Initiatives In Electronic Government

Being important at organizational, process and semantic levels, interoperability became a key characteristic of the new electronic government systems and services, over the last decade. As a crucial prerequisite for automated process execution leading to “one-stop” e-Government services, interoperability has been systematically prescribed, since the dawn of the 21st century: Standardization frameworks, that included guidelines ranging from simple statements to well defined international Web-Service standards started to appear at National and Cross-Country levels, powered by governments, the European Union or the United Nations. In parallel, most international software, hardware and service vendors created their own strategies for achieving the goal of open, collaborative, loosely coupled systems and components. The paper presents the main milestones in this fascinating quest that shaped electronic government during the last 10 years, describing National Frameworks, key Pan-European projects, international standardization and main industrial and research achievements. Moreover, the paper describes the next steps needed to achieve interoperability at technical, semantic, organizational, legal or policy level – leading to the transformation of administrative processes and the provision of low-cost, high-quality services to citizens and businesses

Digital Government Implementation: A Comparative Study in USA and Russia

Although e-government comparative studies are relatively new, there exist a number of approaches to conducting comparisons of e-government development. In this article we employ one of these approaches to study a well-defined topic, e-government, in two contexts at the national level. Our goal is to identify both similarities and differences in problems, challenges and solution approaches in e-government development at the national level of governance. We use a case study method to describe the objects of comparison – the national e-government systems of USA and Russia from qualitative perspective

Electronic health record portals in Portugal : a perspective from providers and patients

Dissertation presented as the partial requirement for obtaining a Master's degree in Information Management, specialization in Knowledge Management and Business IntelligenceHealthcare systems are becoming more patient centered, as today’s citizens are more active and more informed. In line with this trend, healthcare providers are promoting the use of online applications such as Electronic Health Record (EHR) portals. EHR portals can be defined as web based applications that combine an EHR system and a patient portal, with the potential of helping to achieve benefits for both patients and healthcare providers, which makes the adoption of EHR portals an important field to study and understand. The aim of this study is to characterize the view from providers and patients on EHR portals, having the Portuguese health system as scenario. The methodology was divided into a provider-centered and a patient-centered approach, being characterized as a mixed-methods research as qualitative and quantitative data collection procedures were followed. Results point out that EHR portals are considered by providers as crucial in the establishment of a digital relationship with patients, but efforts still need to be carried out for the users to adhere to these technologies. Also, the portals available in Portugal are heterogeneous in terms of functionalities offered, greatly differing in terms of number of functionalities. Patients view some functionalities of EHR portals more important than others and half of them are users of the portal developed by the public provider. The statistically determinants of adoption of EHR portals were verified. By having the perspective of providers and users, it was possible to provide insights that can be helpful to develop EHR portals that meet patient demands