Improving Public Administration Performance through Electronic Government Applications

Electronic Government applications have been the focus of hundreds of local and national government administrations all over the world during the past decade. The emphasis of most of these applications lies in their effort to improve the experience of the user in interacting with public administration services and to minimise waiting times in completing transactions public services and citizens. Early applications were relying mainly on the speed and simplicity of submitting a request by the user while most of the work beyond the web based interaction was carried out as in the era before the introduction of the web based applications. The benefits from such endeavours have been short lived as citizens are looking for real enhancements in they way public administration serves their needs and responds to their requests. The authors argue that for e-government applications to succeed changes would have to be effected in the way public administration organizes itself and how it utilizes information management systems to respond to user / citizen requirements including and addressing the goals of all stakeholders involved. Currently the number of successful applications to that end is quite low when compared to the projects implemented so far. The authors propose steps that would maintain the focus of future implementations in doing so

Not just a "second order" problem in a wider economic crisis: systemic challenges for the global trading system

Reform of the multilateral trade regime is not simply a second order problem within a wider economic crisis. The completion of the Doha Round may be a second order question but the global trade regime faces a series of broader systemic challenges beyond the completion of the current negotiations. This paper identifies five challenges: (i) a marked reduction in popular support for open markets in major OECD countries; (ii) the stalling of a transition from one global economic equilibrium to another; (iii) a lack of clarity and agreement on the agenda and objectives for the WTO as we move deeper into the 21st century; (iv) the demand for fairness and justice in the governance of the WTO—the 'legitimacy' question and (v) the rise of regional preferentialism as a challenge to multilateralism. Failure to address these challenges will represent not only a fundamental question for the future of the WTO as the guarantor of the norms and rules of the global trade regime specifically, but also the ability to establish greater coherence in global economic governance overall when its need is arguably greater than at any time since the depression years of the 20th century inter-war period

The internet and public–private governance in the European Union

The EU plays a significant role in public policy aspects of Internet governance, having created in the late 1990s the dot eu Internet Top Level Domain (TLD). This enables users to register names under a European online address label. This paper explores key public policy issues in the emergent governance system for dot eu, because it provides an interesting case of new European transnational private governance. Specifically, dot eu governance is a reconciliation resulting from a governance cultural clash between the European regulatory state and what can be described broadly as the Internet community. The EU has customised the governance of dot eu towards a public–private dispersed agencification model. The paper extends the evidence base on agencification within trans-European regulatory networks and the emergence of private transnational network governance characterised by self-regulation

Innovative public governance through cloud computing: Information privacy, business models and performance measurement challenges

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to identify and analyze challenges and to discuss proposed solutions for innovative public governance through cloud computing. Innovative technologies, such as federation of services and cloud computing, can greatly contribute to the provision of e-government services, through scaleable and flexible systems. Furthermore, they can facilitate in reducing costs and overcoming public information segmentation. Nonetheless, when public agencies use these technologies, they encounter several associated organizational and technical changes, as well as significant challenges. Design/methodology/approach: We followed a multidisciplinary perspective (social, behavioral, business and technical) and conducted a conceptual analysis for analyzing the associated challenges. We conducted focus group interviews in two countries for evaluating the performance models that resulted from the conceptual analysis. Findings: This study identifies and analyzes several challenges that may emerge while adopting innovative technologies for public governance and e-government services. Furthermore, it presents suggested solutions deriving from the experience of designing a related platform for public governance, including issues of privacy requirements, proposed business models and key performance indicators for public services on cloud computing. Research limitations/implications: The challenges and solutions discussed are based on the experience gained by designing one platform. However, we rely on issues and challenges collected from four countries. Practical implications: The identification of challenges for innovative design of e-government services through a central portal in Europe and using service federation is expected to inform practitioners in different roles about significant changes across multiple levels that are implied and may accelerate the challenges' resolution. Originality/value: This is the first study that discusses from multiple perspectives and through empirical investigation the challenges to realize public governance through innovative technologies. The results emerge from an actual portal that will function at a European level. © Emerald Group Publishing Limited

International Financial Standards and the Explanatory Force of Lex Mercatoria

The global financial crisis has cast a strong light on some hitherto obscure corners of the financial world, provoking an outpouring of calls for concerted international action. “Hard law” having disappointed, can “soft law”, in the form of international financial standards, substitute for traditional national legislation. This article examines some of the difficulties associated with the “international standards as soft law” discourse. First of all, conceptual problems in the “soft law” discourse itself reveal profoundly different patterns of legal thought cutting across national boundaries, resulting in different understandings of international financial standards. Secondly, recent experience, over the past decade, with some “soft law” international financial standards as both diagnostic and prophylactic tools, has been decidedly mixed, in fact, largely unsatisfactory. Thirdly, the “soft law” discourse in international finance appears strangely remote from the daily grind of international commercial practice, where the discourse is largely unknown. But perhaps in this disconnect between theory and practice lies clues to important normative forces at work in international finance, and in particular the international capital markets. The more one considers the world of international finance, the more obvious become the outlines of centuries old transnational merchant law, the contentious lex mercatoria. The proposition put forward here is that the formal regulation of financial markets is supported by a body of strong and persistent customary law, a lex mercatoria, a rarely acknowledged but powerful undercurrent in finance, especially in its international iteration. The continued prevalence of oral contracting and the stubborn persistence of self-regulatory principles are examples. There are several intriguing implications to this proposition. Is it possible that the global financial crisis represented not only a failure of formal, state-led regulation, as it surely did, but also a breakdown of a lex mercatoria of finance? If that is the case, international standard setters and national regulators, both, ignore this lex mercatoria (the customs and practices of international finance) at their peril. To do so, would be to miss a true, powerful, source of normativity operating in international financial markets

Attitudinal and behavioural determinants influencing decision makers when adopting integration technologies in local government

Over the last few years, the advent of innovative or revolutionary integration technologies has influenced pivotal decisions within top management to strategically transform Local Government Authorities (LGAs). These technologies may represent a huge cost for adopting LGAs, but may also offer the chance to achieve competitive advantage through superior service delivery. With the emergence of electronic Government (e- Government), LGAs are turning to integration technologies to fully automate and e-enable their business processes and integrate their IT infrastructures. While prior research on the adoption of integration technologies in the private and public domain has considered several determinants (e.g. benefits, barriers, costs), little attention has been given to investigate the attitudinal and behavioural determinants influencing top management’s decision making process for the adoption of integration technologies in LGAs. Notwithstanding, the implications of this research have yet to be assessed, leaving scope for timeliness and novel research. Therefore, it is of high importance to investigate this area within LGAs and contribute to the area of strategic decision making by examining attitudinal and behavioural determinants of top management in relation to integration technologies adoption

Development of RMJ: A mirror of the development of the profession and discipline of record management

The purpose of this paper is to examine critically the history of Records Management Journal on its 20th anniversary; it aims to review and analyse its evolution and its contribution in the context of the development of the profession and the discipline of records management. The paper seeks to provide the context and justification for the selection of eight articles previously published in the journal to be reprinted in this issue