E-governance in the new democracies: the case of Taiwan

It is expected that the ICTs can maximise the benefits for improved governance and electronic democracy in the information age. This study explores the impact of e-government upon citizens and demonstrates how this kind of electronic medium affects the quality of democracy in the context of the new democracies. Taiwan's peculiar characteristics, which combine a Confucian context, a new democracy and a leading performance in e-government, offers an interesting example of the conceptual diversity of e-government in itself, especially in relation to the level of democracy. Thus, this study uses the Taiwanese experience of developing, using and understanding e-government to identify the effect of e-governance in the new democracies. It integrates larger theoretical and empirical evidence, drawing upon several disciplines, including political science and public administration, communications studies, education and the sociology of technology. The research methods deployed are: documentary analysis, secondary analysis, content analysis and interview. The data are cross-referred and the analysis is presented in different sections. In this study, four themes are discussed: civil education, the policy initiatives, the public use and the public understanding of e-government. I first indicate that civic education in Taiwan has gradually paid more attention to the mode of participation, but the values supporting democracy have not yet been fully instilled. Secondly, the Taiwanese government has been more inclined to use e-government to reorganise itself than to incorporate more of the public in its operation. Thirdly, democratic participation has not yet extended in the public use of e-government in Taiwan. Fourthly, e-government in Taiwan has a modem format, but lacks political efficacy, since it lacks the mechanisms through which people can affect public policy. I conclude that e-government has been used as a modem means to rework authoritarianism. People suffer from a 'democratic deficit' in their understanding and use of e-government. The effects of e-governance have been constrained by the legacy of authoritarianism and the public's democratic deficit. Therefore, in the new democracies, the prospects of electronic democracy should not be overestimated. E-government may be over-rated as a weapon for consolidating democracy

The New Public Management Reform in Municipal Governments as Crucial Catalyst for Transition to Grassroots Electoral Democracy in China

This research approaches public administration reform in China from a domestic perspective. Whereas recognizing that the mechanisms behind the nature differ from the principle of New Public Management (NPM) of Anglo-Saxon tradition, the reform initiatives are similar. Municipal governments were encouraged to carry out NPM Reform towards governance model since 1998 to serve dual-purpose. That is strengthening governmental organizational "3e" that economy, efficiency and effectiveness and strengthening political legitimacy and capacity of Chinese Communist Party. During the governance transition process in urban China, two interactive processes, political centralization and administrative decentralization, create tensions. This paper presents the process of administrative reform in municipal governments from a traditional bureaucratic public administration model moving towards a multi-agency, cross-sector, multi-level local governance manner. The paper identified key successful approaches of the NPM reform within municipal governments, and analyzed the new local governance model from debates of accountability, participation, transparency and responsiveness rather than effectiveness and efficiency debate. Further more, from theoretical and empirical aspects, this paper concludes that local electoral democracy is the necessary condition for governance model to produce consultative policy-making process under the autarchic regime. And this process is a "mutual security" way for political center and society for transitional stability

Conceptual Framework on Integrated System of Sustainability Performance on Islamic Perspectives

This research reviewes previous research on the topic of sustainability and identifies appropriate indicators in Islamic perspective. This research conducts a qualitative method starting from the exploration of relevant issues and problems around Islamic Banking Sustainability Performance through the literature reviews. Qualitative data analysis, data reduction and data presentation from relevant journals, books, articles and proceeding enrich the development of conceptual framework. To consolidate the literature found, several face to face interviews with relevant experts in Indonesia Islamic banking are conducted in order to obtain deeper insight into Islamic Banking Sustainability Performance. The data captured from literature and interviews then be analyzed by using NVivo tools. This software has high capability in data searching, compiling, and preparation of the grounded theory. The graphics capability of the diagram shown in the preparation of theory is awakened. As the results, a conceptual framework on integrated system of islamic banking sustainability performance is successfully developed. Several indicators and contructs which performed this framework were identified through NVivo analysis of literature reviews and interviews. Three sustainability perspectives viz environment, social and economic aspects integrated with financial islamic rules on fair, balance, middleness, grace (rahmah), mandate, thaharah, right, and ilm nafi (expediency science) complement the development of framework. NVivo as a qualitative analysis tool is successfully managed the data transcription from literature and interviews towards the performing of conceptual framework. Keywords: Integrated system, Islamic Banking, Sustainability, Performance Measurement

Accountability arrangements to combat corruption: Literature review

This review describes accountability arrangements to combat corruption in the infrastructure sector. The sustainability of the livelihoods of the poor in low- and middle-income countries is compromised by corruption in the delivery of infrastructure services. Such services include water supply, sanitation, drainage, the provision of access roads and paving, transport, solid waste management, street lighting and community buildings. For this reason, The Water, Engineering Development Centre, (WEDC) at Loughborough University in the UK is conducting research into anti-corruption initiatives in this area of infrastructure services delivery. This series of reports has been produced as part of a project entitled Accountability Arrangements to Combat Corruption, which was initially funded by the Department for International Development (DFID) of the British Government. The purpose of the work is to improve governance through the use of accountability arrangements to combat corruption in the delivery of infrastructure services. These findings, reviews, country case studies, case surveys and practical tools provide evidence of how anti-corruption initiatives in infrastructure delivery can contribute to the improvement of the lives of the urban poor. The main objective of the research is the analysis of corruption in infrastructure delivery. This includes a review of accountability initiatives in infrastructure delivery and the nature of the impact of greater accountability

Moving Toward Development of a Chunghwa Postal Office Business Model of Sustainability

This research integrated western and eastern organization theory in order to restructure the Chunghwa Postal Office (CPO). The goal was to create a more efficient and sustainable business model that would serve the future needs of Taiwan. A region of the CPO, the Hsinchu Post Office (HPO), received training in 2008 in order to provide a pilot study regarding the concepts of sustainability and learning organizations. The research produced a CPO Sustainability Model in which learning organization theory is conceptually woven into the Chinese Tai Ji map. This Model has two core domains, namely vision and evaluation. Using two parallel branches of education and leadership, the Model creates sustainability in the organization and society by using evaluation to inform vision

The Quasi Government: Hybrid Organizations with Both Government and Private Sector Legal Characteristics

[Excerpt] This report provides an overview of federally related entities that possess legal characteristics of both the governmental and private sectors. These hybrid organizations (e.g., Fannie Mae, National Park Foundation, In-Q-Tel), collectively referred to in this report as the “quasi government,” have grown in number, size, and importance in recent decades. A brief review of executive branch organizational history is followed by a description of entities with ties to the executive branch, although they are not “agencies” of the United States as defined in Title 5 of the U.S. Code. Several categories of quasi governmental entities are defined and discussed: (1) quasi official agencies, (2) government-sponsored enterprises (GSE), (3) federally funded research and development corporations, (4) agency-related nonprofit organizations, (5) venture capital funds, (6) congressionally chartered nonprofit organizations, and (7) instrumentalities of indeterminate character. The quasi government, not surprisingly, is a controversial subject. To supporters of this trend toward greater reliance upon hybrid organizations, the proper objective of governmental management is to maximize performance and results, however defined. In their view, the private and governmental sectors are alike in their essentials, and thus subject to the same economically derived behavioral norms.They tend to welcome this trend toward greater use of quasi governmental entities. Critics of the quasi government, on the other hand, tend to view hybrid organizations as contributing to a weakened capacity of government to perform its fundamental constitutional duties, and to an erosion in political accountability, a crucial element in democratic governance. They tend to consider the governmental and private sectors as being legally distinct, with relatively little overlap in behavioral norms. Congress is increasingly engaged with the quasi government. The issues run the gamut from enacting legislation to encourage the creation of nonprofit organizations to promote individual national parks, to proposals to strengthen regulation of government- sponsored enterprises such as Fannie Mae, to oversight hearings respecting national security issues at Los Alamos Laboratory. There is nothing modest about the size, scope, and impact of the quasi government. Time will tell whether the emergence of the quasi government is to be viewed as a symptom of decline in our democratic government, or a harbinger of a new, creative management era where the purportedly artificial barriers between the governmental and private sectors are breached as a matter of principle. This report will be updated at the beginning of each Congress

The effectiveness of public service complaint management processes in contexts of autocratic governance: the case of Brunei Darussalam

Almost inevitably on occasions, purchasers, customers or users of services will be so dissatisfied with the quality or experience of procurement that they will feel driven to make a complaint. Whether in relation to public or private sector organisations, complaints can provide suppliers with valuable feedback information about their services which may help to inform and direct improvements more generally as well as in relation to the particular case and circumstances. This aim of this study has been to examine complaint management within a public governmental organization – and particularly within such an organization in an autocratic state context. The study has taken the form of a case-study – set in Brunei Darussalam - and involved a mixed methods research approach of both a survey of some 200 public servants with a structured questionnaire, and a set of some 60 more in-depth, semi structured, interviews with senior governmental officials drawn from a range of departments. While, almost all respondents and interviewees readily acknowledged the importance and value of complaints and complaint management as a key component of good customer focus, the research found that, mostly, the mechanisms for realizing such value were not in place and that, in practice, few government departments in Brunei were managing complaints in any systematic manner. This state of affairs, it has been concluded, reflects the lack of market or democratic pressures for departments to learn from complaints and to improve its public services

Rethinking the risk matrix

So far risk has been mostly defined as the expected value of a loss, mathematically PL (being P the probability of an adverse event and L the loss incurred as a consequence of the adverse event). The so called risk matrix follows from such definition. This definition of risk is justified in a long term “managerial” perspective, in which it is conceivable to distribute the effects of an adverse event on a large number of subjects or a large number of recurrences. In other words, this definition is mostly justified on frequentist terms. Moreover, according to this definition, in two extreme situations (high-probability/low-consequence and low-probability/high-consequence), the estimated risk is low. This logic is against the principles of sustainability and continuous improvement, which should impose instead both a continuous search for lower probabilities of adverse events (higher and higher reliability) and a continuous search for lower impact of adverse events (in accordance with the fail-safe principle). In this work a different definition of risk is proposed, which stems from the idea of safeguard: (1Risk)=(1P)(1L). According to this definition, the risk levels can be considered low only when both the probability of the adverse event and the loss are small. Such perspective, in which the calculation of safeguard is privileged to the calculation of risk, would possibly avoid exposing the Society to catastrophic consequences, sometimes due to wrong or oversimplified use of probabilistic models. Therefore, it can be seen as the citizen’s perspective to the definition of risk