Towards a network government? A critical analysis of current assessment methods for e-government

Contemporary public administrations have become increasingly more complex, having to cordinate actions with emerging actors in the public and the private spheres. In this scenario the modern ICTs have begun to be seen as an ideal vehicle to resolve some of the problems of public administration. We argue that there is a clear need to explore the extent to which public administrations are undergoing a process of transformation towards a netowork government linked to the systematic incorporation of ICTs in their basic activities. Through critically analysing a selection of e-government evaluation reports, we conclude that research should be carried out if we are to build a solid government assessment framework based on network-like organisation characteristics

Evaluating global e-government sites: A view using web diagnostics tools

This is the post-print version of the Article. The official published version can be accessed from the link below - Copyright @ 2004 The AuthorsSeveral governments across the world have embraced the digital revolution and continue to take advantage of the information and communication facilities offered by the Internet to offer public services. Conversely, citizens’ awareness and expectations of Internet based online-public-services have also increased in recent times. Although the numbers of the different national e-Government web portals have rapidly increased in the last three years, the success of these portals will largely depend on their accessibility, quality and privacy. This paper reports the results of an evaluative study of a cross-section of e-Government portals from these three perspectives, using a common set of performance metrics and Web diagnostic engines. Results show that not only are there wide variations in the spectrum of information and services provided by these portals, but that significant work still needs to be undertaken in order to make the portals examples of ‘best practice’ e-Government services

SPEIR: Scottish Portals for Education, Information and Research. Final Project Report: Elements and Future Development Requirements of a Common Information Environment for Scotland

The SPEIR (Scottish Portals for Education, Information and Research) project was funded by the Scottish Library and Information Council (SLIC). It ran from February 2003 to September 2004, slightly longer than the 18 months originally scheduled and was managed by the Centre for Digital Library Research (CDLR). With SLIC's agreement, community stakeholders were represented in the project by the Confederation of Scottish Mini-Cooperatives (CoSMiC), an organisation whose members include SLIC, the National Library of Scotland (NLS), the Scottish Further Education Unit (SFEU), the Scottish Confederation of University and Research Libraries (SCURL), regional cooperatives such as the Ayrshire Libraries Forum (ALF)1, and representatives from the Museums and Archives communities in Scotland. Aims; A Common Information Environment For Scotland The aims of the project were to: o Conduct basic research into the distributed information infrastructure requirements of the Scottish Cultural Portal pilot and the public library CAIRNS integration proposal; o Develop associated pilot facilities by enhancing existing facilities or developing new ones; o Ensure that both infrastructure proposals and pilot facilities were sufficiently generic to be utilised in support of other portals developed by the Scottish information community; o Ensure the interoperability of infrastructural elements beyond Scotland through adherence to established or developing national and international standards. Since the Scottish information landscape is taken by CoSMiC members to encompass relevant activities in Archives, Libraries, Museums, and related domains, the project was, in essence, concerned with identifying, researching, and developing the elements of an internationally interoperable common information environment for Scotland, and of determining the best path for future progress

The Permit Power Revisited: The Theory and Practice of Regulatory Permits in the Administrative State

Two decades ago, Professor Richard Epstein fired a shot at the administrative state that has gone largely unanswered in legal scholarship. His target was the permit power, under which legislatures prohibit a specified activity by statute and delegate to administrative agencies the discretionary power to authorize the activity under terms the agency mandates in a regulatory permit. Accurately describing the permit power as an enormous power in the state, Epstein bemoaned that it had received scant attention in the academic literature. He sought to fill that gap. Centered on the premise that the permit power represents a complete inversion of the proper distribution of power within a legal system, Epstein launched a scathing critique of regulatory permitting in operation, condemning it as a racket for administrative abuses and excesses. Epstein\u27s assessment of the permit power was and remains accurate in three respects: it is vast in scope, it is ripe for administrative abuse, and it has been largely ignored in legal scholarship. The problem is that, beyond what he got right about the permit power, most of Epstein\u27s critique was based on an incomplete caricature of permitting in theory and practice. This Article is the first to return comprehensively to the permit power since Epstein\u27s critique, offering a deep account of the theory and practice of regulatory permits in the administrative state. This Article opens by defining the various types of regulatory permits and describing the scope of permitting in the regulatory state. From there it compares different permit design approaches and explores the advantages of general permits, including their ability to mitigate many of the concerns Epstein advanced. This Article then applies a theoretical model to environmental degradation problems and concludes that if certain conditions are met, general permits can effectively respond to many of the complex policy problems of the future. Finally, this Article adds to the scholarship initiated by Epstein by proposing a set of default rules and exceptions for permit design and suggesting how they apply to complex policy problems

Reference Model and Method of Evaluation for Smart Cities in Government Portals: a study of the Portuguese and Brazilian reality

The urban issue is currently of great inter-est. The cities and its multiple socio-cultural and political manifestations have been acquiring, from the technological changes of Information Society, new in-struments for ensuring the quality of the future life of most of the world population, and this subject has been named in doctrine as Smart Cities. According to this, several organizations have been gathering efforts in order to monitoring the different dimensions of smart cities. It is thus of utmost importance to analyse the main (inter) national metrics and indicators for evaluating the levels of smartness of cities, with special focus in governance. For this, and based in bibliographic revision and realizacao of conceptual proof, it is proposed an evaluation method that expresses the variables capable of enhancing the intelligent governance in Govern-ment portals. From the research undertak-en, it may be verified that studies in this field are still incipient. On the other side, in spite of the knowledge of the limits of such approach, this method will serve as a new focus on the fiability of the communication process between government and society and as source of consultation and evaluation of the intelligent governance. Finally, it is believed that tha periodical application of this method will allows, besides the monitoring and control of public policies, also the opening up of new ways of citizen's participation.Our thanks to the CAPES Foundation, Ministry of Education of Brazil, and also to the CIIDH-Interdisciplinary Research Center in Human Rights, and to the Algo-ritimi Centre, both at University of Minho. The work of Marciele Berger has been supported by CAPES under Grant nr. BEX - 1788/15-9. The work of Paulo Novais has been supported by COMPETE Pro-gramme (operational programme for com-petitiveness) within project POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007043, by National Funds through the FCT (Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology) within the Projects UID/CEC/00319/2013. The work of Nuno Lopes has been supported by Norte Portugal Regional Operational Programme (NORTE 2020) whithin the pro-ject "SmartEGOV: Harnessing EGOV for Smart Governance (Foundations, methods, Tools) / NORTE-01-0145-FEDER-000037", under the PORTUGAL 2020 Partnership Agreement, through the Euro-pean Regional Development Fund (EFDR)