Government Transparency: Six Strategies for More Open and Participatory Government

Offers strategies for realizing Knight's 2009 call for e-government and openness using Web 2.0 and 3.0 technologies, including public-private partnerships to develop applications, flexible procurement procedures, and better community broadband access

E-Government evaluation factors: Citizen’s perspective

The e-government field is growing to a considerable size, both in its contents and position with respect to other research fields. The government to citizen segment of egovernment is taking the lead in terms of its importance and size. Like the evaluation of all other information systems initiatives, the evaluation of egovernments in both theory and practice has proved to be important but complex. The complexity of evaluation is mostly due to the multiple perspectives involved, the difficulties of quantifying benefits, and the social and technical context of use. The importance of e-government evaluation is due to the enormous investment of governments on delivering e-government services, and to the considerable pace of growing in the e-government field. However, despite the importance of the evaluation of e-government services, literature shows that e-government evaluation is still an immature area in terms of development and management. This work is part of a research effort that aims to develop a holistic evaluation framework for e-government systems. The main aim of this paper is to investigate the citizen’ perspective in evaluating e-government services, and present a set of evaluating factors that influence citizens’ utilization of e-government services. These evaluation factors can serve as part of an e-government evaluation framework. Moreover, the evaluation factors can also be used as means of providing valuable feedback for the planning of future egovernment initiatives

Incentives for the adoption of e-government by Greek municipalities

Purpose: The research aims to identify the incentives that play an important role in the evolution of e-government in Greece at local scale and its actual development level. It also investigates the factors and the perceived barriers that affect the development of local egovernment in Greek Municipalities, as well as the benefits they derive from it. Design/Methodology/Approach: The research is based on a survey that was conducted through a questionnaire to all 325 Municipalities of the country and includes data from 109 Municipalities that participated in the quantitative approach. Findings: While e-government is spread at a relatively satisfactory level, it appears that only a few Municipalities are performing well. Results highlight also the two main incentives that motivate Municipalities to adopt e-government: The first is the improvement of the efficiency of information exchange with the external environment and the second is managing internal issues-relationships in conjunction with the existence of prominent IT departments. Amongst the main factors that affect e-government adoption by Local authorities, budgetary constraints stand out, while the lack of personnel specialized in Information Technologies is identified as common obstacle. Practical Implications: Findings suggest that an integrated approach to e-government is needed in order to enable organizations to minimize failures and to overcome barriers and counter risks. The capacity to align e-government applications with the increasing and evolving needs and requirements of the citizens is the key to optimizing the benefits of eGovernment at local scale. Originality/Value: There is no similar empirical research in the context of Greece; hence, it seems important to increase the knowledge about the drivers of e-government adoption, especially in the public sector at the local scale.peer-reviewe

E-governance at the Local Government Level in the Philippines: An Assessment of City Government Websites

The application of information and communication technology for improving governance by enhancing government's role in service delivery, public administration, and promotion of participatory democracy has been gaining momentum in many parts of the world. In Philippine local government, this has been witnessed lately in the significant rise in web presence of many cities. To what extent have local governments in the Philippines implemented e-governance using websites as their medium? This study attempted to answer this question by looking into the resources and services that city governments provide to citizens and other groups in society through their websites. An assessment of the content of their websites indicated, however, the minimal adoption of e-governance as well as the underutilization of websites as e-governance tools.local government unit, information and communications technology (ICT), e-governance, government websites

E-governance at the Local Government Level in the Philippines: An Assessment of City Government Websites

The application of information and communication technology for improving governance by enhancing government's role in service delivery, public administration, and promotion of participatory democracy has been gaining momentum in many parts of the world. In Philippine local government, this has been witnessed lately in the significant rise in web presence of many cities. To what extent have local governments in the Philippines implemented e-governance using websites as their medium? This study attempted to answer this question by looking into the resources and services that city governments provide to citizens and other groups in society through their websites. An assessment of the content of their websites indicated, however, the minimal adoption of e-governance as well as the underutilization of websites as e-governance tools.information and communications technology (ICT), e-governance, government websites, Local Government Units (LGUs)

E-Governance, Metropolitan Governance and Development Programming. The Case of the Thessaloniki Metropolitan Area

e-Governance has recently emerged as a new field of interest for both researchers and public policy makers. This has to do in the first instance with the rise of information and communication technologies and with the strategy for promotion of the information society. It also reflects growing interest in the capacity of various forms of governance to manage complex development issues and facilitate decision-making in the era of globalization. The potential of e-Governance extends from improvement of public services at the various levels of administration to empowerment of community engagement within decision-making processes. e-Governance is also of manifest relevance to questions such as the digital divide and democratic participation. Metropolitan areas in particular are considered to be at the centre of the developmental process. They thus become the appropriate spatial level for the implementation of development programmes aimed at enhancement of competitiveness and employment. New forms of multilevel metropolitan governance emerge, in response to the economic and institutional transformations occurring in them. e-Governance represents a new challenge for metropolitan governance and in particular for development programming. In the context of the EU structural regional policy, development programming in Greece identifies the development of metropolitan areas as one of its main policy objectives. e-Governance is in any case a basic component of the Information Society strategy. This paper examines the implementation of e-Governance in the Thessaloniki metropolitan area, in the specific context of development programming. From this starting point, lessons are drawn for the necessity of e-Governance as an element of metropolitan governance.

Measuring internet activity: a (selective) review of methods and metrics

Two Decades after the birth of the World Wide Web, more than two billion people around the world are Internet users. The digital landscape is littered with hints that the affordances of digital communications are being leveraged to transform life in profound and important ways. The reach and influence of digitally mediated activity grow by the day and touch upon all aspects of life, from health, education, and commerce to religion and governance. This trend demands that we seek answers to the biggest questions about how digitally mediated communication changes society and the role of different policies in helping or hindering the beneficial aspects of these changes. Yet despite the profusion of data the digital age has brought upon us—we now have access to a flood of information about the movements, relationships, purchasing decisions, interests, and intimate thoughts of people around the world—the distance between the great questions of the digital age and our understanding of the impact of digital communications on society remains large. A number of ongoing policy questions have emerged that beg for better empirical data and analyses upon which to base wider and more insightful perspectives on the mechanics of social, economic, and political life online. This paper seeks to describe the conceptual and practical impediments to measuring and understanding digital activity and highlights a sample of the many efforts to fill the gap between our incomplete understanding of digital life and the formidable policy questions related to developing a vibrant and healthy Internet that serves the public interest and contributes to human wellbeing. Our primary focus is on efforts to measure Internet activity, as we believe obtaining robust, accurate data is a necessary and valuable first step that will lead us closer to answering the vitally important questions of the digital realm. Even this step is challenging: the Internet is difficult to measure and monitor, and there is no simple aggregate measure of Internet activity—no GDP, no HDI. In the following section we present a framework for assessing efforts to document digital activity. The next three sections offer a summary and description of many of the ongoing projects that document digital activity, with two final sections devoted to discussion and conclusions

The elicitation of key performance indicators of e-government providers: A bottom-up approach

Copyright @ 2013 EMCIS.Delivering an adequate e-Government service (e-service) is becoming more of a necessity in today's digital world. In order to improve e-services and increase the engagement of both users' and providers' side, studies on the performance evaluation of such provided e-services are taking places. However a clear identification of the key performance indicators from the e-Government providers’ side is not well explored. This shortcoming hampers the conduct of a holistic evaluation of an e-service provision from the perspective of its stakeholders in order to improve e-services as well as to increase e-services take-ups. In this paper, a systematic process to identify indicators is implemented based on a bottom-up approach. The process used three focus-group meetings with providers, users, and academics in Qatar, Lebanon and UK to collect, identify and validate key indicators from the perspective of e-services’ providers. The approach resulted in the identification of five factors levels (service, technology, employees, policy and management and social responsibilities) with fifteen sub-categories of SMART variables. Hence, leading to the development of a new model, STEPS, that can fully explain and predict e-government success from the providers’ point of view. It will work as a strategic management tool to align various stakeholders on common goal and values based on evidence based evaluation of e-services using smart measurable indicators for the improvement of an e-service at the engagement level in the field of e-government. In addition, other fields can benefit from the outcome of this work, such as logistics service providers, who make their services available across new and existing relationships between the Internet commerce firms, their customers, and their vendors

Electronic governance, premise for implementation of electronic democracy

Living in a rapidly changing society, where information travels with great speed and its upgrade is essential, we decided to approach certain aspects of e-democracy, as a dynamic way of citizen participation, using new Information and Communications Technologies. The theme chosen for this research, Electronic governance, premise for implementation of electronic democracy, is a part of Electronic Administration field and identifies the meanings of implementing e-government and e-democracy, the necessity and effects of putting them into practice and the conditions to be fulfilled for the development of electronic services and fostering citizen participation in their use. E-governance as well as edemocracy have a clear contribution in making social progress, thanks to capitalize the most important irreversible resource, the time for achievement of the main administrative operations. The overall objective of the research aims to establish the relationship between governance and electronic democracy. From this perspective, this paper will contain: analyzing the importance of both e-governance and e-democracy, risks and benefits for each one, clarifying the need and implications underlying the implementation of electronic systems and explain the conditions to be met by citizens in order to benefit from these services. To achieve the objectives set, will be dominant the analyzing method of the social phenomena in their evolution. They will also combine harmoniously with practical examples in various member states of the European Union.e-governance, e-democracy