IMPROVING URBAN MANAGEMENT THROUGH E-GOVERNMENT SERVICES: THE ROMANIAN EXPERIENCE

The paper outlines the role of e-Government services within the process of improving urban management and the conceptual framework for measuring the e-Government services development. Furthermore, the progress on e-Government services in Romania is analyzed with a view to compare it with the sophistication stage achieved within the European Union. The findings of this study reveal that e-Government services are key tools for improving urban management and a higher level of e-Government services development is needed in order to transform the interactions between public administration and citizens/businesses. The study was carried out by combining a wide variety of sources, such as reports, regulations, and the national experience in developing e-Government services. Our conclusion justifies the effort invested in developing e-Government services and also has relevance for policy making in a very sensitive sector like the urban management. The methodology and the results reported in this research may be helpful for the specialists within the system in order to better address the inherent problems encountered in developing the e-Government services.urban management, e-Government services, sophistication stage, Romania.

Focus on Outcomes: Redesigning Minnesota's Local Government Services

Today Minnesota is facing a "new normal" -- with an increasingly aging population, growing public service needs, a changing workforce and a shrinking base of taxpayers -- and these circumstances require new innovations. In November 2011, more than 400 of our members from these three organizations -- city council members and administrators, county administrators and county commissioners, superintendents and school board members -- came together to do just that.Across six meetings, some of Minnesota's most passionate and innovative local leaders came together to share their experiences with redesign and to explore new opportunities to work together across jurisdictions. They shared stories of what's working in their communities, and they shared their hopes for their community's future. Three critical lessons are addressed in this report: 1. Redesign is facing some barriers to change. Changing the way services are managed or delivered is never easy, and it hasn't been for the local leaders working to redesign services in their communities. 2. Leaders agree that five essential elements are needed to redesign local governments. Barriers are not permanent obstacles, and many local leaders have moved past them. 3. Minnesota's local governments are ready to innovate. In fact, they're already doing it. In Beltrami County, local government leaders have redesigned dozens of services from natural resource management to workforce training and more. A consortium of schools in Northeastern Minnesota is joining technology and sharing teachers to offer !rst-class electives in the state's most rural stretches. Cities in Dakota County collaborated with the county and consolidated the 911 public safety dispatch services

Quality of Government Services and the Civic Duty to Pay Taxes in the Czech and Slovak Republics, and other Transition Countries

A 2002 survey of 1089 Czechs and 501 Slovaks, as well as a more limited survey of Hungary, and Poland, indicates that an individual may evade taxes in part if he believes he is receiving substandard government services. We suggest that an individual’s evaluation of the quality of government services is not influenced by his need to justify his evasion. Self-reported measures of morality show no correlation with evasion. This suggests that perceptions of government services are not shaped by an individual’s need to justify his evasion. This gives weight to our finding that the perceived quality of government services influences evasion. The less quality of government services an individual reports, the more likely he is to evade taxes. A 20% increase in the perception that government services are of quality would lead to a 5% decrease in the number of frequent tax evaders and a 12% increase in the number who never evade. Governments in transition countries who suffer from weak tax collection apparatus may wish to transmit clear information on the quality of their services in order to cut down on evasion.Tax evasion; quality of government services; transition; Czech Republic; Slovak Republic; Hungary; Poland

Government Services Architecture

To enable \u27future state\u27 service strategies new architectures are required to enable government and regulatory operations to be more open to disruption and innovation. Through a service science perspective, this paper outlines a government services architecture (GSA) to enable social welfare delivery to be driven by, and responsive to, changing social and economic forces. Using Service Dominant Logic as a kernel theory, we developed an initial set of requirements from which three models were derived: 1. GSA Theoretical Framework (research and theories); 2. GSA Meta-Model (objects and relationships) and; 3. GSA Functional Model (functions and interactions). The research provides a practical application of SD-Logic by responding to limitations of government service business models and supporting approaches to architecture. The implications for government and further research is identified

Transparency and the performance of outsourced government services

The Office of the Information Commission Queensland / ANZSOG Occasional Paper series aims to objectively evaluate the available evidence about whether openness can be a far more powerful tool than secrecy in serving the public interest. Where transparency can be used as a tool, the series also identifies the practical application and the lessons learnt so far. Importantly, it seeks to articulate the case for transparency by showing how transparency can be used as a means to the end: effective policy implementation while minimising costs to the taxpayer.  The latest paper in the series is by Richard Mulgan of ANU, and examines transparency and the performance of outsourced government services. It discusses three aspects of outsourcing: value-for-money efficiency, effectiveness of performance, and publicity of performance information, and explores a number of lessons for both government and public sector managers on how to increase the extent of transparency, and thus the quality, of outsourced services

Issues and challenges: cloud computing e-Government in developing countries

Cloud computing has become essential for IT resources that can be delivered as a service over the Internet. Many e-government services that are used worldwide provide communities with relatively complex applications and services. Governments are still facing many challenges in their implementation of e-government services in general, including Saudi Arabia, such as poor IT infrastructure, lack of finance, and insufficient data security. This research paper investigates the challenges of e-government cloud service models in developing countries. This paper finds that governments in developing countries are influenced by how the top management deals with the attention to the adoption of cloud computing. Further, organisational readiness levels of technologies, such as IT infrastructure, internet availability and social trust of the adoption of new technology as cloud computing, still present limitations for e-government cloud services adoption. Based on the findings of the critical review, this paper identifies the issues and challenges affecting the adoption of cloud computing in e- government such as IT infrastructure, internet availability, and trust adopted new technologies thereby highlighting benefits of cloud computing-based e-government services. Furthermore, we propose recommendations for developing IT systems focused on trust when adopting cloud computing in e-government services (CCEGov)

COBRA framework to evaluate e-government services: A citizen-centric perspective

E-government services involve many stakeholders who have different objectives that can have an impact on success. Among these stakeholders, citizens are the primary stakeholders of government activities. Accordingly, their satisfaction plays an important role in e-government success. Although several models have been proposed to assess the success of e-government services through measuring users' satisfaction levels, they fail to provide a comprehensive evaluation model. This study provides an insight and critical analysis of the extant literature to identify the most critical factors and their manifested variables for user satisfaction in the provision of e-government services. The various manifested variables are then grouped into a new quantitative analysis framework consisting of four main constructs: cost; benefit; risk and opportunity (COBRA) by analogy to the well-known SWOT qualitative analysis framework. The COBRA measurement scale is developed, tested, refined and validated on a sample group of e-government service users in Turkey. A structured equation model is used to establish relationships among the identified constructs, associated variables and users' satisfaction. The results confirm that COBRA framework is a useful approach for evaluating the success of e-government services from citizens' perspective and it can be generalised to other perspectives and measurement contexts. Crown Copyright © 2014.PIAP-GA-2008-230658) from the European Union Framework Program and another grant (NPRP 09-1023-5-158) from the Qatar National Research Fund (amember of Qatar Foundation

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

Determinants affecting privatisation of local government services in Britain

The aim of this paper is to analyse the determinants of CCC (Compulsory Competitive Tendering) policy outputs at the local government level in Britain and to examine how the outputs have been made, relating the CCT implementation process to the main factors affecting its outputs. Specifically, this study is based on the assumption that policy output as a general phenomenon can not be seperated from the process of formulating and implementing the policy. I shall argue that many of the major determinants underlying the CCT process remain unexplored and must be examined in order for us to understand more fully CCT policy as a service provision policy in local government. It is hoped that, in view of the characteristics and implications of the process of privatisation,this research will prove timely. Although the phenomenon of privatisation has spawned a huge literature in 1980s and 1990s, much of it has been guided by public choice theory, which argues the superior cost-efficiency of private over public service delivery. Although policy output studies have not been entirely neglected in these studies, they have generally been a secondary consideration to economic analysis. An examination of CCT policy output which associates the output with the dynamics of the policy implementation process is particularly important. It is no my intention to analyse whether CCT is a desirable policy or not. Rather, my more limited purpose is to identify the main factors which explain local variation in the output of CCT process, and to explain the way in which the contested privatisation process is related to the its output.