Networks of SLGOs: from systems interoperability to organizational cooperability

E-Government doesn’t concern only technological innovation in Public Administration, but most of all organizational innovation through the adoption of organizational models enabled by the use of ICTs. One model of this kind, that in countries characterized by a high number of Small Local Government Organizations (SLGOs) can be adopted also to reduce the administrative fragmentation, is inter-organizational cooperation among SLGOs. This is the model the Italian National Center for Information Technology in Public Administration (CNIPA) adopted in the action plan to promote E-Government in Local Public Administration in Italy. However, inter-organizational cooperation requires the partners to interoperate, at least in the areas which are the object of the cooperation. One possibility which guarantees interoperability of different organizations consists in the adoption of a shared cooperative environment. Depending on how binding are the conditions which define it, the cooperative environment can determine different levels of interoperability, up to organizational interoperability (cooperability). In the case of cooperation among organizations which can be heterogeneous, one of the conditions defining the cooperative environment is the sharing of an “enterprise model” for the cooperation. In the paper we describe some of the conditions that define a cooperative environment and introduce a system for the description and the classification of different forms of intercommunal cooperation for services provision

E- government and innovation in Italian Public Administration: A business approach

E-Government consists of a strategic instrument for re-formulating the organization and the operation of Public Administrations, acting as a catalyst of trends and changes. It not only represents a resource that allows economic and operational advantages to be obtained, but is also an instrument that is capable of modifying the pre-existing operational mechanisms of the organization, guaranteeing a fast adaptation to continuous changes in the external environment. The use of e-Government not only facilitates the internal activities of the Public Administration, but also has the advantage of facilitating the relationship between different administrations, as well as the interaction with citizens and with businesses. The impact that e-Government can have is that of a better Public Administration, in that it allows public policies to be optimized, the quality of services to be raised, the involvement of the citizens to be widened, and other specific fundamental activities to be improved.The present work intends to illustrate the comprehensive framework of the public administration system in Italy and of the main tendencies in progress, paying particular attention to the development of new management logic, considering e-Government not only as a merely technological phenomenon, but also analyzing it in its full meaning with regards to the process of change and modernization of the public administration

Organizing E-Government for Small Local Government Organizations

In the paper, taking as a reference the highly fragmented context of Italian Local Public Administration, we suggest the associated management of services as the organizational model Small Local Government Organizations (SLGOs) can adopt to deal with technological and organizational innovation. We argue that, in order to simplify the activation of an associated management of services, SLGOs should define pre-qualification conditions that define a cooperation environment. In the paper we characterize such an environment by defining the concept of Integrated System of Local Government (ISLG) as a technological and organizational platform for the cooperation among public administrations. The definition of ISGL and the adoption of a particular coordinating technology will allow to model situations in which Small Local Government Organizations share, also temporarily, resources necessary for the production and delivering of services to citizens and enterprises