Diffusion of personalized e-government services among Dutch municipalities: An empirical investigation and explanation

This article describes the trend of personalization in electronic service delivery, with a special focus on municipal electronic service delivery in the Netherlands. Personalization of electronic services refers to the one-to-one citizen orientation using authentication, profiling and customization techniques. The percentage of Dutch municipalities offering services through personalized electronic counters has increased from 14% (2006) to 28% (2009). Using binary logistic regression analyses of 2008 survey data, it is concluded that personalization is positively associated with size of municipalities but not with e-government and policy innovation statements, nor with explicit political responsibility with respect to e-government development. Based on these findings, alternative explanations for the adoption and diffusion of personalized e-government services are suggested. Copyrigh

Student Guides as Mediators of Institutional Heritage and Personal Experience

This paper examines the role of student guides as mediators between the institutional mission and heritage of their university and visitors to the historic campus. Drawing on a longitudinal study undertaken at two historic universities in the west, the authors establish that a small cadre of elite, competitively-chosen guides at these institutions perform a role of openness and democracy on behalf of the increasingly complex and hybrid modern university. The paper considers how student guides are able to navigate their own pride at such privileged engagement and how this privilege impacts on tours offered to visitors, where campus tours become a negotiation based on internal and external influences and are constructed and reconstructed according to the imagined or actual demands of different tour groups. By managing risk at the point of employment, and by encouraging free reign in tours, there is limited risk involved to host universities as student guides offer an informed, personalised heritage experience to both domestic and international tourists