From a literature review to a conceptual framework for health sector websites’ assessment

Health sector institutions’ websites need to act as effective web resources of information and interactive communication mediums to address the versatile demands of their multiple stakeholders. Academic and practitioner interest in health sector website assessment has considerably risen in recent years. This can be seen by the number of papers published in journals. The purpose of this paper is twofold to further establish the field. First, it offers a literature re-view on hospitals’ websites assessment. Second, it offers a conceptual framework to address the website assessment issue in health sector. The proposed assessment framework focuses on four main criteria: content, technology, services, and participation being evaluated by the use of several indicators. Academics, hospital practitioners, public officials and users will find the review and the framework useful, as they outline major lines of research in the field and a method to assess health institution websites.This paper is a result of the project “SmartEGOV: Harnessing EGOV for Smart Governance (Foundations, methods, Tools) / NORTE-01-0145-FEDER-000037”, supported by Norte Portugal Regional Operational Programme (NORTE 2020), under the PORTUGAL 2020 Partnership Agreement, through the European Regional Development Fund (EFDR).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Eco-efficiency measurement and material balance principle:an application in power plants Malmquist Luenberger Index

Incorporating Material Balance Principle (MBP) in industrial and agricultural performance measurement systems with pollutant factors has been on the rise in recent years. Many conventional methods of performance measurement have proven incompatible with the material flow conditions. This study will address the issue of eco-efficiency measurement adjusted for pollution, taking into account materials flow conditions and the MBP requirements, in order to provide ‘real’ measures of performance that can serve as guides when making policies. We develop a new approach by integrating slacks-based measure to enhance the Malmquist Luenberger Index by a material balance condition that reflects the conservation of matter. This model is compared with a similar model, which incorporates MBP using the trade-off approach to measure productivity and eco-efficiency trends of power plants. Results reveal similar findings for both models substantiating robustness and applicability of the proposed model in this paper

Digital Cities Web Marketing Strategies in Italy: The Path Towards Citizen Empowerment

The concept of ‘digital city’ has been introduced as a strategic way of designing a city by highlighting, in particular, the importance of Information and Communication Technologies. Nowadays the performance of our cities depends only in small part on its infrastructure, as an increasing importance is given to the availability, quality and delivery of public services. In this context, citizens have new expectations based on involvement, collaboration and participation. The aim in managing a city becomes making citizens actors in the decision making process creating engagement and involvement, providing ways of direct relationships with politicians and civil servants. This paper attempts on the one hand to assess the web strategies of Italian municipalities to see their level of “citizen empowerment” by adopting a revised version of the Citizens Web Empowerment Index (CWEI) designed to benchmark administrations’ official web portals – and on the other hand, to present some best practices: initiatives which, according to the CWEI, allow the creation of empowerment by answering at citizens’ needs. The analysis was made on the web portals of the 104 Italian cities with over 60,000 inhabitants in 2012 and 2013. Results show a low level of the indicator which testifies that the path towards citizen empowerment is still long. Despite this, the good examples spread around the country allow to believe in a close future where marketing strategies will be more and more oriented towards empowerment creation