Social Computing and Cooperation Services for Connected Government and Cross-Boundary Services Delivery

Connected Government requires different government organizations to connect seamlessly across functions, agencies, and jurisdictions in order to deliver effective and efficient services to citizens and businesses. In the countries of the European Union, this also involves the possibility of delivering cross-border services, which is an important step toward a truly united Europe. To achieve this goal, European citizens and businesses should be able to interact with different public administrations in different Member States in a seamless way to perceive them as a single entity. Interoperability, which is a key factor for Connected Government, is not enough in order to achieve this result, since it usually does not consider the social dimension of organizations. This dimension is at the basis of co-operability, which is a form of non-technical interoperability that allows different organizations to function together essentially as a single organization. In this chapter, it is argued that, due to their unique capacity of coupling several technologies and processes with interpersonal styles, awareness, communication tools, and conversational models, the integration of social computing services and tools within inter-organizational workflows can make them more efficient and effective. It can also support the \u201clearning\u201d process that leads different organizations to achieve co-operability

Connecting the Majority, Getting Digital Dividends

ICT is changing the way people live and do business globally, and is creating new social and economic development opportunities for lower-income populations and vulnerable groups, by enlarging markets and facilitating greater access to information, public services and economic activity. ICT is an effective tool that, when supplemented by investments in innovation, education, social inclusion and flexible government policies, increases competitiveness and contributes to economic growth, social development and poverty reduction, contributing to the creation of a knowledge economy. Yet, these opportunities cannot be effectively and fully realized if left to market forces alone, and require the active participation of the public, private and civil society sectors under an integrated effort towards the development of a socially inclusive knowledge society. This paper, that is descriptive in nature, provides references and examples of e-government pilot and investment initiatives in the Latin America and Caribbean (LAC) Region pursuing the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), showing the ICT pivotal role in the social and economic development of the developing countries. The examples considered in the paper show how favorable development can be achieved through the effective deployment of ICT tools and solutions, especially those based on mobile and wireless technologies, in the priority sectors of education, health, government, finance and social inclusion of vulnerable groups, including ageing people and people with disabilities. These examples also form the basis for a proposed action-oriented strategy that, under a multi-sector approach, aims at the creation of the necessary conditions to facilitate investments in technological infrastructure and connectivity, facilitate access, foster digital education and training, promote the development of local content, and delineate the participation of various stakeholders in the implementation of ICT-based development programs. In the paper four development scenarios benefitting the LAC Region are suggested that can be achieved through the coordinated efforts of the governments, the private sector and civil societies under the described strategy. Although these scenarios are specifically conceived for the LAC region they can be easily transferred to other developing regions

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

Supporting innovation in small local government organizations

E-Government entails the adoption and widespread use of ICTs in Public Administration in order to enable more innovative forms of government and governance. In the past years, which were extensively dominated by the paradigm of online services, E-Government has often been reduced to technological innovation in Public Administration. However, even when they concern highly specific activities of Public Administration, the innovation processes entailed by E-Government involve many different dimensions of innovation that make them different from simple processes of technological innovation. Due to their multidimensionality, the management of the innovation processes entailed by E-Government requires the availability of specialized competencies in various domains, including technology, marketing, communication, policy making and project management that small local government organizations (i.e. municipalities with less than 5000 inhabitants) often lack. However, the non technological aspects of innovation have not been adequately addressed in the policies for supporting the spread of E-Government at the local level which at least in Italy, have mainly (or even exclusively) focused on the funding of technological solutions as the driver for innovation. The paper will discuss what aspects should be considered when devising a supporting model that an authority of a higher institutional level (the Regional Government and the National Government, in the case of Italy) can assume to sustain innovation processes in small local government organizations. The discussion will be based on the case of Lombardy Region (Italy) that, for its characteristics, represents a good case study for evaluating the impact of different policies for the spread of E-Government at the local level. More specifically, by considering the multidimensional character of the innovation processes entailed by E-Government, in the paper it will be claimed that a model for supporting the spread of E-Government at the local level should integrate the funding of technological innovation with the appropriate information, training, assistance as well as control and regulation actions. The need of implementing such actions will be exemplified by considering the results of different funding programmes for the spread of E-Government at the local level that have been delivered to the municipalities of Lombardy (and Italy as well) in the past years

Linguaggio Naturale Controllato per la gestione documentale nella Pubblica Amministrazione

Per la loro rilevanza, anche come risorsa economica, le informazioni del settore pubblico oltre ad essere caratterizzate dalla qualità di sicurezza devono essere caratterizzate anche dalla qualità di usabilità. Queste informazioni assumono generalmente la forma di documenti non strutturati e scritti in linguaggio naturale, spesso con rilevanti componenti di linguaggio tecnico. Ciò rischia di ridurre l’usabilità delle informazioni in essi contenute, almeno rispetto all’attributo della comprensibilità. In ambito industriale per aumentare la comprensibilità dei documenti si tende sempre più a ricorrere a forme di Linguaggio Naturale Controllato (LNC). In questo lavoro viene discussa la possibilità di trasferire anche alla Pubblica Amministrazione esperienze di uso di LNC originariamente sviluppate in ambito industriale. Nell’articolo viene introdotto il concetto di LNC e viene mostrato come l’uso di un linguaggio controllato possa semplificare i documenti della Pubblica Amministrazione, aumentandone la comprensibilità. Inoltre, dopo aver considerato le difficoltà connesse all’introduzione di LNC in organizzazioni di piccole dimensioni, vengono descritti alcuni strumenti di Elaborazione del Linguaggio Naturale che possono essere utilizzati per definire un ambiente di supporto per l’uso di LNC

Citizens as sensors/information providers in the co-production of smart city services

Citizens play a central role in smart cities, both as the users of the services delivered by the city and as active participants in the initiatives aimed at making cities smarter. By assuming the concept of co-production as the lens through which to look at citizen\u2019s participation, the paper considers the role of citizens as information providers in smart city initiatives and discusses the conditions under which citizens, as playing this specific role, can participate to the development of smart cities. Behind the rhetoric of participation that affects many smart city discourses, the paper argues that citizens as information providers can play a co-producer role in smart city initiatives only if they are given back the control over the data they produce with their behaviors

Value creation in the user-centric personal information ecosystem

The emerging user-centric personal information ecosystem within the data-driven economy offers new opportunities and poses new challenges to organizations that base their business on the collection and use of personal information. In the user-centric ecosystem, the control over personal information is given back to the individuals who, as the information owners, can decide whether, under what conditions and in change for what to disclose their data to trusted counterparts. In this new scenario, organizations should revise their relationship with individuals to make them willing to disclose the information they need. Based on evidences from the economics and psychology of privacy literature, the paper argues that this could be done by involving individuals as coproducers in the value-generating processes that use personal information. Under this strategy, besides economic compensation and personalized services, organizations can leverage the \u2018psychological\u2019 benefits deriving from the coproduction experience as further incentives that can enhance the individuals\u2019 willingness to disclose their personal information