icegov2012 proceedings
icegov2012 proceedings
icegov2012 proceedings
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2012<br />
ALBANY, NEW YORK<br />
UNITED STATES<br />
6 INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE<br />
ON THEORY AND PRACTICE OF<br />
ELECTRONIC GOVERNANCE<br />
TH<br />
22 - 25 OCTOBER 2012<br />
EDITED BY J. RAMON GIL-GARCIA, NATALIE HELBIG & ADEGBOYEGA OJO
The Association for Computing Machinery<br />
2 Penn Plaza, Suite 701<br />
New York New York 10121-0701<br />
Copyright © 2012 by the Association for Computing Machinery, Inc. (ACM) Permission to make digital or hard copies of<br />
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ii
Foreword<br />
The 6 th International Conference on Theory and Practice of Electronic Governance, ICEGOV2012, was held in Albany, New<br />
York, United States (US) from October 22-25, 2012. It was hosted by the Center for Technology in Government, University at<br />
Albany, State University of New York under the patronage of the United States National Archives and Record Administration.<br />
The conference was supported by the Center for Electronic Governance of the United Nations University - International Institute<br />
for Software Technology (UNU-IIST), Macao SAR, which is the ICEGOV Series Organizer.<br />
The ICEGOV (International Conference on Theory and Practice of Electronic Governance) series focuses on the use of<br />
technology to transform relationships between government and citizens, businesses, civil society and other governments<br />
(Electronic Governance). Established in 2007 by the Center for Electronic Governance, UNU-IIST, the series looks beyond the<br />
traditional focus on technology-enabled transformation in government (Electronic Government) towards new forms, new<br />
paradigms, and new foundations for technology-enabled governance, collaboration and sustainable development. ICEGOV is a<br />
forum where researchers and practitioners meet to test theories, share insights and report their experiences. It facilitates networkand<br />
capacity-building through a diversity of presentation formats. The conference also provides a unque developmental<br />
opportunity for participants from developing countries, nations in transition, United Nations agencies, and from a range of<br />
governmental and non-governmental organizations. Since its establishment, the series has traveled the globe from Macao SAR<br />
(ICEGOV2007), to Cairo (ICEGOV2008), Bogota (ICEGOV2009), Beijing (ICEGOV2010), Tallinn (ICEGOV2011), and now<br />
to Albany (ICEGOV2012); with each edition generating significant local interest and stakeholder engagement.<br />
Continuing the ICEGOV tradition, ICEGOV2012 featured a rich academic, capacity-building and network-building program of<br />
keynote lectures, tutorials, doctoral colloquium, plenary sessions, thematic sessions, paper sessions, poster session and discussion<br />
panels. All these session were built on the contributions from researchers and practitioners from around the world. Individuals<br />
from over 60 countries were involved in the preparations for ICEGOV2012, as authors, reviewers or committee members. The<br />
2012 edition provided a unique forum for rich interactions between digital government researchers in the United States and North<br />
America and peers from Africa, Asia, Latin America and Europe.<br />
The conference featured three keynote lectures by distinguished experts who offered government, academic and international<br />
perspectives on Electronic Governance. David Ferriero, the Archivist of the United States, National Archives and Records<br />
Administration, presented the first keynote. Nigel Shadbolt, Co-founder of the Open Data Initiative, Professor of Artificial<br />
Intelligence at the University of Southampton, and Head of the Web and Internet Science Group, presented the second keynote<br />
on Open Data Ecosystems. The third keynote was presented by Dr. Beth Simone Noveck, former United States Deputy Chief<br />
Technology Officer on the Future of Governance in the Digital Age.<br />
Seven tutorials were provided as part of the conference exploring areas such as Contests and Prizes in the Age of Social Media,<br />
Digital Curation for Public Sector Professionals, Open Data, Fraud Detection using Modeling and Simulation for Practice and<br />
Research, Public Value Assessment of Open Government Efforts, and Smart Cities, Smart Government: A Research and Practice<br />
Consortium..<br />
Six plenary sessions were organized on topics including: Value Creation through Open Data Ecosystem moderated by Alex<br />
Howard from O’Reilly Media; Open Government: Vision, Value and the Way Forward moderated by Chris Vein, US Deputy<br />
Chief Technology Officer; Information Stewardship: Policy Foundations for Open Government moderated by Miriam Nisbet,<br />
Director of the Office of Government Information Services (OGIS), US National Archives and Records Administration; Smart<br />
Innovation for Sustainable Urban Growth and Development moderated by Meghan Cook, Program Manager, Center for<br />
Technology in Government; Women and ICTs: Access and Empowerment moderated by Dina Refki, D.A., Executive Director<br />
for the Center for Women in Government & Civil Society, University at Albany; and Celebrating 20 Years of UNU-IIST: A<br />
Conversation about the Future of Government in the Digital Age moderated by Tomasz Janowski, Senior Research Fellow, IIST<br />
Center for Electronic Governance.<br />
An interactive Doctoral Colloquium was co-organized by Elsa Estevez, UNU-IIST Center for Electronic Governance, Macao<br />
SAR and Lei Zheng from Fudan University, China providing doctoral students from different countries and disciplines an<br />
opportunity to discuss a variety of themes related to electronic governance research and topics and issues associated with their<br />
dissertation research and career plans. The colloquium included a keynote presentation from Wojciech Cellary, Professor and<br />
Head of Department of Information Technology, Poznan University of Economics and a representative of Elsevier on how to<br />
publish scholarly articles.<br />
Eight thematic sessions were organized by invited experts from academia, government, industry, non-governmental organizations<br />
(NGO), the World Bank, the United Nations, and New York State Government. Each session drew attention to specific electronic<br />
governance concerns in a particular country or on an issue of particular topical interest.. These sessions cover the following<br />
topics.<br />
iii
• Civic Platforms and Coalitions<br />
• Regional Integration through e-Governance in UN-ESCWA region organized by UN Economic and Social<br />
Commission for Western Asia<br />
• Smart Cities - Sustainable Urban Innovation organized by European Commission, JRC-IPTS, Information Society Unit<br />
• Financial Transparency and the Role of Government organized by the OrgPedia Project;<br />
• Developing Public Value Metrics for Return on Government ICT Investments organized and sponsored by Microsoft<br />
• Big Data Analytics organized and sponsored by EMC<br />
• Bridging the North and South Gap in ICT-enabled Policy Modeling and Governance co-organized by UN-IIST Center<br />
for Electronic Governance, Center for Technology in Government, and the EgovPoliNet/Crossover project<br />
In response to the call for submissions, the conference received 166 submissions from 68 countries. Five kinds of contributions<br />
were sought in the call – (1) Completed research or practice papers (2) Short research or practice papers , (3) Demonstrations – 2<br />
pages in length, (4) Posters and (5) Tutorials proposals. The conference organizers received a total of 98 completed works, 49<br />
ongoing works, 2 demonstrations, 11 posters and 5 tutorial. The members of the program committee and expert colleagues<br />
anonymous peer review (on average, three reviews were carried out for each submission). This process resulted in, 23<br />
submissions accepted as Completed Research work, 10 as Completed Practice/Policy work, 24 as Ongoing Research Work, 14 as<br />
ongoing Practice Work, 33 as Posters, 2 as Tutorials and 1 as Demonstration. This was an acceptance rate of 34%. All accepted<br />
submissions have been included, in revised form, in this volume, which is organized into 15 paper sessions, a poster section and<br />
a tutorial section.<br />
Many people and institutions contributed to the organization of ICEGOV2012. We wish to express our most sincere thanks to the<br />
official host of ICEGOV2012 – the Center for Technology in Government, University at Albany, and particularly to the Dr.<br />
Nancy Zimpher, Chancellor of the State University of New York (SUNY), and George M. Phillip, President of the University at<br />
Albany, for creating the enabling environment to turn ICEGOV 2012 into a reality. We also wish to thank Gerald D. Jennings,<br />
the Mayor of the City of Albany, for supporting and hosting the conference in the beautiful city of Albany, New York. We also<br />
wish to thank the conference patron, The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration for endorsing the conference.<br />
We would like to thank our Silver Sponsors Accenture and the Macau Foundation whose contributions have allowed ICEGOV to<br />
be one the premier international conferences in electronic governance. We would also like to recognize Microsoft and EMC for<br />
their dedication to ICEGOV since its inception—it could not have grown without their support. Special gratitude is due to Macao<br />
SAR Government, Public Administration and Civil Service Bureau (SAFP) and Macao Foundation, particularly to Ms. Florinda<br />
da Rosa Silva Chan, Secretary for Administration and Justice; Mr. José Chu, Director of SAFP and the President of the Macao<br />
Foundation; for supporting ICEGOV2012, the ICEGOV global conference series, and the e-Macao Program as the origin of the<br />
series.<br />
Our sincere thank you goes to the host of ICEGOV2012: the Center for Technology in Government (CTG), University at Albany.<br />
In particular we would like to recognize the efforts of Theresa Pardo, Jana Hrdinova, Jane Krumm-Schwan, Meghan Cook,<br />
Alison Heaphy, Paula Rickert, Jim Costello, and the whole CTG team for their time, energy, and dedication to ICEGOV2012.<br />
We are grateful to the General Conference Chairs in particular, David Ferriero, Archivist of the United States, National Archives<br />
and Records Administration and Haiyan Qian, Director of the Division for Public Administration and Development Management,<br />
United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs. We are appreciative of the guidance and support provided by the<br />
International Steering Committee and the National Steering Committee at various stages of the conference planning. We thank<br />
Sharon Dawes for chairing the Best Paper Awards Committee and the members of the committee for conducting a thoughtful and<br />
rigorous selection process. We would like to thank all of the members of the Program Committee and additional reviewers for<br />
their efforts in carrying out a quality review process which is the foundation of a strong conference program. We are most<br />
grateful to the keynote speakers, to the organizers and chairs of tutorials, doctoral colloquium, plenary sessions, thematic<br />
sessions, paper sessions and discussion panels, and to all panelists and speakers for their contributions. We are most thankful to<br />
all authors for their efforts in preparing, submitting and presenting papers at ICEGOV2012. Last but not least, we would like to<br />
acknowledge the efforts of the ICEGOV2012 Conference Committee and the team at the Electronic Governance Center, UNU-<br />
IIST towards organizing ICEGOV2012.<br />
We believe ICEGOV2012 has contributed to the ongoing efforts of building a global community of research and practice for<br />
Electronic Governance that is able to cross not only national but also institutional and thematic borders, and that the contacts,<br />
discussions and ideas in Albany in October 2012 will continue well after the conference is over and continue to build as we<br />
approach ICEGOV2013.<br />
Albany, NY October 2012 J. Ramon Gil-Garcia, Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas, Mexico<br />
Natalie Helbig, Center for Technology in Government, SUNY, United States<br />
Adegboyega Ojo, United Nations University, Macao<br />
Program Co-Chairs<br />
ICEGOV 2012<br />
iv
Table of Contents<br />
Forward .......................................................................................................................................................................................... iii<br />
Table of Contents ........................................................................................................................................................................... v<br />
Conference Organization ................................................................................................................................................................ x<br />
Session 1: Open Government Data<br />
o Beyond Open Government: Ontologies and Data Architectures to Support Ethical Consumption ........................................ 1<br />
Luis Luna-Reyes, Djoko Sigit Sayogo, Jing Zhang, Theresa Pardo, Giri Kumar Tayi, Jana Hrdinova, David Andersen<br />
o Exploring Process Barriers to Release Public Sector Information in Local Government ....................................................... 5<br />
Peter Conradie, Sunil Choenni<br />
o Implementation Framework for Open Data in Columbia ........................................................................................................ 14<br />
Lydia Marleny Prieto, Ana Carolina Rodriguez, Johanna Pimiento<br />
o Increasing Kenyan Open Data Consumption: A Design Thinking Approach ......................................................................... 18<br />
Leonida Mutuku, Jessica Colaco<br />
o New Perspectives for Electronic Government in Brazil: The Adoption of Open Government Data in National and Subnational<br />
Governments of Brazil ............................................................................................................................................................. 22<br />
Ricardo Matheus, Manuella Maia Ribeiro, José Carlos Vaz<br />
o Open Government 2.0: Citizen Empowerment through Open Data, Web and Mobile Apps .................................................. 30<br />
Rodrigo Sandoval-Almazan, Luis Luna-Reyes, J. Ramon Gil-Garcia, Dolores E. Luna, Yaneileth Rojas-Romero<br />
Session 2 - E-democracy & Participation 1<br />
o A Logistic Multilevel Model for Civic Engagement and Community Group Impact in the Digital Age ............................... 34<br />
B. Joon Kim, Stephen Kleinschmit<br />
o Designing Online Deliberation Using Web 2.0 Technologies: Drafting a Bill of Law on Internet Regulation in Brazil ....... 38<br />
Fabro Steibel<br />
o E-Participation in the Era of Web 2.0: Factors Affecting Citizens' Active E-Participation in Local Governance ................. 44<br />
Jooho Lee, Soonhee Kim<br />
o Genres of Communication in Activist eParticipation: A Comparison of New and Old Media ............................................... 48<br />
Marius Rohde Johannessen<br />
o Internet Voting: Fatally Torn Between Conflicting Goals? ..................................................................................................... 58<br />
Marco Prandini, Marco Ramilli<br />
Session 3: Policies 1<br />
o A New Roadmap for Next-Generation Policy-Making ........................................................................................................... 62<br />
Francesco Mureddu, David Osimo, Gianluca Misuraca, Stefano Armenia<br />
o Best International Practices for Access, Ownership and Use of Information and Communication Technologies for People<br />
with Sensory Disabilities ......................................................................................................................................................... 67<br />
Marco Peres, Paula Suárez<br />
o E-Government Education at the Public Administration Departments in Turkey .................................................................... 71<br />
Cenay Babaoglu, H. Serkan Akilli, Mehmet Akif Demircioglu<br />
o e-Government in Latin American Countries: Are they Building National Policies with a Regional Perspective? ................. 75<br />
J. Ignacio Criado<br />
o e-Government in Russia: Is or Seems? .................................................................................................................................... 79<br />
Lyudmila Bershadskaya, Andrei Chugunov, Dmitrii Trutnev<br />
Session 4 - EGOV Adoption and Usage<br />
o Framework for Useful Transparency Websites for Citizens .................................................................................................. 83<br />
Josune Arcelus<br />
o The Circular Continuum of Agencies, Libraries, and Users: A Model of E-Government in Practice .................................. 87<br />
Natalie Greene Taylor, Paul Jaeger, Ursula Gorham, John Bertot, Ruth Lincoln, Elizabeth Larson<br />
o The Critical Success Factors for Websites for Chinese Migrant Farmer Workers: A Multi-case Study ............................... 95<br />
Fang Wang, Lihong Gu<br />
o The Development of Public Smart Phone Apps in Korea: Empirical Approach ................................................................... 105<br />
Eom Seok-Jin, Mi Yeon Lee, Jun Houng Kim<br />
o Understanding Citizens' Perceptions of E-Government Services in Mexico ......................................................................... 109<br />
Juan M. Gomez Reynoso, Celene Navarrete, Rodrigo Sandoval Almazan<br />
v
Session 5 - Information Sharing, Models, & Platforms<br />
o Factors Influencing Exchange Activities in Transnational Knowledge Networks: The Case of the Hajj-MDSS ................. 113<br />
Mohammed Gharawi, Theresa Pardo<br />
o Information Sharing and Financial Market Regulation: Understanding the Capability Gap ................................................. 123<br />
Djoko Sayogo, Theresa Pardo, Peter Bloniarz<br />
o On Public Service Provision Informative Phase: A Dialogue-based Model and Platform .................................................... 132<br />
Efthimios Tambouris, Vassiliti Outsetari, Konstantinos Tarabanis<br />
o The Complexity of Cross-Boundary Information Sharing: An Organizational Perspective on Taiwan E-Government ....... 143<br />
Tung-Mou Yang<br />
Session 6: Digital Records & Information Management<br />
o A Patent System Ontology for Facilitating Retrieval of Patent Related Information ............................................................ 147<br />
Siddharth Taduri, Gloria Lau, Kincho Law, Jay Kesan<br />
o Digitisation of Electoral Rolls: Analysis of a Multi-Agency E-Government Project in Pakistan ......................................... 158<br />
Hasnain Bokhari, Mustafa Maqsood Khan<br />
o Integrating Argumentation Technologies and Context-Based Search for Intelligent Processing of Citizens' Opinion in Social<br />
Media ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 166<br />
Carlos Chesñevar, Ana Maguitman, Elsa Estévez, Ramón Brena<br />
o Preparing for Digital Curation Governance: Educating Stewards of Public Information ...................................................... 171<br />
Christopher Lee, Helen Tibbo<br />
o REGNET: Regulatory Information Management, Compliance and Analysis ....................................................................... 175<br />
Kincho Law, Gloria Lau<br />
Session 7: Policies 2<br />
o From Information-poor to Information-rich: Bridging Regional Economic Disparities in Nigeria through e-Governance<br />
................................................................................................................................................................................................. 184<br />
Sanjo Faniran, Kayode Olaniyan<br />
o ICT for Development and the MuNet Program: Experiences and Lessons Learnt from an Indigenous Municipality in<br />
Guatemala ............................................................................................................................................................................... 188<br />
Jorge López-Bachiller, Javier Sáenz-Coré, Diego Cardona<br />
o ICT Policy in Africa a Comparative Study of Ghana and Kenya: Drawing on Lessons from Developed Countries ........... 192<br />
Agnes Odongo<br />
o Laggards or Victims of Socioeconomic Conditions? Findings from Ongoing Survey of Female Slum-dwellers Without Cell<br />
Phone Ownership ................................................................................................................................................................... 202<br />
Devendra Potnis, Kanchan Deosthali<br />
o Promoting User Uptake of E-Government in Colombia ........................................................................................................ 206<br />
Diana Parra Silva, Johanna Pimiento Quintero<br />
Session 8: Measurement 1<br />
o From Failure to Success: Using Design-Reality Gap Analysis as a Mid-implementation Assessment Tool for e-Government<br />
................................................................................................................................................................................................. 210<br />
Lemma Lessa, Solomon Negash, Mesfin Belachew<br />
o Measuring Organizational Interoperability in Practice: The Case Study of Population Welfare Department of Government of<br />
Sindh, Pakistan ....................................................................................................................................................................... 216<br />
Devender Maheshwari, Marijn Janssen<br />
o Ranking and Hotspot Detection Methods on Infant Health for Districts in Java, Indonesia: E-Governance Micro Tools ... 226<br />
Yekti Widyaningsih, Wayne Myers<br />
o Technological Assessment of e-government Web presence in Nigeria ................................................................................. 236<br />
O. Michael Awoleye, Blessing Ojuloge, Willie Siyanbola<br />
Session 9: Social Media in Government<br />
o Exploring Social Media Usage in Saudi E-Government Websites ........................................................................................ 243<br />
Hend Al-Khalifa, Muna Al-Razgan, Nora Al-Rejebah, Ameera Al-Masoud<br />
o Government Crisis Communication on the Microblog: A Theory Framework and the Case of Shanghai Metro Rear-End<br />
Collision ................................................................................................................................................................................. 248<br />
Xiao Liang<br />
o Government Official Microblogs: An Effective Platform for Facilitating Inclusive Governance ........................................ 258<br />
Xinping Liu, Lei Zheng<br />
o Managing Chinese Government Microblogs: Enablers and Barriers ..................................................................................... 262<br />
Lei Zheng<br />
o Study on Social Media Applications by Government in Hong Kong .................................................................................... 267<br />
Huina Xu, Qian Chen<br />
vi
Session 10: ICTs & Governance Transformation<br />
o E-Government and Transformation of Governance and Service Delivery in Bangladesh: A Developing Country Perspective<br />
................................................................................................................................................................................................. 271<br />
Noore Siddiquee<br />
o Evaluating and Assessing a Typology of Ubiquitous City Services by Classifying and Assigning Actual Services from an<br />
Inventory of Identified Services ............................................................................................................................................. 279<br />
Jungwoo Lee, Hyejung Lee, Taesung Kim<br />
o Explaining the E-Government Paradox: An Analysis of Two Decades of Evidence from Scientific Literature and Practical<br />
on Barriers to E-Government ................................................................................................................................................. 287<br />
Alberto Savoldelli, Cristiano Codagnone, Gianluca Misuraca<br />
o Investigating the Relationships between Accountability and Governments' Transformation to E-Government .................. 297<br />
M. Sirajul Islam, Åke Grönlund<br />
o Technologies, Tools & Web 2.0 in Support of Public Administration Workplace Communications ................................... 301<br />
Milena Krumova<br />
o Transforming City Government: A Case Study of Philly311 ................................................................................................ 310<br />
Taewoo Nam, Theresa Pardo<br />
Session 11: IT Governance & Policy<br />
o A Literature Review: IT Governance Guidelines and Areas ................................................................................................. 320<br />
Ruben Pereira, Miguel Mira da Silva<br />
o Assessment of Success Factors of e-Government Project Implementation: Challenges for the Kosovo e-Government<br />
Perspective ............................................................................................................................................................................. 324<br />
Artan Rexhepi, Blerim Rexha, Agni Dika<br />
o Computer Supported Contractor Selection for Public Administration Ventures ................................................................... 332<br />
Zbigniew Paszkiewicz, Wojciech Cellary<br />
o E-Government Success Factors in the Context of an IT-enabled Budget Reform: A Questionnaire Report ........................ 336<br />
Gabriel Puron-Cid<br />
o Public CIO, Figurehead or Decision-Maker? The Case of Germany .................................................................................... 346<br />
Niels Proske, Moreen Heine, Norbert Gronau<br />
Session 12: Implementation & Impact<br />
o Design and Implementation of a Public School Government-to-Employee System ............................................................. 350<br />
Carl Strang, Ira Goldstein<br />
o E-Governance and Millennium Development Goals: Sustainable Development Perspective in Rural India ....................... 354<br />
Harekrishna Misra<br />
o Harnessing Renewable Energy Technologies for ICT and e-Governance Services in Un-electrified Communities in Rural<br />
Nepal ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 364<br />
Mona Sharma<br />
o ICT-enabled Delivery of Maternal Health Services ............................................................................................................... 369<br />
Johanna Awotwi<br />
o If We Build It, Will They Come? A Mixed-Method Exploration of High Speed Broadband Access and Economic<br />
Development .......................................................................................................................................................................... 379<br />
Amy Huffman<br />
Session 13: E-democracy & Participation 2<br />
o An e-Democracy Experience: Digital Cabinet Office of Rio Grande do Sul State (Brazil) .................................................. 385<br />
Marie Anne Macadar, Gabriela Viale Pereira, Vanessa Marques Daniel<br />
o Social Inclusion and Digital Divide: eParticipation Dilemmas in Municipalities ................................................................. 389<br />
Lukasz Porwol, Padraic O'donoghue, John Breslin, Chris Coughlan, Brendan Mulligan<br />
o Studying Chinese Government Microblogs: Content and Interactions .................................................................................. 393<br />
Tuo Zheng, Lei Zheng<br />
Session 14: Information Structure<br />
o CRHIS: Cloud-based Rural Healthcare Information System ................................................................................................. 402<br />
Manas Ranjan Patra, Rama Krushna Das, Rabi Prasad Padhy<br />
o Data collection in a degraded network: case of developing countries or countries in crisis .................................................. 406<br />
Jiomekong Azanzi Azanzi, Broto Laurent, Hagimont Daniel, Tchuente Maurice<br />
o The Secure Platform Problem: Taxonomy and Analysis of Existing Proposals to Address this Problem ............................ 410<br />
Michael Schläpfer, Melanie Volkamer<br />
vii
Session 15: Measurement 2<br />
o Anti-Corruption Online Monitoring Systems in Brazil .......................................................................................................... 419<br />
Ricardo Matheus, Manuella M. Ribeiro, José Carlos Vaz, Cesar A. de Souza<br />
o E-Government Portals in Central America: A Preliminary Evaluation and Ranking (2011-2012) ....................................... 426<br />
Rodrigo Sandoval-Almazan, J. Ramon Gil-Garcia, Nancy Karina Saucedo Leyva<br />
o Evolving e-government Benchmarking to Better Cover Technology Development and Emerging Societal Needs ............. 430<br />
Jeremy Millard, Kim Andreasson, Mikael Snaprud<br />
o Impacts of the Public Procurement Reform in Chile on the Municipal Level ....................................................................... 440<br />
Gaston Concha, Roberto Anrique<br />
Posters<br />
o A Crowdsourcing Model for Public Consultations on Draft Laws ........................................................................................ 450<br />
Vasiliy Burov, Evgeny Patarakin, Boris Yarmakhov<br />
o A Novel Scheme of Government Information Sharing System for Implementing Paperless Government ........................... 452<br />
John (Jong Uk) Choi, Joowon Cho, Dong Hwa Kim, Chang Hun Yoo<br />
o A structure oriented evaluation model for readiness of e-governance ................................................................................... 454<br />
Uranchimeg Tudevdagva, Uyanga Sambuu<br />
o An Initial Exploration of Hyperlinks of African Government Portal Websites ..................................................................... 456<br />
Abebe Rorissa<br />
o C-DAC Pan India Strategy in High Performance Computing for Human Advancement ...................................................... 458<br />
Kapil Mathur, Sandeep Agrawal, Sucheta Pawar, Abhishek Das, Goldi Misra<br />
o Crowdsourcing as Data Sharing: A Regional Web-based Real Estate Development Database ............................................ 460<br />
Robert Goodspeed, Christian Spanring, Timothy Reardon<br />
o Drivers for Public Sector Contests ......................................................................................................................................... 460<br />
Claudia Louis<br />
o E-Reconciliation in Rwanda ................................................................................................................................................... 464<br />
Erika Bagambiki<br />
o Electronic Participation System: The Nigerian Perspective .................................................................................................. 468<br />
Ibrahim Aliyu<br />
o Enterprise Systems and Government Organizational Changes: A Socio-materiality Analysis ............................................. 470<br />
Loni Hagen, Donghee Sinn<br />
o Evaluation of E-Governance Projects of Nepal ..................................................................................................................... 472<br />
Ganesh Adhikari<br />
o Exploiting the FLOSS Paradigm in Collaborative e-Learning: Application to e-Government ............................................. 474<br />
Sara Fernandes, Antonio Cerone, Luis Barbosa<br />
o From Inter-agency Information Sharing to Open Data: A Case Study of Taiwan E-Government ........................................ 477<br />
Tung-Mou Yang<br />
o From International Open Government Dataset Search to Discovery: A Semantic Web Service Approach ......................... 480<br />
Eric Rozell, John Erickson, Jim Hendler<br />
o Implementation of Integrated Tax System COTS Product .................................................................................................... 483<br />
Uyanga Sambuu, Zolbayar Chuluunbat, Esbold Unurkhaan<br />
o Information Sharing in Inter-departmental Collaboration: A Conceptual Framework for Local Government Authorities .. 485<br />
Alinaghi Ziaee Bigdeli, Muhammad Kamal, Sergio de Cesare<br />
o Interagency Collaboration in Providing Public Services in Russia: A Legal Perspective ..................................................... 487<br />
Evgeny Styrin, Andrey Zhulin<br />
o Monitoring Methods of e-Governance Development Assessment: Comparative Analysis of International and Russian<br />
Experience .............................................................................................................................................................................. 490<br />
Lyudmila Bershadskaya, Andrei Chugunov, Dmitrii Trutnev<br />
o Moroccan E-government Ten years Evolutions ..................................................................................................................... 492<br />
Mohamed Mohyi Eddine El Aichi<br />
o Opportunities for Improving eGovernment: Using Language Technology in Workflow Management ................................ 495<br />
Ola Knutsson, Eriks Sneiders, Alyaa Alfalahi<br />
o Prioritization and Geo-spatiotemporal Hotspot Detection of Forest Loss Hotspot Using NDVI as a Response Variable .... 497<br />
Koli Rajesh E., Rao Anil G., Ranei Guari M., Joshi Manish R.<br />
o Quality Assurance Case Study of an ICT Supported Legally Binding Election in Austria ................................................... 500<br />
Klaus John, Andreas Ehringfeld<br />
o Quality Assurance Model for e-Governance Projects: A Case Study on e-Counseling ........................................................ 502<br />
Rama Krushna Das Pabitrananda Patnaik, Manas Ranjan Patra<br />
o Regulation Room: Moving Towards Civic Participation 2.0 ................................................................................................. 504<br />
Josiah Heidt, Jackeline Solivan<br />
viii
o Revival of Farming Community with M-Agriculture ............................................................................................................ 506<br />
Swapna Veldanda<br />
o Social Media Usage Guidelines for the Government of the United Arab Emirates .............................................................. 508<br />
Ibrahim Elbadawi<br />
o System For Measuring E-Gov: A Multi-Stakeholder Approach ............................................................................................ 511<br />
Camilo Cristancho Mantilla, Juan Carlos Noriega Silva<br />
o The Digital Divide's Devaluing of Local E-Government ...................................................................................................... 513<br />
Richard Huff, Liana Kleeman<br />
o The Importance of Electronic Accessibility in Brazilian Juridical Electronic Process .......................................................... 516<br />
Adriana Simeao Ferreira, Daniel Goncalves de Melo, Leondeniz Freitas<br />
o The Use of Mobile and Wireless Technology and Food Quality Control in China ............................................................... 518<br />
Shuhua Monica Liu, Qianli Yuan, Danyao Li, Lei Zheng<br />
o The Use of Recursive Bisection in the Mapping of Sample New York State Electoral Districts ......................................... 520<br />
David Molik, Michelle Sharer<br />
o Toward Interoperable Government: A case of Bangladesh ................................................................................................... 522<br />
M. Shakhawat Hossain Bhuiyan<br />
o Trust Issues in the E-Government Implementation in Nepal ................................................................................................. 524<br />
Garima Dhakal, Prajwal Amatya, Bal Krishna Bal<br />
o eGovernance Implementation Model for Public Sector Innovation ........................................................................................ 526<br />
M. Irfanullah Arfeen, Nawar Khan<br />
Tutorials<br />
o Tutorial: Digital Curation for Public Sector Proffesionals ..................................................................................................... 528<br />
Christopher A. Lee and Helen Tibbo<br />
o Use of Agent-Based Modeling for e-Governance Research ................................................................................................... 531<br />
Yushim Kim, Callie McGraw<br />
ix
Conference Organization<br />
Host<br />
Center for Technology in Government, University at Albany, State University of New York (SUNY)<br />
Patron<br />
U.S. National Archives and Records Administration<br />
Conference Committee<br />
David FERRIERO, Conference Co-Chair - Archivist of the United States, National Archives and Records<br />
Administration, USA<br />
Theresa PARDO, Conference Co-Chair - Director and Research Professor, Center for Technology in Government,<br />
University at Albany, USA<br />
Haiyan QIAN, Conference Co-Chair - Director, Division for Public Administration & Development Management<br />
(DPADM), UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, USA<br />
Jose Ramon GIL-GARCIA, Program Co-Chair - Associate Professor and Director, Data Center for Applied<br />
Research in Social Sciences, Centro de Investigacion y Docencia Economicas, Mexico<br />
Natalie HELBIG, Program Co-Chair - Senior Program Associate, Center for Technology in Government, University<br />
at Albany, USA<br />
Adegboyega OJO, Program Co-Chair - Academic Program Officer, Center for Electronic Governance, UNU-IIST,<br />
Macao SAR<br />
Jana Hrdinova, Organization Chair - Program Associate, Center for Technology in Government, University at<br />
Albany, USA<br />
Meghan Cook, Fundraising Chair - Program Manager, Center for Technology in Government, University at Albany,<br />
USA<br />
Alison Heaphy, Publicity Chair - Communication Manager, Center for Technology in Government, University at<br />
Albany, USA<br />
xii
International Steering Committee<br />
John Carlo BERTOT, Professor and Co-Director, Information Policy and Access Center (iPAC), University of<br />
Maryland, USA<br />
Francisco CAMARGO, Director General Programa Gobierno en Linea, Colombia<br />
Wojciech CELLARY, Professor, Department of Information Technology, Poznan University of Economics, Poland<br />
Samuel CHAN, Member of Administrative Committee, Science and Technology Development Fund, Macao SAR,<br />
China<br />
Jim DAVIES, Professor and Director, Software Engineering Programme, Department of Computer Science and<br />
Governing Body Fellow, Computing Laboratory, University of Oxford, UK<br />
Sharon DAWES, Senior Fellow & Professor Emeritus of Public Administration, Center for Technology in<br />
Government, University at Albany, USA<br />
Matthias FINGER, Professor, Faculty of Technology and Management, Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne,<br />
Switzerland<br />
Tomasz JANOWSKI, Senior Research Fellow and Head, UNU-IIST Center for Electronic Governance, Macao<br />
SAR, China (Series Coordinator)<br />
Lorenzo MADRID, Chief Technology Officer for the Latin America Region and World Wide Director for the<br />
Government Interoperability Initiative, Microsoft Corporation, USA<br />
Henk G. SOL, Professor and Founding Dean, University of Groningen, The Netherlands<br />
Maurice TCHUENTE, Pro-Chancellor University of Buea, Cameroon<br />
Saleem ZOUGHBI, Regional Adviser (ICT), UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia, Lebanon<br />
National Advisory Committee<br />
Cary COGLIANESE, Penn Program on Regulation, University of Pennsylvania Law School<br />
Mitch LEVENTHAL, Global Affairs, State University of New York<br />
Kim McKINNEY, New York State Office of Information Technology Services (ITS)<br />
Beth NOVECK, Democracy Design Workshop, New York Law School<br />
Robert SAMSON, New York State Spending and Government Efficiency (SAGE) Commission<br />
Jim HENDLER, Departments of Computer Science and Cognitive Science, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute<br />
David L. McCLURE, Citizen Services and Innovative Technologies, GSA<br />
Miriam NISBET, Government Information Services (OGIS), National Archives and Records Administration<br />
Douglas ROBINSON, National Association of State Chief Information Officers<br />
Chris VEIN,The White House Office for Science and Technology Policy<br />
xiii
Awards Committee<br />
Sharon S. DAWES, University at Albany, SUNY – USA, Committee Chair<br />
Nicolau REINHARD -- Universidade de Sao Paulo, Brasil<br />
Enrico FERRO – Istituto Superiore Mario Boella, Italy<br />
Marijn JANSSEN - Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands<br />
Lei ZHENG – Fudan University, China<br />
Luis F. LUNA REYES – Universidad de las Amércias Puebla, Mexico<br />
Rejean ROY – CEFRIO, Canada<br />
Gbenga ADEBUSUYI, Nigeria<br />
Johanna AWOTWI, Ghana<br />
Program Committee<br />
Gustav AAGESON, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway<br />
Gbenga ADEBUSUYI, National e-Government Strategies, Nigeria<br />
Rodrigo SANDOVAL-ALMAZAN, Universidad Autonoma del Estado de México, Mexico<br />
Kim ANDERSEN, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark<br />
Jean-Pierre AUFFRET, International Academy of CIO, USA<br />
Johanna Ekua AWOTWI, Center for e-Governance, Ghana<br />
Frank BANNISTER, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland<br />
Joerg BECKER, University of Illinois at Chicago, School of Art and Design, USA<br />
Jaro BERCE, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia Deepak BHATIA, World Bank, USA<br />
Melanie BICKING, University of Koblenz-Landau, Germany<br />
Nikolaj BJORNER, Microsoft Corporation, USA<br />
Brian BURKE, Center for Technology in Government, University at Albany, USA<br />
Luis CAMARINHA-MATOS, UNINOVA, Portugal<br />
Donna CANESTRARO, Center for Technology in Government, University at Albany, USA<br />
Lemuria CARTER, Mississippi State University, USA<br />
Alejandra CECHICH, National University of Comahue, Argentina<br />
Wojciech CELLARY, Poznan University of Economics, Poland<br />
Yannis CHARALABIDIS, National Technical University of Athens, Greece<br />
Venkatesh CHOPPELLA, IIIT Hyderabad, India<br />
Eleni CHRISTODOULOU, University of Ciprus, Ciprus<br />
Gabriel PURON-CID, Centro de Investigación y Docencias Económicas, México<br />
Soon Ae CHUN, University of New York, USA<br />
Meghan COOK, Center for Technology in Government, University at Albany, USA<br />
Antonio CORDELLA, Information Systems and Innovation Group at the Department of<br />
Management at the London School of Economics, UK<br />
Anthony CRESSWELL, Center for Technology in Government, University at Albany, USA<br />
Ignacio CRIADO, Universidad Autonoma de Madrid, Spain<br />
xiv
Jim DAVIES, Computing Laboratory, University of Oxford, UK<br />
Sharon DAWES, Center for Technology in Government, University at Albany, USA<br />
Rahul DE, Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore, India<br />
Zamira DZHUSUPOVA, Center for Electronic Governance, UNU-IIST, Macao SAR<br />
Sara ERIKSEN, Blekinge Institute of Technology, Sweden<br />
Elsa ESTEVEZ, Center for Electronic Governance, UNU-IIST, Macao SAR<br />
Enrico FERRO, Istituto Superiore Mario Boella, Italy<br />
Pablo FILLOTRANI, National University of the South, Argentina<br />
Simon FONG, University of Macau, Macao SAR<br />
Jose FORMAZ, Swiss Graduate School of Public Administration, Switzerland<br />
Mila GASCO, Institute of Governance and Public Management, ESADE, Spain<br />
Rimantas GATAUTIS, Kaunas University of Technology, Lithuania<br />
Jeremy GIBBONS, University of Oxford, UK<br />
Robert GOODSPEED<br />
Mary GRIFFITHS, The University of Adelaide, Australia<br />
Thad HALL, University of Utah, USA<br />
Steve HARRIS, Computing Laboratory, University of Oxford, UK<br />
Karim HAMZA, Maastricht school of Management, Netherlands<br />
Paul HENMA, University of Queensland, Australia<br />
Andrew HOPPIN, New Amsterdam Ideas LLC, USA<br />
Princely IFINEDO, Cape Breton University, Shannon School of Business, Canada<br />
Sirajul ISLAM, Bangledesh Center for eGovernance & Örebro University, Sweeden<br />
Tomasz JANOWSKI, Center for Electronic Governance, UNU-IIST, Macao SAR<br />
Marijn JANSSEN, Delft University of Technology, Netherlands<br />
Atreyi KANKANHALLI, School of Computing, National University of Singapore, Singapore<br />
Andrea KAVANAUGH, Virginia Tech, USA<br />
Jay KESAN, University of Illinois, USA<br />
Ralf KLISCHEWSKI, German University in Cairo, Egypt<br />
Trond KNUDSEN, Research Council of Norway, Norway<br />
Padmanabhan KRISHNAN, Bond University,<br />
Kincho LAW, Stanford University, USA<br />
Deidre LEE, National University of Ireland, DERI, Ireland<br />
Christine LEITNER, Center for European Public Administration, Danube University Krems, Austria<br />
Calvin LEONG, SAFP, Macao SAR Government, Macao SAR<br />
Miriam LIPS, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand<br />
Nikos LOUTAS, Digital Enterprise Research Institute, Ireland<br />
Luis LUNA-REYES, Universidad de las Americas-Puebla, Mexico<br />
Ann MACINTOSH, University of Leeds, Institute of Communication Studies, United Kingdom<br />
Egle MALINAUSKIENE, Mykolas Romeris University, Lithuania<br />
Albert MEIJER, University of Utrecht, Netherlands<br />
Vassilis MENEKLIS, University of Piraeus, Greece<br />
Ines MERGEL, Syracuse University, USA<br />
Jeremy MILLARD, Danish Technological Institute, Centre for Policy and Business Analysis,<br />
Denmark<br />
Gianluca MISURACA, EC Joint Research Centre, Institute for Prospective Technological Studies,<br />
Spain<br />
Hrushikesha MOHANTY, University of Hyderabad, India<br />
Fawzi MULKI, Social and Economic Directorate, Royal Hashemite Court, Jordan<br />
Taewoo NAM, University at Albany, USA<br />
Toshio OBI, Waseda University, Japan<br />
Theresa PARDO, University at Albany, USA<br />
xv
Marco PERES USECHE, Universidad Externado de Colombia, Colombia<br />
Vasillios PERISTERAS, Digital Enterprise Research Institute, Ireland<br />
Chris REDDICK, The University of Texas at San Antonio, USA<br />
Scott ROBERTSON, University of Hawaii, USA<br />
Tomáš SABOL, Technical University of Košice, Slovak Republic<br />
Steve SAWYER, Syracuse University, USA<br />
Apetipe SEAKOW, Stamford International University, Thailand<br />
Bory SENG, Seoul National University, South Korea<br />
Jochen SCHOLL, University of Washington, USA<br />
Charles SCHWEIK, University of Massachusetts at Amherst, USA<br />
Aadya SHUKLA, Harvard University, USA<br />
Stuart SHULMAN, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, USA<br />
Henk SOL, University of Groningen, Netherlands<br />
Alberto Savoldelli<br />
Marco Prandini<br />
Maurizio Leo<br />
Eleni Panopoulou<br />
Efthimios Tambouris<br />
Alberto Savoldelli<br />
Walter Cerroni<br />
Marco Ramilli<br />
Franco Callegati<br />
Hans-Dieter Zimmermann<br />
Maddalane SORRENTINO, University of Milan, Italy<br />
Evgeny STYRIN, Higher School of Economics (HSE), Russia<br />
Ivar TALLO, e-Governance Academy, Estonia<br />
Efthimios TAMBOURIS, University of Macedonia, Greece<br />
Vishanth WEERAKKODY, Brunel University, UK<br />
Maria WIMMER, University of Koblenz and Landau, Germany<br />
Gamel WIREDU, University of London, UK<br />
Peter WINSTANLEY, Scottish Government, UK<br />
Jing ZHANG, Clark University, USA<br />
Lei ZHENG, Fudan University, China<br />
Jozef ZURADA, University of Louisville, USA<br />
Additional Reviewers<br />
xvi<br />
Jörg Becker<br />
Petra Wolf<br />
Eleni Kaliva<br />
Efthimios Tambouris<br />
Carl Erik Moe<br />
Brunella Caroleo<br />
Elisa Pautasso<br />
Enrico Ferro<br />
Evangelos Kalampokis<br />
Manabu Nakashima<br />
Djoko Sayogo
Session 1<br />
Open Government Data
Beyond Open Government: Ontologies and Data<br />
Architectures to Support Ethical Consumption<br />
Luis F. Luna-Reyes<br />
Universidad de las Americas-Puebla<br />
luisf.luna@udlap.mx<br />
Theresa A. Pardo<br />
University at Albany – SUNY<br />
tpardo@ctg.albany.edu<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
Two important trends on openness are promoting improved<br />
accountability from government and private organizations. The<br />
case of private transparency finds its roots in consumer and other<br />
stakeholder movements. The open government movement in the<br />
US is looking for alternatives to “smart disclosure,” which implies<br />
providing consumers with better information to make better<br />
buying choices. We explore current knowledge on ethical<br />
consumption, as well as two influential technological tools to<br />
support consumer decisions. Our initial discussion suggests that<br />
the use of ontologies and data architectures, together with the<br />
appropriate policy environment and governance system, may<br />
solve some of the current problems identified.<br />
Categories and Subject Descriptors<br />
K.4.1 [Public Policy Issues]: Private Sector Transparency and<br />
Ethical Consumption<br />
General Terms<br />
Management, Design, Human Factors, Standardization,<br />
Languages, Theory, Legal Aspects<br />
Keywords<br />
Sustainability, Supply-Chain, Ethical Consumption, Private Sector<br />
Transparency<br />
1. INTRODUCTION<br />
In the last years we have witnessed two parallel but closely related<br />
trends. First, governments around the world have increasingly<br />
worked to make their operations and decisions more open [17].<br />
On the other hand, a there is a trend pushing corporate<br />
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for<br />
personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are<br />
not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies<br />
bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for<br />
components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored.<br />
Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to<br />
post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission<br />
and/or a fee.<br />
ICEGOV '12, October 22 - 25 2012, Albany, NY, United States, NY, USA<br />
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1200-4/12/10…$15.00.<br />
Djoko Sigit Sayogo<br />
University at Albany – SUNY<br />
dsayogo@ctg.albany.edu<br />
Giri Kumar Tayi<br />
University at Albany – SUNY<br />
g.tayi@albany.edu<br />
David F. Andersen<br />
University at Albany – SUNY<br />
fadum@albany.edu<br />
1<br />
Jing Zhang<br />
Clark University<br />
jizhang@clarku.edu<br />
Jana Hrdinova<br />
University at Albany – SUNY<br />
jhrdinova@ctg.albany.edu<br />
organizations to be more accountable, transparent, and ethical<br />
[2,6]. Although the first documented stakeholder actions to hold<br />
corporations accountable and transparent took place in the early<br />
1600’s [2], the movement has intensified in the last decades<br />
through grassroots movements lead by NGOs to address perceived<br />
failures by States to protect workers [6], and more recently,<br />
because of an increased consumer interest in the environment and<br />
sustainability [14]. In the US, government has also included as<br />
part of its open government initiative, the need to take regulatory<br />
approaches to “smart disclosure” of information needed to help<br />
consumers to make better choices 1 [19].<br />
Although there are many formal attempts to measure and<br />
communicate corporate practices to consumers (surveys, indexes,<br />
or technology applications), there is no agreement on what<br />
information should be disclosed to consumers to better help their<br />
decision making. Moreover, there is even less agreement in terms<br />
of how to ensure data availability, reliability, and validity, as well<br />
as transparency of the processes to disclose such information [14].<br />
Thus, the purpose of this paper is to explore what is the relevant<br />
information for consumers, as well as feasible ways of pulling the<br />
information together to fulfill consumers’ needs. To accomplish<br />
this objective, we explore the literature on ethical consumption<br />
and two prominent tools for ethical consumption in the US and<br />
the European Union. The paper ends by proposing the use of open<br />
architecture and innovative governance systems not only to enable<br />
interoperability along the supply chain, but also to improve<br />
consumer access to information to make better buying decisions.<br />
2. LITERATURE REVIEW<br />
2.1 Understanding Ethical Consumer Values<br />
and Preferences<br />
A large body of literature focusing on ethical consumption is<br />
based on the premise that consumer behavior is “rational”. As a<br />
rational actor, a consumer will seek a product that satisfies his/her<br />
needs by optimally considering all available alternatives and<br />
information [7]. The consumer consumption behavior is guided by<br />
1 http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/inforeg/foragencies/informing-consumers-through-smart-disclosure.pdf
the combination of their moral sentiments and economic motives,<br />
especially for the sustainable products [1].<br />
Based on their information seeking behavior, consumers can be<br />
categorized into: the “super-informed” and the “ignorant” [12].<br />
The “super-informed” consumers actively search for product<br />
information related to social and environmental values. These<br />
types of consumers consider social attributes such as fair labor<br />
practices [13], environmental attributes such as climate change,<br />
carbon footprint, recycling, energy conservation and other. The<br />
“ignorant” consumers have to rely on the information provided by<br />
supply-chain actors and government. Disclosure of organizational<br />
and industry information becomes a valuable tool to guide ethical<br />
consumption decisions [5].<br />
Other streams of literature depict some ethical consumers as<br />
altruistic actors. These consumers adopt their ethical values into<br />
their life styles [13], and adjust their behavior to consume<br />
environmental friendly, ethical or fairly traded products and show<br />
pro-environment behaviors [3,13,16]. Consumers who are more<br />
involved in ethical lifestyles perceived higher benefits from<br />
additional information [18].<br />
Other research shows that the degree of commitment to the ethical<br />
values also depends on economic factors. Ethical consumers have<br />
to make a compromise due to conflicting and competing priorities<br />
[16]. The social and environmental attributes and consumer<br />
lifestyles serve as interacting and/or moderating variables in the<br />
determinants of ethical consumption behavior. Research show that<br />
consumers deal with three interacting factors in ethical<br />
consumption behavior, price, quality and convenience [3].<br />
2.2 Sustainability Liability<br />
Following ethical consumption could become a liability for the<br />
consumers. In general, although consumers might shift their<br />
purchasing preference from cheaper non-labeled products, they<br />
may not venture to choose more expensive alternatives [16].<br />
Buying unethical products is usually cheaper than buying better<br />
equivalent products thus hindering the proliferation of ethical<br />
consumption [5]. Researchers argue that this is due to the fact that<br />
higher costs to the environment does not translate into higher<br />
price to consumers, and capturing all social and environmental<br />
costs associated with a product is hard to accomplish [5].<br />
2.3 The Role of Trust for Ethical Consumer<br />
Trust in information plays also a key role in consumption<br />
decisions. Trust formation is affected by shared values and joint<br />
beliefs held by consumers and companies about certain social or<br />
ethical behavior [15]. Consumers rely on existing information to<br />
assess the conformance of ethical values practiced by particular<br />
companies [15]. Findings from these streams of research suggest<br />
that consumer’s trust in the product depends partly on consumer’s<br />
trust in the company’s ethical conduct and partly on product<br />
labeling. Thus, some research explores the role of trust in the<br />
context of corporate social responsibility (CSR). This research<br />
found that ethical conduct reflected in the CRS report influences<br />
consumers’ perception of trust toward the company [4,15].<br />
However, trust based on the CSR practices does not always<br />
account for corporate success in the market [4]. The positive<br />
impact of trust depends on factors such as consumers’ perceptions<br />
of the social reputation of a company [4], product quality and<br />
consumer satisfaction [15].<br />
2<br />
Other stream of research assesses consumers’ trust based product<br />
labeling or certification. This research explores the values that<br />
consumers attach to certification and labels. For instance,<br />
consumers positively correlate organic certification with values<br />
such as stricter production standards and control system, domestic<br />
origination of product, and familiarity with the logo as source of<br />
trust [8]. Customers rely on the label regardless of their<br />
understanding of the meaning behind label [3].<br />
3. METHOD<br />
We used a convenience sampling approach to identify the current<br />
tools providing consumers with information for value-based<br />
purchasing. We chose to evaluate Barcoo and GoodGuide based<br />
on the following considerations: 1) each tool was developed and is<br />
primarily used on a different continent, thus enabling us to make a<br />
comparison. Barcoo was established and widely used in Europe<br />
while GoodGuide was established and extensively used in North<br />
America. 2) Both tools are currently popular tools used for valuebased<br />
purchasing considerations.<br />
4. RESULTS<br />
4.1 Ethical Consumption – Online<br />
Information Strategy<br />
This section evaluates the above mentioned tools that are designed<br />
to help consumers make ethical purchasing decisions. The<br />
evaluation focuses on examining the data problems related to<br />
building the tool, identifying the source of trust on the<br />
measurements used in each tool and delineating the possible<br />
limitations of each tool.<br />
4.1.1 GoodGuide (www.goodguide.com)<br />
GoodGuide was founded in 2007 by Dara O’Rourke, a professor<br />
specializing in global supply chain at the University of California<br />
at Berkeley. The mission of GoodGuide is to transform the<br />
marketplace by helping consumers make value-based purchasing<br />
decisions. It provides expert judgment about the health,<br />
environment, and social performance of products and companies<br />
with a team of scientific and technology experts. GoodGuide<br />
gives four 1-10 numeric ratings, with one general score and three<br />
sub-scores for health, environmental and social performance of<br />
the product or the company respectively.<br />
4.1.2 Barcoo (www.barcoo.com)<br />
Barcoo is an independent service that offers consumers product<br />
information on their mobile phone. Consumer can use their<br />
mobile phone to scan the barcode of products and obtain<br />
background information about the product. Barcoo has a customer<br />
base of more than two million in Germany. It is used mostly in<br />
Europe. The information provided by Barcoo includes ingredients,<br />
nutrition value, certification, and other environmental<br />
information, as well as price comparison and users reviews.<br />
A summary of the evaluation on GoodGuide and Barcoo is<br />
presented in Table 1. The assessment on both tools indicates<br />
several limitations that exist in both tools: 1) lack of clarity in the<br />
mechanism to generate the score, 2) data collection, matching, and<br />
processing is manual resulting in limited scalability, 3) the<br />
transparency and accuracy is limited in the sense that both tools<br />
cannot drill down to the data at product level, and 4) because of<br />
the lack of source data and verification capacity, the construction<br />
of trusted information is primarily based on human judgment,
such as users based assessment in the case of Barcoo or<br />
combination of users and experts in the case of GoodGuide. These<br />
limitations are arguably affecting the trustworthiness of the<br />
information provided to the users. In addition, their inability to<br />
integrate information across the supply-chain impacts the validity<br />
of their result. In the next section, we will argue for the case of I-<br />
Choose as an architecture that could assist web tools such as<br />
Barcoo and GoodGuide with increasing the credibility and<br />
trustworthiness of the information produced.<br />
Table 1. Comparison of Barcoo and GoodGuide<br />
Indicators GoodGuide Barcoo<br />
Information<br />
elements &<br />
scoring<br />
Data Source<br />
Source of<br />
Trust<br />
Data<br />
Problem<br />
1 – 10 numeric ratings:<br />
General score, Health,<br />
Environment, and Social<br />
scores<br />
• Over 1,000 third party<br />
sources<br />
• Comprehensiveness of<br />
data sources<br />
• Experts and Users<br />
judgment<br />
• Company image<br />
• Clarity of scoring<br />
• Manual data collection<br />
• Human judgment<br />
biases<br />
• Limited granularity of<br />
data<br />
• Credibility of data<br />
source<br />
Product background<br />
information:<br />
Ingredients, nutrients,<br />
certifications, price<br />
• Third party providers<br />
• Independent sources<br />
• Data sources – facts<br />
• Legitimacy of partners<br />
& their database<br />
• Users judgment<br />
• Limited granularity of<br />
data<br />
• Reliance on 3rd party<br />
• Credibility of data<br />
source<br />
4.2 I-Choose As An Architecture to Empower<br />
Current Tools and Trends<br />
In this section, we develop a proposal that could make a<br />
contribution to research and practice of ethical consumption.<br />
4.2.1 Main Gaps from the Literature<br />
Although there is an agreement in the literature that the main<br />
consumer concerns are associated with both environmental and<br />
social impacts of corporate activities, there is not an agreement on<br />
how to measure such impact. Rahman and Post [14] found 15<br />
different ways to define environmental impacts, and different<br />
ways to measure them.<br />
Another gap is the difficulty in creating transparent and reliable<br />
measures. Data is not equally available for all corporations, and<br />
because of that, all available scores require the intensive use of<br />
expert judgment, making them highly costly. Moreover, many of<br />
the either publicly available or proprietary data are not transparent<br />
enough, and do not report on reliability and validity [14].<br />
Research in the area has also shown the importance of labeling in<br />
buying decisions [11]. However, labels that certify low<br />
environmental or social impacts may present very similar<br />
information to the consumer at the point of sale, but use very<br />
different criteria or processes in order to get the certification.<br />
3<br />
Researchers have explored extensively key factors affecting<br />
consumer buying decisions, however, we could not find literature<br />
on the impacts of the use of tools such as Barcoo or GoodGuide in<br />
these decisions. More research in the area is needed. This research<br />
may benefit from current efforts on understanding adoption of<br />
software to aid consumer decision making [17]. Some of the<br />
research that we found suggested that incorporating the cost of<br />
externalities in price is yet another way to promote ethical<br />
consumption [5]. However, there is little research on ways to<br />
account for externalities such as environmental impact. There is<br />
still less research exploring the economic impacts of a policy of<br />
this nature.<br />
Finally, a potentially important problem with this area of research<br />
is the fact that most is looking for ways to promote ethical<br />
consumption, without exploring the possibility of consuming less<br />
or changing significantly current consumption patterns.<br />
4.2.2 A Pathway Forward: A Socio-Technical System<br />
for Opening Private Sector Information to<br />
Support Consumer Choice<br />
Our current research suggests that some of the current gaps and<br />
shortcomings of tools that support ethical consumption can be<br />
addressed by the creation of a socio-technical system such as I-<br />
Choose to facilitate information sharing and interoperability<br />
among stakeholders in the supply chain [10]. Our current efforts<br />
are focusing on coffee produced and traded in the NAFTA region.<br />
Coffee producers and consumers have made an effort to attach<br />
additional information to specific kinds of coffee –such as organic<br />
or Fair Trade—to differentiate them and to allow consumers to<br />
make ethical decisions. Lessons from our current project have the<br />
potential to be used by other industries and in different<br />
geographical areas.<br />
We envision that I-Choose should include at least three different<br />
components: a set of data standards to share information across<br />
the supply chain, a set of Application Programming Interface<br />
(API) standards to make it possible for developers and other<br />
interested groups to create specific applications to make this<br />
information usable by regular consumers, and a governance<br />
system, which will be in charge of creating and modifying the<br />
standards over time. We are calling this system the I-Choose<br />
system [9].<br />
In terms of the data standards for information sharing and<br />
interoperability, we are currently developing an ontology-based<br />
set of standards to integrate information from the coffee supply<br />
chain. There are already many higher order ontologies or data<br />
classifications that can be used to support this interoperability<br />
such as the XBRL standard for financial information. Because of<br />
that, our focus is on data components that are related to<br />
certification, which will link to other data standards.<br />
Shared data promoted by I-Choose will benefit efforts such as<br />
GoodGuide or Barcoo by providing better and wider information.<br />
However, this kind of ventures will need to have a way to access<br />
the information. Thus, the second component of I-Choose should<br />
be an API to ease the development of these kinds of applications.<br />
Finally, those two technical components need to meet the<br />
requirements of usability, utility, trust and openness to be widely<br />
adopted and used. To accomplish this objective, we believe that a<br />
multi-stakeholder group needs to collaborate to set the standards,<br />
but also to maintain and adjust them over time. Our current efforts
involve the creation of a Network of coffee stakeholders that we<br />
believe can constitute a very first group to promote this kind of<br />
standards. The group must include government regulators,<br />
industry associations, consumers, consumer associations,<br />
producers and other stakeholders. The group will need to have in<br />
place a series of policies and procedures to ensure the fairness of<br />
the process, avoiding standards that become driven only by the<br />
larger players in the supply chain.<br />
5. CONCLUDING REMARKS<br />
This paper aims to explore feasible ways of drawing relevant<br />
information to fulfill consumers’ needs in making ethical<br />
purchasing decision. To do this, we explore extant literature on<br />
ethical consumption and evaluate two existing tools available to<br />
support consumers’ ethical consumption. Our exploration<br />
identifies some of the current gaps and shortcomings of the<br />
existing tools supporting ethical consumption. We then proposed<br />
a scalable socio-technical system to facilitate information sharing<br />
and interoperability among stakeholders in the supply chain. This<br />
system comprises of three different but interrelated components,<br />
namely: 1) a set of data standards to share information across the<br />
supply chain, 2) a set of Application Programming Interface (API)<br />
standards to make it possible for developers and other interested<br />
groups to create specific applications to make this information<br />
usable by regular consumers, and 3) a governance system, which<br />
will be in charge of creating and modifying the standards over<br />
time. We are calling this system the I-Choose system. We further<br />
call for more attention to the role of government in the<br />
management of an architecture such as I-Choose.<br />
6. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS<br />
Research reported in this paper is supported in part by the US-<br />
NSF (Grant No. IIS-0540069), CONACYT-Mexico (Grant No.<br />
133670), and COMEXUS-Fulbright Commission in Mexico. The<br />
views and conclusions expressed in this paper are those of the<br />
authors alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of<br />
COMEXUS, CONACYT or NSF.<br />
7. REFERENCES<br />
[1] Barnett, C., Cloke, P., Clarke, N., and Malpass, A. Consuming<br />
Ethics: Articulating the Subjects and Spaces of Ethical<br />
Consumption. Antipode 37, 1 (2005), 23–45.<br />
[2] Baue, B. and Murninghan, M. The Accountability Web:<br />
Weaving Corporate Accountability and Interactive<br />
Technology. Journal of Corporate Citizenship, 41 (2011), 27–<br />
49.<br />
[3] Carrigan, M. and Attalla, A. The myth of the ethical consumer<br />
– do ethics matter in purchase behaviour? Journal of<br />
Consumer Marketing 18, 7 (2001), 560–578.<br />
[4] Castaldo, S., Perrini, F., Misani, N., and Tencati, A. The<br />
missing link between corporate social responsibility and<br />
consumer trust: the case of fair trade products. Journal of<br />
Business Ethics 84, 1 (2009), 1–15.<br />
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[5] Chouinard, Y., Ellison, J., and Ridgeway, R. The Sustainable<br />
Economy. Harvard Business Review 89, 10 (2011), 52–62.<br />
[6] Doorey, D. The Transparent Supply Chain: from Resistance<br />
to Implementation at Nike and Levi-Strauss. 2011.<br />
[7] Freestone, O.M. and McGoldrick, P.J. Ethical positioning<br />
and political marketing: the ethical awareness and concerns<br />
of UK voters. Journal of Marketing Management 23, 7-8<br />
(2007), 651–673.<br />
[8] Janssen, M. and Hamm, U. Consumer perception of different<br />
organic certification schemes in five European countries.<br />
Organic Agriculture, (2011), 1–13.<br />
[9] Luna-Reyes, L.F., Andersen, D.F., Andersen, D.L., Derrick,<br />
D., and Jarman, H. Full Information Product Pricing (FIPP)<br />
Regimes: Policy Implications for US-Mexico Sustainable<br />
Commerce. (2012).<br />
[10] Luna-Reyes, L.F., Zhang, J., Whitmore, A., et al. Full<br />
Information Product Pricing: An Information Strategy for<br />
Harnessing Consumer Choice to Create a More Sustainable<br />
World. 2011.<br />
[11] De Magistris, T. and Gracia, A. Do Consumers Pay Attention<br />
to the Organic Label When Shopping Organic Food in Italy?<br />
In M. Reed, ed., Organic Food and Agriculture - New Trends<br />
and Developments in the Social Sciences. Janeza Trdine,<br />
Croatia, 2011.<br />
[12] McEachern, M.G. and McClean, P. Organic purchasing<br />
motivations and attitudes: are they ethical? International<br />
Journal of Consumer Studies 26, 2 (2002), 85–92.<br />
[13] Michaelidou, N. and Hassan, L.M. Modeling the factors<br />
affecting rural consumers’ purchase of organic and freerange<br />
produce: A case study of consumers’ from the Island<br />
of Arran in Scotland, UK. Food Policy 35, 2 (2010), 130–<br />
139.<br />
[14] Rahman, N. and Post, C. Measurement Issues in<br />
Environmental Corporate Social Responsibility (ECSR):<br />
Toward a Transparent, Reliable, and Construct Valid<br />
Instrument. Journal of Business Ethics 105, 3 (2012), 307–<br />
319.<br />
[15] Swaen, V. and Chumpitaz, C.R. Impact of Corporate Social<br />
Responsibility on consumer trust. Recherche et Applications<br />
en Marketing (English Edition) 23, 4 (2008), 7–33.<br />
[16] Szmigin, I., Carrigan, M., and McEachern, M.G. The<br />
conscious consumer: taking a flexible approach to ethical<br />
behaviour. International Journal of Consumer Studies 33, 2<br />
(2009), 224–231.<br />
[17] Xiao, B. and Benbasat, I. E-Commerce Product<br />
Recommendation Agents: Use, Characteristics and Impact.<br />
MIS Quarterly 31, 1 (2007), 137–209.<br />
[18] Zander, K. and Hamm, U. Consumer preferences for<br />
additional ethical attributes of organic food. Food Quality<br />
and Preference 21, 5 (2010), 495–503.<br />
[19] MOU for the Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies<br />
- Informing Consumers through Smart Disclosure. Executive<br />
Office of The President - Office of Management and Budget,<br />
Washington, DC, 2011.
Exploring Process Barriers to Release Public Sector<br />
Information in Local Government<br />
Peter Conradie<br />
Creating 010<br />
Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences,<br />
P.O. Box 3001 HA Rotterdam<br />
The Netherlands<br />
003110 794 4801<br />
p.d.conradie@hr.nl<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
Due to expected benefits such as citizen participation and<br />
innovation, the release of Public Sector Information is getting<br />
increased attention on various levels of government. However,<br />
currently, data release by governments is still novel, with little<br />
experience and knowledge thus far about the benefits and barriers<br />
of release. This is compounded by a lack of understanding about<br />
how internal processes influence data release. Our aim in this<br />
paper is to get a better understanding of these processes and how<br />
they influence data release, i.e, to find determinants for the release<br />
of public sector information. For this purpose, we conducted<br />
workshops, interviews, questionnaires and desk research. We find<br />
that the way data is used by a department, the way data is<br />
obtained, how data is stored, and the suitability of data to become<br />
open, as crucial indicators for open data release. We conclude<br />
with lessons learned based on the research findings. These are that<br />
we should take a nuanced approach towards data release, avoid<br />
releasing data for it’s own sake and take small incremental steps<br />
to explore data release.<br />
Categories and Subject Descriptors<br />
H.3 [Information Systems]: Information Storage and Retrieval;<br />
K.4 [Computers and Society]: Public Policy Issues<br />
General Terms<br />
Design, Experimentation<br />
Keywords<br />
Open Data, PSI, Participatory Action Research<br />
1. INTRODUCTION<br />
The release of Public Sector Information by governmental<br />
organisations is getting increasing attention from government on<br />
several levels, local, national and international. For example, early<br />
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Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to<br />
post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission<br />
and/or a fee.<br />
ICEGOV '12, October 22 - 25 2012, Albany, NY, United States, NY, USA<br />
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1200-4/12/10…$15.00.<br />
5<br />
Sunil Choenni<br />
Research and Documentation Centre<br />
Ministry of Security and Justice<br />
P.O. Box 20301 2500 EH, The Hague<br />
The Netherlands<br />
0031648100301<br />
r.choenni@hr.nl<br />
in his presidency, United States President Obama called for<br />
increased release of public sector information [24]. Similarly,<br />
European Commissioner for Digital Agenda, Neelie Kroes is a<br />
strong advocate for the release of Public Sector Information in the<br />
European Union, by its member states, but also by the<br />
commission [21]. Her view is supported by the 2003 PSI<br />
Directive the European Parliament and the European Council<br />
[11].<br />
Oft cited motivations for data release are hopes of increased<br />
citizen involvement in government, increased transparency and<br />
improved decision making [2, 21, 24]. Besides the premise of<br />
increased citizen involvement, open data is also seen as fuel for<br />
innovation. To illustrate, the MEPSIR study places the estimated<br />
value of the PSI market at 27 billion within the EU [10].<br />
Furthermore, open data may give also a boost to the field of egovernance.<br />
However, this increased call for data release by governmental<br />
agencies presents data professionals with tasks that are as of yet<br />
unknown, in addition to having side effects that are hard to predict<br />
on a large scale. The cost associated with data release is also not<br />
always known, while the benefits that open data can have need to<br />
be explored. Having said that, the directives from higher levels of<br />
government are putting pressure onto local governments to find<br />
answers to pressing questions in relation to open data, such as<br />
what are the challenges, potentials, barriers and impact of open<br />
data?<br />
In The Netherlands the calls for the re-use of data has not gone<br />
unheard. On various levels of national government in The<br />
Netherlands initiatives have been launched to free data for re-use<br />
in the public domain. These include local city councils, ministries<br />
and provincial governments. To illustrate: recent months has seen<br />
the launch of a national platform of data release [20], but also<br />
platforms on metropolitan level, as the that of the Dutch city<br />
Enschede [19].<br />
While possible barriers and potentials of open data are reported by<br />
several researchers (see Section 2), a deep understanding of the<br />
underlying processes for these barriers is missing. In this paper,<br />
we study the underlying processes that pertain to data release in a<br />
local context, i.e., we search for crucial determinants for the<br />
release of open data. We have studied the processes involved in<br />
releasing data at four organizations of the municipal Rotterdam,<br />
which is the second largest city in the Netherlands, with a<br />
population of 680 000. The municipality currently has 12 000<br />
employees. We have implemented a participatory action research
approach [28] to expose indicators that play a significant role in<br />
releasing data for public at the four organizations. Important<br />
elements in this approach are desktop research, workshops,<br />
questionnaires, and in-depth interviews with key persons at<br />
different levels of the organizations. We have found that<br />
important indicators for data release are the way data is stored in<br />
an organization (distributed/decentralized versus centralized),<br />
whether data is internally produced or externally gathered, the use<br />
of data, and the availability of guidelines to determine whether<br />
data is suitable for release. We discuss how these indicators may<br />
contribute to shape an open data policy at a local level.<br />
We note that while the combination of the indicators may be<br />
considered as a predictor of data release by an organization, the<br />
focus of the paper is rather to identify these indicators.<br />
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. In Section 2,<br />
we embed our work in the field of open data in more detail. In<br />
Section 3, we motivate the use of a participatory action research<br />
approach for our purpose, while we implement this approach in<br />
Section 4. In Section 5, we present our findings from the<br />
participatory action research sessions. Section 6 is devoted to the<br />
lessons that we have learned so far. Section 7 reports about our<br />
future activities, while Section 8 concludes the paper.<br />
2. RELATED WORK<br />
Despite the pressures from higher levels of (federal) government<br />
to realise data release on local level, there are barriers along<br />
several dimensions to open data release. From a user perspective,<br />
major barriers are the access to proper datasets and the adequate<br />
use of datasets. The access to proper datasets is aggravated by the<br />
fact that the datasets are fragmented and offered at several<br />
websites, which are in some case hard to find [3, 17]. Moreover,<br />
access to datasets are in some cases restricted to specific user<br />
groups. Adequate use of datasets is hindered since metadata with<br />
regard to datasets are poorly documented, and therefore the<br />
semantics of the data may be ambiguous. Furthermore, how to<br />
determine the quality of a dataset is an open question. In [29] an<br />
overview of the barriers that users may encounter in using public<br />
sector information is provided.<br />
Along with barriers from a user perspective, data providers also<br />
encounter barriers to data release. From this perspective, major<br />
barriers are the lack of knowledge to deposit data, the economical<br />
loss that data release may entail, and the lack of knowledge to<br />
decide which datasets are eligible to release. In order to deposit a<br />
dataset, often this dataset should be formatted and processed<br />
according to the system requirements that accepts the dataset.<br />
Especially dataset providers who are not familiar with the<br />
technical aspects of data processing should deliver a lot of effort<br />
to deposit a dataset.<br />
The economic impact of data release becomes clear when taking<br />
into account that some European public sector bodies used a cost<br />
recovery model to fund data collection. For example, the Dutch<br />
Business Register (KvK), knows a cost recovery ratio of 19,50%<br />
[25]. By releasing data that is currently sold, certain agencies<br />
loose a valuable source of income [27].<br />
Organizations need practical frameworks that support them to<br />
decide whether a dataset is eligible to release or not [30]. In these<br />
frameworks, special attention should be given to privacy issues.<br />
Nowadays, organizations are struggling with the questions<br />
whether a dataset is or may become privacy sensitive [7]. For<br />
6<br />
example, according to [16, 18], combining datasets could lead to<br />
undesirable results such as revealing the identity of persons.<br />
Additionally, publishing data that was gathered and managed for a<br />
one purpose might lead to different conclusions if implemented in<br />
an unrelated context [16]. The potential violation of privacy, has<br />
especially gained a lot of attention in the literature, see for<br />
example [1, 5, 13, 16, 22, 23, 26].<br />
In [5] a study is devoted on the impact that information<br />
technology has on several privacy issues. While the field of<br />
database security [1] mainly focuses to technical solutions that<br />
enforce the “need to know principle” i.e., access control policies,<br />
which may prevent the disclosure of privacy, more comprehensive<br />
alternatives to prevent the disclosure of privacy are proposed in<br />
[4, 16, 26]. In [26] a framework is proposed to protect the privacy<br />
of citizens, while in [4] and [16] comprehensive architectures are<br />
proposed to minimize the violation of privacy law and regulations.<br />
In [13], the authors plea for a so-called ambient law that<br />
articulates fundamental legal protections, including privacy,<br />
within the socio-technical infrastructure. In [23] privacy concerns<br />
about using cameras and solutions to these concerns are discussed<br />
in the context of monitoring dementia patients, while [8, 22] do<br />
the same in the context of public safety.<br />
However, PSI, is not always personally bound. Moreover, the<br />
barriers that may be encountered depends on the type of data at<br />
hand to be released. Therefore, for different types of data,<br />
different kind of barriers may be encountered. At a national level,<br />
there are also barriers to data release above and beyond privacy. A<br />
comparative study by [15] highlights these issues. Barriers to data<br />
release on national level are cited as traditionally closed<br />
government culture, but also limited data quality or uncertain<br />
economic impact of data release.<br />
These studies, while providing a view to data release on a national<br />
level, lack the focus on issues as experienced on a local level by<br />
public sector information professionals. There is a lack of<br />
understanding on local government levels on the impact, barriers<br />
and opportunities of open data release. Our study focus on the<br />
understanding of the underlying processes entailed by open data at<br />
a municipal level. The rationale to choose this level instead of a<br />
national level is that data is mainly gathered at local levels, and<br />
therefore their support are of crucial importance for the success of<br />
open data. To prevent that the understanding of the underlying<br />
processes will be dominated by privacy issues, we will place our<br />
emphasis in this study on the release of data that not are<br />
personally bound, and therefore the chance that data is privacy<br />
sensitive is minimized. For example, we focus on the underlying<br />
process that are entailed by the release of data that pertains to all<br />
trees in Rotterdam, such as the number of trees in a street, the<br />
kind of trees in the street, the year that a tree is planted and so on.<br />
3. APPROACH<br />
As mentioned above, there is a lack of understanding of how data<br />
should be released, what the effects of release might be, and the<br />
processes needed to facilitate data release. This applies not only to<br />
national or federal governments, but also on a local level. Within<br />
our education program experience has also shown that data<br />
release is not self-evident.<br />
In order to explore data release, the University of Applied<br />
Sciences in Rotterdam initiated a research project with four<br />
services that form part of the Municipality of Rotterdam. They are
Figure 1. Stakeholders in the Participatory Action<br />
Research<br />
City Development (Stadsontwikkeling), City Works<br />
(Gemeentewerken), Library (Bibliohteek) and City Archive<br />
(Gemeentearchief).<br />
The participating services form part of a consortium exploring the<br />
barriers and benefits of open data for the local council and<br />
represent one of the clusters that comprises the municipality. The<br />
Library and the City Archive focuses on clients accessing its<br />
services, City Development is more involved with executing and<br />
developing urban policy, while City Works makes products such<br />
as detailed city maps in addition to maintaining objects and<br />
infrastructure in the city. These roles will be elaborated on later in<br />
Section 4. First, we motivate in the following the choice for a<br />
participatory action research approach and describe how we will<br />
apply this approach.<br />
3.1 Participatory Action Research<br />
In order to understand barriers of data release, we employ a<br />
participatory approach to research, where stakeholders from the<br />
various public services are co-researching through action and<br />
participation how an open data policy can be implemented.<br />
Formally referred to as Participatory Action Research (PAR), this<br />
approach focuses on co-research with participants [28].<br />
From the previous sections, it is clear that the barriers – e.g.:<br />
technical issues, privacy or law - associated with data release<br />
require expertise from different branches of knowledge. Seen<br />
from this perspective, PAR can be an appropriate methodology,<br />
due to its applicability in multidisciplinary research [28].<br />
Furthermore, PAR is often a combination of theory and practice<br />
and thus brings together academic researchers and practitioners as<br />
problem solvers. PAR research aims to advance practical<br />
knowledge and is often built on an understanding that results from<br />
field experience [6]. According to [14], where knowledge<br />
embedded in local context, a PAR approach can be beneficial.<br />
What also speaks to more methodologically flexible approaches<br />
such as PAR is the context in which research is taking place.<br />
Organizations such as the local council are not found in a<br />
7<br />
laboratory environment where variables can be tightly controlled<br />
in order to conduct experiments. Instead, individuals are busy<br />
conducting their regular tasks. Given this, a more flexible<br />
approach to research is required, where results can be quickly<br />
incorporated into the research.<br />
While [28] has expressed the benefits of PAR from a sociological<br />
point of view, [12] mentions that such an approach also benefits<br />
the development of information systems. For instance, the<br />
participatory process can elicit increased commitment, while<br />
helping create support for proposed solutions. This resonates with<br />
the recommendation of [28] that PAR can help to prevent<br />
misconceptions about research results and interpretations, because<br />
participants are involved in research. [12] further mentions that a<br />
more participative approach is less likely to result in change to<br />
resistance from users (i.e.: data professionals in the local council)<br />
during implementation, which is also relevant in the context of the<br />
implementation of open data policy.<br />
In practice, PAR thus means a more involved approach by all<br />
participating stakeholders. In the context of our research, this has<br />
meant not only conducting interviews with our participants, but<br />
also organization of workshops to discuss emerging themes about<br />
data release on a local level. Researchers also aim to be involved<br />
with discussions relating to PSI release by attending internal<br />
events at the council about PSI and data release. Furthermore,<br />
events are organized to involve external stakeholders in the<br />
process, by giving a platform from which issues related to open<br />
data could be discussed.<br />
Throughout the project, there is also a strong focus on the use of<br />
cases that will guide data release. These cases are thematically<br />
tied to the middle and long-term goals of the local council. These<br />
themes were distilled down to projects, to be performed in our<br />
education program by students. The goal is to let the projects act<br />
as driver for data release in the local council, first by animating<br />
the participating partners to quickly supply data for project<br />
purposes, but also to highlight the type of data that is most<br />
wanted, and the potential re-uses of data. Results from the<br />
education program can subsequently be used by participants why<br />
data re-use can be valuable.<br />
Data release cannot be seen in isolation. In the long term, the goal<br />
of open data is to foster innovation, transparency and<br />
participation. This is achieved with actors found externally from<br />
the municipality. Additionally, the municipality, through its very<br />
nature serves goals of others. As such, PSI release is not in and of<br />
itself the goal. The aim is also to explore the value of data for the<br />
city, whether expressed financially, or through other metrics such<br />
as social cohesion o participation.<br />
This prescribes the involvement of stakeholders from outside the<br />
public sector, such as the local creative industry. Several<br />
commercial companies partake in exploring, through their active<br />
involvement in our educational program. The cooperation<br />
between Creative Industry as potential user of data, the Public<br />
Sector as data supplier, education and research is shown in Figure<br />
1. We believe that in bringing these four stakeholders together, a<br />
broad view of the issues can sketched, with education and creative<br />
industry acting as data users, while the public sector<br />
experimentally supplies data, with researchers cataloguing data<br />
release.
4. IMPLENTING PAR<br />
In order to come to a deeper understanding of the underlying<br />
processes for the barriers to data release, we have studied the<br />
participating services provided by the four organizations at the<br />
municipality. This happened first through an exploratory<br />
workshop with consortium partners where earlier experiences<br />
with regards to data release within each service was highlighted.<br />
This was attended by a representative of the four services, plus a<br />
member of the Management Service (Bestuursdienst) (n=6). In<br />
addition to this, we performed desk research about the services.<br />
This was followed up with a questionnaire with all the participants<br />
(n=11). Subsequently, the questionnaire was also filled in by other<br />
civil servants (n=50). Questions were based around five themes,<br />
introduced by [15]: internal; judicial, social cultural, economic<br />
and technical barriers to data release. The statements relating to<br />
these themes were given, asking respondents to agree or disagree,<br />
on a 5-point Likert scale. Examples include: Because my<br />
department generates income through licensing data, I think my<br />
department should retain the right to license the data, or, Within<br />
my department, too much of the data is too privacy sensitive to<br />
release.<br />
The answers from the questionnaire formed the input for<br />
subsequent in-depth interviews with participants (n=11). As part<br />
of the project, a workshop was also attended, where statements<br />
regarding data use was introduced and discussed by attendees<br />
(n=8). Following this, a second workshop was organized where<br />
the benefits and barriers of data release was discussed (n=6).<br />
These various investigations were used to construct the indicators<br />
for the underlying processes. Below we present the results from<br />
these investigations.<br />
Participants work at various departments within the local council<br />
and were recruited as a result of previous engagement with<br />
projects at the University. Respondents also came from services<br />
outside of the project consortium, in order to give a broader<br />
impression of open data. Interviews were loosely structured and<br />
conducted on site.<br />
The goal of these initial interviews was to explore how data<br />
release is currently facilitated within the organization. It also<br />
helped in connecting the internal processes of the council with the<br />
barriers, leading to a better understanding of how data is managed.<br />
Interviews were created based on themes that emerged from a first<br />
open workshop about data release, where participants reflected on<br />
earlier experiences. These results were compared with existing<br />
research on data release by national governments, to form a better<br />
picture of the subject. Respondents also filled out a questionnaire<br />
prior to the interview, which helped to focus the interview themes<br />
and identify some barriers as expressed by the participants<br />
The first impression gathered from the interviews is the large<br />
variety between the profiles of the services and how this impacts<br />
data treatment. City Development executes and develops urban<br />
development policies such as new housing complexes, or new<br />
traffic routes. For this task, City Development uses data<br />
extensively. The organization has a traditional decentralized data<br />
structure, where data is used to execute policy, but is subsequently<br />
often not re-used. The sources of the data also varies. In some<br />
cases, it is gathered by a certain department, for example through<br />
sensors on the road. In other cases, data might be bought<br />
externally, or requested from a service of department controlling<br />
8<br />
the data. Illustrative of this is the use of quantitative interview<br />
data from 17000 citizens in Rotterdam. These interviews,<br />
conducted by an external bureau, is subsequently analysed and<br />
presented in booklet form. This booklet might influence policy,<br />
but the underlying data: interview results with 17 000, or even the<br />
data interpretation that results from an analysis of the data is not<br />
necessarily used again for different purposes within the<br />
department, nor is it centrally controlled. Ownership of the data is<br />
also opaque, in addition to its status as public sector information,<br />
due to the fact that it was bought from an external agency.<br />
While City Development creates policy, City Works has as task to<br />
maintain the objects and infrastructure of the city. This includes<br />
trimming trees, maintaining garbage bins, or removing unwanted<br />
growth from bicycle paths, but also large infrastructure project<br />
planning and advice. Additionally, City Works also produces a<br />
variety of products, such as detailed maps of the city. These tasks<br />
require intensive use of data, either because data is needed to<br />
identify the location of objects due for maintenance, or simply<br />
because it is a core aspect of created products such as maps. City<br />
Works also supplies data to organizations inside the local council.<br />
This would include sharing data with City Development to assist<br />
policy development. For all these tasks City Works has<br />
traditionally been very reliant on data management. Data must be<br />
easily accessible and findable because not only is it important for<br />
the internal functioning of the department, it is also one of the<br />
core services offered.<br />
The Library relates to City Works and City Development in the<br />
sense that data is essential for the internal functioning of the<br />
service. Data is collected about books to make them findable<br />
online or in a local catalogue, but the library also keeps data about<br />
all their customers, to ensure efficient service delivery. However,<br />
data is either personally bound, or might be subjected to copyright<br />
law. For example, meta data about books might contain<br />
descriptions supplied by publishers, unavailable for re-use.<br />
However, the Library is also in the midst of reorganization and<br />
might in the future not be part of the city council, at least not in its<br />
current form. This essentially means that the data gathered and<br />
used by the library might not be considered as PSI. Subsequently,<br />
the legal frameworks, as recommended on European and national<br />
level might not be applicable. This creates uncertainty about the<br />
status of the data and to what extent in might be made available.<br />
The last service, the City Archive, is fundamentally already an<br />
active participant in open data, albeit in a largely non-digital form.<br />
Currently, the archive consists of almost 20 kilometres of archived<br />
material, stretching back 800 years. The legacy of, until recent<br />
years, always working with physical artefacts means that<br />
digitization is not traditionally part of the role of the Archive.<br />
However, the Archive has already digitized more than 150TB<br />
worth of data. This data has not been imported into any<br />
centralised system for easy retrieval. There is thus a significant<br />
amount of available information, but a proportionally small<br />
amount is currently accessible through the digital archive. A scan<br />
on demand services has also been launched, but it seems illusory<br />
that the entire archive will be available online soon. Additionally,<br />
certain objects are not easily scanned: these would include objects<br />
that are of unusual format, or very fragile. The City Archive also<br />
possesses very little geographical information about catalogued<br />
objects, prohibiting its use in maps, or other geographic<br />
applications.
This sketches the picture of the four services participating in the<br />
research. Through our interviews we also identified certain<br />
recurring themes, as identified by respondents. What follows is a<br />
closer look at the most important subjects.<br />
5. OBSERVATIONS<br />
The data collection in our PAR results in a number of interesting<br />
observations. In the following two subsections we report on these<br />
observations. We have classified the observations in two<br />
mainstreams. Observations that pertain to underlying thresholds of<br />
data release, and therefore indirectly determine the release of data,<br />
and observations that directly determine the release of data. From<br />
the latter observations, we derive a set of indicators that are<br />
relevant for the release of data. In Section 5.1, we outline the main<br />
underlying thresholds that play a role in data release. Section 5.2<br />
is devoted to the observations and a set of indicators that directly<br />
determine the release of data.<br />
5.1 Underlying Thresholds<br />
5.1.1 Fear of False Conclusions<br />
A recurring theme was the fear of false conclusions being drawn<br />
from released data. An example of this would be the potential<br />
decrease in property value if details would surface about policy<br />
plans of new city developments, even if these were not yet<br />
finalised. Interpretations of data by outsiders without prior<br />
knowledge about the goal of data gathering could also lead<br />
unwanted situations. For example, research performed on the<br />
demographic profile of certain neighbourhoods might not appear<br />
nuanced enough to an outsider without knowledge about statistical<br />
methods. In the case that there are judicial frameworks in place to<br />
mitigate such issues, there might not be known to individuals<br />
dealing with a particular data request.<br />
5.1.2 Financial Effects of PSI Release<br />
On the economic front, licensing fees also formed a barrier to<br />
release. As mentioned earlier, some public bodies charge usage<br />
fees for data. This is also the case for City Works. While research<br />
has shown that the data recovery model results in proportionally<br />
low amounts of income and that less restrictive data release can in<br />
some cases lead to increases in revenue and or, in the case of free<br />
data, lower transaction costs [25], services find themselves in a<br />
transitional phase. Even proportionally low amounts of income<br />
from data licenses need compensation. The current climate of<br />
decreased government spending aggravates the problem since it is<br />
not a given that lost income from releasing previously licenced<br />
data for free will be compensated by the national government or<br />
the council.<br />
5.1.3 Opaque Ownership and Unknown Data<br />
Locations<br />
There are also significant questions regarding ownership of data.<br />
Due to vertical data management in the past, data sharing between<br />
departments has historically not always been the case. As a result,<br />
services and, in extreme cases, departments within a service, lack<br />
a complete picture about which data others control. Additionally,<br />
even if the location of data is known, its ownership remains<br />
opaque, inhibiting release. Merely identifying a dataset that would<br />
strictly speaking be suitable for release does not warrant its<br />
appropriateness as open data.<br />
9<br />
5.1.4 Priority<br />
Finally, from our interviews and workshops, it transpired that<br />
open data is not necessarily a priority within the council and does<br />
not form part of existing tasks. This is not a consequence of<br />
unwillingness, but simply because data release is not part of the<br />
regular work for many data professionals. In combination with<br />
this, the immediate benefits of data release are not always explicit,<br />
making it an extra task, without clear incentives.<br />
While the interviews conducted provide insights into the<br />
experience of data release by the data professionals in the city<br />
council, it neglects exploring the actual process of data release in<br />
an empirical form. In the following section, we elaborate on the<br />
released data, but also on the data that has, as of yet, not been<br />
easily released. From these observations, we derive a set of<br />
indicators that determines the release of data.<br />
5.2 Indicators for Data Release<br />
For our educational program, the focus has been to release data<br />
that can be described as the low hanging fruit. This was for the<br />
most part non-personal data related to objects in the city, for<br />
reasons elaborated on earlier. A majority of data relates to public<br />
property – in essence everything controlled by the municipality<br />
that can be observed in the public space. Given this, a major<br />
supplier has been City Works. The data released includes data<br />
such as the locations of objects like trees, roads, or parks.<br />
However, release has not only been swift because of the types of<br />
data, but also due to the central data storage at City Works.<br />
However, data released by the City Works was not made available<br />
for re-use outside of our education program. The reason behind<br />
this is the lack of clear judicial rules with regards to data re-use on<br />
a wider scale. This effectively means that the data cannot strictly<br />
be referred to as open data: it may not be used without restrictions<br />
outside of our education program.<br />
Despite the ease with which data about objects was released, other<br />
types of data that relate to the internal processes of the council is<br />
much more sensitive. For example, data about the maintenance<br />
costs of objects has not been released, even within the education<br />
program. This would include data about how often trees are<br />
treated for various disease and the costs associated with cutting<br />
the grass in public parks, or what the budgets are for keeping the<br />
city maintained. Anecdotal evidence from our education program<br />
suggests that this type of data (such as the maintenance cycle of<br />
objects, or the costs associated with taking care of trees), can form<br />
interesting input for applications. Also from the perspective of<br />
transparent government, this data seems valuable. However, in the<br />
short term, this is not forthcoming.<br />
The lack of judicial frameworks and the ease of release stands in<br />
stark contrast with data from City Development. This department<br />
has made explicit decisions about data release, by classifying data<br />
released under Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license. Applying<br />
this license means that, unless otherwise indicated, the contents of<br />
data objects such as traffic information is available for any type of<br />
reuse. An exception to this might be the presence of copyrighted<br />
material inside a document. For example, a policy document<br />
could be supplied, unless it contains a photograph that does not<br />
fall under the CC0 license. Furthermore, it is not required to state<br />
the source of the data by the re-user. However, it is prohibited to<br />
create the impression that the local council agrees with any
conclusions that might arise rom the data, when interpreted by<br />
external parties [9].<br />
Notwithstanding, despite having seemingly unambiguous<br />
permission to release data to the public, the City Development<br />
department is often in the dark as to where data actually resides.<br />
Even if the data location is fully known, it does not warrant<br />
release. Illustrative of this is a request for the locations of public<br />
transport data. While this data is controlled by City Development,<br />
the data is owned on a metropolitan regional level. As a result,<br />
requests for the data’s release needs to go to metropolitan level,<br />
even though the data location is known. Due to its ownership<br />
being external, it is subsequently unclear whether the data can be<br />
classified under the CC0 license mentioned above. This illustrates<br />
that defining the judicial aspects of data release does not translate<br />
to release. Practical or technical issues remain.<br />
Due to the product focussed work process present at City<br />
Development, the extreme decentralization is not conducive to an<br />
open data policy. Additionally, departments within City<br />
Development are controllers of datasets, but do not necessarily<br />
own them. This potentially creates uncertainty as to the<br />
applicability of the license, but also ambiguity as to who has the<br />
final word in releasing the data.<br />
Furthermore, while City Development has been very clear in<br />
taking care of the judicial side of open data, the data that is<br />
currently classified for re-use does not compromise all data. The<br />
real-time status of many parking garages in the city is such an<br />
example. This data, whilst known and shown in certain locations<br />
in the city, is not available to third parties.<br />
While City Development and City Works both deal for a big part<br />
with data in a digital format, the City Archive is historically much<br />
more focussed on physical artefacts. Data release by City Archive<br />
has up until now been limited to the opening up of the search<br />
Application Programming Interface (API), in order to access the<br />
object metadata. There is thus no raw, unedited data about<br />
archived objects such as high-resolution images, or historical<br />
maps available in digital form, for reasons discussed earlier.<br />
Table 1. Indicators of data release based on observations<br />
Themes City Development City Works Library City Archive<br />
Use of data Execute development policy. Maintain public<br />
objects, producing<br />
geographical products.<br />
Support core services,<br />
internally and<br />
externally<br />
Source of data Externally gathered Internally produced Internally produced<br />
through services<br />
processes and<br />
externally bought<br />
Enhance services,<br />
catalogue objects<br />
Metadata internally<br />
created, artefacts<br />
externally supplied<br />
Data storage Decentralized Central Central Central (meta data<br />
only)<br />
Suitability of data for Medium: combination of High: many sets related Low: data personally High: data not<br />
release personally identifiable to public objects, non- identifiable or subject personally identifiable<br />
information, live sensor data personal.<br />
to copyright<br />
and owned by the<br />
and object data.<br />
Archive<br />
Data released None Object data of public Book metadata Search API of archive<br />
artefacts<br />
metadata<br />
Biggest threshold Decentralized data storage No legal framework for Personally identifiable Costs associated with<br />
and internal data<br />
the supply of data, data, uncertain digitalization of<br />
management processes. commercial interests. organizational status,<br />
copyright.<br />
archive artefacts.<br />
10<br />
As mentioned before, the Library has more comprehensive digital<br />
service provision, due to the reliance on data to manage the<br />
collection and serve the public. However, the only set of<br />
information that is currently available for use contains book meta<br />
data. The use of this data currently falls into a grey zone:<br />
bibliographic information gets bought from a commercial<br />
organization, which has implications on its release as open data,<br />
while for education purposes, re-use would be allowed. While the<br />
library is also in possession of other data that is without copyright<br />
restrictions, this comprises information about book lending, or<br />
statistics about members. This data could theoretically be<br />
personally identifiable, which complicates its use as open data.<br />
Even in cases where data is anonymized it might still be possible<br />
to extract personally identifiable data, through methods discussed<br />
by [18].<br />
From these observations, we note that the judicial issues, which<br />
include privacy and copyright concerns, the way data is collected<br />
and how it is stored, play an important role in data release.<br />
Therefore, we distinguish the following indicators that may be<br />
important for data release:<br />
o Use of data, i.e., the way data is used by the department.<br />
o Source of data, i.e., how is a set of data obtained?<br />
o Data Storage, i.e., is data stored centrally, or decentralized?<br />
o Suitability of data for release, i.e., are there rules and<br />
regulations that determine whether a dataset may be released<br />
or not, such as privacy or copyright.<br />
In Table 1, we summarize how the several departments score on<br />
each of the indicators together with the results of dependent<br />
variable “data released”. Based on the research performed, we<br />
also name the biggest threshold to data release. These relate to<br />
indicators important for data release.<br />
This overview of the release of data for use within the education<br />
program provides an initial view to the barriers of data release as<br />
experienced by the various participating partners. In the following
section we will elaborate more on how these findings can impact<br />
open data policy on local level.<br />
6. LESSONS LEARNED<br />
First and foremost, the act of freeing up data is new to the services<br />
at the city council. This results in many questions by public<br />
servants about how data requests should be handled. Because<br />
there is, as of yet, no real framework in place to answer these<br />
questions, data release stumbles. However, beyond the fact that<br />
data professionals lack clear guidelines to support data release to<br />
external parties, there are some more fundamental issues<br />
concerned with data release.<br />
Due to the urgency of the education program, the most effort has<br />
also been on acquiring easy datasets, without prioritizing data<br />
according to demand. As a result, our inquiry reveals where data<br />
is most easily retrieved, but also, by virtue of not being easily<br />
accessible, what types of data needs further exploration. This<br />
revealed that the easiest data to technically and practically release<br />
was non-personal object data and especially due to the centralized<br />
data storage of such data.<br />
Below we will elaborate more in depth about the main lessons<br />
learned from the research.<br />
6.1 Nuanced Approach to Data Release<br />
While the municipality typically presents itself as one entity to the<br />
outside world, there is a much more complex organisational<br />
reality. Even though our focus had merely been on four services,<br />
the heterogeneous character of these services are immediately<br />
apparent. This ranges from the types of tasks conducted, such as<br />
servicing the public (Library), to developing policy (City<br />
Development). Additionally, while some of the services are<br />
involved with interacting with the public as a core task (City<br />
Archive), others focus more on maintaining objects in the public<br />
space. Our attempts at data release further emphasized this view.<br />
This complex picture effectively also means that these services<br />
deal with data in different ways. City Development, as a service<br />
that is primarily concerned with developing and executing policy,<br />
uses data for the creation of a product (such as a policy<br />
recommendation). The data itself in this context merely supports a<br />
task. As a result, data requested by the service remain unused,<br />
except for the times when it is being applied in policy<br />
development or creation of various products such as informational<br />
publications about the city.<br />
These processes of data usage thus impacts data release. Services<br />
where data is used and stored very centrally has shown to be much<br />
quicker in being able to release data, as the Library and City<br />
Works have shown. This does not take into effect the suitability of<br />
the data for release. The converse is true of City Development,<br />
where data is important, but where the emphasis is on the products<br />
that result from the data. Data storage is decentralized and<br />
ownership opaque, complicating data release.<br />
The suitability of PSI for release as open data also varies. Based<br />
on two factors, privacy sensitivity and copyright restrictions, we<br />
identify that internally produced data about public objects are the<br />
most suitable, while at the other end, Library data, which is partly<br />
bought from third parties and pertains to persons have a lower<br />
suitability.<br />
11<br />
Different barriers to data re-use apply. While only one service,<br />
City Development, has made explicit arrangements with regards<br />
to judicial matters, this service, as our interviews and data release<br />
shows, is not in a position to release data under a CC0 licence for<br />
reuse because of how it treats data.<br />
This too would be the case for data release by the City Archive. In<br />
the event that the Archive has a legal framework about data<br />
release it still might not possess the types of data that is easily<br />
released, due to physical limitations to what the archive can<br />
digitize, or financial restrictions. Conversely, the library can, and<br />
has, released data for re-use. However, this data is not widely<br />
reusable due to copyright, and the data that is not subject to<br />
copyright law can be sensitive to privacy.<br />
Given this, it seems that a nuanced view is needed to data release<br />
strategies on a local level, with all the implications this has for<br />
associated policy. Prior to formulating policy it remains important<br />
to look at how services deal with data storage by taking into<br />
account whether data is easily accessible, stored centrally, or<br />
available in digital formats and what the other financial, internal<br />
or judicial aspects might be.<br />
6.2 Data Release for its Own Sake<br />
The difficulties of data release, either as a result of technical<br />
issues, uncertain judicial frameworks, uncertain economic<br />
outcomes or simply not being able to find the data, means that<br />
data release can still be a costly, labour intensive activity. Our<br />
experience up until now has been that simply requesting “all” data<br />
yields no results.<br />
This means that choices are necessary to decide which data should<br />
be released. In reflecting back on the motivation behind PSI<br />
release, it is clear that the aim should not be merely the release of<br />
data for its own sake. Rather, the ambition of PSI release policy is<br />
to contribute to transparent government, innovation and increased<br />
public participation. This however, is easier said than done. The<br />
current state of affairs mean that to ensure efficient use of released<br />
data, it is important to consider the return on investment, not<br />
merely in a financial sense, but in the context of highest re-use<br />
achieved by datasets when compared to effort needed to realise its<br />
release. A more focused approach to data release has the potential<br />
to mitigate some of the problems identified earlier. For example,<br />
if finding the location of data is currently prohibiting release, as is<br />
indeed currently the case, a demand-based approach to data<br />
release might be applicable.<br />
To facilitate the release of data based on demand, it remains<br />
necessary to inform potential end users of the types of data<br />
currently controlled by a service or department. This is currently<br />
attempted within the department of Traffic and Mobility at City<br />
Development. Through our education program, students are given<br />
insight into the types of data that is regularly used at the<br />
department. Request for data can then be performed with much<br />
more focus and results of release, whether failure or success, can<br />
be documented. Through this, the demand is articulated and effort<br />
spent on data release yields quicker results.<br />
Additionally a stronger focus can be achieved without big<br />
investments into infrastructure: by exploring data release on a<br />
small scale, data is released with clearer end-goals, which also<br />
explicitly demonstrates the benefits of PSI.
6.3 Large Scale Implementation<br />
In relation to the heterogeneity of the separate public sector<br />
organizations and in combination with the transaction costs<br />
associated with data release we identify that the large-scale<br />
implementation of open data infrastructure is likely to encounter<br />
significant difficulties. First and foremost, such an<br />
implementation would be troublesome to achieve due to the<br />
inherent heterogeneity of the services as discussed earlier. For<br />
example, significant efforts would first need to take place to<br />
ensure efficient data release and due to the differences in place at<br />
the various services this process could be lengthy and costly. In<br />
our context, merely clearing the judicial hurdles for the four<br />
participating services in cases where data is deemed usable could<br />
slow down development significantly. Even more illustrative of<br />
this is the change needed in internal processes, as would be the<br />
case in organizations with very fragmented data storage.<br />
Furthermore, a large-scale implementation implicitly requires<br />
large amounts of data to be made available. As discussed above,<br />
even where there are judicial frameworks in place and data release<br />
is technically feasible, there are still transaction costs related to<br />
the release of data, such as locating datasets, or digitization. The<br />
resources needed to build op a large-scale infrastructure that could<br />
facilitate data release, might not be justified in relation to the<br />
uncertainty of the actual re-use of the data that is finally released.<br />
This holds especially true in a time when governments on local<br />
and national scale in industrialized countries are seeking to reduce<br />
expenditures.<br />
This sketches the conclusions of the research. In the following<br />
section we will reflect on how these barriers might be addressed<br />
in our own work.<br />
7. OUTLOOK<br />
This research up until now presents a complicated picture with<br />
regards to open data release. We believe that the appropriate way<br />
to deal with data release on the local level is to run small pilots<br />
and cases where there is a continual focus on data release where<br />
direct effects of the value of data can be illustrated. Below we will<br />
elaborate on a practical case that acts as driver for data release.<br />
The data thus far collected is restricted to the easiest to release<br />
information. While this provides insights into what the low<br />
hanging fruit are, it does not answer questions about data that is<br />
harder to release, and what changes the underlying processes will<br />
have to undergo to facilitate release. In order to get a fuller<br />
understanding of data release, more effort should be placed on<br />
harder to release data.<br />
To achieve this we have identified a portion inside the city that<br />
can act as city laboratory for open data. Named the 1km3, this is a<br />
space where an Open Data experiment is being conducted.<br />
Located in the centre of the city, the 1km3 encompasses a place<br />
where people live, shop, play and work. Within the confines of<br />
this area, the goal is to gather as much data as possible. The case<br />
acts to motivate participants by showing the role PSI is playing<br />
for the city and its potential for interaction between residents and<br />
local government. This should also highlight, in addition to the<br />
barriers to data release, the potential benefits that PSI can have on<br />
a local scale. Because the 1km3 is a limited area, a more focused<br />
approach can be taken. Additionally, the limited scope is<br />
appropriate to analyse the process of data release by local<br />
12<br />
authorities, allowing the research results to be applied on a<br />
broader scale.<br />
The results from the first exploratory phases of the project and the<br />
barriers introduced in Table 1 currently forms a basis from which<br />
stakeholders can attempt data release within their own<br />
department. Additionally, the results from the education program<br />
is assistive in illustrating data re-use in the municipality as a<br />
whole.<br />
In referring back to the PAR approach, this city lab provides<br />
conditions where stakeholders can actively play a role to explore<br />
efficient data release. Due to its small size, we can also focus on<br />
the barriers of individual services, whilst releasing data with<br />
explicit goals in mind. Such a pilot also precludes large<br />
information systems, but rather allows smaller explorations.<br />
8. CONCLUSION<br />
In this paper, we explored data release on a local level. For this<br />
purpose, we conduct interviews, workshops, questionnaires and<br />
desk research. Through this we identified underlying thresholds<br />
that inhibit data release, summarized in Section 5.1. Most<br />
importantly, we identified indicators for data release, seen in<br />
Table 1, based on our observations. These include the use of data<br />
within a service, where data is stored and the suitability of data for<br />
release. More studies could show whether there is a dependency<br />
between indicators. This could assist in focussing efforts of<br />
process change to best suit an organization, based on discovered<br />
themes.<br />
To realise the ambition of open data on a wide scale on local<br />
level, there needs to be more questions answered about data<br />
release. Clear examples are needed that illustrate the benefit of an<br />
open data policy to civil servants, on a small scale. Large ICT<br />
projects that attempt to solve all these problems in one attempt<br />
might, in the current financial climate, not feasible. The focus<br />
should be on using pilot projects that illustrate, on a local,<br />
measurable level, the potential impact of open data.<br />
9. ACKNOWELDGEMENTS<br />
We thank our colleagues of the Rotterdam University, both the<br />
researchers of the research lab Creating 010 and the teachers and<br />
students of the School of Communication, Media and Information<br />
Technology involved in the Rotterdam Open Data projects and the<br />
participants from the council of Rotterdam. Special thanks to<br />
Judith Lemmens. The work has been partly funded by the<br />
Rotterdam Media Commission and RAAK Publiek.<br />
10. REFERENCES<br />
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2012).
Implementation Framework for Open Data in Colombia<br />
Lydia Marleny Prieto<br />
IT Development Manager<br />
GEL Programme, Ministry of ICT<br />
Cr 8 12-00 Bogotá, Colombia<br />
+57 (1) 3442270 x1501<br />
lydia.prieto@<br />
gobiernoenlinea.gov.co<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
This document contains an executive summary of the Open Data<br />
strategy for Colombia represented in an open data model fit into<br />
the Government online strategy, which allows operating and<br />
managing the supply, as well as the demand, of public access data.<br />
Colombian Open Data Model has been made with the objective of<br />
supporting the generation of economic and social progress in the<br />
country, by allowing citizens and business to have access to<br />
public information, so that it can be used for developing<br />
government services that create value to society in general; and to<br />
promote transparency in the country, through information and<br />
data available to citizens and businesses.<br />
Categories and Subject Descriptors<br />
K.4. [Computers and Society]: Public Policy Issues<br />
General Terms<br />
Documentation, standardization, legal aspects, management<br />
Keywords<br />
Open data, open data strategy, open data model, online<br />
government, transparency, public data, support and operation.<br />
1. INTRODUCTION<br />
Information generated by public agencies can be considered as a<br />
public asset. According to the Colombian Constitution citizens<br />
have the right to access such information. The concept of open<br />
government data arises as part of the efforts made to structure<br />
information. Governments can have more effective<br />
administrations by means of being more transparent and by<br />
working on improving citizen’s quality of life.<br />
In Colombia, the e-government program has been implemented in<br />
a systematic and coordinated way in all public agencies. Starting<br />
in 2000 with Presidential Directive No. 02 [4], followed in 2008<br />
with Decree 1151 [3], a general framework for e-government<br />
strategy was defined. With the growth of the e-government<br />
strategy, from 2011, a new maturity model was developed, and<br />
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Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to<br />
post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission<br />
and/or a fee.<br />
ICEGOV '12, October 22 - 25 2012, Albany, NY, USA<br />
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1200-4/12/10...$15.00<br />
Ana Carolina Rodríguez<br />
Research and Politics Manager<br />
GEL Programme, Ministry of ICT<br />
Cr 8 12-00 Bogotá, Colombia<br />
+57 (1) 3442270 x 1007<br />
ana.rodriguez@<br />
gobiernoenlinea.gov.co<br />
14<br />
Johanna Pimiento<br />
General Manager<br />
GEL Programme, Ministry of ICT<br />
Cr 8 12-00 Bogotá, Colombia<br />
+57 (1) 3442270 x 1500<br />
johanna.pimiento@<br />
gobiernoenlinea.gov.co<br />
new topics such as Open Government [2] and Open Data have<br />
been included in the file of topics to develop, by taking concrete<br />
actions.<br />
Article 230 of the National Development Plan 2010 - 2014,<br />
introduced this directive: "Government online as a strategy of<br />
good governance: All public agencies shall forward the actions<br />
identified by the national government through the Ministry of<br />
Information Technologies and Communications" [5].<br />
"Gobierno en Linea" (GEL) is the Colombian online strategy,<br />
led by a program with the same name, that contributes to<br />
developing a more efficient, transparent and participative<br />
government, which provides better services by means of ICT<br />
(http://www.gobiernoenlinea.gov.co). This strategy guides the<br />
delivery of online services by public agencies at both national and<br />
local levels.<br />
GEL strategy contributes to build an efficient, transparent and<br />
participative government which provides better services with the<br />
collaboration of the whole society through the use of information<br />
technologies in order to increase competitiveness and to improve<br />
the quality of life for the prosperity all throughout Colombia.<br />
Heading towards such objective, the open government data model<br />
for Colombia has been developed. International best practices,<br />
grounded on political and legal principles as well as technological,<br />
cultural, organizational and budgetary perspectives have been<br />
used to enable the publication of data by government agencies.<br />
The openness of information publicly available has been<br />
leveraged by citizens, academia, developer communities and<br />
agencies, along with some policy framework.<br />
Such work aims to introduce the open government data<br />
framework in Colombia, plus the strategic guidelines needed for<br />
its implementation. Chapters two and three describe the research<br />
methodology and the model design. In chapter four current results<br />
are described: a technical prototype for data and application<br />
catalogs implementation, a regulatory framework, and a road map<br />
to continue working until 2014. Lastly, conclusions and lessons<br />
learned are addressed.<br />
2. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY<br />
This research was developed combining a mix approach of<br />
quantitative and qualitative components. It focused on the<br />
construction of the information that would support the formulation<br />
of guidelines and regulations for the open data strategy in the<br />
Republic of Colombia.
In order to have elements of analysis to produce knowledge,<br />
experiences of other countries in the implementation of actions<br />
and policies of open data were studied. Focus groups led by<br />
experts on specific topics were carried out, as well as case studies<br />
were conducted in eight local national public institutions, mainly<br />
ministries and administrative departments.<br />
Case studies aimed to assess the implementation of the strategic<br />
framework along with the methodological and technological tools<br />
developed by GEL program. This analysis involved a catch effort<br />
through interpretation by the research team against focus groups<br />
and case studies.<br />
A benchmarking study including United Kingdom, Canada, USA,<br />
Australia, Spain and Chile open data models, helped to identify<br />
the main steps needed to develop the framework: a) definition of<br />
the objective situation; b) gap analysis between the objective<br />
situation and the current situation; c) definition of the necessary<br />
components for the model; d) definition of the proposed<br />
architecture for each of the perspectives; e) identification of<br />
elements and organizational structure, actors and components<br />
required to implement the initiative; f) identification of<br />
technological and regulatory elements; g) identification of sociocultural<br />
elements to cope with change; and h) identification of the<br />
mechanisms, actions and budgets required to implement the<br />
initiative.<br />
Through quantitative analysis, results of case studies were<br />
evaluated using surveys to officials of the organizations involved.<br />
Such surveys measured the quality of the concepts, content and<br />
language used in the proposed framework, which were studied<br />
through scales from 1 to 5. Concepts were transformed variables,<br />
identifying areas of improvement used for the formulation of the<br />
final version of the framework toolkit.<br />
3. OPEN DATA MODEL<br />
3.1 Objectives<br />
The open government data model in Colombia seeks to fulfill the<br />
following objectives:<br />
o Support the generation of economic and social progress in<br />
the country by allowing citizens and business to have access<br />
to public information, so that it can be used or transformed<br />
for developing government services that create value to<br />
society in general.<br />
o Promote transparency in the country by means of information<br />
available to citizens and businesses.<br />
3.2 Principles<br />
Taking into account the objectives, the expectations of the<br />
Colombian Government, and the best practices identified, the<br />
following are the fundamental principles for open government<br />
data, illustrated in Figure 1. Basic principles are grouped into<br />
four perspectives: politic and legal, socio-cultural, organizational<br />
and budgetary, and technological.<br />
Politic and legal principles guide the policies handling political<br />
and legal efforts, and establish responsibilities and competences<br />
for its enforcement; sociocultural principles lead strategies, tools<br />
and actions necessary for the promotion and appropriation of good<br />
practices, and guidelines for policy massification by public bodies<br />
and third party application developers; Organizational principles<br />
give directives in policies, business processes, competencies,<br />
roles, organizational structures and resources required to<br />
15<br />
implement the initiative in public administration; and<br />
technological principles guide the definition of protocols,<br />
standards, tools and methodological guidelines necessary to<br />
implement the strategy.<br />
Socio-cultural principles<br />
§� Pursue balance between supply and demand.<br />
§� Seek for support from software development<br />
communities, private companies and<br />
academia.<br />
§� Promote of interaction and feedback from<br />
citizens and businesses about the relevance,<br />
quality and timeliness of published data.<br />
§� Focus on the satisfaction level of citizens,<br />
businesses, the public and the media.<br />
Strategic lines<br />
and<br />
fundamental<br />
principles<br />
Politic and legal principles<br />
§� Support from all levels of government.<br />
§� Phase out restrictions that limit access and use of<br />
public information (such as payments or licenses).<br />
§� Legal establishment of responsibilities and<br />
competencies.<br />
§� Progressive coverage of the initiative, for all<br />
branches of government and private agencies<br />
exercising public functions.<br />
§� Agencies responsible and autonomously publishing,<br />
hosting, maintaining and updating data<br />
§� Support from a legal system that integrates open<br />
data guidelines and policies.<br />
Organizational and budgetary principles Technological principles<br />
§� Leadership, control and monitoring of the<br />
implementation strategy from the central level.<br />
§� Encouraging and supporting generation of local<br />
and thematic initiatives.<br />
§� Considered a common practice throughout<br />
public agencies.<br />
§� Supported by a sustainable budget.<br />
§� Aligned with e-government GEL maturity model.<br />
§� Encouraging quality of data being published.<br />
§� Data easily found by others at a central point.<br />
§� One main data catalog for the country and<br />
multiple synchronized federate catalogs at local<br />
and thematic levels.<br />
§� When possible, government should guarantee the<br />
authenticity of published data.<br />
§� Multiple publication mechanisms to suit the<br />
conditions of the different public agencies.<br />
Figure 1. Fundamental principles for open government data<br />
3.3 Model components<br />
Based on the principles outlined before, Colombian open<br />
government data model has been structured. It was organized for<br />
describing the elements that should be considered at the strategic,<br />
tactical, operational and support levels, as displayed in Figure 2.<br />
This model seeks to generate value-added services to society<br />
through the development of applications made by third parties<br />
(development communities, infomediaries industry, and<br />
academia), using open government data from public agencies.<br />
The elements associated with the model are described below.<br />
3.3.1. Strategic Elements<br />
Strategic elements describe the articulation that must exist<br />
between the proposed open data strategy and the general GEL<br />
strategy. It contributes to the achievement of GEL vision under<br />
the following considerations:<br />
1) Facilitate the efficiency and collaboration within and<br />
between state agencies as well as society as a whole.<br />
2) Strengthen the conditions for increasing competitiveness and<br />
improving the quality of life.<br />
3) Contribute to increase transparency in public administration.<br />
4) Promote citizen participation using electronic media.<br />
3.3.2. Tactical Elements<br />
Tactical elements sought to link operational and strategic<br />
components. For materializing this, an element of institutional<br />
articulation and public policy was formulated through which the<br />
responsibilities and powers of each of those involved in the open<br />
government data initiative in Colombia were defined. Three main<br />
indicators that allow the monitoring and continuous evaluation of<br />
the open data initiative were defined:<br />
1) Compliance: Monitoring the level of compliance of open<br />
data policies and regulations by government agencies,<br />
through the criteria defined in GEL manual.
2) Usage: Assessed by quantifying the use of published data,<br />
taking into account feedback provided by users.<br />
3) Impact: Evaluated considering the applications that had been<br />
built using published data.<br />
Evaluation<br />
Strategic<br />
Tactic<br />
Operational<br />
Support<br />
Open Data Offer<br />
Preparation<br />
Identification<br />
Analysis and Prioritization<br />
Documentation<br />
Structuration, uploading and publishing<br />
Promotion and follow up<br />
Access and use of<br />
information and data<br />
Legal and regulation<br />
Information and<br />
data publishing<br />
Open Data Objectives and alignment with GEL<br />
strategy<br />
Institutional and public policy articulation<br />
Publishing<br />
responsibility<br />
Responsibility of<br />
information /data<br />
access and use<br />
Continued<br />
Feedback<br />
Culture<br />
Strengthening<br />
Publishing<br />
management<br />
Demand and value-added<br />
services generation<br />
Demand identification<br />
Published data access<br />
Applications development<br />
and registration<br />
Processes<br />
Support and<br />
maintaining<br />
Technology<br />
Non-functional<br />
Conceptual model<br />
requirements<br />
Monitoring<br />
Services<br />
consumption<br />
Citizens<br />
Sectors, unions,<br />
NOGs<br />
Stekeholders<br />
GEL Developers,<br />
Infomediary<br />
Agencies<br />
Academy Allies<br />
Figure 2. Open Government Data Model for Colombia<br />
3.3.3. Operational Elements<br />
Operating elements are those which bear with the “day to day”<br />
implementation of the open data model. These elements are solely<br />
responsible for promoting the provision of open government data,<br />
the generation of services around them and the balance between<br />
supply and demand through continuous public feedback and<br />
reinforcement of cultural strategies.<br />
Data supply is the backbone of the operation by which<br />
information is published by public agencies (and private<br />
companies with public functions) at national and local levels in<br />
structured and reusable formats under defined quality parameters.<br />
The demand for data that supports the operation allows<br />
identifying the needs that users have of open data and the<br />
requirements of added value services needed by citizens and<br />
companies.<br />
3.3.4. Support Elements<br />
Support elements include the legal and regulatory framework,<br />
business processes and technological components.<br />
Legal framework establishes determination and the institutional<br />
mandate not only to formulate an open data policy, but also to<br />
implement that policy across the government, including the legal<br />
mechanism that establishes the fundamental principles, rights and<br />
obligations related to open government data. It focuses on four<br />
pillars: access to and use of information; publication of<br />
information; responsibility for publication; and responsibility for<br />
access and use of information.<br />
Technological framework comprises: a conceptual view that<br />
illustrates the different functional modules; a logical view that<br />
identifies the principal components of the required software<br />
structured by means of a layered architecture in which the external<br />
resources, the integration components, the presentation<br />
components, the business logics and the transversal and support<br />
components are identified; and a deployment view that identifies<br />
the possible physical distribution of the technical infrastructure<br />
components and some non-functional requirements identified as<br />
quality attributes of the required platform.<br />
16<br />
For the correct operation of the proposed model, two activities to<br />
support initiative processes were created: release management, for<br />
accompaniment of the implementation, and support and<br />
maintenance, a process including management of the catalog data<br />
portal, plus the promotion and distribution of data dissemination<br />
and application development.<br />
3.4 Road Map<br />
The road map proposed for the implementation on the open data<br />
initiative in Colombia comprises an incremental strategy that is<br />
aligned with GEL maturity model [9]:<br />
The initial level refers to having the institutional conditions that<br />
are necessary to establish open data. At this level some public<br />
agencies start publishing their information inventory, best<br />
practices are shared and an intra-governmental community of<br />
open data advocates starts to be created.<br />
At the basic level, all data sets are prioritized, collaborative<br />
focused events are performed, and feedback from citizens and<br />
organizations start to be significant.<br />
At the advanced level, the open data process has moved beyond<br />
the simple fulfillment of baseline requirements. Impact<br />
measurement, quality assurance, collaboration platforms and<br />
massive collaborative events will be performed.<br />
The maximum level will be reached with continuous processes of<br />
innovation, transparency, and public/private cooperation.<br />
Sustainability of the best applications is reached, key performance<br />
indicators are monitored and the use of semantic components is<br />
achieved [1].<br />
3.5 User Guidelines<br />
A guide for public servants interested in easily acquiring open<br />
data knowledge and a toolkit were developed. It was structured in<br />
five stages of an ongoing process that guide them to publish data<br />
in open formats:<br />
o Identification of information: At this stage the identification<br />
and characterization of all the information held by entities is<br />
performed.<br />
o Analysis of publishable information: At this phase<br />
o<br />
information is classified by filtering what is publishable from<br />
what it is not, according to legal framework policies.<br />
Prioritization of data: This phase organizes the data that<br />
needs to be published according to a strategic analysis which<br />
generates the inventory and working plan of public data to be<br />
published.<br />
o Documentation: This phase fully describes data to be<br />
published, producing useful metadata to make it<br />
o<br />
understandable and easy to find and use.<br />
Structuring, upload and publishing: This phase performs the<br />
preparation of data in open formats, and the execution of<br />
ETL processes to load and release data on the technology<br />
platform for subsequent open access.<br />
3.6 Government data and application catalogs<br />
The primary tool for data supply is the Colombian Government<br />
data catalog prototype available at http://www.datos.gov.co, a<br />
web portal that allows citizens and enterprises to centralize search<br />
and access to all public data – illustrated in Figure 3. This<br />
platform meets two goals: 1) It should make it as easy as possible<br />
for citizens – especially developers—to discover interesting
datasets and to reuse them. 2) It should make it as easy as possible<br />
for government data stewards to make their datasets available for<br />
public consumption. As a pilot case study, nine datasets provided<br />
by national agencies including Transport, ICT and Education<br />
Ministries, Planning Department were identified and published.<br />
Data supply involved the development of a prototype of an online<br />
government operated clearinghouse for publishing third party<br />
applications using open government data, now available at<br />
http://ww.aplicaciones.gov.co. This tool allows third party agents<br />
(volunteers, civil society groups, government itself) to upload<br />
apps, and citizens to search and download apps that provide<br />
government services, using open published datasets.<br />
3.7 Legal Framework<br />
Definitions and actions associated with open data strategy in<br />
national regulations were absent and needed to be developed in<br />
order to implement the mandatory compliance of the model by<br />
public agencies in Colombia. In this sense the inclusion of a law,<br />
a draft decree and two manuals guiding public policy are being<br />
prepared.<br />
National Open Data<br />
Plataform<br />
Citizens<br />
Local and<br />
Thematic Open<br />
Data Platforms<br />
GEL Storage<br />
Datasets<br />
www.datos.gov.co<br />
National Open<br />
Data Catalog<br />
Data load website<br />
www.datosentidad.gov.co<br />
Federated<br />
Storage<br />
Datasets<br />
Federated<br />
Open Data<br />
Platform<br />
Agency Data<br />
Base National, thematic and local web sites<br />
Figure 3. Open Government data platform<br />
First, the draft "Law on Transparency and the Right to Access<br />
National Public Information" [9], included the enforcement for<br />
agencies to allow access to and use of public information, rules<br />
for information publication, accountability in the publication, and<br />
responsibility in access to and use of information.<br />
Second, the draft "Decree for establishing general guidelines<br />
for GEL strategy for the Republic of Colombia" [7],<br />
establishes the open data strategy as one of the priorities for the<br />
country, and identifies the rules for the disposal of information<br />
from public institutions to citizens, free of charge.<br />
Third, the matter of open data was incorporated into the<br />
guidelines contained in the "Manual for the Implementation of<br />
GEL strategy in Colombia" [8], as well as in the "Unique<br />
Manual of Accountability" [6], as mechanisms to promote<br />
openness, transparency and accountability in the Colombian<br />
Government.<br />
4. DISCUSSION & CONCLUSIONS<br />
Open data model developed by GEL provides a framework for<br />
data opening in a structured and organized manner, establishing<br />
balance and sustainability between supply and demand of data,<br />
and outlining a clear route for accomplishing a transparent,<br />
participative and collaborative strategy. Added value must be<br />
obtained from solutions that solve citizens’ needs and agencies<br />
required services for them.<br />
17<br />
At the moment, results from Colombian open government data<br />
initiative are still incipient. Complexity perceived by public<br />
agencies regarding the openness process is one of the main<br />
barriers for the model implementation. Agencies face diverse<br />
problems when trying to comply with the model. Those problems<br />
are mainly related to human behavior and fright to change: fear of<br />
losing control over data, lack of legal responsibility for<br />
publishing, and concern and distrust of third parties that would<br />
market or use the information to publish, summarize the main<br />
concerns.<br />
Currently GEL open data team is working on improving the<br />
technological platform, optimizing the existing instruments,<br />
defining the uptake model, setting the initial legal framework and<br />
developing training campaigns to disseminate the strategy.<br />
In the near future some actions need to be included in the work<br />
agenda: quick gathering of data to be published that can be easily<br />
identified, such as data from national research statistics, already<br />
published at web portals; engage citizens themselves in the<br />
decisions about what data to publish; creation of open channels<br />
for developers to provide information about the use and impact of<br />
the data; and the design of an environment that gives developers<br />
the flexibility to use a full range of software tools to manipulate,<br />
and to add value to, government information, among others.<br />
5. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS<br />
This research was performed in the framework of the Inter-<br />
Administrative Cooperation Agreement No. 308-2011, subscribed<br />
between “Fondo de Tecnologías de la Información - FONTIC and<br />
Centro de Investigación de las Telecomunicaciones – CINTEL”,<br />
with participation of “Everys Colombia” in its development.<br />
6. REFERENCES<br />
[1] Cantera Fonseca, J. M., Hierro Sureda, J. J. and Romo<br />
Zabala, P.A. Web semántica: Tecnologías y arquitectura.<br />
Revista Comunicaciones de Telefónica I+D. ISSN 1130-<br />
4693, Nº. 39, 2006, 211-221.<br />
[2] Corojan, A. and Campos, Eva. Gobierno abierto: alcance e<br />
implicaciones. Fundación Ideas. ISBN: 978-84-15018-73-5.<br />
2011.<br />
[3] Decreto 1151 de 2008. Ministerio de Comunicaciones de la<br />
República de Colombia. Diario Oficial No. 46.960 de 14 de<br />
abril de 2008.<br />
[4] Directiva Presidencial No. 02 de 2000: Gobierno en Línea<br />
del 28 de Agosto de 2008<br />
[5] Ley 1450 de 2011. Por la cual se expide el Plan Nacional de<br />
Desarrollo, 2010-2014. Congreso de la República de<br />
Colombia. Diario Oficial No. 48.102 de 16 de junio de 2011.<br />
[6] Manual Único de Rendición de Cuentas. Proyecto de ley<br />
estatutaria no. 133/11 cámara– Por la cual se desarrollan<br />
disposiciones para la promoción, protección y garantía del<br />
derecho a la participación ciudadana en Colombia<br />
[7] Proyecto de Decreto para establecer los lineamientos de la<br />
Estrategia Gobierno en Línea para la República de Colombia.<br />
2012.<br />
[8] Programa Agenda de Conectividad – Estrategia de Gobierno<br />
en línea. Manual 3.0 para la Implementación de la<br />
Estrategia de Gobierno en Línea en las entidades del orden<br />
nacional de la República de Colombia. Junio 2011.<br />
[9] Proyecto de Ley 156 de 2011 Senado, 228 de 2012 Cámara.<br />
Por medio de la cual se crea la ley de transparencia y del<br />
derecho de acceso a la información pública nacional y se<br />
dictan otras disposiciones. 2011.
Increasing Kenyan Open Data Consumption: A Design<br />
Thinking Approach<br />
Leonida N. Mutuku<br />
iHub Research<br />
Bishop Magua Centre, Ngong Road<br />
P.O. Box 58275 – 00200 Nairobi<br />
+254 732792987<br />
leo@ihub.co.ke<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
In July 2011, the Kenyan Government became the twenty-second<br />
government worldwide and the second in Africa to release many<br />
of its data sets in an open and reusable format on the Open Kenya<br />
portal. This open data portal has presented great opportunities to<br />
develop applications, especially on the mobile platform. There<br />
have been, however, challenges in engaging the technical and<br />
industry experts in conversations around the open data. We are<br />
conducting an ethnographic study on an experiment that brings<br />
together subject matter experts in the Water, Education,<br />
Transport, and Local County sectors, together with open data<br />
evangelists and software developers to guide them through a<br />
design thinking approach to identifying, idea-ting, and<br />
prototyping open data applications. The main objective of this<br />
study is to identify best practices in increasing open data<br />
consumption through scalable mass appeal mobilization and civic<br />
engagement tools and applications.<br />
Categories and Subject Descriptors<br />
A.1 [General Literature]: General – Conference Proceedings<br />
General Terms<br />
Documentation, Design<br />
Keywords<br />
Kenya, Open Data, Design Thinking, Ethnography<br />
1. INTRODUCTION<br />
Over the past couple of years, various governments and public<br />
institutions have launched numerous initiatives to make their data<br />
sets open. Open data is data that is freely accessible, easily<br />
redistributed and reused [8]. The US Government and the World<br />
Bank were among the first of these institutions to release, in 2009,<br />
numerous data sets in an open format for access by all.<br />
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for<br />
personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are<br />
not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies<br />
bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for<br />
components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored.<br />
Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to<br />
post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission<br />
and/or a fee.<br />
ICEGOV '12, October 22 - 25 2012, Albany, NY, USA<br />
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1200-4/12/10...$15.00<br />
18<br />
Jessica Colaco<br />
iHub Research<br />
Bishop Magua Centre, Ngong Road<br />
P.O. Box 58275 – 00200 Nairobi<br />
+254 735203733<br />
jessica@ihub.co.ke<br />
Since then, we have seen more than 20 governments and other<br />
major institutions around the world release their data, in a bid to<br />
democratize this public information by making it accessible to all<br />
citizens; and to promote innovation of local solutions to socioeconomic<br />
development issues that afflict the respective countries<br />
[13]. By providing this public information to citizens, the<br />
governments empower them to query this data and in this way<br />
promote accountability, transparency and innovation in service<br />
delivery.<br />
2. THE KENYA OPEN DATA INITIATIVE<br />
In July 2011, the Kenyan Government became the twenty-second<br />
country worldwide and the second in Africa [16] to release many<br />
of its data sets in an open and reusable format on the Open Kenya<br />
[13] portal. The Vision given for this initiative is that “with the<br />
launch of Open Kenya, Africa will have its own story of<br />
promoting transparency through open data to celebrate, learn from<br />
and share” [13]. At the launch of the portal, there were over 400<br />
data sets released to the public in easily manipulated formats.<br />
2.1 Potential of the Open Data Initiative<br />
The Kenya Open Data Initiative enables Kenyans to interact with<br />
government data at different levels and use this information to<br />
engage [11] further with the government in accordance with the<br />
new Constitution’s provisions on access to information [14]. The<br />
government has released many more large data sets since the<br />
launch of the portal, ranging from national census data to statistics<br />
on government spending at national and county level [9].<br />
Various opportunities to develop applications that use the newly<br />
available open data as a basis to represent information have<br />
emerged. Over 90 dataset requests surfaced within the first month<br />
of the launch by developers and other stakeholders, which<br />
indicates a great interest to explore this data in meaningful ways<br />
and represent it visually, while providing useful insights into the<br />
information that lies within this data.<br />
This opportunity could be explored further in the mobile space to<br />
create mobile open data applications. With over 99% of users that<br />
access Internet in Kenya doing so through their mobile phones,<br />
[4] a much faster and more efficient tool to disseminate open data<br />
information to citizens may be through mobiles. It is therefore<br />
worth considering mobile applications as an important<br />
dissemination method of open data information [9].
Giving Kenya’s citizens greater access to government data<br />
enables communities to mobilize and demand better services<br />
based on evidence provided by open data. [1]<br />
2.2 Importance of Open Data to Governance<br />
Through continuous interaction and providing feedback on the<br />
platform and its data sets, in the long term, open data promotes<br />
not only transparency and accountability, but also democracy. As<br />
previously highlighted, improved service delivery will be<br />
promoted by the feedback loops that arise through frequent<br />
querying of the open data by both citizens and government<br />
agencies. For example, the resource allocations and government<br />
expenditures could be queried and insights obtained by analyzing<br />
the open data accessed. In this manner, open data will allow for a<br />
paradigm shift from a centralized governance model to a citizencentric<br />
governance model.<br />
The government realizes these important values of the open data<br />
platform and has been a strong advocate for the platform,<br />
evangelizing about its potential and benefits at various events and<br />
public functions. In return, many developers and journalists have<br />
embraced the Open Data Portal with a number of applications that<br />
query the database being developed. Examples of such<br />
applications include: Huduma [10], MsemaKweli [12],<br />
CountyScoreCard [5] and CDF Review [3]. Further, the<br />
government has promoted interaction with these data sets by<br />
providing grants of up to $30,000 for the development of<br />
applications based on open data. [6]<br />
The World Bank has also been instrumental in the education and<br />
awareness campaigns on the importance and opportunities of the<br />
open data portal by sending in their own open data evangelists and<br />
members of the finances’ open data team to officiate at boot<br />
camps with a focus on data journalism and open data<br />
visualization.<br />
Despite these numerous efforts, the potential of the open data<br />
portal has only barely been realized.<br />
3. OPEN DATA CONSUMPTION<br />
3.1 Open Data Evangelism<br />
The openness of the platform is subject to interpretation because,<br />
though the data sets are available online, this does not necessarily<br />
translate to the data being available to all Kenyan citizens. This is<br />
because currently, the data is only available on a web or mobilebased<br />
portal. Less-educated citizens may not be comfortable<br />
accessing information through the Internet or mobile phones.<br />
Alternatively, the less educated citizens may not be Englishliterate.<br />
These less educated citizens may be the users who have<br />
the most need for the open data information. Therefore, for the<br />
portal to be a success, citizens, end users, and beneficiaries must<br />
be made aware of what information lies on the data platform and<br />
its relevance and usefulness. This awareness can be raised through<br />
direct interpretation of the data on the portal, but perhaps more<br />
importantly, from easily-digestible information created by<br />
intermediary parties from analysis and visualization of the open<br />
data.<br />
These intermediary parties essentially interact directly with the<br />
platform creating applications based on the data. To reap<br />
maximum benefits from the open data sets, the applications<br />
19<br />
created must address real needs and not just be fancy visuals with<br />
no real value behind them.<br />
Despite the many efforts discussed above, there has been no real<br />
measurable engagement of industry and sector experts in these<br />
open data conversations to date. These are important stakeholders<br />
when it comes to formulate problem statements based on these<br />
data sets and advice on the solution development [2]. While<br />
software developers may create great visualization tools, great<br />
value is derived from their engagement with industry experts who<br />
together, will assist to build necessary service to serve the likes of<br />
those who will not readily accept or understand the data on the<br />
platform.<br />
Figure 1: How different stakeholders engage with<br />
opendata.go.ke<br />
There is a need to bridge the gap between those who can make<br />
sense of the data sets and interpret the seemingly random numbers<br />
to software developers, in a manner that can then be easily<br />
adapted and captured in innovative useful products and<br />
applications. This research aims to test the hypothesis that the<br />
realization of the full potential of open data will be achieved when<br />
easily interpretable open data products are made for the general<br />
public, the final end user of these data sets.<br />
3.2 Design Thinking Approach<br />
3.2.1 The Open Data Pre-Incubator<br />
We are currently carrying out this research study around a sixmonth<br />
experiment, a pre-incubator, which aims to accelerate the<br />
ability for the public to make sense of open data in order to<br />
increase their engagement around critical public issues: in the<br />
sectors of Water, Education, Transport, and Local Counties. The<br />
Pre-incubator experiment will test a model that will be put to use<br />
in a broader two-year Incubator effort, endorsed and supported by<br />
the highest levels of government, which will be led by public<br />
mobilization agents with support from the technological<br />
community.<br />
In this Pre-Incubator, four Open Data Fellows have been<br />
embedded in civil society and media organizations and are<br />
working to build an application or service or platform around key<br />
thematic issues. These host organizations and fellows are<br />
conducting a close consultation process with issue expert working<br />
groups who provide insight into specific use cases and technical
insight into available data resources. The specific outcomes of this<br />
experiment are the creation of analytical dashboards and data tool<br />
kits for knowledge professionals; and the creation of mass appeal<br />
mobilizations applications/platforms for civic engagement.<br />
The multi-stakeholder groups will then follow a Design Thinking<br />
approach to ideate the solutions and create meaningful and useful<br />
applications based on these insights from the data. This will be<br />
done in five steps, following concepts derived from the Stanford<br />
D. School Design Thinking methodologies [15], namely:<br />
o Empathizing - observing, engaging, and immersing the<br />
developers and subject matter experts together so as to<br />
understand the needs of the general citizens. This will take<br />
place in a workshop where there will be brainstorm sessions<br />
around four thematic areas: Water, Education, Transport and<br />
Local County Data.<br />
o Defining -Problem statements will be formulated by the<br />
fellows and the working groups formed. These problem<br />
statements will be based on the synthesis of the empathy<br />
findings in terms of compelling needs and insights, scoping<br />
specific and meaningful challenges to solve. This will take<br />
place in another workshop where a number of projects will<br />
be selected with which to proceed.<br />
o Idea-ting - This will be done around the numerous problem<br />
statements and go further into strengthening solutions for the<br />
selected projects. The idea-tion will be supported by a boot<br />
camp where an initial prototype will be designed to be built<br />
in selected teams. This event will also have a public outreach<br />
component to help educate researchers and the broader<br />
public about the use of open data.<br />
o Prototyping and testing - The actual prototyping will then<br />
follow where all the ideas generated are actualized as<br />
applications and technology services to address the problems<br />
identified to be solved using open data. This step will involve<br />
different levels of prototyping and showcasing demos of the<br />
published data applications.<br />
3.2.1.1 The Research Process<br />
The specific objectives of the research are to:<br />
1) Document the Open Data Outreach process in order for it to<br />
be replicable in other communities and countries<br />
2) Use evaluation mechanisms of the design thinking approach<br />
and the documentation to understand how to make the Open<br />
Data Outreach initiative sustainable and scalable.<br />
This research is being conducted as an intense study that involves<br />
active participation and observation in the entire process of ideation<br />
and development of the open data applications through the<br />
pre-incubator model. Specifically, the study is using ethnographic<br />
models in order to fully understand this pre-incubator model in the<br />
development of open data applications, and uncover new and<br />
consequential variables [7] to consider in the construction of the<br />
larger incubator model.<br />
This research includes an exploratory survey and initial literature<br />
review to help determine scope of the project and verifiable<br />
metrics for success to aid in this evaluation and analyze the<br />
replicability of the open data pre-incubation process so as to<br />
provide targeted recommendations for scaling up the initiative.<br />
These have been identified so far, at a high level, as the successful<br />
20<br />
development of open data applications that will be scaled in the<br />
region or continent of Africa; and the creation of an ecosystem at<br />
the grass root level (the communities) around open data, through<br />
the use of these applications.<br />
The research will continue to review the documentation of event<br />
<strong>proceedings</strong> and activities related to the process as well as<br />
qualitative research conducted through ethnographic observation<br />
and participatory approach, in-depth interviews and audience<br />
analysis.<br />
The documents of the process of building and running the open<br />
data pre-incubator will then be critically analyzed and used to<br />
deliver use cases and recommendations that can be used for<br />
actionable planning in a larger incubator model. This may call for<br />
a review strategy for sustaining such open data incubator model<br />
by analyzing successes, weaknesses, opportunities & challenges<br />
for making this data more ‘mainstream’.<br />
The findings will then be presented at the end of the experiment as<br />
use cases, recommendations, tool kits and a critical analysis of the<br />
process that can be used for actionable planning of a similar open<br />
data consumption product.<br />
Overall, the specific goals of the Pre-Incubator process are to<br />
create one app or service or platform that used at scale across<br />
Kenyan society and drastically increases the use of open data and<br />
the research will support this further by the recommendations<br />
delivered for a sustainable and scalable model.<br />
4. CONCLUSIONS<br />
This project will contribute in creating a knowledge community<br />
on this open data of experts and non-experts alike and spurring<br />
conversations around this open data. The research process will not<br />
only inform the underlying project, the pre-incubation model, but<br />
hopes to raise new questions on how further to promote<br />
engagement of the ordinary citizen with their government through<br />
the usage of other mass appeal applications. This research hopes<br />
to come up with an effective sustainable toolkit on how subject<br />
experts and developers can interact with the Open Kenya portal<br />
and in collaboration, build tools and services around the datasets<br />
that can benefit all citizens in spite of their literacy levels with<br />
regards to the platform.<br />
As we embrace new ideas of living, applications revolving around<br />
various sectors like Water, Education and Health will go a long<br />
way to assist the country in transitioning to more citizen<br />
engagement and efficient service delivery. Consequently, this will<br />
lead to identification of proper open data innovations that solve<br />
real problems within the society and essentially assist in achieving<br />
the objectives with regards to the release of open data.<br />
5. REFERENCES<br />
[1] Beeman, H. 2011. Uses for open data<br />
http://hadleybeeman.net/2011/01/26/uses-for-open-data/<br />
Accessed August 2012<br />
[2] Business Daily, Government portal must have the required<br />
impact, 2011<br />
http://www.businessdailyafrica.com/Opinion+++Analysis/G<br />
overnment+portal+must+have+the+required+impact/-<br />
/539548/1199730/-/10sesc1/-/index.html Accessed in April<br />
2012
[3] CDF Review website, http://cdfreview.on.co.ke/ Accessed in<br />
April 2012<br />
[4] CCK Quarterly Sector Statistics Report. 2012, 19<br />
http://www.cck.go.ke/resc/downloads/SECTOR_STATISTI<br />
CS_REPORT_Q1_11-12.pdf<br />
[5] CountyScoreCard website, http://countyscorecard.on.co.ke/<br />
Accessed in April 2012<br />
[6] Daily nation. Kenya frees Government data on the internet,<br />
2011. http://www.nation.co.ke/sports/-/1090/1196768/-<br />
/item/0/-/bdooo5z/-/index.html Accessed in April 2012<br />
[7] Genzuk M, PH.D. A Synthesis Of Ethnographic Research,<br />
Center for Multilingual, Multicultural Research, University<br />
of Southern California. 1999.<br />
[8] Halonen, A. Being Open About Data. Finnish Institute in<br />
London, London, 2012<br />
[9] Howard, A. Open government data to fuel Kenya's app<br />
economy, 2011,http://radar.oreilly.com/2011/07/open-kenyagovernment-data.html<br />
Accessed in April 2012<br />
[10] Huduma Website, http://huduma.info/ Accessed in April<br />
2012<br />
21<br />
[11] Madera, C. 2010 Solving Urban Challenges With Open Data<br />
http://americancity.org/daily/entry/solving-urban-challengeswith-open-data<br />
Accessed in August 2012<br />
[12] MsemaKweli website,<br />
http://msemakweli.ihub.co.ke/pages/home.php Accessed in<br />
April 2012<br />
[13] Open Kenya Portal. https://opendata.go.ke/ Accessed in<br />
April 2012<br />
[14] Rahemtulla, H., Kaplan, J., Gigler, B., Cluster, S., Kless, J.<br />
and Brigham, C. Open Data Kenya: Case Study of the<br />
Underlying Drivers, Principal Objectives and Evolution of<br />
One of the First Open Data Initiatives in Africa. Open<br />
Development Technology Alliance, 2011.<br />
[15] Stanford D. School, Design Thinking<br />
http://dschool.stanford.edu/use-our-methods/ , Accessed in<br />
April 2012<br />
[16] Were, D. Ushahidi Welcomes Kenya Open Data Initiative.<br />
http://blog.ushahidi.com/index.php/2011/07/12/ushahidiwelcomes-kenya-open-data-initiative/<br />
accessed in April 2011
New Perspectives for Electronic Government in Brazil:<br />
The Adoption of Open Government Data in National and<br />
Subnational Governments of Brazil<br />
Ricardo Matheus<br />
University of São Paulo<br />
ricardomatheus@gmail.com<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
The development of information and communication technologies<br />
(ICTs) enabled production of bases containing raw data which can<br />
be freely manipulated, filtered or being crossed to build new<br />
applications. These possibilities of using this raw data and its<br />
manipulation have been called Open Government Data (OGD).<br />
The aim of this paper is to present the State of Art of the Open<br />
Government Data in Brazilian National, State and Municipal<br />
governments. Some benefits that OGD have been promoted are:<br />
transparency promotion, and, improvements of social control and<br />
citizen participation. The methodology used is the literature<br />
review mainly about concepts of Open Government Data and<br />
three case studies about Brazilian governmental initiatives of<br />
OGD Portals. It was conducted an exploratory study of Brazilian<br />
initiatives National and Subnational governments that aims to<br />
verify the Brazilian level of OGD based on the eight principles of<br />
OGD and the five stars of open linked data, the last one was<br />
created by Tim Berners-Lee to measure the level of open data in<br />
websites. The final considerations reveal Brazilian initiatives<br />
adopt almost the entire principles of OGD. Further, the initiatives<br />
are in the third stage of a completely open linked data (three<br />
stars).<br />
Categories and Subject Descriptors<br />
J.1 [Computer Applications]: Administrative Data Processing –<br />
Government<br />
General Terms<br />
Management, Theory<br />
Keywords<br />
Electronic Government; Transparency; Social Control; Citizen<br />
Participation; Open Government Data<br />
1. INTRODUCTION<br />
Recently, the Information and communications technology (ICT)<br />
development have been bringing new possibilities for promotion<br />
of transparency and availability of public data, mainly through the<br />
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for<br />
personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are<br />
not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies<br />
bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for<br />
components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored.<br />
Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to<br />
post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission<br />
and/or a fee.<br />
ICEGOV '12, October 22 - 25 2012, Albany, NY, United States, NY, USA<br />
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1200-4/12/10…$15.00.<br />
Manuella Maia Ribeiro<br />
Fundação Getúlio Vargas<br />
maiamanuella@gmail.com<br />
22<br />
José Carlos Vaz<br />
University of São Paulo<br />
vaz@usp.br<br />
internet. Through ICTs the promotion of transparency has been<br />
increased because ICTs allowed an easier ambient to access data<br />
and information of public information from governments. The<br />
possibilities of using new technologies by governments to<br />
promote transparency, social control and citizen participation are<br />
constantly presented in the literature [1, 2, 3, 4, 5].<br />
The first phase of the transparency process of governments was<br />
governmental portals of transparency, where several kind of<br />
information, especially financial information, was published in<br />
zipped format. This kind of publication is characterized by the<br />
fact that it is the government who decides what and how it will be<br />
seen. This applies to the publication of financial reports or data<br />
non-interactively. A second phase is characterized by the<br />
possibility of performing custom queries to databases. Some<br />
interested parties could access government databases and interact<br />
with them. This implies they could order structured queries<br />
producing crossed researched of specific data or, at least allowing<br />
filtering databases in search of detailed information. For example,<br />
this applies to appointments to the financial implementation of the<br />
Union, States and Municipalities in Brazil [2, 6, 7, 8, 9].<br />
A new phase becomes possible more recently: the open<br />
government data (OGD). Afforded by the development of ICTs,<br />
OGD can go further publication of reports or queries to access the<br />
databases. It became possible to offer database in its raw state, to<br />
be freely manipulated, filtered or mixed with others, including<br />
allowing the construction of new knowledge and applications by<br />
civil society. Some of consequences of this new possibility of<br />
governmental transparency are social control and citizen<br />
participation through collaboration [10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16].<br />
However, the limits of them are not yet fully known. Neither its<br />
boundaries were fully exploited [17, 18, 19].<br />
Several new applications are emerging in some developed<br />
countries such as United States, New Zealand, United Kingdom<br />
and Australia, as well as movements on the part of organized<br />
sectors of society who are pressing for its implementation [11, 12,<br />
16, 17, 18]. The pioneering example is United States of America.<br />
The federal government created a level of openness of<br />
government information by creating unprecedented memo on<br />
transparency and open government requires that all actions of the<br />
ministries themselves were based on transparency, citizen<br />
participation and collaboration between government and society.<br />
In addition, the Ministry of Science and Technology created the<br />
Open Government Initiative ("Open Government Initiative") to<br />
effect the availability of open government data [20, 21].<br />
While civil society organizations have emerged around the world<br />
that pressure governments to open their data in open format. In<br />
according with [21], in the United States, the Sunlight Foundation,<br />
OMB Watch and the League of Women Voters have created a
movement to pressure for open government data and creating<br />
applications for society from these data. Thus, also received<br />
support from large organizations in the country as the Open<br />
Society Institute, the Omidyar Foundation and the Ford<br />
Foundation.<br />
Despite the limited knowledge available on the subject, it is<br />
possible to envisage the emergence of OGD is appearing in many<br />
countries of the world.<br />
This article will explore the state of the art of using OGD in<br />
Brazil. The methodology used was literature on subject of OGD<br />
and an exploratory study of some of the few experiences in Brazil.<br />
Due to its recent creation, websites that provide open data were<br />
not analyzed by its impacts, but only their potential for promoting<br />
transparency, social control and citizen participation by offering<br />
OGD.<br />
First, the paper presents a concept discussion about OGD. Then, it<br />
was chosen three Brazilians cases to analyze through two methods<br />
of analysis of Brazilian initiatives: the eight principles of OGD<br />
and the five stars of linked data ranking. The data collection<br />
occurred through structured inspection of these three OGD<br />
Portals.<br />
Regardless of open data might be considered in both the public<br />
and in private, this article, as a matter of focus, is only open to<br />
government data in government. Once the conceptual discussion,<br />
the article identifies some of the experiences of reference and uses<br />
them to make an exploratory reflection on the limits and<br />
possibilities of the OGD contribute in social struggle around the<br />
transparency practices and the relationship between government<br />
and civil society, because the data open not only relate to the<br />
dissemination of information but also to encourage new uses for<br />
the citizens of public data.<br />
2. LITERATURE REVIEW<br />
2.1 Open Government Data<br />
Open Government Data (OGD) is a term used to denote<br />
governmental information available via the Internet in the public<br />
domain for free use by society [17]. This concept refers to the<br />
protection of public data as belonging to the citizen, which should<br />
have unrestricted access to government information, advocated by<br />
several authors [22, 17, 23], among others. It also refers to the<br />
context of recent development of ICT, where the Internet,<br />
databases, tools, standards and open formats allow and facilitate<br />
the provision and access to this information.<br />
The idea of the OGD is developed from the discussion on open<br />
data engendered by Tim O'Reilly, owner of O'Reilly Media in<br />
mid-2007. In the same year, along with O’Reilly’s with others<br />
specialists joined by 30 supporters of open government to discuss<br />
OGD and its importance to democracy [24]. At this meeting of<br />
experts and advocates of OGD, it was developed the eight<br />
principles OGD. These principles state that the OGD should be:<br />
1) Complete: All public data is made available. Public data is<br />
data that is not subject to valid privacy, security or privilege<br />
limitations.<br />
2) Primary: Data is as collected at the source, with the highest<br />
possible level of granularity, not in aggregate or modified<br />
forms.<br />
3) Timely: Data is made available as quickly as necessary to<br />
preserve the value of the data.<br />
23<br />
4) Accessible: Data is available to the widest range of users for<br />
the widest range of purposes.<br />
5) Machine understandable: Data is reasonably structured to<br />
allow automated processing.<br />
6) Non-discriminatory: Data is available to anyone, with no<br />
requirement of registration.<br />
7) Non-proprietary: Data is available in a format over which no<br />
entity has exclusive control.<br />
8) License-free: Data is not subject to any copyright, patent,<br />
trademark or trade secret regulation. Reasonable privacy,<br />
security and privilege restrictions may be allowed.<br />
Civil society organizations are using these principles of<br />
governments to levy the availability of government information.<br />
[25] presented at an event in 2009, the three laws of open<br />
government data:<br />
1) A blog about the project;<br />
2) If data is not found and indexed on the web, it does not<br />
exist;<br />
3) If not already open and available in machine-understandable<br />
format, it cannot be exploited;<br />
4) If any legal provision does not allow its replication, it is<br />
useless.<br />
Benefits of adopting the OGD in the field of transparency and<br />
social control are, at least in theory, evident. The provision of<br />
OGD tends to contribute to the increased transparency of<br />
government, creating better opportunities for social control of<br />
government actions. However, given the relative newness of the<br />
topic, yet there have been no studies that show the whole of this<br />
possibility.<br />
A second category of benefits can also be addressed. It is the<br />
possibility of creating new information and applications from the<br />
open government data. In this case, transparency is not only<br />
encouraged, but also new services may originate from the<br />
interaction between government and society through the<br />
exploitation of OGD. These services can be generated through<br />
new ways of working collaboratively across the participatory<br />
government and private institution, since the concept of OGD<br />
avoids the vision of the citizen as a mere recipient of public<br />
information.<br />
The focus on the concept of citizen open government data is<br />
emphasized by [26], pointing the concept relates to an<br />
understanding that the way governments have their information<br />
available allows the intelligence collectively create better ways to<br />
work with them than the governments themselves could do. As an<br />
example, [26] says that “it would be possible to optimize<br />
resources in public administration, if they leach from the traffic<br />
data in urban open format”. Thus, citizens who would take care<br />
through the use of ICT to produce charts and graphs on traffic.<br />
To [23], "the provision of open government data allows<br />
information to be used in the manner and convenience of the<br />
person concerned so that they can be mixed and matched to add<br />
more value to the data." For this author, the purpose of the public<br />
information is made available under the rules of open data is<br />
overcome the limitations that exist for users of public information<br />
can easily find, access, understand and use the public data<br />
according to their interests and convenience [23].
Not without reason therefore that the World Wide Web<br />
Consortium (W3C), an international consortium that aims to<br />
develop Web standards, defines government data as open: the<br />
publication and dissemination of public sector information on the<br />
web , shared in raw format and open, understandable of course, to<br />
allow its reuse in digital applications developed by society [27]. In<br />
addition, the W3C considers that governments should encourage<br />
citizens to use the open data available by governments, ie, they<br />
should be encouraged to reuse the data according to their needs<br />
and wants. The [23] summarizes the purpose of this incentive:<br />
"There is value in providing open government data if the company<br />
has no interest in re-use them".<br />
Likewise, the Declaration on the Public Service Open Europe<br />
believes that public bodies must provide the government data: in<br />
open formats and reusable, public institutions should seek to act<br />
as a platform for building of public value. Public organizations<br />
should offer citizens the ability to solve problems for themselves<br />
by providing them the proper tools to do so [17]. Protection of<br />
open data as a promoter of transparency is due to the possibilities<br />
of making government records accessible to eliminating all<br />
restrictions concerning technology, accessibility and legislation to<br />
International Initiatives of Portals of Open Government Data<br />
Worldwide, activists, international organizations and governments<br />
are thinking about access to public information from the data<br />
open. Although the discussion on this topic is new, there are<br />
already some experience of government provision of open data.<br />
Several national and subnational governments now provide their<br />
data from the orientations of open government. Among the<br />
countries that have policies of open data include: United States,<br />
United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand [26, 17]. These<br />
countries have developed national policies on access to public<br />
data and created web portals that provide public information in<br />
different formats. Moreover, they often encourage citizens to<br />
create new applications and ways of using information published<br />
in their portals.<br />
2.1.1 The Australian, New Zealand and United<br />
Kingdom Portals of Open Government Data<br />
The Australian government created the portal Data Australia in<br />
February 2010. The objective of the portal of transparency is to be<br />
the database of public information government of this country.<br />
They encourage us to use the information contained within the<br />
portal to create gadgets and computer programs by users who do<br />
social control of all information within the portal. The website of<br />
the New Zealand government was created this year to offer<br />
information and intelligence agencies and public bodies of<br />
government. It has space for discussion through forums that may<br />
be proposed by citizens.<br />
The example of the United Kingdom intends to offer data and<br />
information to citizens in public administration for the expansion<br />
of government social control. It has space for the wiki, online<br />
community, and sends in new web applications, among others. In<br />
2008, Britain ceded public information to a competition to<br />
develop solutions to public data named Show us a better way.<br />
2.1.2 The United States Portal of Open Government<br />
Data<br />
The flagship plan for adoption of open data is the U.S. Initiatives<br />
in this country can also be found in the sub-national governments.<br />
According to [26], Washington DC was one of the pioneers in<br />
developing the incentive to collaborative work between<br />
24<br />
government and society with public data. President Obama early<br />
in the mandate, set policies for the promotion of transparency that<br />
encourages the provision of government data in open format.<br />
The memo sent by the president on January 21, 2009 to all heads<br />
of government called the Federal Transparency and Open<br />
Government. This memo pledged to create "unprecedented levels<br />
of openness" in government. The president called the<br />
representatives of the executive to work to ensure trust and<br />
establish a system of transparency, public participation and<br />
collaboration. The opening will strengthen democracy and will<br />
promote efficiency and effectiveness to government "[20, 26].<br />
The Open Government Initiative policy aimed to guarantee the<br />
realization of this memo. Among its actions, is the portal<br />
Data.gov, created in May 2009. The aim of Data.gov, portal<br />
transparency of the federal government is offering information<br />
and expand the creative use of government data through web<br />
applications, encouraging innovative ideas to provide greater<br />
transparency of governmental actions. The site contains<br />
information about hundreds of government agencies and offices<br />
separated by organ. Statistics tell visitors monthly, daily, yearly. It<br />
also has space for participation of citizens wishing to express their<br />
will.<br />
2.1.3 Private Portals of Open Government Data<br />
Besides the government experiences, there are already nongovernmental<br />
organizations that seek to promote and support the<br />
adoption of open data policy. For example, the Sunlight<br />
Foundation and Project Open Government Data, Access the Open<br />
Knowledge Foundation Info. These experiences advocate in favor<br />
of adopting the policy of open data by governments and perform a<br />
variety of activities from research to encourage the creation of<br />
solutions and standards for open formats. In short, despite the<br />
recent discussion of existence and availability of open government<br />
data, there are already examples of governments that adopt this<br />
theory as a public policy to promote transparency and<br />
collaboration between government and society.<br />
2.2 How to Measure the Level of OGD in<br />
Governmental Portals?<br />
One of the methods to measure the level of OGD in governmental<br />
Portals was created by Tim Berners-Lee. It was denominated the<br />
five stars of open linked data [27].<br />
Actually, this method was created to “(…) categorise the<br />
publication of open data on the Web in levels of increasing<br />
usefulness, that encapsulate the present shared vision of the<br />
Semantic Web as a Web of Linked Open Data, and that<br />
individuals can use to rate their own data publication” [27].<br />
It was divided in five categories [28]:<br />
1) One star: available on the web (whatever format) but with an<br />
open licence, to be open data.<br />
2) Two stars: available as machine- readable structured data<br />
(e.g. excel instead of image scan of a table).<br />
3) Three stars: as (2) plus non proprietary format (e. g. CSV<br />
instead of excel).<br />
4) Four star: all the above plus, use of open standards from<br />
W3C (RDF or SPARQL) to identify things, so that people<br />
can point at your stuff.<br />
5) Five stars: all the above, plus: link your data to other<br />
people’s data to provide context.
3. RESEARCH APPROACH<br />
The objective of this article is to present the State of Art of the<br />
OGD in Brazilian National and Subnational governments. To<br />
achieve this goal, firstly, it was done a literature review that<br />
guided this study focused on the key concept: Open Government<br />
Data (OGD) and its main examples in governments (United<br />
States, Australia, United Kingdon and New Zealand) and entities<br />
that promote OGD (Sunlight Foundation and Open Knowledge<br />
Foundation). This allowed us to highlight the possibilities that, in<br />
theory, the DGA can offer as tools for promoting transparency,<br />
social control, and reuse by civil society, among others. However,<br />
the virtually nonexistent literature on DGA in Brazil has required<br />
an exploratory study to identify the initiatives already undertaken<br />
by governments.<br />
It was decided to perform preliminary research from experts and<br />
publicity materials on the Internet, which identified experiences<br />
promoted by the federal, state and municipal governments. After<br />
identifying the set of experiences available, it was decided to<br />
carry out structured visits to the following government websites<br />
that publish open government data (one from each level of<br />
government): DadosGov Project (Federal Government),Open<br />
Government SP (Government of the State of São Paulo) and São<br />
Paulo City Council (Municipal level).<br />
Other initiatives were found such as the portal of the State of<br />
Ceará Municipalities Court of Audits (TCM-CE) and the Public<br />
Security Secretariat of Rio Grande do Sul State. These two<br />
initiatives it was not chosen to a further analysis because they are<br />
isolated experiences in their states. We were looked for initiatives<br />
such as portals and initiatives from Executive or Legislative.<br />
In Brazil there is still no transparency portal experience that is<br />
associated totally with a central policy of open government data<br />
available [26, 17, 23]. In general, cases in Brazil are far short of<br />
international experiences, such as the United States and United<br />
Kingdom. Therefore, the availability of open government data in<br />
Brazil does not have a systematic policy as the United States.<br />
Nevertheless, there are individual experiments and partial<br />
availability of public data by some government agencies and<br />
specific laws that encourage the adoption of open data by<br />
governments.<br />
The objectives of the structured inspections in these three<br />
initiatives were to verify that the Brazilian OGD Portals achieve<br />
the eight principles of OGD and the five stars of open linked data<br />
presented above in the literature review.<br />
A series of structured inspections on these websites was done<br />
between 02/08/2012 e 04/01/2012. Data collected were used to<br />
assess how the eight principles of open government data proposed<br />
by [24] and the five stars of open linked data are presented in<br />
these cases. The exploratory study was conducted because the<br />
cases we found are recent experiences, once OGD are a very<br />
recent issue in Brazil. Therefore, there was no way to make an<br />
analysis of its impacts yet.<br />
Thus, the steps of this research were:<br />
1) An exploratory research of Brazilian governmental initiatives<br />
of OGD through Internet search;<br />
2) Definition of the studies cases. The conditions were:<br />
different levels of governments, preferably of Executive or<br />
Legislative and preferably portals.<br />
3) Structured inspections in these cases to find how many<br />
principles of OGD and stars they have.<br />
25<br />
4) Defining the results and State of Art in Brazilian OGD.<br />
4. RESULTS OF THE EIGHT PRINCIPLES<br />
4.1 Open Government Data in Brazilian<br />
Federal Government<br />
In December 2010, the federal government launched the first site<br />
that aims to provide public data on this being an open format. The<br />
Brazilian Portal of OGD was denominated DadosGov<br />
(http://beta.dados.gov.br/). The project was developed by<br />
Information Organizing Committee from the Presidency of the<br />
Republic (IOC-PR) which consists of the following Federal<br />
Government agencies: Office of Deputy Information for Decision<br />
Support, President's Chief of Staff, Institutional Relations<br />
Secretariat (SRI-PR), Department of Logistics and Information<br />
Technology , and two federal government-owned IT companies<br />
that provide services to government.<br />
The aim of this website is to organize and make available to the<br />
President, general government agencies and society governmental<br />
information, a reliable and easily accessible. For this, DadosGov<br />
website is structured to provide data in open format to be taken by<br />
anyone interested. The data come from federal government<br />
agencies, ministries and other public organizations. The table<br />
below shows the main government agencies that provided data to<br />
the project:<br />
Table 1. Main data provided by DadosGov Project<br />
Government<br />
Organization<br />
Ministry of<br />
Education<br />
(MEC)<br />
Ministry of<br />
Social Welfare<br />
(MPS)<br />
Ministry of<br />
Agrarian<br />
Development<br />
(MDA)<br />
Ministry of<br />
Justice<br />
(MJ)<br />
Ministry of<br />
Agriculture<br />
(MAPA)<br />
Time<br />
Series<br />
252<br />
132<br />
131<br />
127<br />
110<br />
Examples of content<br />
Childhood Education, School<br />
Health Program, University<br />
Scholarships (PROUNI), Student<br />
Loans Fund for Higher<br />
Education (FIES), among others.<br />
Ministry branches.<br />
Rural microcredit, Family Farm<br />
Insurance, among others.<br />
Services to women victims of<br />
domestic violence, Amnesty<br />
Commission deliberations,<br />
among others.<br />
Contracts for urban food<br />
suppliyng.<br />
Source: DADOSGOV Project (2012)<br />
DadosGov portal like the site of the U.S. federal government,<br />
cataloging data that were already available in public bodies, but<br />
were not systematized in a single portal and open format. Over 30<br />
agencies have provided historical series of public information for<br />
use of both governments and citizens. Among the sites studied is<br />
the one that provides more information. Due to the large amount<br />
of data available was not possible to verify that all data presented<br />
were the raw data.<br />
Data are presented usually by historical series that can be<br />
analyzed by the user via graphics, tables or records. Extractions of<br />
the series are in the following formats: CSV, RTF, PDF, XLS, and<br />
XML.
Another principle adopted by this site is that user identification is<br />
not required for data extraction. Although there is no space on site<br />
to discuss applications and other uses of the available information,<br />
there is an incentive for citizens to use these: "The idea of linked<br />
data formats is to allow civil society to development tools able to<br />
read data supplied by the government and make comparisons and<br />
analysis" [31]. Regarding to license to use the data, the site is not<br />
clear what are the chances of reproduction and use of information<br />
available.<br />
In 2010, federal government, through the Secretariat of Logistics<br />
and Information Technology of the Ministry of Planning has<br />
initiated a project to create the Open Data National Infrastructure<br />
(ODNI). The initiative focuses on interoperability and<br />
standardization of information resources. It also intends to<br />
promote best practices for the provision of open government data.<br />
It is defined as an "integrated set of technologies, policies,<br />
procedures and mechanisms for coordination and monitoring,<br />
standards and agreements necessary to facilitate the storage,<br />
access, sharing, dissemination and use of open data" [31].<br />
Factors that motivated the ODNI launching were difficulties for<br />
searching, accessing and reusing government data, both for the<br />
society and the government itself. The initiative seeks to support<br />
demands of changes in relationship between government and<br />
society, promoting transparency, control of government by<br />
citizens and citizen participation in policymaking. The ODNI will<br />
use existing experiences in the dissemination of public data<br />
available in the federal government as a starting point, including<br />
some isolated actions in federal agencies and two centralized<br />
operations of the federal government: the aforementioned<br />
DadosGov portal and federal government's Transparency Portal<br />
(http://www.portaltransparencia.gov.br/).<br />
ODNI's staff points out as a challenge to the success of the<br />
initiative the federal agencies involvement and a successful<br />
consensus around a single set of concepts. Implementation<br />
strategy for ODNI has some main elements: launching a virtual<br />
community for collaborative work involving officials of various<br />
public agencies, scripts and roadmaps for publishing open data,<br />
voluntary membership by various public agencies, technical<br />
training of civil servants in ontology modeling and<br />
implementation of a pilot project on public procurement.<br />
Portal was based on the availability of summary information and<br />
statistical series in a single location on the Internet. ODNI means<br />
a step forward from the experience of DadosGov. The ODNI's<br />
proposal takes a different approach: to create conditions for the<br />
various agencies to make available their data in a decentralized<br />
way. With this, ODNI will provide integrated data with a high<br />
level of interoperability through technologies such as Linked<br />
Data,. This strategy will make ODNI able to foster the opening of<br />
a much larger volume of data.<br />
A beta version was launched in the beginning of 2012. This<br />
version was done by civil servants and hackativists. One of the<br />
goals of creating this new portal is to guarantee the commitment<br />
proposed in the Open Government Partnership (OGP), a global<br />
effort to make governments better through open government.<br />
4.2 Open Government Data in Brazilian State<br />
Government<br />
The São Paulo State Government Portal created SP Open<br />
Government portal in 2010. Its goal is to make available to civil<br />
society, via the Internet, copies of databases and information<br />
which is not confidential and gives unrestricted access to the<br />
26<br />
organs and entities of the State Public Administration. The decree<br />
that created the portal provides the rules of data and creation of<br />
the portal, summarized in its second article:<br />
o Rules of provision, information, guidance and providing<br />
access to databases, as well as to the responsibilities of the<br />
parties.<br />
o Conditions of use of these bases provided, supposed to be<br />
free for any purpose or activity, safeguarding the legal<br />
restrictions and associated regulations.<br />
o Register of available bases, containing the identification and<br />
detailed description of each one and identify the agency or<br />
entity responsible.<br />
o Tools to facilitate collaboration between users of the<br />
available databases, including self-identification for who<br />
obtains a copy of available basis, including information of<br />
purpose for which the base was required; and registration and<br />
publication of products generated through the use of bases,<br />
identifying their authors.<br />
The São Paulo law falls largely to the principles of open<br />
government data to ensure the free reuse of all available nonsensitive<br />
state data. The Open Government SP portal was released<br />
in January 2011. The website seeks to stimulate launching of new<br />
electronic services, promoting transparency and improving the<br />
quality of information of interest to society by providing updated<br />
copies of their public databases, on a free and open basis, using<br />
the Internet. Databases provided are produced by the State<br />
Statistical Agency (SEADE Foundation), which has most state<br />
social and economic indicators, the Department of Treasury and<br />
the Court of Auditors. However, the website does not provide data<br />
from other agencies in São Paulo, i.e. not all data are available on<br />
site. Among the information available are: Elections (information<br />
concerning the elections in São Paulo between 1998 and 2008);<br />
state indicators (Sao Paulo State Social Responsibility Index -<br />
IPRS), catalogue of public services offered through the Internet;<br />
Information from municipalities. Unlike other sites, rules<br />
regarding use and availability of data are clear. All data available<br />
on the site are non-sensitive and have unrestricted access. The<br />
only requirements are that users accept the rules set out in this.<br />
Registration is optional for accessing the data. Developers can<br />
register applications built within the portal itself. However, for<br />
sending and accessing applications created registering is<br />
mandatory.<br />
4.3 Open Government Data in Municipal<br />
Level<br />
The São Paulo City Council Portal has a space to present the<br />
project “Open Data Parliament Program”. The project was created<br />
with the purpose of making databases and non-confidential<br />
information in electronic open format, in accordance with the<br />
principles of public administration and observance of<br />
internationally accepted recommendations, such as those<br />
presented by the Open Knowledge Foundation and the<br />
International World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).<br />
The idea of a OGD Portal in the São Paulo Parliament was<br />
defined after the seminar “The Era of Open Data” in October<br />
2011, conducted by the São Paulo City Council.<br />
The Portals presents:<br />
1) International manuals of OGD such as the Open Data<br />
Handbook [29].
2) An explanation about how civil society can open and read<br />
archive in open format;<br />
3) A blog about the project;<br />
4) Some City Council data in open format.<br />
The open data presented in the website is: a) Presence of<br />
councilors at ordinary and extraordinary plenary sessions; b) Vote<br />
of councilors in ordinary and extraordinary plenary sessions; c)<br />
Budget of the Municipality of São Paulo in 2011; d) Budget<br />
allocations from the Municipal Education in 2011; e) Ratio of<br />
employees (updated monthly); f) Budget Execution of the<br />
Municipality of São Paulo (since January 2010);g) Monthly<br />
Balance of Performance Budget Revenues - Direct<br />
Administration; and, h) Historical Series of the benefits of Aid<br />
Accounts-General Charges In Office.<br />
The data presented in this Portal are few in relation to all<br />
information that has a City Council. But it is a primary and timely<br />
data. They use mainly XML format. Despite claiming that they<br />
follow the recommendations of international organizations, it is<br />
not clear what are the licenses used. They also do not have a<br />
space to present applications that use their data. The following<br />
table summarizes how open government data principles of are<br />
adopted by the Brazilian experiences:<br />
Table 2. OGD principles adoption in Brazilian cases<br />
Principles<br />
Dados<br />
Gov<br />
Governo<br />
Aberto SP<br />
São Paulo<br />
City<br />
Council<br />
No<br />
Complete<br />
Data<br />
No No<br />
Primary<br />
Data<br />
No No<br />
X<br />
Timely<br />
Data<br />
X X<br />
X<br />
Accessible<br />
Data<br />
X X<br />
X<br />
Machine<br />
understandable<br />
X X<br />
X<br />
Non<br />
Discriminatory<br />
X X<br />
X<br />
Non<br />
Proprietary<br />
X X<br />
X<br />
Free License X X<br />
Info not<br />
provided<br />
Source: Created by authors from cases website<br />
Therefore, when we compare these cases and the principles of<br />
open government data, we can realize that most of the principles<br />
are used in the examples of Brazil. Data are not complete and<br />
most are not primary. However, there was still little information<br />
available. There is also lack of clarity about the license of the data<br />
presented in the case of São Paulo City Council.<br />
A positive point is that they all have current data, accessible and<br />
understandable by machines. Furthermore, it is not necessary a<br />
register to data access.<br />
27<br />
5. OGD in Brazil and the Five Stars of Open<br />
Linked Data<br />
In the case of Tim Berners-Lee method, the Brazilian cases are in<br />
the following phase:<br />
1) One Star: the first stage requires that the website contains<br />
data available independently of the format, but with an open<br />
license. All the cases studies presented data available and an<br />
open license. For example, Dados Gov from Federal<br />
Government uses Creative Commons License. We found<br />
three problems to guarantee the excellence of the first stage<br />
in Brazilian initiatives: a) There are few data presented in<br />
these Open Data Portals in relation to public data that<br />
governments have; b) São Paulo City Council does not<br />
explain clearly what open license they use; and c) DadosGov<br />
has some data that is not open license.<br />
2) Two Stars: All portals presented data available as machinereadable<br />
structured data.<br />
3) Three Stars: The Portals use mainly non-proprietary archives<br />
such as XML, CSV and HTML, so, they achieved the third<br />
stage.<br />
Unfortunately, it was not found the four and five stars. To achieve<br />
these stars, the governmental portals have to: i)Use URIs, so<br />
people can point at their stuff, and; ii) Link their data to other data<br />
to provide context.<br />
6. FINAL CONSIDERATIONS<br />
The emergence of the OGD requires a shift in thinking about the<br />
transparency of governmental actions and information. This need<br />
is not just theoretical. The very practice of social actors involved<br />
is creating new demands for transparency, not served by<br />
traditional practices in electronic government.<br />
There is a major change in the principles that guide the handling<br />
of demands for transparency. So far, everything that was not<br />
confidential should be made available to the public upon request,<br />
or kept available as possible. The new framework gives rise to a<br />
new level of demand for transparency: everything that is not<br />
confidential should be available on the internet as open data in a<br />
way people cannot just access data, but also create new services<br />
and analysis with these open data.<br />
Logically, implementing broader OGD programs will face huge<br />
barriers, because most governments wouldn't be mobilized to<br />
increase the level of social control over them. However, the<br />
complexity of the issue makes it impossible to reduce it only to<br />
the interest of governments in promoting transparency through the<br />
OGD. Civil society has an important role, too.<br />
In addition, comprehensive programs to spread open government<br />
data require using data formats and technologies are not always<br />
employed by governments themselves. Therefore it will be a<br />
difficult task even for well-intentioned governments and surely<br />
will took many years to reach a high level of open government<br />
data availability.<br />
According to [17] technology already exists for governments and<br />
civil society to use government data as they decide. Available<br />
technology can support new ways and new indicators of thinking<br />
about public administration. In this way, civil society could<br />
generate more innovation from unrestricted access to public data.<br />
For these authors, the development of open government data<br />
depends on: a clear policy of the Administration in regard to
access to public information, changes in public sector strategies<br />
aiming to foster transformation of relations between state and<br />
society. Moreover, it depends on a change in the central locus of<br />
public organizations as interpreters of social needs” and also as<br />
service delivery agents [17].<br />
[30] argues that to achieve the goal of providing open government<br />
records should be observed three fronts:<br />
o Map of Youth and Adults School (EJA): map showing the<br />
openings of adult education in public schools in Brazil;<br />
o Tr3e: website that crosses over the information of<br />
deforestation in Brazil;<br />
o Open Parliament: website designed to facilitate access to<br />
information about MPs in Brazil.<br />
These civil society initiatives demonstrate how the issue is<br />
increasingly taking up space on the agenda of organizations and<br />
groups interested in using IT to promote democratic developments<br />
in Brazil. Taken together with the emergence of new government<br />
initiatives, these initiatives show a clear sign of an expanding<br />
supply of OGD in the coming years.<br />
Despite the existence of few theoretical and empirical data on<br />
open government in Brazil, there is a clear expansion of national<br />
experiences and discussions.<br />
If we take the experience of Transparency Portal of the federal<br />
government as a reference, it can be said that the ODNI has great<br />
potential to accelerate the adoption of open government data<br />
initiatives in the country. Its impact should go beyond the limits of<br />
the Federal Government and stimulate initiatives at the<br />
subnational level, by giving greater visibility to the idea of the<br />
OGD, and by offering standards and roadmaps that may be<br />
adopted by states and municipalities.<br />
Besides the few public sites that adopt the open government data,<br />
there is a law that deals with open data in known Freedom<br />
Information Act, which regulate access to government<br />
information as provided in the Constitution.<br />
The Brazilian law on transparency emphasizes the information<br />
technologies and communication (ICTS), in particular the<br />
Internet, encouraging and requiring public organizations to make<br />
the information on the World Wide Web. The internet is regarded<br />
as a means of easy access and opportunities to reach a large<br />
number of people.<br />
Among the required data are public expenditures and the general<br />
data for the monitoring of programs, activities, projects and public<br />
works. There is an obligation of public agencies not only to<br />
disclose such information, but also make them available so that<br />
they are easily accessed, understood and updated.<br />
Open government means that public data should be disclosed in<br />
the most disaggregated level possible and in different formats.<br />
Disclosure must attain the raw data which should be able to be<br />
viewed on any type of machine for anyone who want to make use<br />
of such data. Thus, the law has principles of open government<br />
(even if not explicitly quote) for the dissemination of public<br />
information.<br />
Future additional studies would be useful for better understanding<br />
demands for OGD and evaluate impacts of present and new cases<br />
of OGD to promote transparency, social control and citizen<br />
participation. In future studies, it would be also important to check<br />
what are the challenges of Brazilian governments to achieve the<br />
five stars.<br />
28<br />
7. REFERENCES<br />
[1] Ribeiro, Manuella Maia. Transparency on the portals of<br />
Federal Government: The cases of Comprasnet and portal of<br />
transparency. University of São Paulo (USP), 2009.<br />
[2] Pinho, José Antonio Gomes. Investigating states portals of<br />
electronic government in Brazil: Lots of technology, poor<br />
Democracy. Journal Public Administration (RAP), 42 (3):<br />
471-93, MAY/JUN. 2008.<br />
[3] Welp, Yanina. Democracy and the digital divide in Latin<br />
America. International Conference of Direct Democracy in<br />
Latin America, 14-15.MAR. 2007.<br />
[4] Prado, Otávio & Loureiro, Maria Rita. Electronic<br />
Government and transparency: evaluation of advertising the<br />
public accounts of the Brazilian capitals. Reach Magazine,<br />
vol.13, n.3, p. 355-372, SEP/DEC 2006.<br />
[5] Vaz, José Carlos. Prospects and challenges for the expansion<br />
of electronic government in the municipalities. International<br />
Seminar on Electronic Government and Local Governments.<br />
Brasília, 2003.<br />
[6] Ferrer, F. & Borges, Z.. Electronic government:<br />
transparency, efficiency and inclusion. In: E-gov.br: the next<br />
revolution in Brazil: efficiency, quality and democracy:<br />
electronic government in Brazil and abroad. Prentice Hall.<br />
2004.<br />
[7] Ruediger, Marco Aurelio. Electronic Government and<br />
Electronic Governance - Alternative Concepts in the Use of<br />
Information Technologies for Providing Access to<br />
mechanisms of Civic Government and State Reform. Contest<br />
XVI Ensayos y Monografías del CLAD Reforma del Estado y<br />
on Modernización de la Administración Pública "Electronic<br />
Government”. Caracas, 2002.<br />
[8] Diniz, Eduardo Henrique et al. Electronic government in<br />
Brazil: a historical perspective from a structured model of<br />
analysis. Journal Public Administration (RAP). 43( 1):23-48,<br />
JAN./FEB. 2009.<br />
[9] Mello, Gilmar Ribeiro de & Slomski, Valmor. Electronic<br />
Governance Index of Brazilian States : Within The<br />
Executive Branch. JISTEM J.Inf.Syst. Technol. Manag.<br />
(Online) [online]. 2010, vol.7, n.2, pp. 375-408. ISSN 1807-<br />
1775.<br />
[10] Yildiz, Mete. E-government research: Reviewing the<br />
literature, limitations, and ways forward. Government<br />
Information Quarterly. Volume 24, Issue 3, July 2007.<br />
[11] Althrop D. & Ruma, L. Open Government: Collaboration,<br />
Transparency, and Participation in Practice. O’Reilly Media.<br />
P11-39. 2010.<br />
[12] Nam, Taewoo. New Ends, New Means, but Old Attitudes:<br />
Citizens’ Views on Open Government and Government 2.0.<br />
Proceedings of the 44 th Hawaii International Conference on<br />
System Sciences. 2011.<br />
[13] Parks, W.. The open government principle: Applying the<br />
right to know under the constitution. The George Washington<br />
Law Review. 26(1), 1-22, 1957.<br />
[14] Parycek, P. & Sachs, M. Open Government: Information<br />
flow in Web 2.0. European Journal of ePractice. 9(1), 59-70.<br />
2009.
[15] Robinson, David, Yu, Harlan, Zeller, William P. & Felten,<br />
Edward W.. Government Data and the invisible hand. Yale<br />
Journal of Law and technology, 160. 2008.<br />
[16] Sheridan, John & Tennison, Jeni. Linkin UK Government<br />
Data. LDOW 2010, April 27, 2010, Raleigh, North Carolina.<br />
2010.<br />
[17] Agune, Roberto Meizi; Gregorio Filho, Alvaro Santos &<br />
Bolliger, Sergio Pinto. Open government SP: provision of<br />
databases and information in an open format. III Congress<br />
Consad of Public Management, 2010.<br />
[18] Vaz, J. C., Matheus, R. & Ribeiro, M. M.. Open government<br />
data and its impact on the concepts and practices of<br />
transparency in Brazil. Cadernos PPG-AU/FAUFBA, 2010.<br />
[19] Torkington, N.. Rethinking Open Data - O'Reilly Radar.<br />
O'Reilly Radar. 2010.<br />
[20] Obama, B., Memo from President Obama on Transparency<br />
and Open Government. In D. Lathrop & L. Ruma, eds. Open<br />
Government.<br />
http://www.whitehouse.gov/open/documents/opengovernment-directive.<br />
2010.<br />
[21] Fung, A. & Weil, D.. Open Government and Open Society.<br />
In: Open Government: Collaboration, Transparency, and<br />
Participation in Practice. O'Reilly Media. 2010.<br />
[22] Laporte, T.; Demchak, C., Friis, C.. Webbing governance:<br />
national differences in constructing the face of public<br />
29<br />
organizations. In: GARSON, G. Handbook of public<br />
information systems. Marcel Dekker Publishers. 2000.<br />
[23] Diniz, Vagner. How to achieve open government data. In III<br />
Congress Consad of Public Management, 2010.<br />
[24] Open Gov Data. Eight principles of open government data.<br />
http://resource.org/8_principles.html. 2010.<br />
[25] Eaves, David. The three laws of open government.<br />
http://eaves.ca/. 2010<br />
[26] Silva, Daniela Bezerra. Transparency in public<br />
interconnected. College Casper Libero, 2010.<br />
[27] Berners-Lee, Tim. Linked Data.<br />
http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/LinkedData.html. 2011.<br />
[28] Shotton, David. The five stars of online journal articles – a<br />
framework for article evaluation.<br />
http://www.dlib.org/dlib/january12/shotton/01shotton.html.<br />
2012.<br />
[29] Open Data Handbook. http://opendatahandbook.org/. 2011.<br />
[30] World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).<br />
http://www.w3c.br/divulgacao/. 2010.<br />
[31] Miranda, C. & Silva, N. National Infrastructure Open Data.<br />
www.w3c.br/conferenciaegov/05_ODNI_Christian_Nitai.pdf<br />
. Brasília. 2010
Open Government 2.0: Citizen Empowerment through<br />
Open Data, Web and Mobile Apps<br />
Rodrigo Sandoval-Almazan<br />
Universidad Autonoma del Estado<br />
de México<br />
rsandovala@uaemex.mx<br />
J. Ramon Gil-Garcia<br />
Centro de Investigación y Docencia<br />
Económicas<br />
joseramon.gil@cide.edu<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
Although the open government concept is not new, current trends<br />
in open government imply a change in focus from the traditional<br />
principle of accountability to a concept of citizen empowerment,<br />
collaboration and information sharing. In this paper, we explore<br />
the use of open data and mobile apps in the top countries<br />
according to the UN 2010 e-Government Survey. Our exploration<br />
suggests that, although not all countries yet offer mobile apps to<br />
their citizens, there is a great diversity of apps to create citizen<br />
value. Moreover, private companies and citizens are getting<br />
involved in the creation of such apps. More research is needed to<br />
understand ways to promote the development of this kind of<br />
government applications.<br />
Categories and Subject Descriptors<br />
Design, performance, human factors<br />
General Terms<br />
Performance, Design, Human Factors<br />
Keywords<br />
Government apps, apps, mobile apps<br />
1. INTRODUCTION<br />
During the last years, governments around the world have<br />
emphasized the need of a more open and transparent government<br />
[1]. Although the idea of freedom of information and open<br />
government can be traced back to the 50s[2], the principle has<br />
been invigorated with the Open Government initiative from the<br />
Obama administration. Moreover, the traditional focus for open<br />
government was accountability, while current efforts are<br />
emphasizing on information sharing and citizen empowerment<br />
[3]. In fact, the US government has made available about 390,000<br />
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for<br />
personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are<br />
not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies<br />
bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for<br />
components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored.<br />
Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to<br />
post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission<br />
and/or a fee.<br />
ICEGOV '12, October 22 - 25 2012, Albany, NY, USA<br />
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1200-4/12/10...$15.00<br />
Luis F. Luna-Reyes<br />
Universidad de las Américas-Puebla<br />
luisf.luna@udlap.mx<br />
Dolores E. Luna<br />
Universidad de las Américas-Puebla<br />
dolorese.luna@udlap.mx<br />
30<br />
Yaneileth Rojas-Romero<br />
Universidad Autonoma del Estado<br />
de México<br />
yrojasr@uaemex.mx<br />
data sets of raw and geospatial datasets to the public through the<br />
data.gov website. Many other States are following the US<br />
initiative, making raw data available to the public. On the other<br />
hand, the popularization of mobile devices and social media tools<br />
and platforms have promoted the emergence of new forms of<br />
interaction between organizations and the public, or even among<br />
the public themselves[4].<br />
Small applications running on web pages or in mobile devices (or<br />
mobile apps) have become a wide-adopted way of interaction.<br />
Mobile apps stores were estimated to serve 17.7 billion downloads<br />
in 2011, and it is expected that they will serve 185 billion<br />
downloads by 2014 [5]. It is expected that mobile computing will<br />
replace desktop computing by 2015 [6] . Again, just in data.gov,<br />
about 1,500 web and mobile applications (apps for short) have<br />
been developed, more than 200 by citizens themselves. We<br />
believe that these two trends together have the potential to<br />
transform the relationships between government and the public.<br />
Despite this emerging context, we still know very little about the<br />
level of adoption of apps in government websites anrd their use.<br />
In this way, the purpose of this paper is to give a first step to<br />
answer this set of questions, looking for an initial categorization<br />
of practices among top-rated governments in terms of the use of<br />
information technologies, as well as providing some examples of<br />
current app use in government websites. To accomplish this<br />
objective, the paper will be divided in five main sections. This<br />
introduction constitutes the first section. The second section<br />
includes a literature review. The third section describes the<br />
method that we followed to survey the websites and to classify the<br />
apps. The fourth section includes initial results, and the final<br />
section discusses the findings and provides some future research.<br />
2. LITERATURE REVIEW<br />
The literature review includes social media in government, and<br />
the trend of web and mobile apps.<br />
2.1 Web 2.0 in Government<br />
At least since 2008 government web sites have been including<br />
web 2.0 tools to become more interactive with citizens [7] [8] [9]<br />
[10]. All of these applications, although may be very different in<br />
purpose and function, they share some common features like the<br />
collective generation and classification of content, the integration<br />
of communities, and the production and consumption of socially<br />
distributed knowledge. Web 2.0 is a social network platform
ecause some of its content is user-generated –as if it were a<br />
collective intelligence— converting into co-producers of content<br />
and not just passive subjects who only receive information.<br />
Interaction plays a vital role in this platform [11], and offers a<br />
great opportunity as a way of approaching citizens and making<br />
sure their participation enriches government efforts [12].<br />
Wilson and colleagues proposes that web 2.0 must be understood<br />
as “the second generation of the Web, wherein interoperable,<br />
user-centered web applications and services promote social<br />
connectedness, media and information sharing, user-created<br />
content, and collaboration among individuals and organizations”<br />
[13] (p. 2).<br />
The Web 2.0 tools and applications have been used in government<br />
websites in several countries [14] , [Eliason, 2006 #10752].<br />
Lerman and his colleagues researched about social tagging using<br />
the example of Digg [15]. They find that the use of these tools<br />
depends on context events and not ordinary or common use for<br />
activities.<br />
In the near future, it looks like mobile government will adopt<br />
more web 2.0 tools and features The different programs of the<br />
Somus project suggest a promising trend for the use of these tools<br />
on citizen-government interaction in the following years [16].The<br />
use of web 2.0 in the current activities of citizens and politicians<br />
is an ongoing work.<br />
2.2 Desktop and Mobile Apps<br />
Research on the development of apps is not as extensive as the<br />
number of domains for which them have been developed. There is<br />
some evidence that the current app movement is promoting new<br />
development approaches and delivery channels allowing small<br />
ventures to compete globally [5]. However, there is still<br />
dominance of the global mobile media corporations in the market<br />
[17]. The Apple store was the first to open on July 2008. Nine<br />
months later one billion of apps were downloaded. On April 2010,<br />
just 185,000 apps were available for the Iphone [18]. The offer of<br />
apps grew with Android market (346,526 apps until January 21,<br />
2012), the windows phone marketplace, the Samsung apps, the<br />
blackberry App World, and Nokia Ovi Store.<br />
In this environments, independent software developers, as well as<br />
private and public organizations, design tailor apps with almost<br />
any imaginable objective. In fact, many professional areas are<br />
encouraging their members to write their own applications, by<br />
showing its value as well as how-to guides and approaches [19]<br />
[20] .<br />
On the government side, apps have been proposed to provide G2G<br />
inter-agency collaboration [21] and public services [22]. Mobile<br />
applications have the potential to improve service delivery, as<br />
well as efficiency and efficacy in government operations[4] .<br />
Furthermore, mobile apps create the capability of creating<br />
Location-based Services (LBS), such as traffic, bus or parking<br />
applications[4]<br />
Nowadays there are several websites and organizations that<br />
promote the use of apps in the government. However, maybe the<br />
most high impact applications of these mobile technologies come<br />
when government partners with NGOs or private organizations to<br />
allow citizens to get information, add value to it, giving it back to<br />
government to solve important problems and create value [3] .<br />
This implies that government will need to find creative ways of<br />
promoting the creation of ecosystems where vendors, developers,<br />
and citizen hackers use public information made available by<br />
31<br />
government or promoted to be public by government regulations<br />
to solve important problems [3].<br />
In summary, we think that apps expand the potential for egovernment<br />
to allow citizens to access content, create content,<br />
send communications to government officials, adding in some<br />
cases value to information and allowing citizens to create<br />
ecosystems interested in solve important public problems. One<br />
first step that we want to do in this paper is to explore some of the<br />
current applications that exist in government websites.<br />
3. METHOD<br />
In this paper, we follow the approach of Internet-mediated<br />
research (IMR) [23], which consists of “the gathering of novel,<br />
original data to be subjected to analysis in order to provide new<br />
evidence in relation to a particular research question” (p. 58).In<br />
order to make our exploration on the current adoption and use of<br />
government apps more systematic, we decided to look for current<br />
applications in the top 10 countries in the 2010 UNPAN e-<br />
Government Survey [24]. Given that we did not find enough<br />
examples in these initial countries, we decided to increase the<br />
sample size, exploring the first 35 countries in the list,, finding<br />
applications only in 7 out of the 35. We started our search on the<br />
main country websites, exploring to find mobile applications<br />
and/or publicly available data sets. We visited the English<br />
versions of each website during January and February 2012.<br />
4. Government Apps: an Exploratory Survey<br />
The current section of the paper presents an overview of the use of<br />
apps and some examples of how governments are making<br />
available apps for citizens.<br />
4.1 App use by Governments<br />
Results from our initial survey are shown on Table 1. US apps are<br />
mainly linked to the Data.gov website. The apps from U.K. are<br />
linked to the Direct Gov site. In the case of Canada, we did not<br />
found the official number of apps, but we identified some apps<br />
that match our criteria. Similar cases are New Zealand and Japan.<br />
We have four main findings from this sample. The first one, is<br />
that the total number of apps in each country is not easy to find<br />
given that they are not always readily available in a single<br />
repository. On the other hand, only 7 out of 35 countries are<br />
apparently using this kind of applications, which still seems as a<br />
low level of adoption. The second finding is related to the use of<br />
the apps, most of them are focus on access government content, a<br />
very few enable citizens to interact with government sending data,<br />
reusing it, or collaborate making comments using the apps.<br />
Table 1. Apps and categories on egov websites in our sample<br />
Country #Apps<br />
UNITED<br />
KINGDOM<br />
Mobile<br />
Apps<br />
Web-based<br />
Apps<br />
1854 103 1751<br />
UNITED STATES 1164 153 1011<br />
CANADA N.A. N.A. N.A.<br />
AUSTRALIA 80 25 55<br />
SINGAPORE N.A. 61 N.A.<br />
KOREA N.A. 6500 N.A.<br />
SWEDEN N.A. 1 N.A.
As a third finding, we also found a limited number of apps related<br />
to citizens’ relevant issues such as health or finances. We found<br />
also a number of apps for personal development, and not related<br />
to government information. Finally, the fourth finding is that<br />
some apps are created not only by government, but also by<br />
citizens, non-government organizations or consultants. Some of<br />
these apps are developed with marketing purposes such as<br />
acquiring clients, recognition or just to contribute for government.<br />
In this way, open data is in fact opening the opportunity of<br />
sharing, collaborating and disseminating knowledge through this<br />
kind of applications.<br />
4.2 Selected Examples of Government Apps<br />
on Several Application Domains<br />
In order to give a better sense of the kinds of applications that are<br />
being made available for mobile devices, we introduce in this<br />
section several examples of the different kinds of apps that is<br />
possible to find in government web sites in our sample.<br />
One kind of applications that we found involves apps addressing<br />
the needs of individuals to search and manage information. The<br />
example we selected is Ask Karen from the US Department of<br />
Agriculture (see Figure 1a). Ask-Karen provides 24/7 virtual<br />
assistance and tips on preventing foodborne illness, safe food<br />
handling and storage, and safe preparation of meat, poultry, and<br />
egg products.<br />
The Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority (ACRA) has<br />
developed the ACRA app. This app searchs on the agency<br />
database to check if a business firm, company, has limited liability<br />
partnership (LLP), limited partnership (LP), Public Accounting<br />
Corporation (PAC) or Public Accounting Firm (PAF) is registered<br />
in Singapore in order to validate this data. One of the main<br />
features is to search by name or business registration number (see<br />
Figure 1b).<br />
(a) (b)<br />
Figure 1. Information App: Ask Karen and Content Access<br />
App: ACRA<br />
A different version is the ACRA iPhone app which provides the<br />
business community free information that would help users in<br />
their decision-making and planning. This application is a mobile<br />
directory search function facilitates the search of names of all<br />
business firms, local companies, foreign companies, limited<br />
liability partnerships (LLP). A complementary feature is<br />
ASKACRA Mobile, which allows to have easy access to a FAQs<br />
section on related business.<br />
We found applications that can be used for educational purposes.<br />
“Libraries for Ottawa” is an application providing access to the<br />
information of different libraries in the region (Figure 2a). The<br />
application provides name, address, phone number and location<br />
32<br />
using Google Maps, hours of operation. It is important to mention<br />
that this application is an independent development that uses data<br />
from the official website. The author is SKB Wireless<br />
Technology.<br />
Another kind of applications we found can be categorized as<br />
simulation apps. For example, an online financial health checker<br />
has been launched to help people make the most of their money in<br />
the UK website. The application offers money advice on the basis<br />
of a series of queries to the user. Application developers declare<br />
that they care about confidentiality of the user answers. The<br />
author is Direct Recruit LTD (see Figure 2b).<br />
(a) (b)<br />
Figure 2. Educational App: Public Libraries and Simulation<br />
Software: Health Check<br />
One last type of apps that we were able to identify constitutes a<br />
mobile enterprise application. GovPro is a remarkable example<br />
for e-procurement and purchasing of Government. This<br />
application delivers news, product trends and events in the<br />
government market place. The Author is Penton Inc (see Figure<br />
3).<br />
Figure 3. Enterprise Software: GovPro<br />
These are only few examples of the current diversity of mobile<br />
applications and its use in government.<br />
5. FINAL REMARKS<br />
In this paper we have presented some initial findings related to the<br />
use of mobile apps on e-government portals of the top countries<br />
according to the United Nations 2010 survey on e-Government<br />
[24]. Only 7 of the 35 selected countries have adopted this kind of<br />
applications by the time we did the review. Similarly to main<br />
corporations, governments may consider to include a single<br />
repository of government apps to improve discoverability, as it is<br />
one of the main determinants of app adoption by the citizen. Even<br />
this small sample size, governments are fostering the use of apps<br />
to interact with open data. We can not measure this impact yet,<br />
because only a few government websites make available the
information of their apps. However, further research could show<br />
this new trend as a facing change on the government strategy for<br />
interact with citizens.<br />
Previous research reports that government portals expand their<br />
capabilities by using web 2.0 tools, empowering citizens to<br />
collaborate with government and other NGOs to produce relevant<br />
information and solve important citizen problems. That is to say,<br />
governments expands their own limits when a citizen can send<br />
reports of problems with public services or safety problems,<br />
allowing government to respond faster, and overtime,<br />
accumulating information to respond better [3]. Our initial<br />
exploration suggests that most common applications are still those<br />
to access information, and that we are still short of applications<br />
that will increase government-citizen collaboration.<br />
If analysts are correct in their predictions of the predominance of<br />
mobile over desktop devices by 2015[6], the initial trend reported<br />
here has the potential of transforming the current ways in which<br />
government attempts to get in touch with their constituencies,<br />
moving to a digital convergence of voice, text and multimedia in<br />
the citizen’s smartphone. More research is needed on the new<br />
roles that government portals should play in this transformation<br />
process.<br />
Our research provides some preliminary evidence that suggests<br />
government portals are changing direction [7]. Also citizens are<br />
using open data for their own purposes and developing new apps<br />
to interact with government data. This change on the relationship<br />
among citizen-Government interaction must be analyzed and<br />
promoted as a new trend of collaboration and coproduction.<br />
Finally, current trends and analysis suggest that ecosystems of<br />
citizens, vendors and developers will be created around<br />
government open data, and most analysis are quite optimistic [3].<br />
There are also other potential constraints related to attitudes of<br />
citizens towards privacy, credit card adoption or language [25].<br />
This paper is then a first step in the direction to understand the use<br />
of government mobile apps, its evolution and impact on<br />
government innovation.<br />
6. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS<br />
This research is partially supported by the Consejo Nacional de<br />
Ciencia y Tecnología (CONACYT) in Mexico under grant No.<br />
107154. Any opinions expressed in this material are those of the<br />
authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of CONACYT.<br />
7. REFERENCES<br />
[1] Scholl, H. J. and Luna-Reyes, L. F. Transparency and<br />
openness in government: a system dynamics perspective. In<br />
Proceedings of the Proceedings of the 5th International<br />
Conference on Theory and Practice of Electronic Governance<br />
(Tallinn, Estonia, 2011).<br />
[2] Parks, W. The Open Government Principle: Applying the<br />
Right to Know under the constitution. The George Washington<br />
Law Review, 26, 1 1957), 1-22.<br />
[3] Nath, J. Reimagining government in the digital age. Fall, City,<br />
2011.<br />
[4] Trimi, S. and Sheng, H. Emerging trends in M-government.<br />
Communications of the ACM, May2008), 53-58.<br />
[5] Anthes, G. Invasion of the mobile apps 2011, p 18-18.<br />
[6] Milam, L. and Avery, E. J. Apps4Africa: A new State<br />
Department public diplomacy initiative. Public Relations Review,<br />
38, 2 2012), 328-335.<br />
33<br />
[7] Sandoval-Almazan, R. and Gil-Garcia, J. R. Are E-<br />
Government Portals Becoming Central Components for Public<br />
Information Sharing Networks? An Initial Exploration of Local<br />
Governments in Mexico. Government Information Quarterly,<br />
Forthcoming2011).<br />
[8] Reynolds, W. N., Weber, M. S., Farber, R. M., Corley, C.,<br />
Cowell, A. J. and Gregory, M. Social media and social reality.<br />
City.<br />
[9] Mennecke, B. E., Mc Neill, D., Roche, E. M., Bray, D. A.,<br />
Townsend, A. M. and Lester, J. Second Life and Other Virtual<br />
Worlds: A Roadmap for Research. Communications of the<br />
Association for Information Systems2008), 371-388.<br />
[10] Kavanaugh, A., Fox, E. A., Sheetz, S., Yang, S., Li, L. T.,<br />
Whalen, T., Shoemaker, D., Natsev, P. and Xie, L. Social Media<br />
Use by Government : From the Routine to the Critical. Computers<br />
and Society2011).<br />
[11] Haythornthwaite, C. Democratic Processs in Online Crowds<br />
and Communities. In Proceedings of the Conference for<br />
Democracy and Open Government (Austria, May 2011, 2011),<br />
[insert City of Publication],[insert 2011 of Publication].<br />
[12] Woods, E. Web 2.0 and the public sector - Public Sector -<br />
Breaking Business and Technology silicon.com Driving Business<br />
Through technology, City, 2007.<br />
[13] Wilson, D., Lin, X., Longstreet, P. and Sarker, S. Web 2.0: A<br />
Definition, Literature Review, and Directions for Future Research.<br />
AISNET.org, City, 2011.<br />
[14] de Kool, D. and van Wamelen, J. Web 2.0: A New Basis for<br />
E-Government? , City, 2008.<br />
[15] Lerman, K. User Participation in Social Media: Digg Study.<br />
2007 IEEEWICACM International Conferences on Web<br />
Intelligence and Intelligent Agent Technology Workshops,<br />
02007), 255-258.<br />
[16] Näkki, P., Bäck, A., Ropponen, T., Kronqvist, J., Hintikka,<br />
K. A. and Harju, A. Social media for citizen participation Report<br />
on the Somus project. City, 2011.<br />
[17] Mascaro, C. M., Novak, A. and Goggins, S. Shepherding and<br />
Censorship: Discourse Management in the Tea Party Patriots<br />
Facebook Group. IEEE, City.<br />
[18] Isaacson, W. Steve Jobs Biography. Simon & Schuster;,<br />
2011.<br />
[19] Pocatilu, P. Developing Mobile Learning Applications for<br />
Android using Web Services. City, 2010.<br />
[20] B. Boardman No app for that? Write one! Industrial<br />
Engineer: IE, 44, 3 (Marzo 2012.), 44–48.<br />
[21] Beer, D., Kunis, R. and Runger, G. A component based<br />
software architecture for e-government applications. Ieee, City,<br />
2006.<br />
[22] Estevez, E. and Janowski, T. Programmable Messaging for<br />
Electronic Government - Building A Foundation. LNCS,<br />
Springer, City, 2007.<br />
[23] Hewson, C. Internet-mediated research as an emergent<br />
method and its potential role in facilitating mixed methods<br />
research. Guilford Press, City, 2008.<br />
[24] United Nations Global E-Government Development Report<br />
2010. City, 2010.
Session 2<br />
E-democracy & Participation 1
A Logistic Multilevel Model for Civic Engagement and<br />
Community Group Impact in the Digital Age<br />
B. Joon Kim<br />
Department of Public Policy<br />
Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne<br />
Fort Wayne, Indiana, 46805<br />
+1-260-481-0133<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
kimbj@ipfw.edu<br />
Prior research has demonstrated that a citizens’ socioeconomic<br />
status is a significant determinant of the extent of citizen<br />
involvement via ICT [18]. Others have focused on its impact on<br />
civic engagement in terms of community group impacts, finding<br />
that such groups play an important role in increasing citizen<br />
involvement within democratic processes [8]. Thus, previous<br />
research has examined effects aggregated at the ‘individual level’<br />
and ‘group level,’ respectively. This paper seeks to reconcile these<br />
levels in order to assess the impact of ICT on civic engagement.<br />
Our study examines the interplay of individual level and<br />
community group level factors through analysis of the data from a<br />
household survey (N=717) taken in Blacksburg, Virginia in 2005.<br />
This study identifies the idiosyncratic influences at both levels by<br />
applying a multilevel model (specifically, a logistic hierarchical<br />
linear model). In particular, we verify the positive impact of<br />
community groups utilizing ICT in increasing civic engagement.<br />
This research will be used to form the basis of a comparative<br />
study of civic engagement through eGovernment portals, mobile<br />
technology and social media, and to assess their impact on<br />
facilitating group communication and sensemaking.<br />
Categories and Subject Descriptors<br />
H.5.3 [Information Interfaces and Presentation]: Group and<br />
Organization interfaces-Collaborative Computing.<br />
General Terms<br />
Measurement, Human Factors, Theory<br />
Keywords<br />
E-governance, Civic Engagement, Information and<br />
Communication Technology, Community Group Impact,<br />
Hierarchical Linear Model.<br />
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for<br />
personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are<br />
not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies<br />
bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for<br />
components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored.<br />
Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to<br />
post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission<br />
and/or a fee.<br />
ICEGOV '12, October 22 - 25 2012, Albany, NY, USA<br />
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1200-4/12/10...$15.00<br />
34<br />
Stephen W. Kleinschmit<br />
Department of Public Policy<br />
Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne<br />
Fort Wayne, Indiana, 46805<br />
+1-260-481-6351<br />
kleinscs@ipfw.edu<br />
1. INTRODUCTION<br />
Information and communication technology (ICT) has the<br />
potential to significantly increase citizen participation within<br />
democratic community processes [6, 9]. Such technology has also<br />
been credited with establishing new forms of social interaction<br />
among citizens and governmental agencies. Web 2.0 technologies<br />
are also providing new mechanisms for civic engagement,<br />
political expression and public discussion [19], while others have<br />
found that these technologies are important for facilitating and<br />
augmenting the dynamics of political and civic engagement [9,<br />
12]. The use of ICT can be used to as a mechanism to reverse the<br />
decline of social capital in community groups. Putnam [13]<br />
describes the steady decline of group membership in the United<br />
States, which has led to a complimentary decrease in community<br />
involvement. Though he attributes some of this decline to the<br />
isolation effect of internet communication, paradoxically online<br />
communication can also be used to foster civic engagement and<br />
political expression, particularly when it is used to acquire and<br />
share information within community groups. [8, 9].<br />
Previous research has focused on exploring the effect of ICT on<br />
civic engagement, modeling its effects at the ‘individual level’<br />
and ‘group level’ respectively. This study applies a multilevel<br />
model to analyze the community group impact on civic<br />
engagement, in an effort to reconcile their effects. Therefore, the<br />
main research question is; Does the use of ICT affect the nature of<br />
civic engagement for citizens affiliated with community groups?<br />
Additionally, this study also examines; What effects do different<br />
types of community group affiliations, group ICT use (email,<br />
listserv, online discussion boards and websites, including blogs)<br />
have on the civic engagement of individual citizens? To study and<br />
discuss these questions in more detail, this paper is divided into<br />
four sections. First, this paper explores previous studies about the<br />
relationship between ICTs and online civic engagement in<br />
general. Next, we provide an overview of our research methods,<br />
with an emphasis on our explaining our hierarchical linear<br />
models. Then, the preliminary findings are presented before we<br />
discuss the implications of these findings.<br />
2. CONCEPTURAL BACKGROUND<br />
2.1 Civic Engagement in the Digital Age<br />
This study focuses on the civic engagement through the use of<br />
Information and Communication Technology (ICT). When we<br />
discuss the relationship between ICT and civic engagement, there<br />
are three different perspectives we use to explore this relationship:
two polarized (optimistic or utopian and negative or pessimistic)<br />
views and a skeptical standpoint [1, 7]. Optimists insist that<br />
interactive ICT improve connections between citizens and public<br />
bureaucrats, improve public policy-making processes and grow<br />
trust by promoting government transparency and accountability.<br />
With the adoption of interactive technology, improvements to<br />
public deliberation and participatory democracy can be realized [2,<br />
17]. Therefore, ICT is viewed as a means for invigorating<br />
democracy. Conversely, pessimists argue that such mechanisms<br />
for discourse are less likely to mobilize citizens and more likely to<br />
reinforce the power and status of political elites [4, 12]. The<br />
promise of true participatory democracy online is thus undercut<br />
by the problem of demographic representativeness; those who use<br />
it are significantly younger, wealthier and more educated than the<br />
average person [4].<br />
Finally, scholars representing the skeptical standpoint argue that<br />
the ICT neither improves nor reduces civic engagement [1, 14].<br />
Margolis and Resnick suggest that ICT is taking on the features of<br />
ordinary life [11], and Putnam [14] insists that such measures are<br />
likely to displace personal engagement and thus may fail to<br />
generate social capital. Furthermore, some argue there is little<br />
evidence to support a significant relationship between the<br />
evolution of ICT use and levels of civic engagement [1]. As<br />
suggested by the dispute among the polarized perspectives and the<br />
skeptical view, the nature and extent of the impacts of the ICT on<br />
civic engagement are not yet fully understood. Each point of view<br />
has shortcomings. Nevertheless, it can serve a useful<br />
supplementary function. The ICT had not yet profoundly<br />
impacted social trends, but felt it would play an important part of<br />
explaining the contemporary context of a person’s overall civic<br />
and political life. Subsequent developments such as Facebook,<br />
iPods, instant messaging, and text messaging have shown that<br />
citizens, particularly younger generations, are particularly<br />
“plugged in.”<br />
2.2 Bridging Individual and Group Levels of<br />
Analysis: A Logistic Multilevel Model<br />
Past studies have investigated the relationship between ICT use<br />
and civic engagement by modeling behavior at the individual<br />
level, while also considering effects at the group (contextual)<br />
level. By examining both levels through the same level of<br />
analysis, the results were potentially insignificant or<br />
underestimation of variability across levels. According to Katz<br />
and Rice’s panel study of national survey data in the United States<br />
(1995, 1996, 1997, and 2000), internet users were significantly<br />
more likely to belong to at least one local group than non-internet<br />
users. At the same time, on an individual level, the internet has<br />
provided a platform for a significant number of additional forms<br />
of political activity [7].<br />
This paper focuses on detecting the group effects on individual<br />
citizens’ level of civic behavior. In other words, how much their<br />
community group (aggregate) level of ICT use and political<br />
interests affect an individual’s level of civic engagement, while<br />
controlling for their demographic characteristics. Explaining this<br />
effect requires a statistical model that addresses a hierarchically<br />
structured data problem. For example, a multistage sample must<br />
be used to model the effects of the group: first, we aggregate data<br />
at higher levels of organization (e.g., community groups), and<br />
next we sample the sub-units from the available units (e.g.,<br />
individual members from each community group). In such the<br />
35<br />
individual observations are clustered, thus are not truly<br />
independent. To accurately assess their effects, there is a need to<br />
differentiate fixed group effects from the random effects of<br />
individuals. Citizens within the same community group tend to<br />
share similar traits. Because of selection processes (e.g., groups<br />
aggregate those with similar socioeconomic status or interest) and<br />
because of common history, many citizens share the same<br />
affiliation. As a result, the average correlation (the so-called<br />
intraclass correlation) between variables shared by individual<br />
members of the same group will be higher than the average<br />
correlation between variables shared by those from different<br />
groups. Standard statistical tests lean heavily on the assumption<br />
of the independence of the observation. If this assumption is<br />
violated (and in multilevel data this is almost always the case), the<br />
estimates of the standard errors of conventional statistical tests are<br />
much too small, resulting in many spuriously significant results.<br />
Hierarchical linear model estimation accounts for nonindependent<br />
observation at the group level [15]. In this study, a<br />
logistic multilevel model is used, then this study estimates<br />
the effects of group level characteristics on an individuals’<br />
level of volunteerism, after controlling for other demographic<br />
variables 1 . Level two consists of group variables and level one<br />
consists of individual variables. The equations estimated for the<br />
base model of this study are:<br />
Level 1:<br />
π ij =logistic ( β 0 j + β1<br />
j poleff ij + β 2 jrtrust<br />
ij + β 3 jedu<br />
ij + β 4 jage<br />
)<br />
ij<br />
Level 2:<br />
β0 j = γ 00 +γ 01grpictuj + u0 j<br />
β 1 j = γ 10 + u 1<br />
β 2 j = γ 20 + u 2<br />
β 3 j = γ 30 + u 3<br />
β 4 j = γ 40 + u 4<br />
3. METHODS<br />
In order to achieve a more in depth investigation of citizens<br />
affiliated with community groups, this paper uses a logistic<br />
multilevel analysis (a two level model) with a single binomial<br />
dependent variable, volunteer. The outcome individual averages<br />
that are used as 1group level variables are often interpreted as<br />
‘direct and contextual effects.’ To facilitate contributions to the<br />
reconciliation between these levels of analysis, the following<br />
hypothesis is examined:<br />
o Hypothesis: Individual civic engagement (volunteer work)<br />
would be greater in local groups with higher group ICT<br />
(email, listserv, online discussion boards, and websites,<br />
including blogs) use, taking into account individual<br />
citizens’ psychological characteristics (the level of political<br />
efficacy and the extent of social trust) and socioeconomic<br />
variables (age and education).<br />
1 To develop a parsimonious model, we included variables which focused on<br />
our research question. However, we also tested control variables which<br />
were revealed significant effects in prior studies such as education, income<br />
and age. We then excluded statistically insignificant controlling variables.
3.1 Dependent Variable<br />
Civic Engagement: (Variable name: volunteer 2 ): “whether you<br />
(individual citizens) are doing volunteer works or not” (Scale:<br />
0=no, 1=yes).<br />
3.2 Independent Variables<br />
3.2.1 Individual Level Variables<br />
Political Efficacy (Variable name: poleff): the extent to<br />
agreement that “sometimes local politics and government seem so<br />
complicated that person like me can’t truly understand what’s<br />
going on (Scale: 1- 4) (1=strongly agree, 2=somewhat agree,<br />
3=somewhat disagree, 4=strongly disagree)<br />
Social Trust (Variable name: rtrust): the likelihood of answering<br />
to “what extent do you think most people in the local area can be<br />
trusted” (Scale: 1-4) (1=not at all, 2=not very much, 3=somewhat,<br />
4=very much)<br />
Control variables (education and age): the answer of “what is the<br />
highest level of formal education you have completed” (converted<br />
scale: years) and the answer of “in what year were you born”<br />
(converted scale: years)<br />
3.2.2 Group Level Variables<br />
Group ICT Use: (Variable name: grpictu) within your local<br />
group, group use of ICT for communication (email/listserv, online<br />
discussion boards, and websites including blogs) (scale: 0=never<br />
used all three items at any groups - 9=used all items at all three<br />
groups)<br />
3.3 Data and Measures<br />
This study is based on household telephone survey data from the<br />
town of Blacksburg, Virginia and surrounding areas in 2005<br />
(spring 2005; N=717; 40% response rate). As part of larger<br />
research project (National Science Foundation IIS-0429274),<br />
survey questions cover current ICTs use and practice among local<br />
citizens, local community groups and government representatives.<br />
In particular, the author is interested differences among individual<br />
citizens affiliated with local groups and their ICT use for civic<br />
engagement.<br />
4. FINDINGS<br />
This study examined a logistic multilevel model for detecting the<br />
local group effects on civic engagement, with respect to the<br />
individual citizens’ likelihood of doing volunteer work. To<br />
understand the effect of ICT use of community groups, the model<br />
takes into account individual citizens’ political efficacy, level of<br />
trust on other local people, the level of education and age in the<br />
lower individual level. Group Internet use constitutes the group<br />
level variable. The following shows the results of logistic<br />
multilevel model without two.<br />
x<br />
Applying the logistic transformation e<br />
g(<br />
x)<br />
=<br />
to these estimates<br />
x<br />
1+<br />
e<br />
1.<br />
5107<br />
produces an estimated volunteer rate of 81.9% ( e<br />
= ) based on<br />
1.<br />
5107<br />
1+ e<br />
all individual citizens (typical probability). The result shows that<br />
2 In this study, we used the volunteerism as a measure of civic engagement.<br />
36<br />
there is statically significant intraclass correlation (random effect:<br />
p
through aggregating, shaping, and cultivating collective public<br />
interest, will, and competence via ICT in the digital ages. The<br />
results suggest a positive association between citizens’<br />
involvement in community groups of their civic engagement with<br />
group ICT use. Although there are several limitations such as<br />
small sample size and limited group level data, this paper presents<br />
ways to adapt and to present the potential use of multilevel<br />
analysis to examine civic engagement through logistic multilevel<br />
models. This study seeks to contribute to the understanding of<br />
growing evidence that ICT can be used as a useful mechanism for<br />
increasing the civic engagement of citizens affiliated with<br />
community groups.<br />
6. REFENCES<br />
[1] Bimber, B., Information and American Democracy:<br />
Technology in the Evolution of Political Power. New York:<br />
Cambridge University Press, New York, 2003.<br />
[2] Browning, G., Electronic Democracy: Using the Internet to<br />
Transform American Politics, 2nd ed. Medford, NJ: Cyber<br />
Age Books, Medford, NJ, 2002.<br />
[3] Castells, M. The Rise of the Network Society. The<br />
Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture, 1,<br />
Blackwell, Oxford, 1996.<br />
[4] Davis, R., Politics Online: Blogs, Chartrooms, and<br />
Discussion Groups in American Democracy. Routledge, New<br />
York, NY, 2005.<br />
[5] Gallant, L. M., Boone, G. M., and Heap, A. Five heuristics<br />
for designing and evaluating web-based communities. First<br />
Monday: Peer-Reviewed Journal on the Internet, 12, 3, 2007,<br />
1-15.<br />
[6] Galston, W.A. Civic education and potlical participation.<br />
American Political Science Assocaition, College Park, MD,<br />
2004.<br />
[7] Katz, J. E., and Rice, R.E., Social Consequences of Internet<br />
Use: Access, Involvement, and Interaction. Cambridge, MA:<br />
MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2002.<br />
[8] Kavanaugh, A., Zin, T.T., Rosson, M. B., Carroll, J. M.,<br />
Schmitz, J., and Kim, B. J., Local groups online: Political<br />
learning and participation. Journal of Computer Supported<br />
Cooperative Work (Published Nov. 16). 2006. Available<br />
online at:<br />
http://www.springerlink.com/content/tk770mu72w4v6483/fu<br />
lltext.pdf.<br />
[9] Kim, B. J, Kavanaugh, A, and Hult, K. Local Community<br />
Groups and Internet Use: Examining Contents of Local<br />
Community Groups’ Websites. The International Journal of<br />
Technology, Knowledge and Society, 2, 7, 2007, 207-221.<br />
[10] Lukensmeyer C. J. and Torres, L. H. Public Deliberation: A<br />
Manager’s Guide to Citizen Engagement. IBM Center for the<br />
Business of Government, 2006.<br />
[11] Margolis, Michael., and David Resnick, D., 2000. Politics As<br />
Usual: The Cyberspace. Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks,<br />
CA: Sage Publications,. 2000.<br />
37<br />
[12] Norris, P., Digital divide: Civic engagement, information<br />
poverty and the Internet. Cambridge University Press, New<br />
York, 2001.<br />
[13] Putnam, R. D. Bowling Alone: America’s Declining Social<br />
Capital. Journal of Democracy, 6, 1995, 65-87.<br />
[14] Putnam, R.D. Bowling Alone: The collapse and revival of<br />
American community. Simon and Schuster, New York, NY,<br />
2000.<br />
[15] Raudenbush, S., Bryk, A., and Congon, R. HLM:<br />
Hierarchical linear and nonlinear modeling. Sage, Newbury<br />
Park, CA, 1998.<br />
[16] Raudenbush, S., and Bryk, A. Hierarchical Liner Models:<br />
Application and Data Analysis Methods (2 nd ed.) Sage,<br />
Thousand Oak, CA, 2004.<br />
[17] Rheingold, H., The Virtual Community. Addison-Wesley<br />
Publishing, 1993.<br />
[18] Schlozman, K. L., Verba, S., and Brady, H. E. 2010. Weapon<br />
of the strong? Participatory inequality and the internet.<br />
Perspectives on Politics, 8(2), 487-509.<br />
[19] Shah, D. V., Cho, J., Everland, W. P., and Kwak, N.<br />
Information and Expression in a Digital Age: Modeling<br />
Internet Effects on Civic Engagement. Communication<br />
Research, 32, 5 (Oct. 2005), 531-565.
Designing Online Deliberation Using Web 2.0<br />
Technologies: Drafting a Bill of Law on Internet Regulation<br />
in Brazil<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
In this paper, we describe the formatting guidelines for the role of<br />
institutions and political practitioners in designing online<br />
consultation projects. As a case study we evaluate the Brazilian<br />
government-run initiative known as Marco Civil Regulatório that<br />
used web 2.0 tools to draft a bill of law on Internet legislation<br />
with the aid of citizen’s participation. Findings presented in this<br />
article are based on a set of interviews held with policy makers<br />
responsible for designing and promoting the aforementioned<br />
project.<br />
This article contributes to the debates on how deliberative rules<br />
and technology overlap in early stages of policy design. Our case<br />
study supports the argument that Internet has potential to provide<br />
a democratic space, but public consultations need to be<br />
established, funded, promoted and regulated; tasks that are<br />
performed by institutions (not by technology or citizens alone).<br />
For that reason, institutions are key to understand how web 2.0<br />
technologies can be useful for citizens and governments in<br />
designing tools for consultation, deliberation and decision-making<br />
Categories and Subject Descriptors<br />
K.4.1 [Computers and society]: Public Policy Issues<br />
General Terms<br />
Management, Design, Theory, Legal Aspects<br />
Keywords<br />
Online consultation; E-democracy; web 2.0<br />
1. INTRODUCTION<br />
Previous research on the use of web 2.0 tools for online<br />
consultations has argued that design matters. As Wright and Street<br />
claim, “political choices are made both about the format and<br />
operation of the online discussion … we should view deliberation<br />
as dependent on design and choice, rather than a predetermined<br />
product of the technology” [12]. At the same time, authors have<br />
argued that institutions matter to a great extent. As Fischer argues<br />
“not that institutions cause political action; rather, it is their<br />
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Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to<br />
post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission<br />
and/or a fee.<br />
ICEGOV '12, October 22 - 25 2012, Albany, NY, United States, NY, USA<br />
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1200-4/12/10…$15.00.<br />
Fabro Steibel<br />
LAMIDE/PPGCOM/ UFF (Brazil)<br />
CTS/FGV/RJ (Brazil)<br />
ofabro@ofabro.com<br />
38<br />
discursive practices that shape the behaviors of actors who do …<br />
structural relationships give shape to both social and political<br />
expectations and the possibility of realizing them” [4].<br />
Inspired by both arguments, this article explores the conceptual<br />
gap between focusing either on design or on institutions and<br />
presents an analysis of the role played by institutions in designing<br />
deliberative tools. Our evidence is based on interviews held with<br />
political practitioners who participated in the design of the Marco<br />
Civil Regulatório case (hereafter noted as MCR). The MCR was a<br />
government-run initiative that during 90 days of online<br />
consultation received more than two thousand contributions from<br />
the general public, which were later “translated” by interviewees<br />
into a Bill of Law sent to Congress. This article focuses on policy<br />
decisions political practitioners concerning the design of web 2.0<br />
tools for online deliberation, and we explore how institutional<br />
characteristics affects the role of technology used for online<br />
consultations.<br />
This article is divided in three sections: the first section presents<br />
our theoretical framework on the role of design and institutions in<br />
online consultations, our methodological framework and presents<br />
the case study here addressed. The second section discussed the<br />
influence of institutions and institutional context in the design of<br />
online consultation portals. The last section presents the emerged<br />
conceptual framework to analyze similar cases and some lessons<br />
learned.<br />
We expect this article to contribute to the debate about the role of<br />
institutions in using technology for development and democracy.<br />
Our evidence shows that institutions sponsoring the MCR<br />
initiative were key to understand how web 2.0 technologies were<br />
made useful for citizens and governments to collaborate,<br />
deliberate, take decisions and – hopefully – to connect.<br />
1.1 Methodology<br />
Findings presented in this article are based on a set of interviews<br />
held with policy makers responsible for designing and promoting<br />
the MCR project. The three main objectives of this research are:<br />
(a) formulating hypotheses on what contextual elements favored<br />
the launch of the MCR project; (b) evaluating how deliberative<br />
rules and technology overlapped in early stages of policy design;<br />
and (c) mapping good practices regarding the mix of different web<br />
2.0 technologies on designing online deliberation experiences for<br />
drafting legislation purposes. The source of data used in this<br />
project comes from eight in-depth interviews conducted with six<br />
public servants, academics and web designers responsible for<br />
planning and executing the MCR project, selected based on a tworound<br />
sampling procedure. All interviews were semi-structured
in-depth expert interviews, and were analyzed based on a mixedmethod<br />
approach to qualitative data analysis [10].<br />
1.2 About the Case Study<br />
Generally speaking, the Marco Civil Regulatório project (MCR) is<br />
seen as enormously successful. Defining what “success” means in<br />
terms of deliberative practices requires defining normative<br />
standards by which democracy is being evaluated, which is far<br />
from being a settled matter [3, 5, 6, 8]. Nonetheless, considering<br />
that the MCR project is the first of its kind in Brazil, that during<br />
the consultation project their webpage received around two<br />
thousand contributions from the general public, that later projects<br />
refer to it as a keystone reference, and most importantly, that the<br />
project succeeded in translating the concerns received online into<br />
a draft legislation to be sent to Congress, we can argue that the<br />
MCR project was indeed enormously successful.<br />
The government’s decision to run public consultations projects to<br />
make informed decisions is far from a novelty in public<br />
administration. In Brazil, for example, they are even regulated in<br />
specific legislation (D4176/2000). However, what makes the<br />
MCR project new is not the government’s decision to run a public<br />
consultation on how to regulate the Internet, but rather the<br />
decision to run it with the aid of Internet itself. Expanding the<br />
locus of debate from physical spaces (such as the hearing rooms<br />
located in the capital city of Brasilia) to an open and public URL,<br />
capable of hosting a policy debate online, is something<br />
interviewees perceive to have never been before. Interviewees<br />
recall some isolated cases where online technology has been used<br />
by government to “consult” experts or common citizens, and they<br />
remember cases of the government considering running public<br />
consultations online, but the MCR project is perceived as the<br />
pioneer of its kind, something so important that interviewees<br />
describe it as an event that “upgraded” how public consultations<br />
are run in the country.<br />
The MCR project is a joint initiative of the Ministry of Justice (the<br />
project's initiator) and the Centre for Technology and Society<br />
(CTS, hosted at the think thank foundation Getúlio Vargas, in Rio<br />
de Janeiro). Apart from these two organizations, the project also<br />
received direct support from the Ministry of Culture, and indirect<br />
assistance from other governmental bodies (i.e., the Ministry of<br />
International Relations), and ad hoc contributions from civil<br />
society organizations and several Internet activists. As such, the<br />
MCR project was a government initiative, which, with the aid of<br />
an important think thank, and of civil society, established itself as<br />
a one-of-a-kind online policy debate forum.<br />
The general objective of the MCR project was to draft an Internet<br />
Law to be submitted to Congressional vote. The bill was designed<br />
to suggest a set of legal principles and rights to guide future<br />
Internet legislation in the country, and the whole consultation<br />
experience was designed to be based on online collaborative<br />
practices. The project ran from October 2009 to May 2010, and it<br />
resulted in an online forum where politicians, academics, artists,<br />
NGOs, companies, individuals and other stakeholders with an<br />
interest in the topic could post, blog, debate and comment on the<br />
possible design of the future Internet legislation.<br />
1.3 The Use of Technology for Deliberation<br />
The MCR project made use of several web 2.0 tools (mainly<br />
Wordpress platform, Twitter, rss feeds, and blog) and it was<br />
39<br />
divided in two rounds of discussion: during the former people<br />
were invited to comment on a “white paper” with a set of general<br />
ideas that broadly oriented the future draft; during the latter<br />
people were invited to comment on the draft legislation as<br />
formatted to be sent to Congress. As interviewees describe the<br />
process, the first round of debate tested a set of normative<br />
standards, pre-defined by those sponsoring the initiative, that were<br />
considered important to be included in future legislation; while<br />
the second round focused on receiving feedback on the draft law<br />
itself.<br />
What is important to notice is that during both periods of<br />
consultations users could comment only on pre-defined topics,<br />
said by interviewees to focus on three axes of discussions:<br />
individual and collective rights (i.e., privacy, freedom of speech,<br />
and access to rights), principles related to intermediaries (i.e., net<br />
neutrality and civil liability), and governmental directives (i.e.,<br />
openness, infrastructure, and capacity building). Therefore,<br />
although the online consultation project was a collaborative<br />
practice, one initiative open for the general public to engage and<br />
share their opinions, citizens were invited mostly to offer<br />
suggestions, but not to decide on what topics were open for<br />
debate, nor on what writing the final draft would have.<br />
According to interviewees, the MCR project started in<br />
September/2009, when public servants from the Ministry of<br />
Justice invited policy experts from the Centre of Technology and<br />
Society to design the online platform. Two months later, the<br />
website was launched and the consultation period started<br />
(remaining open until mid 2010, when the final draft of the law<br />
draft was concluded). During the two periods of consultation over<br />
2,000 contributions from individual users, governmental and nongovernmental<br />
entities were received. Policy makers were<br />
responsible for gathering comments and writing the final draft<br />
bill, which, as concluded, includes 25 articles divided into 5<br />
chapters concerning users’ rights and general principles for the<br />
regulation of the Internet.<br />
Analyzing the interviews we can argue that the MCR project was<br />
based on three main tenets: first, it aimed to design legislation<br />
based on solid judicial grounds, a legal piece of work ready to be<br />
sent for Congressional hearings; two, it aimed to create policies<br />
capable of securing existing and future individual rights over the<br />
web; third, it intended from the start to be based on collaborative<br />
practices and public debate constructed with aid of web 2.0 tools.<br />
Interviewees constantly refer to the union of these three tenets<br />
(judicial grounds, oriented to secure individual rights and based<br />
on a collaborative online debate) as key motivations behind the<br />
MCR project and as the keystones of their online consultation<br />
initiative.<br />
2. INSTITUTIONAL CONTEXT<br />
Analyzing data referring to this topic, we identify four contextual<br />
elements that need to be taken into consideration, namely: the<br />
engagement of cyber activists around the social movement known<br />
as “Mega não”; the think tank activities of CTS in opposing the<br />
Lei Azeredo’s legal principles; the political agenda of the new<br />
executive branch who welcomed defining Internet as a social<br />
right; a shared understanding amongst policy makers that<br />
regulating a collaborative environment such as the Internet<br />
required the use of collaborative practices such as the ones found<br />
in the online world.
2.1 The Lei Azeredo<br />
If we analyze the main reasons mentioned by interviewees to<br />
justify why the MCR initiative emerged, most of events and<br />
contexts mentioned by interviewees make direct reference to the<br />
Lei Azeredo. The Lei Azeredo was a Bill of Law sent to the<br />
Lower chamber in 1999 (PL 84/99), and to the Senate in 2003<br />
(PLS 89/03). The Bill focused on regulating crimes over the<br />
Internet, framing Internet policy mainly from a Criminal Law<br />
perspective rather than from a Civil Law framework. The Lei<br />
Azeredo was heavily criticized by cyber activists, think thank<br />
organizations and particularly by Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s<br />
(Lula) government (2002-2010) for trying to regulate crimes over<br />
the Internet in a context where civic rights over the web were still<br />
not defined. In fact, as interviewees claim, the projects name<br />
“Marco Civil” (“Civil Regulatory Framework” in English) was<br />
chosen precisely to make clear their opposition to discussing<br />
criminal codes of conduct prior to securing civil rights and<br />
obligations related to Internet use.<br />
2.2 Cyber Activism<br />
The Lei Azeredo attracted, from the start, fierce criticism inside<br />
and outside online forums of debate, but it was mostly after 2009,<br />
with the launch of a blog know as “Mega não”, by the cyber<br />
activist João Caribé, that social opposition to the Lei Azeredo<br />
gained a coherent voice. The “Mega não” movement fuelled an<br />
intense activism in blogs, twitter and other social media that not<br />
only attracted even more online activists to the cause, but also<br />
received media coverage from niche national media and also<br />
motivated protest marches in a number of cities, having also<br />
themed important Internet-related events of the year [9].<br />
Interviewees argue that the existence of the “Mega não” social<br />
movement played a key role in the overall success of the MCR<br />
project. It is argued that those who were closely engaged with the<br />
“Mega não” movement were also those who pioneered the<br />
comment section of the project’s website; not only, activists<br />
linked to the “Mega não” movement were also said to be the ones<br />
who helped to publicize the MCR initiative by using their own<br />
twitter hashtags and blog networks to comment on the initiative.<br />
Interviewees mention that, at first, cyber activists were suspicious<br />
that their “bottom up” movement would be overlooked by the “top<br />
down” initiative they were being invited to join; nonetheless,<br />
interviewees say that gradually most “Mega não” supporters<br />
started to trust the MCR initiative as a real opportunity to push<br />
forward their own policy interests what, in return, attracted even<br />
more contributors and publicity to the MCR website.<br />
2.3 Policy Activism<br />
Another key element mentioned by interviewees refers to the<br />
policy activism of CTS. CTS was already known nationally and<br />
internationally for its policy agenda in favor of open source<br />
software, creative commons license, and other topics related to<br />
technology, law and society. Specifically in relation to the Lei<br />
Azeredo’s debate, CTS was also known for their two reports<br />
criticizing the draft bill proposal, which is perceived by<br />
interviewees to have increased their influence on government<br />
bodies, academics, and cyber activist networks.<br />
As interviewees from the Ministry of Justice claim, CTS’s public<br />
policy views were amongst the top reasons why they were called<br />
to co-author the MCR project. The Ministry of Justice was said to<br />
welcome CTS not only due to their opposition to the Lei Azeredo,<br />
40<br />
but also based on their shared ideas of designing online<br />
collaborative venues for policy making. And as interviewees from<br />
CTS argue, they welcomed the Ministry of Justice’s invitation<br />
because they perceived the initiative as an opportunity to push<br />
forward their own policy agenda, as much as a promising<br />
opportunity to influence politicians to support in the future policy<br />
debates based on collaborative online practices.<br />
2.4 Government’s Support<br />
The third element mentioned by interviewees as decisive in<br />
launching the MCR project was the executive government’s<br />
support. President Lula’s speech at the 2009 FILS international<br />
open-source conference is mentioned as the starting event for the<br />
entire initiative. During his speech, the president explicitly<br />
opposed to the Lei Azeredo’s proposal calling instead for an<br />
alternative bill securing Internet civic rights. Lula’s speech<br />
however was far from an isolated event; it simply illustrated a<br />
broad agenda pushed forward by the incumbent government to<br />
understand Internet as a challenging way of thinking civic social<br />
relations and governance. Experiences using Internet for policy<br />
making precede Lula’s government, backing to 1999 when IRC<br />
chat technology and blogs have been pilot for policy making<br />
inside government. Interviewees nonetheless stress that it was<br />
after Lula’s presidency start in 2002 that uses of Internet for<br />
policy development expanded. The role of the Ministry of Culture<br />
is mentioned as illustrative of this point, two projects in particular.<br />
The first, known as “Pontos de cultura”, linked government’s<br />
financial support to local cultural centers to the provision of<br />
Internet access to local community. The second, know as<br />
CulturaDigital.br, invited citizens to create and share their blogs<br />
and digital identities in a public and open-source Wordpress-based<br />
platform in order to foment policy deliberation online.<br />
2.5 Collaborative Policy Making Framework<br />
The last contextual element mentioned by interviewees refers to<br />
the emergence of new ways of combining law, society and<br />
technology. Due to the emergence of collaborative and networkbased<br />
technology, interviewees needed to re-conceptualize how<br />
their institutions understood knowledge production. CTS, the<br />
Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of Culture had pioneered in<br />
previous years several experiments investigating alternative<br />
governance models based on technology. CTS, for example, had<br />
been influential in supporting the use of the Creative Commons<br />
License; the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of Culture<br />
piloted the portal Culturadigital.br, inviting cyber activists and<br />
hackers to share their opinions online. It is within this panorama<br />
that interviewees said to have welcomed the MCR project: as an<br />
opportunity to try out alternatives to the traditional governmentcentered,<br />
closed-doors process of policy making. As one<br />
interviewee phrases it, the MCR initiative was a “symbiotic<br />
movement between the way you define policy making, and the<br />
object of policy regulation … and it is within this ‘happy<br />
marriage’ between these two elements that we define what we<br />
aimed to achieve”.<br />
3. DESIGNING TECHNOLOGY FOR<br />
DELIBERATION<br />
One way to understand how policy forums are affected by web 2.0<br />
tools is evaluating, when public consultations are over, what<br />
answers citizens provided to government and what uses
government made of citizens’ contributions. These questions refer<br />
to the analysis of later stages of policy making, and do not reflect<br />
the analysis provided here. From a different starting point, this<br />
section focuses on earlier stages of deliberative processes,<br />
specifically evaluating how policy makers decided before the<br />
public was invited to contribute online what policy questions were<br />
open or closed for deliberation, and what technologies would be<br />
used to mediate such debate.<br />
In the case of the MCR project, understanding what policy issues<br />
were open or closed was straightforward – the MCR website<br />
reserved one page to list all topics open for discussion (i.e., civil<br />
responsibility of Internet users, right of expression, privacy and<br />
net neutrality) and another to list all topics closed for debate (i.e.,<br />
copyright, data protection and child pornography). The list of<br />
issues mentioned in the webpage was included in the interview’s<br />
questionnaire, and interviewees confirmed that in general terms<br />
these topics were the ones actually open and closed for<br />
deliberation.<br />
Nonetheless, beyond defining what issues are open or closed for<br />
discussion in policy debates (i.e., beyond defining on what people<br />
deliberate over), designing rules for policy debates requires also<br />
identifying and selecting tools to aid people and institutions to<br />
share their opinions with each other (i.e.., deciding on how people<br />
deliberate). In “offline” policy forums, such as the ones regularly<br />
run by the Congress with the aid of public meetings rooms, policy<br />
makers have to decide how large meeting venues have to be, what<br />
time and date meetings will take place and how present speakers<br />
can effectively share their opinions. In policy forums held online,<br />
similar decisions need to be made, addressing other issues such<br />
as: how people will have access to the forum’s website, what<br />
coding language will the webpage be written in, how comments<br />
will be visualized online, and how people will post their opinions.<br />
3.1 Designing Rules for Technology Use<br />
Due to the pioneer nature of online projects like the MCR<br />
initiative, we notice that designing rules to decide what people can<br />
debate over is a much simpler task than deciding on how<br />
technology is used for deliberation. As interviewees argue, they<br />
made decisions on what issues to deliberate over based on several<br />
background research tools they had at hand: they identified policy<br />
topics already under discussion in other spheres of government,<br />
planned to select topics that would increase chances of receiving<br />
support inside Congress, and favored topics that were likely to<br />
increase their project’s audience. Based on such analyses (which,<br />
by the way, are very similar to those available in “offline” policy<br />
consultations), policy makers had plenty of sources of input to<br />
strategically decide on what mix of policy issues was likely to<br />
increase the overall success of the project.<br />
The same does not apply when we analyze policy makers’<br />
decisions about how technology should be used for deliberation.<br />
As interviewees repeatedly point, the MCR project was a very<br />
experimental and challenging initiative. Interviewees report none -<br />
or at the most very few - previous projects to serve as models,<br />
relying mostly on their own private experience or ad hoc<br />
inspiration. Above all, interviewees say to have mainly decided on<br />
what technology to use based on a trial-and-error basis, reason<br />
why the most important source of input information mentioned in<br />
this regard is feedback provided by users reflecting decisions they<br />
had already taken.<br />
41<br />
Interviewees say for example to have chosen to use Wordpress<br />
based on the open-source nature of this technology; moreover,<br />
they also say they took this decision based on their personal<br />
expertise in running blogs of their own, as well as based on their<br />
awareness of the initiative Culturadigital.br run by the Ministry of<br />
Culture (that was later used to host the project website). The<br />
decision to create a comment section based on a “paragraph-byparagraph”<br />
lay-out, for example, was also generally inspired on<br />
some previous knowledge they had of the “The public index”<br />
project [11], which required, nonetheless, several improvements<br />
before it met their needs. Even decisions on what technology<br />
decisions to continue or discontinue were made based on ad hoc<br />
information: the overall lay-out of the comment section for<br />
example received positive feedback, which resulted in an<br />
improved lay-out implemented for the second phase of<br />
consultation; the use of a “thumbs up/down” voting system<br />
however was removed shortly after implementation due to bad<br />
feedback received.<br />
3.2 Emerged Conceptual Framework<br />
Based on the interviews’ analyses, designing online consultation<br />
with the aid of web 2.0 is a very innovative task. However, we can<br />
find at least three common themes around the uses of Internet for<br />
policy making that have been largely documented before [7],<br />
namely: (a) the will to use of the Internet as a platform for<br />
political discourse, (b) the collective intelligence emergent from<br />
political Web use, and (c) perpetual experimentalism in the public<br />
domain. The former two themes describe quite well interviewees’<br />
expectation during the early stages of the MCR project. For<br />
example: selecting the CulturaDigital.br portal to host the<br />
project’s webpage is justified based on the will to foster new<br />
Internet forums of political debate; inviting citizens to deliberate<br />
online is justified based on the will to follow CTS’s goal of<br />
designing new collaborative ways of knowledge production.<br />
It is however the last theme (i.e., the perpetual experimentalism)<br />
that we most highlight in describing the MCR initiative. To some<br />
extent, online consultations resemble designing a complete new<br />
environment for policy making. For example: policy makers were<br />
required to understand the essence of tools such as Twitter and<br />
email and decide if they were good or not for online<br />
consultation’s use. Based on their previous experience with<br />
offline policy forums, interviewees were willing to avoid the oneto-few<br />
communication flow in favor of a many-to-many flow.<br />
Hence their decision (reached after a try-and-error period) of<br />
using Twitter (but blocking the use of email) to interact with the<br />
general public. In other words, the MCR project is clearly a case<br />
study where experimenting new forms of communications is a<br />
mandatory task that political practitioners have to deal with during<br />
theirs daily routine.<br />
After the end of their project, interviewees perceive to have left<br />
two challenges unanswered. The first refers to the bridging the<br />
online world barrier. Publicizing the MCR’s initiative beyond<br />
those who already had an interest in the topic is described as a<br />
very difficult (but still mandatory) task. Interviewees say to have<br />
attended as many offline conferences and events as possible, and<br />
to also have targeted media venues to increase their reach and<br />
visibility. Even so, considering the geographic and social<br />
characteristics of the country, the overall understanding is that the<br />
online barrier has been only merely scratched. The second<br />
challenge refers to controlling political outcomes of the
experience once the consultation is over. Draft legislation have no<br />
power of law, and more than one year has passed and it has not<br />
being voted in Congress. As interviewees perceive, online<br />
consultations increase the visibility of the drafted legislation, its<br />
speeds the process of preparing draft legislation for a vote, and it<br />
reduces the chances of politicians suggesting U-turn amendments.<br />
Nonetheless, at the end, the result of the deliberative experience<br />
will only be translates as legislation when and if the Congress<br />
votes on it.<br />
3.3 Lessons Learned<br />
As we can conclude when we compare how “offline” and “online”<br />
policy forums, decisions taken during early stages of designing<br />
policy forums about what to deliberate over are much similar<br />
between online and offline experiences than the same comparison<br />
between how technology is used for deliberation in offline and<br />
online experiences. The experimental and rapidly changing nature<br />
of initiatives such as the MCR project does not mean that policy<br />
decisions taken by policy makers are randomly taken; at the same<br />
time, they do challenge the understanding of how well-established<br />
policy making practices (such as mapping competing policy<br />
agendas before deciding on what policy agenda to adopt) interact<br />
with experimental practices of policy making with the aid of web<br />
2.0 tools.<br />
As the third section of this article discussed, we need to<br />
understand first how institutions, technology and people interact<br />
to create a successful and stimulating online policy forum. The<br />
section suggested as hypotheses four contextual elements needed<br />
to start an online consultation project, namely (a) a governmentbased<br />
institution with a real interest in direct public participation,<br />
(b) an active online community with a strong interest in the topic<br />
under discussion, (c) an active think thank institution willing to<br />
bring its own expertise and influence to the project, and (d) a web<br />
2.0 interface capable of engaging policymakers and citizens in a<br />
coherent narrative structure for deliberation.<br />
The fourth section continued the debate around the importance of<br />
institutions, evaluating how technology and deliberative norms<br />
interact in online consultation projects. The section focused on<br />
how policy makers decided on what issues to deliberate over, and<br />
how technology would be used to mediate deliberation; It also<br />
compared challenges faced by political practitioners in designing<br />
online and offline policy forums, focusing on four key decisions<br />
policy makers have to make during early stages of online<br />
consultation initiatives, namely: (a) what policy issues should be<br />
open or closed for people to deliberate over; (b) what technologies<br />
to use to mediate the debate; (c) how and when to moderate<br />
contributions; and (d) how to translate contributions into a<br />
properly formatted legal policy document.<br />
3.4 Conclusion<br />
The main argument pushed forward in this article is that<br />
understanding the role of web 2.0 tools in designing online<br />
consultation forums requires understanding the role of institutions<br />
sponsoring the use of such technology for policy making<br />
purposes.<br />
Without direct support of government-based institutions (in this<br />
case, the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of Culture), as well<br />
as the support given by sponsoring think tank institutions (in this<br />
case, the Centro de Tecnologia e Sociedade, FGV/RJ),<br />
42<br />
contributions of the general public shared with the aid of web 2.0<br />
would be unable to result in policy change. In fact, in a<br />
comparative analysis of the MCR project with a governmentsponsored<br />
similar initiative in Uruguay [1], we argued that<br />
achieving (or not) support of government-based institutions,<br />
particularly in the case of Latin American experiences, is a vital<br />
criterion to evaluate the overall project success.<br />
The MCR project is not a case of success due the role of<br />
technology itself; instead, the findings presented here show that<br />
the project succeeded mainly due to the participation, expertise<br />
and engagement of institutions sponsoring the initiative. In other<br />
words, although technology is a key element to understand the<br />
uniqueness of the MCR project, web 2.0 tools mattered because of<br />
the institutions that moderated the use of technology for policymaking<br />
objectives in the first place. We thus support the<br />
arguments of Blumler and Coleman who say that “for democratic<br />
participation to have a meaningful impact upon political outcomes<br />
there is a need for inclusive and accountable institutions that can<br />
provide a space for consequential interaction between citizens and<br />
their elected representatives” [2] (p. 3).<br />
4. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS<br />
This project is funded by the Fundación Comunica (Project<br />
Impacto 2.0) and by the Singapore Internet Research Centre<br />
(Project SIRCA II). The International Development Research<br />
Centre (IDRC), Canada, sponsored both projects.<br />
Version Note: This paper received constructive feedback<br />
from the ICEGOV reviewing process. Due to the nature of the<br />
project, improvements were still on course by the submission<br />
deadline of 6th Aug 2012. An extended version of the paper<br />
including new material on theoretical framework, future research<br />
recommendations, and methodology design will be available at<br />
the http://ofabro.com website by 10th Oct 2012.<br />
5. REFERENCES<br />
[1] Beltramelli, F. et al. 2012. La web 2.0 y la consulta de<br />
políiticas púublicas en Améerica Latina: el caso del<br />
Marco Civil en Brasil y el caso uruguayo sobre TV<br />
Digital en una perspectiva comparada. Alaic. (2012).<br />
[2] Coleman, S. and Blumler, J.G. 2009. The Internet and<br />
democratic citizenship : theory, practice and policy.<br />
Cambridge University Press.<br />
[3] Coleman, S. and Gøtze, J. 2001. Bowling Together :<br />
Online public engagement in policy deliberation.<br />
Retrieved January. Hansard Society.<br />
[4] Fischer, F. 2003. Reframing public policy : discursive<br />
politics and deliberative practices. Oxford University<br />
Press.<br />
[5] Gomes, W. 2007. Transformações da política na era da<br />
comunicação de massa. Paulus.<br />
[6] Habermas, J. et al. 2004. After Habermas : new<br />
perspectives on the public sphere. Blackwell Pub. :<br />
Sociological Review.<br />
[7] O’Reilly, T. 2005. What Is Web 2.0? Design Patterns and<br />
Business Models for the Next Generation of Software.<br />
Author’s webpage.
[8] Putman, R.D. 1994. Making Democracy Work: Civic<br />
Traditions in Modern Italy [Paperback]. Princeton<br />
University Press.<br />
[9] Santarem, P.R. da S. 2010. O direito achado na rede: a<br />
emergência do acesso à Internet como direito<br />
fundamental no Brasil. UNB.<br />
[10] Steibel, F. and Coleman, S. 2011. The problem of<br />
negative advertising: content-based regulation of political<br />
43<br />
advertising in Brazil and in the US. Institute of<br />
Communications Studies. University of Leeds.<br />
[11] The Public Index: 2012. http://thepublicindex.org/about.<br />
Accessed: 2012-01-13.<br />
[12] Wright, S. and Street, J. 2007. Democracy, deliberation<br />
and design: the case of online discussion forums. New<br />
Media & Society. 9, 5 (Oct. 2007), 849-869.
E-Participation in the Era of Web 2.0: Factors Affecting<br />
Citizens’ Active E-Participation in Local Governance<br />
Jooho Lee<br />
University of Nebraska at Omaha<br />
6001 Dodge Street<br />
Omaha, Nebraska 68182<br />
1-402-554-2756<br />
jooholee@unomaha.edu<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
The study develops a model of active e-participation and tests it in<br />
the context of local governance. By building on and extending the<br />
existing literature on citizen participation, technology acceptance<br />
model and social networks, the study asserts that citizens’<br />
perceptions of the intrinsic and instrumental value of participation,<br />
and the strength of their social networks are associated with their<br />
active e-participation. Using the 2009 E-Participation Survey data<br />
collected from Seoul Metropolitan Government, we found that eparticipants<br />
actively use e-participation when they perceive a<br />
greater intrinsic value of e-participation. By further analyzing<br />
Male and Female models separately, we also found that male eparticipants<br />
who perceive greater instrumental value of eparticipation<br />
are likely to use e-participation actively. The<br />
findings, however, indicate that women who perceived a greater<br />
intrinsic value of e-participation and are embedded in weaker<br />
offline social networks are likely to actively use e-participation.<br />
Categories and Subject Descriptors<br />
H.4.3<br />
General Terms<br />
Management, Human Factors<br />
Keywords:<br />
E-Participation, TAM, Intrinsic and Instrumental Motivation,<br />
Social Networks<br />
1. INTRODUCTION<br />
Recently, government embraces Web 2.0 – various networked<br />
applications as a platform for user-generated information and<br />
collaboration on the Web [1] – to facilitate various forms of<br />
electronic participation (e-participation) such as online policy<br />
forums. E-participation is broadly defined as web-based<br />
applications enabling government to provide information and<br />
support “top-down” engagement, and/or to foster “ground-up”<br />
efforts to empower citizens in order to gain their support [2]. In<br />
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for<br />
personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are<br />
not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that<br />
copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights<br />
for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be<br />
honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to<br />
republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior<br />
specific permission and/or a fee.<br />
ICEGOV '12, October 22 -‐ 25 2012, Albany, NY, United States, NY, USA<br />
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-‐1-‐4503-‐1200-‐4/12/10…$15.00.<br />
44<br />
Soonhee Kim<br />
Syracuse University<br />
306 Eggers Hall<br />
Syracuse, New York 13244<br />
1-315-443-1282<br />
soonheekim@maxwell.syr.edu<br />
this research, we focus on a “ground-up” approach to eparticipation.<br />
A growing body of literature has touted eparticipation<br />
as a means of facilitating greater citizen participation<br />
in the policy making process. The literature, however, has left<br />
significant gaps in our understanding of the motivational and<br />
social factors affecting citizens’ active use of new technology in<br />
the context of citizen participation. Considering that eparticipation<br />
using Web 2.0 is primarily driven by citizens, not<br />
government, the potential of e-participation is problematic when it<br />
is not actively used by citizens. To fill some of these gaps, this<br />
study explores how citizens’ active use of e-participation is<br />
facilitated by their perceptions of intrinsic and instrumental values<br />
of e-participation and strength of social networks where citizens<br />
are embedded in an offline setting.<br />
To test research hypotheses, the study uses the 2009 E-<br />
Participation Survey data collected from the members of Cheon<br />
Man Sang Sang Oasis (hereafter Oasis), which is an eparticipation<br />
program run by Seoul Metropolitan Government<br />
(SMG) in South Korea since 2006. As a form of online policy<br />
forum, the Oasis has served as an e-participation tool for citizens<br />
to participate in policy making, especially the policy agenda<br />
setting process [3]. Using Oasis, citizens view, submit and share<br />
their ideas and suggestions on SMG policies associated with<br />
community and governance issues. Specifically, the Oasis is<br />
equipped with Web 2.0 functions to offer well-organized and<br />
systematic services including participants-led creation of their<br />
policy inputs on proposed SMG policies and collaboration with<br />
other participants to share their policy inputs and feedback.<br />
2. MODEL AND HYPOTHESES<br />
From the citizens’ perspective, this study focuses on two types of<br />
citizen participation values. The intrinsic value of citizen<br />
participation has been supported because it is an essential means<br />
of building and sustaining democratic systems by enabling<br />
citizens to be more educated, developed, and informed [4].<br />
Advocates of the instrumental value have highlighted that citizen<br />
participation serves as a means of affecting and monitoring<br />
government bureaucracy, which enhances citizens’ control over<br />
administrative process and, in turn, promotes a sense of ownership<br />
and empowerment [4, 5].<br />
The second stream of research reviewed for the development of<br />
study model is the technology acceptance model (TAM). The<br />
essence of TAM is that individuals adopt IT applications when<br />
they perceive usefulness and ease of use of the IT applications [6].<br />
TAM has been widely extended by embracing new constructs<br />
such as trust (see Venkatesh et al [7] for review) in diverse<br />
research context [8].
The third stream of studies reviewed is social network theory.<br />
Social network literature has considered social networks as<br />
resources in which people can access information, gain social<br />
support and receive recognition through their social networks [9].<br />
Advocates of strong social networks argue that people embedded<br />
in strong social networks enjoy benefits in terms of accessing<br />
information, exchanging social support and receiving recognition<br />
easily and promptly [10]. Proponents of weak social networks<br />
emphasize that people embedded in weak social networks can be<br />
provided a better opportunity to access diverse groups of people<br />
and, in turn, to gain nonredundant and new information, to enjoy<br />
autonomy, and to manage them with a lower cost [11].<br />
By building on and extending the existing literature on citizen<br />
participation, TAM, and social networks, this research asserts that<br />
citizens’ use of e-participation is affected by their perception of<br />
intrinsic and instrumental values of e-participation, and the<br />
strength of their offline social networks.<br />
2.1 Intrinsic Value of e-Participation<br />
The intrinsic value of e-participation refers to citizens’ perception<br />
of developmental, educative, and informative effects of their eparticipation<br />
in the policy decision making process [5, 6]. The<br />
underlying theory of the intrinsic value relies on intrinsic<br />
motivation in that motivation for active participation mainly stems<br />
from inside an individual rather than from any external rewards<br />
such as political gains.<br />
Proponents of the intrinsic value of citizen participation have<br />
highlighted that citizen participation serves as a leverage to<br />
promote self-esteem and self-fulfillment and develop the attitudes<br />
and skills of citizenship [12]. Also, citizen participation provides<br />
an opportunity to be better informed of their community issues<br />
[13]. Through the experience of citizen participation, citizens gain<br />
a sense of belonging in their community, which facilitates their<br />
willingness to learn more about community issues [4, 13].<br />
Moreover, citizen participation allows citizens to learn the art of<br />
deliberation and compromise, foster an active and public-spirited<br />
moral character and, in turn, realize their potential contribute to<br />
the community [4]. Thus, it is likely that citizens are motivated to<br />
actively use e-participation when they perceive greater intrinsic<br />
value created in the process of e-participation.<br />
H1: E-participants who perceive greater intrinsic value of eparticipation<br />
are more likely to actively use e-participation.<br />
2.2 Instrumental Value of e-Participation<br />
This study also asserts that citizens’ active use of e-participation is<br />
extrinsically motivated. Extrinsic motivation theory emphasizes<br />
that individuals perform a behavior to achieve instrumental values<br />
such as economic and political rewards [14]. In TAM, the<br />
perceived usefulness construct has been used to capture the role of<br />
individuals’ extrinsic motivation in adopting new technology [15].<br />
In the context of e-participation, instrumental value indicates eparticipants’<br />
perceptions of influence on governmental decision<br />
making. Gaining political rewards such as greater influence on<br />
government may serve as a motivation to actively use eparticipation.<br />
Also, as e-participation is based on Web 2.0, social<br />
rewards such as recognition are available to e-participants in that<br />
e-participants and government bureaucrats observe and interact<br />
one another by posting and replying to citizens’ ideas or<br />
comments. It is likely that e-participants are aware of an<br />
opportunity to receive social rewards from peer e-participants and<br />
45<br />
government by using e-participation. Thus, political and social<br />
rewards serve as incentives for e-participants to actively use eparticipation.<br />
H2: E-participants who perceive greater instrumental value of eparticipation<br />
are more likely to actively use e-participation.<br />
2.3 Strength of Social Networks<br />
Strength of social networks refers to the extent to which<br />
individuals intensively interact with others [11]. This study argues<br />
that e-participants embedded in strong offline social networks are<br />
likely to actively use e-participation. Due to the nature of online<br />
interaction (e.g. chat with anonymous friends), people tend to be<br />
connected to one another through weak social networks [16]. Thus,<br />
online social networks can serve as a complementary means for<br />
mobilizing resources such as new information at a lower cost.<br />
Also, e-participants who already have strong offline networks are<br />
likely to have greater ability in using e-participation. Citizens’ eparticipation<br />
can be considered as less active if they simply search<br />
for information and observe the postings of others. The lack of<br />
active e-participation barely creates an opportunity for eparticipants<br />
to build online social networks. Thus, to build online<br />
social networks through e-participation program, e-participants<br />
must initiate interactions by being exposed to peer e-participants<br />
such as through posting their suggestions or replying to others’<br />
postings in the e-participation programs. It is likely that people<br />
embedded in strong offline social networks are equipped with<br />
knowledge about how to initiate, build, and sustain social<br />
networks, which enhances their capability to use e-participation<br />
actively.<br />
H3: E-participants embedded in strong offline social networks are<br />
likely to actively use e-participation.<br />
3. RESEARCH METHOD<br />
To test research hypotheses, we used the 2009 E-participation<br />
Survey data collected from a web-based survey. The sample frame<br />
was 10,136 citizen members of Oasis who have posted at least one<br />
suggestion over the last three years. 1,076 participants responded<br />
to the survey (response rate of 10.6 percent).<br />
For the test of the hypotheses, this research used one survey item<br />
(i.e. the number of suggestions posted by individual users on the<br />
Oasis program) to measure active e-participation. The survey<br />
participants were asked to indicate the extent to which they posted<br />
their suggestions on Oasis using a 6-point scale ranging from<br />
“Never” (1) to “More than 10 suggestions” (6).<br />
We used four survey items to measure e-participants’ perception<br />
of the intrinsic value of e-participation. By modifying Davis’s [8]<br />
perceived usefulness scale, we used four items to capture<br />
perceived instrumental value. The participants were asked to<br />
indicate the extent to which they agreed with the those items using<br />
a 5-point Likert scale ranging from strongly disagree (1) to<br />
strongly agree (5). To measure e-participants’ strength of social<br />
networks, this study used five items regarding the frequency of<br />
going out with different social groups. Five items were designed<br />
with a 7-point Likert-type scale ranging from “Every Day” (1) to<br />
“Once a Year” (7). Correlation among the items was slightly<br />
lower than threshold (Cronbach Alpha=.67). The average scores<br />
of the five items were used in the analysis.<br />
As control variables, we included perceived ease of use, social<br />
altruism, political participation, trust in government and e-
participation experience. As one of core construct of TAM,<br />
perceived ease of use was included as a control variable. To<br />
measure perceived ease of use, this study used the average scores<br />
of four survey items with 5-point Likert scale (Cronbach<br />
Alpha=.83). To measure social altruism, we used a single item as<br />
to respondents’ volunteer experience. This item was rated on a 7point<br />
Likert scale ranging from “Never” (1) to “Every Day” (7).<br />
To capture the degree of political participation, we measured<br />
voting participation. We used an index of dummy variables that<br />
include the 2008 Presidential Election, 2008 National General<br />
Election, 2006 Seoul City Mayor Election and 2006 Seoul<br />
Council Member Election. To control for the effect of trust in an<br />
IT service provider, this study used a measure of trust in the<br />
government who provides the e-participation programs. Trust in<br />
government is measured by a single item: Do you trust that SMG<br />
works in your best interests? The item was rated on a 5-point<br />
Likert scale ranging from strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree<br />
(5). E-participation experience captures the ability of eparticipants<br />
with regard to the use of Web 2.0 technologies. This<br />
study includes it as a control variable in order to control the effect<br />
of the difference between experienced and inexperienced<br />
participants on the degree of e-participation activities. The<br />
respondents were asked to indicate the length of membership in<br />
Oasis. This question was scaled from 4 years (1) to less than 1<br />
year (4). To capture the effects of respondents’ socio-economic<br />
status on active e-participation, we included gender, age,<br />
education, and income as control variables.<br />
4. RESULTS AND IMPLICATIONS<br />
Table 3 shows the results of OLS regression analysis of two<br />
models. Model 1 is a baseline model with only control variables<br />
while Model 2 includes three independent variables plus control<br />
variables. Consistent with H1, Model 2 demonstrates a positive<br />
and significant relation between perceived intrinsic value of eparticipation<br />
and active e-participation, which confirms prior<br />
empirical studies on the effect of intrinsic motivation on new<br />
technology adoption [17]. However, H2 and H3 are not supported<br />
by the data.<br />
Model 1 Model 2<br />
Beta (S.E) Beta (S.E)<br />
Perceived Intrinsic Value .20** (.09)<br />
Perceived Instrumental Value .10 (.09)<br />
Strength of Social Networks -.07 (.05)<br />
Perceived Ease of Use .04 (.07) -.07 (.08)<br />
Social Altruism .11*** (.03) .12*** (.03)<br />
Voting Participation .02 (.04) .03 (.04)<br />
Trust in Government .26 *** (.05) .19*** (.06)<br />
E-participation Experience .16 *** (.04) .17*** (.05)<br />
Male .23 ** (.11) .28** (.11)<br />
Age .03 *** (.00) .03** (.00)<br />
Age 2 -.00 *** (.00) -.00*** (.00)<br />
Education .04 (.04) .05 (.04)<br />
Income .01 (.03) .02 (.03)<br />
N 874 816<br />
Adjusted R .14 .15<br />
F 14.93 *** 12.35***<br />
Note: For two-tail tests; * p < .10; ** p < .05; *** p < .01<br />
Table 3 OLS Regression Results: Aggregated Model<br />
46<br />
The results also show that male e-participants reported posting a<br />
greater number of suggestions than female e-participants. This<br />
finding is inconsistent with recent empirical studies on the role of<br />
gender in Web 2.0 such as social media use [17]. To better<br />
understand the role of gender in active e-participation, we further<br />
analyze the data by disaggregating the sample into two groups:<br />
male and female samples. The results of Chow test allowed us to<br />
test two groups separately using male and female data sets<br />
(F=4.60, p < .001). Table 4 shows the results of a separate OLS<br />
analysis of male and female data sets.<br />
Male Model Female Model<br />
Beta (S.E) Beta (S.E)<br />
Perceived Intrinsic Value .12 (.11) .35** (.16)<br />
Perceived Instrumental Value .18* (.11) -.12 (.16)<br />
Strength of Social Networks -.02 (.06) -.19** (.09)<br />
Perceived Ease of Use -.09 (.09) -.05 (.12)<br />
Social Altruism .16*** (.04) .06 (.05)<br />
Voting Participation .10* (.05) -.06 (.06)<br />
Trust in Government .18** (.07) .13 (.11)<br />
E-participation Experience .14** (.05) .26*** (.08)<br />
Age .03*** (.01) .02*** (.01)<br />
Age 2 -.00*** (.00) -.00 (.00)<br />
Education .03 (.05) .10 (.08)<br />
Income .03 (.04) .00 (.05)<br />
N 619 196<br />
Adjusted R .14 .14<br />
F 9.78*** 3.74***<br />
Note: For two-tail tests; * p < .10; ** p < .05; *** p < .01<br />
Table 4 OLS Regression Results: Male and Female Models<br />
Table 4 shows that only perceived instrumental value is<br />
significant in the Male model, while perceived intrinsic value and<br />
strength of social networks are significant in the Female model.<br />
The findings imply that male e-participants are more likely to put<br />
a greater number of postings in the e-participation program<br />
because they might perceive e-participation as a means of<br />
acquiring a sense of ownership, influence, and/or empowerment<br />
[18]. Meanwhile, female citizens’ active use of e-participation is<br />
influenced by their perceptions of greater intrinsic value. Female<br />
e-participants are more likely to use e-participation actively<br />
because they might perceive e-participation as a means of being<br />
informed, educated and developed [19].<br />
In addition, the results exhibit that there are gender differences in<br />
the effects of social networks on active e-participation. The Male<br />
model shows that there is no significant relationship between the<br />
strength of social networks and active e-participation. However,<br />
Female model depicts the negative and significant effects of the<br />
strength of social networks on active e-participation. That is,<br />
female respondents reported that they actively use e-participation<br />
when they are embedded in weaker offline social networks. In an<br />
offline setting, underrepresented groups of people are often<br />
embedded in low-density networks or take peripheral positions<br />
[20]. In weak social networks, women are likely to face structural<br />
constraints in order to express their interests, to access<br />
information, and to receive recognition in a timely manner. These<br />
constraints may serve as motivating factors for women to seek<br />
active e-participation as a supplementary tool for expressing their
interests, gaining access to information, sharing information with<br />
others, and receiving recognition.<br />
5. CONCLUSION<br />
This exploratory study contributes to e-participation literature by<br />
uncovering both motivational and social factors affecting citizens’<br />
active e-participation. The study findings imply that local<br />
governments may need to pay more attention to how to design and<br />
evaluate e-participation programs to enhance the extrinsic value of<br />
e-participation to facilitate male e-participants’ active eparticipation.<br />
In order to better understand female participants’<br />
use of e-participation, further attention should also be paid to how<br />
to design e-participation programs to improve their intrinsic value<br />
and understand the structure of offline social networks where<br />
female participants are embedded. At least, three limitations<br />
should be noted: external validity, cross-sectional research design<br />
and online social networks. The results of this study could be<br />
outcomes of unique citizen engagement evolution that are affected<br />
by South Korea’s historical, political, and cultural contexts.<br />
Accordingly, more in-depth case studies in various regions and<br />
countries are needed to advance active e-participation models in<br />
local governance. Also, we suggest longitudinal research in order<br />
to better understand the factors affecting the sustainability of<br />
active e-participation. Since this study analyzed the role of offline<br />
social networks on active e-participation, it is limited to<br />
understanding how online social networks affect e-participation<br />
behavior. Therefore, future studies are needed to extend the study<br />
model by incorporating the role of online social networks.<br />
6. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS<br />
The authors would like to thank Seoul Metropolitan Government<br />
for supporting this research project.<br />
7. REFERENCES<br />
[1] Wikipedia. Web 2.0. Accessed July 25 th , 2012,<br />
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0<br />
[2] Macintosh, A., and Whyte, A. Towards an evaluation<br />
framework for eParticipation. Transforming government: People,<br />
Process & Policy, 2, 1 (2008), 16-30.<br />
[3] Tambouris, E., Liotas, N., and Tarabanis, K. A framework for<br />
assessing e-participation projects and tools. Proceedings of the 40 th<br />
Hawaii International Conference on Systems Sciences. 2007.<br />
[4] Roberts, N. Public deliberation in an age of direct citizen<br />
participation. American Review of Public Administration. 34, 4<br />
(2004), 315-353.<br />
[5] Box, R., Citizen Governance: Leading American Communities<br />
into the 21st Century. Sage Publication, Thousand Oaks, CA, 2007.<br />
[6] Davis, F., Perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, and<br />
user acceptance of information technology, MIS Quarterly, 13, 3<br />
(1989), 319-339.<br />
47<br />
[7] Venkatesh, V., Morris, M., Davis, G., and Davis, F. User<br />
acceptance of information technology: Toward a unified view.<br />
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[9] Ibarra, H., Kilduff, M., and Tsai, W. Zooming in and out: Connecting<br />
individuals and collectives at the frontiers of organizational network<br />
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affective organizational commitment: Network centrality, strength<br />
of ties, and structural holes. American Review of Public<br />
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Journal of Sociology, 78 (1973), 1360-1380.<br />
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Administration in an Anti-Government Era. Sage Publications,<br />
Thousand Oaks, CA, 1998.<br />
[13] Patterman, C. Participation and Democratic Theory,<br />
Cambridge University Press, New York, 1975.<br />
[14] Deci, L. Intrinsic Motivation. New York, Plenum Press, 1975.<br />
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[20] Burt, R. Structural holes: The social structure of competition.<br />
Harvard Business Press, Cambridge, M.A. 1992.
Genres of Communication in Activist eParticipation:<br />
A Comparison of New and Old Media<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
In this paper, we examine the genres of communication in an<br />
activist case in a Norwegian municipality. As genres evolve over<br />
time, and the emergence of new genre properties is a sign of a<br />
mature technology, we compare the genres used in traditional<br />
paper-based media with the genres used in social media, to<br />
examine the maturity of social media as a medium for activist<br />
eParticipation. We also discuss the usage patterns of traditional<br />
vs. social media, and their relation to the public sphere. Our<br />
findings indicate that so far, the genres used for activism in social<br />
media are very similar to their offline counterparts, with some<br />
new genres and genre characteristics emerging. Social media is<br />
moving towards maturity, but still has a way to go.<br />
Categories and Subject Descriptors<br />
K.4. [Computers and Society]<br />
General Terms<br />
Measurement, Documentation, Human Factors, Theory<br />
Keywords<br />
eParticipation, Social Media, Genre Theory, Public Sphere<br />
1. INTRODUCTION<br />
Our media and communication habits are increasingly moving<br />
towards the digital domain and to social media. While political<br />
communication has been lagging behind, this area is also<br />
increasingly becoming digitized [1, 2], and as such is forced to<br />
change in order to adapt to the logic of two-way communication<br />
media [3]. This move towards new media has been hastened by<br />
what is perceived as a lessening of civic engagement in traditional<br />
channels. Voter turnout is in decline [4], there are fewer members<br />
of political parties, and less interest for political participation and<br />
debate [5]. These perceived threats to democracy have led<br />
government towards a number of projects where digital media is<br />
used in an attempt to boost participation and civic engagement [2,<br />
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for<br />
personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are<br />
not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies<br />
bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for<br />
components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored.<br />
Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to<br />
post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission<br />
and/or a fee.<br />
ICEGOV '12, October 22 - 25 2012, Albany, NY, United States, NY, USA<br />
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1200-4/12/10…$15.00.<br />
Marius Rohde Johannessen<br />
University of Agder, dept. of Information Systems<br />
Service box 422, NO-4604 Kristiansand, Norway<br />
+47 38 14 17 14<br />
marius.johannessen@uia.no<br />
48<br />
6, 7].<br />
The public sphere, said to have disappeared in the age of mass<br />
media, has re-emerged online [8, 9]. But how new is the online<br />
public sphere? How much has political communication online<br />
been adapted to the two-way, inclusive logic of “new” media?<br />
To answer this question, we look towards genre theory. Genre<br />
theory tells us that communicative acts recurring over time, with<br />
similar form and function, can be analyzed and categorized into a<br />
set of communication genres [10]. Genres used within an<br />
organization or a given context can further be categorized into a<br />
repertoire of suitable genres for a given context [11].<br />
When moving from “old” to “new” media, genres from the old<br />
medium will typically be copied as-is and used for some time in<br />
the new. After some time, new genres emerge, and old ones are<br />
adapted to fit the new medium. The maturity of a medium can to<br />
some degree be measured by examining the genres of the new and<br />
old medium [12]. Maturity is in this case understood as the degree<br />
to which the actors involved in using the medium agree on the<br />
conventions and rules for the medium, as well as the emergence of<br />
new genres, or old genres which are adapted to the functionality<br />
of the new medium.<br />
In this paper, we identify the genre systems used for political<br />
activist communication in new and old media, through a case<br />
study of an urban development project in a mid-sized Norwegian<br />
city. The actors involved in the case have used both traditional<br />
print media, social media and the Internet in their communication,<br />
and this allows us to categorize the same message as different<br />
genres in different media.<br />
In addition, we discuss these findings against the ideals of the<br />
public sphere [13]. Are the new media mature enough to cater for<br />
a public sphere, or are we still in transition between the “old” and<br />
“new”? And if there is an online public sphere in this case, what<br />
kind of public sphere is it? Finally, we discuss how social capital<br />
impacts participation and the public sphere.<br />
The rest of the paper is structured as follows: Section two presents<br />
our theoretical foundation, consisting of the public sphere, genre<br />
theory and social capital. Sections three and four outline the<br />
research method we have applied, and presents a thick case<br />
description. In section five we present our findings, which are<br />
separated into the genre analysis of the new and old media, and an<br />
analysis of the extent to which these genre systems support a<br />
public sphere. Finally, we present our conclusions, limitations and<br />
some possibilities for future research.
2. THEORETICAL FOUNDATION<br />
2.1 The Public Sphere<br />
The Public Sphere is defined as “that domain of our social life in<br />
which such a thing as public opinion can be formed”. An<br />
autonomous “place” where citizens can debate government policy<br />
and act as an informal correction when governments step out of<br />
bounds [14], separated from the state and economic interests [14,<br />
15]. The public sphere can be understood as a mediating layer<br />
between government and citizen, where citizens discuss and agree<br />
on issues of public interest, as It is “the interaction between<br />
citizens, civil society, and the state, communicating through the<br />
public sphere, that ensures that the balance between stability and<br />
social change is maintained.” [16]<br />
The existence of a public, which is aware of itself and able to<br />
form an opinion, is essential for the Public Sphere. When the<br />
bourgeoisie class began to challenge the power of the church and<br />
state during the formation of the European nation states in the 19 th<br />
century, we saw the first modern example of the public forming<br />
an opinion. Before, in the feudal age, the church and kings of<br />
Europe had no use for a public in the modern sense of the word,<br />
as the kings and nobility had no electorate to hold them<br />
accountable for their decisions [17]. In modern representative<br />
democracy this has changed. After the initial formation of the<br />
European nations followed two devastating world wars, several<br />
nations falling back from democracy to dictatorship, and back to<br />
democracy, and all of this has contributed to a strengthening of<br />
the western world’s belief in democracy and governments’<br />
accountability to the public [17].<br />
Public opinion can be understood as the shared understanding of<br />
an issue, reached through debate by rational citizens [18] , and is<br />
considered a necessary function in a modern democracy: “The<br />
public sphere is an essential component of sociopolitical<br />
organization because it is the space where people come together<br />
as citizens and articulate their autonomous views to influence the<br />
political institutions of society” [16].<br />
Some claim the Public Sphere no longer exists, due to the spread<br />
of mass media and commoditization of information, along with<br />
the disappearance of the old “salons” and other physical spaces<br />
where the bourgeoisie assembled and debated. When everyone are<br />
allowed to participate, the public sphere holds no value [19]. This<br />
view is controversial, and has been criticised for being overtly<br />
elitist and for not taking into consideration the changing times we<br />
live in (Hartley, 1996). Rather than longing for the salons of old, a<br />
number of researchers have pointed to the Internet as the medium<br />
for modern day Public Sphere [8, 9, 20, 21]. Studies of political<br />
participation indicate that Internet use has led to an increase in the<br />
public’s political interest [22], and it is claimed that the Public<br />
Sphere of today is no longer a physical place. Rather, it is found<br />
in the media and in networks and acts as the<br />
“cultural/informational repository of the ideas and projects that<br />
feed public debate.” [16].<br />
There is, however, a problem with the online Public Sphere.<br />
Online activities, even more so than their offline counterparts,<br />
tend to be focused around people’s interests, at least in the<br />
Norwegian context. It is a lot easier to pick and choose only that<br />
which we are interested in when we move around on the Internet<br />
[23]. Interest-based communities and segregation can easily<br />
become a democratic problem. When people socialize only with<br />
others who have the same interests, points of view and likes and<br />
49<br />
dislikes, we lose that space in society where people of diverse<br />
backgrounds can assemble, debate, and shape public opinion [24].<br />
And while the Internet is promising, not everyone agrees that we<br />
currently have a functioning Public Sphere. A lack of attention to<br />
issues of public interest, our habits as online consumers as well as<br />
general political disinterest can explain why the internet has not<br />
revitalized the public sphere to the extent some scholars have<br />
expected [25].<br />
Habermas, who has been criticized for being elitist, redefines the<br />
public sphere to better suit the current media environment. He<br />
concludes that two things are needed for a networked and mediabased<br />
Public Sphere: “mediated political communication in the<br />
public sphere can facilitate deliberative legitimation processes in<br />
complex societies only if a self-regulating media system gains<br />
independence from its social environments and if anonymous<br />
audiences grant a feedback between an informed elite discourse<br />
and a responsive civil society.”[26].<br />
Several scholars have operationalized the requirements for a<br />
Public Sphere. Dahlberg [13] has identified six requirements: A<br />
public sphere must be Autonomous from state and economic<br />
power. It should be based on a rational-critical discourse, where<br />
participants are engaged in reciprocal critique of normative<br />
positions that are criticisable rather than dogmatic claims.<br />
Participants must be reflective, and critically examine their<br />
cultural values, assumptions, and interests, as well as the larger<br />
social context. Participants must attempt to understand the<br />
argument from the other's perspective. Each participant must<br />
make an effort to make known all information relevant to the<br />
particular problem under consideration, and everyone is equally<br />
entitled to introduce and question ideas and issues.<br />
Trenz & Eder [27] presents four ideal-types of the Public Sphere,<br />
thereby extending the requirements made by Dahlberg. A Public<br />
Sphere can be discourse-based, based on political protest, on<br />
political campaigning, or simply on consensus. Another issue that<br />
can be measured, especially in cases of online activism, is the<br />
extent to which the online activity is linked with the mainstream<br />
media, and through that to the wider public sphere.<br />
2.2 Social Capital<br />
While the public sphere is the ideal public debate should be<br />
striving for, the concept of social capital can be used to explain<br />
who participates [28]. Social capital refers to<br />
“connections among individuals – social networks and<br />
the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise<br />
from them … ‘social capital’ calls attention to the fact<br />
that civic virtue is most powerful when embedded in a<br />
sense network of reciprocal social relations. A society of<br />
many virtuous but isolated individuals is not necessarily<br />
rich in social capital.” [29]<br />
Some claim that a high level of social capital is an important<br />
factor in explaining the Scandinavian welfare societies. despite<br />
high taxes, big government and a relatively flat income structure,<br />
the Scandinavian countries are among the richest countries in the<br />
world [30]. The high amount of social capital in Scandinavia acts<br />
as “grease” for transactions, lowering the cost of doing business,<br />
as there is less need for formalized contracts and expensive legal<br />
agreements (ibid.).
Social capital is often measured in terms of individual and<br />
institutional trust and reciprocity, and divided into bonding and<br />
bridging social capital. Trusting individuals lowers barriers to<br />
participation and simplifies transactions, as there is less need for<br />
written contracts and other control measures. Institutional trust<br />
indicates that government institutions such as police, judicial<br />
system and administration are functioning well. Reciprocity, the<br />
degree in which people are willing to give something back when<br />
they receive something, is another measure of social capital [31,<br />
32].<br />
There are several types of social capital. Bonding social capital is<br />
the connections between individuals in a group, such as the<br />
traditional village or a local community. Bridging social capital is<br />
the connection between different groups, where individuals in a<br />
group have ties to individuals in other groups [29]. A third type of<br />
social capital is “maintained social capital”, the ability to keep<br />
one’s connections also when one is physically separated from<br />
them [33].<br />
In Information Systems, social capital have been used to measure<br />
both how technology affects social capital, and how social capital<br />
affects development of technology [32]. Other studies have shown<br />
that the characteristics and user population of social networking<br />
services is important for the level of social capital and for the<br />
outcome of political debate on such sites [34]. And that spending<br />
time in front of screens can increase social capital, depending on<br />
the activities we are conducting [35].<br />
2.3 Genres of Communication<br />
Genre theory has been applied to study communication patterns in<br />
a number of eParticipation studies [36-39]. Genres can act as a<br />
tool for studying the role of communication in social processes<br />
[10]. Genres develop over time, in the interaction between<br />
predefined rules for communication and the people that are<br />
communicating. Genres are useful when studying social media<br />
use in eParticipation, as the introduction of new media over time<br />
often leads to new communication practices which genre theory<br />
allows us to map and analyze [38]. By studying communication<br />
genres instead of the technology used to communicate, we can<br />
discover how communication changes and evolves over time [11].<br />
Genres can be defined using the 5w1h-method By asking where,<br />
why, when, who, what and how, we can uncover the purpose,<br />
contents, placement in time, location, participants, structure and<br />
medium for communication [40, 41]:<br />
o Where tells us where the communication takes place, the<br />
medium being used, or the physical location.<br />
o Why explains the purpose of the genre, as understood by<br />
those using it.<br />
o When refers to the time where communication takes place.<br />
For example, the “job application” genre is enacted when<br />
applying for a job, and needs to be in by a set date.<br />
o Who defines the actors involved in communication, the<br />
sender and receiver of the genre.<br />
o What is the content of the genre, and defines what is being<br />
communicated, and any relations to other genres.<br />
o Finally, How describes the technical needs for delivery of the<br />
genre, for example which medium is being used, or any other<br />
technical necessities.<br />
50<br />
Genres are further identified by having a common content (themes<br />
and topics of the conversation) and form (physical and linguistic<br />
features), as well as technological functionality in genres enacted<br />
through electronic media [12]. A common mistake is to confuse<br />
genre and medium, especially when including functionality in the<br />
analysis. E-mail is a medium, while the job application sent via email<br />
is the genre [10].<br />
It is possible to go beyond single genres, and look at the genre<br />
system. Genre systems are collections of genres that belong<br />
together [41]. For example, the previously mentioned job<br />
application is part of a system where the job listing comes first,<br />
followed by the job application and some kind of feedback on the<br />
application. When examining an entire genre system, we can<br />
analyse communicative practices over time, and how new genres<br />
emerge and influence the ways we communicate [11].<br />
By analysing the genre system of different media, we can see if<br />
there are differences between how the genres are enacted, and<br />
identify the genres that are most used by participants in an<br />
eParticipation project (ibid.). By applying genre theory in the<br />
study of new media forms, we get a more comprehensive analysis<br />
than what we would get from only looking at the functionality of<br />
the technology behind the new medium [11].<br />
3. RESEARCH METHOD<br />
The research was framed as a qualitative case study, of which this<br />
paper is one in a series of planned publications. The objective of<br />
qualitative research is “understanding…by investigating the<br />
perspectives and behavior of the people in these situations and the<br />
context within which they act” [42], and qualitative methods are<br />
appropriate for exploratory studies and for examining how<br />
something happens [42, 43]. The case study examines the<br />
phenomenon in its “natural setting”, collects data from multiple<br />
sources, and the researcher may have limited knowledge about the<br />
outcome of the research [44]. Case studies are particularly suited<br />
for research on new phenomena where the actors’ experiences and<br />
interpretations and the wider context are important factors [45].<br />
Our initial objective for the project as a whole was to explore and<br />
understand how social media was being used by activist groups in<br />
a Norwegian municipality. As part of that objective, the research<br />
question for this paper is how are the genre systems of old and<br />
new media used for activist communication, and how do these<br />
genre systems fit with the public sphere ideal?<br />
The urban planning case was chosen for the following reasons:<br />
The process has a long history, dating back almost 30 years. This<br />
provides rich insights into the process, and especially into how the<br />
introduction of social media has changed the way the actors<br />
communicate. The number of people involved also made access to<br />
interview subjects easy. Further, the first author has followed the<br />
case as a citizen over several years before engaging in it from a<br />
research perspective, which leads to a thorough understanding of<br />
the case context. There is a risk of bias, but we have attempted to<br />
minimize this risk through a constant analysis and questioning of<br />
our findings.<br />
The data used in this case was collected between February and<br />
November 2011. We made 12 semi-structured interviews with<br />
representatives related to the case: Members of the city council<br />
(4), officials from the city administration responsible for<br />
developing the plans (2), the private investor’s representative (1),<br />
local media (1 + informal meetings and e-mail with 2 others),
epresentatives from the three main activist groups (3), and one<br />
representative from the regional governments heritage<br />
department. The interviews were recorded and transcribed. The<br />
interviewer gave a brief introduction to the research project, and<br />
asked the respondents to talk freely within the context of the case.<br />
Interviews should be supplemented by other forms of data [46].<br />
For the findings reported in this paper, this mainly consists of<br />
postings from Facebook groups and letters to the editor. These are<br />
the basis for the genre analysis.<br />
In addition, we attended one workshop meeting and two city<br />
council meetings, where field notes were made and written out.<br />
All documents relevant to the case between 2007 and 2011 that<br />
were made available by the city council were collected and<br />
analyzed. This includes minutes from council meetings,<br />
consultancy reports, architectural plans, formal hearing documents<br />
and the results of two surveys made in relation to the development<br />
project. These data sources are not used explicitly in this paper,<br />
but nonetheless influence our conclusions and as such should be<br />
mentioned.<br />
The data was analyzed using genre theory and the 5W1H<br />
framework [41] to identify the genre systems of old and new<br />
media. Old media is represented by the print edition of the local<br />
newspaper, while new media is represented by several Facebook<br />
groups related to the case. The analysis was inspired by a genre<br />
analysis of a municipal online discussion board [36].<br />
Finally, we wanted to examine how the genre systems of old and<br />
new media were related to the public sphere. This examination<br />
was used following the framework of [28], where several<br />
constructs of a public sphere are measured, including the amount<br />
of social capital among the participants.<br />
4. CASE DESCRIPTION<br />
The case is about a cove of 5 acres, located about 1 km from the<br />
city center of a Norwegian mid-sized city (40.000 inhabitants).<br />
There are two land owners: a private investor and the local<br />
municipality own about 50% each.<br />
Over the past 30 years, there have been a number of plans for<br />
development of the cove. In the 1980’s, the city council decided<br />
to build a new harbor in the area, but the development was halted<br />
and the only structure built was the local hub of a national freight<br />
company, resulting in the cove becoming a no-man’s land of car<br />
parks and freight trucks. The area is very attractive for<br />
development, as it is by the sea and also the last open area close to<br />
the city center in a city where the topography makes development<br />
difficult.<br />
There is strong agreement in the population that something should<br />
be done about the cove. No one is pleased with the current<br />
situation. Between 2001 and 2006 a number of plans were<br />
presented. In 2007, the city council agreed on an area<br />
development plan, and in 2008, the municipality invited several<br />
architect firms to draw new plans for the area based on this<br />
development plan. Plans were presented for a mainly residential<br />
project consisting of six five-story apartment buildings, with the<br />
ground floor reserved for business purposes. The idea behind the<br />
plans was to create a new urban district, with shops, restaurants<br />
and apartments. This was to be an extension of the current city<br />
center.<br />
51<br />
When these plans were presented, local opposition began to arise.<br />
The local residents’ association started campaigning against the<br />
development by talking directly to politicians, writing to the local<br />
newspaper, and setting up stands and organizing protest concerts.<br />
Their main argument was that this was the last area close to the<br />
city center which could be developed into a green recreational<br />
park. They also organized a campaign to have politicians<br />
sympathetic to their cause voted in to the city council in the 2007<br />
municipal election, and succeeded so well that the plans were<br />
downcast by the new city council in 2008.<br />
One year later, new plans were presented. This time the plans<br />
were only for the parts of the area owned by the private investor,<br />
and consisted of three high-rise residential buildings. The idea<br />
behind these plans was that with these high-rise buildings, the city<br />
would have room for a recreational park on the remaining 2.5<br />
acres owned by the municipality.<br />
Once again the residents’ association protested, and this time new<br />
activist groups were formed and joined the opposition. The new<br />
groups consisted of creative professionals, local historians and<br />
heritage people. They still argued for a recreational park in the<br />
entire 5 acre area, but also introduced arguments for retaining the<br />
area’s historical heritage by preserving the view from the sea to<br />
the old wooden houses in the surrounding hills. Once again the<br />
activist groups were able to stop the proposed plans.<br />
In 2010, the municipality restarted the process, and decided to<br />
come up with a new area development plan. After being criticized<br />
for not listening to the citizens when the past plans were laid out,<br />
the municipality decided to run this as an inclusive process.<br />
In 2011, they arranged three workshops prior to the plans being<br />
developed by the city administrators. One of them was open to the<br />
public. The other two were for invited groups only, but included<br />
all three new activist groups, as well as public and private<br />
organizations with a stake in the area. In total, 30 different groups<br />
and organizations were invited to these workshops. Workshop<br />
participants got four different alternatives to work with: The entire<br />
area as a recreational park, 25%, 50% and 75% development. One<br />
plan for each of these alternatives were presented and discussed in<br />
the final workshop.<br />
The workshop participants were somewhat skewed towards<br />
activists and others who opposed housing and industrial<br />
development. The private investor did not attend the workshops,<br />
nor did other stakeholders who had an interest in development.<br />
This would later be used as an argument for development.<br />
In addition to the workshops, an online survey was distributed to<br />
the general public and presented at the final workshop. The survey<br />
was based on the same alternatives as the workshops, and<br />
respondents were also asked a number of questions about which<br />
activities they wanted in the area, where buildings should be<br />
erected etc. 55,7% of the respondents (N=688) reported they<br />
wanted at least half the area for a recreational park.<br />
The local newspaper distributed another survey two months after,<br />
with similar results. Around half the respondents wanted a mix of<br />
recreational park and urban development in the area. Respondents<br />
were also asked how important they considered this case to be,<br />
and 40% reported it to be important or very important.
Both surveys were open to interpretation, which lead developers<br />
and activists to argue a great deal about what was the true public<br />
opinion in the matter.<br />
Several respondents, both activists and government officials, have<br />
called this a sham process, and claimed that politicians had no<br />
intention other than to soothe the opposition. When faced with<br />
these charges, politicians have denied them in the interviews,<br />
claiming they created the workshops and surveys in an honest<br />
attempt to be more inclusive.<br />
The municipal administration used the input from the workshops<br />
and survey, and came up with 9 alternatives for the new area<br />
development plan. At this stage only the building footprint, how<br />
much of the cove to set aside for buildings, was discussed. The<br />
argument for this was that previous debates had tried to cover too<br />
much, which lead to no decision on the overall plan. The<br />
administration supported an alternative which meant 75% of the<br />
area was to be developed, and the city council voted in support of<br />
this in a council meeting held late March 2011, with 21 votes<br />
against 18.<br />
In august 2011 the city council assembled again, to vote on<br />
building heights and the contract for development with the private<br />
investor and his partners. After long debate, which included a vote<br />
on a change to the area plan passed in the last meeting, the council<br />
again voted in the support of development, with 24 votes against<br />
14.<br />
Both meetings had a large audience consisting mainly of activists<br />
aged between 40 and 70. There were few, if any, people under the<br />
age of 35 present, in spite of activist claims that youth were very<br />
engaged in the case and were big supporters of a recreational park.<br />
In both meetings, activists created a lot of disturbance, causing the<br />
mayor to threaten to close off the meeting to the public. After the<br />
August meeting, activists were furious, claiming the politicians<br />
had failed to listen to the public.<br />
In the autumn of 2011 there was a new municipal election. Once<br />
again the activists created a pamphlet showing how people could<br />
vote if they wanted “park-friendly” politicians in the new city<br />
council, who could re-open the case. The lists were distributed<br />
online, through a web site, were promoted on Facebook and also<br />
spread through physical means and word of mouth.<br />
Although not a complete success, the activists were once again<br />
able to influence who got elected to the city council. About 400<br />
people seemed to follow the activists’ advice.<br />
At the time data collection ended (November 2011), the previous<br />
city council’s decision had not been up for discussion in the new<br />
city council, and the new mayor has told the media that it is not<br />
likely the case will be reopened.<br />
However, the activists have vowed to keep on fighting, and at the<br />
time of writing have complained to regional authorities about<br />
procedural errors in the existing resolution. The complaints will<br />
most likely not be heard, at least not lead to changes in the<br />
development plans.<br />
Even though it seems as if the activists have lost their fight, there<br />
is no doubt that citizen initiated participation has had considerable<br />
influence in this case. The activists have, through their targeted<br />
efforts, managed to influence the composition of two city<br />
councils, have made the city council swing against development<br />
several times, and through this they have delayed development for<br />
52<br />
almost 5 years, and forced the city to concessions such as the<br />
workshops and survey, as well as the creation of several reports<br />
on noise, pollution and other issues.<br />
5. FINDINGS<br />
In this section the findings from the genre systems of print media<br />
(letters to the editor) and social media (Facebook groups) are<br />
presented, followed by an analysis of how the two systems rate in<br />
terms of contributing to the public sphere.<br />
5.1 Genre Systems<br />
The individual genres were identified through applying the<br />
5W1H-method to letters to the editor in the printed edition of the<br />
local newspaper, and postings on Facebook groups created to<br />
discuss the case. In order to examine the genre system, additional<br />
columns for the system were added, as well as a column showing<br />
the relation between genres. These additional columns were<br />
inspired by [36].<br />
Earlier research conducted by the author has shown that there are<br />
three objectives for why politicians choose to communicate in<br />
digital media. These are dialogue with citizens, contributions from<br />
citizens, and involvement in party activities [39]. Effective<br />
political communication should thus address these.<br />
These objectives can be interpreted and as genres in their own<br />
right. Table 1 shows the three objectives as genres.<br />
The genres identified in the discussion spaces we are observing<br />
can be analyzed as to which of these “genre objectives” they<br />
support (table 2), and this knowledge can be applied by site<br />
administrators and politicians in such a way as to facilitate the use<br />
of genres which are most likely to lead to the desired objective.<br />
Table 1: Political objectives as genres<br />
Dialogue Contribution Involvement<br />
Why Involve citizens in<br />
public debate<br />
Knowledge<br />
about citizen<br />
concerns<br />
Raise funds.<br />
Get people to<br />
volunteer<br />
When Continuous Election time Election time<br />
What Conversation<br />
between citizens<br />
and<br />
politicians/citizens<br />
and citizens<br />
Who Politicians, party<br />
members, citizens<br />
Q&A. Voter<br />
stories<br />
Politicians,<br />
party<br />
members,<br />
voters<br />
Competitions,<br />
membership<br />
forms,<br />
information<br />
Voters,<br />
sympathizers<br />
Where SNS, web site SNS, web site SNS, web site<br />
How Encourage<br />
dialogue.<br />
Open and personal<br />
language. Citizengenerated<br />
content.<br />
Encourage<br />
contributions<br />
and questions<br />
from voters<br />
Competitions,<br />
theme sites,<br />
crosspublication
While letters to the editor could be said to be a genre in itself,<br />
there are some significant differences in style and form. As could<br />
be expected from a mature medium, there are a limited number of<br />
genres to be found. Except for the “poem” genre, the main<br />
difference between the genres in the letters to the editor section<br />
lies in the level of formality and how the arguments are presented.<br />
Some letters are kept in a formal tone and based on facts, while<br />
others are more personal, some bordering on libelous. In the<br />
beginning there were several voices represented, but as the case<br />
progresses the activists, who were against development, produced<br />
the vast majority of letters. Letters tend to become more<br />
aggressive over time, with a somewhat increased focus on<br />
individuals and less on formal, fact-based debate. As it is mainly<br />
those opposing development who write to the paper, there is little<br />
direct debate.<br />
However, a number of the writers address politicians by name,<br />
citing things the politician(s) said in council meetings or other<br />
places.<br />
All in all, the genre system of the editorial column functions well<br />
for disseminating ones ideas, somewhat well for debate (although<br />
the slow speed of print means you have to pay close attention if<br />
you want to catch who is addressing whom), and the majority of<br />
letters are at least somewhat fact-based and formal. The genres in<br />
this system are presented in table 2. The first two rows describe<br />
the purpose and actors of the genre system (letters to the editor),<br />
while the rest of the table is a 5W1H analysis of the individual<br />
genres identified within the genre system.<br />
System:<br />
why<br />
System:<br />
whose<br />
Table 2: Genre system in newspaper editorial section<br />
Promote and conduct debate about local issues<br />
Owned and edited by the local newspaper. Open to<br />
everyone, but editors decide who gets printed<br />
Genre Opinion, formal Opinion, informal<br />
Where Newspaper Newspaper<br />
Why<br />
When<br />
Who<br />
What<br />
How<br />
Convince others<br />
through presenting<br />
facts<br />
Continuously, more<br />
when case is<br />
processed in city<br />
council or during<br />
election time<br />
Activist to<br />
citizen/politicians<br />
Developer to<br />
citizen/politicians<br />
Presents a view,<br />
followed by<br />
supporting facts and<br />
arguments<br />
Letters are sent to<br />
the editor and<br />
Convince others through<br />
appeals to emotions<br />
Continuously, more when case<br />
is processed in city council or<br />
during election time<br />
Activist to citizen/politicians<br />
Presents a view, supported by<br />
emotional statements or<br />
unsupported views<br />
Letters are sent to the editor<br />
and published.<br />
53<br />
Relation<br />
to table1<br />
published.<br />
Dialogue,<br />
contribution<br />
Dialogue<br />
Genre Poem Personal attacks<br />
Where Newspaper Newspaper<br />
Why<br />
When<br />
Who<br />
What<br />
How<br />
Relation<br />
to table1<br />
Gain attention<br />
through an unusual<br />
genre<br />
Infrequently, no set<br />
pattern<br />
Activist/citizen to<br />
citizens<br />
Short rhymes,<br />
aimed at touching<br />
people’s emotions<br />
Letters are sent to<br />
the editor and<br />
published<br />
Vent own feelings, discredit<br />
the one being attacked<br />
Continuously, more when case<br />
is processed in city council or<br />
during election time, or when<br />
newspaper editorial have<br />
written positively about<br />
development<br />
Activist to<br />
politicians/developer/news<br />
editor<br />
None None<br />
Points to previous letter or<br />
quote and argues against it.<br />
Some simply claim the person<br />
being attacked is less gifted<br />
because s/he means what s/he<br />
means<br />
Letters are sent to the editor<br />
and published.<br />
All the Facebook groups we found were run by activists, and most<br />
of the participants in the groups were either activists or citizens<br />
supporting the activists’ opposition to development. There were<br />
also a lot of passive members who did not contribute in the<br />
discussions on the wall, whereof some were representatives of the<br />
city council or the media that joined in order to follow what the<br />
activists were saying and planning.<br />
There are some noteworthy differences between the two genre<br />
systems. In social media we see many of the same genres, but also<br />
some new ones where functionality of the medium plays an<br />
important role. The links genre makes use of the networked nature<br />
of the Internet to provide fast access to information stored<br />
elsewhere, and link targets often contain multimedia content.<br />
Multimedia also helps to enrich some of the other genres. The<br />
formal and informal opinion genres are present in both the “old”<br />
and “new” media, but are enacted somewhat differently in new<br />
media. In the Facebook groups we see a lot of images and also<br />
some videos made by the activists to show how the planned<br />
development will impact the surroundings. These provide<br />
valuable extra information that can be difficult to present in a<br />
printed medium with limited space.<br />
On the other hand, the postings on Facebook tend to be shorter,<br />
and there is less fact-based discussion and postings seem to be<br />
more improvised, which provides less information than the longer<br />
and more thought-out letters to the editor.<br />
Another difference is the spontaneous “greetings/cheers” genre,<br />
where people will congratulate each other, or citizens will write a<br />
short post to show their support for the activists’ case. This kind
of informal communication is not likely to be printed, as it does<br />
not contribute to the debate, but nonetheless acts as important<br />
feedback and perhaps a moral boost to the activists.<br />
System:<br />
why<br />
System:<br />
whose<br />
Table 3: Genre system in social media<br />
Activist groups fighting against the planned<br />
development<br />
Owned by activist groups or individuals, open to<br />
everyone but mostly participants are opposed to<br />
development<br />
Genre Opinion, formal Opinion, informal<br />
Where Facebook group wall Facebook group wall<br />
Why<br />
Convince others<br />
through presenting<br />
facts<br />
When Ongoing Ongoing<br />
Who<br />
What<br />
How<br />
Relation<br />
to table1<br />
Activist to<br />
activist/citizen<br />
Presents a view,<br />
followed by supporting<br />
facts and arguments.<br />
Often with links,<br />
pictures, video<br />
Group members post<br />
messages on wall<br />
Present short opinion on<br />
something<br />
Activist to activist/citizen<br />
Presents a view,<br />
supported by emotional<br />
statements or<br />
unsupported views.<br />
Sometimes with links,<br />
pictures, video<br />
Dialogue, contribution Dialogue<br />
Group members post<br />
messages on wall<br />
Genre Call to action Personal attacks<br />
Where Facebook group wall Facebook group wall<br />
Why<br />
When<br />
Get people to act on<br />
something<br />
Before city council<br />
meetings or other<br />
events where there is a<br />
need to do something<br />
Who Activist to activist<br />
What<br />
How<br />
Relation<br />
to table1<br />
Invites people to<br />
participate in<br />
demonstrations, contact<br />
politicians or cast their<br />
vote in a certain way<br />
Group members post<br />
messages on wall<br />
Discredit opponents<br />
Ongoing<br />
Involvement None<br />
Activist to developer,<br />
politicians<br />
Often unprovoked short<br />
comments claiming a<br />
named person or group<br />
are in the wrong<br />
Group members post<br />
messages on wall<br />
Genre Links Greetings/cheers<br />
Where Facebook group wall Facebook group wall<br />
Why<br />
When Ongoing<br />
Who<br />
Inform others about<br />
content posted<br />
elsewhere<br />
Activist to<br />
activist/citizen<br />
Congratulate each other<br />
after victories, raise<br />
morale<br />
When the city council<br />
vote in favor of activists<br />
Activist/citizen to<br />
activists<br />
54<br />
What<br />
How<br />
Relation<br />
to table1<br />
Links to other online<br />
spaces, often<br />
multimedia content<br />
Group members post<br />
messages on wall, often<br />
with a short comment<br />
Dialogue None<br />
Positive comments about<br />
a recent event, or about<br />
the activists’’ work<br />
Group members post<br />
messages on wall<br />
5.2 Public Sphere and Social Capital<br />
The second part of the research question was how these genre<br />
systems contribute to the public sphere. To measure this the<br />
framework of [28] is applied. The framework analyses the public<br />
sphere using Dahlberg’s criteria for a public sphere (see section<br />
2.1), as well as looking for network effects to help spread the<br />
content of the discussion to more people, the type of community<br />
being supported, and the type of public sphere being supported.<br />
As social capital is said to influence who participates in a public<br />
sphere, social capital is also measured using the constructs<br />
mentioned in section 2.2. Together, these constructs helps us to<br />
understand how the communication spaces we are examining<br />
supports a public sphere, and thus how valuable they are in<br />
maintaining democratic ideals.<br />
Table 4: Public sphere characteristics of "old" media<br />
Theory Concept Case observations<br />
Public<br />
sphere<br />
Social<br />
Capital<br />
Dahlberg’s<br />
criteria<br />
Partially present, but participants<br />
are not attempting to understand the<br />
others’ perspective. Debate is fairly<br />
rational and reflective<br />
Network effects Letters are read and distributed to<br />
others, and often answered or<br />
followed up in new letters.<br />
community Readers and writers all belong to<br />
the same local community, some<br />
have regular contact outside of<br />
editorial columns<br />
Type of PS Discourse-based (after some time<br />
more towards political protest)<br />
Bridging Letters are read by both those who<br />
agree with and those who oppose<br />
the author’s position<br />
Bonding Shows others of the same opinion<br />
that they are not alone, helps bring<br />
the community closer together (for<br />
activists. The developer is more on<br />
his own).<br />
Trust &<br />
reciprocity<br />
Maintained<br />
social capital<br />
Is less of an issue in old media, as<br />
there is an editorial middleman who<br />
decides what is printed and not.<br />
Writers address each other by name,<br />
even though they may not meet in
person.<br />
Table 5: Public sphere characteristics of social media<br />
Theory Concept Case observations<br />
Public<br />
sphere<br />
Social<br />
Capital<br />
Dahlberg’s<br />
criteria<br />
Network<br />
effects<br />
Discourse is more one-way and<br />
less argument-based than in the old<br />
media, as there are mainly activists<br />
taking part in these groups.<br />
Postings can be re-posted on the<br />
walls of group members, helping to<br />
spread the ideas presented to a<br />
larger audience.<br />
Community There is a sense of shared<br />
objectives and common interest in<br />
the groups, which help create a<br />
sense of community.<br />
Type of PS Political protest. There are very<br />
few posts disagreeing with the<br />
activists.<br />
Bridging There is little evidence of bridging<br />
social capital. Content seems to<br />
stay within the group. However, it<br />
was not possible to measure the<br />
extent to which content was<br />
reposted on individual’s walls.<br />
Bonding Greetings/cheers genre as well as<br />
the general sense of agreement<br />
contributes to bonding social<br />
capital.<br />
Trust &<br />
reciprocity<br />
Maintained<br />
social capital<br />
Participants in the groups trust<br />
each other, which is natural as long<br />
as there is a common goal<br />
Not easy to measure, but there is<br />
certainly contact and discussion<br />
between the members in the group.<br />
While there are differences between the two genre systems, they<br />
each contribute to the public sphere in their own way. The genre<br />
system of traditional media is perhaps better suited to support a<br />
traditional Habermasian public sphere, where people of different<br />
opinions come together to discuss and debate. Letters printed in<br />
the newspaper are more reflective and argumentative than posts in<br />
social media, and reach a bigger audience than just those who<br />
already agree with the author of the letter or post. However, the<br />
editorial column is only as good as the people writing to it, and<br />
over time the activists view is almost the only one present, making<br />
it less a space for debate and more of a one-way communication<br />
channel.<br />
The genres in social media are less in line with Habermas’<br />
traditional public sphere ideals, but works great to support a<br />
political protest public sphere. Activists and their supporters have<br />
55<br />
a place to meet, where they can discuss, support each other, share<br />
information and maybe recruit new members. And there is also<br />
the added value that some journalists do use social media in their<br />
work, to discover new issues and find new sources. Sometimes<br />
social media gives them ideas for stories they would otherwise not<br />
have written. An informal e-mail survey sent to the journalists in<br />
the local newspaper confirms that this happens.<br />
Also, the network and bridging effects of social media are<br />
potentially a lot stronger. We do not see these effects very<br />
strongly in this particular case, perhaps because the case is<br />
localized to a small geographical area, and mainly concerns the<br />
inhabitants of that area. The users of social media already belong<br />
to the same physical community, which means there is less need<br />
for virtual networking.<br />
6. CONCLUSION AND LIMITATIONS<br />
This paper has examined the genre systems of the letters to the<br />
editor column in traditional print media and in social media, with<br />
the purpose of uncovering differences and similarities between the<br />
two systems, and to measure if social media is beginning to<br />
produce media-specific genres for eParticipation, and what this<br />
means for the public sphere.<br />
The findings indicate that we are beginning to see new genres in<br />
social media, as well as old genres being reinvented to better suit<br />
the functionality of new media. The addition of multimedia<br />
content to existing genres is one example of this. While we cannot<br />
say that social media has matured, we can conclude by saying that<br />
social media is moving ever more towards maturity.<br />
New media has room for a bigger variety of genres than<br />
traditional print media, and their instant feedback allows for a<br />
faster dialogue and more participants. This does however come at<br />
a price. Contributions in social media are often less well thought<br />
through, and not backed up by facts and rational arguments in the<br />
same way as we see in the traditional media. In that sense, the<br />
strength of the new is also its weakness.<br />
In terms of contributing to the public sphere, both genre systems<br />
do that, each in their own way. Traditional media better supports<br />
the Habermasian ideal of rational discourse, while social media is<br />
a good supporter of the political protest public sphere. As the<br />
examined social media groups are so homogenous, there is little<br />
debate going on. Social media does have a place in the wider<br />
“general public sphere”, as a source of information for news<br />
journalists. As tables one through three show, some genres are<br />
better suited than others for those who want to contribute to the<br />
political debate and to gain the attention of politicians. Genres that<br />
accommodate one of the three political objectives could perhaps<br />
be seen to contribute more to the public sphere than genres that do<br />
not address these objectives.<br />
There are some limitations to the findings in this paper. As they<br />
are based on one single case, it is not possible to generalize the<br />
findings outside of the case context. Other cases in different<br />
contexts would perhaps provide very different results. Future<br />
research efforts could include examining how the different genres<br />
should be enacted to support the objectives in table 1, and through<br />
them the public sphere. Also, more research is needed on how the<br />
added functionality of new media can contribute to eParticipation,<br />
if certain media are better suited than others for a given genre, and<br />
what combination of genres and media would be likely to provide
good results for the concrete objectives of various activist<br />
campaigns.<br />
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Internet voting: fatally torn between conflicting goals?<br />
Marco Prandini<br />
Università di Bologna<br />
Viale del Risorgimento, 2<br />
40136 Bologna, Italy<br />
Tel. +39 05120 93867<br />
marco.prandini@unibo.it<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
More than a decade after the first enthusiastic attempts at<br />
deploying Internet voting, there is still only a single case of<br />
continued adoption for the election of a political body. In this<br />
paper we illustrate the motivations behind the apparent failure of a<br />
process that, at a first sight, looks desirable for many reasons. We<br />
analyze the most relevant efforts in the field, which can be<br />
grouped in two main lines: those grounded on a strong formal<br />
foundation, and those designed to achieve maximum participation.<br />
From the analysis, we derive a set of desirable features, classify<br />
the systems according to their ability to achieve them, and<br />
conclude that no system is currently able to strike a convincingly<br />
positive balance between them.<br />
Categories and Subject Descriptors<br />
C.2.0 [Computer-communication networks]: General-security<br />
and protection; H.5.4 [Information interfaces and<br />
presentation]: Hypertext/Hypermedia-user issues; K.4.1<br />
[Computers and society]: Public Policy Issues-regulation; K.6.5<br />
[Management of computing and information systems]:<br />
Security and Protection-invasive software<br />
General Terms<br />
Security, Verification.<br />
Keywords<br />
Internet voting, security, privacy e-democracy.<br />
1. INTRODUCTION<br />
From the first appearance of democracies, there has been a<br />
constant evolution of the voting processes, to cope with the<br />
growth of the voting base without sacrificing its characteristics of<br />
accuracy, privacy and accessibility. While in the beginning it was<br />
deemed appropriate to openly express one's own will by raising a<br />
hand, nowadays complex devices have appeared to ensure fair and<br />
efficient collection of large numbers of ballots, possibly<br />
containing votes about many different topics, and their tallying<br />
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for<br />
personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are<br />
not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies<br />
bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for<br />
components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored.<br />
Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to<br />
post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission<br />
and/or a fee.<br />
ICEGOV '12, October 22 - 25 2012, Albany, NY, USA<br />
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1200-4/12/10...$15.00<br />
58<br />
Marco Ramilli<br />
Università di Bologna<br />
Via Venezia, 52<br />
47521 Cesena, Italy<br />
Tel. +39 05120 93867<br />
marco.ramilli@unibo.it<br />
according to various kinds of algorithms. Quite obviously, the<br />
latest steps of this evolutionary process involve the usage of<br />
computers and of the Internet.<br />
Electronic voting machines and automatic tallying workstations<br />
took over manual/mechanical casting and tallying procedures,<br />
with the main goal of speeding up the whole voting process and<br />
making it less error-prone. The results were mixed. Twenty years<br />
ago the determination of an election result would take up to a few<br />
days, and the procedures for the verification of contested results<br />
were even slower (and arguably reliable). Nowadays computerbased<br />
systems make it possible to compute the results almost in<br />
real time. Reliability did not see the same improvement, because<br />
there is an intrinsic disadvantage of computer-based systems when<br />
compared to traditional ones: computers inevitably process ballots<br />
in a way that cannot be kept under the voter's control.<br />
Consequently, the voter is forced to surrender a significant part of<br />
his trust in the voting system to the organizational apparatus that<br />
runs the election (the electoral body hereinafter).<br />
In order to face this responsibility, the electoral bodies started to<br />
develop technical and organizational standards for the verification<br />
of standalone computerized voting machines. They had not<br />
finished settling on truly comprehensive procedures, when one<br />
more paradigm shift was proposed towards the building of an<br />
Internet-based voting system. Internet voting is supposed to<br />
exhibit many advantages, especially in terms of accessibility, but<br />
it pushes the control over the correct behavior of the process<br />
farther away from the voter, and from the bodies that run the<br />
election as well.<br />
In this paper, we start by summarizing the foundational works<br />
about Internet voting and then proceed to quickly illustrate three<br />
Internet voting systems, which serve as valid representatives for<br />
different conceptual approaches to the subject. We discuss their<br />
relative merits and issues, before drawing conclusions.<br />
2. AN OUTLINE OF INTERNET VOTING<br />
At the very beginning of the past decade, Internet voting was<br />
beginning to draw interest as a platform for binding, large scale<br />
elections. The first structured analysis of the characteristics of<br />
Internet voting is presented in the final report [5] of the California<br />
Internet Voting Task Force (IVTF), which was convened by the<br />
Secretary of State to study the feasibility of using the Internet to<br />
conduct elections in California, and included more than two dozen<br />
experts in the field of data security, elections and voter<br />
participation.
In March 2000, just a couple of months after the release of the<br />
IVTF report, the presidential preference primary of the Arizona<br />
Democratic party provided a real test case, as the first legally<br />
binding political election to offer voters the possibility to cast<br />
their ballots from the location of their choice. The experience is<br />
well documented in a “pro vs. con”' face-to-face paper where Joe<br />
Mohen and Julia Glidden [16] described the most significant<br />
advantages of voting over the Internet, experienced firsthand as<br />
they actually ran the election on election.com, whereas Deborah<br />
M. Phillips and Hans A. von Spakovsky [19] played the<br />
counterpoint by outlining the few but deeply worrying issues that<br />
arose, mainly due to the insecurity of computer-based systems.<br />
2.1 The Pros<br />
“Universal Access” plays the main role in the list of the Internet<br />
voting advantages. In its simplest acception, universal access is<br />
the possibility to vote from every connected place, during an<br />
extended period, but it has more important aspects than freedom<br />
from lines at the polling station. It makes possible for people with<br />
disabilities to have specific tools tailored to their needs and<br />
enabling them to cast their votes. It allows people living far from<br />
city centers, without cars or any public transport, to reach the<br />
ballot box in a few clicks. These enfranchisement opportunities<br />
are also seen as a way to stimulate participation in countries<br />
where the voters turnout is low.<br />
Economic advantages appear to be obvious with the adoption<br />
Internet voting systems. Indeed Internet voting could eliminate the<br />
need to set up many polling places, to print paper ballots in the<br />
millions, or to organize committees spread all over the country to<br />
direct and to monitor the elections. Internet voting is much<br />
cheaper, quicker and easier to protect from traditional threats such<br />
as physical security of the polling places and of the ballots.<br />
Multi-cultural countries would enjoy the possibility of easily<br />
designing multilingual ballots, so that voters not familiar with the<br />
official language could vote using on their native language. Voters<br />
who cannot read could exploit text-to-speech libraries and be<br />
guided to the expression of their vote by a voice. Finally, Internet<br />
voting systems are especially convenient for the first and foremost<br />
group of citizen which they were originally thought for: overseas<br />
residents, such as military or diplomats who must be outside their<br />
country for job reasons [9].<br />
2.2 The Cons<br />
The issues with Internet voting are both of technical and of social<br />
nature. On the technical side, when compared to electronic voting<br />
solutions based on polling stations, there are three aspects that<br />
make security problems of Internet voting stand out. First, there is<br />
no real possibility of assessing the integrity of voters' terminals.<br />
Injected malware could manipulate the voter's ballot without<br />
being detected. Second, some of the control exercised over the<br />
voting process is shifted to the central processing facilities that<br />
collect votes and count them. The opportunity to curb illicit<br />
manipulation is pushed farther away from the voters and their<br />
representatives, traditionally monitoring the polling places. The<br />
network that connects these two ends is itself subject to attacks.<br />
While cryptography can protect the integrity and privacy of the<br />
transmitted ballots, there is not much that can be done against<br />
denial-of-service attacks, which flood the network preventing the<br />
system to work at all.<br />
59<br />
Also on the social side, at least three issues arise. The first derives<br />
from the disappearing physical protection provided by the polling<br />
place. It is very difficult to prevent voters casting ballots on their<br />
personal computers from getting (or be forced to get) proofs of<br />
what/who they voted for. This could exacerbate phenomena such<br />
as vote selling, “family votes”, and coerced voting. The second<br />
issue regards universal access. While at a first glance the Internet<br />
would appear as an equalizing medium, in reality the most<br />
disadvantaged parts of the population would probably be less<br />
capable of using an advanced system than they are of<br />
understanding traditional ballots, provided they can access a<br />
computer and a network connection at all. Third, some<br />
experiences lead to think that voter's turnout is not increased by<br />
the convenience of the system. In certain cases it was even<br />
lowered, possibly by the feeling that the election was nothing<br />
more than another Internet gadget instead of an important<br />
occasion to meet, discuss, and form a political opinion.<br />
2.3 Three Approaches to Internet Voting<br />
We are interested in comparing projects which have very different<br />
origins, and correspondingly different approaches to security.<br />
Remotegrity [6] was born in the academia to integrate formal<br />
security proof of ballot handling correctness. It is an absentee<br />
voting system implemented at the George Washington University,<br />
which allows to choose among multiple voting methods. Used<br />
during the 2011 election in Takoma Park, Maryland, Remotegrity<br />
gave the citizen the ability to independently verify that their votes<br />
had been correctly recorded without revealing how they voted.<br />
This property is referred to as “end to end (E2E) verifiability”,<br />
and it is built on the Scantegrity [7] system.<br />
Helios [1] was developed by the initiative of a no-profit<br />
organization (http://heliosvoting.org/) focused on the voters right<br />
to control their votes. It has been used in many elections; the<br />
website claims more than 25,000 votes cast at the time we are<br />
writing. Helios defines a stronger concept of verifiability than<br />
Remotegrity does: it gives the ability to verify if a vote has been<br />
correctly counted for in the election results, not simply correctly<br />
recorded. Helios calls this property “true verifiability”.<br />
The Estonian voting system [10] was “built to work” by the<br />
government. Estonia is not the only country having evaluated<br />
Internet voting for politically relevant elections, yet it can<br />
certainly represent the whole category of government-sponsored<br />
Internet voting systems, having the longest history of<br />
development and usage of such systems. Moreover, comparative<br />
analyses show many similarities with other nations' alternatives<br />
[23, 11, 21]. The Estonian Internet voting system is meant to<br />
supplement the traditional methods of voting. Voters can vote on<br />
their computer/smart-card-based systems or mobile phones, but<br />
also override the votes cast on these systems by voting at the<br />
polling station.<br />
2.4 Evaluation of the Existing Systems<br />
The discussion in sections 2.1 and 2.2 allows to list a set of<br />
positive features and advantages that Internet voting systems<br />
should exhibit, and a set of problems and drawbacks that Internet<br />
voting systems should avoid to introduce. We measure how well<br />
the aforementioned systems perform with respect to these sets in<br />
Table 1.
Expected pros<br />
Possible cons<br />
Location- and timeindependent<br />
Multimedia /<br />
multilanguage<br />
Economy<br />
Technological<br />
discrimination<br />
Security issues -<br />
client side infections<br />
Security issues -<br />
server side<br />
manipulation<br />
Security issues -<br />
denial of service<br />
Privacy - vote<br />
selling<br />
Privacy - coercion<br />
Table 1. Internet voting measured against the desired advantages and possible disadvantages<br />
3. DISCUSSION<br />
More than a decade ago, a few but significant security problems<br />
related to the infrastructure backed the criticism of Internet voting.<br />
Now, the same problems have been all but solved in a convincing<br />
way. Motivated attackers can disenfranchise voters by means of<br />
DDoS campaigns. Viruses infecting the I/O interface of voters'<br />
computers enable large-scale alterations or privacy breaches no<br />
matter how sophisticated the voting protocol is. From a<br />
conceptual viewpoint, most of these issues can be addressed and<br />
solved as technology advances, but the experience teaches us that<br />
even in strictly controlled environments there is a significant<br />
margin for errors in design and implementation. The road towards<br />
effective conformance testing of voting machines installed in<br />
polling places has been long. It went through deep review of<br />
systems initially adopted without a transparent process<br />
guaranteeing their security [12, 4, 17]. It led to ample public<br />
discussions in the U.S.A [24, 3] as well as in the European Union<br />
[15] that were incorporated in the track for defining public<br />
standards [22, 8]. Still, there is ample margin for enhancements<br />
[13, 18, 20]. Thinking that the same level of security can be<br />
attained in uncontrolled user computers is unrealistic.<br />
There are examples of formally-designed systems, like Helios and<br />
Remotegrity, that allow voters to detect manipulations. They<br />
neutralize the effect of successful attacks against any component<br />
of the chain leading from the voter's intention to the tallied ballot.<br />
They failed, until now, to achieve widespread acceptance,<br />
possibly because their principles are too complex, or because<br />
there is no authoritative political body pushing for their adoption.<br />
The Estonian case is the exact opposite. The unquestionable<br />
success of the parliament elections appears to be strongly tied not<br />
to the solution of the mentioned issues, but rather to the social<br />
context. Estonians are (rightly) proud of the technological<br />
advances that enable such a small nation to achieve self-<br />
Remotegrity Helios Estonian<br />
Almost completely<br />
(paper-based credentials)<br />
Almost (constrained by the<br />
paper alternative)<br />
Costly (web + mail + polling<br />
places)<br />
No (browser based +<br />
traditional alternatives)<br />
Manipulation can be<br />
detected<br />
Manipulation can be<br />
detected<br />
Possible, especially serious<br />
in the verification phase<br />
Possible but very hard<br />
Possible (subtraction of<br />
authentication pack)<br />
60<br />
Completely<br />
(browser based)<br />
Completely<br />
Optimal (web<br />
only)<br />
Somewhat, no<br />
alternatives to the<br />
Internet<br />
Malware can<br />
sniff votes<br />
Manipulation can<br />
be detected<br />
Possible<br />
Malware can<br />
sniff votes<br />
Possible (in<br />
presence)<br />
sustainability 1 . They gladly accept the word of their government<br />
as regards the security of the voting process, rather than asking for<br />
a process that would enable them to verify the correctness of the<br />
election themselves. The government reinforced this orientation<br />
by designing a system that can be more or less understood by a<br />
large part of the population. In this scenario, proposing<br />
enhancements that make the system slightly harder to understand<br />
but much more secure could have a counter-intuitive effect of<br />
lowering trust. So, trust is where apparently there are less reasons<br />
for it to be; however, the fact that the whole Estonian egovernment<br />
infrastructure was held captive under a DDoS [14]<br />
should be a clear reminder that even the most proactive and<br />
involved player cannot always defeat its opponents.<br />
Moreover, Internet voting is affected by some fundamental issues<br />
that technology cannot completely address. Often, trust in the<br />
system would require the simultaneous satisfaction of<br />
contradicting requirements. Systematic coercion perpetrated<br />
through infected computers can be mitigated by allowing<br />
overwriting of votes, but maintaining both Internet- and paperbased<br />
systems in parallel operation causes confusion and defeats<br />
the economic purpose of Internet voting. Vote selling is enabled,<br />
albeit with different severity, by the same receipts that allow<br />
verifiability and are needed to secure the process end-to-end.<br />
Innovative technological components like the Trusted Platform<br />
Module could greatly increase the robustness of voting clients, but<br />
at the same time introduce new system requirements that limit the<br />
concept of universal access. Solutions at the state of the art could<br />
further aggravate the discrimination of the weakest groups of<br />
citizens, who already suffer digital divide for real,<br />
notwithstanding the false perception that as new generations enter<br />
1 In the words of their president:<br />
http://valits.us/icegov2011keynote<br />
Almost completely (tied to<br />
ID card or GSM coverage)<br />
Almost (constrained by the<br />
paper alternative)<br />
Costly (web + phone +<br />
polling places)<br />
Traditional alternatives, but<br />
special devices needed for<br />
remote voting<br />
Malware can hijack GUI<br />
Valid votes can be<br />
discarderd, fake votes added<br />
Possible<br />
Very hard (votes can be<br />
overwritten later)<br />
Possible (in presence or<br />
through hijacked GUI)
society the gap will close [2]. The most intractable issue however<br />
is the lack of privacy and protection the polling place gives to<br />
voters. Some Norwegian politicians have referred to “family<br />
voting” as a reason to abandon Internet voting altogether [11].<br />
In conclusion, it is our opinion that after a decade of<br />
experimentation Internet voting is not ready for large scale<br />
deployment yet. The different experiences presented in this paper<br />
prove the strong desire to devise solutions to the main problems.<br />
End-to-end verifiable ballots represent a key step towards<br />
independence from “absolute” security of every component of the<br />
voting chain. Significant real-world use cases like Estonian<br />
elections help bridging the gap between technology and citizens.<br />
Whether the combination of these two driving forces will be<br />
successful in producing really trustworthy systems, and in<br />
advancing awareness enough for people to properly use them, it is<br />
still very hard to foresee.<br />
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[21] G. Schryen and E. Rich. Security in large-scale internet<br />
elections: A retrospective analysis of elections in Estonia,<br />
The Netherlands, and Switzerland. Information Forensics<br />
and Security, IEEE Transactions on, 4(4):729-744, Dec.<br />
2009.<br />
[22] Technical Guidelines Development Committee, editor.<br />
Voluntary Voting System Guidelines Recommendations to the<br />
Election Assistance Commission. U.S. Election Assistance<br />
Commission, Aug. 2007.<br />
[23] M. Volkamer, O. Spycher, and E. Dubuis. Measures to<br />
establish trust in internet voting. In Proceedings of the 5 th<br />
International Conference on Theory and Practice of<br />
Electronic Governance, ICEGOV '11, pages 1-10, New York,<br />
NY, USA, 2011. ACM.<br />
[24] D. Wagner. Joint hearing of the house committee on science<br />
and the committee on house administration. Testimony on<br />
voting system standards. July 19, 2006.
Session 3<br />
Policies 1
A New Roadmap for Next-Generation Policy-Making<br />
Francesco Mureddu<br />
Tech4i2 Ltd, UK<br />
43B Mill Road, Leicester, UK<br />
francesco.mureddu@tech4i2.com<br />
Gianluca Misuraca<br />
European Commission, JRC IPTS<br />
C/ Inca Garcilaso, 3 - Seville, Spain<br />
gianluca.misuraca@ec.europa.eu<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
In the last thirty years the role of the government has moved<br />
consistently away from services provision to regulation. Society<br />
and economy has become more interconnected, unstable and<br />
unpredictable than ever, and citizens are keener to engage in<br />
complex policy making. Within this context, traditional tools for<br />
policy making, based upon the perfectly rational representative<br />
agent maximizing its own utility in a general equilibrium<br />
framework, have been demonstrated to be unable to predict and<br />
cope with some of today’s most pressing challenges, such as the<br />
financial crisis and climate change. Despite the explosion of data<br />
availability, the possibility to analyse them through<br />
crowdsourcing and large scale collaboration, the advance in<br />
modelling and simulation tools for assessing non-linear impact of<br />
policy options, the full potential offered by the new instruments<br />
for policy making has yet to be achieved. Therefore policy makers<br />
have not yet at their disposal a set of instruments able to cope with<br />
the needs stemming from their decision making activities.<br />
In order to meet those needs the project CROSSOVER “Bridging<br />
Communities for Next Generation Policy-Making” is elaborating<br />
a demand/driven “International Research Roadmap on ICT tools<br />
for Governance and Policy Modelling”, which links the needs and<br />
the activities of policy-making with current and future research<br />
challenges.<br />
Categories and Subject Descriptors<br />
I.6.0 Simulation and Modeling - General<br />
General Terms<br />
Management, Measurement, Performance, Economics<br />
Keywords<br />
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for<br />
personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are<br />
not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies<br />
bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for<br />
components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored.<br />
Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to<br />
post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission<br />
and/or a fee.<br />
ICEGOV '12, October 22 - 25 2012, Albany, NY, United States, NY, USA<br />
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1200-4/12/10…$15.00.<br />
62<br />
David Osimo<br />
Tech4i2 Ltd, UK<br />
43B Mill Road, Leicester, UK<br />
david.osimo@tech4i2.com<br />
Stefano Armenia<br />
Sapienza University of Rome CATTID<br />
P.le Aldo Moro, 5 - 00185 Rome, Italy<br />
armenia@cattid.uniroma1.it<br />
Governance Analysis and Evaluation, Policy Making 2.0,<br />
Modelling and Simulation, System Dynamics, ICT Tools,<br />
Stakeholders’ Engagement<br />
INTRODUCTION<br />
The role of the government in the last century has not decreased<br />
as the common wisdom would suggest. In fact it has increased<br />
until the end of the ‘70s, and remained stable for the following 30<br />
years. However, the collapse of the Bretton Woods system<br />
together with its associated Keynesian policies marked the switch<br />
from a service provision role of the government towards a<br />
regulatory one, often in novel areas such as environment,<br />
telecommunications and technology [20]. As we will see, as<br />
governments are much more involved in “steering” than in<br />
“rowing”, today more than ever the role of the policy maker has<br />
become difficult due to new challenges. Nowadays, society and<br />
economy are more interconnected, unstable and unpredictable<br />
than they have ever been. As pointed out by [25], we live in the<br />
age of “Extremistan”, a world of “tipping points” [23], “cascades”<br />
and “power laws” [4], where extreme events are “the new normal”<br />
[12].<br />
The policy issues of our age can be addressed only through the<br />
collaboration of all the components of the society, including the<br />
private sector and individual citizens [11]. In fact only changes in<br />
the daily behaviour of citizens can help to tackle challenges such<br />
as climate change, consumable resources and sustainability of the<br />
health system. As clarified by the UK Prime Minister, David<br />
Cameron, "the success of the Big Society will depend on the daily<br />
decisions of millions of people" 1 .<br />
In addition citizens are more than ever willing to engage in<br />
complex policy decision making according to the emergence of<br />
the "Gov 2.0 paradigm" offering new opportunities to enter into<br />
data production, analysis and decision-making. On the other hand<br />
this participation is often fruitless as it is limited to conversations<br />
on social networks, blogs and twitter and a real impact has been<br />
achieved only in specific, highly advertised cases that led to a<br />
massive mobilisation. Moreover the participation seems to be<br />
limited to individuals highly interested and motivated in policy<br />
issues. Finally, seldom the human nature is able to take into<br />
account the long-term impact of our choices, as short-term<br />
impacts are more predictable and visible [16]. However, in an<br />
1 See http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-12443396
interconnected, unstable and unpredictable world the long-term<br />
impact of the policy choices might have unintended<br />
consequences.<br />
In this view, traditional policy-making tools are flawed as they<br />
assume an abstract and unrealistic human being: perfectly rational<br />
(utility maximizing), consistent (not heterogeneous), atomised<br />
(not connected through networks), wise (thinking long-term) and<br />
politically committed. In fact most of the current policy modelling<br />
and simulation practices are rooted on traditional mathematical<br />
models, linear econometric tools or dynamic stochastic general<br />
equilibrium models, based upon the perfectly rational<br />
representative agent maximizing its own utility in a general<br />
equilibrium framework. As shown by [18], all these tools may not<br />
be consistent when applied in the public policy context.<br />
At any rate, today we see the possibility of an ICT-enabled policymaking<br />
model taking full account of the complexity of human<br />
nature. There is a number of social modelling and simulation tools<br />
already available, buy they are built for ad-hoc purposes and<br />
suffer a lack of scalability. In fact there is a tendency to reinvent<br />
and develop “own” models and simulation tools so that adoption<br />
of a policy modelling approach still demands a lot of resources<br />
preventing returns to scale to be fully enjoyed [5][6].<br />
Nevertheless there are several main trends impacting the current<br />
and future policy making: the explosion of data availability given<br />
by the open government data movement and the data provided by<br />
sensors and citizens, the growth of research dedicated to analyzing<br />
those data through crowdsourcing and large scale collaboration,<br />
the improvement of modeling and simulation tools assessing the<br />
possible non-linear impact of policy options. These trends clarify<br />
the need for the next generation of policy making models.<br />
To this end, the CROSSOVER “Bridging Communities for Next-<br />
Generation Policy-Making”, which is a Coordination and Support<br />
Action (FP7-ICT-2011-7, No. 288828) financed by the European<br />
Commission under the objective ICT-7-5.6 – “ICT Solutions for<br />
governance and policy modeling” aims to:<br />
o Bring together and reinforce the links between the different<br />
global communities of researchers and experts by animating<br />
knowledge exchange across communities of practice.<br />
o Reach out and raise the awareness of non-experts and<br />
potential users, with special regard to high-level policymakers.<br />
o Establish the scientific and political basis for long-lasting<br />
interest and commitment to next generation policy-making,<br />
by focusing on a demand-driven approach, involving policymakers<br />
and defining a collaborative stakeholders’<br />
sustainability plan.<br />
More in particular the CROSSOVER project is elaborating a new<br />
International Research Roadmap on ICT Tools for Governance<br />
and Policy Modelling, which aims to provide a clear outline of<br />
what technologies are available now for policy-makers to improve<br />
their work, and what could become available tomorrow. The<br />
roadmap has a demand-driven approach: rather than focusing on<br />
the technology, it starts from the needs and the activities of<br />
policy-making and then links to the current and future research<br />
challenges.<br />
63<br />
The project builds on the CROSSROAD 2 model 3 and roadmap 4<br />
with the aim to reach a stronger focus on policy modelling. More<br />
precisely CROSSOVER focuses on two Grand Challenges (GC),<br />
already part of the CROSSROAD roadmap, which are more in<br />
line with the current workprogramme priorities: GC1 - Policy<br />
Modelling and GC2 – Data-powered Collaborative Governance.<br />
Each Grand Challenge embeds a number of research challenges in<br />
governance and policy modelling.<br />
The aim of this paper is therefore to present the new research<br />
roadmap on ICT Tools for Governance and Policy Modelling<br />
aimed at providing an outline of what technologies are and will be<br />
available to meet the needs of policy-makers. The structure of the<br />
paper continues as follows. Section 2 identifies the methodology<br />
applied for this research. Section 3 describes the research<br />
roadmap. Finally section 4 offers some conclusions and future<br />
research directions.<br />
METHODOLOGY<br />
The roadmap is being developed by the means of desk-based<br />
review (e.g. literature review and meta analysis), discussion and<br />
interviews with experts, and crowdsourcing 5 . More in particular<br />
we define a technology roadmapping exercise, which is a strategic<br />
planning approach to identify the actions and funding decisions<br />
needed to boost technological development and innovation. The<br />
term “roadmap” refers to the main purpose of this approach, i.e. to<br />
chart an overall direction for technology development or usage<br />
[7].<br />
On the one hand the roadmap constitutes a shared vision, able to<br />
inspire collaborative and interdisciplinary research, and between<br />
academia, business, civil society and government. On the other<br />
hand it is a useful tool, able to provide support and orientation to<br />
policy-modelling also after the end of the project. The potential of<br />
roadmapping is significant in the domain of ICT for governance<br />
and policy modelling as it can constitute an important input in the<br />
selection of future research priorities by highlighting the emerging<br />
themes and key technological applications (ICT tools) likely to<br />
impact on policy in the coming years. Furthermore roadmapping<br />
is one of the “recommended best practices” for the selection of<br />
priorities in R&D programmes since it does not only identify the<br />
bottlenecks that need to be addressed within a realistic time frame,<br />
but it can also lead to a high degree of consensus if potential<br />
beneficiaries are involved in the agenda-setting process [17].<br />
THE RESEARCH ROADMAP<br />
As mentioned above, the new International Research Roadmap on<br />
ICT Tools for Governance and Policy Modelling builds on the<br />
previous CROSSROADS roadmap. However the new exercise<br />
represents an improvement in many respects. First, the roadmap is<br />
built following a demand-driven approach: rather than focusing<br />
exclusively on technology, the present roadmap starts from the<br />
2 CROSSROAD - A Participative Roadmap for ICT research on<br />
Electronic Governance and Policy Modelling www.crossroad-eu.net<br />
3 For a presentation of the CROSSROAD model of ICT for governance<br />
and policy modelling please refer to Osimo et al. (2010)<br />
4 For the CROSSROAD white paper and research roadmap please refer to:<br />
http://crossroad.epu.ntua.gr/files/2010/02/CROSSROAD-<br />
State_of_the_Art_Analysis-White_Paperv1.00.pdf<br />
5 The roadmap in commentable format has been published in the project<br />
website and has been disseminated through the http://www.crossoverproject.eu/UserSurvey.aspx
needs and the activities of policy-making and then links to the<br />
research challenges. In fact on the one hand each research<br />
challenge has a direct correspondence to a benefit stemming from<br />
policy making 2.0 tools (i.e. what need does the methodology and<br />
ICT tool address), such as:<br />
o Detect and understand problems before they become<br />
unsolvable<br />
o Generate high involvement of citizens in policy-making<br />
o Identify “good ideas” and innovative solutions<br />
o Reduce uncertainty on the possible impacts of policies<br />
o Encourage behavioural change and uptake<br />
o Detect non-compliance and mis-spending<br />
o Understand the impact of policies<br />
On the other hand each research challenge is explicitly linked to a<br />
traditional activity of policy-making, based on the conventional<br />
policy-making cycle:<br />
o Agenda setting: basic analysis on the nature and size of<br />
problems at stakes are addressed, including the causal<br />
relationships between the different factors<br />
o Policy design: development of the possible solutions, the<br />
analysis of the potential impact of these solutions, the<br />
development and revision of a policy proposal<br />
o Adoption: this is the most delicate and sensitive area, where<br />
accountability and representativeness are needed. It is also<br />
the area most covered by existing research on e-democracy<br />
o Implementation: often considered the most challenging<br />
phase, as it needs to translate the policy objectives in<br />
concrete activities, that have to deal with the complexity of<br />
the real world. It includes ensuring a broader understanding,<br />
the change of behaviour and the active collaboration of all<br />
stakeholders.<br />
o Monitoring and evaluation: make use of implementation<br />
data to assess whether the policy is being implemented as<br />
planned, and is achieving the expected objectives.<br />
Second, in CROSSOVER, more emphasis is put on cases and<br />
applications: each research challenged is enriched with inspiring<br />
cases bearing a global perspective. Furthermore the new roadmap<br />
bears a stronger focus on ICT for Governance and Policy-<br />
Modelling, by dropping more peripheral grand challenges of<br />
Government Service Utility and Scientific Base for ICT-enabled<br />
Governance 6 . Finally, the project is elaborating a “living”<br />
roadmap, accompanied by an online repository of tools, people<br />
and applications.<br />
Let us now describe the two Grand Challenges composing the<br />
roadmap.<br />
The GC1 - Policy Modelling concerns the development of tools<br />
and methodologies able to design an efficient and effective<br />
decision making process, capable of detecting emergencies,<br />
anticipate future events and evaluate the impact of different policy<br />
choices. Furthermore GC1 fosters the engagement of the<br />
stakeholders in models building and in the evaluation and<br />
simulation of policy making.<br />
The GC2 – Data Powered Collaborative Governance is related<br />
6 On this see CROSSROAD, 2012.<br />
64<br />
to the fact that the current citizen participation scene is<br />
characterised by an engagement of highly committed people only,<br />
and by an involvement that rarely stimulates genuine action.<br />
However there are several complementary research areas in ICT<br />
for governance and policy modelling that have the opportunity to<br />
address the need for collaboration and behavioural change<br />
throughout different technological layers: enhanced data<br />
availability through public linked data and participatory sensing,<br />
analytical capability through opinion mining and visual analytics,<br />
and action-oriented tools such as simulation and serious gaming.<br />
These trends mutually reinforce each other to offer a new<br />
opportunity for future ICT for governance and policy modelling.<br />
For each Grand Challenge the roadmap describes a number of<br />
research challenges highlighting their definition, the potential<br />
opportunities for governance, the state of the art of market and<br />
research, the existing challenges/gaps, the recommended research<br />
themes and most importantly the inspiring application cases.<br />
GC1 encompasses the following research endeavors:<br />
o Systems of Atomized Models<br />
o Collaborative modelling<br />
o Easy access to information and knowledge creation<br />
o Model validation<br />
o Interactive simulation<br />
o Output analysis and knowledge synthesis<br />
On the other hand GC2 encompasses the following research<br />
challenges:<br />
o Big Data<br />
o Opinion Mining and Sentiment Analysis<br />
o Visual Analytics<br />
o Serious Gaming for Behavioural Change<br />
o Open Government Data<br />
o Collaborative Governance<br />
o Participatory Sensing<br />
o Identity Management<br />
CONCLUSIONS: CLOSING THE LOOP OF<br />
POLICY-MAKING<br />
The last 30 years witnessed a change in the government role, from<br />
services provider to mere regulator. At the same time the role of<br />
the policy makers became increasingly difficult. This because, as<br />
[25] points out, we live in the age of "Extremistan", a world in<br />
which society and economy are more than ever interconnected,<br />
unstable and unpredictable. This extreme instability takes place<br />
not only in negative forms such as the financial crisis and the<br />
global warming but also in positive development, such as the<br />
continuous emergence of new players and business models on the<br />
market. Unfortunately the current tools available for policy<br />
design, implementation and evaluation are not suitable for<br />
capturing this complex and interconnected nature. The cause of<br />
this may be found in the fact that current tools are rooted on<br />
traditional mathematical models (rational expectations), linear<br />
econometric tools or dynamic stochastic general equilibrium<br />
models.<br />
Alternative tools, based on complexity science and enabled by the<br />
explosion of data availability, are yet to be widely adopted. To<br />
support policy makers in meeting the challenges of implementing<br />
more appropriate tools for policy-making, the CROSSOVER
project is elaborating an updated version of the “International<br />
Research Roadmap on ICT tools for Governance and Policy<br />
Modelling”, initially designed as part of the CROSSROAD's<br />
project in 2010.<br />
As for the partial results of our exercise, on the one hand we<br />
designed the research challenges in relation to specific needs of<br />
the policy makers. For instance: systems of atomized models and<br />
model validation are related to early detection and understanding<br />
of problems; collaborative modelling and visual analytics are<br />
related to generating high involvement of citizens; immersive<br />
simulation is related to reducing the uncertainty on the possible<br />
impacts of policies; opinion mining is related to the need of<br />
identify “good ideas” and innovative solutions; and finally open<br />
data is related to the need of detecting non-compliance and misspending,<br />
as well as to understanding the impact of policies.<br />
On the other hand we were able to connect the research challenges<br />
to specific phases of the policy cycle:<br />
o Agenda setting: in this phase take place the identification and<br />
analysis of problem. Within this scope, visualization and<br />
opinion mining can help to identify the problems at an early<br />
stage, while advanced modelling techniques are used to<br />
disentangle the casual relationships behind the problem as<br />
well as to understand the causal roots that need to be<br />
addressed by policy<br />
o Policy design: on one side immersive simulations support<br />
decision-makers by taking into account unexpected impacts<br />
and relationships, in order to facilitate the choice of the most<br />
effective option. On the other side collaborative governance<br />
enables then to develop further and fine-tune the most<br />
effective option, for example through commentable<br />
documents<br />
o Policy implementation: social network analysis,<br />
crowdsourcing and serious gaming ensure awareness, buy-in<br />
and collaboration from the widest range of stakeholders<br />
o Monitoring and evaluation: Open data and sentiment<br />
analysis, alongside advanced visualization techniques, allow<br />
stakeholders and decision makers to better monitor execution<br />
and can be used to evaluate the impact of the policy<br />
As for future research, the roadmap is being published and<br />
disseminated in commentable format in order to seek input and<br />
validation from stakeholders (on the importance of the proposed<br />
research challenges), researchers (on the actual research carried<br />
out on the proposed challenges), and finally policy makers (on the<br />
actual adoption of the proposed tools). Furthermore it is ongoing<br />
an online survey of ICT needs and challenges of policy makers<br />
which will inform the last version of the roadmap.<br />
ACKNOWLEDGMENT AND DISCLAIMER<br />
The research activity leading to this paper has been funded by the<br />
European Commission under the activity ICT-7-5.6 – “ICT<br />
Solutions for governance and policy modeling” within the<br />
Coordination and Support Action (FP7-ICT-2011-7, No. 288828)<br />
CROSSOVER project “Bridging Communities for Next<br />
Generation Policy-Making”.<br />
The views expressed in this paper are purely those of the authors<br />
and may not in any circumstances be regarded as stating an<br />
official position of the European Commission.<br />
65<br />
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Best International Practices for Access, Ownership and<br />
Use of Information and Communication Technologies for<br />
People with Sensory Disabilities<br />
Marco Peres<br />
Universidad Externado de Colombia<br />
Calle 28 # 13 A- 24 apartment 1304<br />
Bogotá, D.C.- Colombia<br />
+571 4612653<br />
marco.peres@uexternado.edu.co<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
This paper aims to describe the results shown by the consultancy<br />
report requested by the Ministry of Information Technologies and<br />
Communications of Colombia, which highlights the programs and<br />
projects for national and international access, ownership and use<br />
of information technologies and communications for people with<br />
sensory limitations in countries like Colombia, Mexico, Spain,<br />
United States, Canada and Brazil. The dimensions underlying the<br />
research are related to the appropriation of ICTs in education, in<br />
access to employment and social integration, the use of electronic<br />
means for political participation and access to the range of cultural<br />
activities and recreation in this community.<br />
Categories and Subject Descriptors<br />
K.4. [Computers and Society]: Public Policy Issues<br />
General Terms<br />
Documentation<br />
Keywords<br />
Sensory impairment, digital inclusion, digital literacy<br />
1. INTRODUCTION<br />
According to Article nine of the UN Convention on the Rights of<br />
Persons with Disabilities, it is the obligation of States: "... so that<br />
people with disabilities to live independently and participate fully<br />
in all aspects of life, take appropriate measures to ensure access<br />
for people with disabilities on an equal basis with others, the<br />
physical environment, transportation, information and<br />
communications, including computer systems and information<br />
technologies and communications, and other facilities open to the<br />
public or public use, both in urban and rural areas .. 1 "as well as,<br />
implementing programs that facilitate the use and ownership of<br />
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for<br />
personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are<br />
not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies<br />
bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for<br />
components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored.<br />
Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to<br />
post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission<br />
and/or a fee.<br />
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Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1200-4/12/10...$15.00<br />
1 http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1964930<br />
67<br />
Paula Suárez<br />
Universidad Externado de Colombia<br />
Carrera 64 # 24-47 apartment 503,<br />
Bogota, Salitre, Colombia<br />
+57 313 8306908<br />
paucasuarez@gmail.com<br />
the means necessary to include this population in the dynamics of<br />
socioeconomic and political development that generate on their<br />
own information technology and communications. Means and<br />
measures taken by States must have in mind then, the existence of<br />
gaps in digital literacy, access to education and electronic media,<br />
faced by people with disabilities, so it has to generate public<br />
policies and focus on the needs of this group, differentiating by<br />
type of limitation, age and educational level.<br />
Thus, our research shows that those experiences that we can deem<br />
successful are those in which States have taken the characteristics<br />
of the group in different contexts and settings, created inclusion,<br />
access to public education, health, government and employment<br />
into account, with all possible means of interaction to eradicate<br />
drawbacks to people with disabilities.<br />
2. CONTEXT<br />
The world report on disability made by the World Health<br />
Organization (WHO) in association with the World Bank Group,<br />
estimates that ... more than one billion people worldwide live with<br />
some form of disability, of whom nearly 200 million experience<br />
considerable difficulties in its operation 2 , hence governments are<br />
concerned in creating enabling factors for this population with<br />
regard to access to essential services for normal daily activities,<br />
since the number of people with limitations grows and their<br />
situation is exacerbated by poverty and exclusion.<br />
The need for digital literacy in the population with disabilities is a<br />
reality and a priority on the agendas of governments. At the latest<br />
World Summit on the Society of Information, UNESCO and<br />
CEPAL agreed that ICTs are a useful tool for achieving<br />
development and equity. 3 The provision of information<br />
technology, and digital literacy, defined as the ease of access and<br />
use of information technology and communications 4 , turns out to<br />
be of the essence to create a favorable scenario. These policies<br />
targeted at people with sensory disabilities, (defined as those who<br />
suffer from hearing impairments, visual or both) are necessary,<br />
since the benefits related to literacy, range from the ease in the<br />
normal course of daily activities to the full exercise of citizenship.<br />
2 http://www.who.int/disabilities/world_report/2011/accessible<br />
_es.pdf<br />
3 http://bvs.sld.cu/revistas/aci/vol13_1_05/aci04105.htm<br />
4 Ramírez Leyva. Elsa Margarita. La lectura, Alfabetización en<br />
Información y Cultura de la Información.2007.
2.1. National digital inclusion experience for<br />
people with sensory disabilities<br />
According to the National Bureau of Statistics (DANE), in 2005<br />
6.4% of Colombia's population suffers from some form of<br />
permanent disability 5 . This finding, based on the general<br />
population census, shows alarming statistics in this field; as a<br />
result, digital inclusion has become a priority in Colombia. The<br />
Ministry of ICT through its "Communication Technologies for<br />
Disabled People" and their project "New Technologies for<br />
Information Access of the Blind", "Connecting Senses" for deaf<br />
blind people and the "Relay Center" for deaf people, have been<br />
trying to start the process of including people with sensory<br />
limitations by accessing and using information technologies.<br />
Communication Technologies for Population with Disabilities<br />
Program: This program focuses on providing a range of<br />
technology solutions to people with sensory disabilities, to<br />
generate the active participation of these individuals in the<br />
different spheres of social interaction, including the democratic<br />
process. The Ministry of ICT in Colombia, has carried out various<br />
activities for inclusion, such as the Respite Center Project for the<br />
Deaf, which tries to break the communication barriers that this<br />
population suffers. This program has generated a number of<br />
public telephone centers for the deaf, along with the National<br />
Federation of the Deaf of Colombia (FENASCOL) and the<br />
Telephone Company of Bogotá (ETB), which implements text<br />
phones to enable communication between a deaf and a hearing<br />
person. The implementation of closed captioning (subtitles for the<br />
deaf) on television is another initiative that the Ministry has<br />
promoted for the deaf to interpret mass media such as television. 6<br />
New Technologies Project for Information Access for the<br />
Blind: The Ministry of Information Technologies and<br />
Communications, with the help of the National Institute for the<br />
Blind (INCI), has built public libraries for visually impaired<br />
people who can use ICTs and benefit from them, through devices<br />
like: digital book readers and printers to convert braille<br />
documents.<br />
Connecting Senses Program: This program targets people with<br />
deaf blindness conditions, led by the Ministry of Information<br />
Technology and the Colombian Association of the Deaf Blind<br />
(SURCOE). It is responsible for facilitating technology for<br />
classroom use and appropriation of information and<br />
communications technologies in the process of socialization for<br />
this population that has its own characteristics. Connecting Senses<br />
has sought ways to respond to the demands of deaf blind people<br />
holistically, as it has generated an implementation scheme that<br />
takes into account not only the adaptation of ICT for people with<br />
this sensory disability, but also makes special efforts to train<br />
people interested in the topic, as the role of companions for people<br />
with deaf blindness is crucial in the dynamics of socialization.<br />
3. BEST INTERNATIONAL ICT METHODS<br />
TO EMPOWER PEOPLE WITH SENSORY<br />
DISABILITIES<br />
5 http://www.dane.gov.co/index.php?option=com_content&view<br />
=article&id=307&Itemid=124<br />
6 http://201.234.78.217/mincom/faces/index.jsp?id=2334<br />
68<br />
In order to identify the best ICT practices at the international level<br />
aimed at people with sensory disabilities, the following factors<br />
were taken into account: the number of people with sensory<br />
disabilities within each territory, the structure and contribution to<br />
inclusion, the potential for adaptation in the provision of public<br />
services, education, employment, political participation and access<br />
to cultural activities or entertainment.<br />
3.1. Methodology for selecting successful<br />
international practices<br />
The international review of best practices was obtained from the<br />
collection of information from public, private or mixed source<br />
inclusion programs for people with sensory disabilities, which<br />
were selected according to parameters relevant to the digital<br />
inclusion of people with sensory disabilities, this is why there are<br />
three criteria for selection of successful international practices<br />
relating to: 1) the level of practice approach that has the problem<br />
of exclusion of people with sensory, 2) coverage and provide the<br />
inclusion of people with limitations and 3) the potential for<br />
adaptation to cover several dimensions of inclusion (i.e.<br />
education, employment, political participation, etc.).<br />
3.1.1 Criteria approach to the problem of exclusion of<br />
people with sensory disabilities<br />
This criterion is defined as the initiative or practice that is<br />
responsible for solving the problem of exclusion experienced by<br />
people with sensory disabilities. Depending on the conceptual<br />
characteristics of each approach, different alternative solutions<br />
emerge with dramatically different impacts on the lives of people<br />
with visual and auditory disabilities. In this regard there are four<br />
main approaches to address the problem of exclusion.<br />
Exclusion as a personal and individual limitation: This approach<br />
involves recognizing a situation of vulnerability and disadvantage<br />
people with sensory disabilities, which prevents it from interacting<br />
with the rest of society safely and fairly. This approach generates<br />
responses (programs) to direct attention to the individual such as<br />
educational centers or community support.<br />
As a population characteristic: This perspective does not<br />
portray people with sensory disabilities as a vulnerable group, but<br />
as a population group with characteristics that make it different<br />
from the rest of society, as would be the ethnic, religious or<br />
cultural. This approach generates projects including direct and<br />
indirect: direct projects that seek alternative solutions such as<br />
access to specialized education for the visually impaired, to<br />
promote job training and recruitment of this population and<br />
indirect projects which allow them to create partnerships aimed at<br />
achieving a political representation to ensure that this population<br />
is taken into account as a group with characteristics distinct from<br />
the majority society, and therefore must be treated and cared for<br />
differently.<br />
As a matter of physical environment: This approach assumes<br />
that people with disabilities encounter significant difficulties when<br />
interacting with their environment, and therefore, if it is modified<br />
taking into account the sensory abilities of people with sensory<br />
disabilities, to improve their living conditions visibly. This<br />
approach integrates accessibility projects to public buildings,<br />
private buildings regulations to the public and promotes<br />
alternatives to the existing infrastructure which meets the needs of<br />
people with sensory disabilities.
As a matter of human environment: the latter approach to the<br />
problem of exclusion of people with limitations, aims to get<br />
people who have contact with individuals with sensory disabilities<br />
to be able to interact with them, that is, that the responsibility for<br />
social integration lies not only in the individuals with disabilities,<br />
but extends to individuals in regular conditions of perception. this<br />
type of approach promotes alternatives such as indirect inclusion:<br />
raising awareness, training for family members, teachers and<br />
chaperones.<br />
3.1.2. Coverage and contribution to the inclusion<br />
This criterion refers to the ability to serve people with sensory<br />
disabilities, while a positive influence to avoid isolation and<br />
segregation of the population. Similarly, coverage, rather than as a<br />
quantitative index can be understood as the flow direction or<br />
orientation of the actions needed to access or benefit from a<br />
particular program. Here there are: 1) individual care programs, 2)<br />
direct government actions and 3) indirect government actions:<br />
Individual care programs: Tend to only one person or individual<br />
with sensory disabilities, may be of a private or public source.<br />
The objective of such programs is to achieve human development<br />
and social reintegration of the person with limited sensory abilities<br />
Direct government action: Are those actions that are national,<br />
state or local, as appropriate, whose aim is to benefit all people<br />
with sensory disabilities in a particular jurisdiction, such as a law.<br />
These actions differ from individual public actions in the sense<br />
that citizens with sensory disabilities do not have to search for<br />
programs to access them because the initiative includes the<br />
general population with sensory disabilities<br />
Indirect public actions: The indirect actions of public coverage<br />
are those that, like direct public coverage, cover a jurisdiction, but<br />
in this case, do not direct impact on individuals with disabilities,<br />
but rather, their environment<br />
3.1.3. Potential for adaptation to cover several<br />
dimensions of inclusion<br />
Adaptation refers to the possible extension of the use of a program<br />
into other dimensions of impact (employment, education, political<br />
participation, personal autonomy, etc). This approach which seeks<br />
to identify those practices that generate coverage, operation and<br />
ownership by people with sensory disabilities, can be applied<br />
across several dimensions of impact simultaneously or<br />
independently in a potential program or policy of digital inclusion<br />
for people with sensory disabilities<br />
3.2. Programs for digital inclusion of the<br />
visually impaired population<br />
As part of the generation of programs for inclusion in the access,<br />
use and appropriation of ICTs for people with visual, people need<br />
to define what can be described within this group, according to the<br />
World Health Organization, are part of the community with visual<br />
impairment, those who suffer from total blindness in one or both<br />
eyes or those with profound visual impairment (partial blindness<br />
or profound amblyopia amblyopic itself) with respect to visual<br />
acuity at such a level that affects the normal execution of daily<br />
activities, according to the ONCE (National Organization of<br />
69<br />
Spanish Blind) are blind persons whose visual field is reduced to<br />
10 ° or less 7 .<br />
One of the data provided research initiatives around access, use<br />
and appropriation of ICTs, internationally, is related to the<br />
interaction of participants of different natures, since those who run<br />
programs for assisting communities with sensory are not only<br />
public but also private.<br />
There are several initiatives for us to highlight that grant access to<br />
ICTs for people with visual impairments, such as the one<br />
promoted by the Brazilian Ministry of Education and Culture,<br />
which provides the blind with free Mecdaisy software for the<br />
conversion of digital textbooks , this in order to provide tools for<br />
academic and intellectual development of visually impaired<br />
users 8 . In the United States, for example, a legislative initiative<br />
called Americans with Disabilities Act, established the obligation<br />
of both public and private institutions to provide people with<br />
disabilities technologies and devices which are required for access<br />
to information and public services, while in Spain, the scientific<br />
community is most interested in developing specialized<br />
technologies, as it has released a device to see with their<br />
hands, thus facilitating the mobility of blind people through a<br />
technology that converts images into tactile signals.<br />
The adaptation of existing technologies to the needs of the blind,<br />
is the strategy that Mexico is betting on, and that initiatives such<br />
as the Library for the Blind National Autonomous University of<br />
Mexico, show the Mexican government's willingness to attend<br />
and include people with disabilities in education.<br />
3.3. Digital inclusion initiatives for hearing<br />
impaired<br />
The inclusion of deaf people, access to and use of information<br />
technology differs from the dynamics meant for the blind. Even<br />
though both are limitations of a sensory type, the characteristics of<br />
a deaf person call for other programs that cater to different needs<br />
that are unique to this population. According to the World Health<br />
Organization, ninety-three percent of deaf people have no access<br />
to sign language interpretation service 9 , hence it is essential for<br />
communication, use and access to information and<br />
communications technologies.<br />
In Mexico, for example, CONFETER a government sponsored<br />
initiative since 2005 has compelled telecommunication providers<br />
to furnish the necessary technology (such as telephones that<br />
eliminate sound systems interference, vibrating phones, lit alert<br />
indicators and amplified speakers) that facilitates communication<br />
access to the hearing impaired.<br />
Additionally, the Canadian private sector has answered the<br />
hearing impaired communications challenge with organizations<br />
such as The Canadian Society of the Deaf. This is Canada´s main<br />
purveyor of services, products and information that eliminate the<br />
stumbling blocks that limit the communication of the hearing<br />
impaired.<br />
3.3. Best methods for deaf-blind people<br />
This population, which suffers from two limitations (auditory and<br />
visual) depending on each individual case, may or may not benefit<br />
from projects designed for the deaf or blind. However, there are<br />
7<br />
http://www.juntadeandalucia.es/averroes/caidv/interedvisual/<br />
ftp_p_/def_bajavision_ceguera.pdf.<br />
8<br />
http://www.ufpel.edu.br/cic/2009/cd/pdf/CH/CH_00288.pdf<br />
9<br />
http://www.who.int/disabilities/world_report/2011/summary<br />
_es.pdf
advanced initiatives specifically designed to assist this population.<br />
For example, the Department of Rehabilitation Services of<br />
Mississippi, United States, provides the deaf-blind population<br />
with technological, pedagogical and psychological devices (such<br />
as hand magnifiers to read, high-intensity lamps, small telescopes<br />
to read from a distance and small circuit television or computers<br />
that magnify printed material) this with the idea of satisfying the<br />
needs and overcoming the barriers this population faces in relation<br />
to such common activities as learning and communication.<br />
However, the characteristics of the condition of deaf-blindness,<br />
also calls for specialized care programs for access to ICT, a highly<br />
trained companion that can help these people. Nevertheless,<br />
despite the fact that this population possesses less communication<br />
capabilities, it has not been given higher priority within<br />
international programs for the deaf-blind community.<br />
3.3. People with sensory disabilities in the<br />
countries analyzed<br />
Table 3: Number of people with sensory disabilities<br />
Country Census of<br />
the country<br />
(million)<br />
Blind<br />
Population<br />
Deaf<br />
Population<br />
Populatio<br />
n with<br />
deaf<br />
Blindness<br />
Colombia 46,51,645 2.4% 0.98% _<br />
Mexico 112,336,538 1.15% 3.6% _<br />
Spain 45,283,259 0.13% 2.3% 0.013%<br />
UU.EE. 305,000,000 8.2% 3.2% _<br />
Canada 34,030,589 0.52% 0.91% 0.04%<br />
Brazil 203,429,773 0.73% 0.083% _<br />
As evidenced by the table above, the most populous country with<br />
sensory disabilities is United States of America where 11.4% of<br />
the population is visually and hearing impaired , excluding people<br />
with both limitations, followed by Colombia where 3, 4% of the<br />
total population presented some sensory limitation (blind or deaf),<br />
then Spain with 2.43% of people with sensory limitations, fifth<br />
place belongs to Canada with 1.44% of the population with<br />
sensory disabilities and Mexico with 1.15% of visually impaired<br />
people.<br />
4. CONCLUSIONS<br />
To build successful programs in the care of people with sensory<br />
disabilities, we must recognize that this is a population group with<br />
its own characteristics in need of specialized care. International<br />
trends in terms of programs for this population, as presented in<br />
this study, have shown that it is necessary to adapt the physical<br />
space for real digital inclusion of people with sensory disabilities.<br />
It is also of the essence to grant them institutional recognition, as<br />
has been the case with successful programs for people with<br />
limitations in the U.S., Canada, Spain, Mexico and Brazil. These<br />
programs empower groups of people with disabilities by making<br />
policy decisions for the access, use and appropriation of ICTs.<br />
Additionally, international experience shows that spread is also<br />
necessary for the production of digital information in the areas of<br />
education and entertainment, since in most countries and<br />
especially in the United States, this initiative is driven by the State<br />
in their quest to achieve greater competitiveness and human<br />
development of people with sensory impairments, so that there are<br />
two scenarios for people with sensory limitations, a first positive<br />
scenario in which that population can access a variety of digital<br />
content of the same quality as those in normal sensory conditions,<br />
thus reducing the information gap and capacity, and a second<br />
70<br />
scenario less favorable in this population remains excluded from<br />
the flow of ideas and information because they lack the means or<br />
knowledge accessing digital information.Finally, the inclusion of<br />
people with sensory disabilities is the only possibility of<br />
generating a real and effective exercise of the right to information<br />
of every citizen. Thus, governments have an obligation to<br />
implement public policies to help facilitate the use of ICTs<br />
independently to exercise their rights as independent persons with<br />
a real capacity to make their own decisions, thereby affecting<br />
collective decisions that allow them competition and active<br />
participation in democracy. However, the benefits of ICTs for<br />
people with sensory disabilities is not limited to purely civic and<br />
democratic roles, as technologies make everyday tasks easier for<br />
these individuals, which is achieved by a dynamic of inclusion<br />
that goes beyond the merely digital and reaches beyond the<br />
academic, social and family life of each person.<br />
5. REFERENCES<br />
[1] Brian D. Loader and Leigh Keeble, Challenging the digital<br />
divide? : A literature review of community informatics initiatives,<br />
JosephRowntree Foundation, Teesside University, 2004<br />
[2] Bueno Manuel. Definiciones y clasificaciones en torno a la<br />
discapacidad visual. La baja visión y la ceguera,2012.<br />
[3] Canadian Association of the Deaf. Statistics on Deaf<br />
Canadians, 2012.<br />
[5] DANE. Censo General, 2005<br />
[6] Gulati. Archana, Universal Service Obligation Fund´s Pilot<br />
Project Scheme For Access to ICTs And ICT Enabled Services for<br />
Persons with Disabilities in Rural India, 2011<br />
[7] INEGI. Censo de Población y Vivienda, 2010.<br />
[8] MengEe Wong and Libby Cohen. School, Family and other<br />
influences on assistive technology use: Access and challenges for<br />
students with visual impairment in Singapore, 2011.<br />
[9] Microsoft Corporation. Conducted by Forrester Research Inc.<br />
in 2003, The Wide Range of Abilities and Its Impact on Computer<br />
Technology, 2003<br />
[10] Observatorio de Sociedad, Gobierno y Tecnologías de<br />
Información. Revisión y análisis de los avances en alfabetización<br />
digital y apropiación TIC para población con discapacidad<br />
sensorial. 2011<br />
[11] OMS. Resumen Informe Mundial sobre la discapacidad.2011<br />
[12] MINTICS. Tecnologías de Comunicación para la población con<br />
discapacidad, 2009.<br />
[13] Pereira. Selau. Mecdaisy: Um Novo Espaço Virtual Para Os<br />
Deficientes Visuais No Brasil,2009<br />
[14] Silvera. Claudia. La alfabetización digital: una herramienta<br />
para alcanzar el desarrollo y la equidad en los países de América<br />
latina y el Caribe.2005.<br />
[15] Ramírez Leyva. Elsa Margarita. La lectura, Alfabetización en<br />
Información y Cultura de la Información,2007.<br />
[16] World Economic Forum. ISNEAD.The Global Information<br />
Technology Report 2010, 2011.Transformations 2.0. 2011.
E-Government Education at the Public Administration Departments<br />
in Turkey<br />
Cenay BABAOGLU<br />
Hacettepe University<br />
Department of Political Science and<br />
Public Administration<br />
Beytepe, Çankaya, Ankara-TURKEY<br />
+90 312 2978725<br />
cenaybabaoglu@hacettepe.edu.tr<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
This paper presents the main findings of an extensive investigation<br />
of the current status of undergraduate level e-government<br />
education at public administration departments in Turkey. In the<br />
study, online program curriculums were searched to determine the<br />
state of the e-government and ICT courses. Primary data were<br />
collected from lecturers via semi-structured interviews and a<br />
questionnaire which was applied to undergraduate public administration<br />
students who have attended e-government courses during<br />
the fall semester of 2011. Syllabi of the courses were also analyzed<br />
to determine the contents of the courses. In the light of these<br />
data, the current status, risks, future prospects, and diffusion of egovernment<br />
education at public administration departments were<br />
discussed within the limits of the presentation.<br />
Categories and Subject Descriptors<br />
K.3.2 [Computer and Information Science Education]: Curriculum,<br />
Information Science Education<br />
General Terms<br />
Human Factors.<br />
Keywords<br />
E-Government Education, Curriculum, Turkey, PA Departments,<br />
Public Administration.<br />
1. INTRODUCTION<br />
Governments spend considerable amount of resources in egovernment<br />
projects. The cost of these investments may be justified<br />
if one considers the benefits such as reduction of costs, increasing<br />
transparency, easier communication between the state<br />
and the citizens, improving effectiveness, or faster service delivery<br />
[7]. But, e-government projects entail risks as well as its advantages.<br />
Project failures and low user rates may hinder costly egovernment<br />
initiatives. Heeks’ [7] study which investigates the<br />
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for<br />
personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are<br />
not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies<br />
bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for<br />
components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored.<br />
Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to<br />
post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission<br />
and/or a fee.<br />
ICEGOV '12, October 22 - 25 2012, Albany, NY, USA<br />
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1200-4/12/10...$15.00<br />
H. Serkan AKILLI<br />
Nevsehir University<br />
Department of Public Administration<br />
Faculty of Economics and Administrative<br />
Sciences, Nevsehir, Turkey<br />
+90 384 2281000 (1534)<br />
h.serkanakilli@nevsehir.edu.tr<br />
71<br />
Mehmet Akif DEMIRCIOGLU<br />
Indiana University<br />
School of Public & Environmental Affairs<br />
1315 East Tenth Street, Bloomington,<br />
IN USA<br />
+1 812 8552457<br />
mdemirci@indiana.edu<br />
success levels of e-government projects in developing countries<br />
shows that only 15% of projects can be labeled successful while<br />
35% of the projects totally failed and other projects (50%) was<br />
just partially successful. The same failure scenarios and low citizen<br />
usage of e-government services are experienced in developed<br />
countries such as Australia, New Zealand, Netherlands or the UK,<br />
as well [8][12][21].<br />
The failures of e-government projects may stem from many intertwined<br />
reasons such as system design, inadequate infrastructure,<br />
social and organizational issues, public/private relationships or<br />
political factors. However, the focus of this study is on egovernment<br />
education, since lack of human capital is one of the<br />
most critical factors, which may bring success or failure in egovernment<br />
projects. Successful implication of e-government<br />
projects requires educational and training activities on a wide<br />
array of levels and dimensions. As a component of e-government<br />
education research agenda, this paper presents the main findings<br />
of an extensive investigation of the current status of undergraduate<br />
level e-government education at public administration departments<br />
in Turkey. In the following sections, an overview of egovernment<br />
in Turkey and e-government education is shortly<br />
discussed, the methodology of the study is explained, and the<br />
main findings are presented.<br />
2. LITERATURE REVIEW<br />
Turkey, as a candidate to the European Union (EU), and as a<br />
partner involved in e-government agenda of the union, has been<br />
eager to invest in e-government projects since the 1990s under E-<br />
Turkey, and E-Transformation Turkey programs. A single point<br />
access to e-government services was achieved in 2008 with the<br />
opening of the e-government gate (www.turkiye.gov.tr) and as of<br />
2010, 246 services were provided on-line by different government<br />
agencies. In 2010, the availability of 20 e-government services<br />
determined by the European Council was above the average of EU<br />
member and candidate states. Although the supply side of egovernment<br />
services is enough, there is urgent need to increase<br />
the level of use of these services by the citizens and a general<br />
need to develop e-readiness level of the society as a whole.<br />
Parallel to e-government investments, e-government researches in<br />
Turkey have been initiated by several government agencies with<br />
the support of a number of NGOs since the late 1990s. The first<br />
people working on e-government research were computer scientists<br />
and faculty from public administration departments were
involved later [22]. Several institutions are involved in egovernment<br />
research on organizational and technical level [14].<br />
“E-Government Research and Applications Center (EDMER)” in<br />
Middle East Technical University (METU) was opened in 2007<br />
and “Center on E-Government” (eDEM) in the Public Administration<br />
Institute for Turkey and Middle East (TODAIE), (a governmental<br />
institution to train bureaucrats and scholars in the field of<br />
public administration) was opened in 1999. More recently, several<br />
NGOs have also initiated studies about e-government and information<br />
society [14] [22].<br />
To sum up, although it is clear that e-government is a mature field<br />
of research, there is still need for wide-spread e-government training<br />
and education in Turkey since the efforts of the above mentioned<br />
institutions remain restricted in the face of mounting “demand<br />
side”. While lack of investment on educational and training<br />
activities about e-government may bring about disappointment in<br />
e-government projects, there seems to be a substantial gap in this<br />
field, both abroad and in Turkey. A number of reasons lie behind<br />
this withdrawal from such activities: service providers may see<br />
education and training services as extra costs that should be<br />
avoided, due to the complex and multidimensional nature of egovernment<br />
topics, difficulties arise when designing teaching<br />
programs, training programs for public employees may have<br />
limited time and reach a limited number of staff, or governments<br />
may be unwilling to pay for educational costs of large populations<br />
[6]. However as Janowski argues, especially the political leaders,<br />
government leaders, project managers, management staff, technical<br />
staff, service staff, businesses, citizens should have some<br />
training on e-government [9]. Thus, the role of higher education<br />
institutions as well as offering courses to the public becomes more<br />
important, since they have an opportunity to reach various types<br />
of recipients. Moreover, public administration graduates need to<br />
prepare today’s challenges and uncertainty which globalization<br />
and information technology trigger [18]. Since public administration<br />
systems are largely affected from surrounding technologic<br />
environment and e-government initiatives on both organizational<br />
and political levels, it would be appropriate to suggest that public<br />
administration departments should have a leading role in developing<br />
information technology and e-government curricula or update<br />
existing programs according to the needs and requirements of<br />
public organizations and the societies at large [3] [4] [11] [17].<br />
Thus, even before the emergence of the internet revolution, the<br />
importance of updating public administration programs to follow<br />
technological developments was emphasized by various writers,<br />
and the inadequacies in this field still remain problematic [10]<br />
[13] [15] [17]. Parallel to the diffusion of information technologies<br />
into the societies and the institutions, universities have initiated<br />
technology or e-government education programs on different<br />
levels that target students, public/private sector employees, social<br />
groups and specific topics and specialization areas [1][2].<br />
3. METHODOLOGY<br />
In this study, online program curriculums were searched to determine<br />
the state of the e-government and ICT courses in Turkey.<br />
Primary data were collected from lecturers via semi-structured<br />
interviews and a questionnaire which was applied to undergraduate<br />
public administration students who have attended egovernment<br />
courses during the fall semester of 2011. Syllabi of<br />
the courses were also analyzed to determine the contents of the<br />
courses. In the light of these data, the current status, risks, future<br />
prospects, and diffusion of e-government education at public<br />
72<br />
administration departments were discussed within the limits of the<br />
presentation.<br />
There are 68 public administration department in Turkey in 2012.<br />
Although all departments offer courses which aim to develop<br />
basic computer skills, such as office programs or web page design,<br />
only 14 department offer course which are directly about egovernment.<br />
Faculty members teaching relevant courses in these<br />
departments were determined, and semi-structured in-depth interviews<br />
were conducted with them. In these interviews, introduction<br />
process of relevant courses into the curricula was examined, and<br />
related factors were investigated. In addition, questions about the<br />
content of the courses were addressed. The development of egovernment<br />
studies and e-government courses have been asked to<br />
the faculty and their recommendations and predictions were compiled<br />
with the interviews. Syllabi of the courses were collected as<br />
secondary data. It was not possible to reach enough syllabi to use<br />
for content analysis, so 4 syllabi were used as subsidiary sources.<br />
In order to investigate the opinions of students about egovernment<br />
courses, a survey was conducted among undergraduate<br />
students of four PA departments offered e-government courses<br />
in Fall 2011. 266 students followed these courses during the stated<br />
period and 193 of 266 answered the questions. 59.7% (111) of<br />
these students were female, and 40.3% (75) were male. In total,<br />
186 (70% of the students) student questionnaires were used for<br />
analysis. The questionnaire included ten expressions about the<br />
reasons for choosing the course, course satisfaction, perceived<br />
advantage of taking this course, and opinions about the status of<br />
the course. They were asked to choose from one of five options<br />
about the expressions (From absolutely disagree to totally agree).<br />
The students were also asked to assign an importance rating (one<br />
being least important and seven being most important) to 22 student-familiar<br />
e-government topics, which reflect technical, theoretical,<br />
legal, organizational, and political aspects,<br />
4. FINDINGS<br />
In this section, the main findings of the study are presented with<br />
two sub-headings. The first sub-section gives information about<br />
the current status of e-government courses at PA departments, and<br />
discusses the inclusion of e-government courses into the curricula.<br />
The second sub-section deals with the education methods, course<br />
syllabi and the opinions of undergraduate students about egovernment<br />
courses. The findings of the study are discussed in the<br />
last section.<br />
4.1 E-Government Courses at PA Departments in<br />
Turkey<br />
As mentioned before, the interest in e-government investment and<br />
research does not seem to correspond to a similar interest in egovernment<br />
education at the public administration programs in<br />
Turkey. Since the number of PA departments which offer egovernment<br />
courses is low, understanding the way in which these<br />
courses diffuse into the curricula becomes important for future<br />
tracks. In a recent study Yildiz et al. have found that receiving<br />
graduate education or spending sabbatical studies in abroad are<br />
the most important factor to include public policy courses in the<br />
curriculum. Additionally, student exchange programs (particularly<br />
with the European countries) and second generation lecturers who<br />
have taken these courses in Turkey are also affecting the decision<br />
to add these courses in the curriculum.
A similar pattern can be observed about e-government courses.<br />
First reason of spread of e-government courses is about faculties’<br />
academic interests. Our research shows that e-government courses<br />
were included to the curricula mainly because of at least one<br />
faculty’s demand. If a faculty were interested in e-government or<br />
information and communication technologies, he/she demand to<br />
add these courses to curricula. Faculties, who received their MA<br />
or Ph.D. degrees in European or American universities, become<br />
another transfer agent for the e-government courses. Most of these<br />
received similar courses during their studies, and after the graduation<br />
they transferred the courses to Turkish universities. Faculty,<br />
who took these lessons, would be a new instrument for a secondary<br />
transfer, and it is the third reason for the spread of egovernment<br />
course, which could be seen above in Figure 1.<br />
Figure 1<br />
33%<br />
25%<br />
42%<br />
Academic Interest<br />
Transfer by Abroad<br />
Studied Faculty<br />
Secondary Transfer<br />
Although current lecturers of e-government courses are optimistic<br />
that these courses will be developed and core courses in the near<br />
future, we do not expect it due to existing traditions in PA Departments<br />
and lack of interest of academic staff. In terms of Rogers’<br />
diffusion of innovations, it could be claimed that inclusion of<br />
e-government courses are generally optional and personal choice<br />
[19]. The decision rests mostly on the interested lecturer or department<br />
chair that is responsible for updating the curricula. Some<br />
of the “early adapters” find it difficult to open or sustain the<br />
course which is included in the curriculum because of lack of<br />
academic staff or because this course was not really meant to be<br />
opened at all. In this case, the curriculum looks right, but the<br />
courses, in fact, only nominally exist. Thus, the course becomes a<br />
product of isomorphism rather than innovation.<br />
4.2 Content of the Courses and Students’ Opinions<br />
about E-Government Courses<br />
Looking at the contents of the course, e-government issues can be<br />
categorized, which are derived from interviews and syllabi. According<br />
to this data, Turkish e-government education includes<br />
these titles: Basic e-government literature, e-government theories,<br />
e-government applications, e-government policies, e-governance,<br />
e-participation, e-democracy, e-municipality and problems of egovernment.<br />
These titles are used in almost every university.<br />
Three of ten faculties, named the topics; cyber crimes and esignature<br />
as basic, and two others named as subtopic. An advising<br />
report of UNESCO, which is prepared for the African countries,<br />
includes almost the same topics. [20] E-government courses<br />
generally begin with theoretical backgrounds and basic concepts.<br />
Towards the middle of the term, they turned to e-government<br />
applications.<br />
If we look to the students’ opinions about the courses, some of<br />
would be outshining. The ranking means and the standard deviations<br />
of the ratings are presented in Table 1. Test results show that<br />
there is a significant difference among the departments with respect<br />
to the importance rating of e-signature, theories of egovernment,<br />
properties of the information society, system design,<br />
e-democracy, e-trade/e-business, e-government experiences in<br />
Turkey, success/failure factors and internet penal law.<br />
73<br />
Table 1: Stated Importance Ratings of E-Government Topics<br />
(Students, N: 186)<br />
TOPIC MEAN STD.DEV.<br />
Information Security 6,102 1,4576<br />
Right to Internet Access 6,003 1,2884<br />
Right to Information 5,944 1,3210<br />
E-Government and Public Adm. 5,795 1,5052<br />
E-Signature 5,706 1,6790<br />
Theories of E-Government 5,116 1,5277<br />
Public/Private Partnership 5,050 1,5007<br />
Technological Dependency 4,596 1,8363<br />
Significant difference among the departments could be explained<br />
by the interests of the lecturers and could be considered as natural.<br />
However this may also carry the risk of “speci-centrism” as Yildiz<br />
et al. have defined in their own study [23].<br />
It could be argued that the answers of the students are promising<br />
about the sustainability of the e-government courses. When the<br />
options “Totally Agree” ve “Agree” are combined, it is found that<br />
79,6% of the students asserts positive opinions about interest in<br />
the topics of the course. On the other hand, 61,3% percent of the<br />
students think that the e-government course has provided advantages<br />
for their careers. Perceived advantage of taking egovernment<br />
courses would be another factor in development of egovernment<br />
courses in Turkey. There is a high level of satisfaction<br />
(81,1%) about the courses and 79% of the respondents says<br />
they would recommend this course to other students. When the<br />
responses for the above mentioned expressions are considered<br />
together, it could be argued that e-government courses would<br />
attract enough students if they were included in the curriculums of<br />
the departments which have not opened a course about egovernment.<br />
5. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION<br />
The findings present a mixed case. E-government is developing<br />
fast in Turkey, and research on e-government draws significant<br />
attention. But, currently, the number of public administration<br />
departments which offer courses about e-government may not be<br />
considered as adequate. The opinions of lecturers and students are<br />
promising about the e-government courses in the future, yet lack<br />
of interest on academics’ side may hinder the development of<br />
these courses. Proliferation of e-government courses in Turkey is<br />
needed, but this is not without risks. These courses have been<br />
spreading among PA departments in the last five years. Although<br />
the courses which aim to improve basic computer skills could be<br />
traced to 1990s, first e-government courses in Turkey date back to<br />
2006. Currently, 22% of the departments have e-government<br />
courses in their curricula. At this point the problem of institutional<br />
isomorphism becomes critical [5]. As Park and Park acknowledge,<br />
the curricula of leading universities in South Korea were followed<br />
by other institutions and that there is possibility of normative<br />
isomorphism [16]. In a similar vein, latest developments in the<br />
field of higher education in Turkey, especially Bologna process,<br />
have created coercive and imitative institutionalization among PA<br />
departments. This isomorphic trend may end up in curricula which<br />
reflects “the politically right” but which do not correspond to the<br />
real resources of the departments that are required to sustain IT<br />
and e-government related courses. As a conclusion, it is important<br />
to emphasize the need to build necessary resources and skills
among lecturers and students parallel to (better before) diffusion<br />
of e-government courses into core PA curricula in Turkey.<br />
In this study we have focused on on e-government education at<br />
the undergraduate departments of public administration in Turkey.<br />
Our researches, however, have found that other departments and<br />
schools do not offer e-government courses, but similar courses<br />
such as information technology. Future studies may focus on<br />
graduate programs teaching e-government courses at the public<br />
administration department. In addition, since e-government studies<br />
also include practical sides, other scholars may focus on practical<br />
aspects of e-government research and education. As authors,<br />
we consider that it will be very useful if both theoretical and practical<br />
sides of e-government would be examined and compared.<br />
6. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS<br />
We would like to thank Haydar EFE, Veysel EREN, M. Kemal<br />
ÖKTEM, Özgür ÖNDER, Mustafa ÖZTÜRK, Naci SEVKAL,<br />
Nur ŞAT, and Ali ŞAHİN for their valuable helps. And also special<br />
thanks to ICEGOV 2012 organization committee, two anonymous<br />
reviewers and Mete YILDIZ, for their valuable comments<br />
and suggestions.<br />
7. REFERENCES<br />
[1] Augustinaitis, A.and Petrauskas, R. Master Studies on e-<br />
Governance Administration: The First Experience in Lithuania.<br />
In R. Traunmüller, (Ed.), EGOV 2004, Springer<br />
LNCS#3183, Heidelberg, 2004, 438-445.<br />
[2] Biasiotti, M.A. and Nannucci, R. Teaching e-Government in<br />
Italy. In R. Traunmüller, (Ed.), EGOV 2004, Springer<br />
LNCS#3183, Heidelberg, 2004, 460-463.<br />
[3] Chiu, S. Understanding the Adoption and Diffusion of Information<br />
Technology Related Curricula: Multiple Theoretical<br />
Perspectives. Ph.D. Thesis, Indiana University, 2007.<br />
[4] Dawes, S. Training the IT-Savvy Public Manager: Priorities<br />
and Strategies for Public Management Education. Journal of<br />
Public Affairs Education, 10, 1 (Jan., 2004), 5-17.<br />
[5] Di Maggio, P. J., and Powell, W. W. Iron cage revisited:<br />
Institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational<br />
fields, American Sociological Review, 48 (1983).<br />
147-160.<br />
[6] Garson, D. Public Information Technology and E-<br />
Governance: Managing the Virtual State. Jones and Bartlett<br />
Pub, NC, 2006.<br />
[7] Heeks, R. Most eGovernment-for-Development Projects<br />
Fail: How Can Risks Be Reduced?. iGovernment Working<br />
Papers , paper no.14. Institute for Development Policy and<br />
Management, University of Manchester, 2003.<br />
[8] Gauld, R., Goldfinch, S., and Horsburgh, S. Do They Want<br />
It? Do They Use It? The “Demand-Side” of e-Government in<br />
Australia and New Zealand. Government Information Quarterly,<br />
27, 2 (March, 2010), 177-186.<br />
[9] Janowski, T. Conceptualizing Electronic Governance Education.<br />
45th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences,(2012)<br />
2269-2278<br />
[10] Kiel, D. Information Systems Education in Master Programs<br />
in Public Affairs and Administration. Public Administration<br />
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Review, 46, Special Issue: Public Management Information<br />
Systems (Nov., 1986), 590-594.<br />
[11] Kim S. and Layne K. Making the Connection: E-Government<br />
and Public Administration Education. Journal of Public Affairs<br />
Education, Vol.4, No.4 (Oct., 2001), 229-240.<br />
[12] Kolsaker, A. and Kelley, L. Citizens’ Attitudes towards e-<br />
Government and e-Governance: a UK Study. International<br />
Journal of Public Sector Management, 21, 7 (2008), 723-<br />
738.<br />
[13] Kraemer, K.L. and Northrop, A. Curriculum Recommendations<br />
for Public Management Education in Computing: An<br />
Update. Public Administration Review, 49, 5 (Sep.-Oct.,<br />
1989), 447-453.<br />
[14] Medeni, T., Mustafa S., Tunc, M., Asim B., and Merih T.<br />
Developing an E-Government Education Programme Curriculum<br />
Based on Knowledge Management Paradigms to Support<br />
Institutional Transformation. International Journal of<br />
eBusiness and e-Government Studies. 2009. 1(2): 35-47<br />
ISSN: 2146-0744 (Online)<br />
[15] Northrop, A. Challenge of Teaching Information Technology<br />
in Public Administration Graduate Programs. In D. Garson<br />
(ed.), Information Technology and Computer Applications in<br />
Public Administration. IGI Publishing, PA, 1999, 7-22.<br />
[16] Park, H. M. and Park. H. Diffusing Information Technology<br />
Education in Korean Undergraduate Public Affairs and Administration<br />
Programs: Driving Forces and Challenging Issues,<br />
Journal of Public Affairs Education, 2006, 12(4): 537-<br />
555.<br />
[17] Pavlichev, A. The E-Government Challenge for Public Administration<br />
Education. In A. Pavlichev, D. Garson (eds.),<br />
Digital Government: Principles and Best Practices, IGI, PA,<br />
2004, 276-289.<br />
[18] Perry, James L. A Symposium on Transformations in Public<br />
Affairs Education: Challenges, Progress, and Strategies.<br />
Journal of Public Affairs Education, 2001, 7(4): 209-211.<br />
[19] Rogers, E. Diffusion of Innovations. Free Press, NY, 2003.<br />
[20] UNESCO, Curriculum Guide on E-governance for African<br />
Government Institution, Available from:<br />
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[21] Van Deursen, A., van Dijk, J., and Ebbers, W. Why E-<br />
Government Usage Lags Behind: Explaining the Gap Between<br />
Potential and Actual Usage of Electronic Public Services<br />
in the Netherlands. Lecture Notes in Computer Science,<br />
4084 (2006), 269-280.<br />
[22] Yazici, Ali. Teaching and Research on E-Government. International<br />
Conference on eGovernment and eGovernance. 11-<br />
12 March 2010. Antalya, Turkey.<br />
[23] Yildiz, M., Demircioglu, M.A., and Babaoglu, C. Teaching<br />
Public Policy to Undergraduate Students: Issues, Experiences,<br />
and Lessons in Turkey. Journal of Public Affairs Education,<br />
17, 3, 2011, 343-365
e-Government in Latin American Countries. Are they<br />
Building National Policies with a Regional Perspective?<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
Are the Latin American countries building their national e-<br />
Government policies with a regional perspective? The hypothesis<br />
of this paper is that international organizations are shaping, at<br />
least in some extent, the ideas, priorities, and initiatives<br />
implemented by the governments of this emergent region.<br />
Institutional theory suggests that policy transfer implies a process<br />
of institutionalization in the national public sector and public<br />
policies of specific logics of action, values, routines, rules, etc., in<br />
general, defined by international organizations, through diverse<br />
policy instruments. This paper presents a documentary analysis of<br />
policy reports from this type of organizations (i.e. Inter-American<br />
Development Bank…) devoted to foster e-Government in Latin<br />
America. Also it descriptively analyses statistical data about e-<br />
Government in the region. Thus, this paper studies the most<br />
important ideas, priorities, and values that these international key<br />
drivers use to disseminate e-Government policies in the region.<br />
Finally, this work debates their implications using institutional<br />
theory, and gives ideas for future research.<br />
Categories and Subject Descriptors<br />
K.4.1 [Public Policy Issues]: Transborder Data Flow<br />
General Terms<br />
Management, Measurement, Design, Human Factors, Theory<br />
Keywords<br />
Electronic Government, International Organizations, Policy<br />
Transfer, Latin America, Interoperability<br />
1. INTRODUCTION<br />
The diffusion of Information and Communication Technologies<br />
(ICTs) in public administration represents a relatively recent<br />
phenomenon in Latin American (LatAm) countries. This paper is<br />
determined to shed light on the following question: Are the Latin<br />
American countries building their national e-Government policies<br />
with a regional perspective? This general question is based on the<br />
importance that during the last years have gained the ideas,<br />
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for<br />
personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are<br />
not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies<br />
bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for<br />
components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored.<br />
Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to<br />
post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission<br />
and/or a fee.<br />
ICEGOV '12, October 22 - 25 2012, Albany, NY, United States, NY, USA<br />
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1200-4/12/10…$15.00.<br />
J. Ignacio Criado<br />
Department of Political Science<br />
Universidad Autónoma de Madrid<br />
ignacio.criado@uam.es<br />
75<br />
values, priorities, and projects mostly sponsored by international,<br />
inter-governmental, or transnational organizations acting as key<br />
drivers of e-Government developments within the LatAm region<br />
[1,4]. This paper assumes the existence of a policy transfer<br />
process of these ideas, values, priorities, and projects across the<br />
LatAm governments.<br />
This study is rooted in institutional theory literature. Institutional<br />
theory has tackle with the interplay of ICTs and public<br />
administration, and it has been of growing interest for e-<br />
Government scholars during the last decade [6,7,8]. Institutional<br />
theory suggest that policy transfer within a region of the World<br />
implies a process of institutionalization in the national public<br />
sector and public policies of specific logics of action, values,<br />
routines, rules, etc., in general, defined by international,<br />
intergovernmental, or transnational organizations, through diverse<br />
instruments [5]. However, this is not the same to convergence,<br />
harmonization, or political integration; since there is a difference<br />
between a process and its consequences. The next pages put more<br />
emphasis on mechanisms of policy transfer in the field of e-<br />
Government, and how these mechanisms work (processes), than<br />
on final outputs, or qualitative differences across national public<br />
policies and administrations (results).<br />
Methodologically, this paper presents a documentary analysis of<br />
policy reports from international, intergovernmental, and<br />
transnational organizations (i.e. Organization of American States,<br />
Inter-American Development Bank…) dedicated to foster e-<br />
Government in LatAm during the last ten years. It also analyses<br />
statistical data about e-Government developments in the region.<br />
Thus, this paper assembles qualitative and quantitative methods to<br />
focus on the study of the most salient ideas, priorities, and values<br />
of key drivers in the enhancement of e-Government policies.<br />
The following section presents the development of e-Government<br />
readiness from a comparative perspective. This overview needs to<br />
be brought forward by giving an approximation to the drivers of<br />
the e-Government agenda in the LatAm region, notably intergovernmental,<br />
international, and transnational organizations<br />
devoted to formulate, design, fund, and implement projects,<br />
initiatives, or regulations within this field. Finally, the conclusion<br />
section debates the contents of the paper, research implications<br />
and limitations. At the same time, it discusses the institutional<br />
implications of the policy transfer process related to e-<br />
Government that it is supposed to be occurring within this<br />
emergent and vibrant region.
2. COMPARATIVE E-GOVERNMENT IN<br />
LATIN AMERICA<br />
Comparative data about the evolution of e-Government in LatAm<br />
is available from different sources. This section pinpoints some<br />
dimensions of the deployment of ICTs and the Internet within the<br />
countries of the region (e-Government demand-side). Also, it<br />
offers data about the United Nations e-Government readiness<br />
report (e-Government supply-side). Overall, the picture of the e-<br />
Government (potential) demand-side in LatAm resembles<br />
disparities if one look at in a country-by-country basis (see Table<br />
1). For example, there exist important differences among the<br />
societies of the region regarding to the access to the Internet. On<br />
the one hand, a group of experienced countries lead the Internet<br />
access in the region with more than 50% of users each. This group<br />
concentrates almost 30% of the Internet demand of the region. In<br />
second place, a group of six countries has not yet reached the<br />
barrier of 50% of the population connected (with 30% at least).<br />
Here, Mexico and Brazil are the most populated countries in the<br />
region, and they accumulate more than 50% of the Internet users.<br />
Finally, a group of less experienced societies shows the lowest<br />
rates of Internet access in the region (less than 30% of Internet<br />
users). This last group still exhibits a significant lack in terms of<br />
basic accessibility to the Internet, exemplifying the most negative<br />
side of the digital divide.<br />
Table 1. e-Government (potential) demand-side in Latin<br />
American countries<br />
Internet users<br />
(latest data,<br />
2011) (*)<br />
Penetration<br />
(%<br />
population)<br />
Broadband<br />
subscribers<br />
(2010) (**)<br />
Household<br />
use of<br />
computers<br />
(%) (***)<br />
Mobile<br />
phone<br />
subscriptions<br />
(per 100<br />
inhabitants)<br />
(2010)<br />
Argentina 27.568.000 66.0 9.56 21.9 141.79<br />
Bolivia 1.225.000 12.1 0.97 17.1 72.30<br />
Brazil 75.982.000 37.4 7.23 30.9 104.10<br />
Chile 9.254.423 54.8 10.45 33.1 116.00<br />
Colombia 22.538.000 50.4 5.66 22.8 93.76<br />
Costa Rica 2.000.000 43.7 6.19 33.9 65.14<br />
Cuba 1.605.000 14.5 0.03 2.1 8.91<br />
Dominican 4.116.870 41.3 3.64 13.0 89.58<br />
Republic<br />
Ecuador 3.352.000 22.3 1.36 22.8 102.18<br />
El Salvador 1.035.940 17.1 2.83 10.9 124.34<br />
Guatemala 2.280.000 16.5 1.80 10.7 125.57<br />
Honduras 958.500 11.8 1.00 10.1 125.06<br />
Mexico 34.900.000 30.7 9.98 25.7 80.55<br />
Nicaragua 600.000 10.6 0.82 6.3 65.14<br />
Panama 959.900 27.7 7.84 16.9 184.72<br />
Paraguay 1.104.700 17.1 0.61 14.9 91.64<br />
Peru 9.157.800 31.3 3.14 16.2 100.13<br />
Uruguay 1.855.000 56.1 11.37 38.8 131.71<br />
Venezuela 10.421.557 37.7 5.37 14.6 96.20<br />
Total/Mean 212.401.030 36.7<br />
Sources: (*) Internet World Stats (2011). Available:<br />
http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm. Access data: September 1st 2011. (**)<br />
ITU. Available: http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/icteye/Indicators/Indicators.aspx#. Access<br />
data: September 1st 2011. (***) CEPAL. Estimations are based on household surveys<br />
for each country between 2006 and 2008 (Argentine is an estimation of 2001, last year<br />
with household survey information). Available: http://www.eclac.cl/cgibin/getprod.asp?xml=/socinfo/noticias/paginas/6/34246/P34246.xml&xsl=/socinfo/tpl/p<br />
18f.xsl&base=/socinfo/tpl/top-bottom.xsl. Access data: September 1st 2011.<br />
This picture of the e-Government (potential) demand-side requires<br />
attention to other data (see Table 1). The use of personal<br />
computing is an indicator of the extension of the traditional device<br />
to measure technological literacy, and to access the Internet. In<br />
general, data offer low rates in all the countries studied, ranging<br />
from almost 40% in Uruguay to 6.3% and 2.1% in Nicaragua and<br />
76<br />
Cuba. These data contrast with the access to mobile telephones in<br />
the region, which is remarkably higher in most of the cases. Here,<br />
governments may see an opportunity to facilitate the access to the<br />
e-Government services through mobile devices, regarding to their<br />
growing level of acceptance, including those cases with more<br />
limited Internet social penetration. Besides, broadband<br />
connections facilitate the access to the most sophisticated services<br />
available in the Internet, including electronic commerce, live<br />
video and music streaming, or transactional interactions with<br />
governmental agencies. Nonetheless the diffusion is very limited<br />
in all the countries of the region, with only two cases (Uruguay<br />
and Chile) with more than 10% of broadband subscribers.<br />
On the other hand, it is also important the study of the e-<br />
Government supply-side in the region (see Table 2). The most<br />
interesting conclusion of this comparative analysis of the UN e-<br />
Government readiness index is that in LatAm countries the online<br />
service delivery index is more developed than the general e-<br />
Government readiness index. In other words, the supply-side of e-<br />
Government (on-line service delivery) has been more expanded<br />
than the demand-side (equipment and digital education) in the<br />
countries of the region. This seems to be clearly the case of<br />
Colombia or Chile, and it is the same situation in other less<br />
developed including El Salvador or Dominican Republic.<br />
Table 2. United Nations e-Government readiness index and<br />
on-line service delivery in Latin America<br />
On-line service delivery e-Government readiness<br />
Ranking Index Ranking Index<br />
position 2012 2012 position 2012 2012<br />
Argentina 61 0.5294 56 0.6228<br />
Bolivia 97 0.4118 106 0.4678<br />
Brazil 32 0.6732 59 0.6167<br />
Chile 24 0.7516 39 0.6769<br />
Colombia 16 0.8341 43 0.6572<br />
Costa Rica 69 0.4967 77 0.5397<br />
Cuba 129 0.3072 110 0.4488<br />
Dominican Republic 57 0.5359 89 0.5130<br />
Ecuador 84 0.4575 102 0.4869<br />
El Salvador 32 0.6732 74 0.5513<br />
Guatemala 81 0.4641 112 0.4390<br />
Honduras 100 0.3791 117 0.4341<br />
Mexico 28 0.7320 55 0.6240<br />
Nicaragua 125 0.3137 130 0.3621<br />
Panama 82 0.4641 66 0.5733<br />
Paraguay 85 0.4575 104 0.4802<br />
Peru 63 0.5163 82 0.5230<br />
Uruguay 53 0.5490 50 0.6315<br />
Venezuela 76 0.4837 71 0.5585<br />
Source: United Nations. Available:<br />
http://www.unpan.org/egovkb/global_reports/08report.htm. Access data: Sep. 5th 2011.<br />
The analysis offers conclusions from a comparative point of view.<br />
One of them is that the region experiences the digital divide<br />
phenomenon, due to the marginal access to the technologies<br />
across important groups of citizens, still out of the demand side.<br />
At the same time, it seems to be that governments of the region<br />
have invested their resources in the supply-side of e-Government,<br />
while less efforts have been devoted to improve the citizens<br />
access and literacy (demand-side). In order to understand why this<br />
policy frame has been so successful, one may suggest that this is a<br />
consequence of political decisions at national level. Conversely,<br />
one may support that some type of policy transfer process has<br />
been activated within this region. This second assumption is<br />
studied in the next section.
3. REGIONAL DRIVERS OF THE E-<br />
GOVERNMENT AGENDA<br />
This section pinpoints the common efforts to develop e-<br />
Government from a regional perspective, notably coming from<br />
international, intergovernmental, or transnational organizations<br />
devoted to formulate, design, fund, and implement projects,<br />
initiatives, or regulations in this field. In doing so, we look at the<br />
priorities, areas, and the type of projects enhanced by these<br />
regional actors and organizations during the last years. This<br />
analysis facilitates the understanding of how the e-Government<br />
development within a region with very different administrative<br />
realities has tended to share some common policy frames. In this<br />
endeavor, some institutions like the CEPAL (United Nations<br />
Economic Commission for Latin America), CLAD (Latin<br />
American Center for Developing Administration), IDB (Inter-<br />
American Development Bank), OAS (Organization of American<br />
States), among others, have played a prominent role in fulfilling<br />
regional approaches to build up e-Government.<br />
One of the first regional definitions of e-Government derived<br />
from the Ibero-American Chart for Electronic Government (Carta<br />
Iberoamericana de Gobierno Electrónico) (ICEG) [3]. The<br />
definition of e-Government refers to the ‘use of ICTs in public<br />
administration to enhance the information and services offered to<br />
the citizens, to support public management efficacy and efficiency,<br />
and to improve the transparency of public sector and the<br />
participation of the citizens’ [3:7]. This is important while<br />
different country definitions and approaches to e-Government<br />
have been rooted in similar principles. Other recent efforts have<br />
emerged from the CLAD group of countries, i.e., the Ibero-<br />
American Interoperability Framework, the Ibero-American Model<br />
of Pubic Software for e-Government, or the Ibero-American<br />
Framework for Social Electronic Identification. Undoubtedly,<br />
these official documents have been cited and used in national<br />
strategies and blueprints, and they still provide shared guidelines<br />
fostering e-Government in the region.<br />
Other sources of regional influence and vision for the<br />
development of e-Government in LatAm have derived from the<br />
eLAC strategies. eLAC is a regional strategy for the development<br />
of Information Society (IS) from a harmonized perspective, with<br />
the support of CEPAL, using ICTs as instruments for economic<br />
development and social inclusion. Initially, it was endorsed in<br />
2005 in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) as a long-term vision (until 2015)<br />
with short terms milestones (eLac 2007 and eLac 2010), in line<br />
with the Millenimum Development goals and those of the IS<br />
World Summit, which adopted concrete qualitative and<br />
quantitative goals to be achieved, also in the field of e-<br />
Government [1]. In general, the e-Government section of eLAC<br />
2015 fosters the diffusion of governmental agencies on the web<br />
and the sophistication of electronic services on-line [2]. This set<br />
of goals gives a sense of common ideas, values, and priorities<br />
within the diversity of the region. Another key aspect is the eLAC<br />
2015 focus on integration, interoperability, common standards,<br />
and collaborative work in the region.<br />
An archetype instrument derived from eLAC 2015 is the creation<br />
of the Network of e-Government Leaders of Latin America and<br />
the Caribbean (REDGEALC). REDGEALC has promoted the<br />
collaboration of LatAm governments from a technical point of<br />
view. This network of national experts acts as a forum to boost e-<br />
Government in the region, but also as an institutional mechanism<br />
to enforce, even informally, the policy transfer process in the<br />
77<br />
field. REDGEALC actions, meetings, and projects are funded by<br />
international organizations like the IDB or OAS, and it is intended<br />
to deepen the technical collaboration among the units devoted to<br />
manage national e-Government policies and strategies within the<br />
countries of the region. At the same, REDGEALC has expanded a<br />
network of key players, less political and more administrative,<br />
putting together a pool of middle-level managers involved in<br />
fostering e-Government in the region. One of the most remarkable<br />
projects of REDGEALC is eGobex, a common tool for sharing e-<br />
Government knowledge and applications at national, regional, and<br />
local layers (see: http://www.egobex.net/home/en/). This platform<br />
of solutions is based on different topics, among others, electronic<br />
citizen services, document management, e-justice, m-government,<br />
human resources management, e-procurement, or e-health.<br />
eGobex also facilitates other tools by facilitating the exchange of<br />
experiences among the public administrations of the region,<br />
providing a pool of experts in different aspects of e-Government,<br />
or offering virtual training for practitioners. Also, news and<br />
comments about developments of e-Government in the LatAm<br />
region are also provided by this shared digital platform.<br />
In sum, eLAC 2015 guidelines, REDGEALC network, as well as<br />
CEPAL, and other abovementioned international and<br />
intergovernmental institutions (CLAD, OAS, etc.), and the<br />
instruments behind them, play the role of framing this policy field,<br />
targeting the type of e-Government actions that need to be<br />
enhanced, adopted, funded, and implemented by national public<br />
administrations of the region. This group of instruments operates<br />
as policy carriers, or policy transfer instruments. In some cases<br />
they proceed as coercive mechanisms, while they can impose<br />
views about what type of projects will be funded. In other cases,<br />
they frame with ideas and rationales behind the strategies to foster<br />
e-Government nationally. Whatever the case, it is clear that this<br />
process has been, and it is, promoted within the LatAm region.<br />
4. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION<br />
This paper has explored the most salient aspects of the e-<br />
Government policy transfer process within the countries of<br />
LatAm. The question motivating this study is whether or not Latin<br />
American countries are building their national e-Government<br />
policies with a regional perspective. The preliminary assumption<br />
of this paper is that some international, intergovernmental, and<br />
transnational organizations are shaping, at least in some extent,<br />
the ideas, priorities, and initiatives implemented by the<br />
governments of this region of the World. The analysis of previous<br />
sections suggests the verification of this hypothesis.<br />
Consequently, one may support the idea that e-Government in<br />
LatAm may exemplify a policy transfer process.<br />
Overall, one may say that e-Government policy ideas and frames<br />
in LatAm countries derive from the abovementioned international,<br />
inter-governmental, and transnational organizations. These actors<br />
have played a growing role within an emergent policy field (e-<br />
Government), in which a number of developing countries have put<br />
their expectations to modernize their public sectors. What is more,<br />
in developing countries e-Government projects are funded by<br />
these organizations. This facilitates defining priorities, objectives,<br />
and even in some cases, applications, platforms, and vendors<br />
involved in the design, and implementation processes at national<br />
level. Nonetheless, further investigation will be needed in the<br />
future to identify in detail how the regional diffusion of ideas is<br />
implemented in specific countries, and to what extent
governments can innovate or be disconnected from the general<br />
ideas and priorities coming from this group of regional key<br />
drivers.<br />
In the LatAm region, different mechanisms have been oriented to<br />
enhance the supply-side of e-Government. This process has<br />
resulted in policy-makers focused on developing sophisticated<br />
Internet portals and e-services, more than the provision of training<br />
and digital literacy among the citizens. This conclusion is derived<br />
from the importance of supply-side elements within national e-<br />
Government policies, as well as from the analysis of data<br />
provided in previous sections. Besides, it is worth noting the most<br />
important areas of e-Government enhanced, i.e. e-procurement<br />
portals, tax and social security agencies on-line, and more recently<br />
electronic mechanisms for identification, interoperability<br />
schemes, or social media tools for public sector organizations [4].<br />
All of them are inextricably linked with these common beliefs,<br />
mostly a consequence of a techno-centric, e-commerce oriented,<br />
and new public management style of e-Government development.<br />
This study is rooted on institutional theory and policy transfer<br />
literature. Regarding to the previous analysis, this study shows<br />
that international, intergovernmental, and transnational<br />
organizations do not exert adaptive pressure in national states<br />
(‘hard’ mechanisms); and that therefore framing or ‘soft’<br />
mechanisms of policy transfer have characterized e-Government<br />
[5]. In other words, they have promoted e-Government in the<br />
nations of the region through non-coercive processes based on the<br />
will of the participants (i.e. eLAC 2015 goals, CLAD conferences,<br />
REDGEALC groups, etc.) to agree, by way of collective<br />
deliberation, on procedural norms, modes of regulation and<br />
common political objectives and, at the same time, to preserve the<br />
diversity of national and even local experiences.<br />
This type of policy transfer process has created convergence<br />
around paradigms, or a policy frame. This occurs when national<br />
jurisdictions accept new practices, actions and routines inspired<br />
by the international, intergovernmental, and transnational<br />
organizations involved, within an incremental adjustment<br />
process of current domestic institutions. In other words, the<br />
cognitive dimension within this type of intergovernmental<br />
coordination process operates through knowledge-sharing [7,8],<br />
mutual learning or exchange of best practices. In the case of e-<br />
Government policy, the main purpose of the instruments<br />
described throughout the previous section has been to encourage<br />
a comparison of situations across all countries, seeking to share<br />
some mutual representations, opening the road to common<br />
perceptions of political priorities and goals, and enlarging the<br />
variety of candidate alternatives, as a result of the exchange of<br />
good practice (i.e. REDGEALC).<br />
On the other hand, the organizations involved in the policy<br />
transfer process also delivered legitimacy and, less commonly,<br />
solutions to national authorities responsible for e-Government<br />
policies. By the mid of the previous decade, the majority of<br />
LatAm governments perceived this area as a new policy field,<br />
and recognized the extreme importance of the Internet, web sites<br />
and interaction with citizens using digital means. In this context,<br />
eLAC strategy, the CLAD policy formulations, or OAS<br />
initiatives emerged as a source of legitimacy for national<br />
78<br />
governments, as a consequence of the uncertainty about the<br />
future of e-Government. In some cases, they provided solutions<br />
for emergent challenges, altering the cognitive perceptions of<br />
problems in national policy arenas. The logic behind this is<br />
based on the conclusion that national administrations that do so<br />
increase their legitimacy, and their acceptance in society,<br />
independently of the immediate efficacy of practices and<br />
procedures.<br />
Further research will be required to conclude that a process of<br />
policy transfer has operated successfully during the following<br />
years promoting e-Government implementation in LatAm<br />
countries. The next steps of this study will be oriented (a) to<br />
deepen the extent of this process of policy transfer within the<br />
different countries of the region; (b) to understand the<br />
motivations behind the different levels of acceptance of this<br />
process of policy transferability; and (c) to identify the nations<br />
more prone to develop successfully their own e-Government<br />
agendas within the region. This paper aims at providing the<br />
basis for the future consolidation of this ambitious research<br />
agenda.<br />
5. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS<br />
This study has been funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy<br />
and Competitiveness (project CSO2009-09169).<br />
6. REFERENCES<br />
[1] CEPAL. (2010a). Monitoring of the Plan of Action eLAC<br />
2010: Advances and Challenges of the Information Society in<br />
Latin America and the Caribbean. Lima, November 21-23th.<br />
[2] CEPAL. (2010b). Plan of Action for the Information and<br />
Knowledge Society in Latin American and the Caribbean<br />
(eLAC 2015). Lima, November 21-23th.<br />
[3] CLAD. (2007). Carta Iberoamericana de Gobierno<br />
Electrónico. Caracas: Centro Latinoamericano de<br />
Administración para el Desarrollo.<br />
[4] Criado, J. I., et al. (2011). ‘Interoperabilidad de Gobierno<br />
electrónico en Iberoamérica’. Reforma y Democracia 50:75-<br />
114.<br />
[5] Criado, J. I. (2009). ‘Europeanization of e-Government<br />
Policy. Institutional Mechanisms and Implications for Public<br />
Sector Innovation’. Information Polity 14: 299-314.<br />
[6] Gil-García, J. R. (2012). Enacting Electronic Government<br />
Success. New York: Springer.<br />
[7] March J. G. & J. P. Olsen, Rediscovering Institutions: the<br />
Organizational Basis of Politics, New York: Free Press,<br />
1989.<br />
[8] Scott W. R. & J. W. Meyer, The Organization of Societal<br />
Sectors, in The New Institutionalism in Organizational<br />
Analysis, W. W. Powell & P. J. DiMaggio (eds.), Chicago:<br />
University of Chicago Press, 1991, pp. 108-140.
Lyudmila Bershadskaya<br />
e-Gov Center, Analytic<br />
V.O., Birzhevaya line, 14, office 270<br />
199034, St.Petersburg, Russia<br />
+7812-457-1796<br />
analytics@egov-center.ru<br />
e-Government in Russia: Is or Seems?<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
Electronic governance has received much interest worldwide and<br />
a significant amount of attention and money is being put into<br />
making e-governance a reality. Proper assessment of egovernance<br />
projects gives us crucial information on the kinds of<br />
changes needed in order to make them successful.<br />
International ratings are extremely important in relation to<br />
comparing the achievements of different countries, analysing their<br />
experiences and making decisions about further development. On<br />
the other hand, a country’s ranking position forms or adjusts the<br />
world’s attitude toward this country.<br />
This article discusses the possible problem when a high position<br />
in such ranking becomes an aim in itself and determines the<br />
misdirection of e-Governance development – in this, the case we<br />
have chosen to study is Russia.<br />
Categories and Subject Descriptors<br />
K.4 COMPUTERS AND SOCIETY; K.4.1 Public Policy Issues;<br />
K.4.3 Organizational Impacts; K.5.2 Governmental Issues; K.6.1<br />
Project and People Management - Strategic information systems<br />
planning<br />
General Terms<br />
Management, Measurement<br />
Keywords<br />
E-Government, Public Policy, Goals, Ranking<br />
1. INTRODUCTION<br />
The assessment of e-government development held by the<br />
Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations<br />
in 2012 [1] showed that the Russian Federation (hereinafter RF or<br />
Russia) has achieved outstanding success and raised its rating<br />
from 59th position in 2010 to 27th place in 2011.<br />
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for<br />
personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are<br />
not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies<br />
bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for<br />
components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored.<br />
Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to<br />
post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission<br />
and/or a fee.<br />
ICEGOV '12, October 22 - 25 2012, Albany, NY, USA<br />
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1200-4/12/10...$15.00<br />
Andrei Chugunov<br />
e-Gov Center, Director, PhD<br />
V.O., Birzhevaya line, 14, office 270<br />
199034, St.Petersburg, Russia<br />
+7812-457-1796<br />
chugunov@egov-center.ru<br />
79<br />
Dmitrii Trutnev<br />
e-Gov Center, Deputy Director, CISA<br />
V.O., Birzhevaya line, 14, office 270<br />
199034, St.Petersburg, Russia<br />
+7812-457-1796<br />
trutnev@egov-center.ru<br />
At the same time, other ratings do not show the same success in<br />
other areas of Russia’s economic and political life. This<br />
discrepancy can be clearly seen in Figure 1.<br />
Figure 1. Russian Federation Rankings<br />
For comparison, the status and trends of other indicators of the RF<br />
were used as follows: GCI Global Competitiveness Index<br />
rankings [2], IMD Global Competitiveness Index rankings [3],<br />
World Bank Government Effectiveness Index [4], World Bank<br />
Knowledge Index & Knowledge Economy Index [5], Legatum<br />
Prosperity Index [6], Human Development Index [7], Doing<br />
Business 2011 [8] and Corruption Perceptions Index [9]. The<br />
question that the authors raise is as follows: is the formation of e-<br />
Government development plans influenced by world rankings?<br />
Research methods proposed:<br />
- Analysis of the motives of decision-makers in government<br />
and their reflections on the adopted legislative acts that define<br />
e-Government development plans in Russia.<br />
- Analysis of e-Government objectives stated in the adopted<br />
legislative acts and their relationship with the common e-<br />
Government goals and the indicators used in some rankings.
2. E-GOVERNMENT AS IS<br />
2.1. E-Government Globally<br />
E-government and e-governance are intrinsically related,<br />
however, practice shows that successful e-government and egovernance<br />
are not synonymous, but complementary [10]. This<br />
article will use both terms as they are used in the referenced<br />
documents.<br />
E-government has many definitions:<br />
o A new form of organizing public services based on extensive<br />
use of ICT that offers citizens and businesses the new and<br />
higher levels of efficiency and comfort in the delivery of<br />
public services, and in obtaining information on the<br />
performance of governmental agencies [11]<br />
o “E-government” refers to the use by government agencies of<br />
information technologies (such as Wide Area Networks, the<br />
Internet and mobile computing) that have the ability to<br />
transform relations with citizens, businesses and other arms of<br />
government. These technologies can serve a variety of<br />
different ends: better delivery of government services to<br />
citizens, improved interactions with business and industry,<br />
citizen empowerment through access to information, or more<br />
efficient government management. The resulting benefits can<br />
be less corruption, increased transparency, greater<br />
convenience, revenue growth and/or cost reductions. [12]<br />
o E-government is the use of information technology to support<br />
government operations, engage citizens and provide<br />
government services. [13]<br />
o The term “e-government” focuses on the use of new<br />
information and communication technologies (ICTs) by<br />
governments as applied to the full range of government<br />
functions. In particular, the networking potential offered by<br />
the Internet and related technologies has the potential to<br />
transform the structures and operation of government. [14]<br />
Summing up all these definitions and the world’s best practice, we<br />
can say that e-government and information technology serve as a<br />
tool to achieve such national goals as better governance (and<br />
common prosperity as a consequence) due to better (more<br />
effective and efficient) governmental functions, services and<br />
communications as shown in Figure 2.<br />
Figure 2. E-government as a Tool<br />
2.2. E-Government in the Russian Federation<br />
The development of e-government in Russia began with the<br />
adoption of the Federal target programme “Electronic Russia<br />
(2002-2010)” in 2002. The main objectives of that programme<br />
80<br />
have been announced as “the creation of conditions for the<br />
development of democracy, improving the functioning of the<br />
economy, public administration and local self-government<br />
through the introduction of ICT and mass distribution, and the<br />
rights to freely seek, receive, transfer, production and<br />
dissemination of information” [15]. Along with “Electronic<br />
Russia”, other Federal target programmes “Budget Reform” and<br />
“Administrative Reform” where carried out. After 2010 the<br />
Programme “Information Society 2011-2020” became the<br />
successor to “Electronic Russia”. The stated goals of all these<br />
Federal target programmes were consistent with the global trend –<br />
improving the quality of life through the use of ICT.<br />
Over 2002-2011 there was much public investment in nationwide<br />
projects aimed at e-government development in Russia. The<br />
intensity of the legislative activity in the area of e-government<br />
reflects the intensity of the government’s efforts and is illustrated<br />
in Figure 3.<br />
Figure 3. Quantity of E-Government Legislation Acts Adopted<br />
It is logical to expect rapid positive changes in economy and<br />
society in response to such vigorous state activity and investment<br />
growth in the use of ICT in government, but this has not happened<br />
as we have already seen in Figure 1.<br />
3. THE ANALYSIS<br />
3.1. Analysis of the motives of decision-makers<br />
To understand the reasons for this weak link between the growing<br />
use of ICT in government and any positive changes in other areas<br />
of national development, we must understand the motivation of all<br />
stakeholders, including the legislature, supreme executive power<br />
(Ministry), the regional authorities and municipal government<br />
agencies, companies and citizens.<br />
Established in the last decade, the administrative system of the<br />
Russian Federation is characterized by rigid top-down control<br />
(“vertical power”). In such a system all orders comes from the top<br />
down with, as a rule, lack of feedback, horizontal coordination<br />
and local initiatives. In this system, until recently, the opinion of<br />
citizens and businesses (except for the giant and state-owned<br />
corporations) did not play any significant role, for example, no<br />
large-scale studies of the requirements of citizens and businesses<br />
on the quality of public services have been carried out. These<br />
(citizen and business) stakeholders have no significant channels<br />
by which to influence the authorities.<br />
For the main implementers of e-government (regional authorities<br />
and municipal government agencies), Federal Law and<br />
Government Decrees are the only motive for the creation and<br />
implementation of e-government (“system motivation –<br />
administrative control and compulsion” [16]).
Observations over recent years show that the vast majority of<br />
major legislation in the field of e-government was developed and<br />
submitted for approval to the legislature by the executive<br />
authorities – responsible ministries (Ministries of Economic<br />
Development and of Telecommunications). These ministries are<br />
under the direct authority of the Prime Minister (and, indirectly,<br />
under the President) whose orders define the vector of the state in<br />
general and e-government development in particular.<br />
In 2000 at the G8 Summit the President of the Russian Federation<br />
together with the other G8 leaders signed Okinawa’s Charter on<br />
“Global Information Society” in which e-government was listed<br />
as one of the components of the information society. Since that<br />
time the implementation of commitments made under the<br />
Okinawa Charter and improving Russia’s position in international<br />
rankings have become among the highest priorities of the<br />
President and Prime Minister of Russia (especially in the practical<br />
absence of pressure from citizens and businesses as was<br />
mentioned above). This desire to improve Russia’s position in<br />
international rankings is frequently mentioned in the policy<br />
speeches of the leaders of the state and has even been used as the<br />
Key Performance Indicator in the text of the Concept of<br />
Administrative Reform in the Russian Federation in 2006 – 2008<br />
[17]. In particular, this document only elucidated upon the need to<br />
improve Russia’s position in the United Nations E-Government<br />
Survey’s ranking, GRICS, Doing Business and other rankings.<br />
Tracing this chain of motivations, we can conclude that one of the<br />
important factors determining the direction and results of egovernment<br />
development in Russia is the international rankings<br />
and the United Nations E-Government Survey among them.<br />
Logically we can assume that if one of the important goals is the<br />
position in a rating and the other motivators are not very strong,<br />
then there is a natural desire to improve precisely those<br />
characteristics that are evaluated during the surveys.<br />
3.2. Analysis of E-Gov Objectives and<br />
Indicators<br />
The authors have carefully examined the key normative<br />
documents that regulate the direction of e-government<br />
development in Russia ([18], [19], [20], [21]).<br />
These documents contain the requirements for naming and dating<br />
the transfer of governmental service into electronic form, and<br />
establishing the mandatory presence of governmental web-portals<br />
and electronic interagency interaction. At the same time, they do<br />
not contain any requirements for quality characteristics or the<br />
expected results and impact of these innovations on the main and<br />
common e-government goals. The same remark applies to all laws<br />
and regulations adopted in this period.<br />
E-government systems and applications created under these<br />
conditions cannot contribute to goals of e-government such as<br />
effectiveness, cost reduction, quality, anticorruption, etc. and<br />
cannot be useful to citizens and businesses. The absence of these<br />
effects of e-government projects in Russia has been shown here<br />
above in Figure 1.<br />
Indeed, in Russia in full accordance with those legislative acts, the<br />
main efforts were aimed at creating a national central web-portal,<br />
e-services portals, websites of all ministries and administrations,<br />
and establishing a system of interagency interaction.<br />
The United Nations E-Government Survey methodology says: “to<br />
arrive at a set of online service index values, the researchers<br />
assessed each country’s national website, including the national<br />
81<br />
central portal, e-services portal and e-participation portal, as well<br />
as the websites of the related ministries of education, labour,<br />
social services, health, finance and environment as applicable. In<br />
addition to being assessed for content and features, the national<br />
sites were tested for a minimal level of web content accessibility<br />
as described in the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines of the<br />
World Wide Web Consortium” [22].<br />
The generalized relationship between the main objectives of egovernment<br />
(taken from its several definitions), United Nations E-<br />
Government Survey indicators and the targets established by the<br />
laws of the Russian Federation are shown in Table 1.<br />
Table 1. Relationship between E-Gov Objectives, UN E-Gov<br />
Survey Indicators and Targets Established by the RF’s Laws<br />
E-Government Objectives<br />
UN E-Gov Survey<br />
Indicators<br />
Targets Established<br />
by the RF’s Laws<br />
Gov. processes improvement X X<br />
Effectiveness of government X X<br />
Cost reduction X X<br />
Quality of service delivery X X<br />
Availability of Information � �<br />
G2G relations improvement X �<br />
G2B relations improvement � �<br />
G2C relations improvement � �<br />
Less corruption X X<br />
Transparency improvement � �<br />
From Table 1 we can see that in the Russian Federation has been<br />
successfully (according to the UN rating) created that kind of egovernment,<br />
which does not lead to the achievement of such goals<br />
as prosperity due to good governance, better functions, services<br />
and communications, simply because the government did not state<br />
such objectives initially. Instead of e-government as a tool to<br />
achieve these vital goals, Russia saw e-government as a goal in<br />
itself, which takes resources away from other vital goals which<br />
were almost forgotten and not supported (Figure 4).<br />
Figure 3. E-Government as the Goal<br />
Such logic can explain why in recent years Russia actively created<br />
a web interface (front office) that assessors see well (“the national<br />
government portal … looks very solid and representative” [1])<br />
while the processes of public and municipal service delivery (back<br />
office) still continue to run in the manual and paper-based mode,<br />
under the old rules with the same low rate and high (if not higher)<br />
cost. This inner being of the “electronic government” was<br />
concealed from the assessors and cannot be evaluated from abroad<br />
with the methodology used.<br />
4. CONCLUSION<br />
If seen in the light of the Russian case, a negative effect of
ankings on the formation of national e-government development<br />
plans exists, therefore, it may also exist in other countries.<br />
Other authors have found that the raised problem is very complex<br />
and includes a spectrum of related problems:<br />
o The success of the e-governance survey and ranking has been<br />
limited so far [23]. Such a respected ranking as the United<br />
Nations E-Government Survey in some cases could give<br />
results which do not reflect the essence of the phenomena<br />
occurring.<br />
o It is possible to expect an immediate and strong impact of egovernment<br />
evaluation studies on countries’ e-government<br />
policies [24].<br />
o Lack of attention to stakeholders’ interests can make the<br />
results of the ranking meaningless [25].<br />
These problems can and should be solved by joint efforts of<br />
ranking organisations and appraised countries. In any case, all<br />
participants of ranking processes should be aware of the existence<br />
of such problems, understand their causes and take them into<br />
consideration in order to prevent negative impacts.<br />
The authors understand that the problem raised in this publication<br />
has not been adequately studied yet and requires further research.<br />
5. REFERENCES<br />
[1] United Nations e-Government Surveys. [E-source]:<br />
http://www.unpan.org/Home/tabid/1243/language/Library/Maj<br />
orPublications/UNEGovernmentSurvey/tabid/646/language/en<br />
-US/Default.aspx<br />
[2] The World Economic Forum, GCI Global competitiveness<br />
index rankings. [E-source]: http://www.weforum.org/<br />
[3] IMD Global competitiveness index rankings.<br />
[E-source]: http://www.imd.ch/<br />
[4] World Bank Government Effectiveness Index. [E-source]:<br />
http://info.worldbank.org/governance/wgi/sc_chart.asp<br />
[5] World Bank Knowledge Index & Knowledge Economy Index.<br />
[E-source]:<br />
http://info.worldbank.org/etools/kam2/KAM_page5.asp<br />
[6] Legatum Institute, Legatum Prosperity Index.<br />
[E-source]: http://www.prosperity.com/rankings.aspx<br />
[7] UNDP’s Human development index. [E-source]:<br />
http://hdr.undp.org/en/reports/global/hdr2007-2008/<br />
[8] International Finance Foundation & The World Bank’s<br />
Measuring Business Regulation Report “Doing Business<br />
2012”. [E-source]: http://www.doingbusiness.org/rankings<br />
[9] Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index<br />
(CPI). [E-source]: http://www.transparency.org/<br />
policy_research/surveys_indices/cpi<br />
[10] Haiyan Qian, Citizen-Centric E-Strategies Toward More<br />
Successful E-Governance, Journal of E-Governance, Volume<br />
34 Issue 3, August 2011, Pages 119-129, IOS Press<br />
Amsterdam, The Netherlands.<br />
[11] Russian Federation, Concept of E-Government Formation till<br />
the Year 2010. [E-source]: http://www.transparency.org/<br />
policy_research/surveys_indices/cpi<br />
[12] The World Bank, [E-source]: http://web.worldbank.org/<br />
wbsite/external/topics/extinformationandcommunicationandte<br />
chnologies/extegovernment/0,,contentMDK:20507153~menu<br />
PK:702592~pagePK:148956~piPK:216618~theSitePK:70258<br />
6,00.html<br />
82<br />
[13] University at Albany, Center for Technology in Government<br />
[E-source]: http://www.ctg.albany.edu/publications/reports/<br />
future_of_egov?chapter=2<br />
[14] OECD, Glossary of Statistical Terms<br />
[E-source]: http://stats.oecd.org/glossary/detail.asp?ID=4752<br />
[15] RF Government Order of 28.01.2002 N 65. On the Federal<br />
Target Program "Electronic RUSSIA (2002 – 2010)”<br />
[E-source]: http://www.internet-law.ru/intlaw/laws/e-rus.htm<br />
[16] Rustem Nureev, Political Economy of Russian “Vertical-of<br />
Power”, Proceedings of the Second World Congress of the<br />
Public Choice Societies, 8-11 March 2012, [E-source]:<br />
http://www.pubchoicesoc.org/papers_2012/Nureev_Shulgin.p<br />
df.<br />
[17] RF Government Order dated October 25, 2005 N 1789-R On<br />
the approval of the Concept of Administrative Reform in the<br />
Russian Federation in 2006 - 2008 and action plan for<br />
administrative reform in Russia in 2006 - 2010 (as amended)<br />
[E-source]: http://base.garant.ru/188767/<br />
[18] RF Government Order of 17.10.2009 N 1555-R "Transition<br />
plan for federal executive bodies public services and execution<br />
of public functions conversion into electronic form".<br />
[E-source]:<br />
http://government.consultant.ru/page.aspx?8411;1030853<br />
[19] RF Government Order of 17.12.2009 N 1993-R<br />
"Consolidated list of priority of state and municipal services<br />
provided by executive bodies of subjects of the Russian<br />
Federation and local authorities in electronic form".<br />
[E-source]:<br />
http://government.consultant.ru/page.aspx?1041050<br />
[20] RF Federal Law of 27.07.2010 N 210 “On the organisation<br />
of public and municipal services”<br />
[E-source]: http://www.rg.ru/ 2010/07/30/gosusl-dok.html.<br />
[21] RF Government Decree of 2.09.2010 N 1433 “Plan of action<br />
needed to implement the Federal Law “On the organisation of<br />
public and municipal services”<br />
[E-source]: http://www.rg.ru/ 2010/12/21/plan-site-dok.html<br />
[22] United Nations Global E-government survey 2012<br />
[E-source]: http://unpan1.un.org/intradoc/groups/public/<br />
documents/un/unpan048065.pdf<br />
[23] Ojo, A., Janowski, T,. Estevez, E., Building theoretical<br />
foundations for electronic governance benchmarking,<br />
Proceedings of the 10th IFIP WG 8.5 international conference<br />
on Electronic government, Springer-Verlag Berlin, Heidelberg<br />
©2011<br />
[24] Janssen, D., Rotthier, S., Snijkers, K., If you measure it they<br />
will score: An assessment of international eGovernment<br />
benchmarking. Information Polity Journal (Volume 9 Issue<br />
3,4, December 2004)<br />
[25] Rahul De', E-Government systems in developing countries:<br />
stakeholders and conflict. EGOV'05 .Proceedings of the 4th<br />
international conference on Electronic Government. Springer-<br />
Verlag Berlin, Heidelberg ©2005
Session 4<br />
Egov Adoption & Usage
Framework for Useful Transparency Websites for Citizens<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
In this paper, I describe the need to elaborate a theoretical<br />
framework that could help governments to improve their<br />
transparency and access to information websites beyond standard<br />
transparency obligations. If developed properly, these websites<br />
could offer information that is actually useful for ordinary<br />
citizens. In addition, I review literature of e-transparency web site<br />
evaluations in Mexico, as well as some examples of initiatives that<br />
have aimed to provide the ordinary citizen with useful<br />
information. Finally, this paper proposes a research agenda that<br />
could help to develop this framework. This is a work in progress.<br />
Josune Arcelus<br />
Categories and Subject Descriptors<br />
J.1.4 [Computer Applications]: Administrative Data Processing -<br />
Government<br />
General Terms<br />
Management, Human Factors<br />
Keywords<br />
Transparency Websites, Access to Information, e-Transparency,<br />
e-Government, Open Government<br />
1. INTRODUCTION<br />
During the last decade, the topic of transparency has taken a great<br />
deal of importance in Mexico. In 2000 Vicente Fox, the<br />
presidential candidate of National Action Party (PAN), defeated<br />
the long lasting ruling party, the Institutionalized Revolutionary<br />
Party (PRI) under the political banner that government<br />
transparency will empower citizens to demand a more democratic<br />
government. Twelve years after this promise, one of the few<br />
tangible achievements of the new democratic government has<br />
been the growing importance of transparency and access to public<br />
information. In 2002, the Federal Transparency and Access to<br />
Public Information Law (Ley Federal de Transparencia y Acceso<br />
a la Información Pública -- LFTAIP) was approved by Congress.<br />
In addition, a special institute (Instituto Federal para Acceso a la<br />
Informacion-- IFAI) was created to supervise compliance of this<br />
law. Gradually, each state and the Federal District (Mexico City)<br />
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Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to<br />
post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission<br />
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josune.arcelus@gmail.com<br />
83<br />
published their own laws to guide their obligations at the local<br />
level.<br />
The LFTAIP describes in its 7 th article the mandatory information<br />
that must be published electronically, and states in its 9 th article<br />
[1] that information must be available via electronic media.<br />
Over the last ten years state and local governments and their<br />
agencies have created their own transparency websites to comply<br />
with their respective laws.<br />
Different academic and civil society organizations like CIDE<br />
(Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económica) and Article XIX<br />
have been evaluating federal and state governments to assess their<br />
websites as well as their overall transparency initiatives. These<br />
evaluations are widely publicized in the media. Therefore,<br />
governments are trying continually to improve in order to obtain<br />
better evaluations.<br />
Based on the assumption that better informed citizens make better<br />
citizens, this law and transparency websites would contribute to a<br />
more democratic society. Transparency websites would open<br />
mechanisms to supervise the government, and harness a new<br />
desired relationship between citizens and governments. However,<br />
there is the perception that the information requested through<br />
websites is not being used directly by citizens, but by media,<br />
political opposition, and other enemies of the groups in power.<br />
This assumption is hard to evaluate with government produced<br />
data because the petition online system (Sistema de Solicitud de<br />
Información -- SISI) allows for anonymity. Therefore, making it<br />
hard to elaborate a precise analysis of who is requesting<br />
information. However, there is evidence that suggests that citizens<br />
are not making transparency and access to information part of<br />
their lives. According to a survey conducted by Parametría in<br />
2011 [2], only 19% of the persons interviewed were able to<br />
identify the IFAI, 14% knew how to make a petition to the<br />
government, and about 60% thought that information about<br />
government expenses and public servants salaries is “obscure” or<br />
difficult to reach.<br />
Interestingly, the transparency websites users and the petition<br />
system (SISI) users do not consider that transparency and access<br />
to information has been achieved after they interacted with them.<br />
In a survey/focus group published in the Mexican Journal<br />
Derecho Comparado de la Información [3], it is pointed out that<br />
while the test subjects find that the websites comply with what is<br />
required by law to be published, the website does not promote<br />
transparency in itself or the right to know. All interviewed<br />
subjects had access to the federal transparency web site, or used<br />
the SISI.
Several governments are aware of these deficiencies, yet because<br />
they are mostly evaluated and rewarded for complying with the<br />
law, they focus mostly on the latter.<br />
Additionally, evaluators have not found an impartial set of criteria<br />
regarding contents, from where to measure usefulness of<br />
information. There is agreement that evaluations currently lack a<br />
framework to measure content, apart from the mandatory list<br />
provided by the law<br />
In 2011 the Mexican Federal Government launched an initiative [4]<br />
of Focused Transparency (Transparencia Focalizada), intended to<br />
push information that may not be required by law but that is<br />
considered useful to the government. In addition, Mexico City´s<br />
government has published several transparency websites that<br />
evolve around topics of interest to the ordinary citizen, for<br />
instance, transportation, environment and procedures (tramites y<br />
servicios).<br />
However, there is not yet a neutral standard list of elements that<br />
could be considered when designing a website, and performing<br />
evaluation studies.<br />
The purpose of this article is to set the stage for a theoretical<br />
framework and guidelines that would allow for a more<br />
comprehensive evaluation of transparency and access to<br />
information web portals, and that would include compliance of a<br />
minimum set of useful content, apart from what is currently<br />
required by law.<br />
2. LITERATURE REVIEW AND MAJOR<br />
ISSUES<br />
2.1 Transparency and Access to Information<br />
as Part of Accountability<br />
Elaboration of a framework for transparency and access to<br />
information web portals requires defining both transparency and<br />
access to information in the right context.<br />
Literature does not equate transparency to access to information<br />
[5], although both concepts can be included within the concept of<br />
accountability. Lopez-Ayllon and Arellano explain that<br />
accountability has a dimension of answerability, which<br />
comprehends two components: information and justification. The<br />
information component implies an authority that is obliged to<br />
provide information and a citizen that has the right to access that<br />
information. The justification component of answerability is more<br />
complex and harder to achieve, since it implies the justification of<br />
actions by governments to citizens and a dialogue between them.<br />
The authors mention that these two components, information and<br />
justification, imply the possibility of the citizens to sanction, and<br />
that having all these components of information, justification and<br />
sanction allow for a complete accountability.<br />
In addition, Lopez-Ayllon and Arellano develop a diagram that<br />
depicts an incremental relationship among access to information,<br />
transparency, accountability, and democratic governance. Access<br />
to information is the most basic component, as shown below:<br />
Access to Information < Transparency < Accountability <<br />
Democratic Governance<br />
The implications of this concept have a relevant application for<br />
government websites, since it draws possible evolutionary stages<br />
for a complete transparency and access to information website.<br />
84<br />
This is actually explained in a recent study of transparency and<br />
access to information websites of Mexico [6]. In this work, the<br />
author Sepulveda cites the stages of an e-Transparency web<br />
portal, as defined by the University of Manchester [7]:<br />
publication, transaction, reporting, openness and accountability.<br />
The framework proposed in this paper should aim to the more<br />
advanced stages, since it aims to provide guidelines for websites<br />
that harness interaction between the government and the citizens.<br />
2.2 Access to Information as a Human Right<br />
Access to information can be understood under the notion of a<br />
liberal state, where a state is constrained by a set of fundamental<br />
rights of citizens [8].<br />
In addition, access to information is seen as the key that enables<br />
other rights. Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human<br />
Rights, declares freedom of speech for which the right to know is<br />
explicitly required. Within this context, the access to information<br />
is seen as a component of other rights (e.g., free expression). In<br />
other words, access of information protects other rights, helps in<br />
the compliance of other rights, and prevents possible violations of<br />
other human rights [9]. According to this perspective, the more<br />
information citizens have, the more citizens’ rights will be<br />
fulfilled [10].<br />
Consideration of access to information as an enabler and protector<br />
of other human rights should be incorporated as part of the<br />
framework, since it complements the other visions that have been<br />
applied to transparency websites.<br />
The cited contextualization of transparency and accountability<br />
take into account that the government must implement a policy<br />
that actively engages the citizens in the evaluation of all policies<br />
[5]. This paper by López-Ayllón and Arellano sets the extent and<br />
reach of the website regarding the achievement of democracyoriented<br />
goals; however, it does not help to define the basic<br />
contents of a website that enables transparency and access to<br />
information.<br />
A website framework that considers human rights germane<br />
provides the advantage of universality and simplicity as to what<br />
information must be included in any attempt to promote<br />
transparency and access to information.<br />
2.3 Websites Evaluations and Compliance of<br />
the Law<br />
Several efforts have been made to measure the compliance of the<br />
LFTAIP and the different state laws. The metrics developed by<br />
CIDE are the ones that are more widely recognized by the media<br />
and the government. CIDE’s metrics indicators provide a final<br />
grade. The four main aspects evaluated by CIDE include<br />
evaluation of web sites, normative quality, mystery shopper based<br />
on information requests, and institutional quality [5][11].<br />
The evaluation of the website mostly consists of checking the<br />
existence of all mandatory information (used as variables) as<br />
required by law, for example budget, outcomes of investigations,<br />
salaries, public servant directories, goals, programs, expenses,<br />
procurement, procedures, and services. Out of the 15 variables<br />
used as information proxies, only one is assigned to everything<br />
that has to do with the usability and design of the website.<br />
The limit of this evaluation approach is that governments that get<br />
a good grade in the evaluation of the website might think that they
are doing a good job overall in regards to their websites, while<br />
they are mostly doing a good job only in including the legally<br />
required information. As noted above users might acknowledge<br />
that the website provides the information required by law, and yet<br />
not feel their transparency and right-to-know needs are being<br />
fulfilled.<br />
The study conducted by Sepúlveda [6] suggests that quality of the<br />
law (i.e., how advanced the law is in terms of access to<br />
information and democratization) is not related to her<br />
transparency website index, in which she includes more<br />
technology related aspects. In other words, she shows that there is<br />
no relationship between how good the transparency law is and the<br />
quality of its transparency website.<br />
Lastly, the minimal information demanded by the LFTAIP, falls<br />
short within what a government is expected by its citizens to<br />
publish in order to be regarded as transparent. The emphasis<br />
placed in content targeted to fight corruption resulted in a tight<br />
and unattractive set of information for ordinary citizens as can be<br />
observed both in Parametría [2] and the Comparative Law Journal<br />
[3] surveys.<br />
The framework that shall be developed when this work is<br />
completed will emphatically seek to raise the bar of what is<br />
considered the minimum mandatory information that a<br />
government should share with the citizens.<br />
2.4 Usability and Other Types of Friendliness<br />
It is important for any website that the users remain in their<br />
websites for more than 10 seconds before they click-away. This<br />
concept of usability, as defined by Nielsen [12], parts from the<br />
assumption that the Internet user has thousands of options to<br />
choose from when browsing.<br />
Governments allocate a lot of money and other resources to<br />
organize, sort and publish information on their websites just to<br />
discover that they are not used because the information is not<br />
displayed in an attractive way.<br />
The topic of usability is noted in Sepulveda´s [6] study and in the<br />
yearly ranking [13] published by the magazine Política Digital<br />
issued in Mexico. Both studies develop an index to evaluate<br />
exclusively Transparency websites, and suggest specifications of a<br />
good web site, which include usability and accessibility.<br />
The issue of an easy-to-understand language is mentioned in<br />
Sepulveda´s study, but it is specified that it cannot be evaluated.<br />
The study refers to the Mexican Federal Government initiative of<br />
citizen´s language (lenguaje ciudadano), which calls all the<br />
agencies for action to provide information in a simpler and lessbureaucratic<br />
manner.<br />
The trustworthiness of the information provided in the website is<br />
mentioned in both studies, yet no repeatable and neutral<br />
measurement is provided to evaluate it. According to the studies,<br />
trustworthiness always depends on the evaluator´s perception.<br />
The framework will incorporate the usability and accessibility<br />
aspects of previous studies.<br />
2.5 Current Examples of Focused<br />
Transparency<br />
In 2011, the Mexican Federal Government launched an initiative<br />
called Focus on Socially Useful Information [4][14], through<br />
85<br />
which it encourages its agencies to publish more information than<br />
that required by law. The information provided should include<br />
information that citizens might find useful in their every-day lives.<br />
This initiative defines Focused or Socially Useful Transparency as<br />
“providing valuable information to the citizen so that she can<br />
make better informed decisions about procedures and services, or<br />
in aspects that affect her every day life, to prevent public risks or<br />
solve problems from the social sphere.”<br />
The Secretary of Public Administration (Secretaría de la Función<br />
Pública) has already elaborated guidelines with criteria that all<br />
agencies must incorporate when updating information in their<br />
respective websites and transparency sections. A special call is<br />
made to include information beyond what is required by law, as<br />
well as to rephrase, summarize and reorganize the information<br />
that is produced within a bureaucratic environment to<br />
communicate it in a simpler way.<br />
Another attempt to provide more valuable information to citizen´s<br />
has been that of Mexico City´s government of Focused<br />
Transparency [15]. The approach in this case has been to define a<br />
set of thematic websites that publish all the information related to<br />
that topic, arranged and displayed in a question-and-answer<br />
fashion. For example, what is environmental policy…? What is<br />
the impact of CO2 emissions in my life…? How can I become<br />
part of the solution to environmental problems…? [16]<br />
Another initiative was presented by Mexico City´s Governement<br />
where the strategy was described as groups of information<br />
packages:<br />
Table 1. Information Packages<br />
Procurement Environment<br />
Transportation<br />
traffic<br />
and Health<br />
Procedures and Employment and<br />
Services<br />
Education<br />
Social Programs Tourism<br />
Budget Citizen´s requests and<br />
legal petitions<br />
Civil Protection Culture<br />
Public Works Business<br />
So far, the environment, transportation and procedures and<br />
services focused transparency websites have been created.<br />
3. METHODOLOGY AND RESEARCH<br />
The framework suggested in this paper will be a compilation of<br />
findings from the different issues analyzed throughout the<br />
literature, mainly:<br />
o The need to have an accountability approach that goes<br />
beyond the mere provision of mandatory information and<br />
incorporates the justification component;<br />
o The need to provide a content skeleton that can be widely<br />
accepted, because it adjusts to the essence and raison-de-etre<br />
of government, as well as to the nature of human beings as<br />
human beings and not just citizen; and<br />
o The need to incorporate usability and other websites<br />
friendliness criteria as an important element.
Qualitative analysis of websites and surveys will provide a<br />
guideline-like framework that governments may be able to use to<br />
organize their transparency and access to information web sites.<br />
Hopefully, this suggested framework would help supervise the<br />
government and provide evaluators with more tools to measure<br />
transparency beyond the compliance of law.<br />
3.1 Accountability Approach<br />
The ten best ranked access to information and transparency (or<br />
similar) websites in the world as presented in the literature<br />
previously reviewed will be analyzed to gather best practices that<br />
show high evolution in terms of e-Transparency. Already existing<br />
practices of accountability will be identified and incorporated into<br />
a framework.<br />
3.2 Universal Content Skeleton<br />
One of the main gaps observed in the literature reviewed is the<br />
lack of a content skeleton for those websites that goes beyond the<br />
standard list set up by the law. In order to be able to convince<br />
government and academia to accept the contents proposed by such<br />
a skeleton, there needs to be some sort of philosophical theory that<br />
is universal (within a democratic context) and that cannot be<br />
contested. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights offers a<br />
perfect platform for this purpose, because of its universality, its<br />
world-wide acceptance, and its depth.<br />
The list of the human rights contained in the Universal<br />
Declaration of Human Rights will be compared to the mandatory<br />
contents that the LFTAIP demands, and possible gaps will be<br />
identified. Additionally, human-rights oriented information<br />
architecture will be proposed.<br />
In order to incorporate the citizen´s point of view in regards to<br />
what a government should be mainly accountable for, a survey<br />
will be conducted, where citizens will be required to list top-ofmind<br />
information that they would expect the government to<br />
publish. They will also be asked to rank from a list of information<br />
that governments publish which ones do they think are more<br />
important, and explain, how many times in that year they have had<br />
to use that information; finally, citizens will be proposed to list the<br />
names of three activities that they perform weekly in which they<br />
think the government is involved. The outcomes of this survey<br />
will also be considered in the elaboration of a content skeleton.<br />
3.3 Usability and Website Friendliness<br />
A detailed compilation of usability, accessibility and friendliness<br />
criteria will be listed, based on the studies cited. Also, a list of<br />
information pushed by the agencies as useful will be analyzed,<br />
and interviews will be held with the people responsible of both<br />
initiatives in order to assess their success and challenges.<br />
The resultant framework will constitute a list of elements to be<br />
incorporated within future evaluations, but will not provide<br />
specific or new metrics for those evaluations.<br />
86<br />
4. REFERENCES<br />
[1] Cámara de Diputados, Ley Federal de Transparencia y<br />
Acceso a la Información Pública, Diario Oficial de la<br />
Federación, 11 de junio del 2002, 3-5<br />
[2] Parametría, Los mexicanos y su interés por la transparencia.<br />
http://www.parametria.com.mx/DetalleEstudio.php?E=4320,<br />
2011.<br />
[3] Contreras Padilla, S, E-Government y acceso a la<br />
información en México, Derecho Comparado de la<br />
Información, núm. 11, Enero-Junio 2008<br />
[4] Secretaria de la Funcion Publica, Procedimiento 6.4:<br />
Información Socialmente Util o Focalizada, MAAGT,<br />
agosto 2011<br />
[5] Lopez-Ayllon, S. and Arrellano-Gault, D., Estudio en<br />
material de transparencia de otros sujetos obligados por la<br />
Ley Federal de Transparencia y Acceso a la Información<br />
Pública Gubernamental, CIDE-IFAI-UNAM, 2008<br />
[6] Sepúlveda K., P., Transparencia Electrónica en México: Un<br />
Analisis de las Estrategias de los Gobiernos Estatales en<br />
Internet, Tesis ITAM, 2008<br />
[7] Institute for Development Policy and Management (IDPM),<br />
University of Manchester, United Kingdom, 2004:<br />
www.egov4dev.org/transpdefn.htm<br />
[8] Rodríguez Zepeda, Jesús. Estado y transparencia: un paseo<br />
por la filosofía política, Cuadernillos del IFAI, 2006<br />
[9] Jagwanth, S. “The Right to Information as a Leverage Right”<br />
in The Right to Know, The Right to Live: Access to<br />
Information and Socio-Economic Justice, Calland, Richard<br />
and Allison Tilley, ed. Open Democracy Advice Centre,<br />
2002, p.7.<br />
[10] Ramirez Salazar, Los Derechos Humanos desde la<br />
Perspectiva del Derecho de Acceso a la Información, Article<br />
XIX-InfoDF, CDHDF, 2009, p. 53-59<br />
[11] COMAIP and CIDE presentations about Metrica de la<br />
Transparencia www.metricadetransparencia.cide.edu<br />
[12] Nielsen, J., Top Ten Mistakes in Web Design,<br />
www.usability.org<br />
[13] Sandoval, R., Ranking de Portales de Transparencia, Política<br />
Digital, http://www.politicadigital.com.mx<br />
[14] Secretaria de la Funcion Publica, Guia para la Identificacion<br />
y Difusion de la Informacion Socialmente Util o Focalizada,<br />
2010<br />
[15] CGMA, Paquetes de Información, Portal de Transparencia<br />
Focalizada del Gobierno del Distrito Federal, 2009<br />
[16] http://www.transparenciamedioambiente.df.gob.mx
The Circular Continuum of Agencies, Libraries, and Users:<br />
A Model of E-Government in Practice<br />
Natalie Greene Taylor<br />
Information Policy & Access Center,<br />
University of Maryland-College Park<br />
ngreenetaylor@gmail.com<br />
Paul T. Jaeger<br />
Information Policy & Access Center,<br />
University of Maryland-College Park<br />
pjaeger@umd.edu<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
When e-government first became a viable solution to the<br />
dissemination of government information, experts believed that<br />
the rise of direct government-to-citizen (G2C) services would<br />
improve government transparency and foster civic engagement. It<br />
soon became clear, however, that not all users were not getting the<br />
type of information or instruction that they needed from this<br />
arrangement, and that there was a need for an intermediary in this<br />
continuum of services. Increasingly, libraries fulfill this role.<br />
Instead of direct government-to-user interaction, information<br />
channels flow from agency to librarian to user, from user back up<br />
to agency, and from agency to user to librarian. This paper<br />
expands on the idea of these multiple pathways of information<br />
through research conducted in collaboration with libraries,<br />
government agencies, state library agencies, and a national library<br />
association in the United States with aims to create an egovernment<br />
web resource to assist librarians engaging in egovernment<br />
services. The different pathways of information both<br />
informed the creation of the web resource and offered a practical<br />
model of e-government, important for other projects dealing with<br />
similar information.<br />
Categories and Subject Descriptors<br />
A.1 INTRODUCTORY AND SURVEY<br />
General Terms<br />
Documentation, Human Factors, Theory<br />
Keywords<br />
Digital Government, Electronic Government, Models<br />
1. INTRODUCTION<br />
In the early stages of e-government, expectations ranged from<br />
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personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are<br />
not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies<br />
bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for<br />
components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored.<br />
Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to<br />
post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission<br />
and/or a fee.<br />
ICEGOV '12, October 22 - 25 2012, Albany, NY, USA<br />
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1200-4/12/10...$15.00<br />
Ursula Gorham<br />
Information Policy & Access Center,<br />
University of Maryland-College Park<br />
ugorhos@yahoo.com<br />
John Carlo Bertot<br />
Information Policy & Access Center,<br />
University of Maryland-College Park<br />
jbertot@umd.edu<br />
87<br />
Ruth Lincoln<br />
Information Policy & Access Center,<br />
University of Maryland-College Park<br />
rlincoln21@gmail.com<br />
Elizabeth Larson<br />
Information Policy & Access Center,<br />
University of Maryland-College Park<br />
elclarson@gmail.com<br />
cautious optimism to the belief that e-government would promote<br />
unprecedented waves of citizen interaction with the government.<br />
These government-to-citizen (G2C) services were expected to cut<br />
out information middle-men and let users interact directly with<br />
their government. 1 It soon became clear, however, that users were<br />
not getting the type of instruction or information they needed from<br />
this arrangement. Government agencies were not soliciting user<br />
input in developing services, feedback was not a priority,<br />
evaluation data was almost non-existent, and users identified a<br />
variety of access issues that kept them from fully engaging with<br />
the services [9]. Increasingly, public librarians found that they<br />
were serving as the intermediary for the government in this<br />
continuum of services. In addition, users were communicating<br />
their frustrations, concerns, and suggestions about government<br />
information to these librarians, instead of the government directly.<br />
Rather than the government speaking directly to users, it became<br />
the librarian’s job to disseminate information, assist patrons with<br />
form completion, or engage in other aspects of e-government,<br />
often without the guidance of the government agencies from<br />
which it originated . Because of the existence of multiple<br />
participants in the flow of government information, a<br />
straightforward pathway of e-government does not exist. This<br />
paper focuses on two main research questions: 1) what are the<br />
pathways of e-government information and 2) what implications<br />
do these pathways have on e-government services and systems?<br />
Based on a multi-method approach using informal interviews, site<br />
visits, and survey data, the researchers propose a model<br />
representing a circular flow of information with e-government<br />
information traveling from agency to librarian to user, from user<br />
back up to agency, and from agency to user to librarian. This<br />
model has implications for the design of e-government services<br />
and the dissemination of information. Findings made in<br />
connection with the development of this model also serve to<br />
inform the development of a Web resource to assist librarians<br />
1 It is important to note that the term “Government-to-Citizen” is<br />
one historically used in e-government research. In this paper,<br />
outside of direct references to prior research, we have used the<br />
term “user” instead, acknowledging the individuals in need of egovernment<br />
information who may not have citizen status. The<br />
term “user” thus refers to individuals who are either actively<br />
accessing e-government information or are attempting to do so.
serving as intermediaries for e-government services and resources.<br />
The Web resource, funded by the Institute of Museum and Library<br />
Services, is being developed by the authors in conjunction with<br />
the American Library Association, as well as various library and<br />
government agency partners, and aims to create an e-government<br />
web resource for librarians dealing with tax and immigration<br />
issues.<br />
2. LITERATURE REVIEW<br />
2.1 E-Government: A history<br />
Since the advent of the World Wide Web in the mid-1990s, there<br />
has been a surge in the use of e-government by federal, state, and<br />
local governments to deliver information, communication, and<br />
services to users, with much of this content and services now<br />
available only online. As e-government has matured into a<br />
dynamic socio-technical system encompassing issues of<br />
governance, societal trends, technological change, information<br />
management, interaction, and human factors [15], G2C, or<br />
government-to-citizen service, has become one of the central uses<br />
of e-government. Democratic governance relies on access to the<br />
government by citizens [34], resulting in G2C information,<br />
communication, and services holding significant potential not<br />
only for facilitating interactions, but also for promoting<br />
democracy.<br />
For the average user, e-government access now stands as the<br />
primary means of getting government information and interacting<br />
with the government [11]. G2C e-government services are used as<br />
a means to address a wide range of user needs – unemployment<br />
benefits, voter registration, license application and renewal, tax<br />
payments, enrollment of children in school, immigration and<br />
citizenship, and many similarly important functions [13], [18],<br />
[20]. Just from this broad overview of e-government topics, it is<br />
clear that this information intersects with almost every facet of<br />
everyday life. As such, e-government information does not always<br />
flow directly from the source to the user. As shown in Figure 1<br />
(below), other stakeholders have key roles and responsibilities in<br />
the e-government process.<br />
Figure 1. Stakeholders in E-Government Dissemination –<br />
Roles and Responsibilities<br />
Government<br />
Entities<br />
Non-<br />
Governmental<br />
Organizations<br />
Libraries<br />
Businesses<br />
- Create content<br />
- Mandate use (e.g. Electronic Data<br />
Procurement processes)<br />
- Disseminate information via electronic<br />
media (e.g. websites, social media, etc)<br />
- Disseminate information<br />
- Analyze information and re-release for<br />
community needs<br />
- Fund programs that tailor e-government<br />
content to needs of users<br />
- Provide information for community<br />
- Offer personalized help to patrons<br />
- Provide access to technology<br />
- Possess knowledge of patrons that can be<br />
used to provide feedback to content creators<br />
- Provide knowledge of user base (based on<br />
consumer information)<br />
- Provide funding and other resources for<br />
projects that can benefit the community<br />
- Provide feedback to content creators about<br />
88<br />
Users effectiveness of dissemination<br />
- Possess the needs that determine strategies<br />
of content developers and providers<br />
This paper largely focuses on three of these stakeholders – the<br />
government agencies that produce e-government information,<br />
libraries that act as intermediaries, and users. That said, NGOs<br />
and businesses often directly impact the type of services libraries<br />
can offer, the way the information gets disseminated to users, and<br />
the opportunities users have for resources to help them decipher<br />
the government information. The extent of these impacts is an<br />
issue worth exploring through future research.<br />
The growing involvement of intermediaries in G2C government<br />
coincides with users’ increased need for e-government access. In<br />
2003, a CRS report identified G2C government as “initiatives<br />
[that] are designed to facilitate citizen interaction with<br />
government,” [34, pp. 8]. Many agencies now view e-government<br />
as their primary method for interacting with members of the<br />
public [4], [5], [16], [37]. The recent explosion of usage of social<br />
media platforms – such as Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr - has<br />
led many government agencies to view social media as a core<br />
aspect of G2C services [6], [10], [29]. Not surprisingly, G2C<br />
services are central to both of the primary reasons typically<br />
presented in favor of continuing to expand e-government: 1)<br />
engaging citizenry in government in a user-centered manner, and<br />
2) developing quality government services and delivery systems<br />
that are efficient and effective [4].<br />
G2C services, however, are not always designed to make life<br />
simple for the users. In fact, from the agency perspective, the<br />
focus has often been on making the interactions easier for the<br />
agency, not the user [26]. A clear example of this situation was<br />
demonstrated by the Medicare Part D enrollment program in<br />
2006, which required senior citizens – a group with large gaps in<br />
usage of the Internet – to examine the different plans and sign up<br />
for one online [24].<br />
One marker of early G2C literature was that accessing<br />
government information online was deemed voluntary: “citizen<br />
use of a Web-based state government service is an individual<br />
choice and is not likely to be mandated” [14, pp. 3]. This soon<br />
became an outdated assumption, as more government forms and<br />
services became available exclusively online. The need to use egovernment<br />
presents challenges for many members of the public<br />
because they lack the technical skills to use the online functions,<br />
lack sufficient Internet access, or are uncomfortable engaging in<br />
online interactions without guidance [7], [8]. Many of these users<br />
must find an outlet to engage e-government to accomplish<br />
necessary educational, economic, social, and political functions.<br />
The focus on agency savings over access is illuminated by the<br />
emphasis on e-government when so many users still lack Internet<br />
access or sufficient Internet access to interact with e-government.<br />
In many locations in the United States, a lack of available<br />
computers, low levels of Internet access, and low levels of basic<br />
telecommunications infrastructure, are barriers to access. Many<br />
households lack Internet access and many with Internet access<br />
lack broadband speed access, which is necessary for most online<br />
activities, including certain types of social media. Nearly 40% of<br />
homes lack Internet access and many of those families have no<br />
interest in or ability to get Internet access [21]. Among homes<br />
with Internet access, 45% lack broadband access, while 10%
continue to rely on dial-up Internet service [22]. In rural areas,<br />
only 38% of homes have broadband access [22].<br />
Lack of access to technology is not the only barrier to G2C egovernment.<br />
Even if the technological infrastructure is in place, egovernment<br />
services are often limited by difficulties in searching<br />
for and locating the desired information, a general lack of<br />
familiarity with the structure of government, lack of education<br />
about the value of e-government, language barriers, and attitudes<br />
toward technology and government among many users [32], [33].<br />
While many members of the public still struggle with G2C<br />
information and services, government agencies have come to<br />
focus on it as a means of cost savings rather than increasing<br />
access for members of the public [26], [28]. Government agencies<br />
have shifted responsibility to the users for innumerable functions<br />
that the agencies had to handle before e-government– registering<br />
students in school, paying fees and taxes, scheduling<br />
appointments, taking driver’s education programs, applying for<br />
permits, finding court <strong>proceedings</strong>, submitting local zoning board<br />
information, requesting planning permits, searching property and<br />
assessor databases, and completing numerous other federal, state,<br />
and local government functions online.<br />
2.2 The Role of Libraries in E-Government<br />
Paralleling the rise of the Web and e-government, public libraries<br />
quickly became providers of free public access to the Internet,<br />
with virtually every public library already offering public access<br />
by the year 2002 [2], [28].Throughout the intervening years, the<br />
public library has served as the primary – or only available –<br />
access point for G2C access, training, and assistance in<br />
communities across the country [1]. In some sense, serving as<br />
guarantor of G2C access and training is a natural extension of the<br />
established social roles of the public library. “The public library is<br />
one place that is culturally ingrained as a trusted source of free<br />
and open information access and exchange” [30, pp. 487]. Given<br />
the complexities of many G2C services, “even if Americans had<br />
all the hardware they needed to access every bit of government<br />
information they required, many would still need the help of<br />
skilled librarians whose job it is to be familiar with multiple<br />
systems of access to government systems” [19, pp. 124].<br />
Several years ago, it became commonplace for government<br />
agencies to direct users with questions about their websites to the<br />
local public library [8], [7], [13]. Now, many federal, state, and<br />
local government agencies continue to rely upon public libraries<br />
to provide residents with access to and guidance in using G2C egovernment,<br />
including the completion of applications and forms<br />
[8], [7], [25], [27]. For example, the Florida Department of<br />
Children and Families reduced the number of case workers and<br />
assistance providers by over 3,000 positions due to its<br />
implementation of the AccessFlorida online application system,<br />
resulting in near complete lack of available agency staff from<br />
which users can seek assistance [18].<br />
Another example of this shift in information responsibility from<br />
the agency to intermediaries is information provision during the<br />
2005 Atlantic hurricane season. According to Jaeger et al,<br />
librarians reported unprecedented numbers of patrons during the<br />
emergencies. One librarian said, “We have a large number of<br />
displaced people who are coming to rely upon the library in ways<br />
many of them never expected. I’ve had so many people tell me<br />
that they had never been to a library before they had to find<br />
89<br />
someplace to file a FEMA application or insurance claim. Many<br />
of these people knew nothing about computers and would have<br />
been totally lost without the staff’s help.…” [31, pp. 205]. What<br />
would ordinarily have been the job of government-sponsored<br />
disaster relief agencies became the province of the intermediary.<br />
These examples show that librarians operate as an important<br />
stakeholder in the delivery of e-government services. According<br />
to the 2011-2012, Public Libraries Funding & Technology Access<br />
Study (PLFTAS), 96.6 percent of public library outlets reported<br />
that library staff members assist library patrons in applying for egovernment<br />
services. Moreover, 91.8 percent reported that staff<br />
members assist patrons in understanding how to access and use egovernment<br />
websites. The following figure illustrates additional<br />
roles that public libraries serve in connecting patrons with egovernment<br />
services [3]. 2<br />
Figure 2: E-Government Roles & Services of Public Libraries<br />
E-Government Role or Service Percentage<br />
Staff provide assistance to patrons applying for<br />
or accessing e-government services<br />
Staff provide as needed assistance to patrons for<br />
understanding how to access and use egovernment<br />
Websites<br />
Staff provide assistance to patrons for<br />
understanding government programs and services<br />
Staff provide assistance to patrons for completing<br />
government forms<br />
The library developed guides, tip sheets, or other<br />
tools to help patrons use e-government Websites<br />
and services<br />
The library offers training classes regarding the<br />
use of government Websites, understanding<br />
government programs, and completing electronic<br />
forms<br />
The library offered translation services for forms<br />
and services in other languages<br />
The library partnered with government agencies,<br />
non-profit organizations, and others to provide egovernment<br />
services<br />
The library worked with government agencies<br />
(local, state, or federal) to help agencies improve<br />
their Websites and/or e-government services<br />
The library has at least one staff member with<br />
significant knowledge and skills in provision of<br />
e- government services<br />
96.6%<br />
(n=12,607)<br />
91.8%<br />
(n=11,976)<br />
50.0%<br />
(n=6,528)<br />
70.7%<br />
(n=9,230)<br />
20.6%<br />
(n=2,686)<br />
11.2%<br />
(n=1,457)<br />
7.8%<br />
(n=1,020)<br />
30.9%<br />
(n=4,017)<br />
11.0%<br />
(n=1,438)<br />
23.6%<br />
2 Throughout this paper, the term “patron” is used when users are<br />
either in the library, using library resources, or are the target of<br />
library programs.
(n=3,078)<br />
In summary, the various criticisms of G2C services, centered<br />
mainly on the access issues described above have prompted<br />
librarians to function as intermediaries in the G2C information<br />
space.<br />
Notwithstanding public librarians’ acceptance of greater<br />
responsibility along this information continuum, there are obvious<br />
problems with this developing intermediary role. While<br />
government agencies indicate that relying on libraries for G2C egovernment<br />
access and assistance allows the agencies to focus on<br />
other issues [7],[8], [17], the provision of G2C access assistance<br />
by public libraries creates a range of service, funding, technology,<br />
and political challenges for the libraries [12], [28].<br />
One problem is the fact that librarians are largely unrecognized in<br />
any official capacity by the government agencies that encourage<br />
their participation. Underlying this lack of recognition is the way<br />
in which public libraries in the United States are funded.<br />
Historically, 90% of public libraries are independent departments<br />
within their local governments [36]. Accordingly, although<br />
libraries receive state funding, as well as federal money through<br />
the Library Services and Technology Act and the<br />
Telecommunications Act of 1996, the majority of their funding<br />
comes from local government agencies. This trend has become<br />
more pronounced in recent years due to the ongoing economic<br />
downturn, as local governments have struggled to fill the gap<br />
between shrinking state budgets and increased demand for library<br />
services [3] The end result is that funding for public libraries<br />
comes principally from sources other than those federal and/or<br />
state agencies that are shifting much of their service role to<br />
libraries, raising the question of whether libraries have been<br />
burdened with an unfunded mandate [7]<br />
In addition, the expectation that librarians will understand the egovernment<br />
systems and services is often unfounded. While<br />
librarians are certainly capable of figuring out complicated<br />
information, time restraints, concerns over legal liability, and the<br />
constantly changing nature of government information makes the<br />
intermediary role difficult. The lack of advance notice for many<br />
new government information initiatives is one of several reasons<br />
why librarians often feel as though they are left out of the<br />
information loop. For example, a historical instance of this is the<br />
closure of a Virginia unemployment office. In this particular<br />
instance, a mere sign was placed on the door overnight informing<br />
users of the office’s closure. Employees were notified at the same<br />
time, leaving users with no information about the closure. Local<br />
librarians, who were equally surprised by this sudden<br />
development, had no choice but to manage an influx of<br />
unemployed individuals, confused about this loss in services.<br />
Librarians were forced into an unenviable position, in which they<br />
had to provide assistance, despite having no prior knowledge of<br />
the event that precipitated this influx. This is but one example of<br />
an agency decision having unintended consequences on other<br />
stakeholders in the information continuum.<br />
These problems have only grown in importance with the increase<br />
in the number of services being shifted from agency to librarian.<br />
While the E-government Act of 2002 included language on the<br />
need for federal government assessment of the impacts of the law<br />
on public libraries and other social institutions, such studies were<br />
never funded or conducted. Thus, the need for a reassessment of<br />
90<br />
the pathways of e-government information is particularly<br />
important as further policy and funding decisions are made.<br />
3. METHODOLOGY<br />
The findings presented in this paper are based upon three<br />
interrelated data collection efforts that informed the creation of an<br />
e-government Web resource (LibEGov), initially focused on the<br />
areas of immigration and taxation. The 2011-2012 Public Library<br />
Funding & Technology Access Survey, funded by the American<br />
Library Association and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, is<br />
the 14 th in a series of public library Internet access surveys<br />
conducted since 1994. The Web-based survey was conducted<br />
between September 2011 and November 2011, yielding 7,260<br />
responses, a response rate of 83.1%. The survey drew a<br />
proportionate-to-size stratified random sample that considered the<br />
metropolitan status of the library (i.e., urban, suburban, and rural).<br />
More specific methodology issues regarding the survey are<br />
available at http://www.plinternetusrvey.org.<br />
Data were also collected through site visits to seven public<br />
libraries in five states (Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Maryland,<br />
and Texas). The site visits included informal interviews with state<br />
library staff, government officials, and community organization<br />
leaders, all of which occurred between April 2011 and October<br />
2011. For this component of the study, the authors sought to<br />
include geographically dispersed public libraries that serve a<br />
diverse set of communities (e.g., rural, suburban, and urban; high<br />
immigrant concentrations; underserved populations; high<br />
poverty). Library characteristics, such as size, number of staff,<br />
and known e-government partnerships, also factored into the<br />
selection process. In advance of the site visits, research was<br />
undertaken to identify existing e-government collaborative<br />
approaches, leading to a preliminary assessment of “best<br />
practices” that guided the development of LibEGov.<br />
The aggregate and generalizable data regarding public library egovernment<br />
service provision and challenges generated from the<br />
survey, together with the on-the-ground assessments of library<br />
and government collaborative efforts offered by the site visits and<br />
interviews, provide rich insight into the context in which libraries<br />
are currently providing e-government services. Through this<br />
multi-method data collection strategy, the authors were able to<br />
explore the pathways of e-government information. By<br />
determining what e-government service roles public libraries<br />
provide to their communities, what partnerships libraries have<br />
formed with government agencies in the provision of egovernment<br />
services, what the success factors and/or barriers are<br />
to forming these partnerships, and what challenges libraries face<br />
by serving as e-government providers, we explore the<br />
implications these information pathways have on e-government<br />
services and systems.<br />
In addressing each of these questions, the authors identified key<br />
elements to be included in LibEGov, including: 1) detailed<br />
guidance on how to conduct a community needs assessment; 2) a<br />
tool to help librarians better understand complex immigration<br />
processes; 3) strategies for identifying and reaching out to<br />
potential partners; and 4) a community forum that encourages<br />
users to share their e-government experiences with one another.<br />
After conclusion of the data collection efforts in October 2011,<br />
attention shifted to the development of the Web resource’s site<br />
design and content. Usability testing began in April 2012 and, at
this time the authors continue to work on refining both the design<br />
and content of LibEGov. In anticipation of a wide release of the<br />
resource during the summer of 2013, the next phase of the project<br />
will include field testing of LibEGov through workshops at which<br />
additional feedback regarding content and design will be solicited.<br />
4. FINDINGS<br />
Through the survey data, interviews, and site visits that informed<br />
the development of LibEGov, researchers found multiple<br />
pathways of information. This flow could be understood as a<br />
circular continuum of information, with knowledge flowing from<br />
all stakeholders in the stream. Rather than e-government delivery<br />
operating from one central source (the government) and traveling<br />
directly to the user, it became clear that government agencies,<br />
intermediaries (in this case, libraries), and users all source<br />
information and thus are all responsible for the diffusion of<br />
information to each point in the continuum. Below, we outline<br />
each of the six directionalities in which information is<br />
disseminated, including examples from the surveys, interviews,<br />
and site visits to provide more concrete evidence of this<br />
multiplicity of information pathways. Though this discussion<br />
largely focuses on the source of the e-government information, it<br />
should be inferred that the needs of the information targets<br />
directly influence the sources, emphasizing the reciprocal nature<br />
of the information flow.<br />
4.1 Government to Intermediary to User<br />
Several government-library partnerships were discovered through<br />
site visits and interviews. Many of these partnerships are building<br />
on the idea that agencies have begun to recognize the intermediary<br />
as a powerful ally in e-government information dissemination. For<br />
example, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS)<br />
has partnered with The American Place at Hartford Public Library<br />
in Connecticut to provide citizenship services directly at the<br />
library, including a swearing in ceremony for new citizens. The<br />
library provides links to government resources on its website as a<br />
companion to its services on English language learning,<br />
citizenship facts, and information for immigrants new to the area.<br />
USCIS’s effective use of the library’s extensive in-house<br />
resources and capabilities aptly demonstrates how information can<br />
flow from government to intermediary to user.<br />
4.2 User to Intermediary to Government<br />
Often the user needs an intermediary for practical reasons;<br />
without the computers and broadband access provided by a<br />
library, for example, the user would have no means to get to the<br />
information provided on government websites. Given that the<br />
public library is often the only access point for free and reliable<br />
Internet access, an intermediary is necessary to find the<br />
information needed. According to the 2011-2012 PLFTAS data,<br />
62.1 percent of public library outlets were the only provider of<br />
free public Internet and free public computer access in their<br />
communities. More dramatically, 70.3 percent of rural libraries<br />
outlets reported to be the only free provider in their communities<br />
[3].<br />
Even for users who do have Internet access available at home,<br />
government information is often confusing and/or intimidating.<br />
Thus users come to the library for assistance; studies have found<br />
that the library "is a trusted community-based entity to which<br />
individuals turn for help in their online activities—even if they<br />
91<br />
have computers and Internet access at home or elsewhere” [8].<br />
Librarians cite helping patrons with e-government issues as one of<br />
their most oft requested tasks, with 96.6 percent of public library<br />
outlets reporting assisting patrons with applying for or accessing<br />
e-government services. This represents an increase of 11.5 percent<br />
from 2010-2011 [3].<br />
4.3 Intermediary to Government to User<br />
Often the intermediary wishes to inform the government of<br />
missing information or with access problems a user is having with<br />
a government site. For example, in interviews, librarians often<br />
remarked that they anticipated problems based on a lack of<br />
information provided by the government, such as in the case of<br />
the change from paper tax forms to online forms. Librarians<br />
expected an influx of patrons confused about this switch and<br />
sought to inform the government of the potential ramifications of<br />
this decision. This particular information pathway is often<br />
interrupted by the lack of available communication with the<br />
government agency directly, a problem that disrupts the<br />
effectiveness of this communication continuum.<br />
4.4 User to Government to Intermediary<br />
Effective August 1, 2011, Florida law now requires<br />
unemployment claims to be filed over the Internet. During an<br />
interview that took place shortly after this change occurred,<br />
officials from the Florida Department of State, Division of Library<br />
and Information Services indicated that the state workforce<br />
agency was specifically instructing individuals with no access to a<br />
computer or the Internet to go to the public library to complete<br />
their applications. In this situation, users seeking, receiving, or<br />
applying for continued unemployment benefits needed to: 1) take<br />
an aptitude test to determine skills and appropriate employment<br />
skills; 2) reapply for unemployment benefits; and 3) demonstrate<br />
employment seeking efforts. As such, the user had to report to the<br />
state workforce agency a variety of information, which then<br />
flowed to libraries to support a range of employment-related<br />
information.<br />
4.5 Intermediary to User to Government<br />
In this information flow, the intermediary packages information in<br />
way that makes it more accessible to users, therefore enabling<br />
them to engage in more effective interactions with the<br />
government. E-government websites that are developed and<br />
maintained by libraries are one way to facilitate this flow. The<br />
Cobb County Public Library, for example, has recently launched<br />
an e-government website that presents a wide range of resources,<br />
organized by topics focused on common e-government<br />
information needs (e.g., employment, legal information and vital<br />
records). Although much of the information presented through<br />
this site originates from government agencies, the library is the<br />
entity disseminating this information so that users can use it in<br />
their direct interactions with the government.<br />
4.6 Government to User to Intermediary<br />
This particular information flow was seen during the site visits in<br />
connection with a presentation given by a USCIS officer at a<br />
public library branch. As part of a semi-structured presentation<br />
directed to patrons of the library, the representative offered<br />
multiple opportunities for questions from the attendees. Queries<br />
ranged from the mundane (can I apply for citizenship) to
complicated (stories of relatives with criminal backgrounds who<br />
wanted to become citizens), but all were particularly well-suited<br />
for the USCIS representative to answer. A public librarian<br />
attended the Q&A, gathering materials from the representative in<br />
order to have additional resources on hand for patrons who could<br />
not come to the session. The intermediary (i.e., the librarian) was<br />
able to gather information from not only the government<br />
representative, but also the patrons, in order to improve services.<br />
5. DISCUSSION<br />
These findings have important implications on the design of egovernment<br />
policies and systems. Departing from the traditional<br />
view of e-government as a direct government-to-citizen<br />
communication model and incorporating the multiple means of<br />
knowledge transfer between users, the government, and<br />
information intermediaries, such as librarians, necessitates a shift<br />
in the way that government agencies produce and disseminate<br />
information. There are five main areas in which government<br />
agencies need to reexamine their services:<br />
1) Involvement of intermediaries in conversations regarding<br />
the roll-out and implementation of new e-government<br />
services;<br />
2) Government notification of releases and changes in<br />
service through relevant information channels with time<br />
for the intermediaries to prepare proper assistance;<br />
3) Provision of funding for public libraries and other<br />
intermediaries to assist in the proper flow of egovernment<br />
information;<br />
4) Response to feedback from users in terms of egovernment<br />
services; and<br />
5) Clarity for intermediaries of their roles and<br />
responsibilities, whether they are liable for mistakes, and<br />
when professionals should be recommended<br />
The first two points are relatively straightforward. In the<br />
interviews and site visits, a concept that kept coming up was the<br />
fact that librarians often felt blind-sided by agency decisions on<br />
information dissemination and changes in policy. One example of<br />
note that came to light during the interviews was the delayed<br />
dissemination of IRS forms during the 2011 tax season. Although<br />
the IRS did not create the delay, it contributed to a difficult<br />
situation by failing to communicate this development to the<br />
libraries. The end result was that librarians resorted to using<br />
handwritten signs and notes to inform patrons. Another example<br />
raised during the site visits regards affordable housing. Each year,<br />
there is a window for applying for housing vouchers (known as<br />
Section 8 vouchers provided by the Housing and Urban<br />
Development). These windows are administered by the local<br />
public housing agencies, which often do not communicate with<br />
libraries about the upcoming window. Section 8 housing requires<br />
the completion of a range of forms, as well as a process for<br />
determining eligibility. Those seeking housing vouchers often end<br />
up in the library seeking assistance locating and completing the<br />
forms, as well as determining eligibility and information<br />
regarding application submission.<br />
The third point is also fairly intuitive. Libraries have begun to<br />
fulfill the role of customer service operators for government<br />
agencies. With this increased responsibility should come<br />
increased funding. According to the 2011-2012 PLFTAS data,<br />
92<br />
adequate staffing was the most common challenge cited in helping<br />
patrons meet their e-government needs with 44.9 percent of public<br />
library outlets reporting this challenge to be important or most<br />
important [3].<br />
Government agencies also need to provide opportunities for users<br />
to give feedback on e-government services. As early as 2002,<br />
researchers were recognizing that agencies were not adequately<br />
providing opportunities for user input; according to one 2004<br />
study, 90% of local government agencies answered no to the<br />
question “Has your local government conducted a citizen survey<br />
to determine what online services residents and businesses want?”<br />
[23]. Nearly ten years later, the evaluation standards are not much<br />
improved. Agencies would be well served to offer not only direct<br />
online communication opportunities for user feedback (and the<br />
accompanying staff to answer such communication), but also<br />
formal methods of evaluation to ensure that user needs are being<br />
met. The distinction between information as an entity and the<br />
service of information provision is not as clear cut as one might<br />
think. The way the information is developed matters to the way<br />
the public can use it.<br />
The fifth improvement, clarity for intermediaries on their role, is a<br />
task both agencies and library supervisors must address. Though<br />
librarians are taking on the intermediary role in high percentages,<br />
they also remark that they are often unsure of where their roles<br />
should begin and end. In terms of tax services, for example, most<br />
are uncomfortable with any level of service beyond providing<br />
access to forms, for fear of legal liability or intrusion on patrons’<br />
privacies. Agencies should support library supervisors by<br />
determining guidelines for librarians, as well as by assisting<br />
librarians with information queries directly.<br />
The findings from this study have also informed the LibeGov web<br />
resource, a project that hopes to address many of the<br />
improvements listed above. Through the identification of the<br />
multiplicity of information channels in the flow of e-government<br />
information, researchers and developers on the project have<br />
observed the necessity of gaining input from all participants in<br />
providing a source for government resources. There are several<br />
ways that the developers have taken stakeholders and these<br />
possible improvements of service into account. These include:<br />
1) Adding a forum to the site that encourages participation<br />
from both librarians (intermediaries) and government<br />
agency representatives;<br />
2) Soliciting stakeholder input at all levels of web resource<br />
development, achieved by researcher-led meetings with<br />
agencies and public libraries at the beginning of the<br />
project and continued meetings with stakeholders as the<br />
project continues;<br />
3) Conducting usability testing with public library partners<br />
that will shape the second and future iterations of the<br />
web resource; and<br />
4) Providing ample opportunities for feedback in all stages<br />
of development through a contact form provided through<br />
the web resource as well as ongoing communications<br />
among a network of interested parties through a listserv<br />
developed by members of the project team.<br />
By acknowledging the pathways of e-government information<br />
transfer, the model of a circular continuum of service has been<br />
applied to a practical e-government system. In a similar vein,
government agencies should consider all potential information<br />
points when designing websites and other e-government<br />
resources.<br />
6. CONCLUSION<br />
The findings from this study offer an overview of the continuum<br />
of information between users, libraries (intermediaries), and the<br />
government. The major outcomes of the study show that there are<br />
improvements that agencies can make to their current strategies of<br />
information dissemination, as well as ways that libraries and their<br />
patrons can better navigate the often confusing waters of egovernment<br />
information.<br />
Finally, the model provides a conceptual framework to guide the<br />
web resource currently under development by the authors and<br />
their partners, the primary purpose of which is to help libraries<br />
and agencies better support one another in this continuum. The<br />
model also provides direction for other stakeholders interested in<br />
building better information systems.<br />
There are several directions in which this research could go in<br />
continuing to clarify the e-government landscape. While it is<br />
obvious that there are multiple ways that information flows from<br />
stakeholder to stakeholder, the optimum way that this information<br />
should travel is an interesting problem that has still not been<br />
conclusively studied. Does the fact that the information flow is<br />
top-down, bottom-up, and circular in nature have consequences<br />
for the current method of e-government technical information<br />
transmission?<br />
In addition, although government agencies have begun to consider<br />
issues of access, these multiple pathways of information make the<br />
need to keep in mind the access points for users all the more<br />
important. For example, public libraries provide a bevy of<br />
technology training classes, and the PLFTAS data shows that the<br />
more general technology classes are the most prevalent.<br />
According to the latest data, 87.0 percent of public library outlets<br />
offer general computer skills training classes (e.g., how to use a<br />
mouse, keyboard, printer), and 86.5 percent offer general Internet<br />
use classes (e.g. set up e-mail, Web browsing) [3]. How the<br />
different pathways of information flow affects and is affected by<br />
these prerequisites for e-government information retrieval is<br />
necessary for building an information flow that gets to all users.<br />
Future research should ensure that all stakeholders are addressed<br />
and that the multiple ways that information is directed from user<br />
to intermediary to agency are considered.<br />
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Report for Congress, 2003. Available:<br />
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/RL31057.pdf<br />
[36] Shavit, D. (1986). The politics of public librarianship. New<br />
York : Greenwood<br />
[37] Streib, G., & Navarro, I. Citizen demand for interactive egovernment:<br />
The case of Georgia consumer services.<br />
American Review of Public Administration, 36 (2006), 288-<br />
300.
The critical success factors for websites for Chinese<br />
migrant farmer workers: a multi-case study<br />
Fang Wang<br />
Business School of Nankai University<br />
No. 94 Weijin Road, Nankai District<br />
Tianjin, China, 300071<br />
(86)22-23502800<br />
wangfangnk@nankai.edu.cn<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
This paper is to explore the critical success factors for the<br />
websites for Chinese migrant farmer workers. A theoretical<br />
framework was put forward according to the theories of<br />
usability, information architecture, webometrics and business<br />
model. A multi-case study on 10 websites was conducted for<br />
testifying 7 hypotheses. Business model and a few technical<br />
properties were found to be the critical factors that influence<br />
the effect and sustainable development of these websites. The<br />
originality of this paper is that it adopted a managerialtechnical<br />
perspective to explore the critical success factors of<br />
the MFW websites.<br />
Categories and Subject Descriptors<br />
H.3.5 [Online Information Services]: Web-based services<br />
General Terms<br />
Management, Measurement, Performance, Economics, Theory<br />
Keywords<br />
Special website, Website effect, Vulnerable groups, Chinese<br />
farmer workers, Multi-case study, Managerial-technical<br />
Perspective<br />
1. INTRODUCTION<br />
From the late 1980s, along with China’s industrialization and<br />
urbanization process, migrant farmer workers (MFWs, farmers<br />
who leave their home in rural areas and come to cities to hunt for<br />
jobs in various industries without hukou, a registered permanent<br />
residence, in cities where they work, and some of them have to<br />
migrate to different cities frequently as their jobs change) have<br />
become a new workforce who are playing critical roles in Chinese<br />
economic and social development [1]. According to the National<br />
Statistics Bureau, the number of Chinese farmer workers was<br />
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and/or a fee.<br />
ICEGOV '12, October 22 - 25 2012, Albany, NY, USA<br />
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1200-4/12/10...$15.00<br />
95<br />
Lihong Gu<br />
Business School of Nankai University<br />
No. 94 Weijin Road, Nankai District<br />
Tianjin, China, 300071<br />
(86)22-23502800<br />
gulihong1217@163.com<br />
229.78 million in 2009, and 145.33 million of them were away<br />
from their hometown villages, occupying 83% of the total Chinese<br />
floating population. Among the farmer workers who migrated<br />
from hometown villages to cities, 128 million had no Hukous in<br />
cities where they worked [2]. However, the 28th Statistics Report<br />
on China Internet Network Development shows that by June 2011<br />
the number of Chinese netizens had reached 485 million which<br />
occupied 34.3% of the total population, 390 million of them<br />
connected to Internet by family broad-band and 318 million by<br />
mobile phone, 33.6% (131 million) of the total netizens were rural<br />
residents [3], while the proportion of MFWs was only 3.5% by<br />
December 2010 [4]. Abovementioned data indicate that there<br />
exists a big digital divide between MFWs and other social groups<br />
although the total number of netizens in China continued to<br />
increase every year. Because of their fluidity and the restriction of<br />
Hukou, MFWs could neither equally share urban information<br />
infrastructure and resources with native citizens nor enjoy policies<br />
and projects of the "new socialist countryside" for rural residents.<br />
This plight makes them fall into a state of information welfare<br />
“loss” or “deprivation”, and in some way become a marginal<br />
group in information society.<br />
“Information welfare is an important part of social welfares” [5].<br />
The inferior positions in which MFWs have to stay concerning<br />
labor price, social security, public good enjoyment, cultural and<br />
recreation consumption are related with their weak information<br />
capabilities [ 6 ]. Their awkward positions in the process of<br />
informatization will lead them to a greater poverty in economic,<br />
political, social and cultural rights and interests according to<br />
Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs [7]. Under the impacts of present<br />
social structure, economic development and other factors, it's<br />
difficult for them to get necessary information [8]. In order to<br />
diminish the digital divide between MFWs and other social<br />
groups, “it is necessary to integrate and make full use of the<br />
information resources owned by the departments of police,<br />
statistics, population and family planning, to promote the<br />
construction of information networks among MFWs, and to<br />
realize information sharing between relevant departments in order<br />
to provide accurate and timely information for MFW management<br />
and services” [9].<br />
Informatization is essential to the realization of the orderly flow of<br />
MFWs [ 10 ]. Information service is especially promising in<br />
improving MFWs’ employment [11]; [12]. On the one hand,<br />
information services for MFWs can strengthen the communication<br />
between the government and the public [13]. On the other hand,<br />
solutions to MFWs’ information marginalization will help to build
an exit mechanism for them and promote labor transfer by<br />
improving their information capabilities and employability, and<br />
thus to diminish the gap between urban citizens and them and<br />
promote their social integration [ 14 ]. As a seminal work,<br />
Construct an Integrated Information Service System for Migrant<br />
Farmer Workers [15], the report of the National Informatization<br />
Expert Committee in 2005 put forward that China should establish<br />
an integrated information service system for MFWs.<br />
Websites are indispensable parts of an integrated information<br />
service system for MFWs. With the implication of “Village<br />
Connection” policy, the number of agriculture-related websites<br />
had reached nearly 20,000 by the end of 2010 in China [16].<br />
Current studies on these websites mainly include website<br />
construction [17]; [18], webmetrics [19], roles of websites played<br />
in rural informatization [20], existing problems e.g. duplicated<br />
and outdated information [21], limited functions and unguaranteed<br />
information authenticity [22], and low browse rate and inadequate<br />
brand building [23]. However, only several websites special for<br />
MFWs have emerged in recent few years. Among 20,000<br />
agriculture-related websites, they occupy only a minimal<br />
proportion but have great significance for MFWs. Moreover, we<br />
had not found any researches on the websites for Chinese MFWs<br />
by June 2011. How do these websites operate? What factors<br />
influence their survival and development? What difficulties are<br />
they faced with? In order to answer these questions, a holistic<br />
exploration is necessary and a multi-case study will be adopted to<br />
realize it.<br />
2. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK<br />
There are a quantity of theories and methods for website study,<br />
such as usability [24], information architecture (IA), technology<br />
acceptance model (TAM) [25 ], webometrics, social network<br />
analysis (SNA), etc. Studies on usability in LIS and IS fields have<br />
increased dramatically in recent years and a variety of measure<br />
scales have been developed. Shackel advanced four dimensions of<br />
usability, effectiveness, learnability, flexibility and attitude [26].<br />
IA is thought as both a kind of art and a kind of technology on<br />
website building [27] and provides a set of technical aids to make<br />
a website more usable. Webometrics studies the quantitative<br />
aspects of the construction and use of information resources,<br />
structures and technologies on the Web drawing on bibliometric<br />
and informetric approaches [ 28 ]. Abovementioned theories<br />
examine websites from technical, managerial or social<br />
perspectives. Our study will focus on disclosing the effects of the<br />
MFW websites and the influences of some internal and external<br />
factors. This is a comprehensive problem related to managerial,<br />
technical and social issues. It is not enough to employ any single<br />
theory to guide a holistic exploration. Therefore, we select<br />
relevant constructs from present theories and combine them into a<br />
new theoretical framework under a managerial-technical<br />
perspective.<br />
Literatures show that some successful studies focus on complex<br />
aspects of a website rather than a single one. Welch and Pandey<br />
[29] compared different measures for the effect of government<br />
websites and found that except technology, political pressure,<br />
centralization, formalization, goal ambiguity, organizational<br />
culture, communication effect, red tape, complexity and size are<br />
all possible determinants of website effects. To avoid the<br />
shortcomings of a single perspective, Eschenfelder and Miller [30]<br />
established a socio-technical toolkit to measure the openness and<br />
accessibility of government information. Lee and Kozer [31]<br />
96<br />
constructed a model consisting of four major website quality<br />
factors, information quality, service quality, systems quality, and<br />
vendor-specific quality, to measure the effect of e-business<br />
website quality. These studies combined online characteristics of<br />
websites with offline factors and obtained satisfying results. In<br />
terms of this study, research problems could be given a more<br />
detailed examination under a holistic theoretical framework than<br />
under a single theoretical perspective. Out of this consideration, 5<br />
qualitative and quantitative constructs and 7 theoretical<br />
hypotheses are put forward as follows:<br />
2.1 Website Effect<br />
The main goal of the studied websites is to deliver information to<br />
MFWs. An effective website will attract more potential users to<br />
click and satisfy actual users’ information needs better. In this<br />
paper, website effect is taken as the dependent variable. Many<br />
constructs could be extracted to describe or measure website<br />
effect in usability researches. Nilsen [32] used ten usability<br />
heuristics related with user’s satisfaction for user interface design.<br />
Preece [33] adopted the user’s attitude as one of the factors in<br />
defining website usability. Success of information delivery to<br />
intended users or not determines a website’s final effect. Thus<br />
website effect could be defined with two variables, awareness and<br />
users’ satisfaction. High awareness means that a large number of<br />
people have known or experienced the website. In search engine<br />
optimization (SEO) average daily IP clicks and page view (PV)<br />
within a month are used to estimate website awareness. Many<br />
methods are used to evaluate overall user’s satisfaction towards a<br />
website in literatures. In this study, we choose both qualitative and<br />
quantitative indicators to evaluate user’s satisfaction. The former<br />
is used to indicate users’ satisfaction degree by qualitative content<br />
analyses on users’ feedback messages and media comments. The<br />
latter include two quantitative indicators, Google Page Rank<br />
Value (a numeric value that represents how important a page is on<br />
the web) and an overall assessment scored with 5-point Likert<br />
scale by researchers after in-depth investigations of each website<br />
and interviews with its webmaster. These indicators for the<br />
concept of website effect are shown in table 1.<br />
Table 1: Indicators for the concept of website effect<br />
Conceptual<br />
indicator<br />
website<br />
awareness<br />
User<br />
satisfaction<br />
Operational indicator Data Source<br />
Average daily IP clicks,<br />
Page view estimates<br />
within one month<br />
Degree of MFWs’<br />
satisfaction<br />
Websites of ALEXA,<br />
SEO and GOOGLE<br />
Users’ feedback<br />
messages on websites<br />
and comments from<br />
other mass media<br />
Overall assessment Google Page Rank<br />
Value, overall website<br />
analyses and interviews<br />
with webmasters<br />
2.2 Business Model of the Websites<br />
Business model is a concept frequently used in e-business, IS,<br />
computer science, strategy or management [34]. “At its heart, a<br />
business model performs two important functions: value creation<br />
and value capture” [35]. A conceptual business model should
include customers and competitors, the offering, activities and<br />
organization, resources and factor market interactions [36]. “We<br />
must consider which concepts and relationships allow a simplified<br />
description and representation of what value is provided to<br />
customers, how this is done and with which financial<br />
consequences” [37]. As for websites, business model is mainly<br />
determined by their capital sources and profit models, which is<br />
more often used in businesses than government agencies or nonprofit<br />
organizations. Our pilot interviews show that current MFW<br />
websites have four types of investment entities, governments,<br />
non-profit organizations, individuals and enterprises, and their<br />
profit models can be categorized as government websites, nonprofit<br />
websites and enterprise websites. In general, non-profit and<br />
individual invested websites try to represent or pursuit benefits of<br />
MFWs, government invested ones intend to help to improve social<br />
management of MFWs while enterprise invested ones are used to<br />
make money as a e-business platform. Accordingly, their business<br />
models can be classified as “pure public operation”, “supported by<br />
government procurement” and “market operation”. Relationships<br />
between investment entities, profit models and business models of<br />
MFW websites are shown in figure 1.<br />
Government<br />
investment<br />
Non-profit<br />
organization<br />
investment<br />
Individual<br />
investment<br />
Enterprise<br />
investment<br />
Government<br />
websites<br />
Public<br />
welfare<br />
websites<br />
Enterprise<br />
website<br />
Pure public<br />
operation<br />
Supported<br />
by<br />
government<br />
procurement<br />
Market<br />
operation<br />
Figure 1:Relationships between investment entities,<br />
profit models and business models of MFW websites<br />
Different business models mean different incentive mechanisms<br />
and may result in different website effects. Therefore, we propose<br />
hypothesis 1:<br />
H1: Business model affects the effect of MFW websites.<br />
2.3 Website Construction<br />
Website construction refers to technical features or perceived<br />
technical features of a website in this study. Usability and IA<br />
provide valuable explanations for website construction from<br />
different angles. Usability theory examines perceived interface<br />
attributes such as availability, accessibility, readability,<br />
understandability, etc.. Wang and Senecal [38] developed a scale<br />
for website usability including three dimensions: ease of<br />
navigation, speed and interactivity. Al-badi & Mayhew [39]<br />
demonstrated the value of target culture, navigation, layout,<br />
interaction, graphics and color in designing localized business<br />
websites. Karlsson [40] found that graphic design, content and<br />
perceived usability contribute to the perceived expression and<br />
emotional responses of the websites. In these studies, content,<br />
97<br />
accessibility, interactivity navigation, open speed, graphic and<br />
color design are important factors that affect website effect.<br />
IA theory provides some objective guidelines to improve website<br />
usability. Its core idea is “user-centered and to make information<br />
more understandable”. Davenport defined Information<br />
architecture simply a set of aids that match user needs with<br />
information resources [41]. Gullikson [42] examined the impact<br />
of information architecture on the usability of an academic<br />
website and recommended key ingredients: information design,<br />
access tools, and navigational aids. Comparing IA with website<br />
usability theory, we define website construction with two<br />
dimensions, information architecture and technical performance.<br />
Technical performance affects website usability and comprises<br />
complex components. In order to get data more easily, we adopt<br />
open speed to measure it. Content, information organization,<br />
navigation and page presentation are selected to indicate website<br />
information architecture. In the process of investigation, we found<br />
that there are no obvious differences in page presentation between<br />
websites, so it is abandoned for lack of good discrimination.<br />
According to usability and IA theory, website construction<br />
influences its website effect. Four research hypotheses are put<br />
forward as follows:<br />
H2: Information content affects the effect of MFW websites.<br />
H3: Information organization affects the effect of MFW websites.<br />
H4: Website navigation affects the effect of MFW websites.<br />
H5: Open speed affects the effect of MFW websites.<br />
2.4 Social Networking Service<br />
As one of the sociological characteristics of a website, social<br />
networking services help to expand MFWs' social network and<br />
interpersonal communication. Our previous research shows that<br />
interpersonal influence is one of the most important factors for<br />
MFWs to access to the Internet for the first time and interpersonal<br />
network is an important source for them to acquire information<br />
[43]. Previous literatures show that interactivity is an important<br />
indicator of website usability [44]. Therefore, interaction and<br />
community functions of a website could be used to indicate social<br />
networking service. The communication function can help website<br />
users to share information or views and includes BBS, blog,<br />
online groups, etc., while the interaction function helps users to<br />
communicate with the webmaster or manager and mainly involves<br />
the feedback channels on websites. To explore the influence of<br />
social networking services on website effect, hypothesis 6 is put<br />
forward as follows:<br />
H6: Functions for Social Networking service affect the service<br />
effect of MFW websites.<br />
2.5 Website Promotion<br />
From the perspective of network marketing, only when a website<br />
is known by most of the targeted users, could it make full impacts.<br />
In past ten years, e-commerce webmasters have developed various<br />
indicators to measure and adopted many strategies to improve the<br />
awareness of their websites. Our pilot investigation shows that<br />
except that local government websites can be easily found on first<br />
page of Baidu’s search results after 2010, websites of small<br />
government departments and non-profit organizations without<br />
promotions can’t be found easily because Baidu ranks its search<br />
results by bid. The practice of e-business has proved that website
promotion involves a variety of tactics and has obvious impacts<br />
on website effect. Some webometric indicators, such as web links,<br />
search engine optimization, are used to disclose website<br />
marketing [45]. Present webometrics studies involve four areas:<br />
(1) Page content analysis; (2) Link analysis; (3) Site usage<br />
analysis; (4) Web technology analysis (including search engine<br />
performance) [46].To testify the influence of website promotion<br />
on its effect, we adopt SEO (Search Engine Optimization) value,<br />
the number of back-links and the number of times reported by<br />
other media to evaluate website promotion. Hypothesis 7 is put<br />
followed as follows:<br />
H7: Website promotion is positively correlated with the effect of<br />
MFW websites.<br />
All the hypotheses form a theoretical framework of this study, as<br />
shown in figure 3.<br />
3. RESEARCH METHODS<br />
Case study is adopted in some website researches, such as<br />
Weischedel & Huizingh [47], Fang [48], etc.. Yin [49] states that<br />
case studies could be used to describe, explore or explain<br />
phenomena. Bonoma [50] (1985) suggests that multiple cases<br />
could play a role in both hypothesis generation and hypothesis<br />
testing. “Multiple-case designs allow for cross-case analysis and<br />
the extension of theory, and yield more general research results<br />
than single-case study.”[51]. Multi-case studies are often used to<br />
explore influential factors in many management fields. Akhavan<br />
et al [ 52 ] derived critical success factors for design and<br />
implementing knowledge management (KM) system in a multicase<br />
study research with an integrated approach. Our study is to<br />
explore success factors for MFW websites beyond a single<br />
perspective of technology. Multi-case approach is thought suitable<br />
for this holistic exploration.<br />
According to the analytical framework, independent variables are<br />
business model, website construction, social networking services,<br />
website promotion, and the dependent variable is website effect.<br />
Their indicators are concluded in table 2.<br />
Table 2: Indicators for Key Variables<br />
Variables Dimensions Indicators<br />
Website effect<br />
Business<br />
model<br />
Website<br />
construction<br />
Website<br />
awareness<br />
Users’ satisfaction<br />
Overall website<br />
effect<br />
(1)Daily average IP traffic<br />
within a month;<br />
(2) Daily average page<br />
view estimates<br />
Qualitative analysis of<br />
feedback messages and<br />
content of website forums<br />
(1) Google Page Rank<br />
Value;(2)qualitative<br />
assessment of overall<br />
effect;(3) Analysis of<br />
problems and difficulties<br />
Fund sources Amount and persistence<br />
of funds or investment<br />
Website property See in figure 1<br />
Information<br />
architecture<br />
(1) Information contents<br />
(quality, richness,<br />
relevance, renewal and<br />
98<br />
Social<br />
networking<br />
services<br />
Website<br />
promotion<br />
Technical support Open speed<br />
Interaction<br />
function<br />
community<br />
function<br />
SEO (Search<br />
Engine<br />
Optimization)<br />
Number of backlinks<br />
Number of times<br />
reported by<br />
traditional media<br />
accuracy)<br />
(2) Information<br />
organization<br />
(classification, structure)<br />
(3)Navigation (sign<br />
design, number of internal<br />
and external links, search)<br />
Interaction channels (<br />
feedback columns, Online<br />
chat, etc.)<br />
Virtual community (blog,<br />
BBS, QQ group etc)<br />
Number of pages included<br />
in search engines on<br />
ALEXA (google, baidu,<br />
yahoo, netease, soso and<br />
sogou)<br />
Number of back-links<br />
recorded in search engines<br />
on ALEXA (google,<br />
baidu, yahoo, netease,<br />
soso and sogou)<br />
Qualitative analysis of<br />
relevant reports on<br />
important traditional<br />
media<br />
4. CASES AND DATA<br />
4.1 Case Description<br />
Existing MFW websites mainly provide information related to<br />
MFWS’ employment, legal right protection, children’s education,<br />
medical treatment and e-business. Using search engines like<br />
google, baidu, soso, et.al and any possible link tracks, we<br />
searched case websites from November 2010 to 14 June 2011 and<br />
finally found 11 relevant objects in total, including 9 websites (not<br />
involving their sub-websites) and 2 special pages. These MFW<br />
websites occupied a minimal percentage of more than 20,000<br />
agriculture-related websites and could nearly be neglected<br />
compared with more than 70,000 government websites in China at<br />
the end of 2010. The earliest MFW website opened on 10 May<br />
2003, a personal forum established by Changsheng Guo who<br />
hoped to protect MFWs’ legal rights by displaying their living and<br />
working situation. In 2004, “Minggong Net” (Websites for<br />
MFWS), a website supported by the Office of Migrant Workers<br />
and Poverty Alleviation Office of State Council, was opened<br />
online. It mainly provides employment information services, and<br />
often holds public activities for MFWs. After 2007, a few<br />
websites for MFWs emerge, such as “Chinese Young Migrant<br />
Workers”, “Zhong Lao Wang” (Websites of Chinese Labor) and<br />
“Legal Rights Protection of MFWs”, ect.. Besides, some large<br />
portal websites (e.g. Phoenix and Sohu) and large government<br />
websites (e.g. China.net and Labor Union of China) own special<br />
columns for MFWs. These websites, columns and pages play<br />
different roles and gradually form an Internet information service<br />
system for MFWs with specialization and diversity, which can be<br />
shown as figure 2.
Websites or columns for MFWs<br />
In this study, we didn’t involve the special columns for MFWs of<br />
large business portals such as Phoenix.com and Sohu.com,<br />
because contents of these columns only occupy a very small<br />
proportion of the whole portals. All the 11 special websites and<br />
columns related to MFWs are introduced in table 3. Taking into<br />
account that each case should be effective, we abandoned the No.<br />
9 case because it is only a static page of China.com and hasn’t<br />
been updated since 2005.<br />
1. Website name,<br />
setup date and<br />
address<br />
Website for<br />
Chinese Young<br />
Migrant Workers<br />
July,2010,www.y<br />
oungmigrants.org<br />
2.Legal Right<br />
Protection for<br />
China Migrant<br />
Workers Jan.<br />
2006,<br />
www.zgnmg.org/<br />
Non-profit<br />
Websites<br />
For-profit<br />
websites<br />
Government<br />
websites or<br />
columns<br />
Special columns<br />
of large business<br />
portals<br />
Individual<br />
forums<br />
Table 3 Case Description<br />
Sponsor<br />
Agencies or<br />
main investor<br />
Institute of<br />
Population<br />
and Labor<br />
Economics of<br />
Chinese<br />
Academy of<br />
Social<br />
Sciences, ILO<br />
UN<br />
Population<br />
Fund<br />
Beijing<br />
Zhicheng Law<br />
Firm, Beijing<br />
Youth Legal<br />
Aid and<br />
Research<br />
Center<br />
Legal right<br />
protection<br />
Academic<br />
research<br />
Employment<br />
Employment<br />
Sub-websites<br />
Special columns<br />
Small local<br />
websites<br />
Phoenix,<br />
Sohu, etc.<br />
Entertainmen<br />
t<br />
Figure 2 Online information service systems for Chinese<br />
MFWs<br />
Websi<br />
te<br />
proper<br />
ty<br />
Nonprofit,<br />
UN<br />
Millen<br />
nium<br />
Devel<br />
opmen<br />
t<br />
Goals<br />
Fund<br />
Nonprofit<br />
Intended<br />
users<br />
Academic<br />
and policy<br />
researcher<br />
s, migrant<br />
workers<br />
Migrant<br />
workers,<br />
layers, &<br />
governme<br />
nt legal<br />
agencies<br />
99<br />
3.Jobs for<br />
Technical and<br />
Skilled Workers,<br />
2007,<br />
www.nmgjggz.co<br />
m/<br />
4.Website for<br />
Migrant workers,<br />
2007<br />
www.mingong123<br />
.com/<br />
5.China Labor,<br />
Aug. 2008<br />
www.chinalao.co<br />
m/<br />
6. Migrant<br />
Workers Help,<br />
2009<br />
www.zhich.com/<br />
7.Chinese Migrant<br />
Workers(subsite<br />
of Zhongnong<br />
Xingye), April,<br />
2009,<br />
www.nmgw.org.c<br />
n<br />
8.Column for<br />
Migrant Workers<br />
of Chinese Trade<br />
Unions website,<br />
2009<br />
nmg.workercn.cn/<br />
9.Special page for<br />
migrant workers<br />
of China.com,<br />
2005<br />
www.china.com.c<br />
n/chinese/zhuanti/<br />
nmg/507760.htm<br />
10.China Migrant<br />
Workers (Party<br />
Building)Jan,<br />
2011,<br />
www.zgnmgw.co<br />
m/<br />
11.Chinese<br />
Migrant workers,<br />
May, 2003,<br />
http://mg.arkoo.co<br />
m/<br />
Individual<br />
Partners<br />
Beijing<br />
Qingda<br />
Yanyuan<br />
Network<br />
Technology<br />
Co., LTD.<br />
Entrepreneur<br />
Wenghua<br />
Zhou and VC<br />
Individual<br />
partners<br />
Information<br />
Center of<br />
Industrial<br />
projects in<br />
rural China<br />
ACFTU<br />
China Foreign<br />
Languages<br />
Publishing<br />
and<br />
Distribution<br />
Agency<br />
Voluntary<br />
investment by<br />
MFWs in<br />
Beijing from<br />
Gushi county<br />
of Henan<br />
Province.<br />
A migrant<br />
farmer worker<br />
Changping<br />
Guo<br />
Nonprofit<br />
Enterp<br />
rise<br />
Enterp<br />
rise<br />
Enterp<br />
rise<br />
Enterp<br />
rise<br />
Invest<br />
ed by<br />
gover<br />
nment<br />
Gover<br />
nment<br />
websit<br />
e<br />
Gover<br />
nment<br />
News<br />
websit<br />
e<br />
Nonprofit<br />
Person<br />
al<br />
forum<br />
Workers,<br />
employers<br />
recruitme<br />
nt and<br />
training<br />
agencies<br />
Same with<br />
No.3<br />
Same with<br />
NO.3<br />
Same with<br />
NO.3<br />
Same with<br />
NO.3<br />
Migrant<br />
workers<br />
and other<br />
people<br />
People<br />
from all<br />
walks<br />
Migrant<br />
workers<br />
Migrant<br />
workers<br />
4.2 Data Collection<br />
The approaches for data collection include website content<br />
investigation, half-structured interview with webmasters, analysis<br />
of related reports on mass media and some webometrics tools.<br />
Data were collected in three steps:
(1)Firstly, all the existing MFW websites were investigated<br />
comprehensively. The content, structure and information<br />
presentation of each website were repeatedly browsed, tried and<br />
analyzed, and the navigation signs, search engine and links were<br />
tested. A deep content analysis was specially conducted on the<br />
site aim, webmaster`s statements, users’ messages and BBS posts.<br />
And then we collected and qualitatively analyzed relevant online<br />
reports on other media. To ensure the reliability of the data, 2<br />
researchers collected all the data respectively at first, and then<br />
compared the results with each other, discussed the difference,<br />
and unify them by repeat investigation. At last, qualitative data for<br />
IA, social networking services, open speed of part websites,<br />
business model and website promotion of each website were<br />
sorted out. After in-depth analyses of these data, an assessment on<br />
the overall effect of each website is given with Likert 5-point<br />
scale.<br />
(2) Secondly, we conducted half-structured interviews with<br />
webmasters by means of telephone, email and QQ (a timely<br />
online communication tool). Interview questions include: “How is<br />
your website going?”, “Who invested on your website?”, “What is<br />
the main purpose of your website?”, “How does your website<br />
make money?”, “What difficulties does your website face at<br />
present?”, “What do you plan to do for next step?”, etc. Interview<br />
contents were recorded for qualitative analysis. Meantime,<br />
supplements and corrections were made for the data got in last<br />
stage.<br />
(3) Thirdly, we collected quantitative data with webometrics tools<br />
such as ALEXA, SEO and Google (site command), including<br />
average daily IP and PV value, number of the pages included by<br />
search engines, number of back-links, Google PR value, number<br />
of website pages, number of internal and external links, open<br />
speed of some websites, etc. All the quantitative data covered<br />
recent 1 month and were collected from 8 a.m. to 12 a.m. o 'clock<br />
on June 14, 2011. The time for data collection is selected<br />
randomly so as to keep the validity of the data.<br />
For the word limit of this paper, the data table is omitted here.<br />
5. FINDINGS AND IMPLICATIONS<br />
5.1 Hypothesis Test<br />
As a compound variable, website effect is measured by both<br />
quantitative indicators such as GOOGLE PR value, daily average<br />
IP traffic within 1 month and daily average page view estimates,<br />
and qualitative indicators such as overall effect, problems and<br />
difficulties faced by the websites and users’ satisfaction. After a<br />
comprehensive qualitative analysis and repeated quantitative<br />
comparisons, results of hypothesis testing are shown in Figure 3.<br />
H1: is supported. Business model has significant influence on the<br />
effect of MFW websites.<br />
The values of PR, IP and PV of commercial websites far exceed<br />
that of other kinds of websites. Among all the websites,<br />
commercial ones occupy the biggest proportion and operate better<br />
than others. They focus on providing jobs for MFWs and bluecollar<br />
workers, including Website for Migrant Workers<br />
(www.mingong123.com/), China Labor (www.chinalao.com/) and<br />
Migrant Workers Help (www.zhich.com/). These websites charge<br />
the employers and training agencies who issue information and<br />
promise to keep the authenticity and reliability of issued<br />
information, but don't charge farmer workers who issue messages<br />
100<br />
for job looking or charge them little. Some of the commercial<br />
websites try to get supports from governments and positive<br />
comments from media by advertising themselves as “platforms<br />
providing public free information for MFWs”. The Website of<br />
Chinese Migrant Workers(a sub-site of the government website<br />
Zhongnong Xingye, www.nmgw.org.cn) is trying to transform<br />
itself into a commercial one and thus to get more vitality.<br />
Business model of websites<br />
Website construction<br />
Website IA<br />
Technology support<br />
Capability of SNS<br />
Website promotion<br />
Content<br />
construction<br />
Info. organization<br />
Navigation system<br />
H6-<br />
H1+<br />
H2+<br />
H3-<br />
H4+p<br />
H5+<br />
H7+<br />
Figure 3:Theoretical framework of this study<br />
Effects of MFW websites<br />
Clear profit model, persistent investment, rich information sources<br />
and strict information checking system are four main<br />
characteristics of commercial websites. China Xin NongMen (new<br />
gate of the villages) Website was set up in august 2005 and got 2<br />
million dollars of venture capital in 2006, but went to bankrupt in<br />
2008 because of bad business model [53]. It made great efforts to<br />
build close relatiohships with governments, which was proved to<br />
be a wrong strategy. The website of Jobs for Technical and<br />
Skilled Workers (www.nmgjggz.com/) seeks a public welfare<br />
model. It doesn't charge on information issue but also don’t<br />
promise to assure information quality. For lack of a clear profit<br />
model and enough investment, it performs mediocre.<br />
Among non-profit websites, the website of Legal Right Protection<br />
for China Migrant Workers has highest IP and PV value. It was<br />
established by Beijing Zhicheng Law Firm and Beijing Youth<br />
Legal Aid and Research Center as a non-profit platform for<br />
providing free legal advice and practical aid services for MFWs.<br />
Supported by government procurement, it operates well. This<br />
kind of business model solves the problems of inefficiency and<br />
unsustainability when judiciary bodies provide free legal aids for<br />
vulnerable groups directly.<br />
Another kind of non-profit websites are academic ones which are<br />
hosted by research institutes or subsidized by NPO. The Website<br />
for Chinese Young Migrant Workers (www.youngmigrants.org),<br />
funded by the project of UN Millennium Development Goals,<br />
perform quite well. Its targeted users are scholars who are<br />
interested in problems of MFWs instead of farmer workers<br />
themselves. It releases information on policies, laws, regulations,<br />
and new research fruits for academic purpose, which is also<br />
helpful to MFWs. The problem is that if the grant project<br />
terminates, its sustainability will face a great challenge.
According to our investigation, there have been no pure<br />
government websites special for MFWs except columns for<br />
MFWs on two large government websites with outdated<br />
information by June 2011. In some way, they are more news<br />
media than service platforms.<br />
Small-sized personal BBSs or forums attract few clicks. The<br />
earliest BBS is very simple with little information, few visitors<br />
and slow speed, and has to change its domain name frequently for<br />
lack of money to rent a permanent server.<br />
Generally speaking, five kinds of websites for or on MFWs adopt<br />
different business models. Commercial websites and non-profit<br />
ones with sufficient funds and clear mission perform better than<br />
others. All kinds of websites hope to set up good relationships<br />
with governments and manage to get their supports in investment,<br />
procurement, or policies. But in terms of commercial websites, a<br />
good profit model is critical for their survival.<br />
H2: is supported. Information contents have significant influence<br />
on website effect.<br />
Websites with higher specialty, richer and more accurate<br />
information and faster updating have better effect than others,<br />
because they are more competitive in meeting the information<br />
needs of farmer workers. Content don’t only influence website<br />
effect directly but also indirectly by the mediation of business<br />
model. For various missions of their host institutions, websites<br />
adopt different business models to provide information with<br />
different utilities. Information on employment is mainly provided<br />
by commercial websites maybe because of its market scarcity,<br />
high cost, time-sensitivity and value-added capability. Legal<br />
information is more likely provided on non-profit websites and<br />
supported by government procurement completely or partly,<br />
maybe because most of their target users are social vulnerable<br />
groups with low incomes and purchasing power. By the mediation<br />
of business model, information contents correlate with website<br />
effect.<br />
H3: is not supported. We can’t get enough evidences to prove or<br />
deny hypothesis 3.<br />
Information classification of a website determines its accessibility<br />
and understandability. Data show that the information<br />
classification of commercial and academic websites is slightly<br />
better than that of other websites. However, this kind of difference<br />
is not significant. Color style and flash design may have impacts<br />
on customers’ preference and loyalty in some way. But most of<br />
the websites have not developed impressive distinctive styles<br />
except the website for China Migrant Workers (Party Building<br />
), which has a symbolic red style. In general, differences in<br />
information classification and page layout are not significant<br />
among MFW websites. The possible reason is that present website<br />
building technology is mature and cheap enough so that all kinds<br />
of websites can afford and adopt it. This doesn’t prove that<br />
information organization has no influences on the effect of MFW<br />
websites, but means that we have not enough evidences to support<br />
or deny this hypothesis.<br />
H4: is partly supported. Navigation systems correlate with website<br />
effect.<br />
According to data analysis, websites with more powerful search<br />
engine and more external links have better effect. Number of links<br />
correlates with website effect, but not as significant as that<br />
101<br />
between information content and website effect. The possible<br />
reason is that there are not enough alternative websites for MFWs<br />
to choose at present so that they have to choose websites by<br />
content at first to satisfy their basic information needs. Besides,<br />
commercial and academic websites do better in information<br />
navigation and external links than others.<br />
H5: is supported. Technical supports are significantly related with<br />
website effect.<br />
Open speed is adopted to indicate technical supports and has<br />
significant correlation with website effect. Data analysis shows<br />
that except personal BBSs or forums, other websites which are<br />
supported by formal organizations and have independent domain<br />
names can be opened quickly, because they are hosted by bigger<br />
sized and more formal institutions that can provide better<br />
information services.<br />
H6: is not supported. The function of social networking services<br />
of the websites have no significant correlation with their effect,<br />
but have significant correlation with their business models.<br />
The function of social networking service is mainly indicated with<br />
interaction and community functions of websites. Data show that<br />
commercial websites have very strong interaction functions and<br />
offer various channels to communicate timely with users, but they<br />
have few communities to allow users to communicate with each<br />
other. The possible reason is that interaction is attractive for<br />
commercial webmasters because they could know more about the<br />
information needs of customers through it and thus to sell their<br />
services more successfully, while community function is often<br />
welcomed by website users because it can help them to expand<br />
social network and get more useful information. On the contrary,<br />
academic websites provide better community construction but pay<br />
less attention to interaction functions. The possible reason is that<br />
free information sharing among users will damage the interests of<br />
commercial websites, which are mostly deprived from<br />
information asymmetry between information suppliers and users.<br />
Whereas, academic websites have a mission to disseminate public<br />
knowledge but can’t burden additional labor cost for limited<br />
funds, are inclined to provide weaker feedback but strong<br />
community functions. As for government websites, the case in<br />
this study is in a “dormancy” state and prepares to transform into<br />
a commercial website. Government websites pay little attention to<br />
both the feedback and community functions for lack of<br />
motivations to seek profits and incentives to disseminate<br />
knowledge.<br />
H7: is supported. Website promotion is significantly correlated<br />
with both website effect and business model.<br />
Three indicators, search engine’s collection, number of back-links<br />
and number of times reported by other media are selected to<br />
evaluate website promotion. Data show that commercial websites<br />
do far better than others in promotion because they have stronger<br />
motivations and take more measures to increase their awareness.<br />
Non-profit websites funded by NPOs or supported by government<br />
procurement also have incentives to promote themselves. Pure<br />
government websites and small personal websites hardly take any<br />
promoting measures. In general, government websites keep<br />
conservative attitude at commercial promotion strategies while<br />
personal websites own low capabilities to promote themselves. By<br />
the mediation of business model, website promotion influences its<br />
effect.
5.2 Other Findings<br />
Business model is a strong predictor for not only website effect,<br />
but also other variables, such as website construction, social<br />
networking services, website promotion, etc. Two commercial<br />
websites, the Website for Migrant workers and the Website for<br />
China Labor, are better than other websites in all aspects,<br />
especially in information updating and examination of<br />
information accuracy. Websites with worst performances are<br />
those commercial websites which are short of funds, those<br />
government websites which are in transformation to commercial<br />
ones and those personal BBSs.<br />
Lack of funds is reported by several small webmasters as the key<br />
factor that influences website effect. The master of the Website of<br />
Jobs for Migrant and Technical Workers, a commercial website<br />
that was set up by a few individual MFW partners with their<br />
meager wages, said: “limitation of funding is the bottleneck of<br />
development and makes the website very difficult.” Another<br />
website, China Migrant Worker (Party Building), was also<br />
established by individual MFW partners and can’t operate well for<br />
lack of money. Lack of talents is another problem related with<br />
shortage of funds. Workers from a few websites which perform<br />
better said that it is difficult for MFW websites to attract better<br />
professionals because they can’t offer higher salaries.<br />
5.3 Practical implications<br />
Previous studies didn’t pay much attention to MFW websites for<br />
many reasons. This study finds that MFW websites are neither<br />
parts of government websites, nor just a group of agriculture<br />
related websites, but are important information platforms<br />
concerning legal right protection, employment and development<br />
of Chinese MFWs with independent business models. The results<br />
of this study have some practical implications for both<br />
webmasters and governments.<br />
5.3.1 Proper business model is critical for the<br />
survival and development of Chinese MFW<br />
websites<br />
Previous researches advocate that government should make<br />
efforts to provide free information services for MFWs because<br />
some of them live in worse information environment and have<br />
lower information capabilities than others, but few empirical<br />
examinations have been conducted to explore specific service<br />
patterns. This study shows that pure government website is not an<br />
effective and efficient model for the delivery of information with<br />
commercial characters. It also finds that information services<br />
related with legal right protection of MFWs could be supported by<br />
governments by means of service procurement, tax cuts, project<br />
leading, etc.. Therefore, MFW websites need to manage to seek<br />
appropriate business models, broaden funding channels, and strive<br />
for supports from governments.<br />
5.3.2 Construction of website features other than<br />
contents will become more important in the<br />
future<br />
This study shows that some website features such as information<br />
organization, number of links and SNS functions have not<br />
significant influences on website effect. But as more and more<br />
MFW websites emerge and the competition among them<br />
intensifies, strengthening the construction of website features<br />
other than contents will become more necessary and urgent.<br />
102<br />
5.3.3 Governments should provide more supports for<br />
commercial and non-profit MFW websites<br />
rather than establish new ones by themselves<br />
This study shows that commercial websites and non-profit<br />
websites supported by government procurement are more<br />
successful than government websites and personal BBSs. This<br />
means that although public information services are very<br />
important for the survival and development of MFWs, it is not a<br />
smart choice for government agencies to establish and manage<br />
websites for MFWs by themselves. Instead, government should<br />
support non-profit or commercial websites by means of<br />
government procurement, tax cutting and policy concessions.<br />
6. CONCLUSION AND DISCUSSION<br />
6.1 Conclusions<br />
This study explored the factors that influence service effect MFW<br />
websites. An analytical framework comprising four independent<br />
variables, including business model, website construction, social<br />
networking services, website promotion, and one dependent<br />
variable, website effect, was advanced under a managerialtechnical<br />
perspective. These variables were borrowed from<br />
theories of usability, information architecture and webometrics.<br />
Both quantitative and qualitative indicators were used for the<br />
measurement of these variables, and a multi-case study was<br />
conducted for a holistic exploration. It was found that factors that<br />
significantly influence the effect and sustainable development of<br />
MFW websites are business model, information content and<br />
website promotion. Among them, business model also make<br />
impacts as a mediating variable. Different kinds of information<br />
intend to be provided by websites with different business models.<br />
Government procurement and NPO funding are efficient<br />
arrangements for websites on the legal right protection of MFWs.<br />
The “commerce plus non-profit” mode by charging employers and<br />
training agencies who issue information on websites but don’t<br />
charge MFWs who issue or acquire information is common for<br />
employment websites. Lack of money was reported as a prevalent<br />
problem that faces with all kinds of MFW websites.<br />
6.2 Limitations<br />
Firstly, trying to combine both managerial and technical, and even<br />
social perspectives into a holistic study is risky in being accepted<br />
by readers who are accustomed to one discipline paradigm. We<br />
employed and unified theories from LIS, IS, webmetrics and<br />
management science and formulated an analytical framework for<br />
this qualitative study. We hope that this attempt will be proved a<br />
cross-discipline innovation instead of a blunder. Secondly, a<br />
multi-case study may have to lose some detailed information in<br />
order to improve the generality of the research findings, although<br />
we had collected a large amount of first and second-hand data by<br />
means of interview, website examinations and literature reviews.<br />
Thirdly, the validity of four independent variables and 1<br />
dependent variable were not testified powerfully in this qualitative<br />
study because we failed to find similar studies and appropriate<br />
methods. Fourthly, we focused on websites and neglected<br />
information needs and information seeking behaviors of migrant<br />
farmer workers, which will be studied in further step.<br />
7. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS<br />
Our thanks to 3 projects that support this study, the project<br />
“Information Access of Chinese Migrant Farmer Workers and the
Construction of Inter-regional Public Information Service System<br />
for Them” (Grant No. 71173121) supported by the National<br />
Natural Science Foundation of China , the project “Holistic<br />
Evaluation Research on E-government Based on Multistakeholder<br />
Value-focused Approach” (Grant No. 10YJA870021)<br />
supported by the Foundation for Humanities and Social Sciences<br />
Program of Ministry of Education , and the project “Theory<br />
Construction and Evaluation on Social Information Welfare”<br />
supported by the Special Funds for fundamental Research of<br />
Central Universities.<br />
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The Development of Public Smart Phone Apps in Korea:<br />
Empirical Approach<br />
Eom, Seok-Jin<br />
Seoul National University<br />
1 Gwanak-ro, Gwanak-gu,<br />
Seoul, Korea, 151-742<br />
(82) 010-8147-5352<br />
sjum21@snu.ac.kr<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
With widespread proliferation of smart phones, public apps, the<br />
smart phone applications provided by government organizations<br />
and public agencies, have been emerging as a new channel of<br />
public information services in the era of mobile government (mgovernment).<br />
Despite the increasing necessity of research on the<br />
public apps, however, few studies have dealt with the public apps.<br />
Under these circumstances, this study has been in progress with<br />
following purposes: (1) to build a ‘public apps development<br />
model’ for describing the level of services of public apps; (2) to<br />
measure the overall level of public apps in Korea adopting the<br />
development model; and (3) to analyze the factors which<br />
determine the difference in the level of public apps services. Until<br />
now, a 6-stage public apps development model whose criteria are<br />
citizen-centricity and technological complexity of the public apps<br />
was built. In addition, the levels of 148 public apps provided by<br />
Korean central government were measured. As results, it is found<br />
that all kinds of public organizations including central government<br />
are actively providing various public apps and the overall level of<br />
public apps provided by central government is in a midpoint of<br />
the second and third stage. The authors plan to complement the<br />
public apps development model in order to enhance validity, and<br />
to measure a level of the public apps not only of central<br />
government but also of local governments and public agencies<br />
accordingly.<br />
Categories and Subject Descriptors<br />
J.1 [Computer Applications]: Administrative Data Processing –<br />
government.<br />
General Terms<br />
Measurement, Theory<br />
Keywords<br />
m-government, application (app), smart phone, e-government,<br />
public apps development model<br />
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for<br />
personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are<br />
not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies<br />
bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for<br />
components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored.<br />
Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to<br />
post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission<br />
and/or a fee.<br />
ICEGOV '12, October 22 - 25 2012, Albany, NY, USA<br />
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1200-4/12/10...$15.00<br />
Lee, Mi Yeon<br />
Seoul National University<br />
1 Gwanak-ro, Gwanak-gu,<br />
Seoul, Korea, 151-742<br />
(82) 010-7490-3777<br />
dldus33@snu.ac.kr<br />
105<br />
Kim, Jun Houng<br />
Seoul National University<br />
1 Gwanak-ro, Gwanak-gu,<br />
Seoul, Korea, 151-742<br />
(82) 010-9602-5007<br />
jh5451@snu.ac.kr<br />
1. INTRODUCTION<br />
With widespread proliferation of smart phones, public apps have<br />
been produced and provided by government organizations and<br />
public agencies in order to deliver public information services in<br />
recent years. In addition to the wired Internet in the era of egovernment,<br />
these public apps are emerging as a new service<br />
channel in the era of m-government [3][4]. Despite widespread<br />
proliferation of smart phones and the importance of public apps as<br />
a new service channel, however, few studies in the field of egovernment<br />
and information policy have dealt with the public<br />
apps that function in smart phones. Under these circumstances,<br />
this research is in progress for the following purposes: (1) to build<br />
the ‘public apps development model’ for describing the level of<br />
services of public apps; (2) to measure the overall level of public<br />
apps in Korea adopting the development model; and (3) to analyze<br />
the factors which determine the difference in the level of public<br />
apps services.<br />
In this paper, the authors review the literature on e-government<br />
stage models in order to capture the criteria for dividing each<br />
stage of the public apps development model. As a result, the 6stage<br />
public apps development model, which is based on citizencentricity<br />
and technological complexity, is illustrated. Adopting<br />
this model, the authors measure the level of each public app<br />
provided by Korean central government and demonstrate the<br />
result of measurement according to each stage. In the future, the<br />
authors not only plan to measure the level of each public app<br />
provided by local governments and public agencies in Korea, but<br />
also plan to analyze the factors that determine the difference in the<br />
level of each public app through regression analysis.<br />
This study is expected to make a theoretical contribution to<br />
widening understandings on the current status of public apps and<br />
the characteristics of m-government. From the perspective of<br />
practice, this study is expected to provide the guidelines and<br />
toolkits for making better public apps to public agencies and<br />
public officials.<br />
The organization of the paper is as follows. In section 2, the<br />
authors provide theoretical background regarding m-government,<br />
public apps, and development models. In section 3, the public<br />
apps development model is illustrated. Finally, the findings from<br />
the empirical analysis of the public apps adopting the<br />
development model are presented with tentative conclusion and<br />
future research plans.
2. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND<br />
2.1 Mobile Government<br />
With rapid advance in wireless technologies, there have been<br />
several studies on the next generation of e-government adopting<br />
wireless technologies in the public sector, which is called mgovernment.<br />
More specifically, m-government is defined as “the<br />
strategy and its implementation involving the utilization of all<br />
kinds of wireless and mobile technology, services, applications,<br />
and devices for improving benefits to the parties involved in egovernment<br />
including citizens, businesses, and all government<br />
units” [6]. With regard to the emergence of m-government, the<br />
early literatures tend to regard m-government as the subset or<br />
complement of e-government [5][6]. That is, m-government<br />
cannot function apart from the existing e-government in that most<br />
of the public services equipped with wireless technologies are<br />
nothing more than replications of e-government services on the<br />
mobile platforms. On the other hand, the recent literatures<br />
emphasize the uniqueness of m-government [2]. More<br />
specifically, m-government upgrades the level of public services<br />
by providing the infrastructure and contents, which could not be<br />
realized in the era of the wired e-government, by means of<br />
mobility and hand-held devices.<br />
Regardless of a perspective on m-government, however, there is a<br />
tendency that most of the m-government literatures not only put<br />
too much emphasis on conceptual discussion, but also regard mgovernment<br />
as the phenomenon taking place in the distant future.<br />
In order to deviate from such a tendency and approach mgovernment<br />
empirically, the authors analyze the public apps, the<br />
mobile applications provided by public organizations for<br />
improving benefits to the public and private sector, in this study<br />
[3][6]. With rapid increase in sales of mobile devices and huge<br />
success of mobile application markets, such as Apple’s App Store,<br />
citizens’ demand to receive public services via public apps has<br />
been increasing sharply in Korea [4]. It implies that the study of<br />
the relationship between m-government and public apps is<br />
significant in order to understand the substance of m-government<br />
and contribute to enlarging the research field of m-government.<br />
2.2 Development Models of IT/IS<br />
Since Nolan paved the way for the study of the use of IS<br />
(Information Systems) in business organizations through the<br />
growth stage model of computer use, there have been various<br />
discussions to understand and analyze the development process of<br />
e-commerce and e-business through a development or stage model<br />
[7]. Likewise, the stage models that deal with the development<br />
process of e-government, such as Gartner’s 4-stage model, UN’s<br />
5-stage model, and Layne and Lee’s 5-stage model, have been<br />
illustrated in order to analyze the use of IT (Information<br />
Technology) in government organizations [1]. In their metasynthesis<br />
approach, Siau and Long integrate five stage models<br />
into a synthesized one on the basis of a systematic comparison of<br />
stages between different models. They illustrate a comprehensive<br />
e-government model whose stages are web presence, interaction,<br />
transaction, transformation, and e-democracy [9].<br />
However, some scholars criticize validity and usefulness of the<br />
stage models. While these stage models are predicated on the<br />
premise that the development process of technology and its<br />
adoption in organizations are an evolutionary phenomenon,<br />
Andersen and Henriksen argue that “not all researchers agree on<br />
106<br />
the suitability of “evolutionistic” development models as a means<br />
for measuring IT capabilities in organizations” and “the individual<br />
phases occur simultaneously and part of different elements of egovernment.”<br />
[1] That is, a development model could regard<br />
development process as discrete and individual stages even<br />
though it is a complex and continuous process in reality.<br />
Despite the weakness of these development models, the authors<br />
claim that the development models have contributed to identifying<br />
the current status of the recent IT or IS phenomenon, enlarging<br />
conceptual discussion about the development process which is<br />
seemingly chaotic, monitoring whether an organization’s use of<br />
IT is on the right track in practice, and planning for future<br />
applications. In particular, a development model helps provide a<br />
systematic approach with regard to characteristics of newly<br />
emerging fields of IT and IS. Given that few studies have dealt<br />
with public apps and to a larger extent the substance of mgovernment,<br />
it is expected that building the public apps<br />
development model helps understand and analyze the result of<br />
empirical approach on public apps systematically.<br />
3. PUBLIC APPS DEVELOPMENT MODEL<br />
The crucial principles applied to building the public apps<br />
development model are citizen-centricity and technological<br />
complexity. First, the more the functions of each public app are<br />
interactive with citizens, the higher its stage is. Jaeger states that<br />
not only do leading e-government strategies emphasize a citizen<br />
centered version of public administration, but e-government<br />
technologies that allow government to determine the identity of<br />
users in order to provide more personalized and responsive<br />
service become every more important [2]. In a broader sense, the<br />
concept of Web 2.0 is also in accord with citizen-centricity. Web<br />
2.0, inspired by Tim O’reilly, refers to the user-centric Internet<br />
environment that is underpinned by the spirit of participation,<br />
sharing, and openness, which emphasizes the utility of Internet<br />
users, rather than that of Internet contents suppliers [8]. Second,<br />
the more the technology of each public app is complex, the higher<br />
the stage of the development model is. According to Siau and<br />
Long, e-government system complexity and integration increase<br />
with the advancement of the e-government stages, which also<br />
implies that the technological advance in the functions of public<br />
apps deserves to be regarded as the higher level of services [9].<br />
More importantly, the authors put more significance on citizencentricity<br />
than technological complexity because the studies<br />
dealing with e-government stage models also suggest that it is<br />
crucial to emphasize the function that facilitates interaction<br />
between public organizations and citizens [2]. Therefore, the<br />
public apps which provide a high level of citizen-centric service<br />
with high level of mobile technology reaches the higher stage than<br />
those which provide a high level of mobile technology with a low<br />
level of citizen-centric service.<br />
In summary, the public app which provides a high level of citizencentric<br />
services with a high level of mobile technology reaches the<br />
highest stage, while the public app which provides unilateral<br />
services with a low level of mobile technology stays at the lowest<br />
stage. Combining these criteria, the authors demonstrate a 6-stage<br />
development model for public apps. More specific description<br />
about each stage of this model is illustrated in Table 1.<br />
Table 1. The public apps development model
Stage Description<br />
1 st stage<br />
(Simple<br />
Demonstration)<br />
2 nd stage<br />
(Complex<br />
Demonstration)<br />
3 rd stage<br />
(Simple<br />
Interaction)<br />
4 th stage<br />
(Complex<br />
Interaction)<br />
5 th stage<br />
(Transaction)<br />
6 th stage<br />
(Transformation)<br />
Public information services, which were provided<br />
through the wired Internet previously, are provided<br />
through a public app. Since it is the beginning<br />
phase of public apps production, service producers<br />
mainly focus on delivery of simple services and<br />
information, such as text, pictures, and video clips.<br />
The functions that increase citizens’ convenience<br />
are not provided at this stage.<br />
The functions that increase citizens’ convenience<br />
by means of mobile technology, such as QR<br />
(Quick Response) code, are provided. For<br />
example, citizens can search for the nearest<br />
facilities from the place where they are located via<br />
LBS (Location Based Service), such as augmented<br />
reality and Google Maps. Government agencies<br />
provide such services in unilateral way.<br />
Government agencies provide the function that<br />
interacts with citizens. For example, public apps<br />
provide Q & A, counseling, and chatting billboard<br />
in order to provide citizens with the opportunity to<br />
ask a question or express an opinion about public<br />
affairs. Also, citizens can report the emergency<br />
situation with short descriptions about situation or<br />
pictures on the spot.<br />
The function that enhances interaction is provided.<br />
That is, interaction between government agencies<br />
and citizens transcends the simple level and<br />
researches the extent that not only citizens but<br />
government agencies are also proactive in citizencentric<br />
services. For example, mutual<br />
communication occurs through SNS (Social<br />
Network Services), such as Facebook and Twitter.<br />
At this stage, public apps provide the two-way<br />
communication service which is possible only<br />
when technological security and trust between<br />
citizens and government agencies are assured. For<br />
instance, citizens can make payment of taxes,<br />
fines, and public merchandise. Also, they can<br />
request package delivery with regard to civil affair<br />
documents via public apps.<br />
Citizens enjoy one-stop service via one public app.<br />
Because public apps are interconnected in terms of<br />
service delivery, any service or information that<br />
citizens want to receive are provided even though<br />
they get access to other public apps. For example,<br />
a public app which is a platform for all of the<br />
mobile public information services plays a role as a<br />
portal for providing one-stop services.<br />
4. EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS<br />
4.1 Methods<br />
In order to identify current status of Korean public apps which can<br />
be downloaded through Apple’s App Store and Google’s Android<br />
Market, the authors examined the entire population of public apps<br />
as of January 31, 2012. Based on the data collected from the<br />
survey, the list of public apps according to the title, app producers,<br />
and mobile platforms were made. Then, not only were the public<br />
apps provided by central government downloaded, but the<br />
characteristics and functions were closely examined in order to<br />
measure the level of each public app.<br />
More specific procedure is as follows. First, two of the authors,<br />
the one who had an Apple iPhone and the other who had an<br />
Android phone, individually observed the contents of mobile<br />
107<br />
services of the public apps that were produced by central<br />
government agencies and that were provided through both App<br />
Store and Android Market. Second, they cross-checked each<br />
other’s findings in terms of the functions and characteristics each<br />
public app was equipped with. Third, the author who had an<br />
iPhone examined the level of central government’s public apps in<br />
the Apple’s App Store and the one who had an Android phone<br />
examined the level of central government’s public apps in the<br />
Android Market.<br />
4.2 Descriptive Survey Results<br />
Some major findings on the public apps from the survey are<br />
illustrated in Table 2 and Table 3. According to Table 2, a total of<br />
701 public apps are provided by central government, local<br />
governments, and public agencies in Korea. The public apps<br />
provided by local governments account for 40.4%, which means<br />
that local governments are the most active providers of public<br />
apps among the three types of public organizations. In addition,<br />
the public apps provided by public agencies including public<br />
enterprises and quasi-governmental organizations (QUAGOs)<br />
account for 36.7%. On the other hand, the public apps provided by<br />
central government agencies account for 22.9%, which suggests<br />
that central government agencies fall behind the rest of public<br />
organizations in terms of provision of public apps.<br />
Table 2. The number of public apps<br />
Central<br />
Government<br />
Local<br />
Governments<br />
Public<br />
Agencies<br />
Total<br />
Frequency 161 283 257 701<br />
Portion (%) 22.9 40.4 36.7 100.0<br />
By contrast, Table 3 illustrates that central government agencies<br />
are the most active providers of public apps in terms of the ratio<br />
of the number of the agencies that produce public apps to the total<br />
number of agencies. That is, 67.3% of the entire central<br />
government agencies provide public apps, while only 43.8% and<br />
39.1% of the entire local governments and public agencies<br />
provide public apps, respectively. Also, Table 3 suggests that<br />
local governments provide more public apps than central<br />
government agencies and public agencies because the number of<br />
local governments is more than that of central government<br />
agencies and public agencies, not because every local government<br />
is active in provision of public apps.<br />
Table 3. Public apps providers<br />
Central<br />
Government<br />
Local<br />
Governments<br />
Public<br />
Agencies<br />
Total<br />
Total 49 224 284 557<br />
Providers 33 98 111 242<br />
Portion (%) 67.3 43.8 39.1 43.4
4.3 Measurement of a Level of Public Apps<br />
In order to measure the level of public apps of Korean central<br />
government, the authors made a check-list on whether each of 161<br />
public apps was satisfied with the specific criteria of each stage of<br />
the model. And then, the level of each public app was determined<br />
as the highest stage where each public app reached. Of 161 public<br />
apps, 13 public apps were excluded because of the unexpected<br />
problems. For example, the authors could not get access to the<br />
public app named “National Tax Service for Businessmen”,<br />
because it was necessary to have a registered business number in<br />
order to log in to this public app. Then, based on 148 public apps,<br />
the authors measured a level of each public app.<br />
Table 4. Measurement of a level of public apps<br />
1 st<br />
stage<br />
2 nd<br />
stage<br />
3 rd<br />
stage<br />
4 th<br />
stage<br />
5 th<br />
stage<br />
6 th<br />
stage<br />
Total<br />
Frequency 24 80 13 24 7 0 148<br />
Portion<br />
(%)<br />
16.2 54.1 8.8 16.2 4.7 0.0 100.0<br />
As shown in Table 4, 54.1% of the public apps provided by<br />
central government agencies satisfy the criteria of the second<br />
stage of the model. That is, more than half of the public apps<br />
provided by central government agencies provide the functions<br />
that increase citizens’ convenience by means of mobile<br />
technology, such as LBS and QR code. In term of interaction<br />
pattern, 70.3% of public apps provide one-way communication<br />
services, while 29.7% of public apps provide two-way<br />
communication service. Also, it is notable that 25% of the entire<br />
public apps provide the functions that satisfy the third and fourth<br />
stage, while only 4.7% of the entire public apps reach the fifth<br />
stage. When it comes to the portion of the public apps that provide<br />
two-way communication service, the authors interpret in the<br />
following ways. First, given that the public apps that satisfy the<br />
third and fourth stage account for 25% of the entire public apps, it<br />
seems that central government agencies try to provide the<br />
functions for promoting interactions with their citizens by<br />
accommodating their questions or opinions through public apps.<br />
Second, it can be said that public apps which provide two-way<br />
communications are at the initial stage. Only 4.7% of the entire<br />
public apps of Korean central government provide the functions<br />
that satisfy the fifth stage, such as mobile payment and mobile<br />
order of package delivery. Diverse possible causes for this<br />
phenomenon can be considered. On the supply side, the weak<br />
leadership for developing higher level of public apps or the low<br />
level of technology which government agencies have could be<br />
major obstacles against providing the fifth and sixth level of<br />
public apps. On the demand side, it is possible to argue that the<br />
demand from citizens on such kinds of public apps is still weak.<br />
5. TENTATIVE CONCLUSION<br />
In this paper, the authors reviewed the literature on m-government<br />
and claimed the necessity to approach m-government empirically.<br />
Regarding public apps as the significant substance of mgovernment,<br />
the authors built the public apps development model<br />
in order to analyze the public apps systematically, and examined<br />
the entire population of public apps. Until now, it is found that the<br />
total number of the public apps provided by central government,<br />
local governments, and public agencies in Korea was 701. Also,<br />
108<br />
local governments were the most active providers of public apps<br />
among the three types of public organizations. In addition, overall<br />
level of public apps of central government is approximately in a<br />
midpoint of the second and third stage.<br />
These tentative results can be interpreted that government<br />
organizations and public agencies in Korea are actively adopting<br />
mobile technologies for delivering public information services in<br />
the era of m-government. On the other hand, Korean public<br />
organizations still have long way to go because the overall level<br />
of public apps are not so high that it cannot be enough to fully<br />
satisfy the citizens’ expectations and future demands for the<br />
transaction and integrative services through public apps.<br />
The authors plan to do as follows in the future. First, the public<br />
apps development model should be complemented reflecting<br />
results of the public app survey. Second, the current status of<br />
public apps should be analyzed more deeply applying various<br />
criteria. Third, the measurement of levels of public apps of local<br />
governments and public agencies will be conducted and the<br />
overall level of the entire public apps in Korea will be examined.<br />
Finally, causal factors for determining the levels of public apps<br />
will be analyzed through statistical inferential analysis.<br />
6. REFERENCES<br />
[1] Andersen, K. and Henriksen, H. E-government maturity<br />
models: extension of the Layne and Lee model. Government<br />
Information Quarterly, 23 (2006), 236-248.<br />
[2] Campbell, J. and Im, T. Beyond ubiquity: mobile<br />
government, theory and practice. In Proceedings of the<br />
KAPA international conference (Seoul, Korea, 2012).<br />
[3] Kim, H., Hong, S., and Joo, S. Performance analysis of<br />
mobile application, in Proceedings of the Korean computer<br />
synthesis conference (Seoul, Korea, 2011).<br />
[4] Kim, H., Lee, H., and Choi, S. An exploratory study on the<br />
determinants of mobile application purchase. Journal of<br />
Society for E-business Studies, 16, 4 (2011), 173-195.<br />
[5] Kumar, M. and Sinha, O. M-government: mobile technology<br />
for e-government. In Proceedings of the fifth international<br />
conference on e-governance (Hyderabad, India, 2007).<br />
[6] Kushchu, I. and Kuscu, M. From e-government to mgovernment:<br />
facing the inevitable. In Proceedings of the<br />
third European conference on e-government (Dublin, Ireland,<br />
2003).<br />
[7] Nolan, R. Managing the computer resource: a stage<br />
hypothesis. Communications of the ACM, 16, 7 (1973), 399-<br />
405.<br />
[8] Ra, J. et al. A study on the strategies of electronic<br />
government services based on Web 2.0. Korea IT Service<br />
Society, 7, 1 (2008), 237-254.<br />
[9] Siau, K. and Long, Y. Synthesizing e-government stage<br />
models: a meta-synthesis based on meta-ethnography<br />
approach. Industrial Management & Data Systems, 105, 4<br />
(2005), 443-458
Understanding Citizens’ Perceptions of E-Government<br />
Services in Mexico<br />
Juan M. Gomez Reynoso<br />
Universidad Autonoma de<br />
Aguascalientes, Mexico<br />
jmgr@correo.uaa.mx<br />
ABASTRACT<br />
Mexico has made significant progress in expanding the<br />
capabilities of e-government services available for citizens.<br />
According to the 2012 UN e-government report, Mexico ranks<br />
28 th among the 179 UN member states, and 3 rd in Latin America<br />
in terms of overall development of online services. However, to<br />
date, little is known about the demand side of online services.<br />
This paper investigates the factors that influence the adoption of<br />
online services in Mexico. Kumar et al. model is used to support<br />
the hypotheses proposed in this paper. An online survey was used<br />
to collect data on citizens’ perceptions about e-government. The<br />
results will be analyzed using multiple regression analysis.<br />
Categories and Subject Descriptors<br />
K.5.2 [Computers and Society]: Governmental Issues –<br />
Regulation, Taxation<br />
General Terms<br />
Measurement, Documentation, Performance, Reliability, Human<br />
Factors, Standardization, Theory, Verification<br />
Keywords<br />
E-Government Services, e-Government Initiatives, Digital<br />
Government, Mexico, Online Services, Adoption, Perceptions<br />
1. INTRODUCTION<br />
Information and communication technologies have transformed<br />
government service delivery over the past twenty years. With the<br />
emergence of the Internet governments have improved their<br />
internal operations and integrated processes and systems across<br />
multiple government agencies. The impact has also been profound<br />
in the provision of services to citizens, who have traditionally<br />
relied on methods such as over the counter service, ordinary mail,<br />
telephone, and fax to interact with the government. Electronic (e-)<br />
government technologies allow citizens to access a full range of<br />
services in a reliable, secure and convenient manner through<br />
different delivery channels (e.g. web sites, portals, cell phones and<br />
electronic kiosks). To date, government services available online<br />
provide at least the necessary information and materials to initiate<br />
a request for services. Sophisticated applications of technology<br />
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for<br />
personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are<br />
not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies<br />
bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for<br />
components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored.<br />
Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to<br />
post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission<br />
and/or a fee.<br />
ICEGOV '12, October 22 - 25 2012, Albany, NY, United States, NY, USA<br />
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1200-4/12/10…$15.00.<br />
Celene Navarrete<br />
California State University<br />
Dominguez Hills<br />
cnavarrete@csudh.edu<br />
109<br />
Rodrigo Sandoval Almazan<br />
Universidad Autonoma del<br />
Estado de Mexico, Mexico<br />
rsandovala@uaemex.mx<br />
provide services with transactional and collaboration capabilities<br />
(e.g. income taxes declaration, car registration, political<br />
participation, electronic voting).<br />
Mexico has made important progress in implementing e-<br />
Government services. According to the 2012 UN e-government<br />
survey, Mexico ranks 28 th among the 179 UN member states, and<br />
3 rd in Latin America behind Colombia and Chile in terms of<br />
overall development of e-government services. Mexico provides<br />
64% of all the assessed services over the Internet, from which<br />
69% show some interactive presence (e.g. downloadable<br />
databases or pdf files), 62% offer transactional capabilities, and<br />
57% include networked presence including e-participation<br />
capabilities. The UN report assessed each country’s national<br />
portal, e-services portal and the websites of the ministries of<br />
education, labor, social services, health, finance and environment.<br />
The success of e-government initiatives depends on the citizens’<br />
willingness to use online services [1]. Previous studies have<br />
analyzed the adoption of e-government initiatives [2, 3].<br />
However, a few studies provide evidence of what drives adoption<br />
of online public services in Mexico. Research suggests that<br />
quality of services, poor informational and transactional<br />
capabilities in government Web sites, preference for payments in<br />
cash over credit card use, and trust in the Internet to carry out<br />
transactions can be central for the utilization of e-government [4,<br />
5]. The purpose of this study is to identify the perception-based<br />
factors that influence citizens’ perceptions of e-government<br />
services in Mexico. This study analyzes e-government adoption<br />
across four types of services: vital records (birth, death and<br />
marriage certificates), vehicle and property tax payments<br />
(ownership tax), and fine payment (traffic, parking, civil fines).<br />
All these services are provided at the state level.<br />
Mexico presents an interesting case of study for understanding egovernment<br />
perceptions. This is a risk-averse culture that tends to<br />
distrust technological innovation [6]. In addition, Mexico has a<br />
large digital and educational divides [7]. According to the 2010<br />
Census, in terms of computer and Internet access, 29% of the<br />
Mexican population has a computer at home, 21% has Internet<br />
access, 43% has a telephone line at home and 65% owns a cellular<br />
phone [7]. Almost half of Internet users utilize the Internet at<br />
home (48%) and 52% at some other location. The largest<br />
percentage of Internet users reside in medium-low households<br />
(46%) compared to 16% the high income bracket, 31% in the<br />
medium-high and 37% in the low levels. A small percentage of<br />
Internet users earned a bachelor’s degree (26%) and 2% owns a<br />
graduate degree. 42% of Internet users completed 6 th to 9 th grade<br />
of elementary education and 29% completed high school.
This paper is organized as follows: First, we provide an overview<br />
of e-government implementation in Mexico. Second, we describe<br />
the model that we will use to analyze perceptions about egovernment<br />
services. Finally, we describe the methodology that<br />
will guide the collection and analysis of data.<br />
2. OVERVIEW OF E-GOVERNMENT IN<br />
MEXICO<br />
Mexico is divided into 32 states, which are made up of 2,454<br />
municipalities. Mexico’s government is divided in three levels:<br />
Federal, State and Municipal (local). All levels of government<br />
have implemented e-Government initiatives. At the Federal level,<br />
a relevant achievement in terms of service delivery is the redesign<br />
of the “Citizen Portal” (Portal Ciudadano, http://www.gob.mx).<br />
This portal provides a search engine that acts as a single point of<br />
entry for information and services of the three levels of<br />
government. For example, a citizen considering applying for<br />
public health coverage can conduct one search to find information<br />
on the national public health care system, whether provided by a<br />
federal, state, or local government source. Simplicity and usability<br />
are the main aspects of the Portal's design.<br />
Figure 1. Citizen’s Portal (http://www.gob.mx).<br />
At the state level, a recent study evaluated the 32 State portals<br />
according to five different components: information, interaction,<br />
transactions, integration, and participation. A team of egovernment<br />
experts used a form including 143 questions to<br />
evaluate the portals. They found that Jalisco is in 1st place moving<br />
up from 5th, Aguascalientes is 2nd moving up 15 positions, Baja<br />
California moves into 3rd place from 7th last year respectively.<br />
On the other hand, Puebla, Durango y Coahuila, move down 15,<br />
12 and 9 positions, respectively [11]<br />
At the municipal level, previous research suggests that many local<br />
governments in Mexico do not have the basic infrastructure for<br />
developing a digital government strategy [8] . According to Gil-<br />
Garcia et al., 360 Mexican municipalities (out of 2,454) are<br />
considered moderately or highly technologically prepared. A<br />
more recent study that analyzed 518 local e-government websites<br />
shows that municipalities are making poor use of IT government<br />
openness, web design and Web 2.0 tools. On the demand side,<br />
services offered are not really meeting the needs of citizens [9].<br />
This might be due to the fact that “IT departments have limited<br />
influence on the main government strategies and they do not have<br />
the appropriate organizational structure, trained staff, or budget to<br />
manage a digital government strategy” (p. 2) [10].<br />
In sum, e-Government implementations at the three levels of<br />
government are evolving; not enough to understand the citizens’<br />
110<br />
needs yet, but sufficiently to promote new government services<br />
online. Studies focus mostly on the functionality characteristics<br />
of Web portals [11-13] and the public policy aspects of<br />
implementations rather than service provision [12]. There have<br />
been a few efforts to analyze the impact of e-Government and its<br />
interaction with citizens. Trust in the government and perceptions<br />
about the reliability and security of the online service delivery<br />
medium are two important drivers of service utilization in Mexico<br />
[5].<br />
3. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND<br />
Adoption of e-government refers to the citizens’ intention to use<br />
public services online, which encompasses the intentions to<br />
receive information, to provide information, and to request<br />
services electronically [14].<br />
This study uses Kumar’s model of E-government adoption [15] to<br />
explain the way citizens are embracing e-government services in<br />
Mexico. According to Kumar et. al., user characteristics, website<br />
design, service quality and satisfaction impact e-government<br />
adoption. User characteristics consist of a) perceived risk, and b)<br />
perceived control. Perceived risk refers to citizens’ concerns<br />
related to the privacy and security of transactions. Previous<br />
research suggests that Mexicans tend to prefer traditional service<br />
delivery methods when the transaction involves disclosure of<br />
personal and financial information [5]. People in Mexico distrust<br />
the Internet to conduct transactions. They also fear their<br />
information could be misused by public servants or other parties.<br />
Thus, we can expect that perceived risk will influence the<br />
behavior of the adoption. Therefore:<br />
H1) Perceived risk about online transactions will influence the<br />
adoption of e-Government services.<br />
Perceived control is defined as user’s perception of being in<br />
charge of the interaction with e-government technologies. If<br />
citizens have more control over the site navigation, the pace or<br />
rhythm of the interaction, and the content being accessed, it can<br />
increase their trust and give them a feeling of more control [15]<br />
ultimately impacting adoption [16]. Therefore:<br />
H.2) Perceived control will influence the adoption of egovernment<br />
services.<br />
Citizen traits that are of interest in understanding adoption include<br />
demographic factors such as age and education. Higher educated<br />
individuals are more comfortable using the Internet to access<br />
information and to shop [17]. Research has shown that individuals<br />
who attain a certain level of familiarity with online purchases tend<br />
to be more confident about their skills to access services online<br />
[18]. Age also influences adoption. Younger adults, especially<br />
those under age 25, are more interested in using new technologies<br />
to access information and services [17].Thus,<br />
H.3) Demographic factors (age and education) will influence the<br />
adoption of e-government services.<br />
Perceptions related to the design elements of a Web site can also<br />
have a direct impact in e-government adoption. According to<br />
Kumar et al. [15], the design of e-government Web sites can be<br />
evaluated based on their usefulness and ease of use. Perceived<br />
usefulness is considered as an extrinsic motivation. It is defined as<br />
the degree that a person assigns to the value of using a particular<br />
information system to improve its work [19, 20]. End-users could<br />
adopt e-Government services when such services deliver a better
performance compared to those provided by traditional means<br />
[21]. Use of a technological innovation can be predicted by its<br />
associated perceived usefulness [19]. Therefore,<br />
H4) Perceived usefulness will influence the adoption of e-<br />
Government<br />
Ease of use is the degree to which the user expects that the target<br />
information system to be free of efforts [19]. An e-Government<br />
service that is perceived to facilitate the interaction process while<br />
being easy to operate is likely to increase citizen’s intentions to<br />
use it [22]. Therefore,<br />
H5) Perceived ease of use will influence the adoption of e-<br />
Government services<br />
Service quality refers to citizens’ perceptions about the<br />
government’s ability to efficiently provide reliable and convenient<br />
online services [23-25]. Reichheld et al. [26] state that service<br />
quality impacts user satisfaction and, ultimately, adoption. Palmer<br />
(2002) identifies quality as a factor that builds trust towards e-<br />
Government utilization. e-Government implementations have the<br />
ability for improving significantly the quality of services provided<br />
to citizens and businesses while attaining greater efficiency for all<br />
participants (Kumar et al., 2007). Thus, understand what citizens<br />
expect from an e-Government service is crucial for governments.<br />
Therefore,<br />
H.6) Perceptions about service quality will indirectly influence<br />
adoption of e-Government services.<br />
Satisfaction is the perception of pleasure which is obtained upon<br />
receipt of a service with quality [15]. Thus, it is very important<br />
that services provided via the Internet not only to be relevant and<br />
efficient, but also they involve the goal of making the user feel<br />
well for using them and not perceived as an imposition by upper<br />
management. Therefore, we believe that:<br />
H.7) Service encounter satisfaction will influence the adoption of<br />
e-Government.<br />
Figure 2 summarizes the constructs discussed above.<br />
User Characteristics<br />
• Perceived risk<br />
• E-Government interaction<br />
• Perceived control over<br />
personal information<br />
• Demographics<br />
Website Design<br />
• Perceived usefulness<br />
• Perceived ease of use<br />
Perceived Service Quality<br />
4. METHODOLOGY<br />
Figure2. Studied Model<br />
eGovernment<br />
Adoption<br />
Users’ Satisfaction<br />
3.1 Sample<br />
We used an online survey to collect perceptions on e-government<br />
in Mexico. The survey aimed to capture information on the<br />
participants’ demographics and e-government perceptions. It<br />
included a total of 38 questions with a 7 point Likert scale ranging<br />
from completely disagree (1) to completely agree (7). An<br />
invitation to participate in the study was sent to public<br />
111<br />
organizations including the National Association of Universities<br />
and Higher Education Institutions (ANUIES in Spanish), National<br />
Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI) and a private<br />
financial organization with offices across Mexico. We used<br />
convenience-purposive sampling for data collection [27].<br />
Purposive sampling was appropriate for our study because we<br />
needed participants that already attained some sort of level of<br />
exposure to e-government. Participants with such profile can be<br />
especially useful to understand service utilization. We obtained a<br />
total of 217 responses; all of them were usable. Data were<br />
collected from September to December in 2011.<br />
3.2 Initial Descriptive Analysis<br />
This is a research in progress. Table 1 presents the demographic<br />
profile of participants. We are in the process of analyzing the data<br />
using multiple regression analysis. Additional results will be<br />
presented in the conference.<br />
Table 1. Demographic data<br />
Demographics Values Percentage<br />
Gender<br />
Male<br />
Female<br />
42%<br />
58%<br />
No attended 7%<br />
Finished 6<br />
Education<br />
th grade 17%<br />
Finished 9 th grade 6%<br />
High school<br />
Two-year college<br />
8%<br />
9%<br />
Bachelor 24%<br />
Master 13%<br />
PhD 16%<br />
17 years or less 13%<br />
18 to 24 years 21%<br />
Age<br />
25 - 34 years 26%<br />
35 – 44 years 18%<br />
45+ years 22%<br />
Respondents were asked which types of transactions made<br />
through electronic services; 49% paid vehicle taxes, 55% property<br />
taxes, while 44% different types of fines. Also, 56% made<br />
procedures related to vital records, and 44% responded that he<br />
made use of other services not listed previously.<br />
5. REFERENCES<br />
[1] Carter, L. E-government Diffusion: A Comparison of Adoption<br />
Constructs. AMCIS, 2007.<br />
[2] Carter, L. and Belanger, F. The Utilization of e-Government<br />
Services: Citizen trust, Innovation and acceptance factors. Info<br />
Systems, 15, 1 2005), 5-25.<br />
[3] Bélanger, F. and Carter, L. Trust and risk in e-government<br />
adoption. The Journal of Strategic Information Systems, 17, 2<br />
2008), 165-176.<br />
[4] Navarrete, C. Utilization of Electronic Government Services in<br />
México: A Matter of Trust. The Journal of Community<br />
Informatics: Special Issue: E-Governance and Community<br />
Informatics., 4, 2 2008).<br />
[5] Navarrete, C., Gil-Garcia, J. R., Mellouli, S., Pardo, T. A. and<br />
Scholl, J. Multinational E-Government Collaboration,<br />
Information Sharing, and Interoperability: An Integrative<br />
Model. IEEE, 2010.
[6] Hofstede, G. and Hofstede, G. J. Cultures and Organizations:<br />
Software of the mind, New York, USA McGraw-Hill, 2005.<br />
[7] INEGI. Censo de población y vivienda 2010. INEGI,<br />
Aguascalientes, Mexico, 2010.<br />
[8] Luna-Reyes, L. F., Gil-Garcia, J. R. and Mansi, C. Hacia un<br />
Modelo de Gobierno Electrónico a Nivel Municipal para<br />
México: Reporte de Resultados de Talleres con Directores de<br />
Informática Municipales. Universidad de las Américas<br />
Puebla-INFOTEC, Puebla, México, 2010.<br />
[9] Sandoval-Almazán, R. and Colin, J. M. Gobierno electrónico<br />
en México: una exploración Municipal 2010. Association for<br />
Information Systems, 2011.<br />
[10] Luna-Reyes, L. F., Gil-García, J. R. and Ramírez-Hernández,<br />
F. A Resource-Based View of Local Digital Government: Core<br />
Capabilities for Success from the Case of Mexico. 2011.<br />
[11] Luna-Reyes, L., J., Gil-García, R. and Rojas-Bandera, J. S.<br />
An Exploratory Study of Electronic Government and State<br />
Portals in Mexico. Idea Group Inc, 2007.<br />
[12] Sandoval Almazán, R. Explorando la Brecha Digital en<br />
México. Diagnóstico del Proyecto E-México en el Estado de<br />
México. 2006.<br />
[13] Sandoval-Almazan, R. and Gil-Garcia, J. R. The Role of the<br />
CIO in a Local Government IT Strategy: The case of Merida,<br />
Yucatán Mexico. Electronic Journal of e-Government, 9, 1<br />
2011), 1-14.<br />
[14] Al-Omari, H. and Al-Omari, A. Building an e-Government e-<br />
Trust Infrastructure. American Journal of Applied Sciences, 3,<br />
11 2006), 2122-2130.<br />
[15] Kumar, V., Mukerjil, B., Butt, I. and Persaud, A. Factors for<br />
Successful e-Government Adoption: a Conceptual<br />
Framework. The Electronic Journal of e-Government, 5, 1<br />
2007), 63-76.<br />
[16] Wu, G. Conceptualizing and Measuring the Perceived<br />
Interactivity of Websites. Journal of Current Issues and<br />
Research in Advertising, 28, 1 2006), 87-104.<br />
112<br />
[17] Pew Research Center Internet Use and Home Broadband<br />
Connections Jul 24, 2012.<br />
[18] Carter, L. and Weerakkoddy, V. E-government Adoption: A<br />
Cultural Comparison. Information Systems Frontiers, 10, 4<br />
2008), 473-482.<br />
[19] Davis, F. D. Perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, and<br />
user acceptance of information technology. Mis Quarterly,<br />
13,31989), 319-340.<br />
[20] Lederer, A. L., Maupin, D. J., Sena, M. P. and Zhuang, Y.<br />
The technology acceptance model and the world wide web.<br />
Decision Support Systems, 29:32000), 269-282.<br />
[21] Plana, C., Cerpa, N. and Bro, P. B. Bases para la creación de<br />
una metodología de adopción de comercio electrónico para las<br />
Pymes chilenas. Universidad Tarapacá, facultad de<br />
ingeniería, volúmen 142006), 49-63.<br />
[22] Warkentin, M., Gefen, D., Pavlou, P. A. and Rose, G. M.<br />
Encouraging Citizen Adoption of e-Government by Building<br />
Trust. Electronic Markets, 12, 3 2002), 157-162.<br />
[23] Carter, L. and Belanger, F. The Utilization of e-government<br />
Services: Citizen trust, Innovation and Acceptance Factors.<br />
Information Systems Journal, 152005), 5-25.<br />
[24] Reddick, C. G. Citizen Interaction with E-Government: From<br />
the Streets to Servers? Government Information Quarterly,<br />
222005), 38-57.<br />
[25] Welch, E. W., Hinnant, C. C. and Moon, J. M. Linking<br />
Citizen Satisfaction with E-Government and Trust in<br />
Government. Journal of Public Administration Research and<br />
Theory, 15, 3 2004), 371-391.<br />
[26] Reichheld, F. F., Markey, R. G. and Hopton, C. E-customer<br />
loyalty – applying the traditional rules of business for online<br />
success. European Business Journal, 12, 4 2000), 173-179.<br />
[27] Neuman, W. L. Social Research Methods (5th Edition).<br />
Allyn and Bacon, Boston, 2000.
Session 5<br />
Information Sharing, Models &<br />
Platforms
Factors Influencing Exchange Activities in Transnational<br />
Knowledge Networks: The Case of the Hajj-MDSS<br />
Mohammed Gharawi<br />
The Institute of Public Administration<br />
P.O. Box 205<br />
Riyadh, 11141, Saudi Arabia<br />
+1 966 476 8888<br />
gharawima@yahoo.com<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
This paper presents selected results from a study of technical,<br />
information, and knowledge exchange in Transnational Public<br />
Sector Knowledge Networks (TPSKNs). The study contributes to<br />
the growing base of theory relating to TPSKNs presented by<br />
Dawes, Gharawi, and Burke [7]. It explores the TPSKN formed<br />
between the United States Center for Disease Control and the<br />
Saudi Arabian Ministry of Health ahead of the 2009 Hajj, one of<br />
the largest mass gathering events in the world. Data collected<br />
from semi-structured interviews with key participants and a<br />
variety of secondary data that were analyzed with an inductive<br />
approach to identify and address the impact of the influential<br />
factors on attaining the stated goals of the collaboration. The<br />
study extends the current knowledge-base regarding TPSKNs into<br />
a new transnational context, and a new policy domain, public<br />
health. It expands upon the considered contexts to include<br />
technological context, central when exchange centers on<br />
implementing a new system or adopting an existing system. The<br />
study also expands understanding of the influential factors<br />
deriving from knowledge and information; organizational; and<br />
national layers of context.<br />
Categories and Subject Descriptors<br />
K.4 COMPUTERS AND SOCIETY, K.4.1 Public Policy Issues,<br />
Transborder Data Flows<br />
General Terms<br />
Theory, Management<br />
Keywords<br />
Transnational Public Sector Knowledge Networks, Knowledge<br />
Sharing, Information Sharing, Cross-Cultural Collaboration, the<br />
Hajj, Saudi Ministry of Health, Center for Disease Control<br />
1. INTRODUCTION<br />
In the era of globalization, governments around the world are<br />
increasingly engaging in Transnational Public Sector Knowledge<br />
Networks (TPSKNs) as appropriate mechanisms for dealing with<br />
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for<br />
personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are<br />
not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies<br />
bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for<br />
components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored.<br />
Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to<br />
post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission<br />
and/or a fee.<br />
ICEGOV '12, October 22 - 25 2012, Albany, NY, United States, NY, USA<br />
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1200-4/12/10…$15.00.<br />
113<br />
Theresa Pardo<br />
Center for Technology in Government<br />
SUNY Albany<br />
187 Wolf Rd., Suite 301, Albany, NY 12205<br />
+1 518 442 3892<br />
tpardo@ctg.albany.edu<br />
a host of global problems that no one nation or single government<br />
is well-positioned to address individually. Environmental quality,<br />
public health, international trade, and relief efforts relating to<br />
natural disasters are just a few areas where technology,<br />
information, and knowledge need to cross national and cultural<br />
boundaries through channels and mechanisms that are more agile<br />
and less controlled than the formal interactions among sovereign<br />
states [1].<br />
While these networks represent a novel approach to addressing<br />
critical global issues and concerns, they also provide opportunities<br />
for governments to build and diversify their capacities in various<br />
areas and domains. These networks are a key feature of world<br />
order in the twenty-first century, allowing government officials<br />
and organizations to work outside of the formality of sovereign<br />
states to exchange information and coordinate activities to address<br />
problems on a global scale [2].<br />
Several authors have discussed these networks conceptually, and<br />
have described the possibility of empowering them to build<br />
governance capacity around the world [2-5]. There has been little<br />
research conducted, however, which empirically investigates the<br />
complexities surrounding the main function of these networks: the<br />
exchange of different types of content. The dearth of rigorous<br />
study into this phenomenon represents a gap in the pertinent<br />
literature, and a gap in the knowledge available to those<br />
government practitioners who are most likely to engage in these<br />
relationships.<br />
The dearth for theoretical foundations in this area magnifies the<br />
practice gap related to TPSKNs. There have been many binational<br />
memoranda of understanding signed during the past few<br />
years to promote the exchange of technology, knowledge,<br />
information, and practices between governmental agencies; only a<br />
few such documents, however, have been written to guide<br />
practitioners in establishing strategies to manage and guide such<br />
networks. As a result, practitioners engaging in these networks<br />
often lack a clear understanding of the intended nature and<br />
function of a given TPSKN, and further, of the factors which<br />
might promote or hinder its success.<br />
The Center for Technology in Government (CTG) at the State<br />
University of New York at Albany (SUNY) has recently studied<br />
the topic of Transnational Public Sector Knowledge Networks<br />
(TPSKNs) through a National Science Foundation-sponsored<br />
project titled, “Understanding Transnational Public Sector<br />
Knowledge Networks”. The focus of the CTG project centered on<br />
international collaborative efforts to monitor air quality and<br />
reporting initiatives involving the United States and Mexico, and<br />
the United States and China. The project explored the issues
arising as a result of these two bi-lateral collaborations and<br />
analyzed the actual experiences of government and partner<br />
organizations. The resultant conclusions lay the foundation for<br />
future work that goes beyond description, to build a more robust<br />
theory of transnational knowledge- and information-sharing to<br />
better address global problems [6, 7].<br />
This study extends current knowledge about TPSKNs into a new<br />
transnational context involving US and SA and a new policy<br />
domain; public health. It expands context to include technological<br />
context when exchange is centered on implementing a new system<br />
or adopting an existing system. The study also expands<br />
understanding of the influential factors deriving from knowledge<br />
and information; organizational; and national layers of context.<br />
This paper presents selected results from the study that addresses<br />
the following research questions:<br />
o What were the critical factors influencing sharing and<br />
exchange activities during the adoption of the Hajj Mobile<br />
Disease Surveillance System (Hajj-MDSS)?<br />
o What is the impact of the identified factors on attaining the<br />
stated goals of the collaboration?<br />
2. LITERATURE REVIEW<br />
The study is guided by the Dynamic Model of Transnational<br />
Knowledge Networks (DMTKN) developed recently by group of<br />
researchers at the Center for Technology in Government (CTG) at<br />
the University at Albany [6, 7]. The model depicts the contextual<br />
complexity surrounding sharing activities in TPSKNs (Figure 1).<br />
It identifies the contextual elements that characterize the external<br />
and internal environments of the individual organizations that<br />
participate in such networks. These contextual factors are<br />
presented in the model as three layers of complexity: information<br />
and knowledge content; organizational context; and national<br />
context.<br />
Figure 1. Dynamic Model of Transnational Knowledge<br />
Networks [7]<br />
The content layer represents the characteristics of the knowledge<br />
and information being exchanged. Content layer captures the<br />
influence of the existing characteristics of information, and<br />
knowledge being exchanged. Many factors can influence sharing<br />
activities at content layer. While some of these factors are relevant<br />
regardless of the type of content that is exchanged, others become<br />
important only for specific types of content. Thus, the first factor<br />
114<br />
to examine at content layer is the type of content [8]. Following<br />
that, value and sensitivity are to be explored, as they represent two<br />
additional, important factors to be considered when any type of<br />
content is exchanged [9-11] . In the case of information exchange,<br />
the degree of standardization and the existence—or lack thereof—<br />
of metadata describing the information represent additional<br />
factors that has to be considered [9]. Finally, knowledge exchange<br />
is influenced by the degree of embeddedness and articulability of<br />
the exchanged knowledge [13, 14]. Table [1] lists and defines all<br />
such factors which might influence exchange activities at the<br />
content layer of complexity as proposed by the DMTKN.<br />
Table 1. Factors related to technical, information, and<br />
knowledge content<br />
Factor Definition<br />
Type Refers to the type of content being<br />
exchanged (technology, information, or<br />
Value<br />
Sensitivity<br />
knowledge).<br />
Refers to the extent to which the content<br />
being exchanged is perceived as an<br />
organizational, social, or governmental<br />
asset.<br />
Refers to the qualities which make the<br />
exchanged content vulnerable to misuse<br />
or misunderstanding.<br />
Data standards Refers to the extent to which there are<br />
and definitions standard data formats and definitions.<br />
Embeddedness Refers to the degree to which knowledge<br />
is situated in or generated by ongoing<br />
practice and learning by doing.<br />
Articulability Refers to the extent to which knowledge<br />
can be expressed in language, number,<br />
formal procedures, and explicit<br />
techniques.<br />
The organizational context embodies the structures, capabilities,<br />
and constraints of the governmental units involved in the<br />
exchange [6]. The DMTKNs identifies many organizational-level<br />
factors that may influence the effectiveness of TPSKNs. These<br />
factors include the goals and interests of participating<br />
organizations, trust, executive support and organizational<br />
commitment, risks, costs, benefits, authority and hierarchical<br />
structures, organizational culture, leadership, organizational rules<br />
procedures, and regulations, resources, and absorptive capacity [9,<br />
15-18]. Table [2] presents definitions for all such factors.<br />
The national context layer corresponds to the cultures and<br />
political systems surrounding the interaction [1]. Characteristics<br />
of the external environment are likely to influence the sharing in<br />
TPSKNs as indicated by previous research. A review of the<br />
factors which might impede sharing activities at the national level<br />
points to five main factors: national culture [16, 19, 20], laws and<br />
policies [9, 12, 18], political support and interests [15], language<br />
differences [21, 22], and geographic location [14, 22]. Table [3]<br />
presents definitions for the stated factors.<br />
The layers of context, surrounding each participating<br />
organization, represent one of several components of the DMTKN<br />
that emphasize the importance of context in two specific ways.<br />
First, the model depicts the influence of the three layers being<br />
discussed. Second, the layers of context and domestic
elationships among network actors in each country contributes to<br />
a set of contextual distances which represent the differences, in<br />
kind or degree, between the international actors on a set of<br />
influential dimensions: culture, politics, goals and intentions,<br />
organizational factors, ability to form relationships, types and<br />
extent of knowledge, types and extent of resources, physical<br />
location, and available technologies [6, 7]. Variations on these<br />
dimensions form the contextual differences in each country<br />
which, in turn, influence the nature and performance of exchange<br />
processes and interactions and, consequently, products and<br />
performance of TPSKNs [6, 7].<br />
Table 2. Factors related to organizational context<br />
Factor Definition<br />
Goals and<br />
Interests<br />
Trust<br />
Refers to the extent to which participants’<br />
goals and interests are consistent with one<br />
another.<br />
Refers to the degree of confidence or faith in<br />
the intentions and behavior of others (or the<br />
lack of such confidence or faith).<br />
Executive Refers to the extent to which executives and<br />
support and top-level managers from participating<br />
organizational organizations are involved and willing to<br />
commitment commit resources, provide incentives, and<br />
offer direction.<br />
Risks Refers to the extent to which participants<br />
believe their environment, actions, or<br />
relationships threaten something of current<br />
or potential value to their organizations.<br />
Costs Refers to the kind or amount of current or<br />
expected resources and other investments<br />
required of participating organizations.<br />
Benefits Refers to positive results or returns, which<br />
can be financial, societal, political, or<br />
associated with mission performance.<br />
Authority and<br />
hierarchical<br />
structures<br />
Organizational<br />
culture<br />
Leadership<br />
Organizational<br />
rules,<br />
procedures,<br />
and regulation<br />
Resources<br />
Absorptive<br />
Capacity<br />
Refers to formal legal powers, legitimacy,<br />
differences in hierarchical structures, and<br />
formal control over actors and activities.<br />
Refers to commonly accepted and shared<br />
beliefs, values, and practices within the<br />
organization.<br />
Refers to participants’ behavior, such as<br />
taking personal responsibility for actions and<br />
outcomes, providing guidance or direction,<br />
exerting influence, and giving rewards or<br />
punishment.<br />
Refers to the routine, formal policies<br />
defining the ways in which organizations<br />
accomplish their work.<br />
Refers to the extent to which expertise,<br />
funding, infrastructure, staff, technology, or<br />
other suitable organizational assets are made<br />
available.<br />
Refers to the organization’s ability to<br />
identify, assimilate, and exploit knowledge<br />
from the environment.<br />
115<br />
Table 3. Factors related to national context<br />
Factor Definition<br />
Culture<br />
Laws and<br />
policies<br />
Refers to commonly accepted and widely<br />
shared beliefs, values, and practices within a<br />
country.<br />
Refers to formally adopted requirements,<br />
limitations, or obligations which shape and<br />
Political<br />
constrain work practices.<br />
Refers to the support of elected officials and<br />
support<br />
government leaders.<br />
Language Refers to the languages of the participants.<br />
Geographic<br />
location<br />
Refers to geographic or geo-political<br />
locations of the countries involved in the<br />
collaboration.<br />
This study relied on case study methods to identify the factors that<br />
influenced technical, knowledge, and information exchange<br />
during the collaboration between the United States (US) Centers<br />
for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Kingdom of<br />
Saudi Arabia (KSA) Ministry of Health (MoH) that led to the<br />
adoption of the Hajj Mobile Disease Surveillance System (Hajj-<br />
MDSS) in 2009. In the following two sections, A brief discussion<br />
of the Hajj-MDSS case is provided followed by an overview of<br />
the methods.<br />
3. THE HAJJ-MDSS<br />
The Hajj-MDSS initiative is led by the KSA MoH and US CDC.<br />
It allows rapid detection of infectious diseases among Hajj<br />
pilgrims and enhances prevention and control measures through<br />
real-time surveillance information for public health decisionmaking.<br />
The initiative was launched during the period when swine<br />
flu (Pandemic Influenza A, H1N1) had been declared a global<br />
pandemic. The conditions of the Hajj magnified the risks<br />
associated with H1N1. The Hajj is one of the largest, most<br />
culturally and geographically diverse mass gathering events in the<br />
world, attracting more than 2.5 million people of different<br />
nationalities, languages, races, and genders in Makkah. The<br />
guiding vision was to ensure the well-being of Hajj pilgrims and<br />
therefore maintain global public health security. When H1N1 was<br />
declared a global pandemic in June 2009, the Saudi MoH<br />
organized an international workshop of leading global public<br />
health organizations including the World Health Organization<br />
(WHO), the US CDC, and similar institutions in Europe,<br />
Australia, and China. The goals were to pool public health<br />
knowledge about mass gatherings and review the KSA<br />
preparedness plans, focusing on prevention and control of H1N1<br />
[23]. One recommendation was to implement a Mobile Disease<br />
Surveillance System to monitor the epidemiology of swine flu<br />
among Hajj pilgrims.<br />
Immediately following the workshop, the Saudi MoH officially<br />
requested a proposal from the CDC as it has prior experience<br />
using and adopting such technology in many places around the<br />
world. The Request for Proposal (RfP) was followed by extensive<br />
knowledge- and information-exchange through four main phases.<br />
First was the preparation phase, in which participants worked<br />
toward creating a shared understanding and identifying the<br />
responsibilities of each side. In the second phase, a group of<br />
epidemiologists from the US CDC assisted their counterparts at<br />
the Saudi MoH in developing and customizing the electronic
forms for the system. At the same time, the CDC and the MoH<br />
were coordinating their efforts to obtain the necessary technical<br />
resources. During the third phase, participants conducted several<br />
training sessions to train Saudi public health practitioners on how<br />
to use the system and operate the advanced mobile devices used<br />
with it. They also pilot-tested the system during Umrah—an<br />
Islamic ritual performed at Makkah anytime of year. In the final<br />
phase, participants deployed the system and formed one team to<br />
ensure the effective functioning of the MDSS via timely and<br />
accurate data analysis, and reported the results to top-level<br />
management during the days of the Hajj.<br />
During the four phases of the Hajj-MDSS implementation,<br />
participants exchanged a variety of content. Table [4] lists the<br />
content exchanged among participants, and specifies the content<br />
type. Content type is identified based on the extent to which<br />
content was expressed in written form, the extent to which it<br />
adhered to formal procedures, and the extent to which it<br />
conformed to explicitly stated techniques.<br />
Table 4. Content exchanged during Hajj-MDSS adoption<br />
Phase Content (Type)<br />
Preparation<br />
Technical resource<br />
acquisition and forms<br />
development<br />
Training and pilot<br />
testing<br />
Execution<br />
Information about the context of<br />
the Hajj (Explicit.)<br />
Proposal (Explicit &Tacit)<br />
Forms Design (Tacit)<br />
Systems Requirements<br />
(Explicit)<br />
Training materials (Explicit & Tacit)<br />
Installations (Tacit)<br />
System implementation and<br />
troubleshooting (Tacit)<br />
System’s data (Explicit)<br />
After five months of technical exchange, professional visits, and<br />
joint work, the Hajj-MDSS made its official debut during the<br />
2009 Hajj. The system provided public health officials in KSA<br />
with access to timely and accurate information. They were also<br />
able to monitor nine distinct infectious diseases, and make timely<br />
decisions in responding to unexpected situations. By the end of<br />
the 2009 Hajj, only 73 cases of pilgrims with confirmed pandemic<br />
influenza A (H1N1) were reported, and the Hajj was declared a<br />
success [24].<br />
4. RESEARCH METHODS<br />
This research explores exchange activities in TPSKNs and<br />
identifies the factors which might influence the achievement of<br />
participants’ goals and objectives in TPSKNs. The goal of the<br />
study is to extends the current knowledge-base regarding TPSKNs<br />
into a new transnational context, and a new policy domain, public<br />
health. This is achieved by relying on case study methods to<br />
identify the factors influenced the collaboration between the US<br />
CDC and SA’s MoH leading to the adoption of the Hajj-MDSS in<br />
2009. Given the goal of this research and the Hajj-MDSS case<br />
being introduced, the case study approach is most appropriate, as<br />
its main strength lies in its attempts to efficiently reconcile<br />
complexity, detail, and context [25].<br />
Qualitative data has been collected from in-depth, semi-structured<br />
interviews conducted in person, as well as various secondary data<br />
116<br />
sources, including: government documents, participants’ official<br />
websites, training materials, system manuals, news articles, and<br />
related publications. Nine government officials working for the<br />
Saudi MoH, along with three government officials working for the<br />
US CDC, participated in this study. All participants played critical<br />
roles in the project, and most were involved in all phases of the<br />
project’s implementation. Participants also represent different<br />
management levels, and organizational departments and units. A<br />
purposive sampling using a snowball method was used to identify<br />
individuals for interviews, starting with a single manager at the<br />
Saudi MoH.<br />
Two CDC participants preferred to respond in writing; interview<br />
questions were sent to them, and they responded in writing to the<br />
interview questions. Each in-person interview lasted from 1 to 2<br />
hours. Several participants were contacted later, by phone, to<br />
obtain additional information and for the purposes of clarification.<br />
As all Saudi-side participants being interviewed are native Arabic<br />
speakers, all such interviews were thus conducted in Arabic, as<br />
was the interview conducted with one participant from the CDC<br />
who is native Arabic speaker. The two CDC experts who<br />
preferred to respond in writing received an English version of the<br />
research questions and responded in English.<br />
The unit of analysis of the study is the collaboration aimed at<br />
ensuring the successful implementation of the Hajj-MDSS. The<br />
unit of observation of the study is the individual organizations<br />
who participated in this collaborative effort. The interview data<br />
was transcribed and analyzed in Arabic, and the data collected<br />
from the written response of CDC participants, along with the<br />
aforementioned secondary data sources, were analyzed in English.<br />
All collected data was coded and analyzed with an inductive<br />
approach.<br />
In the course of conducting data analysis, the qualitative software<br />
tool (Atlas-ti) has been used to support coding and analysis<br />
activities. Coding was conducted following two separate<br />
approaches proposed by Strauss and Corbin [26], open coding and<br />
axial coding. Open coding refers to the process of reducing the<br />
data to a small set of themes which appear to describe the<br />
phenomenon being studied. In the context of this research, codes<br />
were added to the coding book when data pointed to any new<br />
concept that could refer to an actor, a product, a process, or a<br />
factor influencing the sharing activities in TPSKNs. The outcome<br />
of this step was a series of different concepts representing the<br />
meaning of the data. After completing the open coding, an axial<br />
coding approach was applied. This process involves putting data<br />
together in new ways by making connections between the already<br />
identified concepts. This was achieved by organizing the initial<br />
codes into different categories which reflected the questions of<br />
interest to this research.<br />
5. FACTORS INFLUENCING TPSKNS<br />
Within the case study, a number of factors influenced technical,<br />
knowledge, and information exchange during the collaboration<br />
toward the adoption of the Hajj-MDSS were identified. This<br />
section discusses these factors in four broad contexts:<br />
technological; knowledge and information; organizational; and<br />
national contexts.<br />
5.1 Technological Context<br />
The collaboration toward adopting the Hajj-MDSS was influenced<br />
by several technical factors as the collaboration involves transfer<br />
of a system to suit a new context. Ease of use, the ability to meet
technical requirements, system features, compatibility, and ICT<br />
infrastructure were identified as main technical factors which<br />
influenced the effectiveness of technical exchange between the<br />
Saudi MoH and CDC.<br />
5.1.1 Ease of Use<br />
The system as implemented is perceived as being easy to use as<br />
revealed by the case study. Participants representing the Saudi<br />
team said: “The system, as a system, was not so complicated.”,<br />
“The system is very user friendly from the perspective of the end<br />
user.” The ease of use of the implemented system minimized the<br />
time and energy required to learn how to use it, and increased the<br />
likelihood of successful adoption within the available time frame<br />
as pointed out by one participant: “Understanding the system and<br />
how it works did not represent an issue for us at all, and we were<br />
able to learn it in a short period of time.”<br />
5.1.2 The Ability to Meet Technical Requirements<br />
The ready availability of the required hardware smoothed the<br />
acquisition of the required resources, which in turn accelerated the<br />
implementation process for the Hajj-MDSS. Participants were<br />
able to avoid challenges stemming from a lack of the required<br />
technical resources, as discussed by participants: “There were no<br />
challenges associated with obtaining the required hardware<br />
devices. The purchasing process was handled smoothly, and was<br />
completed in about one day. The servers, too, were readily<br />
available and inexpensive.”<br />
5.1.3 System Features<br />
The study points to the importance of considering national and<br />
organizational contexts during the selection process of any system<br />
to be adapted to suit a new context. In this instance, the selected<br />
software lacks important features such as the support for Arabic<br />
and the Hijri Calender (HC), which is the official calendar in<br />
Saudi Arabia. Top level management at the Saudi MoH adjusted<br />
to these limitations, and agreed to move forward using the<br />
Gregorian calendar and English language. These limitations did,<br />
however, place an undue burden on those Saudi public health<br />
practitioners who worked with the system, as top level<br />
management at the MoH decided to maintain the existing paperbased<br />
system while integrating the new one.<br />
5.1.4 Compatibility<br />
The selected software relies on Extensible Markup Language<br />
(XML) to facilitate the sharing of structured data across the<br />
different components of the MDSS. While XML is becoming the<br />
standard for electronic data exchange and serves the needs of the<br />
implemented system well, it also carries with it some particular<br />
disadvantages which negatively influenced the potential<br />
effectiveness of the system. In this instance, there was other<br />
required software which was incompatible with XML files. Most<br />
importantly, the XML data format is not compatible with the<br />
InstantAtlas software used to display data for decision makers. To<br />
display the data using InstantAtlas, participants had to translate<br />
the XML data file to a discrete data file manually, which was a<br />
time consuming process. The process influenced the quality of<br />
displayed data to some extent.<br />
5.1.5 ICT Infrastructure<br />
The implemented system is dependent on two telecommunication<br />
modalities: the Internet and a cellular network. The use of these<br />
communication modalities peaked during the Hajj, and resulted in<br />
congested communication traffic, which in turn negatively<br />
117<br />
influenced the functionality of the system during the 2009 Hajj, as<br />
discussed by multiple participants: e.g. “The system relies on a<br />
communication network to facilitate the transfer of data from the<br />
field and public health facilities to the server, using the mobile<br />
phones' SIM cards and the Internet. Network traffic peaked during<br />
the days of the Hajj, leading to critical technical challenges, but<br />
there was no way to discover these challenges prior to the onset of<br />
the implementation process.”<br />
5.2 Knowledge and Information Context<br />
The case study identified codifiability, perception of the content’s<br />
value, sensitivity, and confidentiality as additional factors that<br />
influenced the effectiveness of knowledge and information<br />
exchange during the collaboration toward adopting the Hajj-<br />
MDSS.<br />
5.2.1 Codifiability<br />
A portion of the content exchanged was explicit and easily<br />
expressed in written form [Table 4]. The case study found that this<br />
type of content is easy to share among TPSKN participants. The<br />
ready and frequent exchange of such content allowed participants<br />
to speed up the implementation process, in turn allowing more<br />
time for the exchange of the type of tacit content which required<br />
direct interaction. One clear example of this type of content is the<br />
system requirements that CDC experts sent to their counterparts in<br />
the MoH in written form. Saudi IT specialists commented that the<br />
system’s requirements were clear, and they did not encounter any<br />
difficulties in interpreting them: “The CDC gave us the database<br />
design and the technical specifications of the needed resources.<br />
We studied these specifications on our own and obtained the<br />
required smart phones, servers, and other technical resources.”<br />
5.2.2 Value<br />
All interviewees noted the high degree of transparency, and<br />
stressed that content was freely exchanged between both sides.<br />
One Saudi participant commented: “Any time we were set to<br />
conduct an activity which required the exchange of specific<br />
expertise, we found [the CDC] here and willing to assist.”<br />
Similarly, one CDC participant noted, “We were able to access all<br />
of the information we needed to conduct our work.”<br />
The study focused on data stored within the system. This data<br />
consists of both important information about reported cases and<br />
confidential patient information. Participants answered questions<br />
related to their perception of the value, sensitivity, and<br />
confidentiality of this data. The case study revealed that the value<br />
of this data was limited to decision making during the Hajj, and<br />
for subsequent research purposes. The Saudi MoH presented no<br />
obstacles or objections to sharing this data with researchers. As<br />
the CDC experts were there to assist in decision-making, this<br />
attitude facilitated the exchange of system data amongst and<br />
between all participants as revealed in the case study.<br />
5.2.3 Sensitivity<br />
In this case, while participants from the Saudi side discussed the<br />
insistence of the Saudi MoH on having control over the data<br />
stored within the system as they consider such data as being<br />
sensitive, the preference for having full control over the data did<br />
not influence the intention to share that data with the CDC, as the<br />
study has shown. This would not have been the case, however, if<br />
the intention of the CDC had been to secure full access, retain full<br />
control over the data, or connect the system to other existing<br />
systems. Providing evidence for the latter statement requires
further investigation of the relationship between the “intention to<br />
have control” and “the intention to share”, presenting one avenue<br />
for further research.<br />
5.2.4 Confidentiality<br />
The system’s data was considered to be confidential by<br />
participants representing the Saudi MoH as it contains patients’<br />
information. Such confidentiality did not prevent the CDC team<br />
from accessing the data required to conduct their work effectively<br />
and efficiently, although it did restrict the means of access, as<br />
explained in following quote: “Data were all secured, and located<br />
in the server, so that no individual could gain access to it without<br />
prior permission. The specialists from the CDC were able to<br />
access some data independently, and we provided them with the<br />
aggregated data as needed, so that they could assist us in the<br />
analysis. As a result, they were able to access the aggregated data,<br />
and there was no pressure exerted on their part regarding full data<br />
access.”<br />
5.3 Organizational Context<br />
A number of organizational-level factors were identified in the<br />
course of the case study. These factors include: goals and<br />
interests, values, trust and past relationships, executive support,<br />
authority and hierarchical structures, leadership, resources, skills,<br />
capabilities, commitment, organizational culture, and perceived<br />
risk.<br />
5.3.1 Goals and Interests<br />
The goals and interests of participating organizations played<br />
significant roles in bridging the intention distance, and thus in<br />
promoting and sustaining the collaboration. This can be attributed<br />
to three distinct factors: the alignment between the goals of<br />
collaboration and the respective missions and visions of both the<br />
Saudi MoH and the CDC; the consistency of the goals of<br />
collaboration amongst the various participants; and, mutual<br />
interest.<br />
For the Saudi MoH, the Hajj-MDSS discussed in this case study<br />
represents one element of a larger set of tools and strategies which<br />
were implemented to address the challenges imposed by the<br />
H1N1 pandemic during the 2009 Hajj. Accordingly, the goals of<br />
implementing this system were linked to other, larger, goals. One<br />
manager at the Saudi MoH pointed out that, “The ultimate goal of<br />
this collaboration was to protect the well-being of Hajj pilgrims.”<br />
In a similar vein, the goals of the collaborative effort were closely<br />
aligned with the CDC's vision and stated mission. Historically, the<br />
CDC has used its scientific expertise to assist other countries in<br />
improving their public health capacities and conditions for more<br />
than 60 years. It follows that assisting the Saudi MoH in<br />
implementing a system for monitoring H1N1, and controlling the<br />
spread of a major global pandemic, was aligned with that part of<br />
the CDC mission which focuses on “collaborating to create the<br />
expertise, information, and tools that people and communities<br />
need to protect their health (HHS, 2012).” One participant at the<br />
CDC responded to a question asking about the primary goals of<br />
the CDC by saying: “The main purposes of all CDC international<br />
activities are two-fold: sharing experiences, and building local<br />
capacity.”<br />
Second, the consistency of the goals of collaboration amongst<br />
participants played significant role in the success of the<br />
collaboration. As revealed in the case, participants were clearly<br />
and consistently working toward achieving the same goals.<br />
118<br />
Accordingly, they were able to avoid conflicts, and focus<br />
exclusively on achieving their mutual goals. Also, working<br />
towards the same goals enhanced the productivity of participants<br />
from both sides, and led to an open environment where<br />
participants were better able to freely exchange their expertise.<br />
Finally, it is evident that the Saudi MoH was in need of assistance<br />
in implementing the Hajj-MDSS in a period covering less than<br />
five months. As such, there was a real and acute need to<br />
collaborate with the CDC, which possessed the experience and<br />
expertise required to ensure successful implementation. Regarding<br />
the CDC, participants on the Saudi side believe that the access the<br />
CDC obtained to the Hajj through this collaboration added to the<br />
accumulated experiences, and thus to the potential effectiveness,<br />
of the CDC and its researchers.<br />
5.3.2 Values<br />
Participants pointed to organizational values as one of those<br />
organizational characteristics which motivated the Saudi MoH to<br />
collaborate with the CDC. While one participant said: “The CDC<br />
is an organization that has values, and that is why the management<br />
at the MoH was so welcoming towards the idea of a collaborative<br />
effort. When the CDC’s experts come to you, they come to do the<br />
work and give you the knowledge and expertise you need. Also,<br />
they don’t flatter you, or tell you everything is OK. They get<br />
directly to the point and propose clear solutions.”, another one<br />
commented, “I recommend government organizations avoid<br />
collaboration with counterparts that look for profit, and which<br />
lack collaborative values.”<br />
5.3.3 Trust and Past Relationships<br />
Trust played a significant role in establishing, developing, and<br />
maintaining inter-organizational relationships. This was evident<br />
throughout the duration of the collaboration between the Saudi<br />
MoH and the CDC. One participant commented: “Mutual trust is<br />
the most important factor in any transnational collaboration.” The<br />
high level of trust was a product of the historical relationships that<br />
bridged relational distance. The existing relationship also helped<br />
to bridge organizational and knowledge distances, and allowed<br />
both organizations to get to know each other still further, as<br />
commented on by one of the participants: “Previous collaborative<br />
efforts contributed to the success of the system we implemented<br />
during the Hajj. We did not start from scratch, as they already had<br />
prior experiences with our program, and they were familiar with<br />
its strengths. At the same time, we knew what they had to offer,<br />
their capabilities and their skills.”<br />
5.3.4 Executive Support<br />
The case study found that the support of top executives played a<br />
critical role in promoting the collaborative process by dedicating<br />
additional resources as needed. Participants at the management<br />
level discussed the effect of executive support and involvement,<br />
and said: “The minister and the Deputy Minister of the AAPM<br />
provided unlimited support, and gave us unlimited authority to<br />
acquire all of the resources needed to ensure the successful<br />
implementation of the system.”, “The support we received from<br />
the minister played a major role in the eventual success of our<br />
collaboration with the CDC. I believe the access to our minister<br />
was very easy, and this made our entire mission easier. Without<br />
that access, and his presence and follow-ups, our work would<br />
have been much more difficult.”
5.3.5 Authority and Hierarchical Structures<br />
In this case, the main agency involved in the collaboration from<br />
the Saudi side possessed the authority to collaborate with any<br />
international agency, to address any public health issue or<br />
concern. This authority to collaborate played a significant role in<br />
initiating the transnational relationship as discussed by one top<br />
level manager at the Saudi MoH. The data also revealed that there<br />
was delegation of authority to various team members working on<br />
the project. The delegation of authority allowed participants to<br />
speed up the implementation and resource acquisition processes,<br />
as revealed in the case study. Besides, the hierarchical structures<br />
facilitated the acquisition process of all needed resources as the<br />
primary leader on the Saudi side was the Assistant Deputy<br />
Minister of Health for Preventive Medicine and at the same time<br />
the Chairman of the Supervisory Committee for Preventive<br />
Medicine during the Hajj. Through him, the team was connected<br />
directly to the Minister in all matters related to the needs of the<br />
project. On the other hand, the hierarchical structure of the CDC<br />
allowed those CDC participants who were also representing the<br />
Center for Global Health to readily acquire the needed knowledge<br />
and information resources. One participant representing the CDC<br />
team said: “The CDC’s organizational structure is more horizontal<br />
at a higher level, and that allows the CGH to get support from any<br />
subject matter expert inside the CDC, in any office.”<br />
5.3.6 Leadership<br />
Leadership was revealed as one of the critical factors positively<br />
influenced the coordination and management of all aspects of the<br />
collaboration. The formal authority of the primary leader of this<br />
collaboration on the Saudi side was used mainly to facilitate the<br />
acquisition of needed resources, as has been discussed. This<br />
formal authority to command was not evident, however, in the<br />
interaction with those participants who were assigned to work on<br />
the project from the Saudi side. In fact, the power gained through<br />
formal authority was used to guide cooperation, rather than to<br />
direct actions, as discussed by participants. In his effort to further<br />
guide cooperation, than main leader from the Saudi’s side acted as<br />
a focal point between all participants, at all levels. He explicitly<br />
stated that the most critical task in collaboration such as this is to<br />
maintain open channels of communication between all<br />
participants at all levels.<br />
5.3.7 Resources<br />
The ready availability of needed resources contributed<br />
significantly to the sustainability of the collaboration during the<br />
2009 Hajj, and to the overall success of the project. One manager<br />
commented, “The slogan of the government during the Hajj is<br />
‘take whatever resources to accomplish the work.’” He added,<br />
“All resources were in place for this project.” The case study<br />
revealed three types of resources that participants brought to bear,<br />
and which were critical for the eventual success of the<br />
collaboration: financial resources, human resources, and<br />
knowledge and information resources. The availability of funding<br />
resources was critical to the success of the collaboration in<br />
general, and central to the speed with which the proposal was<br />
agreed upon in particular. Little time had to be spent in searching<br />
for funding sources, or on negotiating funding responsibilities.<br />
Participants discussed the ways in which financial resources<br />
facilitated the acquisition of technical resources, eased logistical<br />
concerns, and facilitated the face-to-face meetings which were<br />
critical in bridging the physical distance and enhancing the ease of<br />
119<br />
communication amongst participants toward exchanging tacit<br />
content.<br />
As with regard to human resources, the Saudi MoH and the CDC<br />
each nominated highly skilled professionals to carry out the<br />
implementation. Additionally, all human resources at the Saudi<br />
MoH were made available to the project as needed. For example,<br />
the adoption of the system required trained health care<br />
practitioners to work on mobile surveillance during the Hajj.<br />
Those personnel were made available, and assigned to obtain the<br />
training required to work on the system ahead of time.<br />
Finally, both countries brought considerable surveillance expertise<br />
to the project. While the American team members were more<br />
advanced in using mobile technology in disease surveillance,<br />
Saudi participants brought to bear a greater knowledge of the<br />
unique conditions associated with the Hajj. These different forms<br />
of knowledge were needed in equal amounts to ensure a smooth<br />
and successful adoption of the system as discussed by multiple<br />
participants.<br />
5.3.8 Skills<br />
The case study revealed two skills, both of which clearly and<br />
positively influenced the eventual outcome of the collaboration<br />
between the Saudi MoH and the CDC. These skills are described<br />
as: project management skills, and team working skills. One<br />
participant pointed to the project management skills brought to the<br />
collaboration on the part of the CDC team as one of the factors<br />
that led to a successful completion within the time frame available<br />
to participants while another Saudi participant discussed team<br />
management skills, how they were able to learn those skills, and<br />
how those skills in turn played a significant role in the eventual<br />
success of the collaboration. He said: “One of the most important<br />
things was the team management skills that we were able to<br />
practice during our work with the CDC experts on this project.”<br />
5.3.9 Capabilities<br />
In addition to the enumerated skills, the case study also revealed<br />
certain capabilities that positively influenced interaction among<br />
the participants. These capabilities include the ability to work<br />
across different cultures, the ability to work across various areas<br />
and domains, and absorptive capacity. The CDC specifically<br />
recruited participants who were able to work across different<br />
cultures. Most participants from the CDC had a long history of<br />
doing so; some such prior experiences shared the Islamic cultural<br />
dimensions, as well. In addition, two CDC participants were<br />
fluent in Arabic. On the other hand, all participants recruited by<br />
the Saudi MoH were fluent in English. These characteristics<br />
facilitated communication and better understanding among all<br />
participants, as revealed by the case study. Additionally, both the<br />
CDC and the MoH assembled teams that were able to work across<br />
multiple involved areas. The ability of participants to work across<br />
involved areas bridged the knowledge distance and increased the<br />
likelihood of the project’s success. Finally, the ability of the Saudi<br />
participants to identify, assimilate, and exploit knowledge from<br />
their CDC counterparts played a significant role in achieving the<br />
CDC's goals, which were focused on building the capacity of the<br />
Saudi MoH in using mobile technology to assist in disease<br />
surveillance. One participant from the Saudi side commented:<br />
“The CDC’s experts did not express any kind of difficulty in<br />
working with us. The areas in which we work are the same areas<br />
in which they work, so there were no barriers at all.”
5.3.10 Commitment<br />
Both personal and organizational commitments were evident<br />
throughout all phases of the project and critical to both the success<br />
and the sustainability of the collaboration. The CDC provided an<br />
ideal example of organizational commitment when it continued to<br />
provide technical assistance over the following two years. At the<br />
personal level, participants from both sides were highly<br />
committed. Their commitment was most clearly demonstrated<br />
during the days of the Hajj, as they were routinely working in<br />
excess of 12 hours a day. In addition, the case study revealed that<br />
Saudi participants carried out tasks beyond their defined roles and<br />
responsibilities.<br />
5.3.11 Organizational Culture<br />
The orientation of the Saudi MoH toward transparency and<br />
openness was revealed to be an important factor throughout the<br />
course of this collaboration, and one which influenced the<br />
attitudes of participants towards sharing knowledge and<br />
information. Participants from the Saudi side discussed that<br />
orientation, and how it helped promote the eventual success of the<br />
collaboration: “It would be unreasonable to bring experts in and<br />
then withhold information from them. That simply means you will<br />
not realize the full benefits of cooperation.”<br />
The case study also found that organizational culture could<br />
impose a negative influence. This occurs when collaboration<br />
involves requirements that are not consistent with said<br />
organizational culture. For example, the system proposed by the<br />
CDC allows access to the server through the Internet. That fact<br />
was not considered by the Saudi MoH when they obtained the<br />
SIM cards however, as those purchased allowed access only to the<br />
internal network of the MoH. In this instance, the behavior of the<br />
Saudi MoH emphasized the influence of that part of the Saudi<br />
MoH's organizational culture which values security over<br />
flexibility, and control over cost-effectiveness. These differences<br />
resulted in some challenges during the preparation of the demo lab<br />
for the trainees to practice what they had learned. The challenges<br />
were resolved by participants during the training phase.<br />
5.3.12 Perceived Risk<br />
Perception of risk was identified as a critical factor that influenced<br />
the potential outcomes of the collaboration. One participant said,<br />
“The main risk was that the system would not work.”<br />
Accordingly, the top level management decided to continue<br />
operating the routine surveillance system already in place while<br />
implementing and testing the new Hajj-MDSS. While the two<br />
systems worked fine alongside one another, they resulted in high<br />
overhead costs and placed an undue burden on those health care<br />
practitioners who were reporting the cases.<br />
5.4 National Context<br />
The case study revealed five distinct factors relating to the<br />
national context. Three such factors are identified as enablers—<br />
political support, political relations, and national events—while<br />
the remaining two—national law and national language—are best<br />
described as barriers.<br />
5.4.1 Political Support<br />
Political support was evident throughout all phases of the project.<br />
The speed with which the Saudi government approved the<br />
collaboration with the CDC to implement the Hajj-MDSS, and the<br />
funds it provided, demonstrated the role that political support<br />
plays in initiating, sustaining, and shaping the outcomes of<br />
120<br />
collaboration with the CDC. Top level managers at the Saudi<br />
MoH discussed the positive effects of political support in detail:<br />
e.g. “The AAPM received unlimited support from the government<br />
and the minister. That support opened plenty of doors for us, and<br />
without it we wouldn’t have been able to accomplish anything.”<br />
5.4.2 Political Relations<br />
In this case, the strong relations between the KSA and the US<br />
bridged political distance and led to a stable collaborative<br />
environment, which facilitated the joint activities of participants<br />
and improved the outcome of the entire collaborative endeavor.<br />
Top level management from the Saudi side discussed the roles<br />
that strong political relations had played in facilitating the<br />
logistical issues such as entry visas. Also, they believed that prior<br />
collaboration at the political level had helped to promote<br />
collaboration with the CDC, and served to enhance the eventual<br />
outcomes. Leaders at the CDC shared a similar outlook, and<br />
pointed to the relationship between the US and the KSA as a<br />
facilitator for achieving better public health outcomes. One CDC<br />
participant did state, however, that the CDC’s intention to<br />
collaborate with any country that needs assistance is never<br />
influenced by how that country relates to the US at the political<br />
level.<br />
5.4.3 National Events<br />
Participants pointed to the Hajj and its importance as one of the<br />
main success factors. They discussed different aspects of the<br />
project that were promoted by the fact that the project was<br />
implemented to serve the Hajj and ensure the well-being of<br />
pilgrims. One example of what they said: “If this collaboration<br />
was initiated for a purpose other than the Hajj, or under different<br />
conditions, there would be many more barriers relating to existing<br />
rules and procedures. During the Hajj, all restricting procedures<br />
and bureaucracy diminish, and that contributed to the success of<br />
the project.”<br />
5.4.4 National Laws<br />
The existing laws of the KSA prevent non-Muslims from gaining<br />
entry to the holy cities of Makkah and Al-Madinah. Accordingly,<br />
the core CDC trainers were not able to conduct the last session of<br />
the first phase of training, which was planned to be held in<br />
Makkah. In addition, non-Muslim experts were unable to<br />
accompany the team to Makkah during the execution phase. Thus,<br />
the law added restrictions on the selection process of participants<br />
who provided direct assistance during the Hajj.<br />
5.4.5 National Language<br />
While language did not represent a challenge at the level of the<br />
individual participants, as all participants from the Saudi side<br />
were fluent in English, the influence of national language was<br />
evident on other aspects of the project. One was the lack of<br />
Arabic-language support in the software used, which placed<br />
burdens on participants, as discussed previously. The national<br />
language also increased the amount of effort and energy that<br />
participants from both sides were asked to contribute, to ensure<br />
the successful completion of the training phase. While one<br />
participant took the time to translate the CDC’s training materials<br />
to Arabic, other participants who were fluent in both Arabic and<br />
English were able to act as translators for those health care<br />
practitioners who were not fluent in English during the training<br />
sessions conducted by the main CDC trainers.
6. DISCUSSION<br />
This study expands the concepts and understanding of the factors<br />
related to the three predefined layers of contexts, knowledge and<br />
information content, organizational, and national contexts.<br />
Related to the knowledge and information layer of context, the<br />
case study revealed four factors: codifiability; perceptions of the<br />
content’s value; sensitivity; and, confidentiality. The study<br />
pointed to new ways in which the perceptions of a specific<br />
content’s sensitivity and confidentiality might influence exchange<br />
activities in TPSKNs. As revealed in the case study, the<br />
perception by Saudi participants of the system’s data as being<br />
sensitive did not influence their intention to exchange that data<br />
with their CDC counterparts, although said perception did<br />
influence their intention and desire to have full control over that<br />
data. The same phenomenon can be seen with regards to<br />
confidentiality, in that Saudi perceptions of confidential data—or<br />
data which should be seen as being confidential—did not prevent<br />
the CDC team from accessing the data required to conduct their<br />
work, although it did restrict their means of access to that data.<br />
The case study expands the concepts and understanding of the<br />
factors related to the organizational layer of context as well. These<br />
factors include: goals and interests; trust and past relationships;<br />
executive support; authority and hierarchical structures;<br />
leadership; resources; skills; capabilities; commitment;<br />
organizational culture; and, perceived risk. This research<br />
identified the perceptions of partner’s values as one of those<br />
additional organizational level factors which motivated<br />
collaboration in TPSKNs. Also, the case study discusses the ways<br />
in which the identified factors influenced exchange activities<br />
during the collaboration toward adopting the Hajj-MDSS.<br />
As with regard to the national layer of context, the study discussed<br />
five factors. These factors include: political support; political<br />
relations; national events; national law; and, national language.<br />
The case provided empirical evidence for the influence of these<br />
identified factors and expanded the understanding on the ways in<br />
which they may influence the effectiveness of TPSKNs. For<br />
instance, the case study found that the intention to collaborate<br />
with another country that needs assistance toward addressing<br />
global issues and concerns may not be influenced by relation at<br />
political level while the strong relations at political level still<br />
proved to be significant for ensuring better outcomes. Also, the<br />
influence of national language found to be evident even when all<br />
participants from both sides are fluent and able to speak the same<br />
language.<br />
As the case study was centered on adopting an existing system to<br />
suit a new context, It expands upon the considered contexts to<br />
include a technological context, central when collaboration<br />
centers on implementing a new system or adopting an existing<br />
system. Five distinct factors related to the technological context<br />
were evident in this case. Ease of use, compatibility with other<br />
systems, ICT infrastructures, the ability to meet technical<br />
requirements, and the additional system features, such as culturalrelated<br />
dimensions—e.g. software capable of supporting different<br />
languages and calendars— were identified as additional factors<br />
influencing exchange activities in TPSKNs. Figure 2 depicts the<br />
factors influencing exchange activities in TPSKNs, discussed<br />
above and informed by the collaboration between the MoH and<br />
CDC aimed at implementing the Hajj-MDSS during the 2009<br />
Hajj.<br />
121<br />
Figure 2. Factors Influenced Sharing and Exchange<br />
Activities during the Adoption of the Hajj-MDSS<br />
7. LIMITATIONS AND FUTURE WORK<br />
The research design and methods used by this study have<br />
employed several measures meant to ensure the reliability and<br />
validity of the research and its conclusions. As with any research<br />
endeavor, however, this study is limited in certain respects. One<br />
of the main limitations stems from the low matching level<br />
between those participants representing the Saudi MoH and those<br />
representing the US CDC available to be interviewed as part of<br />
this research. The study faced specific challenges in this regard, as<br />
some CDC participants were unavailable to be interviewed due to<br />
their responsibilities in other countries. Furthermore, Saudi<br />
participants were representative of multiple organizational levels,<br />
from the technical level up to the ministerial level. Such was not<br />
the case, however, with the three CDC participants available and<br />
amenable to being interviewed. Participants from the CDC were,<br />
in fact, representative of essentially the same organizational level,<br />
despite the fact that one such participant had acted as a team<br />
leader throughout the collaborative process. The collected data<br />
would certainly be richer had participants from CDC representing<br />
different organizational levels. Finally, since data collection relied<br />
mainly on semi-structured, face-to-face interviews, bias may have<br />
occurred due to the time lag between the timing of data collection<br />
and the end of the project, the differences between the stated and<br />
actual behavior of the participants, the sensitivity of the questions,<br />
and incomplete or inaccurate recall on the part of interviewees.<br />
Future publications will present the remaining findings of the<br />
study and discuss the extended version of the Dynamic Model of<br />
Transnational Knowledge Networks (DMTKNs) that has been<br />
developed based on the presented findings.<br />
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Understanding the Capability Gap<br />
Djoko Sigit Sayogo<br />
Center for Technology in Government<br />
187 Wolf road, Suite 301<br />
Albany, New York<br />
dsayogo@ctg.albany.edu<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
In testimony on April of 2012 before the House Financial Services<br />
Committee, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)<br />
Chairman, Mary Schapiro, stated that effective information<br />
sharing between financial market actors and their regulatory<br />
bodies is critical to fulfilling the regulatory obligations of the<br />
SEC. The 2008 financial crisis is recognized as a show case for<br />
the risks to the stability of the markets that ineffective information<br />
sharing among supervisory authorities represents. This paper<br />
constitutes a preliminary exploration of the challenges facing<br />
financial regulators building on prior research in the computing<br />
and information science community (CIS). Current literature as<br />
well as data from a recent study of financial market regulation is<br />
used to identify key actors in financial market regulation<br />
information sharing relationships and to begin to outline the<br />
challenges faced in this unique context and the resulting risk if<br />
those challenges go unaddressed. A recently developed theoretical<br />
framework for cross-boundary information sharing (Garcia et al<br />
2007) is used to present insights about challenges and risks from<br />
the literature and the field.<br />
Categories and Subject Descriptors<br />
K.4.1 [Public Policy Issues]: Information Sharing for Regulators<br />
General Terms<br />
Management, Human Factors, Theory<br />
Keywords<br />
Financial Market Regulators, Systematic Information Sharing,<br />
Challenges and Risks Assessment<br />
1. INTRODUCTION<br />
Non-systematic and ad-hoc information sharing practices among<br />
financial market regulatory agencies are regarded as key<br />
contributors to the 2008 financial crisis. The economic crisis of<br />
2008 is a case in point for how ineffective information sharing has<br />
hindered supervisory authorities from detecting vulnerabilities in<br />
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ICEGOV '12, October 22 - 25 2012, Albany, NY, United States, NY, USA<br />
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1200-4/12/10…$15.00.<br />
Theresa A. Pardo<br />
Center for Technology in Government<br />
187 Wolf road, Suite 301<br />
Albany, New York<br />
tpardo@ctg.albany.edu<br />
123<br />
Peter Bloniarz<br />
College of Computing & Information<br />
University at Albany<br />
Albany, New York<br />
pbloniarz@albany.edu<br />
global financial markets [24]. Unfortunately, the impact of<br />
constrained and ineffective information sharing on market<br />
regulation was well-known long before 2008. In a 2004 report the<br />
U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) called for the<br />
creation of routine and systematic fashion of information sharing<br />
across financial regulators [16] citing the vulnerabilities<br />
introduced as a consequence of gaps in these areas. Challenges at<br />
that time were recognized to include lack of authority, multiple<br />
overlapping jurisdictions, security and sensitivity of information,<br />
and protection of turf [16, 17, 30]. Since then researchers and<br />
practitioners alike have worked to understand and mitigate the<br />
challenges to routine and systematic information sharing in<br />
financial market regulation.<br />
The criticality of effective information sharing to the monitoring<br />
of financial markets and the consequences of gaps in capability<br />
for effective information sharing is increasingly recognized by a<br />
range of national and international organizations. Each of these<br />
organizations is calling for specific and significant investments in<br />
the capability necessary to close the gaps in information available<br />
to and held by regulatory agencies. A statement from The<br />
Financial Stability Board to G-20 Finance Ministers and Central<br />
Bank Governors specifically addressed the need for a future focus<br />
on “information exchange standards in the financial regulatory<br />
and supervisory area” [15]. Testimony from the International<br />
Monetary Fund (IMF) in 2009 indicated the need for more<br />
information disclosure at a high level of granularity to cover the<br />
gap of information among supervisory regulators [24]. Crossborder<br />
cooperation and information sharing was among the ten<br />
recommendations of cross-border bank resolution of the Basel<br />
Committee on Banking Supervision reported by the Bank for<br />
International Settlements [1]. In her testimony on the Lehman<br />
Brothers Examiner’s Report before House Financial Services<br />
Committee in April 2010, Chairman of the US Securities and<br />
Exchange Commission, Mary Schapiro called particular attention<br />
to the critical role of information sharing in meeting public<br />
expectations, “Effective information sharing by regulators is<br />
critical to fulfilling our regulatory obligations, and it is something<br />
that the American public has every right to expect. Cooperation<br />
and coordination with other financial institution regulators is<br />
essential [38]” Information exchange standards, more sharing of<br />
more detailed data, cross-border cooperation and information<br />
sharing are clearly recognized as necessary to ensure financial<br />
regulators meet public expectations.<br />
Previous studies, such as Pardo et al [30] identify various<br />
challenges for financial market regulation. On the other hand, they<br />
did not specify the impact of the challenges to the different actors<br />
of financial market regulation. Davenport and Prusak [5] define<br />
information sharing as “the voluntary act of making information
available to others” [5]. Information sharing involves an exchange<br />
between an information holder and requester in the initial stage<br />
and information sender and receiver in the transfer stage. As a<br />
consequence of the above assertion, to understand information<br />
sharing, we need to identify those involved the sharing<br />
relationship, their role in the sharing process, and the challenges<br />
and risks faced by each actor.<br />
This paper will draw on current literature on information sharing<br />
and integration as well as data about information sharing collected<br />
in interviws with inidividuals with a role in financial market<br />
regulation. Using this literature and data we identify a set of<br />
challenges facing systematic information sharing in financial<br />
market regulation. We map current actors in financial market<br />
regulation, specify their relationships to each other, and identify<br />
challenges and risks for each actor in financial market regulation<br />
information and knowledge sharing. Finally this paper lays out a<br />
foundation for future research in this area.<br />
The paper begins by briefly describing inter-agency information<br />
integration and sharing and introducing the framework proposed<br />
by Gil-Garcia et al [20] as a lens to focus the discussion of the<br />
challenges. Section three describes the method used in this paper<br />
Followed by an introducing to the primary actors in financial<br />
market regulation information sharing. Section four focuses on the<br />
challenges facing financial market regulators in their efforts to<br />
share information. The paper concludes in section five a with<br />
discussion on financial market regulation challenges, actors and<br />
risks and epitomes a set of future directions for research on<br />
information sharing in FMR.<br />
2. INFORMATION SHARING AND<br />
INTEGRATION<br />
This paper uses the framework proposed by Gil-Garcia et al [20]<br />
to examine information sharing in FMR. This interagency<br />
information integration framework is useful for characterizing<br />
sharing activities and for focusing discussions of challenges to<br />
that sharing. Building from a close examination of interagency<br />
information sharing Gil-Garcia et al [20] conceptualize an<br />
integrative framework for constituting interorganizational<br />
information integration [20]. They argue for four components of<br />
interorganizational information sharing, namely: a) interoperable<br />
technical infrastructure, b) integrated data, c) shared information,<br />
and d) trusted social network.<br />
Interoperability, as the first component, is regarded as the most<br />
critical element for systematic sharing or integration of<br />
information across different agencies [33]. Gil-Garcia et al [20]<br />
identified the importance of technical aspects of interoperability<br />
for both hardware and software. They argue that despite the<br />
technical difficulties in developing interoperability, an<br />
interoperable system will make sharing information easier and<br />
provide accurate, protected, and usable information [20].<br />
124<br />
Figure 1. Four Components Interagency Information<br />
Integration<br />
Trusted<br />
Network<br />
Source: Gil-Garcia et al, 2010<br />
Integrated Data Shared Information<br />
Interoperable infrastructure<br />
As the second component, integrated data is critical for sharing<br />
information with multiple organizations particularly when it is<br />
required sharing of information in multiple formats [20]. Common<br />
data elements will significantly improve sharing and integrating of<br />
information across organizational boundaries [20].<br />
The third component, shared information, is recognized as<br />
essential to supporting effective information sharing. Information<br />
sharing systems should be designed around an understanding of<br />
the shared information needed [20]. Sharing of information is<br />
regarded as an initial step toward integrated data [20]. The fourth<br />
component of interorganizational information integration is<br />
trusted social networks. Trust among sharing partners is<br />
considered a prerequisite to successful sharing [33]. A network of<br />
trusted actors significantly influences the effectiveness of<br />
communication and reduces resistance to sharing information<br />
[20]. The level of trust is important to reducing turf barriers and<br />
concern over information misuse.<br />
3. APPROACH<br />
The mapping of the literature on information sharing and<br />
integration draws on three sources; 1) Literature in interagency<br />
information sharing and integration 2).Professional reports on<br />
information sharing challenges in financial markets and 3) Article<br />
on the challenges facing 21 st century financial market regulators<br />
detailing the result of interviews with a set of financial market<br />
regulation professionals published in E-Gov conference [30].<br />
4. ACTORS AND CHALLENGES<br />
4.1 Key Actors in Financial Market<br />
Regulation<br />
Financial market regulation in the U.S. is fragmented with<br />
multiple actors responsible for regulating various segments of the<br />
financial industry [28, 30]. In some cases regulatory responsibility<br />
is overlapping resulting in a web of interconnections and intricate<br />
relationships which is then further complicated by informal and<br />
ad-hoc information sharing practices [28]. To begin to understand<br />
this actors and unpack the unique and overlapping regulatory<br />
responsibilities it is necessary to identify the key actors in the<br />
financial market regulation environment. We identify five actors,<br />
each with different roles and responsibilities and each is with<br />
important and unique relationships with other key actors and other<br />
stakeholders. These five key actors identified are federal agencies,<br />
state governments, SROs (self-regulatory organizations), financial<br />
industry entities (firms, investors, rating agencies), and the public.<br />
Federal and state government agencies share responsibility for<br />
setting regulatory policy, enforcing compliance, supervising, and<br />
monitoring specific sectors of financial market activity. Federal<br />
agencies act as primary regulating agencies for most financial
products (securities, commodities, futures, and others) except<br />
insurance. State governments act as the supplementary regulating<br />
actor for the previously mentioned financial products. The State<br />
governments acts as the primary regulators for insurance [28] with<br />
each state have different regulations for insurance.<br />
The US financial market regulation system is based on a<br />
combination of mandatory regulation sanctioned by government<br />
agencies and voluntary regulation, which in the case of financial<br />
markets, is sanctioned by the SROs (Self-Regulatory Agencies).<br />
SROs are self-regulating agencies that exercise some degree of<br />
regulatory authority over the financial market industry and<br />
professionals One example of an SRO in the U.S. is FINRA<br />
(Financial Industry Regulatory Authority). FINRA is an<br />
independent regulator for securities firms listed and doing<br />
business in the U.S with the mission to protect America’s<br />
investors [13]. To a certain extent, SROs are allowed to generate<br />
supplementary rules and policies [22]. For instance, FINRA is<br />
allowed to generate policies and rules for broker-dealer and<br />
trading markets. SROs serve to supplement the government<br />
regulation or fill the vacuum of an absence of government<br />
oversight and regulation.<br />
Financial industry actors in this paper are those organizations<br />
conducting transactions in the financial market such as firms,<br />
investors, and rating agencies, among others. The interest of<br />
financial industry actors lies in the requirement for compliance<br />
with the regulatory framework. These organization need to<br />
comply and trade within the regulation imposed by the Federal,<br />
State and to certain extent the SROs. The public refers to the<br />
general public who have interest on the conduct of financial<br />
market regulations.<br />
4.2 Challenges to FMR Information Sharing<br />
The need for information sharing capability is not unique to the<br />
context of financial market regulation. Public health, human<br />
services, and public safety are just three of the many policy<br />
domains that require effective information sharing across<br />
boundaries of organizations and jurisdictions and across levels of<br />
government. And in each of these areas various communities of<br />
practitioners and academics work to more fully understand<br />
information sharing and the challenges facing those communities<br />
as they seek to effectively share information in the interest of<br />
program execution and policy development. Creating capability<br />
for routine and systematic information sharing has long been a<br />
priority for the U.S. Justice community, in particular. One of the<br />
most recent products of this focus is the National Information<br />
Exchange Model (NIEM), a national program supported by the<br />
federal government. NIEM represents an ongoing collaborative<br />
partnership of agencies and organizations across all levels of<br />
government (federal, state, tribal, and local) and with private<br />
industry for the purpose of effectively and efficiently sharing<br />
information at key decision points [26]. In recent years, NIEM has<br />
expanded to include other federal and state agencies such as the<br />
Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Federal Bureau of<br />
Investigation, Texas, Florida, New York, Pennsylvania, and others<br />
[26]. In addition to such nationally led efforts, many efforts at the<br />
state level are resulting in the creation of multi-agency, multijurisdictional<br />
information sharing capability. For example, in<br />
2003 a New York State Criminal Justice Information Technology<br />
Group representing 13 different Justice agencies was tasked with<br />
developing a framework for a new approach to state-wide<br />
125<br />
information sharing among criminal justice agencies [20].<br />
Insights from these efforts and others are increasingly available in<br />
both the practitioner and academic literature as resources to<br />
inform and guide information sharing efforts in other domains.<br />
Likewise, this section identifies and integrates challenges from<br />
financial market regulation and interagency information sharing<br />
literature.<br />
4.2.1 Interoperability As the Key<br />
The application and implementation of any information<br />
technology is nested within a particular organizational,<br />
sociological, ideological and political context [7]. Successful<br />
cross-boundary information sharing requires understanding of the<br />
different and diverse business processes and practices within the<br />
actors’ organizations and in the broader context within which they<br />
operate [7]. As argued by Pardo et al [35] interoperability not only<br />
depends on the ability of systems to communicate with one<br />
another, employing shared terminology and definitions, but also<br />
requires management and policy interoperability. An examination<br />
of information sharing in the criminal justice arena indicated that<br />
differences in agency culture is a significant barrier to interagency<br />
information sharing [33], and requires the identification,<br />
understanding and accommodation of existing organizational<br />
cultures within each agency [to enable successful sharing. In this<br />
context, interoperable management and policy is seen as<br />
necessary for each agency to reduce resistance to sharing<br />
information. An understanding of the critical role of<br />
interoperability in cross-boundary information sharing highlights<br />
the need to understand the social processes required to develop a<br />
shared understanding of terms, concepts and information used and<br />
available within each agency [7], particularly considering that<br />
information is not objective, neutral or readily available within<br />
each agency [36].<br />
For organizations to work together to build interoperable systems<br />
to share information, organization leaders must first understand<br />
the information sharing capability found in each sharing partner.<br />
Information sharing capabilities are dynamic, varied,<br />
complementary and multi-dimensional in nature. Leaders must<br />
assess the capabilities held collectively by the network to ensure<br />
the relevancy and appropriateness of capability to become<br />
interoperable [29]. Within a broader view, these dimensions of<br />
capability can be classified into two closely related but distinct<br />
components [29, 34], namely capability to create effective<br />
collaboration and capability to develop new systems and<br />
procedures.<br />
Capability to create effective collaboration includes five<br />
dimensions, namely: business model and architecture readiness,<br />
strategic planning, collaborative readiness, organization<br />
compatibility, and project management. Building capability along<br />
these dimensions is necessary to develop mutual understanding<br />
and to reduce resistance in information sharing and integration.<br />
Strategic planning is important for clarifying roles and<br />
responsibility among participants [32] and to alleviate resistance<br />
to change and incompatibility of technology [11]. Assessment of<br />
business models is necessary to describe service and operational<br />
components of the organization, their interrelationship, and the<br />
technology used for implementation [25]. Assessment of strategic<br />
planning, business model, and collaborative readiness will<br />
generate information to inform understanding of the extent to<br />
which potential sharing partners are incompatible. It also will<br />
inform and ideally, alleviate resistance and interorganizational
conflict around information sharing. Each organization must<br />
understand each other’s missions, strategic planning and needs.<br />
To have this level of understanding, the agencies often engage in<br />
several types of collaborative activities, such as coordinated<br />
planning and training [34].<br />
Capability to develop new systems and procedure is comprised of<br />
six dimensions, including: data assets and requirements,<br />
information policies, resource and project management, and<br />
technology readiness. Data assets and requirements and<br />
information policies assessment refers to assessments of the<br />
ability to provide and encourage sharing through wide-ranging,<br />
clear, and precise information policies and management [31]. This<br />
requirement includes data governance and policies; developing<br />
policies for data stewardship and use [8, 10]. This capability also<br />
relates to the management of resources owned by different<br />
agencies. Appropriate resource allocation and procurement<br />
strategies to support the interoperable system. The technology<br />
readiness consists of three elements, namely: technology<br />
acceptance, knowledge and compatibility. Technology acceptance<br />
refers to the attitudes of actors toward changes bring forth by<br />
technology, reflecting the comfort of actors in accepting a new<br />
technology or initiative, the degree of trust in the new technology,<br />
and the beliefs on the usability and success of technology or<br />
initiative [31]. Technology compatibility refers to the presence of<br />
agreed-upon standards, interconnectivity among those seeking to<br />
share information, and experience of staff with sharing activities<br />
[4].<br />
4.2.2 Integrated Data<br />
Two interrelated issues in the development of integrated data,<br />
namely: developing linked data and ensuring data integrity and<br />
quality, were identified through the literature review and field<br />
study.<br />
a) Ensuring Data Quality and Integrity<br />
Data has a central role in financial markets. Regulators as well as<br />
firms need data for a variety of reasons; not the least of which is<br />
to protect consumers. Consumer protection, like other uses<br />
regulators and firms make of the data available to them, requires<br />
data to be of high quality and integrity.<br />
The process of ensuring that data from trading, surveillance and<br />
compliance activities is of sufficient quality for the specific or<br />
intended use can be a daunting task. Financial market data come<br />
from many organizations; broker-dealers, banks, and other<br />
sources, with many different data management cultures. Ensuring<br />
a high quality, integrated data infrastructure, including<br />
sophisticated data management strategies, represents a significant<br />
cost [30]. Monitoring the markets in the new environment of<br />
trading; with ever increasing transaction speeds and the<br />
production of vast amounts of data requires whole new classes of<br />
technology and a new approach to data management.<br />
b) Developing Linked Data<br />
Developing shared terminology and common definitions is one<br />
element of creating an interoperable system [27]. Daniel Tarullo’s<br />
statement [40] in front of US Senate points at two important<br />
issues for better oversight mechanism in financial market 1)<br />
access to high-quality and timely data that are organized and<br />
standardized for supervisory agencies, and 2) the availability of<br />
data in appropriate usable form to other government agencies. His<br />
126<br />
assertion implies data sharing will occur through standardization<br />
and linked data [40]. The November 2009 NRC (National<br />
Research Council) workshop describes the need for standard<br />
language development to enable data aggregation, interpretation,<br />
and analysis to support for controlling systematic risks [12].<br />
Technically, the development of common language and schema<br />
through ontology will enable a linkage of different systems which<br />
would support more systematic and routine sharing. The ontology<br />
will enables the creation of “shared and common understanding of<br />
a domain that can be communicated between people and<br />
application systems [6]”, and served as a language to support data<br />
translation and queries from different system design [23]. The<br />
development of common language facilitates automatic reasoning<br />
about financial systems and proposed regulations, sharing a<br />
common understanding of financial structures, and facilitating the<br />
analysis of interrelationship in financial domains. Effort toward<br />
developing linked data for financial market is already being<br />
invested in. For instance, O’Riain et al [27] proposing a linked<br />
data driven information systems for integrating financial data<br />
from multiple web sources. They further outline the challenges<br />
and issues in addressing data integration in financial market<br />
regulation, namely: a) an increase in data inter-dependencies, b)<br />
data quality and c) three different types of mismatch: text/data,<br />
schema, and abstraction level mismatch [27]. Despite growing<br />
research on ontologies for the financial domain, there is still a<br />
great need for a stronger and more focused connection between<br />
regulatory and systematic risk.<br />
4.2.3 Challenges to Sharing Information<br />
As argued by Gil-Garcia et al [20], sophisticated systems do not<br />
necessarily provide effective platforms for information sharing.<br />
Integrating and sharing information across different agencies is a<br />
difficult endeavor to undertake. For example, Agencies sometimes<br />
act defensively in protecting what they see as their own “turf”;<br />
which in this case is their data [21]. The challenges confronting<br />
agencies as they work to share their information with other<br />
entities range from political and managerial to technical. This<br />
section introduces some of these importance challenges.<br />
a) Collaborative Governance Structure and Sharing Strategies<br />
Agency resistance to sharing information is typically driven by a<br />
variety of reasons, such as to avoid additional costs related to<br />
changes, to control risks, to protect autonomy and adversarial<br />
position [21], and to shun “reputation risk”, that is a risk of being<br />
relevant to the market and losing power over the market [30]. As a<br />
result, agencies need to enact strategies to reduce the risks of<br />
information sharing.<br />
One of the strategies proposed by Pardo, Gil-Garcia and Burke<br />
[33] is through the development of an effective collaborative<br />
governance structure organized around the expectation that<br />
agencies will be sharing information. They further outline six<br />
determinants of an effective collaborative governance structure: 1)<br />
knowledge of information needs, 2) knowledge of the<br />
environment, 3) willingness to accommodate to the diversity of<br />
participating organizations and their goals, 4) knowledge about<br />
participating organizations, 5) existing legislation, and 6)<br />
executive involvement [33].<br />
Developing information sharing and integration capability also<br />
requires leadership and legislative support [21]. To achieve<br />
interoperability across the boundaries of agencies, levels of<br />
government, and even across national boundaries, requires
leadership and authority from the most top levels of<br />
government. Because only the highest level of authority will<br />
enable the formation of secure strategic partnership, build<br />
comprehensive planning, secure necessary resources, and handle<br />
conflicting interests across different agencies to sustain the<br />
governance of multi-agencies network [34].<br />
b) Lack of Authority<br />
Lack of legal authority to access information was a challenge<br />
faced by many state insurance regulators [16]. For instance, state<br />
insurance regulators do not have the authority to access the FBI’s<br />
nationwide criminal history record. As a consequence, state<br />
insurance regulators have limited ability to prevent individuals<br />
with serious criminal records from entering the insurance business<br />
in their states. Inter-state migrations complicate the issue when<br />
individuals with serious criminal histories move around [16].<br />
The lack of authority for access is magnified by fragmented<br />
regulatory structures which often overlap. Financial industry<br />
actors and insurance companies find themselves regulated by<br />
different institutions with different approaches to regulation. The<br />
fragmented structure creates two prominent challenges, a)<br />
duplication and overlap of regulation and b) competition among<br />
regulators to be the first to protect consumers and to appeal to the<br />
public [30, 37]. The overlap and competitiveness leads to<br />
redundancy and causes higher costs for firms and regulatory<br />
agencies. It also creates confusion for firms as they must choose<br />
which regulators to comply with. This situation also challenges<br />
regulators themselves as they work to understand how firms are<br />
operating within the multiple fragmented and overlapping systems<br />
of regulation [30, 37].<br />
A proliferation of complex hybrid financial products increases<br />
complexity of authority questions and hinders the ability of<br />
regulators and consumers alike to identify and mitigate potential<br />
risks. The multiple jurisdictions governing the markets is<br />
recognized as not only obstructing the oversight of hybrid<br />
financial products, but also confusing consumers [16]. For<br />
instance, consumers might lodge a complaint about a hybrid<br />
product with wrong regulator and as a consequences the<br />
complaint is not properly resolved by the appropriate regulator.<br />
To complicate the matter, the lack of a central body facilitating<br />
information sharing or negotiating agreements about what<br />
information could and should be shared means that the<br />
appropriate regulator is often left in the dark [19]. The result is<br />
that regulators are left with limited views of issues in the financial<br />
market that impede their ability to deduce potential problems in<br />
the market.<br />
c) Lack of Enforcement Action from the Current Sharing<br />
Mechanism<br />
The Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) is the primary<br />
mechanism used to establish information sharing agreements.<br />
However, the MOU has been criticized for a lack of enforceable<br />
actions which challenges the extent of sharing. The MOU was<br />
criticized for a high reliance on the “soft power of persuasion”<br />
and willingness to cooperate, instead of taking a coercive<br />
approach [3]. The effectiveness of an MOU largely depends on<br />
the “goodwill” of the counterparties signing the MOU. In<br />
addition, compliance with an MOU also depends on the<br />
underlying legal authority and jurisdictions of each party [14]. In<br />
a similar manner, multilateral arrangements across nations, as a<br />
form of MOU, were also criticized for the high information<br />
127<br />
asymmetries resulting from differences in legal systems,<br />
supervisory arrangements, social and moral habit, and competition<br />
among financial centers for securities transactions [3, 14].<br />
d) Legacy information systems impede the access<br />
Different regulators maintain different and separate information<br />
systems and these different systems can significantly complicate<br />
routine information sharing. The integration of different legacy<br />
systems or the creation of interoperable system out of existing<br />
legacy systems becomes a major hurdle [30]. Different legacy<br />
systems result in systems that “don’t talk to each other” and create<br />
various “gold copies” of data [30]. Gold copies refer to the<br />
different data captured at different levels, organizations, and<br />
formats. These gold copies pose challenges to data accuracy due<br />
to the different formats and metadata and affect the level of<br />
understanding about the data [30]. Considering that information is<br />
constructed from data, the problem with data accuracy could<br />
distort the resulting information and create major barriers for<br />
routine information sharing.<br />
e) Protection of sensitive data and information<br />
Financial regulators expressed their concern over the protection of<br />
sensitive data and information In particular, they expressed<br />
concerns about the need to balance inclinations to share and the<br />
need to protect different types of regulatory information with<br />
varying degree of sensitivity [16]. The legal structure previously<br />
installed to protect financial market consumers, such as the Bank<br />
Secrecy Acts, sometime prohibit the disclosure of certain<br />
information [19].<br />
This concern is not a unique problem to financial market.<br />
Information security and protection are still major concerns in<br />
information sharing across different federal agencies. Looking at<br />
the case of sharing terrorism related information, shows a variety<br />
of weaknesses in the control of information security in federal<br />
agencies [17]. Based on the 2008 GAO report1, almost all 24<br />
major federal agencies continue to have problems with access<br />
control and security management and about 20 federal agencies<br />
have issues with configuration management for information<br />
protection [17, 18]. Pardo et al [30] also pointed at the challenge<br />
of data protection in the financial market. To share information<br />
with various different agencies necessitate sufficient data<br />
protection. With much information that flows around, regulators<br />
need to ensure adequate protection of privacy and proprietary<br />
information. Systems to protect the data and information against<br />
intrusions exist but the problem lies on the protection of data and<br />
information privacy [30].<br />
The development of information policies for information sharing<br />
and integration can be challenged by two factors, 1) the<br />
conflicting interest of multiple agencies and 2) the tension among<br />
security, privacy and sharing needs [30]. Each financial regulator<br />
governs particular financial segments based on their mission;<br />
these regulators intend to protect their autonomy and adversarial<br />
position that can sometimes conflict with other regulators. As<br />
previously discussed, information sharing requirements are<br />
sometimes hindered by the need to protect sensitive data and<br />
privacy rights. There is a conflicting issue between the need to use<br />
shared information with the need to protect the same information<br />
for being misused [9]. Dawes [9, 10] provides a useful framework<br />
1 http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d09546.pdf
for understanding information policies supporting informationbased<br />
transparency initiative. Dawes proposed a balancing of two<br />
complimentary requirements in the framework, namely:<br />
information stewardship and information usefulness [8, 10].<br />
Stewardship “conveys the idea that all public officials and<br />
government organizations are responsible for handling<br />
information with care and integrity, regardless of its original<br />
purpose or source [9, 380]”. Using this lens, regulators must<br />
handle any information with care regardless of who the initiator or<br />
owner of the information is. This principle requires agencies to<br />
forgo their differences and could alleviate the concern of misuse.<br />
Information usefulness, on the other hand, refers to the principle<br />
that the information is beneficial. Making the information more<br />
accessible provides a wide variety of public and private uses [8,<br />
10]. This framework of stewardship and usefulness provides<br />
useful guidance for financial regulators in developing policy<br />
management to support inter-regulators information sharing and<br />
integration. Policy management refers to the “way to express,<br />
analyze, and realize desired sharing system behavior [39].<br />
4.2.4 Trusted Social Network<br />
Systematic inter-organizational information sharing requires the<br />
creation of networks consisting of various different agencies and<br />
at different levels. A network might consist of organizations with<br />
overlapping business processes and non-standardized but similar<br />
information [35]. It might be populated by officials from various<br />
different agencies, each having different cultures, practices and<br />
rules to follows. The diversity of actors in this network could<br />
generate a range of potential conflicts of interest. Pardo et al [30]<br />
argued that managing conflict of interests among different<br />
regulatory agencies might be regarded at one of the primary<br />
challenges for 21st century financial market regulators.<br />
There exists high competitiveness among different regulatory<br />
agencies, each strives to become or maintain their functional<br />
relevance to the market [30, 37]. Considering the high potential<br />
for conflict and power negotiation among different agencies<br />
involved in regulating financial markets, enacting trusted<br />
relationships becomes key element to ensuring systematic sharing.<br />
Trust within the network could change the way people work,<br />
communicate and share information hence trust becomes the<br />
“catalyst for information sharing [20]”. Regardless, it seems, of<br />
the sophistication of system, communications and sharing still<br />
benefit from strong interpersonal capabilities.<br />
5. CONNECTING FINANCIAL ACTORS,<br />
CHALLENGES, AND RISKS<br />
Drawing on the analysis in the previous sections, we identify eight<br />
challenges to information sharing in financial market regulation<br />
resulting from fragmented regulatory structures in US financial<br />
markets (table 1). These include: 1) lack of authority for crossjurisdictional<br />
products, 2) conflicting organizational cultures, 3)<br />
challenges due to data interdependency and legacy systems, and<br />
4) the need for collaborative governance. In addition, four other<br />
challenges emerge as side effects of institutional responses to this<br />
fragmented structure, namely, a need 5) to develop linked data<br />
and a common language, 6) to protect sensitive data and<br />
information, 7) to develop necessary capabilities for existing<br />
information sharing and 8) to create more robust sharing<br />
mechanisms and policies.<br />
128<br />
The financial market regulatory structure in the U.S. is<br />
fragmented with different actors regulating different products.<br />
Considering the diversity of financial market stakeholders and<br />
their role and interest in the market, the identified challenges will<br />
affect different actors in the financial market differently. For each<br />
of these actors, the different impacts of these challenges represent<br />
the risks that need to be addressed by them. In this section, we<br />
correlate the identified challenges with the primary actors in<br />
financial market regulation and identify the risks associated with<br />
the challenges for each actor (table 1).<br />
The risks that government (federal and state) and SROs face are<br />
comparable and include 1) having a limited ability to see built-up<br />
vulnerabilities in the market [21], 2) having resistance to change<br />
in order to maintain “turf” [16, 35], 3) hindering interoperability<br />
due to differences in metadata and data formats [25], and 4)<br />
competitiveness and conflicting interests among regulators [30].<br />
The regulators might also need to invest in ensuring data quality,<br />
developing linked data, and assessing gaps in capabilities.<br />
Although the risks faced by Federal and State regulators and the<br />
SROs are comparable, the magnitude of impact is oftentimes<br />
different. For instance, having limited ability to see built-up<br />
vulnerabilities could create a larger impact for Federal agencies<br />
compared to the SROs. The resulting risks could also affect the<br />
effectiveness of relationships among these regulators, especially<br />
considering that the sharing practices among most federal and<br />
state agencies are primarily informal and ad hoc [28]. For<br />
instance, federal agencies and state government could share<br />
trading information and be involved in joint enforcement<br />
coordination.<br />
The risk of resistance to change in order to maintain turf and the<br />
risk of competing and conflicting interests could undermine their<br />
joint efforts to share. As example, the report by the GAO<br />
indicated how sharing between state and federal agencies, as<br />
illustrated by the case of state insurance regulators and the FBI,<br />
are sometimes not fruitful due to the lack of authority and<br />
jurisdictions. The state insurance regulators could not access the<br />
criminal record of an insurer in the FBI database and were thus<br />
unable to assess and prevent potential fraud [16].<br />
For the actors in the financial market industry (trading firms,<br />
broker-dealer, rating agencies, investors, etc), these challenges<br />
also induce risks. The authority barriers and inadequate sharing<br />
mechanisms could create confusion for market actors in filing<br />
complaints or in identifying relevant information. The report by<br />
the GAO illustrates how difficult it is for consumers to lodge<br />
complaints on hybrid products due to the level of complexities<br />
and the intersectional and multilayered nature of financial markets<br />
[16]. The lack of coercive power on the current sharing<br />
mechanism among the regulatory agencies could also create an<br />
opportunity for irresponsible actors to gain advantage by<br />
manipulating the system [14].<br />
As the previous GAO report indicates [16], an insurer who has a<br />
criminal record could manipulate the system by moving to other<br />
states and create a similar fraud because the state insurance<br />
agencies could not access the criminal record in the FBI<br />
databases. The barrier due to lack of authority and legacy systems<br />
could complicate the effort by the public to identify and access<br />
relevant information.
The relationship between regulators and the public is maintained<br />
through two primary activities: 1) public access to information,<br />
and 2) requests for comments on new regulatory proposals [2].<br />
Legacy systems and differing jurisdictions could result in the risk<br />
of multiple points of access [16], because the public has various<br />
points to access information. On the one hand, multiple points of<br />
access provide a wider range of information for the public to<br />
compare and contrast. On the other hand, multiple points of access<br />
could create confusion as to which information is most relevant<br />
for them. As result, despite the notable transparency effort by<br />
regulators to open up access to information and enhance the<br />
public consultative process, this condition will make the<br />
public, especially individual investors, more vulnerable to fraud<br />
and more exposed to losses. Their inability to identify relevant<br />
information could distort decisions that ordinary investors make<br />
regarding their investment.<br />
Table 1. Actors, Challenges and Risks<br />
Challenges Government SROs Fin. Industry Actors Public<br />
Mitigating authority<br />
barriers - Lack of authority<br />
and cross jurisdictions<br />
Accommodating different<br />
organizational cultures<br />
Legacy systems and data<br />
interdependency impede<br />
access<br />
Developing collaborative<br />
governance culture –<br />
involvement of high-level<br />
officials and political<br />
leaders<br />
Developing linked data<br />
and a common language -<br />
Ensuring data quality and<br />
integrity<br />
Protection of sensitive data<br />
and information, balancing<br />
usefulness and stewardship<br />
Lack of enforceable action<br />
for the current information<br />
sharing mechanism<br />
Developing capabilities for<br />
collaboration and<br />
developing new<br />
procedures<br />
Limited ability to<br />
identify built-up<br />
vulnerabilities [24]<br />
Resistance to change<br />
brought forth by new<br />
systems [9, 35]<br />
Different metadata and<br />
formats inhibit<br />
integration and<br />
interoperability. [27]<br />
Conflicting interests<br />
among regulatory<br />
agencies – the<br />
competitiveness and risks<br />
of being relevant to the<br />
market [30]<br />
Investment to ensure data<br />
quality in large datasets<br />
[30]<br />
Liabilities of privacy and<br />
proprietary data and<br />
information [30]<br />
Dependence on the<br />
“goodwill” of<br />
counterparties [3, 14]<br />
Gaps in capabilities that<br />
hamper collaboration<br />
[34, 35]<br />
*) Intersection of challenges and actors represents the risk<br />
Limited ability to<br />
identify built-up<br />
vulnerabilities [24]<br />
Resistance to change<br />
brought forth by new<br />
systems [9, 35]<br />
Different metadata and<br />
formats inhibit<br />
integration and<br />
interoperability [27]<br />
Conflicting interests<br />
among regulatory<br />
agencies – the<br />
competitiveness and<br />
risks of being relevant<br />
to the market [30]<br />
Investment to ensure<br />
data quality in large<br />
datasets [30]<br />
Liabilities of privacy<br />
and proprietary data and<br />
information [30]<br />
Dependence on the<br />
“goodwill” of<br />
counterparties [3, 14]<br />
Gaps in capabilities that<br />
hamper collaboration<br />
[34, 35]<br />
129<br />
Confusion in filing<br />
complaints<br />
Different reporting<br />
formats increase cost<br />
[30]<br />
Investment to ensure<br />
data quality for<br />
compliance [30]<br />
Liabilities of privacy<br />
and proprietary data and<br />
information [30]<br />
Opportunities to<br />
manipulate the system<br />
Confusion in<br />
identifying relevant<br />
information [18]<br />
Multiple points of<br />
access [16]<br />
Distortion due to low<br />
quality data.<br />
Security of personal<br />
data<br />
Higher vulnerability<br />
to fraud and<br />
exposures<br />
The challenge of protecting sensitive data and ensuring data<br />
quality and integrity also creates significant risks for the financial<br />
industry and the public. The challenges of protecting sensitive<br />
data significantly correlate with the firm’s investment in ensuring<br />
data quality, compliance and privacy protection. This condition<br />
creates a risk of protecting the security of the personal data and<br />
information for the general public. For public, this challenge<br />
correlates with the risk of breach in personal data and security of<br />
personal data. For financial industry, the challenge correlates to<br />
the risk of liabilities related to privacy and proprietary data. The<br />
financial industry might have to invest heavily to reduce the risk<br />
of liabilities due to personal data breach.<br />
6. FUTURE DIRECTIONS<br />
Through the review on literature in the interagency information<br />
sharing and integration, this paper provides an initial framework<br />
for understanding the challenges relating to inter-agency<br />
information sharing for financial market regulators, focusing
primarily on the information flows between the different agents<br />
playing significant roles in the regulation of financial markets.<br />
There are a number of other areas in which computer and<br />
information science research can help support this information<br />
and knowledge sharing, through analyses of the types of<br />
information and knowledge that should be shared between the<br />
actors. For example, better analytic tools could build on a formal<br />
specification of trading data and financial actors’ behavior. High<br />
level languages for identifying patterns of interest (e.g., fraud<br />
signatures) in financial data streams should enable highly<br />
scalable, real-time analysis of data streams to support decision<br />
making. As another example, data mining approaches will be<br />
essential to detect patterns of activity that produce anomalous<br />
market behavior, such as the May 2010 “flash crash,” or identify<br />
the possibility of manipulative or fraudulent practice that warrants<br />
further investigation. Predictive data mining could be useful for<br />
identifying impending market destabilization or manipulation and<br />
developing better “circuit breakers.” Social network analysis<br />
could be used in combination with structured data to provide<br />
evidence of individuals or organizations engaged in inappropriate<br />
activities. Financial market professionals can get the information<br />
they need to support their high-stakes decision making. The<br />
ensuing research should lead to new models of computing, system<br />
design, and data analysis that can improve practices in this<br />
important and challenging domain.<br />
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tools necessary to monitor systemic risk.
On Public Service Provision Informative Phase: A<br />
dialogue-based Model and Platform<br />
Efthimios Tambouris<br />
1 University of Macedonia<br />
156 Egnatia Str., 54006, Thessaloniki,<br />
Greece, +30 2310 891 588<br />
2 CERTH/ITI<br />
6 th km Charilaou-Thermi Rd.<br />
57001, Thessaloniki<br />
tambouris@uom.gr<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
Online provision of public services (such as passport issuance and<br />
establishing a new business) is a priority of eGovernment<br />
worldwide for over a decade. Public service provision consists of<br />
two phases: informative and performative. During the informative<br />
phase, citizens or businesses obtain information before actually<br />
invoking a public service. This information includes required<br />
documents to be submitted, cost, responsible authority etc. The<br />
informative phase, although significant, has been overlooked at<br />
eGovernment literature. In this paper we present a notation for<br />
modeling the informative phase of public services as well as a set<br />
of indicators for measuring quantitative and qualitative<br />
characteristics of public services. We further present a prototype<br />
platform than enables modeling the informative phase of public<br />
services and automatically creating online dialogues to be used by<br />
citizens for obtaining personalized information on public services.<br />
We finally demonstrate the use of the platform by using the<br />
passport issuance public service.<br />
Categories and Subject Descriptors<br />
K.6.1 [MANAGEMENT OF COMPUTING AND<br />
INFORMATION SYSTEMS]: Project and People Management<br />
- Systems Aanalysis and Design, Systems Development<br />
General Terms<br />
Management<br />
Keywords<br />
eGovernment, Public Service Provision, Informative Stage<br />
1. INTRODUCTION<br />
eGovernment is a political priority worldwide with tremendous<br />
amounts of funds being invested, which are estimated to be over $<br />
490 billion worldwide [3]. One of the key eGovernment activities<br />
is online Public Service Provision (PSP) with relevant progress<br />
being regularly monitored [2][13]. A number of stage models<br />
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Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to<br />
post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission<br />
and/or a fee.<br />
ICEGOV '12, October 22 - 25 2012, Albany, NY, United States, NY, USA<br />
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1200-4/12/10…$15.00.<br />
Vasiliki Outsetari<br />
University of Macedonia<br />
156 Egnatia Str.<br />
54006, Thessaloniki, Greece<br />
+30 2310 891 589<br />
mis0924@uom.gr<br />
132<br />
Konstantinos Tarabanis<br />
1 University of Macedonia<br />
156 Egnatia Str., 54006, Thessaloniki,<br />
Greece, +30 2310 891 578<br />
2 CERTH/ITI<br />
6 th km Charilaou-Thermi Rd.<br />
57001, Thessaloniki<br />
kat@uom.gr<br />
have been proposed for evaluating sophistication and maturity of<br />
eGovernment solutions [4][5][10]. For example, according to<br />
European Union there are five stages of online sophistication for<br />
public services: information, one-way interaction, two-way<br />
interaction, transaction, and targetization [2].<br />
Academic work to better understand PSP suggests it consists of<br />
two distinct but complementary phases: the informative phase and<br />
the performative phase [9]. During the informative phase the<br />
citizen/business obtains information about the service while<br />
during the performative phase the citizen/business invokes and<br />
eventually consumes the public service.<br />
The informative stage is often considered as straightforward to<br />
fully automate. This is reflected in various stage models that<br />
suggest providing information is the first stage of sophistication<br />
and can be fully accomplished simply by “providing information<br />
online”. Targetization, which is considered as the ultimate stage,<br />
is often related to providing personalization during the<br />
performative phase, i.e. during service execution.<br />
We follow a different path suggesting the informative phase of<br />
PSP is very important and should be also carefully automated.<br />
During the informative phase, citizens/businesses have to obtain<br />
all necessary information with regards to the specific version of<br />
the public service relevant to their circumstances. As many public<br />
services have hundreds or even thousands of different versions<br />
[7], providing personalized information in an efficient and<br />
effective manner is not straightforward. We therefore consider<br />
that targetization is also relevant to the informative phase in<br />
addition to performative.<br />
In this paper we present a model and prototype platform that can<br />
be used for modeling PSP informative stage and, subsequently,<br />
for providing personalized information to citizens and businesses<br />
using online dialogues.<br />
We believe this work contributes to obtaining a better<br />
understanding of PSP informative stage. It reviews relevant work<br />
in the area to propose a notation that enables domain experts to<br />
model the information stage. It further proposes a number of<br />
indicators that can be used to understand the complexity of PSP<br />
informative phase. Finally, it presents a platform that can be used<br />
by domain experts to graphically design the informative phase of<br />
PSP and by citizens and businesses to obtain information based on<br />
an online dialogue that is automatically created from the model.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows. In section 2 we<br />
present related work in automating the informative phase of PSP.<br />
In Section 3 we present our proposed modeling notation as well as<br />
a number of indicators to better understand the produced public<br />
service models. In Section 4 we present a platform prototype we<br />
have developed for modeling the informative phase of PSP which<br />
enables automatic development of online dialogues to be used by<br />
citizens and businesses. In Section 5 we present a case from using<br />
the platform. Finally, in Section 6 we present the main<br />
conclusions of this work along with future work.<br />
2. PSP INFORMATIVE PHASE (PSP IP)<br />
RELATED WORK<br />
The informative phase is the informative part of the interaction<br />
between a citizen and a public authority providing a public<br />
service. During this phase, the citizen asks questions like Why?<br />
What? Who? Where? When? How? about a public service. When<br />
the answers to these questions have been provided, we can<br />
consider this phase of service provision as complete and the<br />
citizen may proceed to the performative phase i.e. service<br />
invocation.<br />
The informative phase is essential for optimal service utilization<br />
and public administration efficiency however it is often<br />
overlooked by governments. In order to effectively use a public<br />
service, citizens must identify which public services address their<br />
needs and find answers to their questions regarding these services,<br />
e.g. “am I eligible for this service?”, “what documents should I<br />
provide?”, “what is the relevant cost?” etc. [9].<br />
This is particular important as studies suggest public services<br />
often have numerous versions depending on a number of factors<br />
[1] [7]. For example, issuing a passport has many versions<br />
depending on age, whether the application is for a new passport or<br />
renewing a passport or replacing a stolen passport etc. In each<br />
version, the input documents that should be provided are different<br />
whereas the cost may differ as well.<br />
Despite the existence of sophisticated eGovernment PSP systems<br />
for the performative phase, citizens and businesses spend valuable<br />
resources (time and sometimes money) in order to collect the<br />
information required (e.g. about needed documents, cost demands<br />
etc.) in the informative stage i.e. before invoking a service.<br />
In the rest of this section we present three different ways used for<br />
PSP informative stage (PSP IP). We call them unstructured<br />
websites, structured websites and dialogue-based systems.<br />
133<br />
Figure 1. Example of website providing unstructured PS<br />
information<br />
2.1 Unstructured Websites<br />
This category includes websites containing plain information<br />
about public service(s). The information may be excessive<br />
nevertheless there is no structure in the content other than the<br />
menu of the website. Sometimes specific websites have been<br />
developed for single public services such as www.passport.gov.gr<br />
developed for providing information on passport issuance (fig. 1).<br />
2.2 Structured Websites<br />
This category also includes websites containing plain information<br />
about public service(s). This time however information is<br />
provided according to a template that is common for all public<br />
services. It is common that one-stop government portals provide<br />
structured information on public services e.g. www.help.gv.ac<br />
(fig. 2).<br />
Figure 2. Example of website providing structured PS<br />
information<br />
2.3 Dialogue-based Platforms<br />
These platforms guide the visitor through a number of online<br />
questions. By answering, the visitor is provided with personalized<br />
information, commonly on whether he is eligible for the service,<br />
required documents, costs, responsible authority etc.<br />
These platforms are all similar with regards to what the visitor<br />
experiences. However, they are substantially different on how that<br />
information is produced. We will outline three such applications,<br />
namely OneStopGov platform, Rural-Inclusion platform and<br />
Oracle Policy Automation (OPA) platform.<br />
2.3.1 OneStopGov Platform<br />
OneStopGov platform has been developed within the European<br />
Union co-funded project OneStopGov (http://islab.uom.gr/<br />
onestopgov). The platform provides a complete system for online<br />
one-stop government hence covers both the informative and<br />
performative phases of PSP [12]. The public servant (who should<br />
actually be a domain expert) with the assistance of a technical<br />
expert models the public service using a proprietary process<br />
management tool employing BPMN and web services (fig. 3).<br />
The dialogue is automatically created from this model. The enduser<br />
visits the relevant website in order to get informed about the<br />
public service through an online dialogue. OneStopGov platform
employs workflow management technologies for modeling public<br />
services.<br />
Figure 3. Developing a model for PSP IP using OneStopGov<br />
platform<br />
2.3.2 Rural-Inclusion Platform<br />
Rural-Inclusion (RI) platform has been developed within the<br />
European Union co-funded project Rural Inclusion<br />
(http://www.rural-inclusion.eu). RI uses exactly the same<br />
principles as OneStopGov platform. However, the underlying<br />
technologies are different. More specifically, the Semantic Public<br />
Service Portal (S-PSP) developed to support the informative phase<br />
of the public services is based on ontologies technology [6]. As a<br />
result, the domain expert needs to be supported by IT experts in<br />
order to model the public service as an ontology. Recently, the<br />
project has developed a front-end which enables domain experts<br />
to provide all information needed for the online dialogue through<br />
an easy-to-use interface which automatically creates the ontology<br />
(owl file) consumed by the project website visited by end-users.<br />
Rural Inclusion platform employs semantic technologies for<br />
modeling public services.<br />
Figure 4. Developing a model for PSP IP using Rural<br />
Inclusion platform<br />
2.3.3 Oracle Policy Automation Solution for Social<br />
Services (OPA)<br />
The Oracle Policy Automation (OPA) platform was initially<br />
developed from the Australian firm RuleBurst Holdings in order<br />
134<br />
to translate laws and official documents into business rules.<br />
Today, OPA is a tool that serves the modeling and automation of<br />
the business rules’ application (www.oracle.com/technetwork/<br />
apps-tech/policy-automation/). Thus, although it was initially<br />
designed to serve public sector’s needs, it is currently applied in<br />
other sectors as well (e.g. the insurance sector).<br />
OPA consist of two separate applications. The first is Oracle<br />
Policy Modeling, an environment that facilitates authoring of<br />
public services’ rules. The second is Oracle Policy Automation,<br />
which is used to automate public services’ processes. Oracle<br />
Policy Modeling is a windows application that can be employed<br />
by the user (normally a domain expert) in order to author a set of<br />
natural language rules that govern the public service. The tool is<br />
compatible with Microsoft Office automation applications (such<br />
as Word and Excel) hence enables using text properly structured<br />
and annotated in order to describe public services’ rules (fig. 5).<br />
Using these rules, an interview (online dialogue) is automatically<br />
created and deployed. The interested citizens can thereafter visit<br />
the relevant website and initiate this interview in order to be<br />
informed whether they are eligible for the service or not. OPA<br />
platform employs rules management technologies and expert<br />
systems for modeling public services.<br />
Figure 5. Developing a model for PSP IP using OPA<br />
2.3.4 Evaluation of Existing Approaches<br />
Existing solutions for PSP information phase range from simple<br />
websites to sophisticated solutions.<br />
An analysis of advanced solutions suggests they follow an<br />
architecture similar to the one presented in fig. 6.
Expert<br />
1. Expert<br />
describes service<br />
3. Dialogue<br />
launched<br />
«subsystem»<br />
Service Representation<br />
Tool<br />
2. Service model<br />
transferred<br />
«subsystem»<br />
Dialogues Presentation<br />
Website<br />
4. Citizen executes<br />
dialogue<br />
End-‐user<br />
Figure 6. Main Architecture of dialogue-based platforms<br />
More specifically, the platform consists of two sub-systems: a<br />
Service Representation Tool and a Dialogues Presentation<br />
Website.<br />
The platform is used in a 4-step manner. In the first step, an expert<br />
uses the Service Representation Tool in order to describe<br />
(verbally or using a model) the public service. In the second step,<br />
a file describing the service is transferred from the Service<br />
Representation Tool to the Dialogues Presentation Website. In the<br />
third step, the dialogue is automatically created and launched.<br />
Finally, in the last step the end-user (normally citizen or business)<br />
visits the Dialogues Presentation Website, executes the dialogue<br />
and obtains the required information.<br />
By examining the different approaches for the Service<br />
Representation Tool we decided to endorse modeling of public<br />
services since we believe it is more straightforward and widely<br />
used as it can also be based on open standards for process<br />
modeling. RI platform employs ontologies which we believe is<br />
less straightforward than provess modeling. On the other hand,<br />
OneStopGov platform is based on proprietary software and<br />
handles both informative and performative phases thus is more<br />
complicated than needed for our objectives.<br />
Using a diagram for PSP has significant advantages [11]. In our<br />
case, it enables (a) easy representation of PSP IP by domain<br />
experts (usually public servants) without any programming effort,<br />
(b) analysis and better understanding of PSP IP complexity using<br />
a number of indicators, (c) easy management of PSP IP by reusing<br />
and changing diagrams, (d) easy validation of diagrams, (e)<br />
eventually development of better quality public services, (f)<br />
citizens and businesses to obtain personalized information about<br />
public service simply by answering online questions instead of<br />
face-to-face interactions, using a call center etc.<br />
It should be noted here that extensive research has been conducted<br />
in the area of personalized PSP mainly using ontologies and rules,<br />
e.g. [1]. In this paper however we focus on more visual and easyto-use<br />
technologies for the reasons stated above. In addition, the<br />
descriptions of public services in relevant legal documents are<br />
usually detailed hence can easily result in deterministic models<br />
that can be easily verified.<br />
3. NOTATION AND INDICATORS<br />
An important element for the production of personalized<br />
information is the development of a model that will represent the<br />
public service’s dialogue.<br />
In order to model the informative phase of PSP, we developed a<br />
simple modeling notation that allows for the visual representation<br />
135<br />
of the dialogue. We also present the rules that need to be followed<br />
for the resulting model to be valid.<br />
Having represented a public service using a model enables us to<br />
obtain interesting information about the service. In this respect,<br />
we propose a number of indicators to better understand the<br />
modeled public services.<br />
3.1 PSP IP Dialogue Model<br />
The main idea is to model the PSP informative phase (PSP IP) as<br />
a dialogue (or interview) between the public authority and the<br />
visitor (citizen or business). The model thus mainly contains<br />
questions and possible answers. For example, when modeling<br />
public service “issuing a marriage permit”, a possible question is<br />
“what is your marital status?” with possible answers “single”,<br />
“divorced” etc. The model also contains information on input<br />
documents that should be submitted by the citizen for invoking<br />
the public service as well as information on cost or subsidy<br />
depending on the nature of the service.<br />
Using this dialogue model one can quickly and without any<br />
ambiguity determine whether he is eligible for a service or not.<br />
Eligible visitors can further obtain personalized information such<br />
as required documents to be submitted for service invocation and<br />
costs.<br />
3.2 PSP IP Modeling Notation<br />
In Table 1 we present a simple notation proposed for modeling<br />
PSP informative phase. This notation is influenced by BPMN<br />
(http://www.bpmn.org/), graph theory, academic public service<br />
models (e.g. GEA [9]), templates used for describing public<br />
services (e.g. in national portals) as well as templates proposed in<br />
national eGovernment Interoperability Frameworks. The only<br />
reason for proposing a new notation instead of adopting an<br />
existing such as BPMN is simplicity. We aim at a notation with<br />
only a few symbols since our experience suggests simplicity is of<br />
paramount importance if the tool is to be used by public servants.<br />
The diagrams produced using this notation represent the dialogue<br />
between the system and the user. From a technical point of view<br />
each diagram is actually a directed acyclic graph.<br />
The notation is briefly explained now (the term visitor here<br />
represents anyone executing a dialogue).<br />
o Start node. Represents the start of the diagram.<br />
o End node. Represents the completion of a dialogue in the<br />
diagram. It can be one of the following:<br />
-‐ Eligible. It suggests the visitor is eligible for the<br />
service.<br />
-‐ Not Eligible. It suggests the visitor is not eligible for<br />
the service.<br />
o Question. Represents a question posed to the visitor e.g.<br />
“Which is your current marital status?”<br />
o Answer. Represents a possible answer to an expressed<br />
Question e.g. “Married”.<br />
o Input Document. Represents a document the visitor should<br />
provide based on a previous answer. For example, a<br />
“Married” answer to a question might lead to a need for<br />
submitting a “marriage certificate” as a required document<br />
for invoking the public service.
o Information. Represents any information the visitor should<br />
know e.g. “the execution of the service should be completed<br />
within ten working days”.<br />
o Value. Represents an amount the visitor should pay to<br />
invoke the service or receive after the service’s completion<br />
(e.g. in case of a social benefit service). There are three cases<br />
for a Value object:<br />
-‐ Registration. Represents the amount that the visitor<br />
should pay as a lump sum (e.g. a 20 € fee).<br />
-‐ Annual Subscription. Represents the amount that<br />
the visitor should pay annually (e.g. an annual<br />
subscription to a chamber of commerce).<br />
-‐ Subsidy. Represents the amount that the visitor is<br />
entitled from the execution of a service (e.g.<br />
housing benefit).<br />
Value is a subcase of Information but we include it as<br />
separate object due to its particular importance to citizens<br />
and public authorities as well as its semantics (e.g. Values<br />
can be added).<br />
We call Question, Input Document, Information and Value<br />
internal nodes of the graph (diagram).<br />
Table 1. Notation for PSP IP Dialogue Diagrams<br />
Element and Description Symbol<br />
Start:<br />
� Portrays the beginning of the diagram.<br />
Question:<br />
� Is used to represent a question posed to<br />
citizens/businesses.<br />
Answer:<br />
� Is used to represent a possible answer to a<br />
question.<br />
Input Document:<br />
� Is used to represent a document required for<br />
invoking a public service.<br />
Information:<br />
� Is used to represent any additional information<br />
a citizen/business should know.<br />
Value:<br />
� Is used to represent any monetary amount (it is<br />
a special case of Information).<br />
Not Eligible:<br />
� Is used to stop all control flows (thus it<br />
represents an end node)<br />
� It suggests the citizen/business is not eligible<br />
for the service.<br />
Eligible:<br />
� Is used to stop all control flows (thus it<br />
represents an end node)<br />
� It suggests the citizen/business is eligible for<br />
the service.<br />
We should note that the arrow besides representing a Question is<br />
also used to link the Start node to the first Question (hence<br />
representing control flow without any question). We understand a<br />
136<br />
new symbol should have been introduced for that however for<br />
simplicity we decided to use the arrow.<br />
In developing PSP IP diagrams there are certain rules that need to<br />
be respected for the resulting diagram to be valid. These rules are<br />
derived from graph theory and the fact that the graph should be a<br />
directed acyclic one. The most important are presented in Table 2.<br />
Table 2. Rules of PSP IP Dialogue Diagrams<br />
1. There is only one Start node that contains only one<br />
outgoing arrow leading to the first Question.<br />
2. There are one or more End nodes. An End node has one<br />
or more incoming Arrows but no outgoing Arrow.<br />
3. All paths (representing potential dialogues) should end in<br />
an End node.<br />
4. An Arrow always connects two nodes which should be<br />
different.<br />
5. Arrows indicate the control flow of the dialogue.<br />
6. An Answer may lead to only one Question, Information,<br />
Input Document or End Node.<br />
7. Question nodes should have at least two outgoing Arrows.<br />
All other internal nodes should only have one outgoing<br />
Arrow.<br />
8. No node should be “orphan”, i.e. all nodes should have at<br />
least one incoming and one outgoing arrow (subject to<br />
other rules).<br />
9. The resulting graph should be acyclic, thus no cycling<br />
paths should exist.<br />
3.3 Public service indicators<br />
The current effort aims to facilitate, apart from citizens, public<br />
service providers in designing dialogues but also in managing PSP<br />
IP. For this purpose, we introduce a number of indicators. Using<br />
these indicators the domain expert who designs the diagram<br />
obtains interesting information on various aspects of the service.<br />
The indicators measure the behavior of the main objects (i.e.<br />
Question, Document, and Value) and the diagram in general. To<br />
derive these indicators, graph theory was reviewed in the context<br />
of public service provision according to the authors’ relevant<br />
experience. In the rest of this section, we present the proposed<br />
indicators.<br />
3.3.1 Number of Dialogues<br />
This indicator provides the number of different dialogues in a<br />
diagram, i.e. the number of unique paths in the graph. This is an<br />
indication of the service’s complexity, since an increased number<br />
of dialogues suggests an increased number of service’s versions.<br />
3.3.2 Number of Dialogues that Results in a not<br />
Eligible Node<br />
This indicator provides the number of different dialogues that<br />
result in a not eligible node i.e. in cases where the citizen does not<br />
meet the requirements for invoking the public service. This is an<br />
indicator of the number of preconditions that must be fulfilled for
someone to be non-eligible for the service. When this indicator is<br />
equal to zero then everyone is eligible for invoking the service.<br />
3.3.3 Maximum/Minimum/Average Number of<br />
Questions<br />
These indicators provide the maximum, minimum and average<br />
number of questions that are asked to the citizen during the<br />
dialogue. The indicators count only questions that result in an<br />
eligible end node and, thus, show the number of questions<br />
required for the successful completion of the dialogue. An<br />
increased number of questions indicate more complex services.<br />
3.3.4 Maximum/Minimum/Average Total Cost<br />
These indicators provide the maximum, minimum and average<br />
cost of the service. Obviously, they count only the cost coming<br />
from dialogue paths that result in an eligible end node. The<br />
service provider can use these indicators to measure the range of<br />
the service’s cost for the citizen. As a result, they can also<br />
measure the expected income from the execution of the public<br />
service provided details on the number of citizens that will<br />
consume the service are also known.<br />
3.3.5 Maximum/Minimum/Average Total Subsidy<br />
These indicators provide the maximum, minimum and average<br />
expected citizen’s benefit after the execution of the public service.<br />
It can be used by public authorities to compute the range of the<br />
total subsidy as well as its average provided details on the number<br />
of beneficiaries are known.<br />
3.3.6 Maximum/Minimum/Average Number of Input<br />
Documents<br />
These indicators provide the maximum, minimum, and average<br />
number of documents that different citizens’ categories need to<br />
provide for invoking the service. They also count the number(s) of<br />
documents coming from not eligible dialogues, if applicable.<br />
These indicators could be used to examine the level of<br />
bureaucracy as an increased number of required input documents<br />
usually indicates an increased level of red tape.<br />
3.3.7 Indicators for Set of Services<br />
Apart from the indicators that refer to each specific service<br />
diagram, we also propose a number of indicators that apply to a<br />
set of services diagrams. These indicators are helpful to public<br />
administrations responsible for the design and management of<br />
many public services. The indicators include:<br />
o Involvement of Other Public Authorities. This dictates the<br />
number of other public authorities that are involved in<br />
providing a particular public service. It is measured through<br />
the required input documents of each service and the public<br />
authorities that are issuing them.<br />
o Number of Services per public Authority. This dictates the<br />
number of services provided by each public authority. This<br />
information can be useful for planning, including human<br />
resources management.<br />
o Document’s Importance. A large number of input<br />
documents are actually produced by public authorities. This<br />
indicator depicts the number of services using a particular<br />
document. This is useful in planning e.g. to estimate how<br />
many services will be affected if an input document is<br />
abolished or replaced.<br />
137<br />
It should be noted that as all service descriptions can be stored in<br />
a database, additional information may be extracted depending on<br />
specific needs.<br />
4. PSP IP PLATFORM<br />
In order to demonstrate the use of the proposed notation we<br />
developed a prototype platform presented in this section.<br />
4.1 Architecture and Functionality<br />
The architecture of the developed prototype platform is shown in<br />
fig. 7 using UML deployment diagram while its main<br />
functionality is shown in fig. 8 using UML use case diagram.<br />
Figure 7. Platform architecture<br />
As presented in the use case diagram there are three main actors:<br />
domain expert, content manager and citizen/business (visitor or<br />
end-user). It is worth explaining the content manager. This role is<br />
responsible for central activities including managing all public<br />
documents, describing public services, deciding which PSP IP<br />
diagrams to launch in the Dialogue website etc.<br />
Figure 8. Platform main functionality<br />
4.2 Main Usage Scenario<br />
There are many different usage scenarios for this platform. Here<br />
we present one such usage scenario.<br />
Step 1. Input Documents are Described<br />
The Content manager is using the Service Admin Tool in order to<br />
create descriptions of input documents that will be needed when<br />
modeling PSP IP (fig. 9). Ideally, there should be one such
common documents repository at the national level. This list is<br />
stored in an xml file.<br />
Step 2. Domain Expert Models the PSP IP Dialogue<br />
The Domain expert is using the Service Modeling Tool in order to<br />
create the PSP IP diagram for a public service (fig. 10). While<br />
preparing the diagram, the Domain expert is also able to observe<br />
the values of various indicators. He is capable, in that way, to<br />
study the different versions of the service.<br />
Figure 9. Management of public documents<br />
Figure 10. Platform screenshot<br />
It should be noted that the Service Modeling Tool fully supports<br />
the proposed notation including rules as well as indicators<br />
presented in the previous section. In this respect, the Domain<br />
expert can choose to “validate” the diagram which results in<br />
checking that no rule is violated (see fig. 11 and 12).<br />
138<br />
Figure 11. Example of a detected violation<br />
Figure 12. Example of an error message<br />
Finally, the Domain expert can save a dialogue’s graph into an<br />
xml file, which can be retrieved in the future to complete the<br />
design or send it to the Content manager of the system. The<br />
Domain expert can also choose to model a part of the diagram and<br />
send the relevant file to another Domain expert to finalize it. This<br />
is particularly useful for modeling services provided by more than<br />
one public authority or for complex services where many Domain<br />
experts need to collaborate during the design of the diagram.<br />
Step 3. Content Manager Stores the Dialogue to the<br />
Database<br />
For each public service modeled, the Content manager adds some<br />
information such as title, description, responsible authority etc.<br />
Then he can use this information along with the xml file in order<br />
to publish the service in the Dialogues Presentation Website. For<br />
this purpose, he stores the graph in the Services Database that is<br />
accessible by the Dialogues Presentation Website.<br />
Moreover, in case of termination or modification of a service, the<br />
Content manager can delete the service from the database, thus<br />
making it unavailable for the public. Finally, the Content manager<br />
can produce public services’ aggregate statistics using data<br />
extracted from the database.<br />
Step 4. Citizen Launches the Dialogue<br />
The citizen/business visits the Dialogues Presentation Website<br />
and launches the dialogue for a specific service. The dialogue is<br />
automatically created on the fly by accessing the Services<br />
Database (fig. 11). In case the citizen is eligible for the service,<br />
the system also informs him about the required documents that he<br />
should adduce in order to proceed to the execution of the service.
Figure 13. Citizens website<br />
4.3 Technologies<br />
The Service Modeling Tool and Service Admin Tool were<br />
developed in this prototype under a common desktop application<br />
supporting different roles based on credentials. This application<br />
was implemented in Java. The Dialogues Presentation Website<br />
was implemented using PHP programming language. The services<br />
database was implemented using MySQL.<br />
A basic feature of the Service Modeling Tool is the graphic design<br />
and representation of dialogues as graphs. Jgraphx library allows<br />
the visual design, graphical representation and interaction with the<br />
dialogue’s graph.<br />
In the frame of the Service Modeling Tool there was a need for<br />
xml files processing. To this end, the XOM library was employed.<br />
The calculation of indicators was performed using depth-first<br />
search (DFS) graph theory algorithms.<br />
The validation of the graph in terms of identifying cycles was<br />
performed using the topolorder algorithm [8].<br />
5. CASE STUDY<br />
In this section we present a case study to demonstrate the<br />
proposed approach, model and platform. We use the public<br />
service passport issuance (in Greece). In order to model the<br />
service’s informative phase, we gathered and studied all relevant<br />
laws and rules governing the specific public service. Main source<br />
of information was also the official website passport.gov.gr.<br />
In the rest of this section, we present the four main steps that were<br />
followed in the process.<br />
Step 1. Input Documents are Described<br />
In this step the content manager is using the Service Admin Tool<br />
in order to describe all input documents needed for invoking<br />
Passport Issuance service, if these are not already in the database.<br />
In this case, there are 9 different input documents including ID,<br />
application, birth certificate etc. It should be noted that most of<br />
them are provided by other public authorities as the outcome of<br />
other public services.<br />
Step 2. Domain Expert Models the PSP IP Dialogue<br />
In this step the domain expert has to produce the PSP IP diagram.<br />
For this purpose, all service versions need to be documented in<br />
terms of different questions and answers, required documents and<br />
relevant costs.<br />
Next, the domain expert uses the Service Modeling Tool in order<br />
to model the service as a graph. The expert starts using the Start<br />
Node and proceeds with the first Question. This is done by<br />
139<br />
dragging and dropping the symbols from the Symbols area to the<br />
Design area just like in any other drawing tool (see fig. 14).<br />
The questions have to be formulated so that every Answer leads to<br />
a different version or satisfies a service precondition. A basic aim<br />
is to develop a graph that contains the minimum number of<br />
questions. Each question has to be short in length, easy to<br />
understand and focus on one only rule. For example, the question<br />
“Are you an adult Greek?” includes two rules (age and<br />
nationality) and thus should be divided in two questions.<br />
Obviously, there should also be no overlap between questions e.g.<br />
“What is your age?” and “Are you an adult?”<br />
Each Answer is followed by another Question or Required Input<br />
Documents that are needed to verify the answer.<br />
As a good practice, we recommend that the model starts with the<br />
eligibility questions i.e. those that determine whether someone is<br />
eligible and then proceeds with the versioning questions i.e. those<br />
determining the service version along with the needed input<br />
documents and costs.<br />
Figure 14. Modeling Passport Issuance service<br />
The following figure presents the full diagram for the Passport<br />
Issuance service. The diagram is not readable but provides an idea<br />
of the complexity of the dialogue.
Figure 15. Full model of Passport Issuance service<br />
From a technical point of view, it should be noted that the<br />
dialogue graph is stored as an xml file.<br />
An interesting feature of the platform is its ability to calculate and<br />
present a number of indicators for the modeled public service. By<br />
pressing “calculate” in the Service Modeling Tool (tab:<br />
Indicators) we obtain the results presented in fig. 16.<br />
These suggest there are 219 different paths (dialogues) in this<br />
service with 26 leading to a Non-Eligible end node. Hence, the<br />
public service contains 193 service versions.<br />
They further suggest a dialogue has a minimum of 3 and a<br />
maximum of 10 questions for the citizen. The citizen has to<br />
provide between 4 and 9 different input documents (based on his<br />
circumstances) to invoke the public service.<br />
Finally, the costs of the service is between 68.8 € and 84.4 € with<br />
an average cost of 80.11 €.<br />
Figure 16. Indicators for Passport Issuance<br />
140<br />
Step 3. Content Manager Stores the Dialogue to the<br />
Database<br />
In this step the content manager inserts some basic information on<br />
the service (see fig. 17) and stores it to the Service database hence<br />
making it available for launch by citizens.<br />
Figure 17. Inserting basic information about the service<br />
Step 4. Citizen Launches the Dialogue<br />
In this final step, the citizen visits the Dialogues Presentation<br />
website, selects the Passport Issuance service, views the basic<br />
information about it and launches the dialogue. After that, the<br />
questions are asked one by one (fig. 18).<br />
Figure 18. Screenshot presenting one question with possible<br />
answers<br />
Based on the answers, the citizen is informed whether he is<br />
eligible and in this case what are the required documents and the<br />
cost of the service (fig. 19).
Figure 19. Information provided after the dialogue completion<br />
6. CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE WORK<br />
In this paper, we present a notation and platform that facilitates<br />
the informative phase of public service provision (PSP IP). This<br />
model capitalizes on previous work suggesting public services are<br />
represented (usually in models) and subsequently online dialogues<br />
are automatically developed for citizens to obtain personalized<br />
information.<br />
More specifically, we first present a modeling notation for PSP IP.<br />
The notation is influenced by BPMN and graph theory and<br />
suggests PSP informative phase is modeled as a directed acyclic<br />
graph that consists of one start node, one or more eligible and<br />
non-eligible end nodes, questions, answers, information, value<br />
and input documents. Furthermore, we introduce a number of<br />
indicators of graph models such as number of dialogues, max and<br />
min questions in the diagram; max and min required documents;<br />
max and min cost (or subsidy).<br />
We further present a prototype platform that can be used by<br />
domain experts to model PSP IP and by citizens to execute<br />
corresponding dialogues that have been automatically created<br />
from the models. The platform also performs a number of validity<br />
tests on the graph and automatically calculates the values of<br />
indicators thanks to the use of graph theory algorithms. This<br />
platform provides some clear advantage over other approaches<br />
(presented in section 2) as shown at the beginning of section 3.<br />
Future work includes revisiting the proposed modeling notation to<br />
become theoretically solid and robust without losing its<br />
simplicity. It also includes further enriching the modeling<br />
notation. For example, in its current form, the model cannot<br />
handle complex situations such as when Document A or<br />
Document B can be used as required documents to validate an<br />
answer.<br />
Future work also includes a thorough investigation of indicators.<br />
In this work, we introduced a small number of indicators and<br />
implemented a subset of them. However, deeper theoretical work<br />
is needed including validation by experts.<br />
The platform itself is only a proof-of-concept prototype hence<br />
there is substantial room for improvement both in terms of<br />
functionality but also user friendliness, robustness etc.<br />
For example, we would like to enhance the platform to be able to<br />
handle more complex situations, e.g. enabling domain experts<br />
141<br />
from different public authorities to collaborate in order to model a<br />
set of public services required to fulfill a life event. For this<br />
purpose, our intention is to move towards a web-based platform<br />
for service modeling.<br />
Finally, as a next step for our case study, once the above<br />
mentioned work is done, we aim to contact the official authorities<br />
and suggest integrating the Dialogues Presentation Website in the<br />
official Passport Issuance website (www.passport.gov.gr).<br />
7. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS<br />
Part of this work was conducted within the eGovPoliNet project<br />
which is co-funded by the European Commission.<br />
8. REFERENCES<br />
[1] Chun S., Atluri V., and Adam N. Dynamic Composition of<br />
Workflows for Customized eGovernment Service Delivery.<br />
In: Proceedings of dg.o 2002, (2002), ACM Press, 383-389.<br />
[2] European Commission. Digitizing Public Services in Europe:<br />
Putting ambition into action, 9th Benchmark Measurement,<br />
2010.<br />
[3] Gartner. Forecast: IT services 20082015, 2Q11 Update,<br />
2011.<br />
[4] Klievink, B., Janssen, M. Realizing joined-up government -<br />
Dynamic capabilities and stage models for transformation.<br />
Government Information Quarterly, 26, 2 (2009), 275-284<br />
[5] Layne K. and Lee J. Developing fully functional egovernment:<br />
A four stage model. Government Information<br />
Quarterly, 18, 2 (2001), 122-136.<br />
[6] Loutas N., Lee D., Maali F. Peristeras V., Tarabanis K. The<br />
Semantic Public Service Portal (S-PSP). In: Proceedings of<br />
8th Extended Semantic Web Conference (ESWC 2011),<br />
(Heraklion, Greece, 2011), 227-242.<br />
[7] Momotko M., Izdebski W., Tambouris E., Tarabanis K. and<br />
Vintar M. An Architecture of Active Life Event Portals:<br />
Generic Workflow Approach. Electronic Government, LNCS<br />
# 4656, Springer Verlag, (2007), 104-115.<br />
[8] Paparrizos K. Algorithms, Zygos, Greece, 2002.<br />
[9] Peristeras, V. The Governance Enterprise Architecture-GEAfor<br />
Reengineering Public Administration. PhD Thesis,<br />
University of Macedonia, Greece, 2006.<br />
[10] Siau, K., Long, Y. Synthesizing e-government stage models<br />
– a meta-synthesis based on meta-ethnography approach.<br />
Industrial Management & Data Systems, 105, 4, (2005) 443-<br />
458.<br />
[11] Tambouris E. Introducing the need for a Domain Model in<br />
Public Service Provision (PSP) eGovernment Systems. In:<br />
Proceedings of ICDIM 2008, IEEE Press, 794-799.<br />
[12] Tambouris E., Tarabanis K., A dialogue-based, life-event<br />
oriented, active portal for online one-stop government: the<br />
OneStopGov platform. In: Proceedings of dg.o 2008, (2008),<br />
ACM Press, 405-406.<br />
[13] United Nations. Global E-Government Survey 2012, 2012
142
The Complexity of Cross-Boundary Information Sharing:<br />
An Organizational Perspective on Taiwan E-Government<br />
Tung-Mou Yang<br />
Department of Library and Information Science, National Taiwan University<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
Cross-boundary Information sharing has long been considered an<br />
important approach for increasing organizational efficiency and<br />
performance. However, achieving cross-boundary information<br />
sharing is a complex task not only in the private sector but also in<br />
the public sector. This research explores the complexity of crossboundary<br />
information sharing by employing a case study in<br />
Taiwan e-Government. Data are collected through semi-structured<br />
interviews and analyzed by using grounded theory techniques.<br />
While a variety of influential factors can come from different<br />
perspectives such as technology, organization, legislation, policy,<br />
and surrounding environment, this paper takes a deeper look to<br />
focus on the influential organizational factors. The findings of this<br />
exploratory research is also able to contribute to the current<br />
information-sharing literature from an international perspective.<br />
Categories and Subject Descriptors<br />
H.4.2 [Information Systems Applications]: Type of systems – egovernment<br />
applications<br />
General Terms<br />
Management, Performance, Human Factors, Theory<br />
Keywords<br />
Information Sharing, Electronic Government, Taiwan<br />
1. INTRODUCTION<br />
With the development of information and communication<br />
technologies, e-Government has become an important strategy for<br />
attaining the effectiveness and efficiency in government<br />
operations and public services. Several stage-models of e-<br />
Government developments are proposed by researchers, and the<br />
critical role of cross-boundary information sharing in e-<br />
Government is identified [1]. Although many government<br />
agencies have integrated services within their own agencies,<br />
citizens and businesses still need to interact with various different<br />
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143<br />
government agencies to acquire desired services. There is an<br />
urgent cross-boundary information-sharing need among<br />
government agencies of different levels and functionalities.<br />
2. THE COMPLEXITY OF CROSS-<br />
BOUNDARY INFORMATION SHARING<br />
Nevertheless, cross-boundary information sharing in the public<br />
sector is a complex task and usually happens in a diversified<br />
environment with participants having different values, goals, and<br />
cultures. In order to facilitate information-sharing initiatives,<br />
identifying influential factors is critical, and a variety of<br />
perspectives such as technological, organizational, sociological,<br />
ideological, and political contexts should be considered [2].<br />
In the technological perspective, information sharing activities can<br />
be considered as IT projects when there are usually information<br />
system construction and business process reengineering involved<br />
[3]. It is a challenge to integrate heterogeneous information<br />
systems having different platforms, data standards, schemas and<br />
qualities [3]. In addition, technological capability among the<br />
participating organizations is also critical to the success of crossboundary<br />
information sharing [4].<br />
In the organizational perspective, interagency information sharing<br />
involves complex interactions among involving organizations [3,<br />
5]. Organizations have different values and cultures and may<br />
spread in different geographic areas to make communication<br />
difficult and inefficient. The creation and maintenance of interorganizational<br />
relationship also rely heavily on trust building<br />
among involved organizations [5, 6]. However, trust in<br />
information sharing collaboration can decreases due to concerns<br />
of losing autonomy and information misusing by others to incur<br />
liabilities [7, 8]. In addition to trust, leadership can be utilized as<br />
an authority force to promote cross-boundary coordination [9].<br />
The lack of resource such as staff shortage is another challenge.<br />
An agency may focus on urgent issues within its own organization<br />
if the immediate benefits of sharing information cannot be<br />
foreseen by the agency [10, 11].<br />
In the political and policy perspective, legal and policy regulations<br />
can shape relationship building, risk reduction, and trust<br />
development in inter-organizational information sharing when<br />
specific guidance is mandated [3, 4, 12, 13]. Without support from<br />
legislators and policy mandate, cross-boundary information<br />
sharing in the public sector can lose its priority and necessary<br />
resources to make the project sustainable [7]. Nevertheless, crossboundary<br />
information sharing may also be hindered due to related
policies to prevent government agencies from sharing sensitive<br />
and regulated information [3, 7, 12]. Therefore, an explicit<br />
statutory authority should clearly define the circumstances that<br />
information collected in one agency can be shared to other<br />
agencies [4, 10].<br />
3. THE SELECTED CASE STUDY<br />
In the past decade Taiwan government has focused its effort on<br />
developing initiatives of interagency information sharing and<br />
integration. Current focus has been on cross-agency service<br />
integration and the promotion of integrated e-services.” Therefore,<br />
the context of Taiwan e-Government and its past and ongoing<br />
development in cross-agency shared services make a good case<br />
for this study to explore the complexity of interagency<br />
information sharing. Specifically, this research focuses on the<br />
organizational perspective to examine the following two<br />
questions:<br />
1. What are the critical organizational factors that influence<br />
the initiatives of cross-boundary information sharing in<br />
Taiwan e-Government?<br />
2. What is the nature of the impact of the factors on the<br />
initiatives of cross-boundary information sharing in Taiwan<br />
e-Government?<br />
4. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHOD<br />
This study employs a case study methodology, and the selected<br />
case comes from the context of Taiwan e-Government. In<br />
particular, a case study of the e-Networking Project of<br />
Government Online Service in Taiwan is developed and then<br />
applied in the research.<br />
A purposive sampling using snowball sampling methodology is<br />
undertaken to identify the relevant candidates to conduct<br />
interviews. In-depth and semi-structured interviews were used to<br />
collect data. There were in total twenty-eight participants<br />
interviewed in the study. The data analysis process followed an<br />
inductive approach by using grounded theory techniques. During<br />
data analysis, a qualitative software, Atlas-ti, was utilized to<br />
support coding and analysis activities.<br />
5. FINDINGS<br />
In this exploratory research, established organizational structures<br />
and instilled organizational cultures of government agencies are<br />
identified to influence initiatives of cross-boundary information<br />
sharing. In addition, other influential organizational factors are<br />
listed and discussed according to the roles of information provider<br />
and information receiver. Lastly, some organizational factors that<br />
can bring positive impact on the related initiatives are also<br />
addressed.<br />
5.1 Bureaucratic Organizational Structures<br />
Cross-boundary information sharing in e-Government is not just<br />
related to technological issues but is in a complex context<br />
involving different government agencies separated by the<br />
bureaucratic organizational structures. Boundaries of information<br />
sharing are formed by the bureaucracy from both the vertical and<br />
horizontal dimensions. With different operational procedures and<br />
work flows, resources and budgets, government agencies have<br />
respective missions and operations. Different government<br />
agencies can bring up different levels of information quality, and<br />
their approaches and strategies to share information across<br />
organizational boundaries also vary from each other. It is also<br />
144<br />
observed that government agencies within the same Ministry can<br />
encounter fewer obstacles to share information when fewer<br />
organizational boundaries are formed among them.<br />
5.2 Organizational Cultures and Values<br />
Having different missions and operations, government agencies<br />
foster their respective organizational cultures and values. In the<br />
case study, some government agencies such as the Department of<br />
Household Registration are already defined to act as information<br />
providers in their organizational missions. The government<br />
agencies can be more willing to share information to other<br />
agencies. On the contrary, some agencies such as police agencies<br />
and taxation agencies act more conservative to share their<br />
information to others. The negotiation and communication among<br />
government agencies with different cultures and values usually<br />
takes time and cost.<br />
5.3 Influential Factors to Information<br />
Providers<br />
For government agencies acting as information providers, several<br />
factors that influence their intentions to share information are<br />
discussed in the following subsections.<br />
5.3.1 Extra Effort under Limited Resource<br />
The major effort of information sharing usually falls on the<br />
process of information preparation and the following maintenance<br />
and service. The process of information preparation can be a very<br />
time-consuming task especially when a government agency has to<br />
go over some of its information systems or even modify them to<br />
produce the required information. In addition, an information<br />
provider also has to assign necessary personnel to maintain the<br />
hardware equipment and the information systems implemented for<br />
cross-boundary information sharing which require extra time,<br />
labor, and effort. Under limited budget and resource, government<br />
agencies tend to focus on their own businesses first and put the<br />
information-sharing requests from other agencies in the lower<br />
priority.<br />
5.3.2 Concern of Information Quality<br />
The intention of a government agency to share information across<br />
boundaries can also be influenced by the quality of information it<br />
currently possesses. A government agency can be less willing to<br />
share information when its information is in low completeness<br />
and accuracy. A government agency has concerns in incurring<br />
potential scrutiny and does not want to be liable for providing<br />
incomplete and inaccurate information to other government<br />
agencies.<br />
5.3.3 Concern of Information Misuse<br />
Another information provider’s concern is information misuse by<br />
other agencies to incur liability. After information is shared across<br />
boundaries, information providers have little control over the<br />
shared information and encounter difficulty in knowing how the<br />
shared information is utilized by other agencies. Whether the<br />
information is protected in a secured information environment,<br />
whether the information is solely applied to the proposed purpose,<br />
and whether the information is used for other unknown purposes?<br />
The uncertainty regarding how other government agencies may<br />
treat, use, and protect the shared information incur the liability<br />
concern of government agencies to act as information providers to<br />
share information across boundaries.
5.3.4 Limited Incentive and Reward<br />
In the case study, for government agencies acting as information<br />
providers, they have very few and limited incentive and reward to<br />
share information. The limited incentive and reward available is<br />
not encouraging enough for government agencies and their<br />
employees to contribute effort to interagency information sharing.<br />
In most of the cases, major credits are usually taken by<br />
information receivers which acquire information sharing from<br />
other government agencies to provide integrated or innovative<br />
services. Information providers actually care more about the<br />
liability rather than the limited incentive or reward.<br />
5.4 Influential Factors to Information<br />
Receivers<br />
For government agencies acting as information receivers, several<br />
observed factors that influence initiatives of cross-boundary<br />
information sharing are discussed in the following subsections.<br />
5.4.1 Over-Estimated Capability of Information<br />
Provider<br />
Some information requestors may request information that does<br />
not exist in the databases of information providers. The situation<br />
can happen when an information requestor does not really<br />
understand an information provider’s limitation of information<br />
possession. A cognition divide regarding cross-boundary<br />
information sharing exists between some information providers<br />
and information receivers so that related initiatives cannot be<br />
implemented properly.<br />
5.4.2 The Willingness and Trust to Use Shared<br />
Information<br />
It is also observed that some government agencies put little trust<br />
on the shared information from other agencies. Even though the<br />
information is actively shared across boundaries based on<br />
legitimate policy, some conservative agencies still prefer<br />
following their traditional operational procedures without<br />
applying the shared information to their work. They are unwilling<br />
to utilize the information when the shared information can indeed<br />
improve the efficiency and accuracy of their operations and<br />
increase the effectiveness of public services. Hence, the concept<br />
to trust and to utilize shared information is critical to the success<br />
of interagency information sharing.<br />
5.5 Influential Factors to Both Information<br />
Providers and Receivers<br />
The following subsections talk about influential factors that can<br />
be applied to both information providers and information<br />
requestors.<br />
5.5.1 The Long-Been-Ignored Information Unit<br />
The role of IT professionals and information units is critical to the<br />
success of cross-boundary information sharing. The dedicated<br />
time and effort from IT professionals and information units is<br />
required to setup the infrastructure, to prepare and to receive<br />
information. However, in the case study, compared with the<br />
administrative units, the information units generally do not<br />
receive similar support from the leadership. The information units<br />
are mainly defined as the supporting units to facilitate business<br />
operations. In addition, many information units are just temporary<br />
units and are composed of contract employees without suitable<br />
information-related training.<br />
145<br />
5.5.2 Leadership Interactions<br />
The personalities, management styles, and interpersonal<br />
relationships of agency leaders matter, especially for the<br />
horizontal interagency information sharing where the involved<br />
agencies are parallel organizations. Social networks and good<br />
relationships among agency leaders can benefit information<br />
sharing initiatives. When the interactions among agency leaders<br />
are not in harmony, interagency information sharing can even<br />
result in failure.<br />
5.6 Some Suggested Success Factors<br />
The participants of the case study also suggested some factors that<br />
can lead to the success of cross-boundary information sharing.<br />
5.6.1 The Fostering of Reciprocity Concept<br />
In the case study, it is indicated that the existing reciprocal<br />
relationship can increase the success in cross-boundary<br />
information sharing. The participants asserted that cross-boundary<br />
information sharing can be more easily achieved between two<br />
government agencies when they both have information needs to<br />
their respectively possessed information. The incentive to crossboundary<br />
information sharing can be created and enhanced by the<br />
reciprocal information sharing between the two government<br />
agencies.<br />
5.6.2 The Involvement of Higher-Level Authority<br />
The interviewees also mentioned the importance of authoritative<br />
support to push the initiatives of cross-boundary information<br />
sharing. The authoritative support can come from two aspects.<br />
One is the authoritative support from participating government<br />
agencies. The participation and support from high-level authority<br />
can affirm the importance and the priority of related initiatives.<br />
Another aspect of authoritative support comes from the level<br />
involved in the information sharing effort. The involvement of<br />
higher-level government agencies can be the championship to<br />
initiate and direct the process of cross-boundary information<br />
sharing.<br />
6. DISCUSSIONS<br />
In the research, various factors influencing interagency<br />
information sharing are discussed from an organizational<br />
perspective. While some factors mainly have influences solely on<br />
information providers and some on information receivers only,<br />
others have impacts on both providers and receivers (see Figure<br />
1).<br />
- Extra Labor and Effort under Limited Resource<br />
- Concern of Information Quality to Incur Liability<br />
- Concern of Information Misuse to Incur Liability<br />
- Limited Incentive and Reward<br />
Information Provider<br />
Information Retriever<br />
- Over-Estimated An Information Provider’s Capability<br />
- The Willingness and Trust to utilize Shared Information<br />
- The Fostering of Reciprocal Concept<br />
- The Involvement of the Higher-Level Leadership<br />
- Organizational Structures of Bureaucracy<br />
- Organizational Cultures and Values<br />
- The Long-Been-Ignored Information Unit<br />
- Leadership Interaction of Government Agencies<br />
Figure 1. The organizational factors to influence cross-boundary<br />
information sharing<br />
The result of the case study reveals that government agencies<br />
behaving as information providers show less concern of losing<br />
valuable assets and competitive advantages to other agencies,
ecause the majority of the shared information in the case study is<br />
data-oriented information and is subject to being updated daily.<br />
Even though some information receivers may retain the acquired<br />
information, the information still soon becomes obsolete and<br />
inaccurate.<br />
The interviewees agree that when two government agencies are<br />
co-located, their information sharing initiative may benefit from<br />
the better and closer social and personal network among them.<br />
However, the interviewees do not consider the geographic<br />
locations of government agencies an important factor in the case<br />
study. The interviewees point out that, with the advancement of<br />
information technologies, cross-boundary information sharing is<br />
no longer obstructed by geographic limitations. The interviewees<br />
also state that Taiwan is small so that geographic location is not<br />
the major concern.<br />
Overall, from an organizational perspective, the paper takes a<br />
deeper look at the complexity of inter-agency information sharing.<br />
The observed influential factors provide insights to researchers<br />
and also practitioners. The paper also contributes to the current<br />
information-sharing literature from an international perspective.<br />
In addition, while open data has become an important<br />
governmental movement in recent years, open data can be viewed<br />
as one type of cross-boundary information sharing among<br />
government agencies and the public including individuals and<br />
businesses. Some of the identified factors in the paper can be<br />
applied to explain the behaviors of government agencies<br />
participating in open data initiatives. Future research can focus<br />
more on other perspectives including technology, legislation and<br />
policy, and surrounding environment to provide a more complete<br />
and integrated discussion to understand the complexity of crossboundary<br />
information sharing among government agencies.<br />
7. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS<br />
The author wants to thank Dr. Yu-Hsieh Sung, the Minister of the<br />
Research, Development and Evaluation Commission and other<br />
government officials of the Taiwan government for their<br />
important help during the interviewee recruitment of the research.<br />
The author is also thankful for all the interviewees participating in<br />
the research for their time, patience, and valuable information and<br />
suggestions.<br />
8. REFERENCES<br />
[1] Klievink, B. and M. Janssen, Realizing joined-up<br />
government -- Dynamic capabilities and stage models for<br />
transformation. Government Information Quarterly, 2009.<br />
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2001. 61(2): p. 206-220.<br />
[11] Zhang, J. and S.S. Dawes, Expectations and perceptions of<br />
benefits, barriers, and success in public sector knowledge<br />
networks. Public Performance & Management Review, 2006.<br />
29(4): p. 433-466.<br />
[12] Gil-Garcia, J.R. and T.A. Pardo, E-Government success<br />
factors: Mapping practical tools to theoretical foundations.<br />
Government Information Quarterly, 2005. 22(2): p. 187-216.<br />
[13] Otjacques, B., P. Hitzelberger, and F. Feltz, Interoperability<br />
of e-Government information systems: Issues of<br />
identification and data sharing. Journal of Management<br />
Information Systems, 2007. 23(4): p. 29-51.
Session 6<br />
Digital Records & Information<br />
Management
A Patent System Ontology for Facilitating Retrieval of<br />
Patent Related Information<br />
Siddharth Taduri, Gloria T. Lau, Kincho H. Law<br />
Engineering Informatics Group<br />
Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA<br />
{staduri, glau, law}@stanford.edu<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
The recent years have seen a tremendous growth in research and<br />
developments in science and technology, and an emphasis in<br />
obtaining Intellectual Property (IP) protection for one’s<br />
innovations. Information pertaining to IP for science and<br />
technology is siloed into many diverse sources and consists of<br />
laws, regulations, patents, court litigations, scientific publications,<br />
and more. Although a great deal of legal and scientific<br />
information is now available online, the scattered distribution of<br />
the information, combined with the enormous sizes and<br />
complexities, makes any attempt to gather relevant IP-related<br />
information on a specific technology a daunting task. This paper<br />
describes a knowledge-based software framework to facilitate<br />
retrieval of patents and related information across multiple diverse<br />
and uncoordinated information sources in the US patent system.<br />
The document corpus covers issued US patents, court litigations,<br />
scientific publications, and patent file wrappers in the biomedical<br />
technology domain.<br />
Categories and Subject Descriptors<br />
H.3.3 [Information Storage and Retrieval]: Information Search<br />
and Retrieval – Retrieval Models, J.1 [Administrative Data<br />
Processing]: Law<br />
General Terms<br />
Algorithms, Design, Economics, Experimentation<br />
Keywords<br />
Ontology, Patent, Information Retrieval, Knowledgebase<br />
1. INTRODUCTION<br />
The recent years have seen a tremendous growth in research and<br />
developments in science and technology, and an emphasis in<br />
obtaining Intellectual Property (IP) protection for one’s<br />
innovations. IPs are important assets of any organization. During<br />
the lifetime of a patent, from its initial filing, patent issuance to<br />
disputes and litigations, the patent system will constantly be<br />
searched for information. However, information pertaining to IP<br />
and the patent system for science and technology is siloed into<br />
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for<br />
personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are<br />
not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that<br />
copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights<br />
for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be<br />
honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to<br />
republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior<br />
specific permission and/or a fee.<br />
ICEGOV '12, October 22 -‐ 25 2012, Albany, NY, USA<br />
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-‐1-‐4503-‐1200-‐4/12/10...$15.00<br />
147<br />
Jay P. Kesan<br />
College of Law<br />
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, IL, USA<br />
kesan@illinois.edu<br />
many diverse sources and consists of laws, regulations, patents,<br />
court litigations, and more. Although a great deal of legal and<br />
government information is now available online, the scattered<br />
distribution of the information, combined with the enormous sizes<br />
and complexities, makes any attempt to gather relevant IP-related<br />
information, even on a specific technology, a daunting task.<br />
Currently, the task of gathering IP-related information is<br />
performed manually and is both laborious and expensive. This<br />
falls disproportionally on smaller firms, start-ups, and individual<br />
inventors who have very limited resources. This paper describes<br />
the development of a patent system ontology to facilitate retrieval<br />
of patents and related information across multiple diverse and<br />
uncoordinated information sources in the US patent system.<br />
This paper is organized as follows: Section 2 discusses the<br />
background and motivation for this research. Section 3 briefly<br />
describes our use case and document corpus. Section 4 introduces<br />
the patent system ontology and its structure. Section 5 briefly<br />
describes the Information Retrieval (IR) framework. Illustrative<br />
examples are provided in Section 6. Section 7 concludes this<br />
paper by summarizing the current status.<br />
2. BACKGROUND AND MOTIVATION<br />
The following scenarios illustrate some of the issues faced with<br />
the current patent system:<br />
o A company looking to patent its technology on medical<br />
imaging devices, for example, is required to perform an<br />
initial patentability search and establish the usefulness,<br />
novelty, and non-obviousness of the technology [1]. The<br />
patentability search involves a thorough study of prior art<br />
including scientific literature and patent databases,<br />
competitor analysis, existing litigations to similar<br />
o<br />
technologies, and regulations issued by government agencies<br />
such as the Federal Drug Agency (or any agency enforcing<br />
laws with respect to medical imaging devices and related<br />
technologies).<br />
Similar to the patent applicant, a patent examiner performs<br />
patentability search when examining an application. As of<br />
2009, the United States Patent and Trademark Office<br />
(USPTO) employs about 6,242 patent examiners and<br />
received over 456,106 utility patent applications [28]. 1<br />
Roughly, this translates to around 73 patents per examiner<br />
annually and approximately 1.5 patents per examiner per<br />
1 The USPTO’s annual statistics can be accessed at<br />
http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/ido/oeip/taf/reports.htm<br />
(Accessed on 03/01/2012)
o<br />
week. Although a patent examiner is generally well-versed<br />
with the technological domain of the patent application, the<br />
situation imposes a serious time constraint during the review<br />
process. Hence, each application receives lesser time and<br />
leads to insufficient examination, and possibly infringement<br />
or invalidation at a later stage.<br />
To protect IPs, companies may perform an infringement<br />
analysis to ensure that a particular patent’s right is not being<br />
infringed. The consequences of an infringement can be<br />
severe and result in heavy losses. Infringement analysis<br />
involves a thorough search in the issued patents database,<br />
patent application database, prior court litigations,<br />
regulations, and any form of documented evidence to help<br />
assert the infringement or invalidate an infringing patent’s<br />
claim as a defensive measure.<br />
Irrespective of the scenario, whether a company intends to patent<br />
its technology or to perform an infringement analysis, or a patent<br />
examiner intends to perform a patentability search, several<br />
questions arise:<br />
o What are the issued patents in related technologies?<br />
o What is the legal scope of similar patents?<br />
o Who are the competitors?<br />
o Have any similar patents been challenged in court?<br />
o How can one work around existing body of knowledge?<br />
o Are there any scientific literatures, or regulations which can<br />
potentially be used to challenge and to invalidate a patent’s<br />
claims?<br />
Many existing methods attempt to improve IR within a single<br />
information source [9][12][14][16][26][27][30][31]. However,<br />
these questions cannot be answered from any single information<br />
source. An integration framework is needed to enable the retrieval<br />
of relevant information from diverse sources. This research<br />
explores a knowledge-based approach to address two fundamental<br />
information integration issues – (a) the lack of interoperability<br />
among the information sources in the current patent system; and<br />
(b) the varying information needs by the users of the patent<br />
system.<br />
Interoperability between information sources is essential in order<br />
to perform multi-source IR [29]. E-government initiatives in the<br />
US and Europe are increasingly adopting interoperability<br />
frameworks [11]. An important step in achieving interoperability<br />
is to allow the information sources to communicate with one<br />
another. To achieve this, we propose a Patent System Ontology<br />
(PSO) to standardize the representation of the information sources<br />
and achieve interoperability. While the documents are vastly<br />
diverse, the information is implicitly cross-referenced. For<br />
example, a court document which involves a particular patent<br />
document reveals a high relevancy between the two documents.<br />
Such relevancy is central to our method for multi-source IR and is<br />
captured by the PSO.<br />
Terminological variations such as synonymy and polysemy are a<br />
common source of problems which often hinder the effectiveness<br />
of traditional term based IR methods. We develop a knowledgebased<br />
method that uses external knowledge sources such as<br />
domain ontologies to provide the required semantics to resolve<br />
terminological inconsistencies and improve semantic<br />
interoperability between information sources. The IR framework<br />
148<br />
then integrates the patent system ontology and the domain<br />
ontologies to retrieve a set of related documents across multiple<br />
sources.<br />
3. USE CASE AND DOCUMENT CORPUS<br />
We demonstrate our methodology through a use case in the<br />
biomedical domain – erythropoietin, a hormone responsible for<br />
the production of red blood cells. The synthetic production of<br />
erythropoietin has enabled the treatment of chronic diseases such<br />
as anemia. Epogen - the production brand of synthetic<br />
erythropoietin manufactured by the pharmaceutical giant Amgen<br />
Inc. is protected by five core patents namely – US 5,547,933, US<br />
5,618,698, US 5,621,080, US 5,756,349, and US 5,955,422. These<br />
patents have been central to many related court cases involving<br />
other pharmaceutical companies such as Hoescht Marion Roussel<br />
and Transkaryotic Therapies, and heavily cite scientific literature<br />
from top journals. Our corpus includes a total of 1150 patent<br />
documents downloaded from the USPTO database related to<br />
erythropoietin [28]. We identified 135 relevant patents amongst<br />
the 1150 patents by following forward and backward citations<br />
from the five core patents that will serve as the ground truth.<br />
Several court litigations, involving these five patents and some<br />
others, date back to the late 1980's. Around 30 U.S. patent<br />
litigation documents are collected which are closely related to the<br />
use case from Public Access to Court Electronic Records<br />
(PACER), an electronic system to access the databases of the 94<br />
District Courts and 13 Courts of Appeals (CAFC) [22]. The<br />
repository includes file wrappers for the core patents. The<br />
repository also contains the 2007 Text Retrieval Conference<br />
(TREC) Genomics data set, which consists of over 162,000<br />
scientific publications from 49 prominent biomedical journals<br />
[32]. All in all, the repository contains a diverse set of information<br />
from different domains.<br />
4. PATENT SYSTEM ONTOLOGY<br />
In this section, we describe a patent system ontology which<br />
provides standardized representation and a shared vocabulary of<br />
the information sources to facilitate interoperability. The ontology<br />
will also provide the required declarative syntax to express multisource<br />
queries, rules, and relevancy metrics.<br />
Many ontology development methodologies have been proposed<br />
and implemented over the years [6][8][10][18]. In general, the<br />
development of ontologies consists of several steps starting from<br />
the conceptualization of the domain, defining the properties interrelating<br />
the defined classes, instantiating the classes with physical<br />
objects and the verification of the constructed ontology. The<br />
development process is iterative as the ontology evolves to satisfy<br />
the requirements of the application it is being designed for [18].<br />
The resulting ontology is instantiated with actual physical<br />
documents from the document repository.<br />
Another practical aspect of ontology development is the<br />
specification language in which the ontology will be coded.<br />
Several specification languages have evolved over the years<br />
including frame based languages such as F-Logic and OIL, and<br />
descriptive logic based languages such as DARPA Agent Markup<br />
Language and Ontology Inference Layer (DAML+OIL), Resource<br />
Description Framework (RDF) and Web Ontology Language<br />
(OWL) [21,24]. The factors for choosing a specification language<br />
include expressivity, reasoning capabilities, availability of tools,<br />
re-use and personal preference. RDF is a widely used language to<br />
conceptualize domains. OWL is a W3C recommendation which is
uilt on top of the semantics of RDF to provide higher<br />
expressivity levels. These higher expression levels allow us to<br />
define disjoint classes, ‘sameAs’ or ‘differentFrom’ axioms<br />
among others [21]. Several tools have also been developed for the<br />
construction and modeling of ontologies such as Protégé and<br />
Chimaera [7][23]. Protégé supports both OWL and RDF, and<br />
provides useful features and plugins allowing us to query and<br />
visualize the ontology. Taking into account the above mentioned<br />
considerations, we choose OWL as the specification language and<br />
Protégé-3.4 as our development tool for the patent system<br />
ontology. However, it should be noted that not all OWL axioms<br />
are highly scalable; hence, to the extent possible we make<br />
maximum use of the RDF subset of the OWL axioms.<br />
4.1 Scope<br />
Ontologies are typically developed with specific applications as<br />
targets. Gruninger and Fox suggested that a set of competency<br />
questions be developed; these are questions that the ontology is<br />
expected to answer [10]. Developing these questions not only<br />
helps define the scope of our ontology but also allows us to verify<br />
the usefulness of the ontology both throughout and after the<br />
development phase [18]. In the patent system domain, the target<br />
applications may include patent claim invalidation, and patent<br />
infringement analysis. The following are selected examples of<br />
competency questions.<br />
Patent Domain:<br />
o Return all patent documents which contain the phrase<br />
‘recombinant erythropoietin receptor’ in the claims<br />
o Return all the patent documents which contain the phrase<br />
‘recombinant erythropoietin receptor’, at least 3 claims,<br />
issued before 02-02-1999 and assigned to Genetics Inc.<br />
Court Case Domain:<br />
o Return all court cases which contain the term –<br />
‘erythropoietin’<br />
o Return all court cases which involve the company Amgen<br />
Inc. either as the plaintiff or defendant, and from the District<br />
Court of Massachusetts<br />
Multi-domain:<br />
o Return all patents which contain the term – ‘erythropoietin’<br />
in their claims, which are involved in at least one court<br />
litigation.<br />
o Return all court cases with the term ‘erythropoietin’. From<br />
these court cases, return the patents involved. From these<br />
patents, follow the backward and forward citations to<br />
identify more important patents.<br />
Note that the questions can get more complex depending on the<br />
requirement of the user. The results of one query can be further<br />
re-filtered with additional constraints. In each of the listed<br />
questions, the main terms (or objects) are underlined. First, these<br />
terms are grouped together into concepts or classes such that they<br />
represent a collection of items corresponding to that term. Second,<br />
relations are drawn between classes such that the competency<br />
questions can be sufficiently expressed as a query using those<br />
classes and relationships. The competency questions shown in no<br />
way limit the use of the ontology to these applications alone,<br />
rather they are examples of questions the ontology must be<br />
capable of answering at the minimum. Furthermore, the list of<br />
149<br />
competency questions presented is not meant to be an exhaustive<br />
list, but to illustrate how the metadata and text fields parsed from<br />
the documents.<br />
Relations in OWL are binary relations, i.e. they can be used to<br />
relate exactly two classes, two individuals or an individual to a<br />
value. These can be represented in triple form as {subject,<br />
predicate, object}. The values that the subject and object take on<br />
can be restricted by defining the domain and the range of the<br />
relation; where domain refers to the subject end of the relation and<br />
range refers to the object end of the relationship [13]. OWL<br />
additionally allows us to define logical characteristics such as<br />
transitivity and symmetry on these binary relations which enhance<br />
the meaning of this relation. For example, if the ‘=>’ relation is<br />
defined as a transitive relation, then {A => B} can be used to infer<br />
{B => A}. Hence, if properly defined, new knowledge can be<br />
derived from existing knowledge. Additionally, we can define<br />
necessary and sufficient conditions on classes which can be used<br />
to logically classify instances into classes [13].<br />
4.2 Conceptualization<br />
Figures 1 and 2 show a conceptual view of the patent and court<br />
case documents respectively. The relations between two entities<br />
(shown as a black line) are directional from patents and court<br />
cases out to other classes, e.g. {Patent, hasTitle, Title}. The<br />
relations are not symmetric and hence the inverse {Title, hasTitle,<br />
Patent} does not hold true. As shown in the figures, the remaining<br />
classes can be grouped under either metadata or textual<br />
information. This form of classification helps to address all the<br />
metadata at once, instead of individually calling out to each one.<br />
For example, if an application requested for all metadata of a<br />
patent, using the ontology we can return all metadata entities such<br />
as Title, Date, Classification, etc.. We can further group metadata<br />
and textual information into a single parent node Information.<br />
When the patent and court case hierarchies are combined, classes<br />
which are common to both documents will refer to the same<br />
concept and not two different concepts.<br />
This form of abstraction is not only possible for classes, but also<br />
for relations, made possible by the rdfs:subPropertyOf construct.<br />
Court cases and Patents are related to each of the classes shown in<br />
Figures 1 and 2. These relations, such as ‘hasTitle’, ‘hasAbstract’,<br />
and ‘hasPlaintiff’, etc., can also be abstracted into a common<br />
parent relation ‘hasInformation’. This relation has a domain of<br />
either Patent or Court Case and Information as a range.<br />
File wrappers are not documents themselves, but in fact a<br />
collection of documents. This makes modeling file wrappers<br />
trickier than the other documents such as patents and court cases.<br />
Firstly, a vocabulary of all kinds of documents contained within<br />
the file wrapper must be defined. Since each of these documents<br />
refers to a particular event of communication between the<br />
applicant and patent office, we will call it Event instead of<br />
document to avoid confusion between the class Document and a<br />
file wrapper event. The events of importance to us are shown in<br />
Figure 3. We group application events and office actions<br />
separately to allow representation of queries such as – “Return all<br />
office actions for file wrapper A”. Each file wrapper event must<br />
be individually modeled keeping in mind the information it<br />
contains. For example, each examiner Rejection contains critical<br />
information such as – the allowed claims, the rejected claims, and<br />
the withdrawn claims (see Figure 4). Similarly, other events such
as Interference, Restriction, and Amendments can be modeled<br />
using the patent system ontology.<br />
The Patent, Court Case, and File Wrapper classes shown in<br />
Figures 1-3 are different types of documents available from<br />
different information sources. The patent system comprises many<br />
such information sources and many such documents. In the top<br />
level ontology for the patent system (shown in Figure 5), all types<br />
of documents are abstracted into a single parent class (Document).<br />
The Document class can be sub-classed any number of times to<br />
include other forms of documents such as regulations and laws<br />
which are currently not in the scope of our study. The classes<br />
Document, Information, and Event correspond to the three root<br />
nodes of the patent system ontology. Additionally, the classes<br />
Figure 1. Conceptual View of Patent Documents<br />
Figure 2. Conceptual View of Court Case<br />
150<br />
Inventor, Examiner, Author, and Judge, etc., can be abstracted<br />
into a common parent node such as Person.<br />
As mentioned earlier, information sources in the patent system<br />
implicitly cross-reference one another (see Figure 6). These<br />
implicit cross-references show relevancy for comparing<br />
documents from different information sources. When manually<br />
comparing two documents, these cross-references are rather<br />
obvious to the human eye. For example, a human could easily<br />
spot a reference to a patent document in the court case. These<br />
references can very quickly help identify relevant documents to a<br />
user query. The power of the patent system ontology lies in the<br />
ability to integrate information across multiple information<br />
sources by explicitly expressing such cross-references.<br />
Applications built around the patent system ontology can
dynamically derive relevancy based on these pre-defined crossreferences.<br />
4.3 Populating the Ontology<br />
The ontology is populated with information from actual physical<br />
documents from the document repository. The instantiation is<br />
done automatically using the standard Jena and Protégé Java<br />
libraries [23]. Once the instantiation is complete, a standard OWL<br />
reasoner such as Pellet is triggered to check for consistency and<br />
make inferences [33]. For example, an entity in the class Patent<br />
will be additionally classified as a Document, since Patent is a<br />
subclass of Document. The current version of the knowledge-base<br />
is populated with the actual documents from our corpus described<br />
in Section 3. Other documents which may have been found in<br />
Figure 3. Events Contained in a File Wrapper<br />
court cases or through patent citations, but not in the corpus are<br />
instantiated but contain no information about the patent since the<br />
original document itself is unavailable. A file wrapper has also<br />
been partially (including the first amendment, rejection,<br />
interference and the original application) incorporated into the<br />
knowledge-base.<br />
RDF Triple stores are specialized databases to manage large<br />
amount of information written in RDF [5][17][20]. Due to the size<br />
of the ontology, we create a local instance of a triple store<br />
(Virtuoso) and store all the triples in it. Using a triple store will<br />
allow us to scale our ontology to millions of instances<br />
(documents). Moreover, ontology editors such as Protégé require<br />
Figure 4. Excerpt from the Patent System Ontology: Rejection class<br />
151
Figure 5. Top Level Ontology for the Patent System<br />
Table 1. Expressing Competency Questions in SPARQL<br />
Competency Questions SPARQL Query<br />
Return all court cases which involve the company<br />
Amgen Inc. as the plaintiff and from the District Court<br />
of Massachusetts<br />
Return all patents which contain the phrase<br />
‘recombinant erythropoietin receptor’ in the claims<br />
and IPC class “A61K”<br />
152<br />
SELECT ?case WHERE {<br />
?case type CourtCase .<br />
?case hasPlaintiff “Amgen Inc.” .<br />
?case hasCourt “District Court…”<br />
}<br />
SELECT ?pat WHERE {<br />
?pat type Patent .<br />
?pat hasClaim ?clm .<br />
?clm hasTerm “recombinant …” .<br />
?pat hasIPCClass “A61K” .<br />
}
Figure 6. Cross-‐Reference between Documents in the Patent System<br />
loading the ontology each time the application is executed. The<br />
triple stores provide a persistent store for the triples and<br />
significantly lower the loading time. The ontology can be queried<br />
using SPARQL through both Protégé and Virtuoso interfaces<br />
[20][23].<br />
Table 1 shows examples of how we can represent any natural<br />
language question in SPARQL to query the ontology, as long as<br />
the classes and relations required to express the query are defined<br />
in the ontology. The queries do not always have to return<br />
documents, but can return other classes like Inventors or<br />
Examiners as well. These SPARQL queries will generally be<br />
handled at the application level and will be abstracted from users.<br />
Applications can request any information they want from the<br />
ontology. In fact, even the applications do not have to fully know<br />
the details of the ontology. The ontology can be queried for all its<br />
relations for a particular class or between two classes. For<br />
example, the query:<br />
SELECT ?rel WHERE {<br />
}<br />
?pat type Patent .<br />
?pat ?rel Information<br />
will return all relations (variable ?rel) which have the class Patent<br />
as the domain. In other words, all relations defined on patents<br />
such as hasTitle, hasAbstract, hasIPCClass, etc., will be returned.<br />
Hence, updating the underlying ontology with new information<br />
will automatically update the application using it as well.<br />
153<br />
5. INFORMATION RETRIEVAL<br />
FRAMEWORK<br />
In information retrieval, the information desired is seldom<br />
achieved with a single query. Queries are typically reformulated<br />
several times based on intermediate search results until the<br />
information need is satisfied [25]. This reformulation could<br />
include the addition of synonyms, new search terms, and other<br />
constraints. When performing multi-source search, information<br />
obtained from searching one domain is applied to another. The<br />
patent system ontology provides the backbone for automating this<br />
process by standardizing representation of the information<br />
sources. In this section, we present an IR framework which builds<br />
on top of the semantics of the patent system ontology in multiple<br />
stages to enhance multi-source IR (see Figure 7):<br />
Step–I Expand Query: In this stage, the user’s initial query is<br />
expanded using external knowledge such as dictionaries, thesauri,<br />
or domain ontologies. While the patent system ontology provides<br />
a framework for the structural interoperability between the<br />
information sources, domain ontologies provide semantic<br />
interoperability within a specific technical domain. The term<br />
expansion is based on several properties of domain ontologies<br />
such as abstraction, synonymy, and term mapping, etc.<br />
Step–II Search Information Sources: Information sources are<br />
independently searched using the expanded query from Step–I.<br />
The required vocabulary and syntax for searching the information<br />
sources is contained in the patent system ontology. For example,<br />
the patent system ontology provides the syntax for searching the<br />
titles of documents – hasTitle:‘erythropoietin’. The information
sources are searched independently in this stage to retrieve highly<br />
relevant documents from each source.<br />
Step–III Cross-Reference Information: The cross-referenced<br />
information is highly important for multi-domain retrieval. The<br />
cross-references explicitly defined in the patent system ontology<br />
are used as relevancy measures to correlate search results between<br />
information sources. For example, a relation defined in the patent<br />
system ontology – {caseA, patentsInvolved, patentA} will help<br />
the framework to extract patent numbers from the court case.<br />
These patent numbers can be used to repeat or enhance the search<br />
for the patent domain. Similarly, text from one document can be<br />
used to search an entirely different information silo. For example,<br />
Figure 7. Information Retrieval Framework<br />
Figure 8. System Implementation<br />
the abstract of a patent document can be used as a query to search<br />
for relevant scientific publications. In fact, the extracted text can<br />
be directly fed back into Steps 1 and 2.<br />
Step–IV User Feedback: Besides the diverse information and<br />
knowledge sources, the users in the patent system domain area<br />
also come from a diverse background – scientific/technical, legal,<br />
154<br />
business, and more. The intention of the user must be captured<br />
through the search process in order to ensure that the results<br />
retrieved are indeed relevant to the user. User-relevancy feedback<br />
has been an important part of IR research [4][15]. However, the<br />
user relevancy feedback stage is out of this paper’s scope and will<br />
not be discussed.<br />
5.1 Implementation Details<br />
In this section, we provide a brief overview of the implementation<br />
of the IR framework and its basic features (see Figure 8). The IR<br />
framework is implemented entirely in Java with abstractions of<br />
several modules that are critical for the system. The actual<br />
documents are parsed in order to populate the patent system<br />
ontology and perform reasoning using standard Jena libraries. A<br />
persistent storage such as Virtuoso or Mulgara is used to store the<br />
RDF triples [17][20]. Apache Lucene is a widely used text mining<br />
library [2]. In order to provide text-based search, a simple user<br />
interface is developed which interacts with the lucene text index.<br />
A summary of the implementation is provided below:<br />
o Jena libraries and triple store integration for modifying the<br />
patent system ontology through new constructs, crossreferences,<br />
or rules.<br />
o Solr and Lucene libraries to create, update, and query the text<br />
indexes [3].<br />
o Generic API for integration with sources of domain<br />
knowledge such as BioPortal [19]<br />
o Automatic query generation, abstracting the syntactic details<br />
from the user.<br />
6. ILLUSTRATIVE EXAMPLES<br />
As explained in Sections 1 and 2, during the lifetime of a patent,<br />
the patent system will constantly be searched for information.<br />
Examples include prior art searches, patent claim invalidations,<br />
and infringement analysis, etc.. In this section, we demonstrate<br />
how the patent system ontology enables queries across multiple<br />
sources in order to retrieve related information. Specifically, we<br />
focus on Step-III of the framework, i.e., the cross-referencing<br />
capabilities of the patent system ontology. We develop a<br />
SPARQL query to search for information related to US patent<br />
5,955,422 (see Figure 9). The individual clauses in the query are<br />
grouped into three categories each meant to retrieve related case<br />
documents, patents, and scientific publications respectively.<br />
Category I: Court cases provide important information regarding<br />
the major competitors, and successful patents, etc.. A patent<br />
which has been challenged in court several times is considered<br />
very important in its respective technology class. Clauses 1-3<br />
attempt to retrieve related documents by following the crossreferences<br />
between court cases and patent documents. Court cases<br />
related to US patent 5,955,422 are identified by querying the<br />
ontology for all court cases that involve the patent. This search<br />
retrieves around 20 patent litigations from our corpus. In addition,<br />
other patents involved in the court case are also extracted as<br />
relevant documents using clause 3.
Category II: After identifying some relevant patents, some of the<br />
possible next steps could be to retrieve patents by following the<br />
forward and backward citations etc. (clause 4), to get more<br />
relevant results. The information extracted from the ontology can<br />
also include names of inventors (clause 5), assignees (clause 6),<br />
and technology classifications (clause 7) that appear in the patent<br />
documents, which can in turn be used to search the documents.<br />
The extracted information from the documents is summarized in<br />
Table 2.<br />
Category III: In addition to metadata such as inventors and<br />
assignees, the text of the patent documents can also be used to<br />
search for related documents. For example, clauses 9-12 show<br />
how the claims of a patent can be used to search for related<br />
scientific publications.<br />
The query discussed in this section shows how the semantics<br />
provided by the patent system ontology can be used to integrate<br />
information across multiple domains, with a potential to improve<br />
search. Similar to the above example, in practical applications,<br />
SPARQL queries can be formulated to express extremely complex<br />
information needs. Figure 10 shows the actual documents<br />
retrieved from this query.<br />
Precision, a common metric used to evaluate the quality of IR<br />
methodologies, is measured as the ratio of the number of relevant<br />
documents retrieved to the total number of documents retrieved.<br />
In addition to the query in Figure 9, we retrieve patent documents<br />
related to the top inventors, assignees, and technology classes<br />
from Table 2. We calculate the precision of the retrieved patent<br />
documents with respect to the ground truth discussed in Section 3.<br />
Table 3 summarizes these results.<br />
Plaintiffs/Defendants Patents Involved in<br />
Cases<br />
Table 2. Summary of Extracted Information<br />
SELECT ?pat1 ?pat2 ?case ?pub ?inv ?assg<br />
?class<br />
WHERE {<br />
Category I:<br />
Clause 1: ?case a CourtCase .<br />
Clause 2: ?case patentsInvolved<br />
US5955422. Clause 3: ?case<br />
patentsInvolved ?pat1<br />
Category II:<br />
{Clause 4: ?pat1 hasCitation ?pat2 .}<br />
{Clause 5: ?pat1 hasInventor ?inv .}<br />
{Clause 6: ?pat1 hasAssignee ?assg .}<br />
{Clause 7: ?pat1 hasUSClass ?class .}<br />
Category III:<br />
Clause 9: ?pat hasClaim ?claim .<br />
Clause 10: ?pub a Publication .<br />
Clause 11: ?pub hasBody ?body .<br />
Clause 12: FILTER REGEX (?body,<br />
?claim, “i”)<br />
US Class Inventor Assignee<br />
Amgen Inc. 5,955,422 514/8 Lin, Fu-Kuen Kirin-Amgen, Inc.<br />
Chugai Pharmaceuticals 5,547,933 530/350 Hewick, Rodney, M. Amgen, Inc.<br />
Hoescht Marion Roussel 5,621,080 536/23.51 Seehra, Jasbir, S. Kiren-Amgen, Inc.<br />
Genetics Inc. 5,618,698 435/325 Seenra, Jasbir, S. Genetics Institute, Inc.<br />
155<br />
}<br />
Figure 9. SPARQL Query to Retrieve<br />
Information Related to U.S. Patent<br />
5,955,422
Figure 10. Actual Documents Retrieved by Querying Patent System Ontology<br />
Table 3. Precision of Retrieved Patent Documents<br />
Related to a Set of Inventors, Assignees or US Class<br />
Query Precision<br />
Top 5 Technology Classes 0.183<br />
Inventors 0.8<br />
Assignees 0.256<br />
Combined 0.186<br />
7. CONCLUSION<br />
Intellectual Property (IP) related information for science and<br />
technology is distributed across several heterogeneous<br />
information silos. The scattered distribution of information,<br />
combined with the enormous sizes and complexities, make any<br />
attempt to collect IP-related information for a particular<br />
technology a daunting task. Hence, there is a need for a software<br />
framework which facilitates semantic and structural<br />
interoperability between the diverse and un-coordinated<br />
information sources in the patent system. In this paper, we present<br />
a knowledge-based software framework to facilitate retrieval of<br />
patents and related information across multiple diverse and<br />
uncoordinated information sources in the US patent system.<br />
Specifically, we discuss the patent system ontology which<br />
provides standardized representation and a shared vocabulary of<br />
the information sources to facilitate interoperability.<br />
Through an illustrative example in Section 6, we showed how the<br />
patent system ontology can be used to integrate information and<br />
query multiple information sources to retrieve related information.<br />
156<br />
The patent system ontology provides the necessary semantics to<br />
allow users to develop complex declarative queries. The<br />
methodology presented will benefit many end users ranging from<br />
lawyers, start-up companies, to large corporations.<br />
8. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS<br />
This research is partially supported by NSF Grant Number<br />
0811975 awarded to the University of Illinois at Urbana-<br />
Champaign and NSF Grant Number 0811460 to Stanford<br />
University. Any opinions and findings are those of the authors,<br />
and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science<br />
Foundation.<br />
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Digitisation of Electoral Rolls: Analysis of a Multi-Agency<br />
E-Government Project in Pakistan<br />
Hasnain Bokhari<br />
Faculty of Humanities<br />
University of Erfurt<br />
Postfach 90 02 21. D-99105 Erfurt<br />
+491632359046<br />
hasnain.bokhari@yahoo.com<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
Mobile governments are seen as an ancillary extension of egovernment<br />
practices. The low cost of mobile equipment, its<br />
mobility factor and a personalised device may however, herald<br />
them as the predominant means of e-government in developing<br />
countries. Inclusive participation to mobilise and engage the<br />
poorer, excluded and lesser-informed citizens has been the bane of<br />
e-government yet, but it may change by including m-government<br />
as an emphasis factor in the national e-government plans. This<br />
paper considers the case study of the Election Commission of<br />
Pakistan, which initiated a SMS-based voter verification system<br />
with the central database authority in order to inform over 85<br />
million voters of their electoral registration in March 2012. This<br />
unique service is among the first public mobile based initiatives in<br />
Pakistan which builds upon an inter-agency collaboration drawing<br />
on the success of a digitized and central database.<br />
Categories and Subject Descriptors<br />
K.6.1 [Management of Computing and Information Systems]:<br />
Project and People Management - Strategic information systems<br />
planning; J.1 [Computer Applications]: Administrative Data<br />
Processing – Government; H.1.2 [Information Systems]:<br />
User/Machine Systems - Human information processing<br />
General Terms<br />
Management, Documentation, Human Factors, Verification.<br />
Keywords<br />
E-government, Developing Countries, Interagency collaboration,<br />
M-government, Alternative public service delivery<br />
1. INTRODUCTION<br />
Rapidly declining costs of Information and Communication<br />
Technologies (ICTs) and mobile phone equipment are paving new<br />
ways for a digitally connected society through a variety of<br />
communications spectra. e-government initiatives are now taking<br />
a crucial turn in the domain of public service delivery. A number<br />
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bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for<br />
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Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to<br />
post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission<br />
and/or a fee.<br />
ICEGOV '12, October 22 - 25 2012, Albany, NY, USA<br />
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1200-4/12/10...$15.00<br />
158<br />
Mustafa Khan<br />
Willy Brandt School of Public Policy<br />
University of Erfurt<br />
Postfach 90 02 21. D-99105 Erfurt<br />
+4917671704089<br />
mmmkhan@gmail.com<br />
of countries are emphasizing horizontal and vertical integration of<br />
governmental agencies to ensure the one-stop-shop promise of egovernment.<br />
Thus, multiple governmental agencies cooperate<br />
with one another and more importantly with private partners in<br />
order to develop innovative eServices. Similarly, countries<br />
especially in the developing world are increasingly moving<br />
towards the concept of electronic public service delivery over<br />
multiple channels digital communication other than the internet.<br />
To connect with and inform citizens, governments around the<br />
world are now considering mobile phones as an alternative service<br />
delivery channel for government data. In the context of<br />
developing countries, mobile phones offer a feasible opportunity<br />
for governments to expand their digital focus to the disconnected<br />
areas. The entire ‘e’ lexicon of e-government is now focusing<br />
towards ‘m’ making a plausible case for m-government. Mgovernment,<br />
in a nutshell is not hugely different from its<br />
predecessor. Rather it offers a strategy for providing information<br />
and services through mobile or wireless technology [21]. As the<br />
definition relies on e-government practices, the basic theory and<br />
implications of m-government are going to work as<br />
complementary to e-government.<br />
What sets m-government apart and makes it a new focus area are<br />
its strengths of “mobility” and being “wireless” [33]. Freeing the<br />
user from desktop-bound and wired internet access, it allows<br />
information access on the move, increased functionality, low<br />
opportunity cost for access and more pervasive reach into<br />
‘unwired’ or physically unsupported areas. This latter property<br />
makes it the ideal infrastructure choice in developing or underdeveloped<br />
countries, where internet access is expensive or not<br />
available and requires more technical literacy. It must, however,<br />
be noted that m-government does not need to eliminate the online<br />
and offline modalities of service-delivery but it aims at harnessing<br />
the powerful and transformational capacity of the mobile platform<br />
to enhance public service [16].<br />
Since the beginning of new millennium, there has been a<br />
phenomenal growth in mobile subscription around the world. In<br />
2011, International Telecommunication Union (ITU) estimated<br />
5.9 billion mobile subscriptions, with a global penetration rate at<br />
an astounding 87%-79% in developing countries against a global<br />
internet penetration rate of 35% [17]. What matters here the most<br />
is the social construction of mobile technology, which qualifies<br />
the mobile platform as a preferred means of communication due<br />
to the oral communication culture it espouses. Given its spatial<br />
mobility and flexibility to manage contextual mobility with an
oral option, it also allows for a much wider usability within<br />
digitally challenged or ageing populations.<br />
The prevalent oral communication culture that is inherent with<br />
mobile phones has found a strong audience in rural and<br />
geographically-isolated communities of developing and under<br />
developed countries that have shown considerable acceptance<br />
towards mobile technologies. Such a communal reliance has led a<br />
number of local and state level agencies to provide emergency,<br />
health, agriculture and education related information through<br />
mobile phones [23] [25]. The location-based targeting system of<br />
m-government is becoming increasingly popular way to<br />
communicate with only certain geographically proximate<br />
communities, which can prove to be a vital mobilisation tool in<br />
the case of natural disasters, epidemics or accidents.<br />
Figure 1: Mobile and Internet subscribers per 100<br />
inhabitants in Pakistan<br />
The urban-rural divide and the digital imbalance more<br />
synonymous with the developing world has so far not let Layne &<br />
Lee widely debated model of e-government provide a functional<br />
solution for developing countries. The Layne & Lee model based<br />
on catalogue stage, transaction stage and vertical and horizontal<br />
integration stage gets seriously challenged by the cost of<br />
infrastructure, limited government budgets and the lack of<br />
information in local and regional languages [14]. A number of<br />
developing countries are now moving beyond the informational<br />
web portal (which is a catalogue stage in Layne & Lee model) and<br />
are concentrating on multiple channels of public service delivery,<br />
either through kiosk machines, telecentres, over-the-counter<br />
approaches and now mobile phones to digitally facilitate their<br />
public. In India for example, a free SMS service, launched in<br />
February 2007, enables farmers in rural areas to ask agricultural<br />
or animal husbandry related queries to experts. Similarly in<br />
Pakistan, an SMS service was launched by the Pakistan Telecom<br />
Authority (PTA) to facilitate citizens for SIM verification against<br />
their unique national identity cards [18].<br />
159<br />
Hereinafter, this paper discusses the case of multiagency<br />
collaboration for an m-government application for voters’<br />
registration and verification in Pakistan. Taking into consideration<br />
all the above-mentioned limitations and opportunities, this paper<br />
analyzes Pakistan as an aberrant transitive democracy to see if and<br />
how a m-government initiative led by the Election Commission of<br />
Pakistan (ECP) in collaboration with National Database and<br />
Registration Authority (NADRA) could facilitate voting for the<br />
general elections planned in 2013. The paper touches upon a brief<br />
chronological progress of e-government evolution in Pakistan<br />
with the formation of NADRA, which eventually guided ECP in<br />
its m-government application.<br />
2. E-GOVERNMENT AND<br />
PARTICIPATORY FACTOR OF<br />
DEMOCRACY<br />
The driving force behind the phenomenon of e-government was to<br />
make governments rely on digital gadgetry in order to provide<br />
services that are more responsive and effective. This in turn could<br />
bring more transparency to administrative processes, thereby<br />
triggering a democratic culture which is supported by new<br />
communication media. For a more responsive government, it is<br />
inevitably necessary for governments to assure access and the<br />
right to information. It is perhaps the similar motivation held by<br />
Layne & Lee model of e-government whose first phase, the<br />
catalogue model, focuses on the availability of government<br />
information via web portals. However, such a model has<br />
repeatedly been rebuffed academically and contested for its<br />
viability in developing countries where there still is a huge digital<br />
gap and illiteracy. This brings the participatory promise of egovernment<br />
in a questionable position where governments on one<br />
hand try to offer multi-channel public services but on the other<br />
hand are unavailable to deliver the basic promise i.e. the<br />
availability of government information – the first requirement in<br />
almost every possible e-government model. In order to ensure the<br />
participatory nature of democracy, would it not be just to assure<br />
the access to the portal or at least an alternative way to provide<br />
government information [1]. With his empirical findings Donald<br />
Norris has challenged these early hyperbolic claims [27] that<br />
provisions for better governance through digital means does not<br />
essentially translate into enhanced or increased public<br />
participation in governments. Also, in case of developing<br />
countries, most are delineated by fledgling democracy that are yet<br />
to take root in relatively younger states staggering on to postconflict<br />
and transitional stages where the need for stability often<br />
trumps egalitarian inclusion into governments and elections. The<br />
case of e-government in Pakistan suffers from the similar<br />
developing country syndrome of digital divide where the<br />
government has not been able to reach out to its public via its web<br />
portal. There are, however, a number of multi-channel electronic<br />
public services that continues to facilitate the citizens. With the<br />
inception of the m-government application in February 2012, the<br />
Government of Pakistan introduced probably for the first time, a<br />
digital service via a short message (or SMS) that enable citizens to<br />
verify and confirm them as registered voters for the general<br />
elections in 2013. For a transitional democracy such as Pakistan,<br />
an eService of such sort can have a considerable impact on voter<br />
turnout. However, can it be claimed if an eService of this calibre<br />
delineates the participatory element for Pakistani voters? To<br />
answer, one probably needs to revisit the most celebrated and<br />
equally contested theorist of democracy, Robert Dahl, whose<br />
general set of criteria for evaluating democratic process includes
effective participation, voting equality, enlightened understanding,<br />
and control of the policy agenda [7]. If the democratic and<br />
participatory element of the ECP’s SMS application is gauged<br />
with Dahl’s criteria, this application does seem to qualify at least<br />
for one of Dahl’s five criteria. However, before dwelling upon the<br />
details of this application, it seems necessary to give a brief<br />
chronology of events that has eventually led ECP to undertake a<br />
rather sensitive and careful task of voter registration and<br />
verification via the m-government application.<br />
3. E-GOVERNMENT SCENARIO IN<br />
PAKISTAN<br />
The Government of Pakistan started its chapter of e-government<br />
in 2002 by forming a separate organisation under the Ministry of<br />
Information Technology named Electronic Government<br />
Directorate (EGD). EGD’s major tasks included to plan, prepare<br />
and implement e-government projects in Pakistan and to provide<br />
technical guidelines on the implementation of these projects at the<br />
federal, provincial and district levels. Since 2005 EGD has also<br />
put an e-government strategy and action plan for years 2005-2010,<br />
which so far has not been revised, at least publicly. At the<br />
beginning of millennium, offering a web portal remained the first<br />
task for national governments and Pakistan’s one-stop-shop<br />
solution was to initiate web portal of government ministries,<br />
divisions, and its sub organisations accessible via Internet at<br />
www.pakistan.gov.pk. The portal provided information about the<br />
ministries and explained their functioning albeit in English – a<br />
language which is only spoken and understood by a small<br />
minority of a population of 185 million people. The portal, which<br />
was revamped in 2008, does not yet offer or indicate any<br />
interactive G2C service in order to qualify for the second stage<br />
(transaction) of e-government model (by Layne & Lee) [18].<br />
While the EGD together with Government of Pakistan was trying<br />
to delve into e-government, a number of parallel initiatives started<br />
in the G2C scenario in Pakistan. Due to deregulation in the<br />
telecommunications sector, various telecom operators started their<br />
services in Pakistan. Over the course of 10 years the low rates of<br />
the mobile telecom sector found a strong audience all over the<br />
country. The figures mentioned by the International<br />
Telecommunication Union (ITU) clearly indicate that Pakistani<br />
citizens prefer mobile phones to the internet. According to the<br />
ITU statistics, mobile users in Pakistan increased from 0.21 users<br />
in 2000 to 57.14 users per 100 inhabitants in 2010 [17]. As of<br />
May 2012, the PTA puts the cellular mobile teledensity at 68.6%<br />
making it the most highly penetrated South Asian country in this<br />
regard.<br />
The increased reliance on mobile phones made a number of<br />
telecom operators in Pakistan realise the potential of mobile<br />
penetration and they started offering G2C services by acting as a<br />
middle agency. Currently, Norwegian telecom operator Telenor’s<br />
easy Paisa service for the payment of utility bills and money<br />
transfer is considered the most frequently used service, which has<br />
triggered a new era of branchless banking in Pakistan. However, a<br />
major development in e-government scenario that took place in<br />
Pakistan is the formation of National Database Registration<br />
Authority (NADRA). In order to digitise the population data, the<br />
Ministry of Interior initiated a technical wing named as the<br />
NADRA to develop Computerised National Identity Cards<br />
(CNICs), which eventually became one of the first G2C electronic<br />
public services. Over a number of years NADRA has initiated<br />
other G2C projects as well. These projects include the<br />
160<br />
development of the electronic passport, driver’s license, birth<br />
registration certificate and/or the vehicle identification and<br />
tracking system. Pakistan moved beyond the web portal when in<br />
2005 NADRA started a kiosk machine service in order to pay<br />
utility bills. The idea behind kiosk machine was the lack of<br />
internet penetration and possibility of mCommerce application on<br />
official web portal. The kiosk machine service is now being<br />
franchised and exists as a part of the eSahulat project, which<br />
allows people to transfer money without involving any bank<br />
transaction for the recipient and sender. It would not be wrong to<br />
mention that in Pakistan NADRA has now assumed the role of a<br />
master agency as it possesses the major citizen database and<br />
collaborates in a number of intergovernmental projects such as the<br />
World Bank supported cash transfer programme called Income<br />
Support Programme and the Watan Card for flood afectees.<br />
NADRA has also collaborated with the PTA by sharing its<br />
database with telecom operators in order for people to verify their<br />
SIM cards against their CNICs. This paper considers NADRA’s<br />
most recent collaboration with another governmental agency- the<br />
Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP). The next section<br />
describes the role of the ECP and its collaboration with the<br />
NADRA to develop the digitised electoral rolls.<br />
4. ELECTION COMMISSION OF<br />
PAKISTAN<br />
The Election Commission of Pakistan presides over the voting<br />
<strong>proceedings</strong> of the State and National assemblies and the Senate.<br />
Its Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) is appointed by the<br />
President of Pakistan and with amendments made in the<br />
constitution during 2012; it has been made an autonomous and<br />
independent organisation with separate funds and appointment<br />
powers for interim government, which will be responsible for<br />
organising fresh national elections [32].<br />
The ECP adopted a five-year strategic plan in May 2010, taking<br />
various stakeholders such as political parties, Civil Society<br />
Oraganizations (CSOs), female councillors, minorities, lawyers<br />
and the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES) on<br />
board. The strategic plan was aimed at overhauling various<br />
technical, organizational and legal functions of the ECP.<br />
Alongside, the ECP also came up with strategic deliverables to<br />
foster digitization of the electoral rolls, building a new website,<br />
translation of content in regional languages, a better Content<br />
Management System (CMS), adoption of Electronic Voting<br />
Machines (EVM), a mobile version of the website and online<br />
availability of all ECP information, results and notifications as<br />
and when announced [11]. The following section details the<br />
collaborative model that the ECP adopted in order to verify and<br />
collate the digitization of electoral rolls with the help of NADRA.<br />
4.1 Multiagency Collaboration at Work:<br />
Preparation of the Computerised<br />
Electoral Rolls System (CERS II)<br />
In June 2011, ECP and NADRA signed a formal contract for the<br />
revision of electoral rolls and the updating of the 2006<br />
Computerised Electoral Rolls System (CERS I). NADRA<br />
extended its support by sharing the citizen database and by<br />
appending and adding supplementary information from their<br />
unique CNIC system against every voter. The CNIC carries<br />
unique identification card with multiple biometric features,<br />
photograph and includes details of residence, contact information<br />
and family status. This inter-sectoral and inter-organisational
mapping of citizens would ensure unique identity within the<br />
system and prepare clear transparent rolls which would be now<br />
called as CERS II.<br />
The ECP established a project management unit comprising ECP<br />
and IFES officials to steer and monitor this enormous task. The<br />
ECP handed over the existing electoral rolls data to NADRA in<br />
February 2011 for verification, updating and augmentation of<br />
electoral rolls 2006-07 on the basis of CNIC database.<br />
Simultaneously, the Population Census Organization (PCO)<br />
which conducts census every five years was instructed in its April<br />
2011 census to collect the information of the head of family’s data<br />
on a specially designed form for preparing preliminary electoral<br />
rolls on the basis of new census blocks as prescribed by the<br />
Census Organisation previously and now adopted by the ECP as<br />
revised electoral areas. These data were handed over to NADRA<br />
offices at district level. NADRA used the data for assignment of<br />
new census block codes after verification and augmentation of<br />
existing electoral rolls with its CNIC data. In effect, NADRA<br />
created a new database for the ECP from a data image of its CNIC<br />
database but customised it along the lines of the newly defined<br />
electoral areas. This meant further clarity and precision of voter<br />
distribution [11].<br />
NADRA prepared preliminary electoral rolls on the basis of new<br />
census blocks, using CNIC as unique identifier of voters. The<br />
ECP then conducted a country-wide door-to-door verification of<br />
these rolls in August-October 2011. A pilot project was completed<br />
in 60 selected electoral areas in four districts through door-to-door<br />
verification which helped in identifying issues during field<br />
exercise which were taken care of while rolling out the national<br />
level verification project.<br />
Figure 2: Digitisation flowchart of electoral rolls by the<br />
Election Commission of Pakistan<br />
.<br />
161<br />
NADRA then entered the data changes on the basis of voters’ data<br />
forms collected during door-to-door verification in light of<br />
guidelines/business rules, using double-blind data entry<br />
mechanism. Thereafter, the preliminary electoral rolls were<br />
printed by NADRA and delivered to the ECP’s field offices on 23<br />
February 2012. The ECP released the draft electoral rolls at<br />
52,166 display centres across Pakistan for public display for<br />
inviting claims and objections for corrections on the prescribed<br />
forms as per existing legal framework. On 29 February, both the<br />
paper-based electoral rolls and a unique SMS facility (explained<br />
in the next section) to verify citizens’ voting details were launched<br />
[8]. After incorporating the decisions of the revising authorities,<br />
the final electoral rolls were displayed successfully in May 2012.<br />
Thus, from 2012 onwards, the revised CERS-II can be updated<br />
annually as originally envisaged in the constitution of Pakistan.<br />
NADRA and the ECP plan to extend its cooperation to the next<br />
level by updating the voter data simultaneously in the ECP<br />
database when voters visit the NADRA offices for renewing or<br />
changing the personal details of their CNIC.<br />
4.2 SMS Voter Verification Application<br />
After an extensive multi-agency collaboration in collecting the<br />
voters’ data the ECP planned to not only announce the paperbased<br />
results of the voters but it also launched a unique SMS voter<br />
verification application on 29 February 2012. A widespread print<br />
and electronic media campaign was organised and the<br />
announcement of the electoral roll received prime coverage on all<br />
leading television channels, given the loaded political atmosphere<br />
with the impending 2013 elections. With regard to geographically<br />
isolated and rural areas, these campaigns were chiselled with the<br />
ECP conducting radio spots in six local languages to advertise the<br />
publication of the electoral rolls and the SMS verification<br />
application.<br />
Figure 3: Sample of return SMS with voter registration<br />
details<br />
.<br />
The SMS application requires a voter to text her/his unique CNIC<br />
number to a short code ‘8300’. Irrespective of the mobile network<br />
operator, the voter is charged, Rs. 2 (USD 0.02) and a reply SMS<br />
in the national language Urdu is received, showing the CNIC<br />
number, electoral area name, block code, tehsil/district and serial
number [10]. Keeping in view that multiple voters may use one<br />
mobile phone in a household to verify their vote and to protect the<br />
privacy of the voter, the name, parentage and home address which<br />
are attributes of CNIC are not included in the return SMS.<br />
The block code is the assigned block or colony number allotted<br />
after the new housing census of 2011 as mentioned before. The<br />
serial number replaces the old manual slip system that was issued<br />
to every voter with the serial number and name upon registration.<br />
The idea of digitally replacing the paper slip system intends to<br />
save cost and paper waste and also reduces the chances of<br />
misplaced slips. Another important issue it helps address is a<br />
voting malpractice, which was often reported in rural areas with<br />
illiterate or inexperienced voters. It is observed during elections in<br />
Pakistan that political party agents canvassing outside polling<br />
station would try to influence the voter in the guise of providing<br />
support to inexperienced voters [20]. With a new digitised version<br />
of electoral rolls, voters only need to carry their CNIC and newly<br />
issued serial number via digital electoral rolls to polling stations<br />
and cast their ballot. It shall , however, be noted that physical<br />
display of electoral rolls will continue side by side in order to<br />
ensure that no voter is denied this right. The electoral roll<br />
verification drive ended on March 20, 2012.<br />
5. ECP-NADRA SMS APPLICATION<br />
ANALYSIS<br />
It is perhaps the first time in Pakistan that a number of<br />
governmental agencies namely, the ECP, NADRA and the<br />
Population Census Organisation have cooperated with one another<br />
in order to make a digital electoral roll. The Pakistani voters’<br />
uptake on this service was considerable in both rural and urban<br />
sectors. With mobiles, virtual display centres for a small price<br />
could be created anywhere at the convenience of the voter.<br />
Indicative of the demand shift in the new service delivery, voters<br />
opted to use the SMS service and the display centres were not<br />
crowded, making it easier and speedier to deal with modification<br />
complaints of effected voters. Within 17 days of the launch of the<br />
application, 4.6 million people had used it to verify their electoral<br />
details [28]. By end of March 2012, the number of verified voters<br />
exceeded the 7 million that used this facility.<br />
The SMS service serves as an auxiliary provision that enabled the<br />
8.4% registered voters in Pakistan. However, this level of<br />
collaboration will be able to open new areas of interagency<br />
collaborations, which actually could be considered as the third and<br />
fourth phase of horizontal and vertical integration, if compared<br />
with the Layne & Lee model of e-government. Similarly, the SMS<br />
service has landed the ECP in the Guinness Book of World<br />
Records for having the World’s largest voter verification SMS<br />
service with a voter density of 83.28 million [31]. Introducing this<br />
application on an even bigger network of almost 111 million<br />
mobile users in one go, relying on indigenous technology and<br />
skills without physical external assistance bodes well for<br />
developing countries and their m-government plans. As of 2012,<br />
the ECP plans to launch the same SMS service to announce and<br />
inform voters of their allocated polling stations before the national<br />
elections are conducted.<br />
An instance of this provision was observed in July 2012, after the<br />
dismissal of the then Prime Minister Gillani by the Supreme Court<br />
of Pakistan. His seat in the Pakistan National Assembly eventually<br />
fell vacant and bye-election had to be held. Here the ECP<br />
provided information to over 138,000 voters in that constituency<br />
162<br />
using location based targeting and its new CERS II rolls to SMS<br />
voters their block codes, polling station names and numbers and<br />
serial numbers.<br />
The architecture behind the SMS application is a G2C<br />
informational exchange initiated by texting a short code- a C2G<br />
pull communication. On the front end, it is a text-based<br />
communication on the GSM cellular network in a local language<br />
and numbers. The middleware is a NADRA SMS Gateway. All<br />
the Mobile Network Operators (MNO) have reserved short code<br />
8300 for the ECP. Once a network operator receives an SMS, it<br />
passes the message to the NADRA SMS gate way. In return, if the<br />
message is appropriate (i.e. if it contains 13 digits of CNIC) the<br />
voters’ information is returned.<br />
If this application is analysed against the Task-Technology Fit<br />
model [13], it can be argued that the ECP-NADRA’s application<br />
is a useful one in a way that a huge chunk of the target audience is<br />
available on the employed platform, the task (here informational)<br />
can be viably transmitted. Given the text-based informational<br />
request in a mobile and geographically diverse target area, with a<br />
varied skill set and technical abilities and round the clock access<br />
to ensure all voters could verify their status within the 20-day<br />
period- this match serves a useful proposition for the SMS<br />
verification system. Had the ECP launched a website version of<br />
this application then, , the application would not have even<br />
achieved the 8.3% of audience due to limited internet penetration<br />
in Pakistan as compared to the mobile phone subscription as<br />
indicated in Figure 1. Building up on the location-based facility in<br />
m-government, the future plan to inform voters of their designated<br />
polling stations through a similar SMS based application may also<br />
be successful, which was test run in the bye-elections of<br />
constituency Multan-IV as pointed before.<br />
Incorporation of an external facilitator or technology provider in a<br />
highly sensitive national affair such as the national election is not<br />
desirable [19] especially with regard to credibility and neutrality<br />
of an election body. By hiring an indigenous public firm on a<br />
formal contract to implement both the software and hardware ends<br />
of a project, while keeping check and balance on the tailored<br />
solution, ensured control with the contractee. The digitisation of<br />
voters’ registration roll brought together not only the government<br />
officials but also IT experts to ensure that the design phase does<br />
not suffer from the absence of experts from both ends. Brewer<br />
et.al. [5] have argued that the combination of bureaucracy and<br />
technology experts would minimise the pitfalls in an egovernment<br />
application. The ECP relied on NADRA’s<br />
accumulated experience of over 10 years in the automation and<br />
biometric business. A unique factor was that NADRA customized<br />
a data image of its CNIC and appended the CERS I with it to<br />
create CERS II. Such a multiagency cooperation for interagency<br />
information sharing can be extended and scaled to further future<br />
projects [35].<br />
Ideally, there should not have been any costs involved for an<br />
SMS, but to avoid jamming of the SMS service by miscreants the<br />
ECP decided to keep a minimal cost. Despite the lower cost of<br />
SMS, it may still prevent the marginally poor people from<br />
availing it. However, the government did not abandon the paper<br />
display of electoral rolls to ensure no citizen is missed out.<br />
Security and trust though remain tangible issues to be addressed<br />
as with all e-government initiatives- establishing an identity<br />
versus the anonymity of a citizen have confounded electronic<br />
notions of governance and elections [19].
Here the authors wish to extend the analysis of the ECP project by<br />
gauging against the success factor model proposed by Sandy and<br />
Macmillian [29] to evaluate the internal effects on the government<br />
based on six points:<br />
Cost: Governments need to find cost effective solutions to ensure<br />
funding and look into options for joint operations. In this case,<br />
even buying services from MNO in the long-term or in a bulk<br />
package lasting only during the verification drive, might have<br />
further lessened or eliminated the charge of the service on the<br />
public, perhaps making it more inclusive. Who might pay for the<br />
novelty of receiving an SMS for a service viewed as too<br />
expensive? After all e-government services tend to have an elastic<br />
demand [24] and do not stand the test of the cost distribution well.<br />
Similarly, attracting and keeping staff with “requisite agility” will<br />
make for a self-conscious government that can adequately handle<br />
and deal with citizen demand [5].<br />
Business Reengineering: A central authority and political support<br />
in the form of a coordinated and bench-marked national egovernment<br />
plan with specific m-government services recognized<br />
with clearly defined deliverables would ensure a better and<br />
cohesive strategy. This would mean that dependency on legacy<br />
systems be reduced and government should try to keep or<br />
maintain central databases or platforms that can be used to test,<br />
pilot-run and launch e-government or m-government initiatives,<br />
which will prove to be launching pads and resource centres for all<br />
departments and sectors.<br />
Education: Better access and training programs to ensure adoption<br />
of m-government initiatives so as to have stronger back office<br />
work. Identifying and maintaining open source international<br />
standards that would make it easier for both employees and public<br />
to remain at the top of the infrastructural game and the everchanging<br />
technology blitz.<br />
Acceptance: There should be ownership of the projects to ensure<br />
that the increased participation of the public is handled well or it<br />
would have a reverse effect on inclusive nature of m-government.<br />
Here, the popularity of the e-Sahulat programme over the Kiosk<br />
system may explain the local populace’s preference for human<br />
interaction rather than machine-human interfaces [3]. For this<br />
purpose, incorporating government officials in the design and<br />
feedback of such initiatives will create interest. Supporting<br />
employees with technically sound and well-fitted offices with<br />
clearly defined job descriptions will ensure accountability.<br />
Security: Data loss in terms of device theft can be limited by<br />
ensuring that mobile phone SIMs are registered against CNICs.<br />
Similarly providing access to an online temporary identification<br />
should also be accepted in case of ID theft. Data protocols on<br />
office machinery should be defined and stripped down for work<br />
purposes only and IT administrators should have strict policies<br />
against external data storage devices in workplaces. These<br />
policies currently prevail in NADRA offices.<br />
Access: Providing key infrastructure to all actors, both within and<br />
without the government. Presence of content in local language,<br />
regular and audited updating of CMS system and providing<br />
similar opportunities for people with physical disability and<br />
special needs will ensure equal access for all.<br />
163<br />
5.1 Litmus Test- Requisite Agility of the<br />
CERS II and SMS application<br />
Coming to the last factor- has the governance module succeeded<br />
with this initiative? Coupling this system with the aforementioned<br />
electoral bill, the CNIC numbers have essentially become unique<br />
identifying factors in elections. The ECP’s initiative has the<br />
potential to promote transparency and would help in removal of<br />
defunct or fraudulent votes from the vote bank - hence the<br />
strengthening of related factors of openness, accountability and<br />
participation. Here, one recent incident that was reported during<br />
the verification procedure serves as a litmus test of this initiative’s<br />
working. After the display of electoral rolls, a member of national<br />
and another of provincial assembly observed abnormal increase in<br />
the electorate records of their respective constituencies and<br />
reported it to the ECP. The ECP gave NADRA and its provincial<br />
election commission office a forty-eight hour deadline to explain<br />
the cause behind this anomaly. Not only was the mistake traced<br />
and rectified, but NADRA investigated that five people had tried<br />
to manually fill thousands of vote-transfer forms and migrated<br />
voters in these districts. As they had submitted these forms with<br />
some identification, NADRA used the biometric assets of the<br />
CNIC and traced the culprits. Similar patterns were also traced out<br />
in two other constituencies and rectified [9] [26].<br />
6. CONCLUSION<br />
Encouraging as the result of this debilitation may be, it is<br />
however, difficult to say as to what extent governance will be<br />
fostered by this initiative in the long run despite its wide usage<br />
and demonstrated benefits. But the ECP-NADRA app surely is a<br />
unique experiment in strengthening the democratic culture in<br />
Pakistan. Apart from NADRA’s kiosk machine project and an<br />
eSahulat programme, the ECP SMS app can be considered as<br />
another contribution in the category of alternative channel of<br />
electronic public service delivery which excludes the web portal<br />
as a main communication medium. This app has tried to exploit<br />
the most frequently used gadget, i.e., a mobile phone which does<br />
not even have to be a smart phone to use this app. For a young<br />
democracy like Pakistan the ECP-NADRA collaboration seems to<br />
have contributed to a larger extent in assuring the effective<br />
participation and/or voting equality in Dahl’s sense of effective<br />
democracy. The way multiple governmental agency have<br />
collaborated in the preparation of electoral rolls, the ECP and<br />
NADRA have set up a decent example for other developing<br />
countries how vertical boundaries can be overcome in such inter<br />
agency collaborations. M-government presents a substantive case<br />
in enfranchising the participatory nature and equal rights to<br />
information sharing for all citizens. Once this information divide<br />
is plugged, participation may seep into the public policy<br />
formulation sphere. However, the external implication of mgovernment<br />
on public is not the only factor in their success.<br />
The internal implications that m-government will have in making<br />
the government effective and efficient in its function is also<br />
important. There is diverse literature from organisational<br />
behaviour studies that shows that lack of ownership for projects<br />
from within governments can kill the most promising innovations.<br />
The public and governments are generally seen as complacent in<br />
their business models and more so when accountability and<br />
checks and balances are absent or hindered by fledging,<br />
discontinuous democracies. This is also the political case of<br />
Pakistan, where change in governments leads to entire and sudden<br />
shifts in policy which means squandering the already deficit
public money. As most of the e-government initiatives in<br />
developing countries are based on legacy systems, there is little<br />
scope for backward compatibility for newer front-end<br />
applications. Additional training cost, quality of manpower and<br />
organizational rigidities are hindrances [33] [34], which ideally<br />
the private sector has always adapted better to. Thus, Public<br />
Private Partnerships (PPP) maybe the way forward as public<br />
sector brings in money, employees and better business models,<br />
while the government ensures that the role of governance and<br />
common public good are not lost in capital building.<br />
7. RECOMMENDATIONS<br />
With regards to the case study, certain recommendations that<br />
could facilitate newer m-government initiatives and thus make<br />
room for innovative and useful e-government initiatives which are<br />
user-centric are listed below:<br />
1. Establish a Mobile Service Gateway Delivery system, which<br />
could be an incubation cell for all or any government initiatives<br />
into m-government. It would maintain a technical infrastructure<br />
and staff to help formulate, devise, test-run and then deploy<br />
various m-government initiatives. It would be ideal to have one<br />
central Mobile Gateway with networked centres in all provinces<br />
to keep a balanced and federal linearity in equal funding but will<br />
allow them flexibility to identify preferred areas for action thus<br />
promoting a bottom-up approach.<br />
2. Ensure that the format of the CNIC database is the groundwork<br />
database for all new initiatives for e-government and mgovernment.<br />
This would allow mapping of citizens across<br />
different organizations building up a single unified repository on<br />
user-id with unique biometric features. These would prevent<br />
identity theft or misuse of data, as biometric checks are embedded<br />
within these systems.<br />
3. Establish a market for m-government applications not only for<br />
smartphones but normal cellular phones that can exploit the<br />
location-based context of the mobile phone to provide crucial<br />
information. The Government should provide incentives to mobile<br />
application programmers to compete and design comprehensive<br />
application that can be used to facilitate agricultural, medical and<br />
educational initiatives over the mobile channel.<br />
4. Initiating a standard for mobile applications and incorporating it<br />
within the National e-government plan. The EGD of Pakistan has<br />
to revise and update its e-government strategy plan and design a<br />
separate model for m-government that can be used to benchmark<br />
and help future initiatives on this platform across the public<br />
sector.<br />
5. Pre-designated short codes should be reserved for future mgovernment<br />
initiatives. Reserving short codes on a national level<br />
and then using them for deploying essential services comes in<br />
handy for the recalling abilities of these short codes. Similarly, a<br />
long number should be reserved which would be the touch point<br />
of all m-government initiatives. It would feature a menu-based<br />
Interactive Voice Response (IVR) menu that would serve to be a<br />
repository for accessing, using and interacting with all mgovernment<br />
initiatives through oral occupation thus involving<br />
illiterate or technically challenged citizens.<br />
6. Developing mobile websites for all government websites which<br />
would have the same URL but would divert the user to the mobile<br />
website after it has been established that it is being accessed<br />
through mobile. Mobile websites need to be text-rich and without<br />
164<br />
too many graphics, and they should be available in the national as<br />
well as regional languages.<br />
8. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS<br />
The authors are indebted to the technical wing of National<br />
Database Registration Authority (NADRA) for their assistance in<br />
providing information about the case study.<br />
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/over-4-6m-citizens-verify-vote-through-sms/<br />
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51-60.
Integrating Argumentation Technologies and<br />
Context-Based Search for Intelligent Processing<br />
of Citizens’ Opinion in Social Media<br />
Carlos Chesñevar,<br />
Ana Maguitman<br />
Dept.of Computer Science and Eng.<br />
Universidad Nacional del Sur<br />
Av. Alem 1253<br />
8000 Bahía Blanca, Argentina<br />
+54 291 459 5135<br />
{cic,agm}@cs.uns.edu.ar<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
Nowadays, governments are adopting Web 2.0 technologies for<br />
interacting with citizens, empowering them to share their views,<br />
react to issues of their concern and form opinion. In particular,<br />
social media play an important role in this context, due to their<br />
widespread use. For governments, a major technical challenge is<br />
the lack of automated intelligent tools for processing citizens’<br />
opinion in government social media. At the same time, during the<br />
last decade, argumentation theory has consolidated itself in<br />
Artificial Intelligence as a new paradigm for modeling common<br />
sense reasoning, with application in several areas, such as legal<br />
reasoning, multiagent systems, and decision support systems,<br />
among others. This paper outlines an argument-based approach<br />
for overcoming such challenge, combined with context-based<br />
information retrieval. Our ultimate aim is to combine contextbased<br />
search and argumentation in a collaborative framework for<br />
managing (retrieving and publishing) service- and policy-related<br />
information in government-use social media tools.<br />
Categories and Subject Descriptors<br />
J.1 [Administrative Data Processing]: Government; I.2<br />
[Artificial Intelligence]: Learning; H.3 [Information Storage<br />
and Retrieval]: Information Search and Retrieval<br />
General Terms<br />
Algorithms, Human Factors, Languages<br />
Keywords<br />
Social media; Government 2.0; e-Governance; Participation;<br />
Intelligent Tools<br />
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for<br />
personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are<br />
not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies<br />
bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for<br />
components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored.<br />
Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to<br />
post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission<br />
and/or a fee.<br />
ICEGOV '12, October 22 - 25 2012, Albany, NY, United States, NY, USA<br />
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1200-4/12/10…$15.00.<br />
Elsa Estevez<br />
United Nations University<br />
Int. Institute for Software Technology<br />
Center for Electronic Governance<br />
P.O. Box 3058, Macao SAR, China<br />
+853 85040491<br />
elsa@cs.uns.edu.ar<br />
166<br />
Ramón Brena<br />
ITESM Monterrey<br />
Av. E. Garza Sada 2501,<br />
Col. Tecnológico, 64849 Monterrey,<br />
N.L., México<br />
+52 81 8358-2000 ext. 5246<br />
ramon.brena@itesm.mx<br />
1. INTRODUCTION AND MOTIVATIONS<br />
Government 2.0 refers to government's adoption of Web 2.0<br />
technologies to socialize government services, processes, and data<br />
[1][2]. Enabling new ways of communication – text, audio, video<br />
as well as two-way communications, Government 2.0 provides<br />
new mechanisms for government agencies to: 1) increase<br />
transparency – bringing public sector agenda and government<br />
activities closer to citizens [3], 2) facilitate participation –<br />
engaging citizens in making opinion and contributing to policydecision<br />
making; and 3) enhance service delivery – pushing<br />
service-related information and gathering citizens’ opinions about<br />
service delivery. As an example of Government 2.0 adoption, the<br />
Government of Singapore offers a directory of the web 2.0 and<br />
other social media initiatives, such as Facebook pages, Flickr<br />
photostreams, Twitter accounts, and YouTube channels, among<br />
others; used by government agencies [4].<br />
Aware of the benefits and willing to pursue them, governments<br />
first need to overcome various types of challenges posted by<br />
Government 2.0. In particular, the use of social media requires<br />
governments to overcome challenges related to privacy, security,<br />
data management, accessibility, social inclusion, governance and<br />
policy-related issues [5]. Focusing on the data management<br />
perspective, only integrating data streams from social media<br />
requires solving two important issues: 1) the magnitude of the<br />
information flow associated with such data streams (e.g. Twitter<br />
disseminates 55 million tweets a day), and 2) extracting<br />
meaningful information –social media data streams are usually<br />
incomplete which may be potentially inconsistent, as citizens<br />
might have different views on a certain issue.<br />
Addressing technical challenges of data management in<br />
government-use social media tools, this paper presents DECIDE<br />
2.0 – a framework integrating argumentation technologies and<br />
context-based search for intelligent processing of citizens’ opinion<br />
in social media. The framework relies on text mining and opinion<br />
mining techniques to filter noise and detect main topics being<br />
discussed by citizens in social media. Recognizing that the use of<br />
such techniques is not a common government practice, the main<br />
contribution of DECIDE 2.0 is to provide an automated tool for<br />
extracting arguments based on citizens’ opinions. The framework
will enable to assess and confront pro- and cons- arguments to be<br />
used by policy makers and government officials as inputs in<br />
decision making processes.<br />
The rest of the paper is structured as follows. Section 2 presents<br />
an overview of the framework; while Section 3 explains the main<br />
technologies applied in DECIDE 2.0 – context-based search and<br />
argumentation using Defeasible Logic Programming (DeLP).<br />
Finally, Section 4 outlines a roadmap for future work.<br />
2. DECIDE 2.0 - OVERVIEW<br />
DECIDE 2.0 aims at extending the current state of the art of web<br />
2.0 technologies by integrating existing social media tools with<br />
argumentation and context-aware technologies. Following its aim,<br />
DECIDE 2.0 combines context-based search [6] and<br />
argumentation [7] in a collaborative system for managing<br />
(retrieving and publishing) service- and policy-related information<br />
in social media tools used by governments. Therefore, DECIDE<br />
2.0 contributes to a more enhanced set of Government 2.0 tools.<br />
Context of<br />
e-Government-<br />
related<br />
issue<br />
Citizens<br />
Citizens’<br />
Opinion<br />
Knowledge<br />
base<br />
post<br />
opinions<br />
C2) Argument-based<br />
decision making<br />
C1) Extracting opinions<br />
using context-based<br />
search<br />
3. INTEGRATING ARGUMENTATION<br />
AND CONTEXT-BASED SEARCH<br />
Our approach involves two main stages: a) context-based search<br />
from social media - C1 in Figure 1; and b) argumentative decision<br />
making on the basis of the obtained information – C2, C3 and C4<br />
in Figure 1. Next we will analyze these two stages in more detail.<br />
3.1. Context-Based Search for Social Media<br />
Context-based search in Twitter is an instance of context-based<br />
search in general [6]. The task of context-based search could be<br />
applied in many different situations. For example, a<br />
contextualized suggestion interface could be useful to a journalist<br />
for exploring information sources while she writes a news article.<br />
It could also be helpful to a researcher, to identify novel but<br />
r<br />
Citizens’ Opinion<br />
Database<br />
Fig. 1. DECIDE 2.0 Framework<br />
DECIDE 2.0 was originally presented in [8] and a revised version<br />
of its architecture is presented in Figure 1. The architecture<br />
comprises four main components: C1) Extracting Opinions -<br />
based on data provided by social media, extracts citizens’<br />
opinions on a given theme using context-based search and<br />
produces formal predicates, and stores opinions and predicates in<br />
a knowledgebase; C2) Argument-based Decision Making – based<br />
on the generated knowledgebase, the component selects predicates<br />
on a given theme; C3) Applying DeLP Web Services – predicates<br />
are analyzed with DeLP web services to assess whether they<br />
follow some assumptions or not; C4) Producing Global<br />
Assessment – based on the results of the previous stage, arguments<br />
are classified into pro- and cons- and are consolidated into a<br />
global assessment of citizens’ opinion on a given theme.<br />
Even though DECIDE 2.0 is intended to capture citizens’ opinions<br />
from different social media, our current research is particularly<br />
focused on the use of Twitter. Consequently, in what follows we<br />
will outline part of our ongoing research in this direction.<br />
SOCIAL MEDIA TOOLS<br />
167<br />
C3) Applying Defeasible<br />
Logic Programming<br />
(DeLP) web services<br />
C4) Producing global<br />
assessment of citizens’<br />
opinions<br />
post<br />
policy-related<br />
issues<br />
Citizens’<br />
Opinion<br />
(with details for<br />
policy-making<br />
oriented<br />
decisions)<br />
Government<br />
Officials<br />
related material to consider or to help assure that relevant areas<br />
have been considered in her research work.<br />
To illustrate our approach, we define a case study where<br />
government stakeholders involved in a particular policy area are<br />
interested in collecting opinions from Twitter on a topic that is<br />
openly discussed by community members.<br />
One of the goals of the proposed framework is to develop a topic<br />
suggestion tool that has the capability of identifying a set of<br />
opinions that share a common theme. We assume that a citizen’s<br />
opinion refers to a certain theme and contains several terms. In<br />
turn, the opinion may be related to one or more topics and it is<br />
possible to associate each topic with the related terms in the<br />
citizen’s opinion. In addition, the suggested topics can be<br />
evaluated in the light of a set of criteria for assessing their quality.
The concepts are illustrated in Figure 2. Technically. given a<br />
corpus of opinions O = {o1, o2, … ,om}, and a universe of possible<br />
terms K ={k1, k2, …, kn}, we consider a topic ti of an opinion oj to<br />
be a nonempty subset of the terms ki1, …, kip contained in K<br />
satisfying a set of criteria for topic quality. In this sense, a topic<br />
can be characterized as a set of cohesive terms associated with<br />
opinions that share a common theme.<br />
Fig. 2. DECIDE 2.0 Concepts<br />
A contextualized search system starts with a piece of text d<br />
reflecting a general context or topic of interest td and identifies a<br />
set N = {t1, t2, …, tq} of new topics related to topic td. The<br />
performance of the main component of the system - a<br />
contextualized topic suggester, can be judged according to various<br />
criteria [10]:<br />
o Global coherence: The new suggested topics (topics in N)<br />
must be relevant to the general topic of interest td.<br />
o Local coherence: Each suggested topic must be of high<br />
quality according to the criteria of the domain. Such criteria<br />
might include: 1) measures of coherence - each topic<br />
description is constituted of tightly related terms and opinions,<br />
2) descriptiveness - the terms used to identify the topics are<br />
good descriptors, 3) discriminative power - the terms help<br />
differentiate among other suggested topics , 4) conciseness -<br />
the topic is summarized in few terms; etc.<br />
o Coverage: The set of new suggested topics (N) must contain<br />
most of the topics considered to be relevant.<br />
o Novelty: The set of new topics (N) must go beyond the<br />
information captured in the initial topic td.<br />
o Diversity: topics in N must be sufficiently diverse from each<br />
other.<br />
Using context-based search, given a set O of opinions provided by<br />
citizens via Twitter and a set of possible terms K on a topic of<br />
community discussion td, we can identify new topics associated<br />
with those opinions. Clearly, users might confront opinions,<br />
including positive or negative remarks within their tweets.<br />
Sentiment analysis techniques [11][12] allow to determine the<br />
attitude of a speaker (citizen) or a writer with respect to some<br />
topic or the overall contextual polarity of a document (e.g.<br />
positive, negative, neutral). As a final result, we will be able to<br />
identify different logical predicates associated with a user’s<br />
opinion, the topics involved, and the attitude of the speaker.<br />
As an example, consider the following piece of text d (extracted<br />
from http://www.conservapedia.com):<br />
ObamaCare, more formally known as "The Patient Protection and<br />
Affordable Care Act," was passed by Congress on March 21,<br />
2010, and signed into federal law by President Barack Obama on<br />
March 23. This law began the process to socialize the United<br />
States health care system. The centerpiece of ObamaCare is the<br />
individual mandate, a provision that makes it mandatory for every<br />
citizen to purchase private health insurance, which is<br />
unprecedented in American history.<br />
168<br />
By applying techniques described in [13] it is possible to identify<br />
a set of good topic descriptors and topic discriminators (e.g.<br />
preventive health care , obamacare, etc.) as well as a list of<br />
representative hashtags associated with this topic, such as #hcr<br />
and #obamacare. A context-based search system might then<br />
identify the following set of opinions, among others:<br />
o1: Thanks for the new health law, pregnant women can receive<br />
many free preventive health services and screenings. (tweeted by<br />
user U1)<br />
o2: Health care reform does not make health care more<br />
affordable it makes people buy something they can’t afford.<br />
(tweeted by user U2)<br />
From the opinions above, logical predicates can be extracted,<br />
structuring previous information in logic programming fashion:<br />
opinion(o1, “Thanks for…”)<br />
opinion(o2, “Thanks for…”)<br />
topic(t1, preventive health care)<br />
useropinion(u1,o1, t1, positive)<br />
useropinion(u2,o2, t1,negative)<br />
Such set of logical predicates derived from citizens’ opinions on a<br />
particular context will provide a Citizens’ Opinion Knowledgebase<br />
(see Figure 1), on top of which an argumentative analysis<br />
will be carried out.<br />
3.2. Argumentation using DeLP<br />
Over the last few years, argumentation systems have been gaining<br />
increasing importance in several areas of Artificial Intelligence,<br />
mainly as a vehicle for facilitating rationally justifiable decision<br />
making when handling incomplete and potentially inconsistent<br />
information [7]. Argumentation provides a sound model for<br />
dialectical reasoning, which underlies discussions or opinion<br />
confrontation in social networks.<br />
Rule-Based Argumentation Systems, such as Defeasible Logic<br />
Programming (DeLP) [14] are increasingly being considered for<br />
applications in developing software engineering tools, constituting<br />
an important component of multi-agent systems for negotiation,<br />
problem solving, and for the fusion of data and knowledge. Such<br />
systems implement a dialectical reasoning process by determining<br />
whether a proposition follows from certain assumptions,<br />
analyzing whether some of those assumptions can be disproved by<br />
other assumptions in our premises. In this way, an argumentation<br />
system provides valuable help to analyze which assumptions from<br />
our knowledge base are really giving rise to inconsistency and<br />
which assumptions are harmless.<br />
In DeLP we refer to a knowledgebase as a pair of sets (KS, KD),<br />
distinguishing strict and defeasible knowledge. Strict knowledge<br />
(KS) corresponds to the knowledge which is certain; typical<br />
elements in KS are statements or undisputable facts about the<br />
world (e.g. adopting the representation used in logic<br />
programming, implications of the form Q(x)←P(x)). The strict<br />
knowledge is consistent, i.e. no contradictory conclusions can be<br />
derived from it. Defeasible knowledge (KD) corresponds to that<br />
knowledge which is tentative, modelled through “rules with<br />
exceptions” (defeasible rules) of the form “if P then usually Q”<br />
(e.g., “if somebody is a citizen, it usually votes”). Such rules<br />
model our incomplete knowledge about the world, as they can<br />
have exceptions (e.g., a citizen may be travelling abroad without<br />
access to a voting place, or may not be willing to vote).<br />
Syntactically, a special symbol (⇐) is used to distinguish<br />
“defeasible” rules from logical implications.
The underlying DeLP process is as follows. Given a particular<br />
query Q - e.g. assessing whether ObamaCare Programme is<br />
supported by citizens’ opinions – isSupported(ObamaCare),<br />
DeLP will automatically perform a backward chaining process to<br />
obtain a sequence of defeasible rules instantiations allowing to<br />
conclude Q. Such a sequence is called an argument supporting Q.<br />
Clearly, as contradictory information can be present in the<br />
defeasible knowledgebase, counter-arguments might arise (e.g. an<br />
argument supporting ~isSupported(ObamaCare). When two<br />
arguments A and B are in conflict, a preference criterion is used in<br />
DeLP to determine which argument should prevail. The argument<br />
that prevails will be called a defeater. The preference criterion to<br />
be applied (e.g. specificity [14]) can be defined in a modular way.<br />
Note that the notion of defeat among arguments may lead to<br />
complex “cascade” situations: an argument A may be defeated by<br />
an argument B, which in turn may be defeated by an argument C,<br />
and so on. Besides, every argument involved may have on its turn<br />
more than one defeater. Argumentation systems allow us to<br />
determine when a given argument is considered as ultimately<br />
acceptable with respect to the knowledge we have available by<br />
means of a dialectical analysis, which takes the form of a tree-like<br />
structure called dialectical tree. The root of the tree is a given<br />
argument A supporting some claim, and children nodes for the<br />
root are those defeaters B1, B2, .. Bk for A. The process is repeated<br />
recursively on every defeater Bi, until all possible arguments have<br />
been considered. The tree leaves are arguments without defeaters.<br />
Some additional restrictions apply - e.g. the same argument<br />
cannot be used twice in a path, as that would be fallacious and<br />
would lead to infinite paths.<br />
In DECIDE 2.0 we expect to have a knowledge engineer with<br />
expertise in DeLP, who will be in charge (along with egovernment<br />
officials) of characterizing a knowledge base of strict<br />
and defeasible rules for assessing valuable aspects for policymaking<br />
oriented decisions. Through suitable visualization tools,<br />
the DeLP machinery will provide an automated dialectical<br />
analysis of arguments and counterarguments when facing a<br />
problematic situation (associated with a particular topic or context<br />
for decision making), helping government officials to make better<br />
and more informed decisions. It must be remarked that DeLPbased<br />
recommender systems have been already successfully<br />
formalized [15]. A particular deployment of DeLP for integrating<br />
sentiment analysis and recommendations has also been applied<br />
previously in a commercial software product for travelling<br />
recommendations [16]<br />
4. BRIEF ROADMAP: CONCLUSIONS<br />
Research on the proposed framework will lead directly to<br />
improved coverage, scalability and context-awareness with<br />
respect to the current model of information delivery and retrieval<br />
in social networks. Governments can greatly benefit from the<br />
proposed solution in twofold - by having adequate mining<br />
techniques to retrieve valuable information provided by citizens<br />
on social media, and by targeting different announcements to the<br />
appropriate group of government stakeholders.<br />
In order to materialize the proposed solution, some important<br />
technical problems are to be solved, and constitute research<br />
questions of this work. Major challenges that we intend to address<br />
defining a roadmap for our future work include: 1) developing<br />
algorithms for integrating information - several users may post<br />
messages related to the same topic; hence accrual of information<br />
needs to be modeled properly; 2) implementing efficient models<br />
of trust and reputation propagation - users post information on<br />
social media whose reliability has to be assessed in order to<br />
169<br />
effectively use such information for decision making; and 3)<br />
developing customized information models providing targeted<br />
information to various categories of stakeholders requires having<br />
different “views” of the issues under analysis.<br />
5. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS<br />
The research is funded by LACCIR (Latinamerican and Caribbean<br />
Collaborative ICT Research), Microsoft Research, CONACyT<br />
(Mexico) and Interamerican Development Bank (IDB) and PIP<br />
CONICET Projects 112-200801-02798 and 112-200901-00863.<br />
6. REFERENCES<br />
[1] O’Reilly, T. Government as a Platform. Innovations, vol 6,<br />
no.1, pp 13-40, 2010.<br />
[2] DiMaio, A., Government 2.0: A Gartner Definition, 2009.<br />
http://blogs.gartner.com/andrea_dimaio/2009/11/13/governm<br />
ent-2-0-a-gartner-definition/, last retrieved 28 February 2012.<br />
[3] Bonson, E., Torres, L., Royo, S., and Flores, F., Local e-<br />
Government 2.0: Social Media and Corporate Transparency<br />
in Municipalities, Government Information Quarterly, vol.<br />
29, pp 123-132, 2012.<br />
[4] Government of Singapore, Government Social Media<br />
Directory, available at: http://www.socialmedia.gov.sg/Web/<br />
Home/Default.aspx, last retrieved 15 April 2012.<br />
[5] Bertot, J.C, Jaeger, P.T, and Hansen, D., The Impact of<br />
Polices on Government Social Media Usage: Issues,<br />
Challenges, and Recommendations, Government Information<br />
Quarterly, vol. 29, pp 30-40, 2012.<br />
[6] Lorenzetti, C., Maguitman, A. A Semi-supervised<br />
Incremental Algorithm to Automatically Formulate Topical<br />
Queries. Information Science. Elsevier. 179 (12), 2009.<br />
[7] Simari, G., Rahwan, I. (eds), Argumentation in Artificial<br />
Intelligence, Springer Verlag, 2009.<br />
[8] Estévez, E., Chesñevar, C., Maguitman, A., Brena, R.<br />
DECIDE 2.0 – A Framework for Intelligent Processing of<br />
Citizens’ Opinion in Social Media. In Proc. dg.o 2012,<br />
Maryland, USA, pp.266-267, ACM Press, 2012.<br />
[9] Guo, L., Lease, M. Personalizing Local Search with Twitter.<br />
SIGIR 2011 Workshop on Enriching Information Retrieval<br />
(ENIR 2011).July 24–28, 2011, Beijing, China. Available at:<br />
http://select.cs.cmu.edu/meetings/enir2011/papers/guolease.pdf.<br />
[10] Maguitman, A., Leake, D., Reichherzer, T., Suggesting novel<br />
but related topics: towards context-based support for<br />
knowledge model extension, Proc. of the 10th IUI Conf., San<br />
Diego, California, USA, January 2005.<br />
[11] Twitter Sentiment Corpus, available at: http://www.<br />
sananalytics.com/lab/twitter-sentiment/, retrieved April 2012.<br />
[12] Bing Liu. "Sentiment Analysis: A Multifaceted<br />
Problem." IEEE Intelligent Systems, 25(3), pp. 76-80, 2010.<br />
[13] Maguitman, A., Leake, D., Reichherzer, T., Menczer,<br />
F. Dynamic Extraction of Topic Descriptors and<br />
Discriminators: Towards Automatic Context-Based Topic<br />
Search. Proceedings of the 13 th CIKM Conf.. ACM Press.<br />
Washington, DC, USA, November 2004<br />
[14] García, A., Simari, G. Defeasible Logic Programming: An<br />
Argumentative Approach. Theory and Practice of Logic<br />
Programming 4(1-2): 95-138, 2004.<br />
[15] Chesñevar, C., Maguitman, A, Simari, G. Recommender<br />
Systems based on Argumentation, in "Emerging Artificial<br />
Intelligence Applications in Computer Engineering".<br />
Maglogiannis et al (eds). Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence<br />
and Applications, Vol. 160, pp. 53-70.. IOS Press, 2007.
[16] Galitsky, B., McKenna, E. Sentiment Extraction from<br />
Consumer Reviews for Providing Product Recommendations.<br />
US Patent Application US 2009/0282019 A1<br />
170
Preparing for Digital Curation Governance: Educating<br />
Stewards of Public Information<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
We report results of research into curriculum development for<br />
dual degree programs and the development of a dual degree<br />
curriculum jointly undertaken by the University of North<br />
Carolina’s School of Information and Library Science (SILS) and<br />
School of Government (SOG). This IMLS-funded program<br />
provides training in public information stewardship to four<br />
cohorts of eighteen masters’ level students. The curriculum<br />
development rests upon previous curriculum development<br />
projects, examination of masters’ programs throughout the world,<br />
semi-structured interviews of public sector information experts,<br />
recommendations from an expert Advisory Board, and focus<br />
group responses from current and alumni project Fellows.<br />
Categories and Subject Descriptors<br />
J.1 [Computer Applications]: Administrative Data Processing –<br />
Government<br />
General Terms<br />
Professional Development, Digital Curation, Electronic<br />
Governance<br />
Keywords<br />
Continuing Education, Digital Information, Public Sector,<br />
Government<br />
1. INTRODUCTION<br />
Curation of digital assets from all sectors of society provides<br />
fundamentally new challenges and opportunities. Nowhere is the<br />
need for stewardship of digital content greater than with<br />
government information. Government activities and services are<br />
now predominately performed using computer systems, and many<br />
interactions with government are now performed over the<br />
Internet. According to a recent study, 82% of internet users (61%<br />
of all American adults) “looked for information or completed a<br />
transaction on a government website” in the past year [7]. There<br />
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for<br />
personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are<br />
not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies<br />
bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for<br />
components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored.<br />
Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to<br />
post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission<br />
and/or a fee.<br />
ICEGOV '12, October 22 - 25 2012, Albany, NY, United States, NY, USA<br />
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1200-4/12/10…$15.00.<br />
Christopher A. Lee and Helen R. Tibbo<br />
School of Information and Library Science<br />
University of North Carolina<br />
216 Lenoir Drive, CB #3360<br />
1-(919)-962-7024<br />
callee, tibbo@email.unc.edu<br />
171<br />
has been a dramatic push in many countries toward open access to<br />
government data, which will only be successful if appropriate data<br />
are retained and long-standing issues of data fragmentation can be<br />
addressed [6].<br />
The public administration literature uses the term “governance”<br />
for the exercise of authority and control, in order to advance goals<br />
of the state. In contrast to “government,” which suggests<br />
established structures, governance is a continually evolving and<br />
interactive set of processes. The governance concept has spawned<br />
many associated terms within both the public and private sectors,<br />
including corporate governance, information technology<br />
governance, and data governance. Effective governance requires<br />
an understanding of stakeholder needs, existing policies, social<br />
norms, individual behaviors, incentive structures and<br />
characteristics of potential implementation mechanisms.<br />
“Digital curation governance” is an increasingly important arena<br />
of activity with associated requirements for professional education<br />
and engagement: ensuring the quality, integrity, discovery, access,<br />
and meaningful use of digital collections over time. Digital<br />
curation governance is a shared responsibility that requires<br />
extensive communication, collaboration and mutual learning.<br />
Those advancing the cause of digital curation governance must<br />
have skills and competencies to navigate the policy arena, manage<br />
projects, mobilize stakeholders and dig into the bits of digital<br />
collections.<br />
Many schools of information and library science have established<br />
curricula to prepare professionals to establish and administer new<br />
arrangements between information, technology and people. As<br />
these professionals move into higher levels of responsibility and<br />
authority, they engage not only in management but also in<br />
governance, which includes “specifying the decision rights and<br />
accountability framework to encourage desirable behavior in the<br />
use” of information and technology [14].<br />
A common theme in the literatures on governance and digital<br />
curation has been the shared and distributed nature of the<br />
activities. Governance can be driven and shaped by many nongovernment<br />
actors, facilitated by changes in the geopolitical<br />
landscape [10] and information technologies [9]. Successful longterm<br />
stewardship of public information depends upon<br />
contributions and actions of individuals from various sectors.<br />
This will require “effective governance mechanisms…to<br />
aggregate the collective interest into an effective preservation<br />
strategy that ensures that the effort and cost of preservation are<br />
appropriately apportioned” [3]. Innovative and timely professional<br />
education will need to support new forms and features of<br />
governance.
2. NEW NEEDS AND EXPECTATIONS<br />
Navigating the current environment increasingly requires the<br />
development and implementation of clear policies for data<br />
curation. The National Association of State Chief Information<br />
Officers (NASCIO) includes among its top state CIO priorities for<br />
2011: document/content/records/e-mail management; data and<br />
information management; data ownership in cloud computing;<br />
and data governance [11]. Supporting, documenting and<br />
evaluating government activities requires responsible stewardship<br />
of public digital information, which will involves coordinated<br />
efforts by a diversity of players. Professional education for<br />
stewards of public information is most effective if it can<br />
incorporate fundamental elements of both library and information<br />
science (LIS) and public administration curricula.<br />
Many records services and archives have developed and<br />
advocated standards, policies and guidelines for public officials.<br />
The most common examples are email policies, metadata<br />
standards and recordkeeping system functional requirements.<br />
While these documents are valuable, they have often not been<br />
implemented widely and rarely carry enforcement mechanisms.<br />
Records professionals often have not integrated the documents<br />
into the larger arenas of policy and public administration in which<br />
they operate.<br />
Based on early experiences with electronic records, two<br />
prominent themes in the literature are that records professionals<br />
must collaborate with and draw expertise from other professionals<br />
[8][12], and records professions must influence practices within<br />
the public sector, rather than focusing solely on the management<br />
of records already transferred to archival repositories [2].<br />
As public digital information was becoming ubiquitous, there was<br />
significant parallel growth in “strength and individualization in<br />
graduate level archival education programs, a dramatic increase in<br />
full-time, tenure-track faculty, a growing number of course<br />
offerings often eclipsing the LIS offerings in an archival student’s<br />
course of study, and the nascent development of degrees<br />
acknowledging the archives and records field” [5]. Within the<br />
United States, “new archivists and career changers (from another<br />
career into archives) increasingly view the master’s degree as a<br />
necessary requirement” with a master of library and information<br />
science (MLIS) or an equivalent being “the degree of choice” [1].<br />
Unfortunately, these developments have not yet translated into<br />
widespread education on electronic records [1], nor have most<br />
records professionals had any formal education in issues of policy<br />
development, implementation or analysis. We believe it is<br />
important to develop clear tracks of graduate study that (1) attract<br />
students who already have an interest in government service, (2)<br />
bring government service opportunities to the attention of those<br />
already pursuing ARM careers, and (3) be built in programs that<br />
have a robust technology infrastructure.<br />
3. EDUCATING STEWARDS OF PUBLIC<br />
INFORMATION<br />
In 2009, the School of Information and Library Science (SILS)<br />
and School of Government (SOG) at the University of North<br />
Carolina, Chapel Hill (UNC-CH) began a project called Educating<br />
Stewards of Public Information in the Twenty-First Century<br />
(ESOPI-21), funded by the Institute of Museum and Library<br />
Services (IMLS). The project has redesigned and enhanced a dual<br />
degree program that was earlier developed by SILS and the SOG.<br />
172<br />
Students in the program earn dual MSIS/MPA or MSLS/MPA<br />
degrees, in order to prepare for careers in stewardship of digital<br />
information in the public sector. In 2011, IMLS funded a second<br />
project called Educating Stewards of the Public Information<br />
Infrastructure (ESOPI 2 ).<br />
The ESOPI projects have developed educational and professional<br />
engagement opportunities. They fund two cohorts of eighteen<br />
graduate-level Fellows, who are pursuing dual degrees at SILS<br />
and SOG. The projects build on the work of two other IMLSfunded<br />
projects: the DigCCurr I & II (Digital Curation<br />
Curriculum) projects.<br />
4. DUAL-DEGREE CURRICULUM<br />
The MSIS/MSLS and MPA dual degree program at UNC-CH is<br />
offered jointly by SILS and the SOG. It integrates policy<br />
development, issues of legal compliance, and knowledge of<br />
government structures and information with principles, values,<br />
methods and technologies of the information professions.<br />
4.1 Master of Information/Library Science<br />
The School of Information and Library Science (SILS) at UNC-<br />
CH offers two masters degrees: Master of Science in Information<br />
Science (MSIS) and Master of Science in Library Science<br />
(MSLS). Each degree requires 48 semester hours, which students<br />
usually complete in four semesters (two academic years) of fulltime<br />
study. This includes 24 semester hours of required core<br />
courses and 24 semester hours of elective courses. Students must<br />
also complete a comprehensive exam and a master’s paper.<br />
The MSLS and MSIS core courses address five functional areas:<br />
organization, collection and retrieval, information-related<br />
behavior, design and evaluation, and management. The majority<br />
of the required courses are the same for both degrees. The<br />
differences are: MSLS students complete courses on Information<br />
Resources and Services (INLS 501) and Resource Selection and<br />
Evaluation (INLS 513), while MSIS students complete a course<br />
on Information Retrieval (INLS 509); and MSIS students take a<br />
class on Systems Analysis (INLS 582), which is not required for<br />
MSLS students.<br />
4.2 Master of Public Administration<br />
The Master of Public Administration degree at the SOG is also<br />
designed to be completed in two years of full-time study.<br />
Students must complete at least 44 semester hours of course work.<br />
Core courses address: Public Administration Institutions and<br />
Values, Organization Theory, Public Service Leadership, Public<br />
Administration Analysis and Evaluation, Professional<br />
Communications, Human Resource Management, Public<br />
Financial Management, and Law for Public Administration.<br />
MPA students must also complete of a summer-long management<br />
internship in a position with meaningful administrative<br />
responsibilities, and a portfolio during the final semester of study.<br />
One component of the portfolio is a comprehensive oral exam.<br />
4.3 MPA and MSIS/MSLS Dual Degree<br />
The UNC-CH MPA/MSIS and MPA/MSLS dual degree program<br />
is designed to prepare students to deal with information issues in a<br />
variety of public sector settings. This dual degree opportunity is<br />
designed as a three-year, full-time program, requiring at least 71
semester hours. Nine of the forty-four (44) semester hours<br />
required for the MPA may be counted from the SILS curriculum,<br />
and twelve of the forty-eight (48) semester hours required for the<br />
SILS degree may be counted from the MPA curriculum.<br />
5. PRACTICAL ENGAGEMENT<br />
COMPONENT<br />
Project Fellows engage in coursework and simultaneously work<br />
for 15 hours per week (or 360 hours over the summer) at one of<br />
the projects’ participating partner institutions: the National<br />
Archives and Records Administration, University Archives at<br />
UNC-CH, North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources,<br />
Town of Chapel Hill, NC Orange County’s CIO’s Office, NC-<br />
LIVE, the H. W. Odum Institute of Research in Social Science,<br />
and UNC-CH Environmental Finance Center. The ESOPI projects<br />
have provided fellowships to eighteen students 2009-2014.<br />
Tasks performed by the fellows have included the creation of<br />
various policies and policy-related guidance documents (on social<br />
media, email, and text messaging), authoring an article on<br />
eDiscovery software capabilities, revising and developing new<br />
online training modules, and advising government energy<br />
efficiency and water quality programs on possible financing<br />
options and institutional arrangements.<br />
6. RESEARCH METHODS<br />
ESOPI research has included investigation of functions and<br />
activities reflected in current research literature; professional<br />
association guidance on key curricular needs; and current<br />
offerings of graduate programs in public policy, information<br />
science, and archives and records management.<br />
The project has engaged in various research approaches, including<br />
a comprehensive literature and website review of information and<br />
library science and public administration masters-level programs,<br />
a series of interviews with Advisory Board Members, a series of<br />
interviews with public sector information experts, and a focus<br />
group study of current and alumni Fellows from the project.<br />
In 2010, we conducted two sets of semi-structured phone<br />
interviews with experts in public administration and public<br />
information management. The first eight interviews were with<br />
members of the ESOPI advisory board. These were followed by<br />
interviews with ten public-sector professionals who had presented<br />
their work at the 2010 Best Practices Exchange.<br />
In 2011, we conducted a focus group with four ESOPI fellows in<br />
their final semester of the dual degree program. The discussion<br />
revealed many program strengths, challenges and opportunities<br />
for improvement.<br />
7. FINDINGS<br />
Findings can be characterized in terms of factors related to<br />
“stewardship of public information,” desired knowledge and<br />
competencies, current professional challenges, and SILS/SOG<br />
dual degree integration.<br />
7.1 Interviews<br />
When asked to explain what is meant by “stewardship of public<br />
information,” participants in our studies have provided a variety<br />
of answers, often emphasizing characteristics of stewardship that<br />
173<br />
are particularly relevant to their own jobs or disciplines.<br />
However, there were four main themes that emerged from the<br />
interview data about this issue. First, many interview participants<br />
discussed the importance of being able to understand and apply<br />
the definition of public record, whatever that might be within<br />
one’s particular jurisdiction. A second theme was balancing<br />
privacy or confidentiality on the one hand with public access on<br />
the other. A third theme was that of needing to understand the<br />
value of public information (what makes certain forms of<br />
information valuable and how to convey that importance to<br />
relevant stakeholders). Finally, interview responses suggested the<br />
need to differentiate the role of custodian as opposed to owner<br />
which may overlap but often reside in different individuals or<br />
organizations).<br />
Many of the interview questions related to desired knowledge and<br />
competencies. Participants identified many different responses,<br />
which we have grouped into three broad categories: contextual<br />
background knowledge; technical and operational skills; and<br />
social skills and approach to work (see Table 1).<br />
Table 1 - Desired Knowledge and Competencies<br />
• Contextual background knowledge - how government works,<br />
legal frameworks, accountability mechanisms, third party<br />
agreements and contracts, comprises in information<br />
lifecycle, balance between privacy and accessibility,<br />
planning and evaluation processes, project management and<br />
requirements definition and design, recordkeeping<br />
requirements, patterns of information use, environmental and<br />
budgetary drivers of workplace evolution<br />
• Technical and operational skills - integrating technological<br />
knowledge with understanding of government functions and<br />
processes; allocating storage and space; identifying and<br />
recommending access methods, preservation techniques and<br />
system designs; data quality and data management, metadata<br />
and access provision via interface design; identifying and<br />
explaining which information does or does not have longterm<br />
value; data and workflow modeling<br />
• Social skills and approach to work - verbal and written<br />
communication skills; teamwork skills; “thinking on one’s<br />
feet”; appreciating importance of speaking carefully and<br />
thoughtfully in the public sector; commitment to open<br />
government and public accountability; focus on creating<br />
efficiency and economy in processes; thinking at the<br />
enterprise level to act as change agents; capabilities to gain<br />
sponsorship, build coalitions, and get support by engaging in<br />
stakeholder identification and team building; ability to<br />
“manage people when you are not their boss”; curiosity and<br />
willingness to engage in ongoing education<br />
We also asked interview participants about current professional<br />
challenges. Responses fell into the following categories: limited<br />
funding for infrastructure (including storage); insufficient IT skills<br />
of responsible staff; outreach to stakeholders and making business<br />
case for investment in information stewardship; characteristics of<br />
data creation (large volume, highly distributed, often unstructured,<br />
inconsistent metadata conventions and quality); underdeveloped<br />
user interfaces and access mechanisms; and defining new job<br />
roles and categories.<br />
Members of the ESOPI Advisory Board have also provided<br />
substantial input on how to approach the dual degree, what
practical work experience contexts to pursue, and how to set the<br />
future direction of the dual degree.<br />
7.2 Focus Group and Dual Degree Findings<br />
Our research has revealed numerous benefits and<br />
complementarities of completing both degrees. Interview<br />
participants and graduating ESOPI fellows have identified a<br />
variety of advantages, including complementary knowledge, skills<br />
and perspectives, as well as a wider range of employment<br />
opportunities.<br />
We have also learned about cultural differences between the SOG<br />
and SILS. The SOG has a more regimented curriculum and<br />
smaller number of students, resulting in a more tight-knit cohort<br />
of students. The SOG also places heavy emphasis on preparing<br />
students to behave as public officials, with associated expectations<br />
for personal presentation and interaction. By contrast, SILS has a<br />
more individually-crafted curriculum and a larger set of students,<br />
resulting in less of a cohesive cohort. SILS courses often place<br />
great emphasis on scholarly knowledge and recent research<br />
literature.<br />
Feedback from ESOPI Fellows has revealed that the majority of<br />
content from the MSIS/MSLS and SOG degrees is<br />
complementary, rather than being repetitive. The dual degree has<br />
been designed to allow students to replace similar courses from<br />
one program to the other, e.g. the SOG course on Public Service<br />
Leadership (PUBA 711) can substitute for the SILS course on<br />
Management for Information Professionals (INLS 585). Courses<br />
in the two programs related to research methods, analysis and<br />
evaluation do have similarity in scope, but they address the topics<br />
quite differently given the nature of the two programs. SILS is<br />
considering changes to its research methods course sequence, and<br />
we may need to revisit this area of the dual degree.<br />
8. CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS<br />
Stewardship of public information is a fundamental responsibility<br />
of a democratic society. Providing appropriate access to public<br />
information promotes accountability, rights of citizens, effective<br />
administration of policy, and social memory. Public officials and<br />
public servants must increasingly make and enact decisions<br />
related to information systems; this requires an understanding of<br />
ways in which people, information and technology can best<br />
complement each other. Information professionals are also<br />
increasingly required to engage in policy discussions and<br />
processes; this requires an understanding of the history, principles,<br />
processes and methods of public administration.<br />
Fundamental to ensuring successful e-governance is appropriate<br />
stewardship of the information that supports, documents and<br />
advances governance processes. This work includes its own flavor<br />
of governance, which we have called digital curation governance.<br />
Enabling it will require professionals with a range of skills and<br />
capabilities that may not have previously been considered part of<br />
public administration or the work of information professionals.<br />
We see great potential for advancing professional capabilities<br />
required at the frontier of public information stewardship.<br />
9. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS<br />
Research associated with this work has been supported by the<br />
Institute for Museum and Library Services (Grant Awards # RE-<br />
05-09-0085-09 and # RE-05-11-0076). We would like to<br />
174<br />
acknowledge numerous contributions of Lori Richards to the two<br />
ESOPI projects and to various products reported in this paper.<br />
10. REFERENCES<br />
[1] Bastian, J. and Yakel, E. 'Are We There Yet?'<br />
Professionalism and the Development of an Archival Core<br />
Curriculum in the United States. Journal of Education for<br />
Library and Information Science, 46, 2 (2005), 95-114.<br />
[2] Bearman, D. and Hedstrom, M. Reinventing Archives for<br />
Electronic Records: Alternative Service Delivery Options. In<br />
Electronic Records Management Program Strategies.<br />
Archives and Museum Informatics, Pittsburgh, PA, 1993, 82-<br />
98.<br />
[3] Blue Ribbon Task Force on Sustainable Digital Preservation<br />
and Access. Sustainable Economics for a Digital Planet:<br />
Ensuring Long-Term Access to Digital Information. 2010.<br />
[4] Conference of Directors of National Libraries. Resolution on<br />
the Preservation of the Digital Heritage - Adopted by the<br />
General Conference of UNESCO at the 31st session. United<br />
Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization,<br />
Paris, 2001).<br />
[5] Cox, R. J., Yakel, E., Bastian, J. A., Wallace, D. and<br />
Marshall, J. Archival Education at the Millennium: The<br />
Status of Archival Education in North American Library and<br />
Information Science Schools. Library Quarterly, 71, 2<br />
(2001), 141-194.<br />
[6] Doyle, C. D. Federal Electronic Information in the United<br />
States. In Encyclopedia of Library and Information Sciences.<br />
CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL, 2010, 1823-1833.<br />
[7] Government Online. Pew Research Center, Washington, DC,<br />
2010.<br />
[8] Hedstrom, M. Building Record-Keeping Systems: Archivists<br />
are Not Alone on the Wild Frontier. Archivaria, 44 (Fall<br />
1997), 44-71.<br />
[9] Marche, S. and McNiven, J.D. E-Government and E-<br />
Governance: The Future Isn’t What It Used To Be. Canadian<br />
Journal of Administrative Sciences, 20, 1 (March 2003), 74-<br />
86.<br />
[10] Rosenau, J.N. and Czenpiel, ed. Governance without<br />
Government: Order and Change in World Politics.<br />
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1992.<br />
[11] State CIO Priorities for 2011. National Association of State<br />
Chief Information Officers, October 19, 2010.<br />
[12] Walch, V.I. Maintaining State Records in an Era of Change:<br />
A National Challenge. Council of State Historical Records<br />
Coordinators, 1996.<br />
[13] Wallace, D. A. Survey of Archives and Records Management<br />
Graduate Students at Ten Universities in the United States<br />
and Canada. American Archivist, 63, 2 (Fall 2000), 284-300.<br />
[14] Weill, P. and Ross, J.W. IT Governance: How Top<br />
Performers Manage IT Decision Rights for Superior Results.<br />
Harvard Business School Press, Boston, MA, 2004.
REGNET: Regulatory Information Management,<br />
Compliance and Analysis<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
This paper describes a research effort that aims to develop<br />
information infrastructure and tools to facilitate access,<br />
compliance and analysis of government regulations. It is well<br />
recognized that the complexity, diversity, and volume of<br />
government regulations are detrimental to business and hinder<br />
public understanding of government. The burden of complying<br />
with regulations can fall disproportionately on small businesses<br />
since these businesses may not have the expertise or resources to<br />
keep track of the regulations and the requirements. The situation<br />
can potentially be improved by developing appropriate tools that<br />
can help facilitate the regulatory and compliance process. To<br />
illustrate, this paper discusses the applications of information<br />
technology for selected services related to regulations, such as<br />
compliance assistance, comparison of regulation from diverse<br />
sources, and e-rulemaking.<br />
Categories and Subject Descriptors<br />
H.3.3 [Information Storage and Retrieval]: Information Search<br />
and Retrieval – retrieval models, I.2.1 [Artificial Intelligence]:<br />
Applications and Expert Systems – law.<br />
General Terms<br />
Algorithms, Management, Legal Aspects.<br />
Keywords<br />
regulations; compliance assistance; relatedness analysis; erulemaking;<br />
information retrieval; e-government.<br />
1. INTRODUCTION<br />
This paper provides an overview of the REGNET research project<br />
at Stanford University, which aims to gain insights on information<br />
infrastructure and tools that can facilitate access, compliance,<br />
analysis and use of government regulations. Regulations, in<br />
general, provide many social benefits, such as protecting our<br />
environment and improving public safety and accessibility.<br />
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for<br />
personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are<br />
not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies<br />
bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for<br />
components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored.<br />
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ICEGOV '12, October 22 - 25 2012, Albany, NY, USA<br />
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1200-4/12/10...$15.00<br />
Kincho H. Law and Gloria Lau<br />
Engineering Informatics Group<br />
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering<br />
Stanford University<br />
Stanford, CA, 95014, USA<br />
law@stanford.edu; glau@stanford.edu<br />
175<br />
However, the complexity, diversity, and volume of Federal and<br />
State regulations are detrimental to business and also hinder<br />
public understanding of government. As new issues arise, new<br />
regulations are promulgated; old regulations, however, are rarely<br />
removed. Regulations emanating from different agencies often<br />
overlap; because settings and objectives differ, they may be<br />
inconsistent. The scope of concern and the terminology used to<br />
express those concerns often differs among agencies. The<br />
distributed responsibilities also increase the complexity in dealing<br />
with regulations. Advances in information technology can<br />
potentially improve the situation by developing appropriate tools<br />
that can help facilitate the regulatory process, from rulemaking to<br />
compliance assistance.<br />
“Deciphering and complying with federal regulations is a legal<br />
and paperwork nightmare for many businesses. To keep pace,<br />
some hire consultants--sort of regulatory accountants--to keep<br />
track of the applicable health, safety, environmental and equalopportunity<br />
rules [1].” Regulations can be particularly<br />
burdensome on small businesses since they often do not have the<br />
resources to keep track of and to deal with these complicated<br />
regulations and the compliance procedures. This burden has been<br />
recognized and targeted by legislation through the Regulatory<br />
Flexibility Act (RFA), which was amended by Small Business<br />
Regulatory Enforcement Fairness Act (SBREFA). Agencies<br />
have a commitment to take into account the burden that<br />
regulations can place on small businesses. SBREFA requires that<br />
agencies to establish procedures, policies and guides to promote<br />
compliance with RFA. Agencies published, in accordance to<br />
SBREFA, Small Entity Compliance Guides that are written in<br />
plain language and elucidate the rights of small entities in<br />
enforcement actions (e.g. reducing civil penalties for violations).<br />
Furthermore, agencies, such as EPA, must provide Congress and<br />
the General Accounting Office with copies of all final rules and<br />
supporting analyses [2]. The act clearly recognizes the<br />
information problem facing business, particularly small<br />
businesses, in compliance with regulations. The Small Business<br />
Administration (SBA) (with participation from various federal<br />
agencies, including EPA, FDA, OSHA, etc.) launched an<br />
initiative to build a “one-stop” portal to assist small businesses to<br />
comply with regulations [3]. In recent years, governmental<br />
portals (such as the FirstGov.gov and USA.gov) have emerged to<br />
provide public to gain access to US government information and<br />
services on the web. Government regulations are available online<br />
(for examples, see www.gpoaccess.gov/cfr/ and<br />
www.regulations.gov). Most of the online portals are designed<br />
primarily for displaying the regulatory information and often<br />
usable only by experienced users, who are familiar with the
subject and the portal. Some primitive searching capabilities may<br />
be provided; however, it remains difficult to locate crossreferenced<br />
information and to link the regulatory information with<br />
useful applications. Utilization of advanced information<br />
technologies and development of new and innovative high quality<br />
tools are crucial to move the regulatory information available and<br />
useful to the public.<br />
This paper describes a research effort investigating useful<br />
information services related to regulatory information. The paper<br />
is organized as follows: First, a brief literature review on<br />
applications of IT in laws and regulations is provided in the next<br />
section. Example applications are then presented to illustrate<br />
some of the research issues investigated in the REGNET project.<br />
The paper is concluded with a brief summary and discussion on<br />
current research.<br />
2. LITERATURE REVIEW<br />
Research on information science and technology applicable to<br />
regulations and laws has been active research area for decades.<br />
There has been a great deal of work done on building expert<br />
systems for law [4,5]. T. Bench-Capon provided a review on the<br />
applications of knowledge-based systems for legal applications,<br />
particularly the research and development efforts related to the<br />
Alvey DHSS Demonstrator project in U.K. [6]. The reference<br />
includes several hundreds of citations that appeared before 1990<br />
which are related to logic and rule based approaches and their<br />
application in legal systems. Erdelez and O’Hare also provided<br />
an overview of the research and status of legal informatics in the<br />
1990s [7]. Applications of case-based reasoning and information<br />
retrieval techniques have been proposed [5,8]. Current state on<br />
information technology and laws can also be found in a recent<br />
book edited by Lodder and Oskamp [9]. While legal knowledge<br />
representation and reasoning has been an active research topic, an<br />
integrated approach covering the management of regulations,<br />
efficient access and retrieval of regulatory and related documents<br />
and tools for compliance assistance is missing.<br />
Policies and public interests concerning how IT can be<br />
appropriately and effectively applied to regulation management,<br />
rulemaking and compliance assistance have been actively<br />
discussed in workshops and public forums [10-12]. It has been<br />
recognized that information technologies, including information<br />
retrieval, text mining, knowledge representation, logic reasoning,<br />
natural language processing and many other areas, can find<br />
applications in legal informatics and further enhance the<br />
development of regulatory information systems. Issues such as<br />
what types of support are needed to go from the textual<br />
information of the regulations to the formal models that can<br />
support computations, to integrate and link diverse source of<br />
related documents to regulations, and to provide means to analyze<br />
and compare regulatory data, are fundamentally important to an<br />
effective regulatory information system. Practical applications<br />
require that the computer be able to interpret the situation or<br />
circumstances, scenarios and exceptional cases. Solutions that do<br />
emerge must support the treatment of multiple, heterogeneous<br />
regulations and related documents from diverse sources. Modeling<br />
regulations requires not only the understanding of individual<br />
content within a regulation provision, but also the relationships<br />
among and within provisions as well as mechanisms for linking<br />
applications, supplemental documents and related information<br />
with the regulations. Research in this field must proceed in two<br />
176<br />
parallel tracks: (1) representing the regulations so that they can be<br />
accessed according to the needs of the users and the regulatory<br />
agencies, and (2) structuring the regulations so that they can be<br />
assessed automatically to support applications, such as<br />
compliance assistance, business processes and others. The<br />
research of REGNET investigates information service<br />
infrastructure that takes textual repositories as a base and develop<br />
methodologies and tools to locate, merge, compare, and analyze<br />
the information. This paper describes selected examples to<br />
illustrate some of the research issues investigated in the REGNET<br />
project.<br />
3. A REGULATION-CENTRIC<br />
COMPLIANCE ASSISTANCE<br />
FRAMEWORK<br />
There has been a push for government agencies to put more<br />
emphasis on compliance assistance in lieu of enforcement to<br />
encourage companies to comply with regulations [13]. Towards<br />
this end, specialized programs, using expert system technologies<br />
for example, have been built to assist users in understanding<br />
regulations and fulfilling the requirements [14]. Among the<br />
limitations of many compliance assistance systems is that the<br />
tools do not directly map or link to the source documents that they<br />
represent. Our research adopts a regulation-centric approach to<br />
structuring a compliance assistance system around the regulation<br />
itself [15,16]. The rules together with the metadata about the<br />
regulations are directly embedded within the provisions they<br />
represent. This framework allows clear linkages to the regulation<br />
text. Because all encoded regulation rules are tied to particular<br />
regulation provisions, it is straightforward to map the compliance<br />
process to the provisions. The following briefly describes the<br />
structure of the document repository for the regulations and the<br />
regulation assistance system.<br />
3.1 A. Document Repository<br />
The scope of our research and the document repository<br />
demonstrative development cover Title 40 of the US Code of<br />
Federal Regulations (40 CFR): Protection of the Environment<br />
[17]. Besides the regulations themselves, the repository also<br />
includes supplementary and supportive documents that are<br />
important for the accurate interpretation of the federal<br />
regulation(s) to which they refer [18]. 1 For the research<br />
prototype, supplemental documents dealing with used oil, which<br />
include the preamble to the regulation text found in 40 CFR 261<br />
and 279, administrative decisions, guidance documents, federal<br />
cases, letters from the general counsel and letters of interpretation<br />
from the issuing agency. The document repository is designed not<br />
1 Supplementary and supportive documents are important part of<br />
regulatory information and are commonly considered in<br />
judiciary decisions. To illustrate, for the case “Beazer East, Inc.<br />
v. U.S. EPA, Region III” (963 F.2d 603, 3 rd Cir. 1992), Beazer<br />
East, Inc., argued that the aeration basins were “tanks”, not<br />
“surface impoundments”, and were therefore not subject to<br />
RCRA’s groundwater-monitoring regulations. The court ruled<br />
in favor of EPA by considering the so called “Weddle<br />
memorandum”, which was issued to clarify the definitions of a<br />
“tank” and a “surface impoundment,” as an interpretive rule,<br />
which can be exempted from the notice and comment<br />
requirements of the Administrative Procedures Act.
Search Terms/ Concepts<br />
References<br />
Definitions<br />
only to facilitate displaying the provisions but also to support<br />
compliance assistance by making these important documents<br />
more accessible.<br />
A document-centric repository is designed to structure and to<br />
organize the regulation texts and metadata. Mirroring the<br />
standard structure of regulations, the XML-based framework<br />
includes tags for each level of regulation text – for example part,<br />
subpart, section or subsection. A parsing system using basic<br />
pattern matching according to the regulation structures is built to<br />
transform the regulations from Portable Document Format (PDF)<br />
or HTML into the XML-based document framework. In addition<br />
to the regulation texts, the XML-based structure is augmented<br />
with regulation-specific metadata, including concept tags,<br />
reference tags and definition tags (see Figure 1).<br />
o With existing text mining and information retrieval tools,<br />
concepts can be generated automatically or semiautomatically<br />
from the regulation texts. The concept tags<br />
are introduced so that links to related supporting documents<br />
in the document repository can be dynamically generated.<br />
This is useful because supporting documents and regulations<br />
may not directly reference each other even when they<br />
address the same topic. The automatic application of concept<br />
tags to the XML framework means that as new supporting<br />
documents are added to the document repository, regulations<br />
stored in the framework can automatically be linked to them<br />
via the terms that they share.<br />
o Regulation provisions tend to include casual references to<br />
other provisions. Simple references (for example, “as stated<br />
in 40 CFR section 262.14(a)(2)”) and complex references<br />
(for example, “the requirements in subparts G through I of<br />
this part” as in part 265) exist. Manually translating such<br />
references would be time consuming. A parsing system was<br />
developed using a context-free grammar and a semantic<br />
representation/interpretation system that is capable of tagging<br />
regulation provisions with the list of references they contain.<br />
The references serve not only for retrieval of related<br />
provisions, but also provide a list of provisions that may<br />
require consideration during the compliance checking<br />
process.<br />
o Regulation contain many domain-specific terms and<br />
acronyms that can make regulation text difficult for novices<br />
Search by Concept Category<br />
Letter of of Interpretation<br />
(a) Definition, definition and concept tags (b) Retrieving supporting document using concepts<br />
Figure 1: Metadata defined for regulations<br />
177<br />
to understand. Adding the definition tags would allow a<br />
regulation viewing system to incorporate explicit definitions<br />
of terms and acronyms into its user interface (for example,<br />
by mousing over the term). Definitions can be extracted<br />
from the regulations (and other sources) and automatically<br />
attached to the terms identified by a parser.<br />
3.2 Compliance Assistance<br />
Our research of a compliance assistance infrastructure builds upon<br />
the XML regulation framework and takes advantage of the<br />
regulation metadata described earlier. Besides the concept,<br />
reference and definition tags, logic and control processing<br />
metadata are added into the XML regulation framework. The<br />
logic metadata represents a rule or concept from a regulation. First<br />
Order Predicate logic sentences are used to represent the rules that<br />
must be followed for an entity to be in compliance with the<br />
regulations. Control processing metadata provides information<br />
about what provisions need to be checked for compliance.<br />
Metadata are also introduced to manage the interaction between<br />
the user and the system. Each logic or control processing<br />
metadata is associated with a specific regulation provision and is<br />
manually tagged with logic and control process metadata.<br />
The compliance assistance system controls the process by taking<br />
advantage of the metadata information. First, the system parses<br />
the XML-structured regulation to extract the information<br />
necessary to run a compliance check. Only those logic rules and<br />
control processing metadata (based on the information from the<br />
reference tags) are acquired and dynamically loaded into the<br />
reasoning system. Logic reasoning tools, such as a theorem<br />
prover, can then be used to perform the logic checks [19].<br />
One essential feature of the web-based compliance assistance<br />
system is that it helps guide the user through the regulations.<br />
Utilizing the metadata tagged with the regulations, the system can<br />
link to any referenced regulation provisions and display terms and<br />
definitions. Key conceptual phrases for the provision are<br />
displayed and linked, enabling instant access to repository<br />
documents related to the provision. When the system completes<br />
the check against the regulation provisions or detects a conflict<br />
between the user’s answers and the regulation, it displays a<br />
summary of the question-and-answer history as well as the results<br />
of the compliance check.
One can easily build a compliance system for specific application<br />
utilizing the regulation compliance assistance system and the<br />
repository as a back end. To illustrate, Figure 2 shows linking the<br />
provisions from the used oil regulations of the New York state to<br />
the federal regulations implemented in the prototype. The online<br />
guide is built for vehicle maintenance shops to check compliance<br />
with the used oil based on paper-based 2002 guide developed by<br />
the New York State department of Environmental Conservation<br />
Prevention Unit [20]. As noted in Figure 2(b), the provision<br />
references 40 CFR 279.23, which can be used as a link to the<br />
regulation assistance system, as shown in Figure 2(c). Figure<br />
2(d) shows the compliance result which shows the questions,<br />
answers and the related provisions that contributed to the logical<br />
conclusion.<br />
There are many challenges in developing a compliance assistance<br />
system. The regulation-centric approach where the document<br />
repository includes not only the regulation documents but also the<br />
supplemental document as well as rules and computational logic<br />
embedded within the provisions can offer many advantages.<br />
First, because users can see the regulation text as they interact<br />
with the system, users may have better understanding of the<br />
results produced by the system. Second, since users can see the<br />
regulations during compliance process they may be able to learn<br />
how the regulation works, and re-tracing the results easier for<br />
validation purposes. Third, with supplementary documents<br />
linking with the regulation, users can not only track how the<br />
system is proceeding with its analysis, but also enquire<br />
background information on the intents and issues of the<br />
regulations, and directly address the questions that the regulation<br />
is intended. Fourth, updating the system as the regulation changes<br />
would become easier, since with the mapping between the<br />
regulation and the rules in the system, what parts of the system<br />
need to be changed become more obvious when the regulation is<br />
altered. Last but not least, even though regulations are often<br />
ambiguous, contain many exceptions, and are not written in the<br />
(a) Vehicle maintenance shop compliance guide (b) Compliance guide for used oil<br />
(c) Compliance guides linking to RAS (d) Results displaying questions, answers and provision<br />
Figure 2: A regulation assistance system<br />
178<br />
form that is computationally sound, the regulation texts are often<br />
well structured and organized. By implementing the compliance<br />
assistance system according to the regulation structure can greatly<br />
facilitate modular development of a compliance assistance system.
4. COMPARATIVE STUDIES OF<br />
REGULATORY INFORMATION<br />
Government regulations should ideally be understandable and<br />
retrievable with ease by practitioners as well as the general public.<br />
Requirements for a given situation could be different from<br />
different regulations. Multiple sources of regulations, for<br />
instance, from the Federal, State and local governments, amend,<br />
complement and potentially conflict with one another.<br />
Regulations from different agencies on similar and related issues<br />
could differ and inconsistent with their intents. There are many<br />
reference guides that are published independent of governing<br />
bodies, attempting to help the public to better understand and<br />
comply with the regulations. The regulations, amending<br />
provisions and interpretive manuals together create a massive<br />
volume of documents with potentially similar content but possible<br />
differences in format, terminology and context. An information<br />
infrastructure that can consolidate, compare and contrast different<br />
regulatory documents will greatly enhance and aid the<br />
understanding of regulations.<br />
Retrieving and interpreting particular US government regulations<br />
have become easier with the establishment of government portals<br />
to enhance transparency to the public. For example, business.gov<br />
(or sba.gov) is a centralized portal that contains information to<br />
guide business owners and entrepreneurs through government<br />
rules and regulations and to identify resources that can help them<br />
start, grow and succeed in business. Regulations.gov provides a<br />
forum for users to comment on existing and pending federal rules.<br />
Government portals now provide useful information to help<br />
citizens to access regulations and submit feedbacks. However,<br />
what is needed is an information framework that enables<br />
individuals and small businesses with limited resources to retrieve<br />
related regulations from multiple copies of governing regulations<br />
and related regulatory documents and then perform comparative<br />
analysis. The REGNET project seeks to establish such a<br />
framework and have initiated a number of studies focusing on US<br />
national and regional regulations and codes in the domains of<br />
environmental and accessibility standards.<br />
4.1 Relatedness Analysis of Regulatory<br />
Documents<br />
Text document comparison, in particular similarity analysis<br />
between documents, has been an active research area in<br />
Information Retrieval [21,22]. Regulatory documents differ from<br />
generic text documents in that sections are organized<br />
hierarchically and they are heavily cross referenced. As noted<br />
earlier, a wide variety of meaningful concepts can be extracted<br />
and categorized using text mining and information retrieval tools.<br />
However, terminologies used in the regulations for a specific<br />
application, such as hazardous wastes, are better defined than free<br />
form text documents. On the other hand, common sense or<br />
dictionary knowledge may not substitute domain knowledge;<br />
“lift” and “elevator”, for example, are synonymic terms in normal<br />
English usage, but each have specific meanings in accessibility<br />
regulations. In addition to traditional information retrieval<br />
179<br />
techniques, our framework exploits the structural organization of<br />
the regulatory documents, references and their distributions, and<br />
the “bounded” terminology set to further enhance comparative<br />
analysis of regulations [23-25]. To illustrate, we compare<br />
similarities between sections from different regulations. Our<br />
attempt is to identify the most related provisions between different<br />
regulations. The “relatedness” analysis framework takes into<br />
consideration the structure (section hierarchy, referencing) of the<br />
document and the features (concepts, synonyms, etc.) that are<br />
specific to the corpus. In our current approach, a base score for<br />
each pair of provisions is first computed by matching extracted<br />
features (including concept phrases, synonym information,<br />
measurements and units, etc..). The scoring scheme for each of<br />
the features essentially reflects how much resemblance can be<br />
inferred between the pair of sections based on that particular<br />
feature. The score is then refined by taking into account the<br />
hierarchical organization of regulations. Finally, we further refine<br />
the score by considering reference distribution, which takes into<br />
account that regulations are heavily self-referenced and crossreferenced.<br />
Figure 3 shows an example that reveals the similarity (almost<br />
identical texts) discovered between sections from Parts 141-143 of<br />
40 CFR and Division 4 of 22 CCR on regulations related to<br />
drinking water [17,26]. It is not uncommon that one agency<br />
directly adopts provisions issued by another agency. However,<br />
subtle differences exist and can have significant effects to the<br />
public. As an example, Figure 4 shows the barium requirements<br />
for drinking water by both the US EPA and the California DHS<br />
[17,26]. While the two provisions contain identical texts (except<br />
for the agencies), a careful reader might also note that the EPA<br />
and the California DHS do have different barium requirements –<br />
the EPA requires 2 parts per million while the California DHS<br />
sets the requirement at 1 part per million. This example also<br />
illustrates the importance of domain knowledge, where a<br />
measurement comparison would reveal that these two provisions<br />
are not identical, even though the wordings are almost the same.<br />
Another interesting application for comparison analysis is to<br />
locate similar provisions from different states [27].<br />
In developing a regulation information management (RIM)<br />
system that would allow searching, retrieving and comparing<br />
regulations, domain knowledge plays a very important role in<br />
understanding regulations and the relationships between them.<br />
For instance, different regulations use different chemical<br />
acronyms, such as TTHM or HAA (used in 40CFR) and “total<br />
trihalomethanes” or “haloacetic acids” (appeared in 22CCR).<br />
Besides typical text mining and information retrieval<br />
methodologies, we believe a knowledge driven approach,<br />
combining with similar analysis, is a powerful way to develop a<br />
RIM system. In particular, distinct knowledge sources or<br />
regulations do not have to be made completely consistent, only<br />
the terms and the concepts that articulate their application<br />
connections are involved. Ontological information (terms,<br />
features and relationships) commonly used by industry experts<br />
can be important to search and compare regulations for specific<br />
industry sectors and regulatory domains [28,29].
Figure 3: Comparison of similar sections in 40CFR [17] and 22CCR [26] on drinking water regulations<br />
40.cfr.141.32.e.16 Barium<br />
The United States Environmental Protection<br />
Agency (EPA) sets drinking water standards and<br />
has determined that barium is a health concern<br />
at certain levels of exposure. . . .In humans,<br />
EPA believes that effects from barium on blood<br />
pressure should not occur below 2 parts per<br />
million (ppm) in drinking water. EPA has set the<br />
drinking water standard for barium at 2 parts<br />
per million (ppm) to protect against the risk of<br />
these adverse health effects. Drinking water<br />
that meets the EPA standard is associated with<br />
little to none of this risk and is considered<br />
safe with respect to barium.<br />
4.2 Comparing Drafted Regulations with<br />
Public Comments<br />
The making of government regulations involves communication<br />
between the issuing agency and the public. During the rule-<br />
22.ccr.64468.1(c) Barium<br />
The California Department of Health Services<br />
(DHS) sets drinking water standards and has<br />
determined that barium is a health concern at<br />
certain levels of exposure. . . In humans, DHS<br />
believes that effects from barium on blood<br />
pressure should not occur below 2 parts per<br />
million (ppm) in drinking water. DHS has set the<br />
drinking water standard for barium at 1 part per<br />
million (ppm) to protect against the risk of<br />
these adverse health effects. Drinking water<br />
that meets the DHS standard is associated with<br />
little to none of this risk and is considered<br />
safe with respect to barium.<br />
Figure 4: Comparison of drinking water standards for barium between US EPA [17] and CA DHS [26]<br />
180<br />
making process, government agencies are required to inform the<br />
public about the drafted rules and to solicit comments and<br />
reviews. E-rulemaking redefines the process of rule drafting and<br />
commenting by utilizing electronic media, such as the Internet.<br />
For example, email has become a popular communication channel<br />
for the public to submit comments on proposed rules.
1105.4 [6]<br />
Content of<br />
Section 1105.4<br />
6 Related Public Comments<br />
The process of e-rulemaking with participation from the public<br />
involves sorting through and organizing a massive volume of<br />
electronically submitted comments. We extended the related<br />
analysis framework to compare drafted regulations with<br />
associated public comments [23,30,31]. To locate related<br />
materials, we use regulation structures and features as well as<br />
certain characteristics of the drafted rules to add knowledge to the<br />
comparison. In particular, most drafted rules are domain-specific,<br />
focusing on a narrowly-defined issue or area of interest. The<br />
relatedness analysis takes advantage of the added knowledge to<br />
facilitate the comparison between the drafted rules and public<br />
comments.<br />
To illustrate, we applied the prototype system to a 15-page drafted<br />
chapter for the ADAAG titled, “Guidelines for Accessible Public<br />
Right of Way,” which has received over 1400 public comments<br />
[32,33]. Figure 5 shows the results indicating the public<br />
comments that are related to a specific drafted rule as well as an<br />
example that is not relevant to the proposed rules. Figure 5(b)<br />
shows a typical pair consisting of drafted section and its identified<br />
related comment. The draft discusses situations that “signal<br />
timing is inadequate for full crossing of traffic lanes,” while the<br />
commenter wrote “walk lights that are so short in duration”. The<br />
result shows the importance of a full content comparison between<br />
provisions and comments is necessary instead of just simple<br />
keyword matching. Figure 5(c) shows a different type of comment<br />
screening that a particular piece of public comment is not latched<br />
with any drafted section. The commenter suggests how a visually<br />
impaired person should practice blindness skills as opposed to the<br />
drafted rule which concerns with installing electronic devices on<br />
streets to help.<br />
Although this experiment is performed on regulations with a<br />
relative small set of comments, the potential of such knowledgedriven<br />
similarity analysis approach could be quite useful for the erulemaking<br />
process, where electronic media, such as emails and<br />
ADAAG rights-of-way draft<br />
1105.4.1 Length<br />
Where signal timing is inadequate for full crossing of all<br />
traffic lanes or where the crossing is not signalized, …<br />
Public comment<br />
Deborah Wood, October 29, 2002<br />
… This often means walk lights that are so short in<br />
duration that by the time a person who is blind realizes<br />
they have the light, …<br />
(b) Related draft rule and comment<br />
ADAAG rights-of-way draft<br />
No relevant section identified<br />
Public Comment<br />
Donna Ring, September 6, 2002<br />
If you become blind, no amount of electronics on your<br />
body or in the environment will make you safe and give<br />
back to you your freedom of movement. You have to<br />
learn modern blindness skills from a good teacher. …<br />
(a) Comparison of drafted rules with public comments (c) Comment not related to drafted rules<br />
Figure 5: Application of relatedness analysis for e-rulemaking<br />
181<br />
the internet, are used by the public to comment on proposed rules<br />
and regulations.<br />
5. SUMMARY AND DISCUSSION<br />
This paper has demonstrated, in a small way, how information<br />
technology can potentially be used effectively to facilitate<br />
regulatory information management and compliance assistance.<br />
The complexity and scale of regulations pose many challenges to<br />
information technology research. In REGNET we have<br />
investigated fundamental issues related to government<br />
regulations, their features, characteristics and properties that need<br />
to be addressed. In this paper, we have presented a regulatory<br />
compliance assistance framework that not only focuses on<br />
translating requirements into computational rules but also takes<br />
into consideration the organization of regulations as well as the<br />
supplementary information that are needed to enable better<br />
understanding and interpretation of the regulations. We have<br />
presented examples to illustrate how advanced IT development<br />
can be applied to facilitate retrieval of regulatory information and<br />
to compare related regulations issued by different agencies and<br />
organizations. The relatedness analysis methodology has been<br />
shown to be potentially useful for supporting the e-rulemaking<br />
process.<br />
Ongoing research in REGNET continues to explore how<br />
information technology can facilitate better understanding of<br />
regulations and public policies. For instance, regulations are<br />
traditionally issued and managed by isolated individual state and<br />
federal agencies. Coordination among different agencies about<br />
what issues agencies need to collaborate and in what capacity is<br />
not always easy. As part of the REGNET effort, Ekstrom has led<br />
the development of a tool to gauge agency involvement in a<br />
specific topic related to marine ecosystem management [34,35].<br />
Utilizing information retrieval techniques and text analysis, the<br />
tool first maps out agency’s involvement in a particular topic
ased on the laws and regulations issued by an agency, and then<br />
analyze possible areas of overlaps and disparities among the<br />
regulations by the different agencies on the topic. The tool has<br />
the potential to identify objectively what agencies are involved in<br />
the management of a topic across sectors and levels of<br />
government. In a collaborative effort with Prof. Jay Kesan at<br />
University of Illinois, our research has been extended to deal with<br />
laws and regulations related to intellectual properties (IP) [36,37].<br />
Information pertaining to IP includes not only laws and<br />
regulations, but also patents, court cases, scientific literature, and<br />
other related data. Our research is to develop a computational<br />
framework that can assist in retrieving related information about a<br />
specific topic across these diverse domains, with the objective to<br />
mitigate and help solve many of the complicated issues involved<br />
in patent filings and compliance.<br />
While our research has demonstrated the potential use of<br />
information science and technology in government regulation<br />
domain, much research and development efforts remain. Among<br />
the challenges include interpretation and validation of regulations,<br />
which are often ambiguous in nature. Translating regulations in<br />
computable rules, even manually, can be difficult. Automated<br />
translations would require the development of formal models for<br />
rule making and rule writing. Last but not least, technology<br />
transfer mechanisms are needed to bridge the gap between<br />
fundamental research demonstration and the development of tools<br />
ready for deployment.<br />
6. ACKNOWLEDGMENT<br />
This research has been partially supported by the National Science<br />
Foundation (Contract Numbers EIA-9983368, EIA-0085998, and<br />
IIS-0811460). The authors would like to thank Professor Gio<br />
Wiederhold of Stanford University for his mentorship in the<br />
REGNET project. The authors would also like to thank Larry<br />
Brandt and Valerie Gregg (former program directors of NSF’s<br />
Digital Government Program), and Sylvia Spengler, (program<br />
director of NSF’s Information Integration and Informatics<br />
program) for their encouragement and supports. The<br />
contributions by the former and current research students of the<br />
Engineering Informatics Group at Stanford University are<br />
gratefully acknowledged. In particular, the regulation assistance<br />
system (RAS) was implemented by Dr. Shawn Kerrigan under the<br />
supervision of the first author. Any opinions expressed in this<br />
paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the<br />
opinions of the National Science Foundation and their<br />
collaborators.<br />
7. REFERENCES<br />
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[14] A. Botkin, “Wizards, advisors and websites, Oh My!<br />
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Commission on Environmental Quality, San Antonio, TX ,<br />
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[15] S. Kerrigan, A Software Infrastructure for Regulatory<br />
Information Management and Compliance Assistance, Ph.D.<br />
Thesis, Stanford University, August 2003.<br />
[16] S. Kerrigan and K.H. Law, “A regulation-centric, logic-based<br />
compliance assistance framework,” Journal of Computing in<br />
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[17] Code of Federal Regulation, Title 40: Protection of<br />
Environment, (Part 260-265: Hazardous Waste Management<br />
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[19] W.W. McCune, Otter 3.0 Reference Manual and Guide,<br />
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Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, IL., 1993<br />
[20] New York State Department of Environmental Conservation<br />
Pollution Prevention Unit., Environmental Compliance And
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2002.<br />
[21] R. Baeza-Yates and B. Ribeiro-Neto, Modern Information<br />
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to Information Retrieval, Cambridge University Press, 2008.<br />
[23] G. T. Lau. A Comparative Analysis Framework for Semi-<br />
Structured Documents, with Applications to Government<br />
Regulations, Ph.D. Thesis, Department of Civil and<br />
Environmental Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford,<br />
CA, August 2004.<br />
[24] G. T. Lau, K. H. Law, and G. Wiederhold. "A relatedness<br />
analysis of government regulations using domain knowledge<br />
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680, 2006.<br />
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analysis of government regulations using structural and<br />
domain information," IEEE Computer, 38(12):70-76, 2005.<br />
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"Relating Taxonomies with Regulations," Proceedings of the<br />
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Artificial Intelligence and Law, 16(3): 277-303, 2008.<br />
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analysis tool for comparing drafted regulations and the<br />
associated public comments," Journal of Law and Policy for<br />
the Information Society, 1(1):95-110, 2005.<br />
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Encyclopedia of Digital Government, May<br />
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[32] ADA Accessibility Guidelines for Buildings and Facilities,<br />
The Access Board, 1998.<br />
[33] Draft Guidelines for Accessible Public Rights-of-Way, US<br />
Architectural and Transportation Barriers Compliance Board,<br />
Washington, DC, 2002.<br />
[34] J. Ekstrom, G. Lau, C.P. Cheng, D. Spiteri, and K. Law,<br />
"Gauging agency involvement in environmental management<br />
using text analysis of laws and regulations," I/S – A Journal<br />
of Law and Policy for the Information Society, 6(2):189-219,<br />
2010.<br />
[35] J. Ekstrom, G. Lau, D. Spiteri, J.C.P. Cheng, and K. Law,<br />
"MINOE: a software to evaluate ocean management in the<br />
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[36] S. Taduri, H. Yu, J.P. Kesan, G.T. Lau, and K.H. Law,<br />
“Developing a comprehensive patent related information<br />
retrieval tool,” Journal of Theoretical and Applied Electronic<br />
Commerce Research, (in press).<br />
[37] H. Yu, S. Taduri, J.P. Kesan, G.T. Lau, and K.H. Law,<br />
“Retrieving information across multiple related domains<br />
based on user query and feedback: application to patent laws<br />
and regulations,” 4th International Conference on Electronic<br />
Governance, Beijing, China, 2010.
Session 7<br />
Policies 2
From Information-Poor to Information-Rich: Bridging<br />
Regional Economic Disparities in Nigeria through e-<br />
Governance<br />
Sanjo Faniran<br />
International Cooperation Department<br />
Plot 421 Constitution Avenue,<br />
Central Business District, Abuja, Nigeria<br />
+2348034264007<br />
sfaniran@npc.gov.ng<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
Most of the recent economic advancement experienced globally<br />
has been driven largely by information and communication<br />
technologies (ICTs) - from Kigali to Kuala Lumpur, Nairobi to<br />
New Delhi - bringing significant changes in development of the<br />
human society through technological innovation and information<br />
dissemination. The pervasive use of digital technologies has, no<br />
doubt, improved people’s day–to–day life in different ways and to<br />
varying extents resulting in “economically-rich” and<br />
“economically-poor” regions of the world, and at the same time,<br />
“information-rich” and “information-poor” societies. This broadly<br />
reflects the differing levels of access and utilization of<br />
information and communication technologies, a phenomenon<br />
referred to as the digital divide. This paper examines the coincidence<br />
between economic disparities and ICT use, both<br />
between and within countries. We argue that just as the adoption<br />
of focused strategies in ICTs by developing countries is bridging<br />
the global digital divide between countries and fast-tracking<br />
economic development in many of today’s emerging economies,<br />
the prioritization, adaptation and rapid diffusion of ICTs through<br />
e-governance could also help reduce economic disparities<br />
between sub-national entities and regions within countries. We<br />
review case studies from India and South Africa, and compare<br />
with Nigeria which aspires to become a top 20 economy by 2020.<br />
By examining the results of the 2010/11 surveys on ICT access<br />
and income-poverty distribution across the country, the paper<br />
highlights the recent efforts by sub-national administrations in<br />
Nigeria to advance e-government, presenting key opportunities to<br />
bridge the growing economic disparities between regions in<br />
Nigeria.<br />
Categories and Subject Descriptors<br />
J.4 [Computer Applications]: Social and Behavioral Sciences –<br />
Economics<br />
General Terms<br />
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for<br />
personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are<br />
not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies<br />
bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for<br />
components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored.<br />
Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to<br />
post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission<br />
and/or a fee.<br />
ICEGOV '12, October 22 - 25 2012, Albany, NY, United States, NY, USA<br />
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1200-4/12/10…$15.00.<br />
184<br />
Kayode Olaniyan<br />
National Bureau of Statistics<br />
Plot 721 Constitution Avenue,<br />
Central Business District, Abuja, Nigeria<br />
+2348038499670<br />
kolaniyan@nigerianstat.gov.ng<br />
Management, Economics<br />
Keywords<br />
Digital Divide, Economic Development, Poverty, ICT Use,<br />
Nigeria<br />
1. INTRODUCTION: THE DIGITAL<br />
DIVIDE AND REGIONAL ECONOMIC<br />
DISPARITIES<br />
A greater number of countries, and their citizens, are gaining both<br />
knowledge of and skills at using modern ICTs, connecting to the<br />
internet, and interacting using multiple media channels at a<br />
rapidly increasing rate. According to the 2012 UN E-Government<br />
Survey, the world average on the e-government index increased<br />
by 10 percent over the last two years led by Europe and the<br />
Americas [6]. One important point that the survey notes, however,<br />
is that the digital divide – the differing levels of access and usage<br />
of ICTs between the developed and the developing world -<br />
remains a phenomenon of growing, rather than diminishing,<br />
importance. This is despite the array of cutting-edge technologies<br />
and evolution of social media and networking tools, which have<br />
re-defined inter-human relationships, government and governance<br />
in many parts of the world. According to a 2006 report, a person<br />
living in a high-income country is over 22 times more likely to be<br />
an Internet user than someone in a low -income country. Secure<br />
Internet servers, a rough indicator of electronic commerce, are<br />
over 100 times more common in high-income countries than in<br />
low-income countries. In spite of their rapid growth in developing<br />
nations, mobile phones are 29 times more prevalent in highincome<br />
countries, and mainline penetration is over 21 times that<br />
of low-income countries [5].<br />
The usage to which many citizens put the internet, mobile phones<br />
and other digital devices to spread information and record (and in<br />
some cases influence) recent events, from Japan’s tsunami to the<br />
different dimensions of the Arab Spring, demonstrate how far the<br />
developing world has come, and how fast it is catching up with<br />
the rest of the world. But despite the achievements towards<br />
bridging the digital divide, and improving its positive impacts on<br />
the society, there are still glaring regional disparities which are<br />
both the causes and consequences of the economic well-being of<br />
the developed world.<br />
With a history of high levels of functional education and<br />
widespread telephony infrastructure, Europe and the Americas as<br />
a whole remain far ahead of the rest of the world regions [6].
Asia, which is home to around three-fifths of the world citizens,<br />
has only around 70 per cent of the level of e-government in<br />
Europe while the level of services in Africa barely squares off at<br />
40 per cent of those in Europe. Within any region, countries at the<br />
lower percentile of e-development do not fare well either. This is<br />
especially true of the lower income countries in both Asia and<br />
Africa. The 10 least e-ready countries in Asia have barely 37 per<br />
cent of the level of e-government in Europe while in Africa the<br />
figure is little more than 20 per cent [6]. Figure 1 below shows<br />
global trends over the last decade in regional progress towards egovernment.<br />
Figure 1: Advances in regional e-government development<br />
(Source: UN E-Government Survey, 2012)<br />
However, this scenario is not entirely hopeless. Within the last<br />
decade in particular, many developing countries especially in<br />
Africa and Asia, have increased their web presence, clearly<br />
utilizing the opportunity to leapfrog the development cycle<br />
through innovative adoption and deployment of ICTs. In Eastern<br />
Africa, for example, mobile money transfer has taken strong roots<br />
in Kenya and Uganda, and rapidly spreading across the continent<br />
[1]. The effects of these technologies on socio-economic<br />
development, gender empowerment, increased schooling rates and<br />
rising income levels have been the subject of many recent<br />
economic literature.<br />
In view of the important role that ICTs play in bridging the digital<br />
divide between countries and regions of the world, can the<br />
deployment of ICTs also bridge the digital divide within countries<br />
to the same extent thereby reducing economic disparities within<br />
the country? This paper addresses this question by examining the<br />
case of Nigeria, a West African nation, which aspires to become a<br />
top 20 economy by 2020. The telecommunications industry<br />
remains the fastest-growing sector in the country, recording<br />
34.38% growth in 2010 and 34.76% in 2011, rapidly transforming<br />
the business, economic and governance landscape across the<br />
country. The rest of the paper is structured as follows: in section<br />
2, a brief review of the methodology employed is presented, while<br />
section 3 discusses the country experiences of India and South<br />
Africa as case studies. In section 4, the Nigerian case is explored<br />
more in-depth with respect to ICT access and the nature of<br />
economic disparities in the country. Section 5 highlights some<br />
opportunities for e-governance to reduce the disparities, while key<br />
challenges to realizing this are presented in section 6. Section 7<br />
concludes the paper.<br />
185<br />
2. METHODOLOGY<br />
A review of two country cases studies – India and South Africa –<br />
is undertaken to examine what the experience of countries with<br />
similar large populations and economic conditions have been with<br />
respect to bridging the digital divide. This is supported by<br />
examining the latest available official data on ICT use and poverty<br />
distribution at sub-national level for the country to determine<br />
whether a relationship exists between access to ICTs and<br />
economic development. For this purpose, access to ICTs is<br />
measured by the percentage of persons who own or have access to<br />
personal computers, mobile phones and internet access.<br />
Economic development, on the other hand, is indicated by the<br />
relative poverty (percentage) rate. Given the strong correlation<br />
between access to internet, and access to personal computers<br />
(estimated at 0.83, or 83%), and the fact that the data series for the<br />
latter is more complete than the former “access to personal<br />
computers” is selected as the better indicator of ICT access, and<br />
hence the measure of the digital divide in Nigeria.<br />
Data is obtained from Nigeria’s National Bureau of Statistics<br />
(NBS) General Household Survey (2010/11) which produced data<br />
on ICT use in Nigeria, as well as the Harmonised Nigeria Living<br />
Standard Survey (2009/10) which produced data on relative<br />
poverty.<br />
3. COMPARATIVE COUNTRY CASE<br />
STUDIES<br />
In this section, we discuss the cases of India and South Africa:<br />
two countries that have undertaken considerable efforts to bridge<br />
the digital divide among sub-national entities and regions in their<br />
domains. India’s global leadership in the IT industry is wellacknowledged<br />
1 . The second most populous nation in the world,<br />
India ranked 125 th on the UN E-Government Development Index<br />
(EGDI) in 2012. India is one of the countries where<br />
telecommunication development activities have gained<br />
momentum in the past decade. Efforts have been made from both<br />
governmental and non-governmental platforms to enhance<br />
telecommunication infrastructure, provide modern technologies to<br />
serve all segments of India’s culturally-diverse society, and to<br />
transform the country into a IT powerhouse. However, the digital<br />
divide still remains significant between rural and urban India [7],<br />
[8]. While the major cities are even at par with some developed<br />
countries, rural areas in states like Eastern Bihar and Orissa are<br />
worse off than several least-developed countries. With respect to<br />
teledensity 2 for example, according to the Telecom Regulatory<br />
Authority of India (TRAI) while States like Delhi and Chennai<br />
have more phones than people (with >100% teledensity rate) the<br />
teledensity in States like Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand are as low as<br />
4.18% and 3.49% respectively. India has around half a million<br />
software developers and is second only to the US, but 300,000<br />
Indian villages do not have a phone connection, 26 per cent of the<br />
population lies below the poverty line and 35 per cent illiterate.<br />
There are only 5 PCs per 1000 people, 9 mobile lines per 1000<br />
and 37 fixed lines per 1000 people in India, which is extremely<br />
low when compared to China.<br />
1 This section relies on [4]<br />
2<br />
Number of landline telephones in use per 100 individuals living<br />
in an area.
To address the divide, specific government initiatives taken<br />
include the CARD project for land administration in Andhra<br />
Pradesh; the Bhoomi project in Karnataka covering over 6 million<br />
farmers and as many records of land ownership; Sourkaryan<br />
project which provides rural cyber hubs in Andhra Pradesh; the<br />
Gyandoot project in Madya Pradesh which facilitates access to<br />
information on crops, weather and markets; and the FRIENDS<br />
project in Kerala for tax and utility payments. These e-governance<br />
initiatives are a clear demonstration of improving rural<br />
infrastructure and information access thus bridging the rural-urban<br />
digital divide in India.<br />
Africa’s largest economy today, South Africa ranks third among<br />
African countries on the 2012 EGDI 3 . There are 9 provinces and<br />
each has its own provincial legislature and Provincial<br />
Administration with various departments responsible for various<br />
aspects of service delivery. Provincial departments are key<br />
agencies of service delivery. Nevertheless, there are<br />
infrastructurally-disadvantaged areas, especially rural areas, with<br />
limited access to electricity and telephone lines.<br />
In summary, both case studies attest to the existence of withincountry<br />
digital divide even in developing countries, just as the<br />
global digital divide exists between the developed and developing<br />
worlds. In the next section, we discuss the Nigerian experience<br />
with respect to the nature of the digital divide and its interactions<br />
with the level of economic disparities across the country.<br />
4. ICT ACCESS AND ECONOMIC<br />
DISPARITIES IN NIGERIA<br />
Nigeria, with population of about 160million in 2012 ranked 162 nd<br />
on the UN E-government development index (2012) and is<br />
recognised among highly-populated (larger than 100 million)<br />
nations that made a special effort to improve service delivery to<br />
large swathes of their populations despite the challenges they face<br />
[6]. Africa’s largest country by population, Nigeria has 36 (subnational)<br />
States split almost equally into Northern and Southern<br />
Nigeria. Development indicators have historically pointed to<br />
better outcomes for the southern part of the country than the<br />
northern part. Nevertheless, it may be useful to add a note of<br />
caution that the evidence here does not warrant any conclusions<br />
regarding the direction of causation. However, the evidence does<br />
suggest a possible relationship between access to ICT and<br />
measure of poverty.The telecommunications industry has<br />
remained the fastest growing sector in the country, generating<br />
hundreds of thousands of jobs, directly and indirectly, and<br />
changing business processes and governance, while linking up<br />
new areas to centres of economic activity. According to the<br />
Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), between February<br />
2011 and February 2012, the number of active mobile phone lines<br />
increased by 10million to just over 92 million lines. Such has been<br />
the phenomenal growth in Nigeria’s mobile telephone market.<br />
Mobile phones represent the device with the highest total access<br />
rate, with nearly 64% of the population having access to mobile<br />
phones, according to data provided by the National Bureau of<br />
Statistics. As shown in Table 1, Anambra, Osun, Kogi, Ogun,<br />
Niger and Lagos (each with more than 85% total access levels)<br />
have the highest percentages of population with mobile phone<br />
access, while States with less than 50% access to mobile phones<br />
3 This section draws heavily from [3]<br />
186<br />
include mostly the Northern States of Zamfara, Kano, Katsina,<br />
Bauchi and Adamawa.<br />
Table 1. Total access to ICTs and relative poverty among<br />
States in Nigeria<br />
State<br />
Phones<br />
(%)<br />
Personal<br />
Computers<br />
(%)<br />
Internet<br />
access<br />
(%)<br />
Relative<br />
poverty<br />
(%)<br />
Kano 36.2 0.4 0.5 72.3<br />
Kebbi 65.0 0.5 0.3 80.5<br />
Zamfara 36.1 0.6 0.5 80.2<br />
Borno 54.1 0.7 N/A 61.1<br />
Sokoto 33.1 0.8 0.3 86.4<br />
Bauchi 42.8 1.1 0.5 83.7<br />
Katsina 39.7 1.3 1.3 82.0<br />
Ebonyi 82.0 1.5 0.8 80.4<br />
Kaduna 54.8 1.9 0.5 73.0<br />
Bayelsa 64.0 2.0 2.0 57.9<br />
Taraba 33.1 2.1 1.7 76.3<br />
Imo 81.9 2.5 2.3 57.3<br />
Benue 55.0 2.6 1.7 74.1<br />
Abia 70.6 2.9 2.6 63.4<br />
Ondo 75.0 3.0 2.1 57.0<br />
Enugu 71.2 3.1 4.0 72.1<br />
Yobe 51.8 3.3 3.0 79.6<br />
Ekiti 77.9 3.6 2.2 59.1<br />
Gombe 62.3 3.7 1.1 79.8<br />
Adamawa 46.5 3.7 1.8 80.7<br />
Nasarawa 74.8 4.1 4.2 71.7<br />
Plateau 67.2 4.5 3.6 79.7<br />
Jigawa 75.4 4.6 2.0 79.0<br />
Kwara 78.0 4.6 2.7 74.3<br />
Akwa Ibom 68.1 4.7 1.5 62.8<br />
Niger 86.2 4.7 4.4 43.6<br />
Delta 76.8 5.2 3.4 70.1<br />
Oyo 81.5 6.0 4.3 60.7<br />
Cross River 54.3 6.3 3.3 59.7<br />
Ogun 87.1 6.4 4.7 69.0<br />
Edo 78.5 6.9 5.0 72.5<br />
Anambra 95.1 8.6 3.4 68.0<br />
Rivers 75.8 9.0 10.8 58.6<br />
Osun 91.9 10.0 8.5 47.5<br />
Lagos 85.6 15.8 27.0 59.2<br />
FCT Abuja 71.8 15.9 14.1 59.9<br />
Kogi 87.6 17.4 8.7 73.5<br />
National 63.9 4.5 3.6 69.0<br />
Sources: Nigeria National Bureau of Statistics General Household<br />
Survey, 2010/11, Nigeria Poverty Profile, 2009/10. A coloured<br />
row indicates a Southern State, otherwise a Northern State.<br />
Further analysis of table 1 indicates that in terms of personal<br />
computer access Kogi, FCT, Lagos, Osun and Rivers have the<br />
highest rates of access to PCs, while Kano, Kebbi, Zamfara,<br />
Borno and Sokoto have the least. Internet access rates suggest the<br />
same trends as access to PCs. These depict, although not<br />
absolutely, the disparity between the Northern and Southern<br />
regions of the country: while the southern states have a generally<br />
higher access rate to ICTs, the Northern States have generally
lower access rates. In terms of relative poverty however, Northern<br />
States have a generally higher poverty level.<br />
Figure 2: Scatter diagram showing the relationship between<br />
access to personal computers and relative poverty in Nigeria<br />
(Source: computed by authors)<br />
The gap in PC access rates in Nigeria suggests that economic<br />
disparities also exist between these States in Nigeria, as reflected<br />
in the differing levels of poverty. This point is further clearly<br />
seen in Figure 2, which shows a negative relationship between<br />
access to personal computers (as a measure of ICT access) and<br />
level of poverty. It can be observed that States with lower levels<br />
of poverty have higher ICT access rates, while states with higher<br />
poverty levels have lower ICT access rates. Overall, many states<br />
in Nigeria have high poverty levels, hence the observations (dots)<br />
in Figure 2 appear clustered toward the upper left corner of the<br />
chart. Nevertheless, the downward sloping line shows clearly the<br />
inverse relationship between ICT access rates and economic<br />
development. Therefore, if ICTs have the potential to lower<br />
poverty rates, as seen in the case of the Southern states, it may be<br />
suggested that increasing ICT access rates for the Northern states<br />
could potentially lower poverty rates so as to reduce the socioeconomic<br />
disparities among states in Nigeria. E-governance<br />
presents a viable opportunity to increase ICT access rates in the<br />
country. This is discussed in the next section.<br />
5. OPPORTUNITIES FOR E-<br />
GOVERNANCE<br />
E-government is about visibility and transparency of government<br />
in the delivery of public services to the citizens, a deliberate and<br />
conscious policy to improve access to information by citizens and<br />
to deliver public services efficiently. In recognition of the critical<br />
role that e-governance can play in accelerating the rate of<br />
economic development in the country, the Federal Government in<br />
mid-2011 created the Ministry of Communication Technology to<br />
provide sectoral leadership and policy guidance to the government<br />
and administering policies to enable Nigeria bridge the digital<br />
divide. [2]. In addition, notable efforts by some state governments<br />
to bridge the divide are on-going. For example, in Lagos, Cross<br />
River and Ekiti, citizens are now comfortable with e-tax forms<br />
while Osun State has announced plans to introduce e-learning in<br />
secondary schools using the tablet device. On another level, the<br />
deployment of electronic governance tools such as community<br />
information centres, e-kiosks etc, offer the necessary support to<br />
private entrepreneurs to thrive especially where such e-<br />
187<br />
governance platforms provide information that may be expensive<br />
to obtain privately such as weather forecasts, educational services,<br />
business support opportunities or agricultural markets information<br />
and prices. By creating such platforms of information exchange,<br />
economic activity is stimulated via private entrepreneurship,<br />
promoting better production, encouraging trade and ultimately<br />
impacting also on socio-economic disparities among States or<br />
regions.<br />
6. CONCLUSION<br />
As Nigeria aspires towards becoming one of the largest<br />
economies in the world by Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by the<br />
year 2020, the challenges to adopting and promoting egovernance<br />
to bridge the digital divide and boost rapid economic<br />
integration need to be overcome. And they are not<br />
insurmountable; but they require political will, effective<br />
prioritization and sufficient financial commitment.<br />
7. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS<br />
We wish to thank the Hon. Minister/Deputy Chairman, National<br />
Planning Commission, Dr. S.U. Usman, for his inspirational<br />
leadership and support for this project. Special thanks also go to<br />
the Statistician-General of the Federation, Dr. Yemi Kale for his<br />
unending encouragement. We also wish to thank Mr. B.O.<br />
Akpanyung, Mr. C.E. Ezeilo, Alhaji Idris and Mr. Yukubu, all of<br />
National Planning Commission for their technical inputs and<br />
insightful comments on the paper.<br />
8. REFERENCES<br />
[1] Demombynes, G. and A. Thegeya. (2012). Kenya’s mobile<br />
revolution and the promise of mobile savings,Policy<br />
Research Working Paper 5988, the World Bank 2012<br />
[2] Johnson, O. (2012) “The ICT industry in Nigeria: A<br />
roadmap”, Federal Ministry of Communication Technology<br />
Abuja, Nigeria (www.fmct.gov.ng)<br />
[3] Langmia, K.(2005). The role of ICT in the economic<br />
development of Africa: The case of South Africa,<br />
International Journal of Education and Development using<br />
Information and Communication Technology, (IJEDICT),<br />
Vol. 2, Issue 4, pp. 144-156.<br />
[4] Shah, M. (2007). E-governance in India: Dream or reality?<br />
International Journal of Education and Development using<br />
Information and Communication Technology (IJEDICT),<br />
Vol. 3, Issue 2, pp. 125-137.<br />
[5] United Nations (2006). Bridging the technology gap between<br />
and within nations, Commission on Science and Technology,<br />
E/CN.16/2006/2<br />
[6] United Nations (2012). United Nations E-Government<br />
Survey, United Nations, New York<br />
[7] Dasgupta, S.; Lall, S. and Wheeler, D. (2002) Policy Reform,<br />
Economic Growth, and the Digital India, Policy Review<br />
Working Paper of the World Bank, No. WPS-2567,<br />
Washington, DC<br />
[8] Singh, Neena (2007) “Bridging the Digital Divide in India:<br />
Challenges and Opportunities”, World Libraries, Vol. 17,<br />
No. 1.
ICT for Development and the MuNet Program- Experiences<br />
and Lessons Learnt from an Indigenous Municipality in<br />
Guatemala<br />
Jorge López-Bachiller<br />
Municipality of Patzún Consultant<br />
2ª calle, 2-75 zona 2, Patzún<br />
Chimaltenango, Guatemala C.A.<br />
+502 45 36 30 88<br />
jlopezbachiller@munetguatemala.org<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
The aim of this paper is to present experiences and lessons learnt<br />
from the use and contribution of Information and Communication<br />
Technologies (ICT) to the development of the MuNet Program<br />
and one of its implementation instances in Patzún (Guatemala).<br />
With 94% indigenous population from the Maya Kaqchikel ethnic<br />
group, Patzun economy is based on agriculture and handicraft.<br />
Since 2005, Patzun Municipality is part of the Efficient and<br />
Transparent Municipality (MuNet) Program of the Organization<br />
of American States (OAS). Due to the MuNet Program, Patzun<br />
citizens and the local government were empowered through the<br />
use of ICT and ICT-based applications. As a result, citizens’<br />
quality of life and governance processes were improved.<br />
Categories and Subject Descriptors<br />
H.4 [Information Systems Applications]; J [Computer<br />
Applications] - J.1 Administrative Data Processing – Government<br />
General Terms<br />
Performance, Experimentation, Human Factors<br />
Keywords<br />
MuNet; Modernization; Local Government; Digital Divide; ICT;<br />
Indigenous Population; Guatemala<br />
1. INTRODUCTION<br />
Located in the central part of Guatemala, Patzun has a population<br />
of 52,000 - 94% of them indigenous from the Maya Kaqchikel<br />
ethnic group. Agriculture products are the main income for 90%<br />
of the population. Before 2005, the community had poor access to<br />
ICT services. Informing citizens was not a priority for the local<br />
government and citizen’s participation was restricted to<br />
development tasks and community councils.<br />
The rest of this paper is structured as follows. Section 2 presents<br />
the MuNet Program; while Section 3 one of its instantiation -<br />
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for<br />
personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are<br />
not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies<br />
bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for<br />
components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored.<br />
Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to<br />
post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission<br />
and/or a fee.<br />
ICEGOV '12, October 22 - 25 2012, Albany, NY, USA<br />
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1200-4/12/10...$15.00<br />
Javier Saenz-Core<br />
MuNet II Project Coordinator<br />
Italia 536 B- B8000DKL<br />
Bahía Blanca, Argentina<br />
+54 9 291 4545726<br />
jsaenzcore@gmail.com<br />
188<br />
Diego Cardona<br />
Universidad del Rosario<br />
Calle 12 C No 4 – 80 of 1-01<br />
Bogotá, Colombia<br />
+57 311 2395061<br />
diego.cardona@urosario.edu.co<br />
Patzun Municipality. Challenges and lessons learnt from Patzun<br />
experience are discussed in Sections 4 and 5, respectively.<br />
Conclusions are drawn in Section 6.<br />
2. MUNET PROGRAM<br />
Continuous developments of ICTs have opened new opportunities<br />
to transform governments. Electronic Government (e-<br />
Government) refers to the ICT-based transformations of<br />
government structures and processes aiming at improving<br />
efficiency in government operations, enhancing interactions with<br />
citizens and other social actors, reducing transaction costs and<br />
incrementing users’ satisfaction on public services [14].<br />
In Latin America, municipalities are the government level where<br />
most social development activities take place. Therefore, actions<br />
oriented to enhance relationships between citizens and public<br />
administrations should start at the municipality level to guarantee<br />
immediate perceptible changes. Following this principle, the<br />
MuNet Program was designed as part of the cooperation activities<br />
among the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA)<br />
[15], the “Andes Foment Corporation“ (CAF) [16] and the<br />
Executive Secretariat for Integral Development (SEDI) [17] from<br />
OAS. The aim of the MuNet program is to help Latin American<br />
municipalities in the adoption of ICT, as a tool to increase<br />
transparency, efficiency and citizen participation.<br />
The Program was launched in Latin America in 2005. Comprising<br />
two phases, 11 countries and 22 municipalities, including Patzún,<br />
participated in Phase I. The Program methodology comprised<br />
achieving political support from the mayor or local authority,<br />
creating a MuNet team with municipality personnel and<br />
developing e-Government strategies. In 2010, the Phase II of the<br />
Program was started, with four participating countries - Panama,<br />
Guatemala, Paraguay and Costa Rica, and 179 municipalities.<br />
3. MUNET IMPLEMENTATION PATZÚN<br />
EXPERIENCE<br />
The execution of the MuNet Program in Patzun lasted for four<br />
years. In such time frame, the municipal budget was USD 6M,<br />
from which USD 32,000 were dedicated to ICT. Despite the<br />
scarce resources, the municipality was able to achieve its ICTrelated<br />
strategic objectives due to international cooperation and<br />
optimal management. The implemented ICT initiatives are<br />
explained below.
3.1 Municipality Modernization<br />
Initially, the Municipality had five old computers. The new<br />
municipal government purchased new hardware and software.<br />
Currently, 25 computers are available.<br />
3.2 Internet Installation<br />
The Municipality used to have a non-stable 256 kbps Internet<br />
connection. This service was only available to the Mayor, the<br />
Treasurer, and the Secretary. To improve the service, a telephone<br />
company (Telgua) was hired to provide a service of 1 MHz.<br />
Wiring of all municipality offices was made and currently 30 staff<br />
have Internet access. Due to the increase in personnel, more<br />
installations are being made in new offices.<br />
3.3 Employee’s Training<br />
One feature of Patzún Municipality is the continuous renewal of<br />
its staff. Therefore, new personnel have to be trained to acquire<br />
the required skills. 35% of the personnel do not have email<br />
accounts or do not use them properly. To overcome this difficulty<br />
a corporative email platform “@patzun.gob.gt” was deployed. In<br />
addition, personnel has to be trained in the focused use of internet<br />
and its applications to improve the services provided to citizens,<br />
and to work with others government departments. To promote a<br />
correct use of ICT, a user manual has been developed and is<br />
shared with the new staff. In addition, more communication<br />
devices are planned to be adopted.<br />
3.4 MuNet Team<br />
When the MuNet Program started, a MuNet team of consultants<br />
was assembled and trained. Over time, this team has been<br />
restructured with the incorporation of new members. Nowadays,<br />
the team has a Program Manager, who leads and defines the<br />
strategy.<br />
3.5 Free Internet Access to Community<br />
A part of the strategy to close the digital gap, Internet access has<br />
been provided by the Municipality to the community. Two free<br />
access points were installed equipped with donated computers.<br />
The time for the use of computers is restricted so more users can<br />
benefit from the service.<br />
3.6 Community Digital Center<br />
To reduce the digital gap, citizens need to be educated in the use<br />
of ICT. In order to contribute to this task, national and<br />
international institutions helped to create a Digital Community<br />
Center. Opened in 2010, the Center offers free ICT-basic courses<br />
(office and communication tools) to the community and<br />
government institutions.<br />
3.7 Government Website<br />
A very important element of the Municipality ICT-driven<br />
development has been the deployment of its website -<br />
www.patzun.gob.gt. The website provides information about the<br />
history, culture and geography of Patzun; as well as information<br />
about the government’s agenda and how citizens can be involved.<br />
Some sections, particularly those dedicated to history and culture,<br />
include multimedia materials, relying on free tools as Picasa and<br />
YouTube.<br />
3.8 Language Stimulation<br />
To promote and protect the Kaqchikel language, a team is creating<br />
a Wikipedia version of the municipal website in Kaqchikel. The<br />
189<br />
team members are linguistics, Kaqchikel speakers and local and<br />
international collaborators. Social development is tightly related<br />
to the promotion and protection of their culture. For this reason<br />
the content of the municipal website is presented in Spanish and<br />
Kaqchikel.<br />
3.9 Inter-Institutional Coordination<br />
The success of the project mainly relied on the support received<br />
from the Municipality, various public institutions and private<br />
companies, as well as individual contributions of collaborators<br />
from Guatemala and other countries. Mainly, the project was<br />
developed and coordinated by MuNet OAS, public institutions at<br />
Patzún and the National Secretary of Science and Technology<br />
(SENACYT) [18], Guatemala.<br />
3.10 Other Initiatives<br />
Some other experimental ICT-related initiatives are being<br />
developed in Patzún in specific vertical domains: e-Health, e-<br />
Safety, e-Learning, and e-Prevention. Results obtained so far are<br />
positive, show the potential of ICT use.<br />
4. CHALLENGES<br />
After presenting the overview of the MuNet Program and concrete<br />
examples of one implementation instance – the case of Patzún<br />
Municipality, this section discusses some of the main challenges<br />
faced during the project implementation and the adopted<br />
approaches to overcome it:<br />
o Resources – The Municipality faced difficulties to allocate<br />
resources to the project. Resources are limited or needed for<br />
other initiatives. Approach: To implement small actions with<br />
great impact on the population and thus convince the authorities<br />
about the benefit of investing on the project.<br />
o Human capital – The community lacked qualified human<br />
resources able to teach informatics. Approach: To foster<br />
international cooperation and appeal to national organizations<br />
to contribute with such resources.<br />
o Resistance to change – Municipal staff showed resilience to<br />
change and adopt new working practices. Approach: To<br />
manage cultural change and show how community members<br />
become familiar with the use of ICT.<br />
o Adoption of new practices – The team was uncertain about the<br />
acceptance from public employees to adopt ICT as a tool to<br />
enhance their efficiency, and apply it for creating new<br />
applications. Approach: To show enhanced efficiency in the<br />
management, leading and showing by examples how staff can<br />
innovate on their daily work.<br />
o Changing staff - Some personnel previously trained on ICT did<br />
not continue working at the municipality and new staff was<br />
hired after the elections in 2011. Approach: The new<br />
government hired younger staff that was more familiar with<br />
ICT.<br />
o Lack of support from central government – During the<br />
implementation of Phase I there was lack of support from the<br />
central government. Approach: In January 2012, the national<br />
government created the Digital Agenda for the Change, which<br />
is expected to generate decentralized actions. Municipal staff<br />
participated in meetings at the national level aiming at<br />
identifying ICT-related decision making areas or impact areas.<br />
o Lack of strategy to bridge digital divide - Guatemala does not<br />
have similar initiatives to reduce the digital gap. Approach: At<br />
the local level, the two community centers provided free<br />
internet access and delivered training on basic ICT
competencies and skills, contributing to reduce the digital<br />
divide.<br />
o Lack of awareness about potential benefits of ICT – Local<br />
authorities possess limited knowledge on ICT and its potential.<br />
Approach: Communicate in a massive and effective way to<br />
municipal authorities the benefits achieved through the use of<br />
ICT.<br />
5. LESSONS LEARNED<br />
The following two sections present some lessons learnt from<br />
Patzún Municipality (Section 5.1) and from the MuNet Program<br />
(Section 5.2).<br />
5.1 Patzún Municipality<br />
o Strategy for Digital Divide – The first important aspect to<br />
consider is to create a strategy to reduce the digital divide. Two<br />
mainstream topics of such strategy should be indigenous people<br />
development and inclusion.<br />
o Inter-disciplinarity – The project would have benefitted more<br />
from a multidisciplinary team.<br />
o Motivation – Part of the success of the project relied on the<br />
highly-motivated team.<br />
o Communication – The effective communication of both strategy<br />
and implemented activities is crucial to raise the interest of<br />
other institutions, creating the awareness and support that the<br />
program requires.<br />
o Stakeholders’ Participation – To enrich the opportunities and<br />
benefits of the program, participation of representatives from<br />
different areas - i.e. health, education, youth, is required.<br />
o Continuous Training – The support of local authorities is<br />
needed to ensure continuous efforts to building human capacity.<br />
o Efficiency –The program proved the efficiency to change<br />
traditional styles of working, reducing costs through the use of<br />
ITC tools.<br />
o Awareness – After taking the online e-Government course<br />
delivered by the MuNet Program, the awareness raised and<br />
competencies developed among government staff constituted a<br />
key factor to design and implement e-Government strategies.<br />
5.2 MuNet Program<br />
Community development in any municipality must be<br />
accompanied with the provision of access to ICT. Since<br />
indigenous populations have fewer resources and opportunities,<br />
their inclusion in the knowledge society requires the<br />
implementation of e-Government initiatives. However,<br />
implementing such initiatives much rely on the political will of<br />
community leaders and national authorities.<br />
Major qualitative impacts of the MuNet Program include:<br />
o Identifying municipal government strategic objectives in the<br />
short, medium and long term<br />
o Inspiring municipalities to improve their ICT infrastructure to<br />
enhance connectivity<br />
o Implementing online services for citizens<br />
o Contributing to increase citizen’s trust in the municipal<br />
government<br />
o Expanding team members’ perspective beyond the local<br />
context, stressing the importance of ICT in global development.<br />
o Deploying ICT applications to monitor the execution of projectrelated<br />
tasks.<br />
190<br />
Lessons learnt from the execution of Phase I of the MuNet<br />
Program are classified into the following perspectives:<br />
o Program Planning – It is important to define the terms of<br />
reference of project consultants and local stakeholders, and to<br />
establish local teams ensuring that interdisciplinary and<br />
multiple skills are represented.<br />
o Training – Officials and municipal workers should have a<br />
preparatory phase for the program implementation. Technology<br />
Adoption – A wide gap was identified among cultural and<br />
social diversity across teams. To overcome differences,<br />
required and essential organizational changes were<br />
implemented and a record of the identified technical challenges<br />
was maintained for future improvements. Additionally, as long<br />
as the program implementation progresses and ICT becomes<br />
embedded in the administration, new ICT demands emerged<br />
from specific areas – health, education, etc.<br />
o Political Management – Top-level leadership is essential for<br />
project success. Such leadership should manifest abilities in<br />
management and communication to share the achievements<br />
with project stakeholders, and maintain the e-Government<br />
strategy according to the municipal development plan.<br />
o Dissemination – Document all facts and events and dedicate<br />
special efforts to internally and externally disseminate the<br />
project progress. Moreover, awareness should be raised among<br />
project stakeholders on the opportunities offered by ICT.<br />
o Sustainability – It's essential to create legal, financial, and<br />
political instruments as well as building national and<br />
international networks to provide project sustainability.<br />
o Collaboration - MuNet contributed to strengthen collaboration<br />
among government authorities and officials, guaranteeing<br />
autonomy in the long term.<br />
Methodological Approach - MuNet offered a comprehensive<br />
methodological framework for the municipalities to use.<br />
6 CONCLUSIONS<br />
This paper introduced the MuNet Program and the experience of<br />
its implementation in Patzun Municipality. The Patzún experience<br />
- called “Patzún, all its information in a click” has participated in<br />
several competitions; winning a third place in the call to the best<br />
local innovations organized by the Executive Secretariat of the<br />
Presidency Coordination (SCEP). In addition, it has being<br />
nominated in the category of e-Inclusion for the World Summit<br />
Awards 2011 Guatemala.<br />
Next steps for Patzún Municipality include presenting the<br />
program and its progress to the Municipal Corporation and<br />
obtaining their commitment to continue the activities under the<br />
Modernization Commission, led by a Councilor. To raise more<br />
visibility, there will be an official re-launch of the website and<br />
presentation of the actions carried out by the Municipality to<br />
reduce the digital divide. Finally, the Municipality will continue<br />
its efforts to publicize its actions in this field, both nationally and<br />
internationally.<br />
Next steps for the MuNet Program include seeking allies in<br />
government who are committed to implementing e-Government<br />
strategies and updating and improving several methodologies.<br />
7 REFERENCES<br />
[1] Cardona, D, MuNet un esfuerzo de la OEA/ACDI/CAF para<br />
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municipios eficientes y transparentes, en Said, E, TIC,<br />
Comunicación y Periodismo Digital. Reflexiones de América<br />
Latina y Europa; Universidad del Norte, Barranquilla, 2010<br />
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Transparentes, On Line document<br />
http://portal.oas.org/Portal/Sector/Secretar%C3%ADaGenera<br />
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[5] Iberomunicipios, V Premio Iberoamericano de Ciudades<br />
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[6] Lasagna, M, 1.- Programa MuNET: Productos y Resultados,<br />
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http://www.educoas.org/RestrictedSites/Curso1/Newsletter-<br />
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en países andinos y centroamericanos, On Line document<br />
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[13] Villagrán, S, MuNet (Municipios Eficientes y<br />
Transparentes), On Line document<br />
http://www.protic.org/proyectos.shtml?&sh_itm=df10f42820<br />
87ae1170cbb506cafb2fd2.<br />
[14] Field, T., Mield, T., Muller, E. and Law, E., The e-<br />
Government Imperative. Organization for Economic Cooperation<br />
and Development, ISBN 92-64-10117-9, Paris,<br />
France, 2003, available at http:213.253.134.43/<br />
oecd/pdfs/browseit/4203071E.PDF.<br />
[15] Canadian International Development Agency, CIDA,<br />
http://www.acdi-cida.gc.ca/home.<br />
[16] Corporación Andina de Fomento,<br />
http://www.caf.com/view/index.asp?ms=19<br />
[17] Organization of American States (OAS), Executive<br />
Secretariat for Integral Development (SEDI),<br />
http://www.oas.org/en/sedi/<br />
[18] National Secretary of Science and Technology (SENACYT),<br />
http://www.concyt.gob.gt/
ICT Policy in Africa - A Comparative Study of Ghana and<br />
Kenya Drawing on Lessons from Developed Countries<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
Kenya and Ghana realized that developing a National Information<br />
Communication Technology Policy (NICTP) is vital for the<br />
development of a nation. They also realized that Information and<br />
Communication Technology (ICT) sector is a key accelerator to<br />
development. The two countries have made progress including<br />
liberalization of the ICT sector. The ICT sector has changed<br />
considerably in the two countries. However, there is need to<br />
review all stages of the policy and come up with suggestions for<br />
improvements or gaps that need to be filled. This paper looks into<br />
the process of reviewing Kenya and Ghana NICTP by applying<br />
the benchmarking process as a supporting tool for policy-making<br />
and improvement. The paper illustrates the analysis carried out<br />
and the results from five successful countries recognized<br />
worldwide on ICT policy formulation, policy focus areas and<br />
policy implementation. Besides the policy process and<br />
stakeholder‘s involvement, the ICT policy goals, objectives and<br />
mission are discussed. The institutional arrangements for driving<br />
the ICT policy at regional and international dimensions, as well as<br />
the implementation processes, policy comparison and monitoring<br />
are elaborated. The paper winds up with recommendations on how<br />
the policy comparison processes should be conducted.<br />
Categories and Subject Descriptors<br />
K.4 COMPUTERS AND SOCIETY<br />
K.4.0 General<br />
K.4.1 Public Policy Issues (privacy, regulation, transborder data<br />
flow).<br />
General Terms<br />
Legal Aspects<br />
Keywords<br />
ICT, NICTP, benchmarking, policy, mission, vision<br />
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requires prior specific permission and/or a fee.<br />
ICEGOV '12, October 22 - 25 2012, Albany, NY, USA<br />
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1200-4/12/10...$15.00<br />
Agnes Owuato Odongo<br />
Kenya electricity generating company limited<br />
P.O Box 79439.00200 Nairobi, Kenya<br />
Mobile No. +254-722-273-589<br />
agwuato@yahoo.com<br />
192<br />
1. INTRODUCTION<br />
ICT policy is a formal statement that specifies the objectives,<br />
goals, principles, strategies, etc intended to direct and control the<br />
development, operation and use of ICT. ICT policies must<br />
consider additional policies like education, trade and investment,<br />
foreign, monetary, transport polices, etc. ICT policies have been<br />
recognized by the African executives. The PANAFTEL network<br />
concept was approved in 1976. The PANAFTEL coordinating<br />
committee was established in 1973, to mobilize the resources<br />
necessary for the establishment of the system and to implement<br />
the network speedily. By 1982 a basic telecommunications<br />
infrastructure had been constructed within Africa, allowing intra-<br />
African telecom traffic, largely avoiding the previous long,<br />
complex and very expensive transit routes through Europe. By the<br />
end of 1982, 67 routes between African countries were available<br />
by using Intel sat satellite circuits. African authorities and the<br />
private sector should become more involved in the network<br />
exploitation through the different telecommunications<br />
restructuring processes; and to modernize the network by<br />
judiciously combining all technologies to build the continent<br />
telecommunications network representative. This should meet the<br />
countries need and prepare Africa for insertion within the global<br />
information technology infrastructure (GII).<br />
1.1Ghana<br />
The National Information Communication Technology Policy<br />
(NICTP) development process for Ghana started in the year 2003<br />
as a result of the perceived lack of guidance on ICT [8]. The lack<br />
of ICT Policy and existence of isolated initiatives led to random<br />
adoption of different systems and standards, resulting in<br />
unnecessary duplication of effort hence wastage of resources.<br />
Benefits of effective adoption of ICT are likely to result not only<br />
in an increase in connectivity or access, but more importantly the<br />
benefits acquired from the facilitation of new types of<br />
development solutions and economic opportunities that the<br />
utilization of ICT makes possible.<br />
Ghana ICT Policy Process [8] has been touted as the most<br />
participatory policy development process on the continent.<br />
Extensive consultation with major stakeholders was conducted<br />
throughout the length and breadth of the country in search for<br />
national priorities and needs, as well as to sensitize the<br />
community prior to the development of the ICT4AD framework<br />
document and the eventual write-up of the policy document,<br />
action plans and legislations.<br />
The opportunities are envisaged in the National Strategy to<br />
simultaneously target the development of the ICT sector and<br />
industry as well as use ICTs as a broad-based enabler of
developmental goals, with emphasis on the development,<br />
deployment and exploitation of ICTs, to aid the development of<br />
all other sectors of the economy. The said NICTP was essential<br />
and necessary to guide the ICT development in Ghana. The<br />
NICTP development was a four step process [8] under which<br />
these are some of the decisions made:<br />
To create enabling environment to facilitate the deployment,<br />
utilization and exploitation of ICTs<br />
• To support the development of a viable knowledge-based<br />
ICT industry<br />
• To facilitate the modernization of the agricultural sector<br />
• To support the development of a competitive high valueadded<br />
services sector<br />
• To aid the process of developing a national human resource<br />
capacity and the nation’s R&D capabilities<br />
• To promote an better educational system that deploys ICTs<br />
• To facilitate a wide-spread deployment and exploitation of<br />
ICTs within the society<br />
• To support the modernization of civil and public service<br />
• To facilitate the development, expansion, rehabilitation and<br />
the continuous modernization of the national information and<br />
communications infrastructure<br />
• To guide development and implementation of e-government,<br />
e-commerce and business strategies and action plans<br />
• To facilitate development and implementation of necessary<br />
legal, institutional and regulatory framework and structures<br />
The policy was approved and published in 2005, this was the first<br />
phase. The publishing of the policy followed implementation<br />
strategy as the ICT policy development process. This first policy<br />
implementation process was faced with various challenges that<br />
made the phase less effective in delivering the objectives. Some of<br />
the challenges experienced are that [8]:<br />
• Ghana has a relatively high population growth rate<br />
• Ghana has a youthful population; about 60% are under 25<br />
years of age and 5% over 65 years of age<br />
• Ghana has a high illiteracy rate with close to 40% of the<br />
population without any form of education<br />
• Ghana has a high primary school dropout rate close to 50%<br />
fail to progress secondary school and senior secondary<br />
school leavers failing to continue with their education.<br />
• Close to 40% of Ghanaians currently lives below the poverty<br />
line and 10 regions of the country currently have more than<br />
40% of their people living in poverty.<br />
Ghana recognized that the socioeconomic problems and<br />
challenges facing it are likely to be compounded by the new<br />
challenges posed by globalization and the information age,<br />
namely [22]: narrow export base dominated by traditional exports;<br />
under-developed physical infrastructure; Poor and limited<br />
communications infrastructure, etc. And that for it to make<br />
progress in developmental process, the nation has to take step to<br />
address the developmental challenges and to put in place efforts to<br />
address the additional challenges posed by globalization and the<br />
information revolution.<br />
From these weaknesses and challenges, Ghana saw a need of<br />
reviewing the policy to address the observed weaknesses and<br />
challenges, synergies and regional cooperation in ICT policies and<br />
harmonize regional policy framework in order to achieve<br />
economies of scale. Ghana through the formulation of a number<br />
193<br />
of socioeconomic development policy frameworks over the years<br />
has identified a number of key developmental objectives to<br />
address the developmental problems facing the country. Of these<br />
policy frameworks, the key ones are Vision 2020 Socioeconomic<br />
Development Framework, the Ghana Poverty Reduction Strategy<br />
(2000-2004), the Ghana Science and Technology Policy and the<br />
Coordinated Program for Economic and Social Development of<br />
Ghana (2003-2012). Some of the key socioeconomic development<br />
objectives of Ghana as the policy Frameworks [8]:<br />
• The social and economic pressures of a youthful population<br />
• Rapid population growth and declining per capita income<br />
• An under-performing agricultural sector<br />
• An economy dominated by the agricultural sector with weak<br />
under-developed industrial and service sector<br />
• The Ghana heavy debt burden<br />
• The disproportionate informal private sector<br />
• Low professional, technical and managerial manpower base<br />
• Relatively high proportion of population illiteracy<br />
• Low job creation capacity of the economy<br />
• Narrow export base dominated by traditional exports<br />
• Under-developed physical infrastructure<br />
• Poor and limited communications infrastructure<br />
Socioeconomic problems and challenges facing Ghana are likely<br />
to be compounded by the new challenges posed by globalization<br />
and the information age. And that for Ghana to make progress in<br />
its developmental process, the nation in addition to taking steps to<br />
address these developmental challenges will also need to put in<br />
place efforts to address the additional challenges posed by<br />
globalization and the information revolution.<br />
1.2 Kenya<br />
The National Information Communication Technology Policy<br />
(NICTP) development process for Kenya started in the year 2003<br />
as a result of the perceived lack of guidance on ICT [14]. The<br />
Government recognizes the role of ICTs in the social and<br />
economic development of the nation and has promulgated a<br />
national ICT Policy based on the Economic Recovery Strategy for<br />
Wealth and Employment Creation (2003-2007). The move to<br />
develop a national ICT policy was triggered BY three key and<br />
mutually reinforcing factors namely the fast and haphazard<br />
growth of information technology that lacked direction and<br />
regulation; the desire to develop the national ICT policy<br />
guidelines to steer development of ICTs in order to address the<br />
disorder; and the readiness of UNESCO to fund the process.<br />
This policy seeks to facilitate sustained economic growth and<br />
poverty reduction; promote social justice and equity; mainstream<br />
gender in national development; empower the youth and<br />
disadvantaged groups; stimulate investment and innovation in<br />
ICT; and achieve universal access [14]. It is based on<br />
internationally accepted standards and best practices, particularly<br />
the COMESA Model adopted by the COMESA Council of<br />
Ministers in March 2003.<br />
The policy is based on four guiding principles: 1) infrastructure<br />
development 2) human resource development 3) stakeholder<br />
participation 4) appropriate policy and regulatory framework.<br />
The Government recognizes that there is a growing digital divide<br />
between the countries that are highly endowed and developed in<br />
the field of information technology and Kenya as well as between<br />
rural and urban areas in the country. The said NICTP was
essential and necessary to guide the ICT development in Ghana.<br />
The NICTP development was done by four committees under the<br />
supervision of Ministry of Information and Communication given<br />
the mandate by the government to formulate the ICT policy.<br />
The policy formulation process was in form of consultations that<br />
followed a three-tier approach at the national, provincial and<br />
district levels with stakeholders that included the Private Sector,<br />
Civil Society, Development Partners and local communities. This<br />
approach led to the formation of a National Steering Committee of<br />
stakeholders charged with the responsibility of spearheading<br />
consultations and ensuring inclusion at all levels; and chaired by<br />
Minister for Information and Communication. Also involved in<br />
the process were Kenya's development partners; civil society<br />
representatives and government officials. The government has<br />
implemented ICT policy reforms between 1999 and 2006 which<br />
resulted in a number of structural changes in the ICT sector.<br />
Several policy documents were released namely in January 1997,<br />
April 1999, and Dec 2001[14].<br />
The Kenya ICT policy was approved and published in 2006. The<br />
publishing was followed by implementation of the strategy that<br />
was faced by various challenges so the implementation less<br />
effective in delivering the objectives stated in the policy<br />
document. Some of the challenges experienced are that [14]:<br />
• To harness the potential of ICTs for economic growth and<br />
poverty reduction<br />
• Lack of a comprehensive policy and regulatory framework<br />
• Inadequate infrastructure<br />
• Insufficient skilled human resources<br />
Kenya recognized that the socioeconomic problems and<br />
challenges facing it are likely to be compounded and that for it to<br />
make progress in developmental process; the nation has to take<br />
step to address the developmental challenges and to put in place<br />
efforts to address the additional challenges posed by globalization<br />
and the information revolution.<br />
From these weaknesses and challenges, Kenya saw a need of<br />
reviewing the policy to address the observed weaknesses and<br />
challenges, synergies in ICT policies and harmonize regional<br />
policy framework in order to achieve the set objectives. Kenya<br />
through the formulation of a number of socioeconomic<br />
development policy frameworks over the years has identified a<br />
number of key developmental objectives to address the<br />
developmental problems facing the country as listed below [14]:<br />
Policy, legal and regulatory framework, ICT infrastructure, human<br />
resource development, electronic learning, universal access,<br />
public-private partnerships (ppp), e-government, Electronic<br />
commerce, content development, electronic security, ICT<br />
leadership, engendering ICT, and youth and ICT<br />
Kenya has had a long history of economic leadership in East<br />
Africa as one of the largest and most advanced economies in the<br />
region. However, inconsistent efforts at structural reforms and<br />
poor policies over the past decades have generated a prolonged<br />
period of decline in development indicators and significantly<br />
eroded the leadership position, at a time when other countries in<br />
the region have made significant strides. While Kenya was a<br />
prime choice for foreign investors seeking to establish a presence<br />
in Eastern and Southern Africa in the 1960s and 1970s, poor<br />
economic policies or inconsistent efforts at structural reforms,<br />
increased problems of corruption and governance, and the<br />
194<br />
deterioration of public services have discourage Foreign Direct<br />
Investment (FDI) since the 1980s.<br />
Therefore, for Kenya, to make progress in the developmental<br />
process, the nation in addition to taking steps to address these<br />
developmental challenges will also need to put in place efforts to<br />
address the additional challenges posed by globalization and the<br />
information revolution. Some of the key investment laws are<br />
outdated and fail to account for modern practices and principles in<br />
conducting and regulating business. A large degree of<br />
discretionary power is left to the civil service in administrating<br />
and enforcing the principles laid out in the laws.<br />
This paper underlines the need and effective process of NICTP<br />
review suitable for Ghana and Kenya, and the analysis of the key<br />
success factors that need to be considered during undertaking of<br />
the review task.<br />
2. METHODOLOGY<br />
ICT is dynamic and therefore the processes and activities keep<br />
changing within short time scales. The rapid changes in the ICT<br />
sector affect key decisions made and essentially call for an up to<br />
date environmental scan. Due to the dynamic nature of ICT,<br />
benchmarking emerges to be the best tool for policy review. In<br />
this paper, a review of the ICT Policy formulation of fast growing<br />
countries in recent years namely Australia, Korea, Malaysia,<br />
Canada and Singapore is considered effective. In the final phase,<br />
an analysis on how the Kenya and Ghana ICT Policy was<br />
developed and implemented is made and thus exposing the<br />
commonalities and differences.<br />
2.1 Source of Information<br />
In this paper, key documents reviewed and analyzed included the<br />
following: National ICT policies for Kenya, Ghana, Singapore [2]<br />
[20], Korea [13] [15], Canada [10], Australia [6] [5] and Malaysia<br />
[1] [16]. Other documents are [12] [7]:<br />
2.2 Selecting the Five Relatively Successful<br />
Countries for Benchmarking<br />
The selection of countries for benchmarking was based on the<br />
ranking of ICT Development Index (IDI) 2010 report released in<br />
February 2012 by ITU [9] (http://inwent-iijlab.org/Weblog/2010/07/26/ict-development-index-itu-omitssierra-leone-again/).<br />
Ghana has been touted to be the ICT hub of<br />
West Africa was ranked 116 th and Kenya 115 th . The republic of<br />
Korea was ranked 3 rd ; and Australia, Singapore Canada and<br />
Malaysia was ranked 14 th , 19 th , 26 th, and 56 th respectively.<br />
The desktop survey was used to review the policies of Australia,<br />
Canada, Republic of Korea, Singapore, and Malaysia based on the<br />
IDI 2010 results as indicated above. In the final stage, the<br />
Benchmarking analysis of the ICT policy cycle (formulation,<br />
implementation and review process) in Kenya and Ghana was<br />
considered against experiences of five relatively successful<br />
countries namely Singapore, Korea, Canada, Australia and<br />
Malaysia. The research of this paper is discussed within the<br />
context of: 1) the policy development process and stakeholders<br />
involvement 2) the ICT policy goals, objectives and mission 3)<br />
ICT policy focal areas 4) institutional arrangements driving the<br />
ICT policy development and implementation 5) regional and<br />
international dimensions 6) implementation processes 7) policy<br />
monitoring, evaluation and review.
3. BENCHMARKING AS A POLICY<br />
REVIEW TOOL<br />
1. Translate obstacles into<br />
more concrete concerns<br />
2. Develop the basis of<br />
specification of policy<br />
actions<br />
Policy Mission &Vision<br />
Too general to measure<br />
1. Measure output and<br />
outcome of policy<br />
implementation<br />
2. Review and benchmark<br />
the prevailing status<br />
Policy<br />
challenges<br />
Policy<br />
objectives<br />
Policy<br />
focus goals<br />
Inter-regional<br />
benchmarking<br />
Indicators<br />
Benchmarking:<br />
1. Determine if goals Policy<br />
been met<br />
assessment<br />
2. If no asses the reasons<br />
Adapted from Selhofer 2003<br />
Conclude and recommend<br />
www.observatory.gr/files/meletes/<br />
BISER_Benchmarking_Rep.pdf<br />
Figure 1. Policy making roles benchmarking<br />
Benchmarking has different meaning based on the institutional<br />
and organization set-up in which it is applied. It can be used to<br />
measure the success factors of a policy towards developing an<br />
ICT society. There are several regional benchmarking options like<br />
bottom-up, top down, horizontal approaches etc. In the bottom-up<br />
approach, regions get together and agree among themselves on a<br />
set of common indicators. Since the region has different policy<br />
framework, it is not possible to apply the method initially. The<br />
choice of indicators is a result of a compromise among different<br />
regions without top-bottom coordination. This implies that the<br />
same indicator can measure different parameter in different<br />
regions for example a measure of policy output, results, and<br />
impacts, or a simple framework of readiness indicator could be<br />
adopted [19].<br />
This paper considers the position of indicators into the policy<br />
review process and benchmarking as stipulated in Figure 1. The<br />
role of benchmarking is to determine policy challenges through<br />
policy evaluation that have impact on the policy review process.<br />
3.1 Policy Development, Review Process and<br />
Stakeholders Involvement<br />
The policy formulation of five selected countries demonstrate<br />
several advantages of involving stakeholders like the private<br />
sector, academia and civil society organizations such as<br />
professional bodies in the policy processes. The process for<br />
development of Australian, Canada, and Singapore, Malaysia and<br />
Korea ICT policies had consultative meetings with a range of<br />
stakeholders. Of interest is the case of Australia where the<br />
stakeholders were approached by e-mail regarding their<br />
discussions on effective use of ICT by citizens and consumers<br />
across civil society [5] [5].<br />
The government should involve key stakeholders in the policy<br />
formulation process in order to affect its outcomes. Kenya did not<br />
involve all key stakeholders [14]. In principle, the policy lacked<br />
195<br />
ownership of the majority of the stakeholders. The National ICT<br />
Policy and Plan Development Committee of Ghana were involved<br />
all key stakeholders and had an integrated approach to their<br />
national ICT development process. The process became an all<br />
inclusive venture and ensured that the policy development process<br />
and final product is acceptable to all [8]. In principle, the policy<br />
had ownership of the majority of the stakeholders and had clear<br />
harmonized approach to its implementation strategies.<br />
3.2. Benchmarking ICT Policy Vision,<br />
Missions and Objectives of Selected Countries<br />
Compared to the Ghana’s and Kenya’s<br />
The policy vision, mission and objectives of Korea, Australia,<br />
Canada, Malaysia and Singapore emphasize on addressing citizen<br />
problems which are similar to those of Kenya and Ghana.<br />
Furthermore, countries like Singapore [20] and Malaysia [16] [17]<br />
have provided milestones in the policy. Malaysia’s vision is to<br />
utilize ICT to transform progressively to information and a<br />
knowledge society; and as the fifth economy pillar of the<br />
economy and transforming the country to a regional ICT hub.<br />
Ghana NICTP vision statement: “Ghana to improve the quality of<br />
life of the people by significantly enriching their social, economic<br />
and cultural well-being through the rapid development and<br />
modernization of the economy and society using information and<br />
communication technologies as the main engine for accelerated<br />
and sustainable economic and social development; the vision<br />
statement sets out the roadmap for developing Ghana’s<br />
information society and economy and provides a basis for<br />
facilitating the socioeconomic development of the country in the<br />
emerging information, knowledge and technological age to be<br />
dominated by information and knowledge-based economies” [8].<br />
The Kenya policy vision is “A prosperous ICT-driven Kenyan<br />
society” and the mission statement is “to improve the livelihoods<br />
of Kenyans by ensuring the availability of accessible, efficient,<br />
reliable and affordable ICT services” [14]. The policy vision,<br />
mission and objectives of Kenya and Ghana lacks milestones of<br />
how to achieve these compared to Singapore above. Emphasis on<br />
universal access is lacking in the vision and mission statement as<br />
the success of becoming the ICT hub depending on accessibility<br />
issues; that includes the concept of digital divide between access<br />
in urban/rural and national/international relations.<br />
3.3. Strategic ICT Leadership<br />
The objective of the Strategic ICT leadership involves an increase<br />
in the use of ICT for equitable and sustainable socioeconomic and<br />
cultural development, aiming at improving the awareness on the<br />
role and potential of ICT. In so doing, creating an authoritative<br />
national organization to effect, coordinate and review the ICT<br />
policy. The role of prioritizing ICT investment in development<br />
assistance policies and programs, enhancing synergy, economies<br />
of scale and productivity in all ICT matters and creating a<br />
favorable environment for cooperation and partnership in ICT<br />
among public and private sectors, civil society became an<br />
important ingredient to its development. This is in consistent with<br />
best-practice in Singapore, Korea, Canada, Australia and Malaysia<br />
picking a few supporting examples. The review process has to<br />
follow this definitive focus. The case of Ghana and Kenya the<br />
level of leadership is not ranked high like in Korea where ICT<br />
policy committee is chaired by the prime minister. Ghana ICT<br />
policy committee chair person is a university professor, while in
Kenya it is the minister for Information Communication ministry.<br />
The political goodwill may not be achieved easing in order to<br />
support policy implementation.<br />
3.4 ICT Infrastructure<br />
Infrastructure covers both national and institutional levels. At<br />
national levels, a system to ensure usefulness of the installed<br />
infrastructure has to be assured of. In Kenya’s and Ghana’s case<br />
for instance, building the broadband infrastructure is an agenda.<br />
Achievements realized in Korea, Malaysia, Canada, Australia and<br />
Singapore is as a result of broadband deployment. All countries<br />
based on the objectives of the respective Act, targets were set<br />
which include:<br />
• An increase in penetration for the whole country and rural<br />
areas respectively. An interim target of 30 per 100 persons<br />
had been set for Malaysia by the year 2005 and fully<br />
developed by year 2020 for example [1].<br />
• Quality of service at affordable costs.<br />
• Infrastructure development, communications and multimedia<br />
infrastructures with adequate and effective plans for<br />
supporting overall economic development.<br />
• Creation of a hub to serve the global hub of communications<br />
and multimedia industry in this region.<br />
Development of ICT infrastructure is mentioned in the policy. The<br />
policy went further to mention need for provision of infrastructure<br />
e.g. energy and roads, support software development, promotion<br />
of local manufacturing among others. The policy recognizes<br />
power of open source software. However, the policy is just<br />
generic. The Kenya ICT policy is not providing details on how it<br />
will promote local software development. The Ghanaian Policy<br />
proposes no duty on computer hardware [8]. The policy for the<br />
benchmarked five countries are explicit on how to go about by<br />
saying that foreign owned and multinationals who will establish<br />
such production facilities and employ the local workforce, shall be<br />
offered special incentives. This can be part of technology transfer<br />
to the local workforce.<br />
The Kenya NICTP has several objectives concerning broadband<br />
issues to hitherto disenfranchised and isolated populations in the<br />
country and to extend the connection to the neighboring countries.<br />
The fact finding report revealed that, the private sector especially<br />
the mobile operators have invested substantially in developing an<br />
efficient infrastructure [4] [11]. However, interoperability,<br />
reliability and rural access are still a challenge in some parts of the<br />
country based on the provider to the initiative. Infrastructure<br />
sharing is the most sustainable and efficient way of rolling out<br />
infrastructure, even though it is facing internal resistance from the<br />
operators who consider their infrastructure as a business<br />
differentiation tool.<br />
The Ghana NICTP has several objectives concerning universal<br />
access issues to hitherto disenfranchised and isolated populations<br />
in the country. The fact finding report revealed that, in the private<br />
sector especially the mobile services have grown thus increasing<br />
the number of service providers. Spacefon, a GSM operator is the<br />
only mobile phone operator that has deployed its services in all<br />
the ten regional capitals and most key cities and towns across the<br />
country [8]. However, interoperability, reliability and rural access<br />
are still a challenge in the country to the initiative. Infrastructure<br />
sharing is the best as the sustainable and efficient way of rolling<br />
out infrastructure. Ghana Telecom, the national carrier that is<br />
supposed to be at the forefront of ICT development is struggling<br />
196<br />
and has failed to keep up with the times. The problems of Ghana<br />
Telecom are further compounded by the array of legal battles it<br />
has found itself to deal with. Telekom Malaysia has been<br />
throwing legal challenges to the national carrier and the Ghana<br />
government.<br />
3.5 The ICT Industry and Human Resource<br />
The ICT industry is service or hardware manufacturing or<br />
assembly based. Companies should be involved in all aspects of<br />
the business. A national ICT policy could stimulate the<br />
establishment, development and growth of ICT businesses<br />
through incentives and support provision. In Korea for example,<br />
several strategies to enhance productivity and efficiency across<br />
economic sectors and SMEs through the use of ICT were set and<br />
it worked. Furthermore, the International Cooperation Division of<br />
Department of Information Technology has been set up to<br />
promote international cooperation in the emerging and frontier<br />
areas of information technology under bilateral, multilateral or<br />
regional framework. Such interaction provides an opportunity for<br />
sharing of knowledge and experience with countries, international<br />
bodies, academia and institutions for forging partnerships for<br />
mutual progress.<br />
As far as international cooperation with Korea is concerned, it<br />
has been envisaged to promote the investment flow from Korea<br />
to the Indian ICT hardware sector, exploitation of<br />
complementarities, development of technology, human resource<br />
development, next generation ICT industry, Broadband<br />
infrastructure, E-Governance, etc. Two major Korean companies<br />
LG and Samsung are established brand names in Indian<br />
households and have already acquired a major share of the Indian<br />
market in the electronics and white goods segments. The Indian<br />
customers are happy with the pricing and service provided [21].<br />
NICTP was to make Ghana and Kenya a producer and not a mere<br />
consumer of ICT products and services. It is thus clear that the<br />
ICT Policy is expected to create conducive environment for a<br />
vibrant and sustainable ICT industry, making the country a more<br />
competitive developer and producer of ICT products and services.<br />
The policy lacks support to entrepreneurship and emphasis on<br />
small and medium enterprises (SMEs). On human resource<br />
development, Korea, Australia, Canada, Singapore and Malaysia<br />
defined it clearly in their ICT policies. Malaysia set several<br />
objectives to improve the human resource capacity that stimulates<br />
improving science and technology courses, the use of e-learning<br />
and training teachers on ICT skills. Korea, Singapore, Canada and<br />
Australia trained the mass so that the mass is able to use the<br />
technology and appreciate the advantages.<br />
Kenya and Ghana NICTP provides for the development of an ICT<br />
ready workforce with the objective of increasing human resource<br />
ICT skills, support ICT training for political decision-makers,<br />
community and civil society leaders, as well as private and public<br />
sector executives, expand and develop the teaching of ICT at all<br />
levels of the national system of formal and informal education and<br />
training, to foster interest among scientists and citizen at large.<br />
However, the policy does not address how this is achieved. Korea<br />
set up a 3rd Basic Plan for Informatization Promotion (2002-<br />
2006) issued in April 2002, to provide every Korean with learning<br />
opportunity by fostering an online learning environment and<br />
training on Internet usage skill [15. Kenya and Ghana policy does<br />
not focus on regional linkages in human capacity development,<br />
for collaboration and knowledge sharing.
3.6 ICT Productive and Service Sectors<br />
The inception and diffusion of ICT in the production sectors<br />
forms an important basis for exploitation of the ICT muscles at<br />
the full-scale. The ICT policy needs to strengthen the competitive<br />
and comparative advantage of hardware and ICT service providers<br />
locally, regionally and internationally. Policies of some countries<br />
have focused on local companies over foreign-owned companies<br />
just as is the case with Korea ICT policy‘s priority to enhance<br />
productivity and efficiency across economic Sectors and SMEs<br />
through [13] [15]. Kenya and Ghana NICTP focuses on local<br />
companies to contribute to the reduction of poverty and to<br />
improve the quality of life of Kenyans and Ghana people,<br />
fostering enterprise, entrepreneurship and innovativeness for<br />
sustainable socio-economic and economic development.<br />
3.7 ICT Legal and Regulatory Framework<br />
Many of the leading countries in ICT policy formulation and<br />
implementation formulated regulatory and legal frameworks for<br />
easy implementation of the ICT policy. Singapore and Korea<br />
created several acts and regulations that provided legal<br />
recognition of electronic contracts and electronic signatures [13]<br />
[15]. Malaysia on the other hand, developed Digital Signature Act<br />
1997 to give a digital signature the same legal status as an<br />
ordinary signature, thumbprint or other binding mark in use [16]<br />
[17]. Above all, Singapore and Malaysia enacted binding laws on<br />
cyber crime and Korea created laws for online procurement.<br />
Deployment of the necessary infrastructure to support secure<br />
electronic transactions for e-business and e-government need be<br />
implemented. Korea, Australia, Singapore, Canada and Malaysia<br />
are well known worldwide as the leading in the implementation of<br />
e-government. Other entailing key issues include measures to<br />
protect the confidentiality and privacy of citizens, increase the<br />
level of awareness on information security threats and best<br />
practices to safeguard data. Singapore established cabinet<br />
agencies to oversee ICT policy development. The key question is<br />
whether there is one best institutional model for policy<br />
development and implementation. It is critical that agency or<br />
commission leads in ICT planning and development.<br />
Technological development to regulate is critical. Digital<br />
technology has enabled the use of one digital network to distribute<br />
services that used to require different analogue networks. Thus,<br />
broadcasting, telephony and internet can be delivered using one<br />
network. Malaysia‘s Communications and Multimedia<br />
Commission [16] [17] and Singapore‘s Infocomm Development<br />
Authority [1] [21] are good examples.<br />
The Kenya Communications Commission of Kenya (CCK) is a<br />
convergence regulator bringing the convergence concept in<br />
communication sector to reality in Kenya [14]. The policy talks of<br />
strengthening the mandates of CCK to ensure quality and<br />
compatibility of IT products and services. However, the policy is<br />
quiet about the modes of strengthening needed and seems to<br />
ignore the importance of other standard bodies and professional<br />
groups to assist. There is no dedicated regulator for "ICT" in<br />
Kenya. The National Communications Secretariat has struggled<br />
with a culture of secrecy, which has made cooperation with more<br />
progressive entities such as the CCK and the Directorate of Egovernment<br />
housed inside the President's office. Emphasis is<br />
needed on confidentiality and privacy, formulation of the National<br />
197<br />
Information Security Strategy and promoting adoption of<br />
Information Security Standards at national level.<br />
The National Communication Authority (NCA) was established<br />
by an Act of parliament in 1996, to regulate the information and<br />
communication technologies (ICTs) industry in Ghana. Since<br />
inception the NCA focus has been on promoting growth of the<br />
communication sector and significant progress has been made in<br />
meeting the objectives. However, an area that needs similar<br />
attention is the “consumer” aspect of its mandate. Global trends in<br />
the ICT industry make it mandatory for consumer issues to be<br />
included in national regulatory structures. In addition, the world<br />
ICT governing body, ITU, upholds the need for regulators to carry<br />
the responsibility of addressing the consumer issues [17].<br />
3.8 Public Service and Local<br />
Many developed and developing countries focus on the use of ICT<br />
to enhance service delivery to the public. Remarkable efforts have<br />
been shown in many of these countries including Singapore,<br />
Australia, Canada, Korea and Malaysia. The five have set out<br />
goals for the use of ICT for delivering government services and<br />
have implemented the same. This pillar (Public service) in the<br />
Kenya and Ghana NICTP focuses on effective delivery of services<br />
to the public [14] [8]. The specific objectives of e-government<br />
outlined in NICTP are to increase the productivity of both the<br />
public and private sectors, empowering the public by building and<br />
e-Government platform that facilitates their relationship and<br />
interactions with the Government, and enhances the range and<br />
delivery of more effective public services at both central and local<br />
levels, while also generating accurate and timely information to<br />
better shape policies, strategic plans and tactical decisions for<br />
developing and enhancing the delivery of affordable public<br />
services. The policy has also outlined strategies for promoting<br />
good corporate and public governance by furthering information<br />
sharing, transparency and accountability. In Kenya and Ghana<br />
part of this pillar has been implemented and some government<br />
transactions are now done online.<br />
Compared to infrastructure development, content development<br />
has not received as much attention from governments worldwide.<br />
Already we see that lack of local content has driven Internet<br />
traffic in many countries to foreign sites. There are countries such<br />
as Singapore that have initiatives to develop local content.<br />
Singapore and Malaysia have laws and rules regarding<br />
objectionable Internet content [1]. Singapore is unique in<br />
combining government rules with industry self-regulation in<br />
managing content [21]. In some countries, governments are<br />
nervous about content, in particular one that is challenging the<br />
political and economic interests of the State or its allies. Content<br />
that has the potential for political mobilization also comes within<br />
the orbit of the State‘s surveillance, which is provided for by the<br />
laws enacted in those countries.<br />
While other countries have developed laws governing the<br />
management of local content, Kenya has done little in regard to<br />
this. The government should provide support, resources, and put<br />
laws in place. Ghana NICTP lacks local content.<br />
Korea has strategies for harnessing ICT for Social Development<br />
[13] [15]. These include the specific targets of increasing ICT<br />
integration in society, by providing access to ICTs to all<br />
communities including those isolated geographically or<br />
economically, provide universal access through the enhancement
of existing Public Internet Access Points (PIAPs), reducing the<br />
digital divide, by encouraging the youth to set up computer clubs<br />
aimed at encouraging their interest in IT-related fields and provide<br />
online access to express their needs.<br />
A commitment to universal access is the cornerstone of efforts to<br />
reach out to include everyone in the information economy and is a<br />
first step in bridging the digital divide. A funding mechanism to<br />
meet the cost of universal access has to be discussed and<br />
negotiated by the telecoms regulator and/or the government<br />
department/ministry responsible for this. Operators should<br />
contribute to the cost of rolling out access as part of their<br />
obligations under the licensing agreements they have signed with<br />
the local regulatory authority of the government.<br />
3.9 Institutional Arrangements for Driving the<br />
ICT Policy<br />
Kenya and Ghana have established CCK and NCA respectively as<br />
the sector ICT regulator just like Comparing Korea, Canada,<br />
Australia, Singapore and Malaysia with (. The regulator is an<br />
independent, credible, and effective quasi-government body<br />
whose functions are to regulate and monitor the ICT sector and<br />
foster competition through the issuance of licenses to operators<br />
and franchise holders. The regulator was established as part of the<br />
Government Policy reforms in the communication sector for both<br />
the countries with the aim of improving the availability of the<br />
info-communications services to the public as well as to allow<br />
new players into the market. Both CCK and NCA reports to the<br />
line Ministry in their respective countries.<br />
Furthermore, institutional arrangements for ICT policy<br />
implementations should consider the participation of both public<br />
and private sector and functional linkages between different key<br />
institutions should feature clearly in the policy.<br />
4. FORMULATION PROCESS OF KENYA<br />
AND GHANA ICT POLICY<br />
4.1 Kenya National ICT Policy Formulation<br />
Process<br />
Kenya developed its ICT policy as part of ICT for Economic<br />
Growth (2006) to represent the nation’s vision in the information<br />
age [14]. The aspirations set included Recovery Strategy for<br />
Wealth Creation and Employment as well as Poverty Reduction.<br />
The move to develop a national ICT policy was triggered off by<br />
three key and mutually reinforcing factors namely the fast and<br />
haphazard growth of information technology that lacked direction<br />
and regulation; the desire to develop the national ICT policy<br />
guidelines to steer development of ICTs in the country to address<br />
the disorder; and the readiness of UNESCO to fund the process.<br />
The development of a policy for the deployment of ICT for socialeconomic<br />
development in Kenya began in mid nineties. The<br />
policy is based on four guiding principles: infrastructure<br />
development, human resource development, stakeholder<br />
participation and appropriate policy and regulatory framework.<br />
The challenge is to harness the potential of ICTs for economic<br />
growth and poverty reduction [14].<br />
4.1.1 Kenya ICT Policy Framework<br />
In order to identify and address the critical factors for the success<br />
of the policy formulation and plan development process, and<br />
eventual ICT implementation process, extensive consultation with<br />
…<br />
198<br />
KENYA ICT POLICY FRAMEWORK: Tiered approach to<br />
sector management<br />
various institutions and organizations were conducted based on a<br />
Kenya opted for a tied framework with the policy instrument driving legal and regulatory aspects as<br />
3 tiered approach to sector management, figure 2 [14].<br />
Increasing level Specificity<br />
illustrated on first diagram.<br />
Instrument<br />
Policy &Vision-Policy<br />
Guidelines<br />
Regulation Framework-<br />
KCA 98<br />
Regulations-KCR 2001<br />
Operator License<br />
Source of Authority<br />
Stakeholder-<br />
Minister/Citizen<br />
Parliament<br />
Minister<br />
Regulator<br />
Figure 2: Kenya’s IT Policy Framework<br />
4.1.2 KENYA ICT Policy ICT POLICY Institutional FRAMEWORK Support Framework<br />
Institutional Positioning<br />
Policy<br />
Formulation<br />
Regulation<br />
Service<br />
Operation<br />
Consumers<br />
Ministry for Communication<br />
Communications<br />
Commission of Kenya<br />
Arbitration<br />
Advisory<br />
Legislature-Parliamentary Committee<br />
on Public Works, Energy and Communications<br />
National Communications<br />
Secretariat<br />
Appeals Tribunal<br />
Content oo<br />
Universal Access<br />
Universal Access Fund<br />
Service Providers, Telecoms, ISP Broadcasters ,Vendors<br />
Figure 3: Kenya’s IT Policy Institutional Framework<br />
4.1.3 ICT policy development process<br />
Economic Recovery Strategy for Wealth and Employment<br />
Creation gave birth to “Investment Program for the Economic<br />
Recovery Strategy for Wealth and Employment Creation 2003-<br />
2007 (IP-ERS)”, released in May 2004. The consultations<br />
followed a three-tier approach at the national, provincial and<br />
district levels with stakeholders that included the Private Sector,<br />
Civil Society, Development Partners and local communities. This<br />
approach led to the formation of a National Steering Committee of<br />
stakeholders charged with the responsibility of spearheading<br />
consultations and ensuring inclusion at all levels; and chaired by<br />
Minister of Information and Communication. Also involved in the<br />
process were Kenya's development partners; civil society<br />
representatives and government officials. The government has<br />
implemented ICT policy reforms between 1999 and 2006 which<br />
resulted in a number of structural changes in the ICT sector.<br />
Several policy documents were released at intervals namely in<br />
January 1997, April 1999, and Dec 2001.<br />
4.1.4 ICT Cardinal Pillars<br />
The Cardinal Pillars of the Kenya policy are: 1) education and<br />
Training 2) new opportunities 3) marketing networking and<br />
promotion 4) recruitment and retention 5) market intelligence and<br />
research 6) business support and investment.<br />
4.2 Ghana National ICT Policy Formulation<br />
Process<br />
Ghana developed its ICT policy [8] for Accelerated Development<br />
(ICT4AD) process led by the Economic Commission for Africa<br />
(ECA) within the context of the African Information Society<br />
Initiative (AISI). To the benefactor countries, the initiative served<br />
as a framework for a radical socioeconomic transformation of the<br />
countries through the deployment and exploitation of ICTs within<br />
the context of the challenges of the globalization and Information
Age. It is based on the policy framework document “An<br />
Integrated ICT-led Socioeconomic Development Policy and Plan<br />
Development Framework for Ghana”. The Ghana ICT4AD Policy<br />
Statement recognizes the aspirations and provisions of key<br />
socioeconomic development framework documents like Vision<br />
202o Socio-Economic Development Framework, Ghana Poverty<br />
reduction Strategy (GPRS) (2002 – 2004) and Coordinated<br />
Program for Economic and Social Development of Ghana (2003 -<br />
2012)<br />
4.2.1 ICT Policy Framework<br />
The development, deployment and exploitation of ICTs within the<br />
economy and society can contribute to and accelerate Ghana’s<br />
socioeconomic development process provided some critical<br />
success factors and conditions are addressed at the: national,<br />
organizational levels as well as at the level of individuals in the<br />
work place and in the society at large.<br />
4.2.2 Ghana’s ICT Policy - Institutional Support<br />
Framework<br />
Ghana ICT policy framework structure [22] formed four bodies to<br />
assume responsibility of coordinating, facilitating monitoring and<br />
subsequently ensuring the implementation of the policy:<br />
• The National ICT Policy and Plan Development Committee,<br />
constituted by the President, and chaired by a University<br />
Professor.<br />
• The Ministry of Communications as the host ministry and the<br />
policy implementation agency<br />
• The Ghana ICT Directory, as an implementation arm of the<br />
Ministry of Communications<br />
• The National Information Technology Authority, as a<br />
Presidential Advisory body<br />
4.2.3 Ghana’s ICT Policy Process<br />
Ghana ICT Policy Process [22] has been touted as the most<br />
participatory policy development process on the continent.<br />
Extensive consultation with major stakeholders was conducted<br />
throughout the length and breadth of the country in search for<br />
national priorities and needs, as well as to sensitize the<br />
community prior to the development of the ICT4AD framework<br />
document and the eventual write-up of the policy document,<br />
action plans and legislations. The development, deployment and<br />
exploitation of ICTs within the economy and society can<br />
contribute to and accelerate Ghana’s socioeconomic development<br />
process provided some critical success factors and conditions are<br />
addressed at the: national and organizational levels as well as at<br />
the level of individuals in the work place and in the society at<br />
large. It was a four step process [22] involving the development of<br />
a framework, development of a policy, followed by development<br />
of plans and eventually the implementation of the policy strategies<br />
and action plans. Ghana conducted extensive consultation with the<br />
stakeholders that was located across the length and breadth of the<br />
country. Participatory nature of the process was referenced by the<br />
ECA as a benchmark for its facilitated ICT Policies<br />
4.2.4 Ghana’s ICT Policy – Cardinal Pillars<br />
The Cardinal Pillars of Ghana ICT4AD Policy are as follows [8]:<br />
1) accelerating Human Resource Development 2) promoting ICTs<br />
in Education 3) facilitating Government administration and<br />
service delivery 4) facilitating private sector development 5)<br />
developing export-oriented ICT products and service industry 6)<br />
199<br />
modernizing agriculture and development of agro-business 7)<br />
developing a globally competitive value added service industry.<br />
4.3 Policy Priorities and Internet Regulation<br />
Despite the broad participation of multiple stakeholders in<br />
Ghana’s policy formulation process, and partial participation of<br />
stakeholder Kenya’s case, the implementation in both countries<br />
did not translate into action plans to acceptable level [8][17]. The<br />
establishment of the Ministry of Information Communications<br />
made it possible to update the policy framework and implements<br />
some flagship projects. Consequently there has been a major<br />
disconnection between communication policies that address<br />
access issues and broad based ICT policies that focus on the<br />
exploitation of ICTs as instrument of development. Although<br />
access to communication was improved through cellular services,<br />
progress with regards to fixed lines and broadband network that<br />
underpin ICT application has remained very low. Increasing<br />
access to affordable communication and developing human<br />
capacity are vital for the success of ICT policy.<br />
Although Kenya and Ghana have started internal processes of<br />
governance over the Internet by developing their own set of<br />
National ICT Strategies, infrastructure, technological and<br />
regulatory frameworks, there is wide gap between national policy<br />
and the regulation of online environment in the aspects of<br />
international communications infrastructure, content access and<br />
development, electronic trade and on-line applications. In<br />
particular Ghana is not focusing on local content in its policy.<br />
A team should be formed to address Internet issues. The policy<br />
review shows that there is an overlap in the priority areas, a<br />
reflection of the common social and economic challenges in the<br />
two countries. The overlap is evident particularly in the areas of:<br />
human resources development; broadband infrastructure<br />
development; policy; legislative and regulatory framework; ICT<br />
sector development; and ICT applications and content.<br />
Main areas of focus of ICT policy Include: ICT Leadership, ICT<br />
Infrastructure, ICT Industry, Human Capital, Legal and<br />
Regulatory Framework, Productive Sectors, Service Sectors,<br />
Public Service, Local Content and Universal access. Furthermore,<br />
the vision and mission expressed in the policy documents remain<br />
consistent, an indication of a degree of convergence in adopting<br />
common vision to harness information and communication<br />
technologies for development.<br />
The review indicates that; there is under emphasis of the need for<br />
highly skilled human resources and ICT research and<br />
development that could have long term economic and social<br />
benefits to the country. The smart use of ICTs in the universities,<br />
public and private sector is critical for national and regional<br />
competitiveness. The application of ICTs in agriculture and health<br />
has not been given equal attention considering number of<br />
workforce and resources devoted to these sectors in the country.<br />
4.3 Institutional Arrangement and<br />
Participation of Stakeholders<br />
Institutional arrangement and the participation of various<br />
stakeholders particularly the media, civil society, private sector<br />
and the academia provide a good indication of the maturity of ICT<br />
policy. The review of institutional arrangement shows that the<br />
more the ICT function is sponsored by the highest political<br />
leadership like the President, the better the chance of its success.<br />
Likewise, the higher the involvement of the major stakeholders in
the policy process e.g. formulation, implementation and policy<br />
review; the higher the ownership and the better the success in<br />
implementing ICT programs.<br />
Although Kenya and Ghana have relatively developed broad<br />
consultation process in the ICT sector, the participation of civil<br />
society in ICT policy issues has not been that consistent due to<br />
lack of a strong ICT civil society with a national coverage. Figure<br />
2 shows institutional framework for policy formulation and<br />
implementation for Kenya. The ministries formed by the two<br />
governments to administer the implementation of ICT policy<br />
should promote strong civil society participation. As a result of<br />
lack of limited ownership the formed ministries are expected to<br />
alleviate coordination challenges. It is necessary to encourage<br />
civil society participation and strong competitive private sector<br />
facilitated by good regulatory framework.<br />
Evaluation of the governance framework shows that various<br />
sectors and institutions continue to compete for external resources<br />
to meet their needs and concerns independently, rather than<br />
creating a favorable framework applicable to all. The main lessons<br />
drawn from the ICT policy can be summarized as follows:<br />
streamline institutional arrangements, establish the directorate of<br />
ICT at the Ministry of Communication Science and Technology<br />
has a high chance of success in the implementation of ICT<br />
programs and mobilize the resources.<br />
Since the Ministry to champion ICT exists in Ghana and Kenya,<br />
the established directorate will drive the policy process, develop<br />
priority and flagship projects and implement projects through<br />
public and private partnerships. The minister should act as key<br />
champions and sponsors for the ICT policy process. The<br />
separation of policy (political) and regulatory (procedural)<br />
function has been a key governance challenge. There is no one<br />
size fit strategy for the separation of policy and regulatory<br />
functions; however it is essential that the regulator is insulated<br />
from day-to-day interference of policy makers and secure its<br />
financial autonomy. The legitimacy of the regulator can be<br />
improved by enhancing competence and improving interaction<br />
with the public. A good coordination among institutions needs a<br />
champion Minister, trust and flexibility within the ICT policy.<br />
4.4 Implementation of ICT Policy<br />
In general terms, the ICT policy leads to an implementation plan<br />
benchmarked by flagship projects, although the presence of an<br />
implementation plan may not guarantee the success of policy. A<br />
review of the situation of Kenya and Ghana show that the<br />
implementation of the ICT policy is driven by external funding<br />
than a well thought-out plan that addresses the key building<br />
blocks like infrastructure, regulatory functions and human<br />
resources development as envisaged and monitored.<br />
Although NICTP existed, Kenya and Ghana did not develop the<br />
implementation strategy. Various projects targeted to the policy<br />
have been implemented with support from external donor<br />
agencies. The national fiber backbone network, Universal Access,<br />
and the e-government projects are among the current flagship<br />
projects for the implementation of the national ICT policy. The<br />
main objective of the national backbone project is to establish a<br />
telecom backbone transmission network to satisfy domestic and<br />
regional ICT requirements in the long term. It intends to provide<br />
long-distance telephone networks, data backbone networks and<br />
extend Internet bandwidth countrywide by offering sufficient<br />
capacities, network resiliency and guaranteed quality of service<br />
200<br />
provision to meet the needs of voice, data, mobile, internet, leased<br />
circuit etc.<br />
5. KEY FACTORS ON THE<br />
DEVELOPMENT OF NICTP<br />
The NICTP for Kenya and Ghana were analyzed using<br />
benchmarking principals and compared to other countries. The<br />
emerging issues from the work and the entailing findings are<br />
categorized in the following key elements summarized as: the<br />
policy process and stakeholders involvement; the ICT policy<br />
goals, objectives and mission; ICT policy focus areas; institutional<br />
arrangements to drive ICT policy, regional and international<br />
dimensions, implementation processes; and policy review and<br />
monitoring<br />
The Institutional framework for implementing the national policy<br />
implementation and monitoring was not described adequately in<br />
the Kenya policy; hence some roles were left hanging. Monitoring<br />
was not covered in the Ghana policy. It is my observation and<br />
strong feeling that the policy left a serious governance gap. Based<br />
on the review it can be concluded that, coordination of the<br />
implementation strategy was inadequate and resulted in<br />
misunderstanding on the way forward and a priority on where<br />
funds or source of funding for the proposed activities.<br />
6. CONCLUSION<br />
The analysis of the current NICTP development and<br />
implementation was conducted. Weaknesses were identified<br />
through the benchmarking analysis that compared Kenya and<br />
Ghana NICTP from other countries of similar nature but in<br />
different regions. The review shows that from the onset of the<br />
initiatives, drafting and development of the policy, stakeholders<br />
were not fully involved for Kenya’s as was the case of Ghana,<br />
thus resulting in: 1) lack of full ownership and operational<br />
institutional framework 2) poor participation of key stakeholders<br />
3) poor coordination during implementation 4) lack of coherent<br />
but integrated implementation strategies.<br />
Kenya and Ghana NICTP is very generic. It eliminates strategy<br />
from the vision where the policy looks at vision, principles and<br />
guidelines, the Strategy should look at implementation plan, by<br />
focusing on who is to do what by when, where, benefits and cost<br />
of implementing the policy. The policy ignores implementation<br />
and no action plan is provided in the entire document.<br />
Therefore, in order to rectify the situation, the policy review<br />
process has to consider changes in technology, new national and<br />
regional developments and recognize the need to add acts and<br />
policies to support policy implementation by creation enabling<br />
environment. A good policy with its implementation strategies<br />
and institutional framework has the potential of making ICT an<br />
effective tool in achieving set goals. For an effective policy<br />
review process the paper recommended the following:<br />
• NICTP assessment should involve stakeholders and<br />
ministries for a multi-stakeholder participatory approach.<br />
Policy vision and mission to be shared by key role players to<br />
address universal access and infrastructural developments.<br />
• The policy should appreciate laws and regulations like cyber<br />
usage, e-transaction, confidentiality and privacy.<br />
• The reviewed policy has to emphasize downstream issues<br />
like ICT Incubator to promote local entrepreneurial culture.
• In regard to vision and strategy the national ICT policy<br />
should be specific and should include strategy in the vision.<br />
• It should be noted that many a nation develop ICT policies<br />
but few realize the widely acclaimed benefits of ICT in terms<br />
of socio-economic development, because it takes more than<br />
policy development to realize those benefits.<br />
7. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS<br />
My thanks go to ICEGOV sponsoring organizations and<br />
conference organizers for the financial support given to attend the<br />
ICEGOV 2012 conference and to present a paper.<br />
8. REFERENCES<br />
[1] BALRAJ-AMBIGAPATHY, S, GOONASEKERA, A AND<br />
LEE CHUN, W. 2001. Asian Communication Handbook<br />
―Malaysiaǁ‖ in (eds). Singapore: AMIC.<br />
[2] Cheryl Marie Cordeiro and Suliman Al-Hawamdeh, “National<br />
Information Infrastructure and the realization of Singapore<br />
IT2000 initiative,” Division of Information Studies,<br />
Information Research, Vol. 6 No. 2, 2001.<br />
[3] David A. Wolfe and Allison Bramwell, “Growing the ICT<br />
Industry in Canada: A Knowledge Synthesis Paper”, 2010.<br />
[4] David Gichoya, “Factors Affecting the Successful<br />
Implementation of ICT Projects in Government”, 2005.<br />
[5] Delivering Australian Government Services: Access and<br />
Distribution Strategy (http://www.finance.gov.au), 2006.<br />
[6] Delivering Australian Government Services: Managing<br />
Multiple Channels (http://www.finance.gov.au), 2006.<br />
[7] Ewen Le Borgne and Jaap Pels, “Knowledge management<br />
and Communication strategy West Africa Water Initiative<br />
Knowledge Management project, October 2010<br />
[8] Ghana’s ICT4AD Policy Document (http://www.ict.gov.gh),<br />
2003<br />
[9] ICT Development Index (IDI) 2010 report February 2012 by<br />
the International Telecommunication Union (ITU)<br />
(http://inwent-iij-lab.org/Weblog/2010/07/26/ictdevelopment-index-itu-omits-sierra-leone-again/)<br />
[10] ICT Policy Development: the Case of Canada, 2012 IPCSIT<br />
vol. 36 (2012) © (2012) IACSIT Press, Singapore,<br />
(http://www.ipcsit.com)<br />
[11] Investment Policy Review Kenya, 2005 by United Nations<br />
(http://mirror.undo.org).<br />
[12] Investment Policy Review of Kenya, 2005 (http://unctad.org)<br />
[13] IT839 Strategy Document (http://www.vus.sk)<br />
[14] Kenya ICT Policy Document (http://www.ist-africa.org)<br />
[15] Korea’s Informatization Policy to Deliver ICT Use in<br />
Everyday Life (http://unpan1.un.org), 2007 Edition<br />
[16] Malaysia draft national IT policy (revised) 2007-2013,<br />
(http://www.eeas.europa.eu)<br />
[17] Malaysia National ICT Policy; Malaysia‘s Vision 2020,<br />
which foresees Malaysia becoming an industrialized country<br />
(http://www.epu.gov.my)<br />
201<br />
[18] Margaret Abba-Donkor, “Effective regulation: The<br />
importance of addressing consumer issues in an Era of<br />
digitization and convergence”, 2007.<br />
[19] OSIMO, D., AND GAREIS, K. 2005. The role of interregional<br />
benchmarking in the policy-making process:<br />
experiences in the field of information society, in<br />
<strong>proceedings</strong> of the Regional Studies Association conference,<br />
Aalborg, Denmark.<br />
[20] Singapore National ICT Policy, Transform Singapore into a<br />
vibrant global ICT capital with a thriving and prosperous Net<br />
Economy by year 2010, (http://www.unapcict)<br />
[21] Sudhir Kumar Marwaha, International Cooperation in the<br />
ICT Field: Bridging the Digital Divide, 2009.<br />
[22] The Ghana ICT for Accelerated Development (ICT4AD)<br />
Policy, 2003 (http://www.ict.gov.gh/).
Laggards or Victims of Socioeconomic Conditions?<br />
Findings from Ongoing Survey of Female Slum-dwellers<br />
Without Cell Phone Ownership<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
This paper presents the following details from an ongoing survey<br />
of 334 poor female slum-dwellers who don’t own cell phones:<br />
demographic features including socioeconomic status, sources of<br />
income, barriers to adopt cell phones, and perceived incentives for<br />
and consequences of using cell phones in India. The findings<br />
differ from three key characteristics of laggards identified by the<br />
diffusion of innovation literature. The findings based on responses<br />
from 334 poor laggards suggest hypotheses for predicting the cell<br />
phone adoption by the remaining poor laggards in India.<br />
Categories and Subject Descriptors<br />
H.1.1 [Systems and Information Theory]: Value of Information<br />
H.1.2 [User/Machine Systems]: Human Factors<br />
General Terms<br />
Economics and Human Factors<br />
Keywords<br />
Diffusion of Innovation, Laggards, Poor Slum-Dwellers,<br />
Adoption of Cell Phones<br />
1. INTRODUCTION<br />
Cell phones are the most widely adopted information and<br />
communication technology (ICT) innovation in the world with<br />
more than five billion subscribers as of December 2010, and the<br />
customer-base was expected to exceed six billion by the end of<br />
2011[1]. Since 2000, coverage of mobile telephony has expanded,<br />
and cell phone subscriptions in developing countries like India<br />
and China have increased by over 500%. Intense competition and<br />
innovation within the telecommunications sector in the last decade<br />
has catapulted India into the largest and fastest-growing cell<br />
phone market in the world. Inexpensive cell phone handsets ($15<br />
Devendra Potnis and Kanchan Deosthali<br />
University of Tennessee<br />
01-865-974-2148, 01-518-322-6693<br />
dpotnis@utk.edu, kdeostha@utk.edu<br />
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for<br />
personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not<br />
made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear<br />
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this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with<br />
credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to post on servers or to<br />
redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee.<br />
ICEGOV '12, October 22 - 25 2012, Albany, NY, USA<br />
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1200-4/12/10...$15.00<br />
202<br />
per piece and above), fierce competition in the Indian cell phone<br />
industry (five out of 15 service providers sharing the market<br />
almost equally), and very cheap tariff rates (less than two cents<br />
per minute) have made cell phones affordable even to poor.<br />
Further, collective ownership models (sharing cell phones through<br />
SIM cards and payments for air-time) and flexible payment<br />
options such as micro-payments (up to a dollar) make cell phones<br />
an attractive communication medium [3].<br />
In India, thirty percent of the nation’s 1.3 billion people are under<br />
18[5], which is the legal age for buying cell phones in the country.<br />
Out of 910 million potential cell phone owners, 907 million had<br />
adopted the ICT innovation as of September 2011 [4]. Thus,<br />
according to the diffusion of innovation literature, the citizens<br />
above 18 who do not own cell phones can be labeled as<br />
innovation laggards. The diffusion of innovation theory [2]<br />
proposes five categories for innovation adopters: innovators, early<br />
adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards (see Figure<br />
1).<br />
Figure 1. Adopter Categories [2]<br />
Adopter categories are the classifications of members of a social<br />
system on the basis of innovativeness, or the degree to which an<br />
individual or other unit of adoption accepts new ideas when<br />
compared to other members of a system.<br />
1.1 Research Objective<br />
Despite the cheapest cell phone prices in the world and a host of<br />
affordable services and products offered over the cell phones,<br />
more than 3 million Indian adults – categorized as innovation<br />
laggards – do not own and/or use cell phones. To learn more<br />
about these innovation laggards, this study focused on poor<br />
female slum-dwellers who don’t own cell phones. These female<br />
slum-dwellers earn less than two dollars a day and represent one<br />
of the most disadvantaged populations in the male-dominant<br />
Indian society. The following research questions were explored as<br />
part of this ongoing study:
1) What are the demographic characteristics, including<br />
socioeconomic status, of female slum-dwellers who do not<br />
own cell phones?<br />
a) Is there a correlation between respondents’ income,<br />
education, age, family characteristics, and facilities at<br />
home and their lack of cell phone ownership?<br />
2) What are the key barriers to cell phone adoption by<br />
respondents?<br />
3) What are the perceived consequences of and incentives for<br />
cell phone adoption?<br />
The second section describes the relevant theory from diffusion of<br />
innovation literature. The third section presents the research<br />
methodology used to collect responses from slum-dwellers in<br />
urban and rural India. The fourth section presents the study<br />
findings, and the final section concludes with hypotheses and<br />
suggestions for future research, and practical implications of study<br />
findings.<br />
2. DIFFUSION OF INNOVATION<br />
Diffusion is a special type of communication in which messages<br />
are new ideas. It is a social change, defined as the “process by<br />
which alteration occurs in the structure and function of a social<br />
system” [2, p.6]. Social changes occur when new ideas are<br />
invented, diffused, and are adopted or rejected. Although the cell<br />
phone is not a new technology, it is definitely a new idea for<br />
millions of poor in India to start using cell phones for everyday<br />
life. The following sub-sections portray characteristics of laggards<br />
and consequences for and incentives of innovation as described by<br />
the diffusion of innovation theory [2].<br />
2.1 Characteristics of Laggards<br />
Laggards are the last in a social system to adopt an innovation.<br />
They are conservative and “localite” in their outlook. They often<br />
interact with those who have traditional values. They are not part<br />
of any social network and live in their own worlds with very<br />
limited exposure to the outside world. There are no leaders among<br />
laggards, and they are rarely associated with any opinion leaders.<br />
The point of reference for the laggard is always the past. They do<br />
not believe in innovations and, hence, tend to be suspicious of<br />
new innovations. Laggards adopt an innovation only when they<br />
are sure about its success, since they cannot afford to lose the<br />
investment made in any innovation.<br />
2.2 Perceived Consequences of and Incentives<br />
for Innovation<br />
Consequences are the changes that occur to an individual or to a<br />
social system as a result of the adoption or rejection of an<br />
innovation. There are three types of consequences of diffusion of<br />
innovation: (i) desirable versus undesirable consequences,<br />
depending on whether the effects of an innovation in a social<br />
system are functional or dysfunctional; (ii) direct versus indirect<br />
consequences, depending on whether the changes to an individual<br />
or to a social system occur in immediate response to an innovation<br />
or as a second-order result of the direct consequences of an<br />
innovation; and (iii) anticipated versus unanticipated<br />
consequences, depending on whether the changes are recognized<br />
and intended by the members of a social system or not.<br />
There are a variety of incentives observed with the diffusion of<br />
innovation. The incentives are as follows. Either the individual<br />
adopter or the system associated with that adopter is benefitted<br />
203<br />
due to the individual’s adoption of innovation. Positive incentives<br />
like awards and rewards or negative incentives like penalties and<br />
fines increase the rate of adoption. Monetary or social incentives<br />
trigger the act of adoption. Immediate incentives, which are<br />
incentives that are paid at the time of the adoption, increase<br />
adoption rate; in contrast, delayed incentives could benefit<br />
adopter(s) days, weeks, months, or even years after adoption.<br />
3. RESEARCH METHODS<br />
The current study focused on poor females living in urban and<br />
rural slums who did not own cell phones. Two female assistants in<br />
their 40s from the lowest socioeconomic stratum were recruited<br />
for data collection. The assistants were literate enough to write<br />
down responses on the survey questionnaire. The assistants were<br />
paid 60 cents for each respondent they surveyed. The assistants<br />
randomly distributed surveys and collected data from selected 386<br />
slum-dwellers. Out of 386 responses, 334 responses were usable.<br />
The data collection is still going on in rural and urban areas of<br />
Maharashtra, one of the western states in India. The convenient<br />
sampling of respondents limits the generalizability of study<br />
findings.<br />
4. FINDINGS<br />
This section provides answers to the three research questions.<br />
4.1 Demographic Characteristics Including<br />
Socioeconomic Status<br />
Out of 334 female respondents, 79 belong to rural slums and 255<br />
live in urban slums. The average age of respondents was close to<br />
37 years (see Figure 2).<br />
Figure 2. Age Distribution for % of Respondents<br />
Approximately 37% of respondents were illiterate. Out of the<br />
remaining 63% of respondents, (a) 29% of respondents dropped<br />
out of school before 10 th grade, (b) 21% of respondents attended<br />
school until 10 th grade, and (c) 13% of respondents attended<br />
college. Fifty seven percent of respondents earned less than a<br />
dollar a day, 36% of respondents earned more than a dollar a day<br />
and less than two dollars a day, and 7% of respondents earned<br />
more than two dollars a day. Television, in-house bathrooms, and<br />
tap water connections were the three topmost facilities and<br />
services enjoyed by the respondents (see Figure 3).
Figure 3. Facilities & Services Enjoyed by Respondents<br />
There was no correlation found between respondents’ education,<br />
age, marital status, family characteristics, and facilities at home<br />
and their lack of cell phone ownership.<br />
4.1.1 Sources of Income<br />
The survey sought primary, secondary, and tertiary sources of<br />
income from each respondent. Table 1 lists the income sources<br />
into the following categories: (i) business of selling services, (ii)<br />
business of selling products, (iii) employment, (iv) helper in nonemployee<br />
role for someone else’s business, (v) unemployed, (vi)<br />
retired, and (vii) miscellaneous.<br />
Table 1. Source of Income<br />
# Types of Income Primary Secondary Tertiary<br />
Sources N= 312 N= 181 N =84<br />
1 Business of<br />
selling services<br />
44% 44% 35%<br />
2 Business of<br />
selling products<br />
24% 27% 43%<br />
3 Employee 14% 13% 13%<br />
4 Helper in Nonemployee<br />
Role<br />
2% 4% 5%<br />
5 Unemployed 13% 12% 4%<br />
6 Retired 2% 0% 0%<br />
7 Miscellaneous 1% 0% 0%<br />
The business of selling services emerged as the topmost income<br />
source in primary and secondary category, whereas the business<br />
of selling products was the topmost tertiary source of income for<br />
respondents. Respondents offered the following services: house<br />
cleaning, dishwashing, cloth washing, cooking and catering, babysitting,<br />
dropping children to schools, massaging, teaching,<br />
tailoring, singing, training women for handicraft, renting photo<br />
frames to hospitals, singing, match-making, portering, and<br />
nursing. The business of selling products included a variety of<br />
products, such as vegetables, fruits, sweetmeats, traditional<br />
snacks, spices, dry fish, tea, meals, fish, bangles, pearl ornaments,<br />
hair-bands, dress material/clothing, flowers, fabric paintings,<br />
birthday party decorations, ribbons for typewriters, calendars,<br />
rubber stamps, brooms, and sticks for ice-cream candies.<br />
The different forms of employment for the women were as<br />
follows: compounder at a dispensary, care-taker of mentally<br />
retarded children, assistant in a photo studio, sales-girl, student<br />
assistant, office staff in placement office, nurse, assistant in<br />
transportation business, assistant at telephone booth, hotel staff,<br />
204<br />
construction worker, government employee, bottle company<br />
worker, delivery girl by a courier company, assistant to an<br />
accountant, assistant to caterers, farm workers, server in<br />
weddings, floor mill operator, and assistant at a computer<br />
institute. Another type of income source for women was serving<br />
as helpers in others’ businesses. This included helping in<br />
husbands’ businesses, fathers’ businesses, uncles’ businesses, and<br />
sons’ businesses. The unemployed women were: students, job<br />
seekers, housewives whose husbands did not allow them to work,<br />
physically handicapped women, caretakers of their big families,<br />
daughter-in-laws refrained by their in-laws to work, illiterate, and<br />
less educated women.<br />
4.2 Key Barriers to Cell Phone Adoption<br />
Respondents reported three key barriers that kept them away from<br />
owning cell phones. Table 2 shows low income or insufficient<br />
income as the most significant barrier and second most significant<br />
barrier to adopting cell phones. Miscellaneous financial reasons<br />
were reported as the third most significant barrier that prevented<br />
respondents from owning cell phones. The miscellaneous<br />
financial reasons were as follows: scarce money to eat food on a<br />
daily basis, insufficient money to repair a leaking roof, low<br />
savings for children’s schooling, uncertainty and unpredictability<br />
of daily wages, no raise in income and salary, seasonal<br />
employment, unemployment, lack of permanent job, remittance of<br />
money to relatives in native places, insufficient savings to buy a<br />
cell phone, lack of guidance for operating cell phones, loss in<br />
business, very small profit margin in business, meager pension,<br />
savings lost in son’s accident, medical expenses, and a lot of<br />
accrued debt due to mother’s sickness and daughter’s wedding.<br />
The miscellaneous non-financial reasons that served as barriers to<br />
cell phones included government policies, socio-cultural<br />
backwardness, illiteracy, less education, dependency on relatives,<br />
retirement, disabled husband, resistance by husband and in-laws<br />
to use cell phones, lack of freedom to make decisions, availability<br />
of office phones to make personal calls, lack of electricity to<br />
charge cell phones, lack of knowledge for operating cell phones,<br />
ease of access to public phone booths, old age, husband’s<br />
addiction to alcohol, possible mishandling and misuse of cell<br />
phones by children, and extreme difference of opinions among<br />
family members for using cell phones.<br />
Table 2. Barriers to Cell Phone Adoption<br />
# Types of Barriers First<br />
Key<br />
Barrier<br />
N=325<br />
1 Entire Financial Burden<br />
on Respondent Alone<br />
2%<br />
2 Low/Insufficient Income 30%<br />
Second<br />
Key<br />
Barrier<br />
N=304<br />
Third<br />
Key<br />
Barrier<br />
N=208<br />
2% 0%<br />
27% 10%<br />
3 Inflation 14% 14% 14%<br />
4 a. Large Family b. More<br />
# of Dependents than<br />
Bread-winners<br />
5 Lack of Need for Using<br />
6<br />
Cell Phones<br />
Borrow Cell Phones<br />
from Others<br />
4% 8% 10%<br />
4%<br />
3%<br />
4% 3%<br />
4% 2%
7<br />
Unaffordable Cell Phone<br />
Prices and Maintenance<br />
7%<br />
6% 8%<br />
8 Miscellaneous Financial<br />
Reasons<br />
13% 16% 32%<br />
9 Poverty 12% 5% 1%<br />
10 Costly<br />
Upbringing and<br />
Education of Children<br />
11 Miscellaneous Nonfinancial<br />
Reasons<br />
3%<br />
9% 6%<br />
8% 5% 14%<br />
4.3 Perceived Consequences of and Incentives<br />
for Cell Phone Adoption<br />
Anticipated and desirable consequences of adopting cell phones<br />
were as follows. Ninety-five percent of respondents think that<br />
their status in the family would improve if they started using cell<br />
phones. Ninety eight percent of respondents believe that cell<br />
phone usage will lead to personal development. Table 3 presents<br />
respondents’ top perceived incentives for cell phone adoption.<br />
Social networking with family, relatives, friends, and neighbors<br />
emerged as the most important incentive for cell phone adoption.<br />
Table 3. Perceived Incentives for Cell Phone Adoption<br />
# Incentives for First Second Third<br />
Cell Phone Adoption N = 334 N = 327 N = 271<br />
1 Easy to make calls to<br />
anybody any time<br />
3% 3% 1%<br />
2 For expanding business 25% 28% 17%<br />
3 To maintain social contact<br />
with family, relatives,<br />
friends, and neighbors<br />
55% 51% 62%<br />
4 To seek out help in<br />
emergency situations<br />
17% 17% 19%<br />
5 Entertainment 0% 1% 1%<br />
5. CONCLUSION<br />
The lack of cell phone ownership among female slum-dwellers<br />
was largely based on unfavorable socioeconomic and financial<br />
conditions and not driven by choice as is the case with laggards.<br />
Poor female slum-dwellers are the victims of socioeconomic<br />
conditions in rural and urban India, discouraging them from<br />
adopting cell phones. Table 4 lists the differences between three<br />
key characteristics of laggards identified by the diffusion of<br />
innovation theory and the current study findings.<br />
Table 4. Differences in Theory and Study Findings<br />
# Theoretical Views<br />
for Laggards<br />
1 Laggards are<br />
conservative<br />
their outlook.<br />
in<br />
Current Study Findings<br />
In the male-dominant Indian<br />
society, business of selling services<br />
and products forms the topmost<br />
source of income for poor female<br />
slum-dwellers. Respondents are<br />
financially independent microentrepreneurs<br />
with modern<br />
205<br />
2 Laggards are not<br />
part of any social<br />
network with very<br />
limited exposure to<br />
the outside world.<br />
3 Laggards do not<br />
believe in<br />
innovations, hence<br />
are suspicious of<br />
innovations.<br />
outlook.<br />
Social networking with friends and<br />
family members emerged as the<br />
topmost incentive for slumdwellers<br />
to adopt cell phones.<br />
100% of respondents expressed<br />
their confidence in the utility of<br />
cell phones. They were not<br />
suspicious about the value created<br />
by adopting cell phones.<br />
Findings based on responses from 334 poor laggards suggest<br />
hypotheses for predicting cell phone adoption by the remaining<br />
poor laggards in India, who do not own and use cell phones. The<br />
hypotheses are as follows.<br />
H1: Demographic variables (e.g., education, age, marital status,<br />
family characteristics, and facilities at home) do not influence cell<br />
phone adoption.<br />
H2: Low or insufficient income is the main barrier for cell phone<br />
adoption.<br />
H3: Improvement in social status is the most evident perceived<br />
consequence of cell phone adoption.<br />
H4: Social networking is the major perceived incentive for cell<br />
phone adoption. Hence, H4a: Respondents are more likely to<br />
adopt cell phones, if they have family, friends, relatives, or<br />
neighbors who own and use cell phones.<br />
In addition, future research focusing on personal characteristics<br />
and communication patterns of laggards without cell phone<br />
ownership would equip us better for predicting cell phone<br />
adoption by laggards in India.<br />
Practical implications for cell phone manufacturers are as follows.<br />
Cell phone features supporting the “business of selling services<br />
and products” could increase the cell phone adoption by<br />
microentrepreneurs in India. In addition, mobile applications<br />
facilitating social networking with appropriate user interfaces<br />
designed for illiterate and semi-literate cell phone users would be<br />
an additional incentive for poor laggards to adopt cell phones.<br />
6. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT<br />
We would like to thank the University of Tennessee at Knoxville<br />
for funding this study.<br />
REFERENCES<br />
[1] ITU. International Telecommunications Union<br />
Retrieved from www.itu.int/ on December 21, 2011.<br />
[2] Rogers, E. Diffusion of Innovations (4th ed.).<br />
New York: Free Press. 1995.<br />
[3] Sinha, C. Effect of Mobile Telephony on Empowering Rural<br />
Communities in Developing Countries, Conference on Digital<br />
Divide, Global Development and the Information Society<br />
(Tunis, Tunisia, 2005), 2005.<br />
[4] TRAI. Telecom Regulatory Authority of India<br />
Retrieved from http://www.trai.gov.in/ on October 23, 2011.<br />
[5] US Census Bureau. US Census Bureau’s Intl. Database,<br />
Retrieved from http://www.census.gov on May 1, 2010.
Promoting user uptake of e-government in Colombia<br />
Diana Parra Silva<br />
International Consultant<br />
Orinoco 5006<br />
Montevideo, Uruguay<br />
+598 97305822<br />
dianaparra@hotmail.com<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
This paper describes the key factors for the development of a<br />
successful strategy for the e-government uptake in Colombia.<br />
Categories and Subject Descriptors<br />
A.0 [General]: Conference <strong>proceedings</strong>.<br />
General Terms<br />
Management, Measurement, Performance.<br />
Keywords<br />
E-government, "Gobierno en linea", Uptake, Marketing.<br />
1. INTRODUCTION<br />
In 2005, the OECD identified that having a strong brand, as well<br />
as developing a solid marketing strategy, was a key factor in egovernment<br />
successful cases. In 2009, some years later, the same<br />
organization dedicated a publication to highlight the importance<br />
of public awareness on e-government.<br />
Raising awareness about the importance of user uptake has<br />
become a pressing matter in the last years, to such an extent that<br />
the UN E-Government Survey 2012 recognized it as a highpriority<br />
aspect, when it points: "availability of online public<br />
services ('supply-side') has been the primary focus of egovernment<br />
studies and policymaking, but over the past years<br />
citizens' usage of e-government services ('demand-side') has also<br />
become a priority issue".<br />
The fundamentals behind this fact have triggered a discussion on<br />
two aspects: if citizens are not aware of the government's online<br />
services and do not use them, are the efforts made by public<br />
administrations valuable for the citizens? And, will the benefits<br />
commonly associated to e-government and the social return of<br />
investments be achieved without a critical mass of users?<br />
"Gobierno en linea" is the Colombian strategy, led by a<br />
Programme with the same name, that contributes on developing a<br />
more efficient, transparent and participative government, which<br />
provides better services by means of ICT. This strategy guides the<br />
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for<br />
personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are<br />
not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies<br />
bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for<br />
components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored.<br />
Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to<br />
post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission<br />
and/or a fee.<br />
ICEGOV '12, October 22 - 25 2012, Albany, NY, USA<br />
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1200-4/12/10...$15.00<br />
206<br />
Johanna Pimiento Quintero<br />
Manager of "Gobierno en linea"<br />
CR 8 12-00<br />
Bogota, Colombia<br />
+571 3442270<br />
johanna.pimiento@gobiernoenlinea.gov.co<br />
delivery of online services by public agencies, at both national<br />
and local levels.<br />
The Programme, taking into consideration the discussion<br />
mentioned before has impelled the awareness of e-government<br />
services in the country through the diagnosis, design, development<br />
and follow-up of a marketing and outreach strategy in Colombia<br />
from 2008 to 2010. Below you will find the most relevant aspects<br />
concerning such experience, which gave Colombia the basis to<br />
promote the citizens' awareness up to the present days.<br />
2. BASELINE<br />
In 2007, a study carried out in 21 municipalities allowed gathering<br />
information about knowledge, use, needs and expectations. The<br />
study consisted of face-to-face surveys conducted in 2,500<br />
households which represented the total of individuals residing at<br />
urban areas, selected according to age, socioeconomic strata and<br />
education of the country's population. The following are some<br />
highlights of the study's findings:<br />
o Only 23% of Colombians had visited a website of the<br />
government, which meant that there were nearly 4<br />
million of Internet users at that time that had never<br />
visited any public agency website.<br />
o Only 4% had used a government online service.<br />
o 77% had not used government online services because<br />
they didn't know how they worked, they were<br />
considered to be unsafe or unreliable.<br />
o 54% of nonusers were willing to use them, representing<br />
19 million of potential users.<br />
These findings motivated the decision to develop the marketing<br />
and outreach strategy for enhancing awareness and use of egovernment<br />
services.<br />
3. DIAGNOSTIC<br />
In 2008, the work began by analyzing the desired positioning for<br />
"Gobierno en linea": being efficient, participatory and transparent,<br />
as well as a provider of high quality services, which was<br />
transformed into the strategy's specific objectives:<br />
o To increase the government's efficiency by optimizing<br />
processes and sharing resources, as well as exchanging<br />
accurate and quality information.<br />
o To promote transparency and participation, by<br />
increasing the visibility of public matters and enabling<br />
new channels for participation and social control.
o To provide better services fulfilling the citizen's needs,<br />
with high quality, and reduced costs and time; making<br />
them simpler and accessible through multiple channels.<br />
A diagnosis was made with the intention of gathering more<br />
information in order to design the marketing and outreach<br />
strategy, using: 4,700 surveys in households, SMEs and large<br />
companies, associative organizations and public agencies; a<br />
positioning study with 6,003 surveys; 104 focus groups with<br />
citizens, entrepreneurs and public servants; 369 interviews with<br />
ICT companies, SMEs, Colombians living abroad and<br />
international organisms.<br />
In addition, the main characteristics of the communicational<br />
approach of the leading countries on e-government were<br />
researched, along with the best international practices regarding<br />
incentives to citizens and companies for online services usage.<br />
Likewise, macro and micro characteristics were analyzed<br />
(economical, political, social and cultural factors; consumer, client<br />
and competition profiles, among others), as well as domestic and<br />
international audiences and potential users. Moreover, a study was<br />
carried out in order to determine the positioning of the brand and<br />
the organization and how they were perceived.<br />
Equally important was to know the acceptance, motivations and<br />
habits of use, possible advantages and disadvantages, main<br />
benefits and problems, and usage intention for each target<br />
audience. Also, a study to evaluate opportunities and risks of<br />
repositioning or renovating the Programme denomination (called<br />
"Agenda de Conectividad" at the moment) was made.<br />
The following are some highlights about how the target audiences<br />
perceived the positioning values:<br />
o What is EFFICIENCY? "To not keep people wandering<br />
around, from one government office to another". "Equal<br />
treatment for everyone".<br />
o What is TRANSPARENCY? "It is a government with<br />
clear rules". "It implies the right of citizens to review<br />
the government's performance".<br />
o What is PARTICIPATION? "To be able to have a free<br />
opinion and to express my ideas". "That every opinion<br />
is taken into account".<br />
o What is TO PROVIDE A GOOD SERVICE? "To make<br />
the client feel well". "That the human being comes<br />
first".<br />
When people used Gobiernoenlinea.gov.co, they said things like:<br />
o "There is no discrimination; it shows us that<br />
opportunities are equal for everybody because it is open<br />
to the public".<br />
o "It no longer depends on the shift of public servant's<br />
opinion; it is not open to interpretations".<br />
o "With this type of portals one can make things easily<br />
and it is not incited to pay somebody to speed up an<br />
administrative formality".<br />
o "It is serious because it avoids external middlemen".<br />
4. DESIGN<br />
From world experiences on e-government, it was concluded that<br />
the communication objective for these services is mainly oriented<br />
towards raising awareness on online services and promoting its<br />
use by target audiences.<br />
207<br />
Therefore, it was decided to develop the marketing and outreach<br />
strategy on "awareness and use", focusing on building a closer<br />
relationship between people and the government.<br />
The strategy focused on the following target audiences:<br />
o Citizens: Although they do not always know how to use<br />
it and they are not very aware of the administrative<br />
formalities, it is the main target audience because it is<br />
the most massive and most of the online services are<br />
provided for them.<br />
o Citizens living abroad: For this target audience,<br />
Gobiernoenlinea.gov.co is an optimal channel offering<br />
information and services, given that through this portal<br />
they will always have access to the government from<br />
any part of the world.<br />
o Enterprises: It refers to large companies with a closer<br />
contact to the government because they must regularly<br />
comply with mandatory formalities. They support<br />
initiatives that make them save time and money in their<br />
interactions with the government.<br />
o SMEs: It refers to small and medium enterprises, which<br />
should be considered as a specific target audience since<br />
they have different habits than large companies in their<br />
interaction with the government. SMEs require more<br />
support from the government because they do not have<br />
the same resources or the same expertise as large<br />
companies.<br />
o Public servants: They are especially important, as they<br />
are the human assets that assure e-government's good<br />
operation. They may have certain fears, resistance to<br />
change and may also think that technology might come<br />
in to take their place.<br />
o International community: The interaction with this<br />
target audience is a window to global advocacy of<br />
success and achievements. They provide the possibility<br />
of learning from other experiences and it is also a way<br />
of sharing what has been accomplished.<br />
It was decided that the message was to be clear, outstanding and<br />
inspiring; solid enough to be used in every media communication.<br />
Such communications should have a pertinent tone according to<br />
the target audience to be reached taking into account its specific<br />
characteristics.<br />
Similarly, it was decided that the denomination of the Programme<br />
("Agenda de Conectividad") should be changed, using the same<br />
name of the strategy ("Gobierno en linea") and therefore unifying<br />
its image. A new logo was designed to be present throughout the<br />
communication actions; the logo had to be simple and close to the<br />
citizen and it should also convey credibility and the government's<br />
identity (see Table 1). Using focus groups the whole process was<br />
tested by citizens, businessmen and public servants.<br />
Table 1. Changes in name and image<br />
Before After
It was also decided that it was necessary to have a slogan, a short<br />
phrase, easy to remember, which would link the functional matter<br />
to the emotional one; something that would linger in time and that<br />
will reflect the identity and the characteristics of the brand.<br />
Consequently it should communicate change, easiness, and<br />
proximity in such a way that each target audience could feel<br />
identified with it: "Making your relationship with the government<br />
easier" was chosen as the appropriate one.<br />
To influence target audiences' perception, a five stages strategy<br />
was designed, as detailed below:<br />
o Stage of Preparation - its purpose was to advance in<br />
research and strategic planning, prepare schedules and<br />
budgets, and negotiate with the media, producing and<br />
pre-testing campaigns, among others actions. It lasted<br />
for 7 months.<br />
o Stage of Sensitization - oriented specifically to public<br />
servants. Communication objective: to raise their brand<br />
awareness for the launching. Key message: We are all<br />
"Gobierno en linea". It lasted for 2 months.<br />
o Stage of Awareness - oriented to all target audiences.<br />
Communication objective: to generate positive<br />
perceptions for a better brand positioning, that would<br />
raise its awareness and impact. Key message: We are<br />
working to make your relationship with the government<br />
progressively easy. It lasted for 3 months.<br />
o Stage of Experience - oriented to all target audiences.<br />
Communication objective: to generate satisfactory<br />
experiences in all the audiences. Key message:<br />
"Gobierno en linea" works; check it out. It lasted for 12<br />
months.<br />
o Stage of Habit - oriented to all target audiences.<br />
Communication objective: to set habit's groundwork to<br />
use "Gobierno en linea" when interacting with the<br />
government. Key message: You can always find<br />
something new on "Gobierno en linea". It lasted for 12<br />
months.<br />
5. IMPLEMENTATION<br />
For the stage of awareness, which started in late 2008, a campaign<br />
focusing on massive media and brand activation was carried out,<br />
under the premise: "Questions about administrative formalities are<br />
easier to answer than questions about life" (see Figure 1).<br />
Figure 1. Sample of the Awareness Stage<br />
208<br />
For example, it is more difficult to answer a question about life<br />
such as "What should I study?" than getting information to answer<br />
a question about an administrative formality such as "How can I<br />
get an educational loan?".<br />
For the stage of experience, implemented in 2009, the objective<br />
was to produce satisfactory experiences for the target audiences,<br />
with the aim of allowing people to verify that "Gobierno en linea"<br />
actually works.<br />
In order to achieve such goal, workshops inside an itinerant<br />
classroom with a circus tent shape were carried out. The tent<br />
traveled more than 7,500 kilometers visiting 16 departments<br />
(states) across the country. It allowed more than 71,500 people<br />
(students, adults, social groups, communal leaders, elderly people,<br />
handicapped people, single mothers, indigenous, afro-<br />
Colombians, street vendors, teachers, public servants, among<br />
others), to have a direct contact with online services. The<br />
campaign was called "Vive Gobierno en linea" (Livin' "Gobierno<br />
en linea") and advertising material was used in local media,<br />
inviting people to participate in the workshops (see Figure 2).<br />
This campaign was granted the 2010 FRIDA Award for Best<br />
Initiative of Public Administration in the region.<br />
Figure 2. Sample of the Experience Stage<br />
Finally for the stage of habit, executed in 2010, the objective was<br />
to motivate people to try not one but several online services,<br />
demonstrating through good experiences some of the new<br />
available services for the different target audiences, under the<br />
premise: "a good experience makes a good history".<br />
The fact that Colombians should be the ones communicating the<br />
benefits and kindness of "Gobierno en linea" was found to be a<br />
good opportunity, because people would use real life, human and<br />
inclusive stories. Thus, a contest was launched so that people<br />
could share their experiences through testimonies recorded on<br />
video. The best ones were turned into TV spots for the campaign<br />
under the name "Experiences that make history" (see Figure 3).
Figure 3. Sample of the Habit Stage<br />
The starting point for the development of each campaign was the<br />
media mix that was determined for each target audience:<br />
o Citizens: ATL - Ads on national and regional press,<br />
magazines, television and radio, as well as free PR press<br />
(political speech of regional and national important<br />
authorities). TTL - Social media such as Facebook,<br />
Twitter, Flickr and YouTube, links on websites of the<br />
government and online ads. BTL - Events, banners,<br />
merchandising and text messages.<br />
o Citizens living abroad: ATL - Ads on international TV<br />
channels. TTL - To make contact with this segment<br />
digital and social media were crucial.<br />
o SMEs: ATL - Specialized magazines, professional<br />
guilds, radio stations and news channels. BTL -<br />
Specialized events, direct email with information about<br />
the different uses and benefits, as well as brand presence<br />
at fairs and congresses.<br />
o Enterprises: ATL - Ads in specialized magazines<br />
oriented to different sectors and professional<br />
associations. Also, ads on TV and radio news shows.<br />
BTL - Presence at fairs and specialized congresses for<br />
large companies, as well as through speakers<br />
discoursing about different trends with the purpose of<br />
catching companies’ attention.<br />
o International Community: ATL - Articles in specialized<br />
magazines. An annual magazine was created divulging<br />
successful cases and advances. BTL - Brand presence in<br />
events and congresses. TTL - Online networks related to<br />
e-government, for posting a variety of successful cases.<br />
Others - To follow international rankings and other<br />
types of publications.<br />
o Public servants: BTL: to carry out events, seminars,<br />
chats, direct email, presence at fairs and congresses.<br />
Others: production of training materials (using familyfriendly<br />
language and situations applicable to their<br />
realities).<br />
6. RESULTS AND FOLLOWING ACTIONS<br />
During the first three years of the strategy a follow-up was made<br />
analyzing the raise of awareness and use of electronic means in<br />
the interaction between people and the government.<br />
209<br />
A raise of 309% of awareness (increasing from 22% up to 90%)<br />
and a raise of 550% in use (increasing from 6% up to 39%) were<br />
achieved. One fact that is worth highlighting, is the one referring<br />
to "re-use" (do it again): among people who had actually used<br />
"Gobierno en linea", 99% asserted that they would be willing to<br />
use it again.<br />
These results, together with an analysis of usage evolution,<br />
allowed inferring that next steps for the marketing and outreach<br />
strategy should be focused on promoting "the first time use". Once<br />
people experience online services, they would be willing to<br />
continue to use them due to the benefits perceived.<br />
The main lesson learnt was that a communication strategy should<br />
not be approached as a series of isolated actions but as a whole<br />
strategy (as its name indicates) with clear challenges, objectives,<br />
key messages, concepts, stages and indicators, and should also be<br />
projected within a definite timeline.<br />
Furthermore, users need to be analyzed in depth in order to<br />
understand how they think and how they interact with the<br />
government, as well as the kind of messages they might consider<br />
interesting; plus examine how their perceptions are changing in<br />
order to set the service value promise according to their<br />
expectations.<br />
From that starting point on, a strategic plan was designed and<br />
piloted during 2011: an accompaniment outline was implemented,<br />
to help agencies to design their marketing and outreach strategies<br />
so as to enhance the use of online services, by transferring the<br />
knowledge gained by the Programme in such area.<br />
During the last years (between 2010 and 2011), through the<br />
maintenance of the strategy initially designed, awareness suffered<br />
a slight fall from 90% to 88% (that is within the margin of error in<br />
measurements), while use rose from 39% to 55% over the same<br />
period, which showed that the strategy was being successful and<br />
should continue this way (see Table 2).<br />
Table 2. Increase of awareness and use<br />
Aspect 2008 2009 2010 2011<br />
Awareness 22% 66% 90% 88%<br />
Use 6% 30% 39% 55%<br />
For Colombia the necessity to define sustained actions towards<br />
user uptake of e-government has been a priority. As a<br />
consequence of these actions, future strategies should leverage the<br />
lessons learnt in recent years.<br />
7. REFERENCES<br />
[1] OECD. e-Government for Better Government, 2005.<br />
[2] OECD. Rethinking e-Government Services, 2009.<br />
[3] UN. E-Government Survey 2012: E-Government for the<br />
People, 2012.<br />
[4] Gobierno en linea Programme. Study of knowledge, use,<br />
needs and expectations, 2007.<br />
[5] Gobierno en linea Programme. Results of application of the<br />
methodology for monitoring and evaluation, 2008, 2009,<br />
2010 and 2011.
Session 8<br />
Measurement 1
From Failure to Success: Using Design-Reality Gap<br />
Analysis as a Mid-implementation Assessment Tool for<br />
e-Government<br />
Lemma Lessa<br />
School of Information Sciences<br />
Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia<br />
(+251) 911683805<br />
lemma.lessa@gmail.com<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
e-Government implementation failure in low-income countries is<br />
reported to be as high as 85% where 35% being classified as total<br />
failures - the project never started or was started but immediately<br />
abandoned, and 50% are partial failures - major project goals are<br />
not attained or there were undesirable outcomes [5]. Given this<br />
rate of failure we wanted to investigate a project with partial<br />
failure and draw lessons learned that can be replicated in other<br />
projects. This paper looks at a Land Management Information<br />
System (LMIS) in Ethiopia that facilitates citizen’s request for<br />
land information. The project is credited for reducing the delay in<br />
retrieving land information, simplifying the process, and reducing<br />
the potential for corruption.<br />
We use Design-Reality gap model [5] as a theoretical framework<br />
to assess the project status. Primary data were collected from four<br />
different groups involved in the project including agency<br />
representatives from the Federal Government of Ethiopia, officials<br />
from the capacity building office of Diredawa City<br />
Administration, municipality representatives, and IT<br />
professionals. Our analysis revealed the main contributors for the<br />
success of the e-Government project and also show the<br />
implementation gaps which need due attention in the future to<br />
maximize the success of the project. Based on the implementation<br />
experiences of this project, list of recommendations are provided<br />
for successful execution of possible related initiatives in the<br />
future.<br />
Categories and Subject Descriptors<br />
J. [Computer Applications] J.1 [Administrative Data Processing]<br />
- Government; H.4 [Information systems Applications] H.4.m<br />
[Miscellaneous]<br />
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for<br />
personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are<br />
not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies<br />
bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for<br />
components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored.<br />
Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to<br />
post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission<br />
and/or a fee.<br />
ICEGOV '12, October 22 - 25 2012, Albany, NY, USA<br />
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1200-4/12/10...$15.00<br />
Solomon Negash<br />
Department of Information Systems<br />
Michael J. Coles College of Business<br />
Kennesaw State University, USA<br />
770-420-4312<br />
snegash@yahoo.com<br />
210<br />
Mesfin Belachew<br />
Ministry of Communications and<br />
Information Technology, Ethiopia<br />
(+251) 911791462<br />
mesfinbelachew@gmail.com<br />
General Terms<br />
Management, Measurement, Performance<br />
Keywords<br />
e-Government, implementation success, Design-Reality gap<br />
model, ITPOSMO model, developing countries, low-income<br />
countries<br />
1. INTRODUCTION<br />
It has been said a lot about the tremendous role of e-Government<br />
to improve and more importantly transform the public sector<br />
especially in developing countries context. Although there are<br />
significant investments on e-Government initiatives in spite of<br />
limited budget, there are only few success stories recorded<br />
whereas majorities of those efforts end up in a failure. It is of the<br />
interest of all respective governments if those e-Government<br />
initiatives can be ideally successful as well as sustainable. In line<br />
with this there is also emerging keen interest to evaluate the<br />
contributions of such initiatives on the effectiveness and<br />
efficiency of their public services as it is natural to evaluate<br />
whether benefits out weight costs or not and as they ideally expect<br />
very much positive impacts in this regard.<br />
An e-Government project is said to be successful if most<br />
stakeholders attain their major goals and do not experience<br />
significant undesirable outcomes. Considerable amount of<br />
research has been carried out on the use and positive role of ICTs<br />
in low-income countries in areas such as health, public<br />
administration, and education [9]. And some studies have pointed<br />
out information systems project failure in low-income countries<br />
([7]; [4]). Researchers have also argued that most of these projects<br />
fail either totally or partially due to ‘design-actuality’ [4] or<br />
‘design-reality’ gaps [5], long-term sustainability problems [1], or<br />
lack of commitment on the part of political leadership and public<br />
managers [2].<br />
According to a study curried out by Heeks (in [4, p.2]) who has<br />
done substantial research in the subject area, most<br />
implementations of e-Government in low-income countries fail,<br />
with 35% being classified as total failures (project was never<br />
started or was started but immediately abandoned), and 50% are<br />
partial failures (major goals are not attained and/or there were<br />
undesirable outcomes). Similarly, in a study by [6], it was<br />
estimated that US$3 trillion will be spent on information
technology (IT) projects by governments during the ten year<br />
between 2000 and 2010; with the overall estimated failure rate of<br />
60%, much of this investment will go to waste. This is a<br />
disturbing fact, especially as developing countries have limited<br />
resources at their disposal.<br />
One way to avoid failure is to learn from successful projects<br />
within the developing countries. If we find such a project that is<br />
successful, then we should analyze why it was a success in order<br />
to learn lessons for other Developing Country e-Gov projects.<br />
Especially lessons learned from other low-income countries are<br />
more relevant for this group and encourage South-to-South best<br />
practice sharing. The e-Government system under consideration is<br />
a partial failure. What we are actually asking in this paper is how<br />
we can seek to steer projects that are partial failures from failure<br />
to success just by assessing progress to date, and identifying<br />
future action priorities to enable greater success.<br />
The rationale for the study is, thus, to promote local best practices<br />
while learning from strengths and mistakes of those initiatives so<br />
far. Hence, the main objectives of this study are exploring the<br />
factors critical to the success of the e-Government initiative;<br />
identify the extent of success, and forward recommendations for<br />
future action. In addition, we present the application of the<br />
Design-Reality Gap model, a theoretical model that explains<br />
success/failure of IT project implementation in low-income<br />
countries, vis-à-vis e-Government project.<br />
2. A CASE STUDY OF LAND<br />
MANAGEMENT INFORMATION<br />
SYSTEM (LMIS)<br />
The Ethiopian ICT Development Agency (EICTDA) is a<br />
government body responsible to promote integration and<br />
utilization of ICT in Ethiopia. The deputy director of the Agency<br />
related to us one of an e-Government project in a city<br />
municipality in one of the regional governments. This piece of<br />
work is aimed at analyzing the project which is known as Land<br />
Management Information System (LMIS). This system is<br />
considered as a successful both by EICTDA and the Diredawa<br />
city administration.<br />
The Land Management Information System (LMIS) under<br />
consideration was launched mid 2009 at Diredawa city<br />
administration. Diredawa is located in eastern part of Ethiopia and<br />
is one of the two city administrations directly reporting to the<br />
Federal government of Ethiopia. The LMIS was initiated by the<br />
ICT development bureau of the administration and outsourced in<br />
an open bid to a local software developing company. The<br />
application is aimed at managing the land-related information of<br />
the city. It has taken about a year to implement the system. The<br />
key stakeholders involved in the process of implementation were<br />
the top management, the Capacity Building Bureau, and the ICT<br />
staff in the city administration.<br />
The new system manages and provides information related to<br />
land(s) owned by residents. More specifically, it manages and<br />
provides basic information about the land(s) including size (area<br />
in sq. meter), zoning (such as commercial, residential, school, or<br />
church), plan number, and file number (container number). It also<br />
manages information on personal details (such as family<br />
information – spouse, children), documents (scanned softcopy of<br />
211<br />
each piece of paper that indicate different historical information in<br />
the land owner’s file/container), and address (address for the<br />
owner).<br />
Current<br />
Reality<br />
Information<br />
Technology<br />
Processes<br />
Objectives<br />
and values<br />
Staffing and<br />
skills<br />
Management systems<br />
and structures<br />
Other resources time<br />
and money<br />
Design proposal for<br />
New eGov project<br />
Information<br />
Technology<br />
Processes<br />
Objectives<br />
and values<br />
Staffing and<br />
skills<br />
Management systems<br />
and structures<br />
Other resources time<br />
and money<br />
Figure 1. The ITPOSMO dimensions of e-<br />
Government project design-reality gaps [5]<br />
o Information - indicates the information used in the e-<br />
Government application (comparing the information<br />
o<br />
requirements contained within the design of the e-<br />
Government application vs. the information currently really<br />
being used in the organization);<br />
Technology – indicates the technology used in the agency<br />
(comparing the requirements contained within the design of<br />
the e-Government application vs. the real situation now);<br />
o Process – indicates the work processes undertaken in the<br />
agency (comparing the processes needed for successful<br />
implementation of the e-Government application vs. the real<br />
situation now);<br />
o Objectives – indicates the objectives and values that key<br />
stakeholders need for successful implementation of the e-<br />
Government application vs. their current real objectives and<br />
values;<br />
o Staffing and Skill - indicate the staffing numbers and skill<br />
levels/types required in/by the agency (comparing the<br />
requirements for successful implementation of the e-<br />
Government application vs. the real situation now);<br />
o Management and Structure – indicate the management<br />
systems and structures required in the agency (comparing the
equirements for successful implementation of the e-<br />
Government application vs. the real situation now);<br />
o Others – indicate such issues as the time and money required<br />
to successfully implement and operate the new application<br />
compared with the time and money really available now.<br />
3. COLLECTION OF DATA<br />
All the Primary data were collected from the supply side of the<br />
system as citizens have no direct interaction with the system yet.<br />
Thus, those involved in the project were considered. Accordingly,<br />
interview was made with the Deputy administrator of the city<br />
administration; head of the Capacity Building and ICT Sector<br />
Bureaus; head of the ICT sector in the capacity building bureau;<br />
seven top level managers in the city administration whose duties<br />
are highly related to the Land Management practice, and the<br />
system administrator of the new system. In addition, group<br />
discussion was made with the four IT staff (data encoders) in the<br />
city administration. The questions for the structured interview<br />
were prepared based on the constructs of the Design-Reality gap<br />
model and a copy of the interview questions were given to each<br />
study subject at least two days in advance. But, some more<br />
clarifications were obtained through telephone conversation from<br />
two of the interviewees among the top level managers in the city<br />
administration during our discussion while rating the numerical<br />
values for each of the constructs in the Design-Reality Gap model.<br />
3.1 Presentation and analysis of data<br />
Thematic analysis [8] of the organizational reality and<br />
requirements within the design of the e-Government application<br />
was made based on the qualitative data collected from the field as<br />
per the seven ITPOSMO dimensions. Next, the rating of each<br />
dimension as well as the interpretation of the sum of the<br />
numerical values of the dimensions is made by adopting a detailed<br />
guideline available for same (See at<br />
http://www.egov4dev.org/success/techniques/risk_drg.shtml).<br />
The rating of each dimension was made in a coconscious among<br />
the three researchers based on the data at hand and<br />
recommendations made by interviewees during the group<br />
discussion. Accordingly, each dimension is numerically rated in a<br />
scale from zero to ten where zero is to mean no change between<br />
the design proposal and current reality; ten means complete<br />
change between the design and current reality; and five would<br />
indicate some degree of change. Finally, all the rating numbers for<br />
each dimension were added up and interpreted as depicted in<br />
Table 1.The original table is for use with predictive – i.e. pre-hoc<br />
design-reality gap analysis before implementation. As this system<br />
has already been implemented, we were interested in doing a midimplementation<br />
assessment in order to see what has been achieved<br />
so far, and where the project may go in future. Thus, rewordings<br />
were done on the items in the table accordingly.<br />
Table 1: Interpretation of total gap score<br />
Total Gap<br />
Score<br />
Interpretation<br />
0-14 The e-Government project well<br />
succeeded.<br />
15-28 There is partial failure in the e-<br />
Government project as actions are not<br />
212<br />
taken to close design-reality gaps.<br />
29-42 The e-Government project might fail<br />
totally, or might well be a partial<br />
failure unless action is taken to close<br />
design-reality gaps.<br />
43-56 The e-Government project may well<br />
fail unless action is taken to close<br />
design-reality gaps.<br />
57-70 The e-Government project certainly<br />
failed as actions are not taken to close<br />
design-reality gaps.<br />
4. DESIGN-REALITY GAP ANALYSIS<br />
AND DISCUSSIONS<br />
In this section we will use the seven dimensions from the Design-<br />
Reality Gap model to analyze the case study gaps. We will<br />
describe the design goals and the current reality followed by gap<br />
assessment between the two.<br />
4.1 Information<br />
The Land Management Information System (LMIS) was designed<br />
manage data on the basic land information and owner profile. It<br />
provides information on land purpose/zoning (commercial vs.<br />
residential), lot size, land location, land identification number,<br />
other legal information in relation to that piece of land, the land<br />
owner name and address, spouse name, children names, and<br />
household number. The system design requires all supporting and<br />
related documents to be scanned and available online.<br />
In reality majority of the land and user profile information are<br />
made ready by the new system except few documents to be<br />
scanned in incorporated.<br />
Gap = 3; a significant portion of the design goals are<br />
implemented. But supporting documents of few land owners were<br />
not scanned and incorporated yet.<br />
4.2 Technology<br />
The design called for technologies including scanners, server<br />
computer and local area network, Internet connection, and<br />
personal computers. Scanners needed to digitize the current paper<br />
based documents, new court decisions, and tax receipts. Server<br />
computer and network needed for storing information in a<br />
centralized location for access by decision makers including<br />
engineers, finance officers, land administrators, and city<br />
managers. Internet connection needed for off-site access mostly<br />
by field personnel. About fifteen personal computers with<br />
Pentium IV processor and at least 40GB hard disk space were<br />
needed for decision makers and data entry personnel.<br />
The implemented reality has all technology requirements except<br />
scanners and some concerns regarding the processing as well as<br />
storage capacity of the Personal Computers as their capacity is<br />
lesser than the required capacity.
Gap = 5; The weak and unreliable Internet connection provided by<br />
the Ethiopian Telecommunications and also the shortage of<br />
scanners weakens the Land Management Information System<br />
(LMIS) system ability to function in its full capacity.<br />
4.3 Processes<br />
A business process re-design project has preceded the Land<br />
Management Information System (LMIS) project. Therefore the<br />
business process for the Land Management Information System<br />
(LMIS) was already defined and in place in the manual system.<br />
The major top-level processes that the system is involved in<br />
include the following among others: Land information registration<br />
sub-process – aimed at registering and documenting all required<br />
information regarding the land management; Land ownership<br />
licensing sub-process – aimed at providing and approving<br />
ownership license to owners of plot of land for a given purpose<br />
(business; residence; public service; or other); and Information<br />
provision service – aimed at providing any information regarding<br />
a plot occupied for an owner or any other concerned body within<br />
and outside the city administration such as the court and others.<br />
The new system design followed the business process already<br />
implemented; hence the reality was the same as the design, except<br />
in few cases the workers are required to follow the old process in<br />
those cases where there is no scanned copies of any document<br />
about a land owner.<br />
Gap = 2; the design was intended to incorporate scanned<br />
documents. Although a small portion of the process it still poses<br />
minimal gap.<br />
4.4 Objectives and Values<br />
Two primary objectives and values of the design were efficient<br />
and transparent system. As to efficiency, the manual system took<br />
3-4 months to process land administration inquiries, reducing this<br />
long processing time was one of the design objectives. Regarding<br />
transparency also the manual system has introduced many<br />
loopholes that are prone to corruption; hence the design calls for a<br />
transparent system. The design in terms of transparency assumes<br />
that this objective is also shared by all the public servants.<br />
In relation to efficiency, the current reality shows a significant<br />
improvement in land administration processing both in time,<br />
effort, and resource consumption. The current system takes less<br />
than a day to complete land administration queries, a significant<br />
improvement that reduced the time from months to hours. The<br />
intended transparency, however, is compromised because decision<br />
makers find loopholes to revert to the manual system. Although<br />
the design requires buy-in to the goals of efficiency and<br />
transparency, and that this buy-in – while absent among some<br />
(corrupt) staff in the middle and lower levels of the decision<br />
making ladder – was present for few senior decision makers and<br />
the volunteers.<br />
Gap = 7; Lack of scanned document is used as a primary reason<br />
for reverting to the manual system, but also decision makers resist<br />
using the new system and find excuses to revert to the manual<br />
system. The intent to overcome corruption is minimized but not<br />
eliminated.<br />
213<br />
4.5 Staffing and Skills<br />
The design calls for personnel including one system administrator,<br />
one network administrator, one database administrator, four data<br />
encoders, and two computer maintenance crew. The design called<br />
for all personnel to have experience and the administrators to have<br />
at least a bachelor degree.<br />
In reality only five people were hired (the system administrator<br />
and the four data encoders), none had experience; they were all<br />
fresh graduates from ICT diploma program. Of course, they have<br />
stayed in the job for about a year on average and they have built<br />
up skills by learning on the job.<br />
Gap = 7; Five of the staffing positions were filled, skill level fall<br />
short of the design.<br />
4.6 Management Systems and Structures<br />
The design called for a new structure with an ICT department that<br />
manages the Land Management Information System (LMIS). The<br />
design also called for salary structure with clearly defined<br />
promotion levels. In reality the intended department was not<br />
created and the reporting structure falls under the existing land<br />
administration department. No permanent employees were hired;<br />
all ICT hires have temporary status.<br />
Gap = 8 failed to create the intended department and management<br />
structure.<br />
4.7 Other Resources<br />
In other resources we looked at cost and time overrun. The design<br />
was loosely defined to take a year. The city administration<br />
allocated the required one-time budget for the project. The project<br />
was completed in the projected time period. However there is<br />
acute shortage of budget to cover the running cost required just<br />
following the system implementation.<br />
Gap = 3; project time was as expected. Although money was spent<br />
to complete the project the city administration did not consider the<br />
running costs of the new system.<br />
5. CONCLUSIONS<br />
Summary of the Design-Reality gap is shown in Table 2.<br />
Table 2: Summary of Design-Reality gap<br />
SN Dimension Gap<br />
1 Information 3<br />
2 Technology 5<br />
3 Process 2<br />
4 Objectives and values 7<br />
5 Staffing and Skills 7
6 Management system and structure 8<br />
7 Other resources 3<br />
Total 35<br />
The total gap of 35 indicates that there is a partial failure in the e-<br />
Government project and the project may fail totally unless action<br />
is taken to close design-reality gaps; see Table 1 for reference.<br />
The largest gap is ‘management system and structure’ which is 8<br />
followed by significant gaps in ‘staff and skill’ & ‘Objectives and<br />
values’, both showing 7. The main reason for the large gaps in<br />
these three dimensions was the lack of awareness about the<br />
priority of such systems among the decision makers except the<br />
champions. The transparency objective is also lacking because the<br />
documents not scanned still require manual intervention, this in<br />
turn has created a loophole for corruption. Installing scanners to<br />
digitize the all process flows will further reduce the Design-<br />
Reality and increase the project success. These are clear<br />
indications for the fact that the project may still continue to be a<br />
partial failure unless those gaps are closed. However, in our<br />
discussion with the management they too have lately recognized<br />
this gap. In relation to the ‘management system and structure’<br />
dimension, we are also informed that a new ICT department has<br />
been proposed and getting ready to implement. We were also<br />
informed additional staff with appropriate skills will soon be<br />
hired. A permanent position with clearly defined promotion scale<br />
is also in the works. Reducing the gaps in these two areas will<br />
significantly increases the project success rate.<br />
The dimensions with the least Design-Reality gap are ‘process’<br />
and ‘other resources’. The business process changes made prior to<br />
the project launch became an opportunity and has made the<br />
process gap low. The typical resistance often experienced during<br />
business process change has already been done and implemented.<br />
‘Other resources (cost and time)’ gap was low because of the<br />
commitment from the project champion. Funding issues were not<br />
constrained by bureaucratic red tape; instead the champion had<br />
funded the project. The time commitment was also managed and<br />
accomplished by the project champion. The role of the champion<br />
played a critical role in materializing this project.<br />
Given the overall rating of 35, the e-Government project may well<br />
fail unless action is taken to close design-reality gaps. The main<br />
actions needed are to reduce the largest design-reality gaps (i.e.<br />
working on key issues such as Management system and structure,<br />
objectives and values, and staffing and skill, and also availing<br />
financial resources to cover the recurrent costs which resulted in<br />
large design reality gap). The Diredawa city administration should<br />
try to identify ways in each case to make design more like reality<br />
and/or to make reality more like design.<br />
Finally, the value of Design-Reality gap analysis model as a midimplementation<br />
assessment tool for e-government projects is<br />
worth mentioning. In this piece of work, we have found Design-<br />
Reality gap analysis model as valuable tool in that it has<br />
capability to show possible gaps during implementation which<br />
actually need proper intervention from stakeholders and we have<br />
noticed that the model can also serve as a mid-implementation<br />
assessment tool for e-government projects as it can be<br />
214<br />
longitudinally used at different points to see the progress in<br />
closing identified gaps in the process of implementation as well as<br />
post-implementation periods.<br />
The current research concludes with highlighting the following<br />
key findings and recommendations:<br />
o Project champions: As revealed in the study, the most<br />
critical factors that contributed to the success of the e-<br />
Government implementation are exceptional<br />
o<br />
commitment from few influential decision makers to<br />
overcome the barriers and challenges for change, the<br />
alignment of the new systems with the Business Process<br />
Reengineering initiative, and unreserved effort from<br />
volunteers to support the change effort by the<br />
government.<br />
The e-Government project was not initially planned as a<br />
solution in the overall reform effort by the city<br />
administration. Rather it came to being at the end of the<br />
comprehensive business process reengineering effort<br />
when the administration noticed that the new business<br />
processes cannot be put in place unless automation in<br />
undertaken. This in turn shows that unless short term<br />
and long term measures are taken in order to bridge the<br />
observed gaps in all the ITPOSMO dimensions and<br />
specifically the gaps in objectives and values; staffing<br />
and skill as well as financial resource constraint; the<br />
success and sustainability of these e-Government<br />
applications will definitely be in trouble.<br />
o Collaboration: Although not institutionalized, the effort<br />
made by few top management members and IT<br />
professionals in the capacity building bureau brought<br />
difference and hence credited for the success. Hence,<br />
the top management commitment takes the lion’s share<br />
of the achievement attained at the end of the day.<br />
o Staffing, Skills and structure: The IT professionals are<br />
not recognized as permanent in the current<br />
o<br />
organizational structure and as a result they are working<br />
in a temporary basis. This may disappoint the<br />
professionals and force them look for better job and<br />
salary elsewhere which in turn endanger the day to day<br />
operation of the application put in place. It should be<br />
underlined that the success of such initiatives depends<br />
largely on human skills and capabilities. Hence,<br />
education and training initiatives must be considered as<br />
priority actions. Staff need to be trained to handle new<br />
processes and activities; they have to be given<br />
incentives to prevent the brain drain of skilled people;<br />
and they need to feel part of the organization by<br />
engaging in the decision making process. Planned and<br />
continuous awareness creation effort through series of<br />
workshops, events, seminars, and conferences is<br />
required in the future to better create clear impression<br />
about the benefits of the new system among all<br />
stakeholders.<br />
Continuous improvement: Evaluating such an effort<br />
should not be one time activity rather it should be done<br />
periodically in order to assure long term success of the<br />
new system.
6. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT<br />
We are grateful to the management of Ethiopian Information &<br />
Communication Technology Agency (EICTDA) of the Federal<br />
Democratic Government of Ethiopia for partially sponsoring the<br />
case study.<br />
7. REFERENCES<br />
[1] Aichholzer, G., Scenarios of eGovernment in 2010 and<br />
implications for strategy design, Electronic Journal of<br />
eGovernment, 2(1), 2004, 1–10.<br />
[2] Bhatnagar, S., Social implications of information and<br />
communication technology in developing countries: Lessons<br />
from Asian success stories, The Electronic Journal of<br />
Information Systems in Developing Countries, 1(4), 2000, 1–<br />
9.<br />
[3] Dada, D., The Failure of EGovernment in Developing<br />
Countries: A Literature Review, The Electronic Journal on<br />
Information Systems in Developing Countries, 26, 7 (2006)<br />
215<br />
[4] Heeks, R., Information systems and developing countries:<br />
Failure, success, and local improvisations, The Information<br />
Society, 18(2), 2002, 101–112.<br />
[5] Heeks, R., Most eGovernment-for-development projects fail:<br />
How can risks be reduced? iGovernment Working Paper<br />
Series, paper no. 14, 2003.<br />
[6] Heeks, R. and Stanforth, C., Understanding eGovernment<br />
project trajectories from an actor-network perspective,<br />
European Journal of Information Systems, 16, 2007,165-177.<br />
[7] Ndou, V., E-Government for Developing Countries:<br />
Opportunities and Challenges, The Electronic Journal on<br />
Information Systems in Developing Countries, 18(1), 2004,<br />
1-24 http://www.ejisdc.org (2004)<br />
[8] Orodho, A. J. and Kombo, D.K., Research Methods.<br />
Nairobi:Kenyatta University, Institute of Open Learning,<br />
2002.<br />
[9] Walsham and Shahy, Information Systems Research<br />
Landscape in Developing countries, Information Technology<br />
for Development, 2005, Published online in Wiley<br />
InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com), Wiley<br />
Periodicals, Inc.
Measuring Organizational Interoperability in Practice: The<br />
case study of Population Welfare Department of<br />
Government of Sindh, Pakistan<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
Devender Maheshwari<br />
Technical University Delft<br />
2628 BX DELFT<br />
The Netherlands<br />
Tel. 0031152783284<br />
D.Maheshwari@tudelft.nl<br />
Government organizations use technology to interoperate with<br />
each other in order to provide effective and efficient services to<br />
the citizens. Interoperation between these organizations is<br />
challenging due to the organizational differences among different<br />
types of public organizations. Measuring organizational<br />
interoperability of government organizations using technological<br />
advancements is difficult and often remains at the technical level<br />
and do not measure the organizational level. Existing<br />
interoperability models and frameworks focus on different aspects<br />
of organizational and technical interoperability independently; but<br />
there is hardly any single measurement instrument addressing<br />
both. Though the interoperability models and frameworks<br />
describe the layers, levels, and stages; they do not identify any<br />
assessment constructs for measuring and benchmarking the<br />
organizational interoperability. This paper investigates<br />
interoperability maturity models to identify assessment layers for<br />
measuring and benchmarking the interoperability, and propose the<br />
measurement instrument that will allows government<br />
organizations to effectively measure organizational<br />
interoperability. We develop a list of measurement constructs for<br />
the sub-layers of organizational interoperability layer to assess the<br />
maturity of organizational interoperability. Finally, we conduct a<br />
case study at Population Welfare Department Government of<br />
Sindh, Pakistan to investigate the applicability and usefulness of<br />
the organizational layer and its measurement constructs in the<br />
proposed interoperability measurement instrument for assessing<br />
the maturity of organizational interoperability.<br />
Categories and Subject Descriptors<br />
D.2.12 [Interoperability]: Distributed objects; H.1.1. [Information<br />
Systems]: Models and Principles –Systems and Information<br />
Theory; H.4 [Information Systems Applications]: Miscellaneous;<br />
J.1 [Administrative Data Processing]: Government<br />
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for<br />
personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are<br />
not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies<br />
bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for<br />
components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored.<br />
Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to<br />
post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission<br />
and/or a fee.<br />
ICEGOV '12, October 22 - 25 2012, Albany, NY, USA<br />
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1200-4/12/10...$15.00<br />
216<br />
Marijn Janssen<br />
Technical University Delft<br />
2628 BX DELFT<br />
The Netherlands<br />
Tel. 0031152781140<br />
M.F.W.H.A.Janssen@tudelft.nl<br />
General Terms<br />
Measurement, Documentation, Design, and Theory<br />
Keywords<br />
E-government, Interoperability, Measurement, Benchmarking,<br />
Public Service Organizations.<br />
1. INTRODUCTION<br />
Interoperability is described to have significant impact on public<br />
organizations to advance the processes, procedures, operations,<br />
and effective service provision to the citizens [30-31, 37-38].<br />
Maturity of public organizations is often characterized by the<br />
interoperability as a key element for e-government integration,<br />
new connectivity creation among networks, information sharing,<br />
and collaboration [13, 21, 27]. Measuring interoperability is not<br />
only a technological challenge, but a sociotechnical matter since<br />
both technical as well organizational capabilities reflect the<br />
maturity of public organizations [16, 38, 48]. This means that the<br />
aspects of organizational interoperability are equally important for<br />
interoperability measurement. Hjort-Madsen [21] describes that<br />
the complexity of organizational aspects of interoperability may<br />
surpass the technical as the public organizations move toward<br />
inter-organizational governance. Van der Veer and Wiles [50, p-6]<br />
describe the organizational interoperability as “the ability of<br />
organisations to effectively communicate and transfer<br />
(meaningful) data [7] even though they may be using a variety of<br />
different information systems over widely different<br />
infrastructures, possibly across different geographic regions and<br />
cultures”, whereas the European Interoperability Framework (EIF)<br />
IDABC [23, p-16] describes it as "defining business processes and<br />
bringing about the collaboration of administrations that wish to<br />
exchange information and may have different internal structures<br />
as well as aspects related to requirements of the user community”.<br />
Recently, this bias has been criticized by many as the public<br />
organizations interoperate more and more with each other for<br />
information sharing to provide effective and efficient services.<br />
Hence, the need of disparate back-office systems to interoperate<br />
and collaborate with each other requires enhanced interoperability<br />
among different back-offices. Interoperability in literature is<br />
mostly described from technical viewpoint as a capability of<br />
different systems to exchange and share information in useful<br />
manner [2, 24, 33, 41]. Many definitions of interoperability can be<br />
found in literature [10, 24-25, 33, 41].<br />
It is easily ascertained from the literature that several authors and<br />
organizations discuss technical aspects of interoperability<br />
standards e.g. [3, 9, 11, 34, 46, 49]; whereas the organizational
aspects are hardly discussed as they are messy. Goldkuhl [16]<br />
describes that the interoperability is not only a technical subject,<br />
but there is a need to conceptualize the organizational aspects as<br />
well. He further explains that the interoperability is also about<br />
what people do for information systems to interoperate. Scholl<br />
and Klischewski [41] describe that the assessment of<br />
interoperability is still unclear and faces many challenges, the<br />
evaluation and measurement methods need to be investigated<br />
properly. They also identify nine major constraints that affect the<br />
interoperability: 1) constitutional, 2) jurisdictional, 3)<br />
collaborative, 4) organizational, 5) informational, 6) managerial,<br />
7) technological, 8) cost, and 9) performance. Some of these<br />
constraints also reflect the organizational aspects of<br />
interoperability and need to be included in interoperability<br />
measurement process. Aspects of organizational Interoperability<br />
can be measured within an organization between two or more<br />
information systems as well as between different organizations<br />
with multiple information systems.<br />
This paper presents a measurement instrument and a set of<br />
measurement constructs to assess and benchmark organizational<br />
aspects of interoperability. Section 2 discusses the interoperability<br />
maturity models and frameworks to investigate the organizational<br />
aspects of interoperability. Section 3 proposes the interoperability<br />
measurement instrument and derives the measurement constructs<br />
for each sub-layer of the organizational interoperability layer. In<br />
section 4, a case study is conducted at the population welfare<br />
department government of Sindh, Pakistan using the developed<br />
organizational layer and its measurement constructs for assessing<br />
the organizational interoperability. Finally, section 5 discusses the<br />
results of the outcome of case study.<br />
2. BACKGROUND<br />
Interoperability maturity models described in literature mostly<br />
focus on the technical aspects of public organizations [3, 9, 11, 22,<br />
28, 34, 46]; whereas the organizational aspects are parsley<br />
discussed with little emphasis on the measuring and<br />
benchmarking perspective. Measures to assess organizational<br />
interoperability are hardly indicated in these interoperability<br />
maturity models. Maheshwari et al. [32, p-2] discuss ten different<br />
interoperability maturity models and related measurement<br />
approaches to investigate the interoperability measurement issues<br />
and challenges in public service organizations. Only a handful of<br />
maturity models [16, 22-23, 28] discuss the aspects of<br />
organizational interoperability, whereas the majority remains<br />
centrally focused on technical interoperability. Furthermore, they<br />
argue that the measuring and benchmarking the interoperability of<br />
public organizations is challenging as it encompasses a<br />
widespread array of diverse areas and dimensions. In a similar<br />
vein, Shahkooh et al. [43] investigated some generic (e.g.<br />
INTEROP NoP, NEHTA, and IDEAS) and country specific (e.g.<br />
Australia, Malaysia, New Zealand, and United Kingdom) egovernment<br />
interoperability frameworks. They, after investigating<br />
different frameworks describe interoperability as:<br />
“a set of policies, strategies, standards, guidelines, and<br />
instructions to connect different governmental organizations in<br />
order to facilitate fast and easy information exchange to deliver<br />
services to the citizens, businesses, and employees” [43, p-65]<br />
Thus, the interoperability on the whole is a combination of<br />
technical as well organizational aspects that affect the information<br />
exchange and sharing between any two or more entities. Though<br />
the existing interoperability models and frameworks sparsely<br />
217<br />
address these issues in different layers, levels, and steps; there are<br />
hardly any guidelines to incorporate these aspects into a single<br />
measurement instrument. This paper proposes the measurement<br />
instrument that incorporates both technical and organizational<br />
aspects of interoperability. In order better understand the<br />
interoperability measurement layers, we investigate the selected<br />
interoperability maturity models and frameworks that are<br />
commonly discussed literature and utilized by national and<br />
international organizations:<br />
Levels of Information Systems Interoperability (LISI): The<br />
LISI model developed by the US Department of Defense (DoD)<br />
comprises of five levels i.e. isolated systems, connected systems,<br />
functional distributed, domain integrated, and enterprise universal.<br />
These levels of LISI are centrally focused on the technical<br />
interoperation of the systems [18, 35, 43, 46].<br />
NC3TA Reference Model for Interoperability (NMI): The<br />
NMI model also mainly focuses on the technical aspects of<br />
interoperability while including the interoperability degrees i.e.<br />
unstructured data, structured data, seamless data sharing, and<br />
seamless information sharing to classify the content type of the<br />
exchanged data and information flows. The model aims to<br />
improve the functional efficiency by introducing the structured<br />
data interpretation and exchange [35, 46].<br />
Organizational Interoperability Model (OIM): The IOM model<br />
is an extension of LISI model that includes the organizational<br />
aspects of interoperability. Although the model only focuses on<br />
the organizational interoperability, the levels of OIM i.e.<br />
independent, ad-hoc, collaborated, integrated, and unified are<br />
closely aligned with the environmental description of levels of the<br />
LISI model. OIM model provides some information in each level<br />
for shared value systems, shared goals, and common structures but<br />
does not provide any guideline to achieve the desired<br />
organizational interoperability [9, 18, 35].<br />
Levels of Conceptual Interoperability Model (LCIM): The<br />
LCIM model in [18, 35, 46] describes five levels of conceptual<br />
interoperability i.e. system specific data, documented data, aligned<br />
static data, aligned dynamic data, and harmonized data. The<br />
model shows that the interoperability is not only subjective to the<br />
technical capability of the systems but also the composability on<br />
the conceptual levels. The levels of LCIM conceptual model were<br />
later extended and reproduced [47, 49] as i.e. no-interoperability,<br />
technical interoperability, syntactic interoperability, pragmatic<br />
interoperability, dynamic interoperability, and conceptual<br />
interoperability. The LCIM conceptual models also centrally<br />
focus on the technical interoperability of the systems [18, 35, 46-<br />
47].<br />
European Interoperability Framework (EIF): The EIF 1.0<br />
framework by Interoperable Delivery of European eGovernment<br />
Services to public Administrations, Businesses and Citizens<br />
(IDABC) was first introduced in 2004 [23]; which was later<br />
upgraded to EIF 2.0 in 2008 [22]. The version EIF 1.0 comprised<br />
of three layers i.e. organizational, semantics, and technical; which<br />
were extended to five layers in EIF 2.0 i.e. organizational,<br />
semantics, technical, political, and legal interoperability. Unlike<br />
other models and frameworks (LISI, NMI, OIM, LCIM), the EIF<br />
focused not only on technical interoperability but also other<br />
organizational aspects of the interoperability [15-16, 22-23, 30,<br />
43].<br />
European Interoperability Maturity Model (EIMM): The<br />
EIMM by Advanced Technologies for interoperability of
Heterogeneous Enterprise Networks and their Applications<br />
(ATHENA) comprises of five levels i.e. performed, modeled,<br />
integrated, interoperable, and optimizing. ATHENA intended to<br />
assess the interoperability in enterprise domain using EIMM. The<br />
model specifically focuses on both organizational as well<br />
technical aspects of interoperability in enterprise domain [3, 18].<br />
Though the maturity models are developed by different individual<br />
researchers [9, 46], national [11], and international [22, 34]<br />
organizations; none of these models or frameworks discuss<br />
measures to assess the organizational aspects of interoperability.<br />
The stages, levels, and layers are sequentially numbered without<br />
any further guideline about the measurements method or the<br />
measures themselves. Literature reviews of interoperability<br />
maturity models and frameworks suggests that the maturity of<br />
technical interoperability is somewhat achievable due the<br />
established standards and policies, but the aspects of<br />
organizational interoperability e.g. policies, business processes,<br />
financial, and governance are important and need to be addresses<br />
carefully. In other words, some of the organizational aspects are<br />
often described as the barrier of interoperability adoption and<br />
implementation [1, 12, 41].<br />
3. MEASUREMENT APPROACH<br />
Literature review of maturity models and frameworks discussed in<br />
Section 2 gives insight about the importance of organizational<br />
aspects of interoperability, but does not provide sufficient<br />
guideline to measure organizational interoperability. The maturity<br />
models describe interoperability levels in a linear fashion, whereas<br />
these levels are implemented on top of each other in practice.<br />
Although some authors [e.g. 50] argue that the successful<br />
implementation of technical, syntactical, and semantic<br />
interoperability is necessary for organizational interoperability,<br />
whereas others [e.g. 28, 32] suggest that both organizational as<br />
well technical interoperability can be implemented on top of each<br />
other. This paper proposes a two layered measurement instrument<br />
where each layer can be implemented on top of each other.<br />
Organization Layer<br />
• Policy<br />
• Enterprise architecture<br />
• Business process<br />
• Judicial<br />
• Governance<br />
• Economical<br />
Technical Layer<br />
• Syntactic<br />
• Semantic<br />
• Physical infrastructure<br />
Figure 1 Interoperability Measurement Instrument.<br />
Proposed measurement instrument as shown in Figure 1 is based<br />
on the methodology of architecture layers of interoperability by<br />
[28], whereas the selection of layers based on the socio-technical<br />
design approach. Bostrom and Heinen [6] argue that the success<br />
of the organizations depend socio-technical system (STS), where<br />
social system represents people and structure and technical system<br />
218<br />
represents technology and tasks. Measurement aspects of the<br />
technical and organizational interoperability as shown in Figure 1<br />
are derived based on the literature review interoperability maturity<br />
models and frameworks. Janssen and Scholl [28] describe that the<br />
settlements should be reached among various involved partners to<br />
avoid unwanted situations regarding the quality, compatibility,<br />
and extent of information collaboration and interoperation. The<br />
arrows shown in the Figure 1 from top to bottom and bottom to<br />
top of each layer shows that implementation of interoperability<br />
layers is non-linear, which means that each layer can be<br />
implemented independent of each other. Hence, the<br />
interoperability measurement aspects of each layer are relative,<br />
but can be measured independently.<br />
The explanation of technical sub-layers is already clear and well<br />
defined by many organizations as well as individual authors [e.g.<br />
22-23, 28, 32, 49], whereas the organizational interoperability and<br />
the measurement aspects of its sub-layers are hardly discussed in<br />
literature. Therefore, this paper briefly discusses the measurement<br />
aspects of organizational layer and derives the adequate<br />
measuring and benchmarking constructs for each sub-layer.<br />
3.1 Organizational Layer<br />
Organizational factors (e.g. technology adaption, economic<br />
constraints, openness, and back-office cooperation) and<br />
organizational issues (e.g. collaboration, business process, and<br />
coordination) that impact the performance of information systems<br />
are used to describe interoperability [14, 16-17]. Organizational<br />
layer places the foundation for functional infrastructure of public<br />
organizations for collaboration, exchange, and sharing of<br />
information. Table 1 gives short description of each organizational<br />
sub-layer as depicted in Figure1. Interoperability sub-layers<br />
explained in Table 1 are sparsely described in literature, but there<br />
is hardly any discussion about the measures to assess them.<br />
Tolk, Turnitsa et al. [47] describe that the pragmatic<br />
interoperability can reflect the maximum maturity if the<br />
information sharing by the sender as well receiver is translucent,<br />
clear, and truthfully interpretable. Policy sub-layer analyzes the<br />
maturity of organizational aspects and helps to avoid the adverse<br />
effects by identify the limitations. This layer also envisages<br />
personal, environmental, standardization, and policy aspects to<br />
distinguish the types of communication, and embraces the<br />
information exchange intention of sender [28, 39].<br />
For the public organizations aiming to facilitate citizens and<br />
businesses with seamless service delivery, the enterprise<br />
architecture can perform the essential role and provide guidance to<br />
address organizational issues [19]. Enterprise architecture of a<br />
public organization provides systematic understanding of basic<br />
elements describing existing and anticipated environment [5].<br />
Thus, enterprise architecture is useful to measure the basic<br />
information about organizational elements. Tough enterprise<br />
architecture encapsulates majority of organizational aspects, we<br />
only focus on interoperability related measures. Thus, the sublayer<br />
enterprise architecture is used to measure the basic<br />
information about human resource and formal communication.<br />
Interoperability in public organizations aims to improve the<br />
service provision by advancing the business processes and<br />
procedures for citizens, business, employees [32]. The business<br />
process sub-layer in this context measures the processes and<br />
procedures alignment, whereas the processes and procedures for<br />
information exchange and sharing between the collaborating and<br />
interoperating information systems are often reflected by the
service level agreements. The interoperating information systems<br />
desire comprehensive, understandable, and coherent re-adaptation<br />
of business processes.<br />
Judicial aspects of interoperability are sparsely described by many<br />
[3, 8, 22-23, 28, 41, 49] as an important factor affecting the<br />
Sub-layers Description Constructs<br />
Policy<br />
Enterprise<br />
Architecture<br />
Business<br />
Process<br />
Judicial<br />
Governance<br />
Economical<br />
This layer deals with<br />
back-office procedures<br />
and processes between<br />
the interoperating<br />
systems from policy<br />
perspectives for clear,<br />
transparent, and truly<br />
interpretable exchange<br />
of information by<br />
sender as well as<br />
receiver [41, 47].<br />
Enterprise architecture<br />
represents wide-spread<br />
areas of public<br />
organizations that can<br />
be effective to resolve<br />
interoperability<br />
conflicts [40] as a mean<br />
to measure the basic<br />
information.<br />
Business process deals<br />
with the alignment of<br />
business processes and<br />
procedures, valuecreation,<br />
monitoring,<br />
controlling, and long<br />
and short term<br />
agreements.<br />
Judicial layer reflects<br />
the organizational laws<br />
and regulations,<br />
constitutional and legal<br />
restraints, and<br />
organizational safety<br />
and security issues that<br />
affect the interaction of<br />
information systems.<br />
Governance<br />
mechanisms determine<br />
how communication,<br />
responsibilities, and<br />
decision-making<br />
structures are<br />
formalized [26, p.2307].<br />
Economic layer<br />
concerns the issues that<br />
limit the overarching<br />
scope of<br />
interoperability.<br />
1. Context and<br />
demarcation<br />
s<br />
2. Collaboratio<br />
n<br />
3. Policies<br />
4. Standards<br />
5. Formal<br />
communicat<br />
ion<br />
6. Human<br />
resource<br />
Formal<br />
7. Processes<br />
and<br />
procedures<br />
alignment<br />
8. Service level<br />
agreements<br />
9. Laws and<br />
regulations<br />
10. Constitution<br />
al restrains<br />
11. Political<br />
commitment<br />
12. Jurisdictiona<br />
l regulations<br />
13. Change<br />
management<br />
14. Environmen<br />
t and ethics<br />
15. Financial<br />
constraints<br />
overall maturity of interoperability. This sub-layer discusses the<br />
219<br />
law and regulation and constitutional restrains that affect the<br />
maturity of interoperability. Goldkuhl [16, p-4] describes the<br />
judicial interoperability as “congruence between different laws<br />
and regulations”. According to Janssen and Scholl [28] the<br />
governance in public organizations is differentiated by the wellorganized<br />
and cogent interoperation among organizational<br />
mechanisms, as long as these mechanisms guide in the correct<br />
direction.<br />
Table 1 Organizational sub-layers and measurement constructs<br />
Janssen and Joha [26, p-2307] explain that the “governance<br />
mechanisms determine how communication, responsibilities, and<br />
decision-making structures are formalized”. Measures to assess<br />
the maturity of judicial sub-layer of organizational interoperability<br />
include political commitment, jurisdictional regulations, and<br />
change management. Finally, we define the economical sub-layer<br />
of interoperability, which is discussed quite often in literature but<br />
rarely incorporated in maturity models and frameworks. This sublayer<br />
describes the financial issues of organization interoperability<br />
that restricts the overarching purview and affects the maturity e.g.<br />
return on investment. Based on the literature review of<br />
organizational interoperability and interoperability maturity<br />
models and frameworks in Section 2 we derived the sub-layers of<br />
organizational interoperability as discussed in Section 3. In order<br />
to briefly understand the importance and classification of these<br />
sub-layers of organizational interoperability, we will discuss each<br />
measurement construct shown in Table 1 in details.<br />
3.2 Measurement Constructs Organizational<br />
Interoperability<br />
In this subsection the constructs are further detailed and refined to<br />
enable the assessment in real-life situations.<br />
1. Context and demarcation. Interoperability requires clear and<br />
distinctive interoperation between information systems, processes,<br />
organizations, and employees. According to Strang, Linnhoff-<br />
Popien et al. [44, 45], clear and distinctive contextual<br />
interrelationship and specifics help to assess the interoperability<br />
compatibility and substitutability. Although there is an informal<br />
consensus about the context and demarcations of technical<br />
interoperability, the contextual definitions, goals, objectives,<br />
ontologies, and demarcations of organizational interoperability is<br />
hardly discussed in literature. This measure gives a reflection of<br />
the level of to-the-point clearness and distinctiveness of<br />
organizational interoperability [32].<br />
2. Collaboration. Inter and intra-organizational interactive and<br />
willing full working relationship in public organizations [32],<br />
where the shared goals, and roles and responsibilities are<br />
recognized to support organizational interoperability [9].<br />
Although the organizational framework can be distinct in nature,<br />
the collaboration is essential for organizational interoperability.<br />
This measure determines the level of organizational collaboration.<br />
3. Standards. Although policies and standard are two separate<br />
measures, their description and implications are somewhat interrelated.<br />
Standards are necessary for organizational interoperability<br />
as majority of maturity models and frameworks are still<br />
conceptual. In our view, standards are essential to advance<br />
organizational interoperability. They can describe the conceptual<br />
settlements between the concerned interacting quarters in subtle<br />
agreed documented format in consultation with recognized<br />
standardization bodies [52].
4. Policies. This is also a necessity of pubic organizations to<br />
ensure the effective implementation of the organizational<br />
interoperability as per the standards. Depending on the size,<br />
scope, and type of organization (local, regional, or national), the<br />
policies for organizational interoperability is required for business<br />
process alignment among the interoperating quarters with regional<br />
and national policies and regulations [52].<br />
5. Formal communication. Communication of information in<br />
public organizations using pre-defined proper channels is<br />
important for interoperability. Weedman [51] describes the formal<br />
communication as a core for any established field as it offers<br />
opinions, discoveries, suggestions, improvements, experiences,<br />
and ideas. For example regular meetings between the responsible<br />
authorities and employees will help both to resolve issues with<br />
mutual cooperation and understanding. The measure determines<br />
the frequency of formal meetings and communication channels for<br />
information exchange and sharing at the organizational<br />
interoperability level.<br />
6. Human resources. Unlike other layers, the interoperability at<br />
organizational layer is also subject to the capability of the<br />
effective human resources. Adaption of new technological<br />
advancements, policies, agreements, procedures, and processes<br />
not only requires willingness but also skills and knowledge. This<br />
measure determines the maturity of human resources for<br />
implementation of organizational interoperability.<br />
7. Processes and procedures alignment. Interoperability is often<br />
related to business processes and procedures, IDABC [22-23]<br />
refer to organizational interoperability as describing business<br />
processes and procedures. Janssen and Scholl [28] state that<br />
business process layer derives the attention to process-driven<br />
integration. Alignment of processes and procedures helps public<br />
organizations with business transitions, integration, control and<br />
monitor, value-creation, and management of interoperability<br />
related issues.<br />
8. Service level agreement. Interoperability at organizational<br />
level is subject to agreements, negotiations, and compliance of<br />
service related terms and conditions for effective information<br />
sharing and exchange. Thus, the quality of service (QoS)<br />
requirements is agreed between the concerned stakeholders to<br />
ensure the minimum service delivery. Service level agreements<br />
are strictly bound for implementation and incompliance is<br />
rewarded with heavy penalties. European interoperability<br />
framework [23] discusses that several service level agreements<br />
can be made for organizational interoperability based on the<br />
demand and business process connections [29].<br />
9. Laws and regulations. Organizational interoperability is still at<br />
the conceptual level [38, 41, 48]. There is a desire for new laws<br />
and regulations for effective and efficient information sharing and<br />
exchange at organizational level. This measure illustrates the need<br />
for new laws and regulations for organizational interoperability on<br />
top of the existing laws and regulations.<br />
10. Constitutional restrains. Scholl and Klischewski [41] explain<br />
that the interoperability objectives are not aligned with the<br />
democratic government’s constitutional power distribution at<br />
national, regional, and local levels etc. Though the constitutions<br />
limit the organizational interoperability objectives to certain<br />
boundaries, the objectives have not yet reached the desired<br />
maturity within those boundaries. This measure determines the<br />
maturity of organizational interoperability objectives within the<br />
constitutional boundaries in public organizations.<br />
220<br />
11. Political commitment. Pardo and Burke [37] describe that<br />
political commitment is necessary for public organizations to<br />
continue with their objectives for implementation of long-term<br />
projects in case of the changes in political administration. Political<br />
commitment is a need for consistency to ensure the success of<br />
organizational interoperability. This measure evaluates the<br />
political commitment for organizational interoperability.<br />
12. Jurisdictional regulations. Public organizations at different<br />
levels (national, regional, and local) follow distinct patterns of<br />
business processes and information handling. They operate<br />
independent of each other [42] and have the liberty to interoperate<br />
or share the information only if they volunteer [20]. To avoid illuse<br />
of this liberty, jurisdictional regulations are essential to<br />
engage public organizations for information sharing and<br />
interoperation. This measure determines the implementation of<br />
jurisdictional regulations for organizational interoperability.<br />
13. Change management. Organizational leadership and<br />
management are responsible for execution different task and<br />
assignments. Leaders are responsible guidance, motivation,<br />
creativity, innovation, and resource mobilization to achieve the<br />
organizational objectives [36]. In the context of organizational<br />
interoperability, Maheshwari, Veenstra et al. [32] describe the<br />
leadership responsibilities as “smooth execution of tasks by<br />
assigning right-job-for-right-person”. Hence, the organizational<br />
interoperability requires effective change management.<br />
14. Environment and ethics. Organizational culture and ethics<br />
has direct influence on the interoperability. Working environment<br />
free of rivalries and inimical behavior allows employees to<br />
interoperate easily for information exchange and sharing among<br />
different stakeholders. Though hardly discussed in literature, this<br />
aspect of organizational interoperability can be useful for assess<br />
the internal working environment.<br />
15. Financial constraints. Financial aspects have greater<br />
importance in practice over others concerning the quality and<br />
maturity of interoperability. Dos Santos and Reinhard [12] infer<br />
that financial barriers limit organizations to procure resources<br />
based on lower price than better quality. Interoperability<br />
initiatives by public organizations face challenges of major<br />
resistance for change acceptance, which can also result in<br />
financial turmoil. Therefore, the overarching return on<br />
interoperability investments not only reflects the financial success,<br />
but also the level of change acceptance.<br />
4. A CASE STUDY OF POPULATION<br />
WELFARE DEPARTMENT<br />
GOVERNMENT OF SINDH<br />
As an illustrative case study research case, the proposed<br />
measurement instrument and constructs were applied to assess the<br />
organizational interoperability of Population Welfare Department<br />
(PWD) Government of Sindh, Pakistan in January, 2012. The<br />
research method was based on open-ended interviews with the top<br />
management followed by a survey session with the experts from<br />
different sub-departments to test the applicability and usefulness<br />
of organizational measurement constructs. The purpose of<br />
conducting the open-ended interviews with the top managmenet<br />
was to refine the proposed measruement model before conducting<br />
the structured survey session. Furthermore, a survey session not<br />
only allowed selected participants to fill-in the questionnaire but<br />
also inteactive discussions, reflections, suggestions, and feedbacks<br />
about the survey itself and measurement instrument. With
concensus of all participants, the technical interoperability was<br />
pusposefully excluded from the survey session as the maturity of<br />
the technical interoperability was already available and<br />
documented.<br />
The case study was designed specifically based on the relationship<br />
among the open-ended interviews and the sturctured survey<br />
session from the measuring and benchmarking pespectives. The<br />
open-ended interviews allowed us to not only ask the indepth<br />
questions but also the opportunity to have better understanding of<br />
the back-office infromation sharing, handling, and gathering.<br />
Which in result helped us to recrusively update and improve the<br />
structured survey questionnaire. Though the management was<br />
well aware of the overall processes and procedures; a participative<br />
session was necessary to confirm the findings from the interviews<br />
of the top management to the findings of the operational<br />
employees from the different departments. Furthermore, the<br />
session allowed us for immediate reflections and discussion about<br />
the applicability and usefulness of measruement constructs and<br />
the instrument.<br />
Population welfare program Sindh is an integral part of Federal<br />
Population Welfare program Pakistan. In 2010 the Ministry of<br />
Population Welfare Pakistan was devolved and the functions were<br />
completely transferred to the province creating Ministry of<br />
Population Welfare, Government of Sindh. PWD Sindh has<br />
approximately 24,00 employees, most of them operate in small<br />
villages and remote areas where the literacy ratio is very low.<br />
PWD aims to provide family planning services ensuring high<br />
quality service delivery at the doorstep of people. PWD facilitates<br />
its services at District, Town, and Tehsil level through Family<br />
Welfare Centers (FWCs), Mobile Service Units (MSUs),<br />
Provincial Line Departments (PLDs), Registered Medical<br />
Practitioners (RMPs), Labour, Local Government, and Non-<br />
Governmental Organizations (NGOs).<br />
Figure 2 Outcome of illustrative case study<br />
221<br />
The interviews were conducted with the top management that<br />
included the director general PWD Sindh and four assistant<br />
directors; who are responsible for the respective functional wings<br />
i.e. Admin & Finance (A & F), Monitoring Evaluation and<br />
Planning (ME & P), Communication, Training, Logistic and<br />
Supplies (CTL & S), and Medical wing of PWD Sindh. Each<br />
interview lasted for approximately an hour and half (90 minutes),<br />
in which a total of sixty selected questions were asked from each<br />
interviewee. The questions were put together to measure the<br />
organziational interoperability as per the list of measruement<br />
constructs described in Section 3.2. Though the number of<br />
questions per construct were uniformly distrubuted, it was<br />
understood from the discussion with interviewees that some<br />
constructs i.e. Service Level Agreement, Laws and Regulations,<br />
and Juristictional regulation required less questions than the others<br />
i.e. Collaboration, Change Management, and Human Resources.<br />
Although the management is responsbile for provincial<br />
administrative setup; they had clear vision and knowledge about<br />
the processes, procedures, and services as they were quite flexible<br />
while answering the questions. The management was fully aware<br />
of the importance of organizational interoperability as the major<br />
objectives of PWD focus on coordination and collaboration<br />
among local and district back-offices; integrated services;<br />
enhanced interaction with businesses, citizens, NGOs, and<br />
government organzitions; ensuring maximum public participation;<br />
and improving quality of family planning services delivery. The<br />
interviews of the top management provided further insight and<br />
understanding of the PWD Sindh to ask more relevant, precise,<br />
and in-depth questions about the organizational interoperability.<br />
To be able to compare and benchmark the current marutiy levels,<br />
each interviewee was also asked to rate the desired maturity for<br />
each described construct from level-0 to level-9. The dotted-line<br />
in Figure 2 shows the desired maturity level for each oncstruct.<br />
Following the knowledge gained from the interviews, a<br />
comprehensice list of 75 structured questions was prepared for the<br />
survey session comprising on 25 technical and non-technical<br />
employees lower down the hierarchy at PWD Sindh. Participants<br />
of the survey session were also briefed about the measurement<br />
approach and constructs before providing them the questionnaire.<br />
Therefore, along with the survey questionnaire, a separate<br />
evaluation form was also provided to the participants for<br />
discussion at the end to reflect upon the applicability and<br />
usefulnes of the proposed measurement approach.
Table 2 Measurement outcomes of interoperabiltiy constructs<br />
There were 25 participants in the survey session, who filled in the<br />
structured questionnaire about organziational interoperability by<br />
categorically specifying the maturity value for each of the related<br />
questions per construct from level 0 (lowest) to the level 9<br />
(highest). For the participants lacking the knowledge about<br />
particular measruement construct, an option of ‘don’t know’ was<br />
also added to each question. As the participants were from<br />
different sub-sections of the functional wings; some participants<br />
did not answer the particular set of questions, of which they were<br />
least knowledgeable. Approximately 20 percent values per<br />
question (5 out of 25) were asnwered with the option ‘don’t<br />
know’. The average value of the total number of answers per each<br />
question was assigned to the ‘don’t know’ answers. Furthermore,<br />
the mean of the average values of questions for each construct was<br />
calculated as maturity level. Figure 2 shows the outcome of<br />
survey session where the dotted line represents the desired<br />
maturity level and the plane line represents the measured maturiy<br />
level.<br />
For better understanding of the case study findings, we further<br />
investigated and analyzed the outcomes of the measurement<br />
values from the survey questionnaire; the values of standard<br />
deviation and mean for each construct were derived as shown in<br />
Table 2. The lowest and highest standard deviation values of the<br />
measurement constructs in Table 2 explain that though the<br />
average calculated maturity levels for some contructs shown in<br />
Figure 2 are close to the desired maturity levels, the low and high<br />
standard deviation values determine that some participants had<br />
different opinions than others.<br />
The case study of PWD shows that the measurement of<br />
organizational interoperability can help policy makers in design<br />
and development of interoperability maturity models. The<br />
differences in the desired and measured maturity levels clearly<br />
indicate that moer focus is needed on the organizational aspects of<br />
interoperability. We also conclude from the case study that the<br />
selection of measurement constructs for organziational<br />
interoperability is difficult and depend on the complexity, size,<br />
and scople of the back-office information gathering, sharing, and<br />
handling. Finally, the case study using the proposed measurement<br />
instrument shows that the mearuement constructs for<br />
organizational interoperability can be implemented on top of each<br />
other.<br />
5. DISCUSSION<br />
Interpretation of the organizational measurement constructs and<br />
maturity levels is quite difficult and complex as there is hardly<br />
any existing literature, but we realize that this can be dealt to a<br />
greater extend by extensive discussions with concerned experts.<br />
The discussion with the participants in the case study shows that<br />
the total numbers of questions designed for the measurement were<br />
relevant, but there was consensus among all the experts that<br />
measurement of organizational interoperability is complex and<br />
requires large amount of questions. It is, however, questionable if<br />
it is desired or feasible to have hundreds of questions for<br />
measuring all the details about the measures. The challenge is to<br />
measure with a limited number of questions that can be filled in<br />
within a short time frame.<br />
Though our structured survey questionnaire included 75 selected<br />
questions, the focus was to better assess the level of abstraction<br />
that is required to measure interoperability at a satisfactory level.<br />
The participatory discussions with the participants, after they<br />
222<br />
No.<br />
Measurement<br />
Constructs<br />
SD-<br />
Low<br />
Mean SD-High<br />
1 Context and demarcations 6,22 7,04 7,86<br />
2 Collaboration 6,11 7 7,89<br />
3 Policies 5,32 6,04 6,76<br />
4 Standards 6,11 7 7,89<br />
5 Formal communication 6,08 6,92 7,76<br />
6 Human resource 5,21 6,12 7,03<br />
7<br />
Processes and<br />
procedures alignment<br />
6,08 6,92 7,76<br />
8 Service level agreements 5,21 6,12 7,03<br />
9 Laws and regulations 6,11 7 7,89<br />
10 Constitutional restrains 6,47 7,12 7,77<br />
11 Political commitment 7,03 7,92 8,81<br />
12 Jurisdictional regulations 5,34 6,08 6,82<br />
13 Change management 6,25 7 7,75<br />
14 Environment and ethics 5,18 5,92 6,66<br />
15 Financial constraints 6,09 7,12 8,15<br />
filled the questionnaire, provided positive feedbacks about the<br />
applicability and usefulness of the measurement instrument and<br />
constructs. Participants suggested that although some of the<br />
constructs e.g. human resources, change management, and<br />
financial constraints are very important for organizational<br />
maturity; they were hardly included in the measurement process.<br />
Some participants quoted in the feedback form that the policy sublayer<br />
is very important for organizational interoperability and<br />
must be part of measurement process. Another major finding of<br />
this case study is the outcome of the architecture layer constructs<br />
i.e. human resources and formal communication. Majority of<br />
participants highly recommended these constructs as they<br />
constitute the basis for enhanced interaction, collaboration, and<br />
training programs for the back-office employees. Participants also<br />
highlighted that technology alone cannot resolve organizational<br />
interoperability problems if the human resources in the backoffice<br />
are not skilled and trained. Participants discussed the<br />
example of old age employees who hardly speak English and use<br />
ICT enabled software and systems.<br />
The outcome of the case study as shown in Figure 2 and Table 2<br />
reveals that the measurement of organizational interoperability<br />
layers is possible, but for some measurement constructs mixed<br />
reviews were found by the participants about the maturity levels.<br />
For example, the interpretation of measured maturity levels is<br />
difficult as it partly depends on the type, complexity, and scope of<br />
organizational functions, operations, and processes. Some experts<br />
had the consensus about the understanding of measures, whereas<br />
others had different views. This can be observed by looking at the<br />
variations in values of standard deviation compared to their<br />
averages. For example two constructs of policy and economic<br />
measures i.e. collaboration and financial constraints have an<br />
average of 7 and 7.12 but standard deviation values (6.11 - 7.89)<br />
and (6.09 – 8.15) respectively, which means that some<br />
participants partially disagree with the average maturity level<br />
assigned by others.
Furthermore, it is understood from the highest standard deviation<br />
values for political commitment (8.81) and financial constraints<br />
(8.15) that though some participants were extremely positive<br />
about the consistent political will and funds, whereas others were<br />
not satisfied and had ambiguities. They believe that political<br />
commitment and financial constraints need further improvement.<br />
The discussions with experts revealed that the highest average<br />
(7.92) of political commitment does not necessarily represent the<br />
successful organizational interoperability as some commitments<br />
did not produce fruitful outcomes. Hence, despite of effective<br />
measurements outcomes, the benchmarking can be a disguise if<br />
the interpretation is not correct [4]. Furthermore, they argue that<br />
the policy makers should coordinate directly with back-office for<br />
feedback about these constructs. Selecting interoperability<br />
measures for benchmarking is difficult as the organizations vary<br />
in scope, objectives, and complexity. The measurement<br />
instrument and the constructs described in this paper are the first<br />
step towards advancement of organizational interoperability.<br />
Satisfaction shown from Population Welfare Department, The<br />
case of Sindh is a positive indication that the instrument is<br />
applicable and useful, but there is a need of further extension of<br />
this research to generalize the usefulness of in different types of<br />
public organizations.<br />
Finally, the participants were asked to discuss the applicability of<br />
the proposed measurement instrument and the measurement<br />
constructs for organizational interoperability. The overall<br />
feedback from the participants during participative discussions<br />
about the measurement instrument and constructs was quite<br />
satisfactory, whereas some participants had different views about<br />
some measurement constructs e.g. constitutional restrains and<br />
financial constraints. Though they agree upon the importance of<br />
including these constructs in assessment of organizational<br />
interoperability for the reasons of creating awareness that they’re<br />
important, the measuring and benchmarking of these constructs at<br />
the provincial, district, and local level requires further<br />
investigation. The discussion also concluded that more focus is<br />
required on the aspects of organziational interoperability as it is<br />
equally important to the technical interoperability.<br />
6. CONCLUSIONS<br />
Measurement of organizational interoperability is still a major<br />
challenge for public organizations as there is hardly any<br />
promising, tested, and validated measurement instruments.<br />
Although the organizational aspects of interoperability have<br />
recently proven themselves equally important as technical aspects,<br />
they are still sparsely described in conceptual maturity models and<br />
frameworks. There is hardly any available literature describing<br />
measurement methods and measures to assess organizational<br />
interoperability. There is a definite need of improvement in<br />
organizational interoperability as there are no existing benchmarks<br />
due to the lack of adequate measurement methods and measures.<br />
This paper proposes a measurement instrument focusing both<br />
organizational and technical interoperability. Based on the<br />
literature reviews of existing interoperability maturity models and<br />
frameworks, we developed a list of 15 organizational<br />
measurement constructs in 6 sub-layers of the organizational<br />
layer. Though the proposed measurement instrument includes<br />
both organizational and technical interoperability measurement<br />
layers, our focus was to assess organizational interoperability. The<br />
sub-layers of organizational interoperability provide the guideline<br />
for assessment, whereas the selection of relevant measures or<br />
measurement constraints can vary from organization or<br />
223<br />
organization. Furthermore, we conducted a case study of the<br />
population welfare organization government of Sindh to illustrate<br />
the operationalization of developed measurement instrument and<br />
test the applicability and usefulness of selected constructs. The<br />
case study shows that the measurement constructs and the<br />
instrument provides considerable insight into organizational<br />
aspects of interoperability. The case study entails that the<br />
measurement constructs can be implemented on top of each other.<br />
We found that our approach using measurement layers and<br />
constructs is seen as helpful, but further research is recommended<br />
to investigate the applicability of the measurement instrument<br />
while selecting and applying the measurement constructs to the<br />
different types of public organizations. Finally, we conclude that<br />
the target group of this case study was limited, whereas more<br />
respondents should be included for further evaluation of proposed<br />
measurement instrument and measures.<br />
7. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS<br />
Thanks to director general Population Department, Government of<br />
Sindh for granting us permission to conduct interviews and survey<br />
session for case study. We specially thank the participants of<br />
PWD Sindh for interactively participating in questionnaire based<br />
survey on measuring and benchmarking the organizational<br />
interoperability.<br />
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225
Ranking and Hotspot Detection Methods on Infant Health for<br />
Districts in Java, Indonesia: E-Governance Micro Tools<br />
Yekti Widyaningsih<br />
Department of Mathematics<br />
Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences<br />
University of Indonesia<br />
yekti@ui.ac.id<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
As the Academia stakeholder, this paper shares the method and<br />
theory which extend the understanding of Electronic Governance.<br />
The purpose of this research is to obtain the ranking of infant<br />
health in Java based on five indicators and three indicators. These<br />
indicators or variables are number of infant deaths (infd), number<br />
of people in poverty (pov), number of infants with low birth<br />
weight (lbw), number of deliveries in absence of health personnel<br />
(abhp), and average education shortfall of women (avedsf). All<br />
variables are district level aggregates. Besides ranking, hotspots<br />
based on those indicators are also detected by ULS hotspot<br />
detection method, while rankings are computed based on ORDIT,<br />
implemented in R software. Rankings of the districts based on 5<br />
(all) indicators and 3 indicators (infd, pov, lbw) are obtained. Also,<br />
ranking is obtained based on salient scaling of 5 indicators and<br />
salient scaling of 3 indicators. According to those results, the most<br />
severe districts are districts 87 and 90, while the least severe<br />
districts are districts 73, 31, and 35. There are many districts in<br />
the hotspot area as the results of the ULS hotspot detection.<br />
Districts 87, 90, 47, 58, 83, 44, and 45 are the worst areas of<br />
infant health. This result is important information for the<br />
government, especially the Health Department to make decisions<br />
for the improvement of health programs. The methods can be used<br />
as a micro tool to extend the function and understanding of egovernance.<br />
Categories and Subject Descriptors<br />
D.2.4 [Software/Program Verification - Statistical method]; G.3<br />
[Probability and Statistics – Correlation];J.2 [Physical Sciences<br />
and Engineering - Mathematics and statistics]; J.4 [Social and<br />
Behavioral Sciences – Sociology]; K.6 [Management of<br />
Computing and Information Systems]<br />
General Terms<br />
Measurement, Performance, Theory, Legal Aspects, Verification<br />
Keywords<br />
Ranking, Infant Health Indicators, ORDIT, R Software,<br />
Computational Complexity, Hotspot, Upper Level Set Scan<br />
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for<br />
personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are<br />
not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies<br />
bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for<br />
components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored.<br />
Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to<br />
post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission<br />
and/or a fee.<br />
ICEGOV '12, October 22 - 25 2012, Albany, NY, United States, NY, USA<br />
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1200-4/12/10…$15.00.<br />
226<br />
Wayne L. Myers<br />
Penn State Institutes of Energy and Environment<br />
Penn State University, University Park,<br />
PA 16802 USA<br />
wlm@psu.edu<br />
Statistics<br />
1. INTRODUCTION<br />
Governments around the world wrestle with a wide range of social<br />
and political challenges and look for innovations in technology,<br />
not only in the government institutions of, but also in the<br />
interactions between the government and citizens to help them<br />
meet these challenges. Serving citizens efficiently and effectively,<br />
engaging interested parties in decision making, and creating<br />
sustainable economies, are among the many ways innovations in<br />
policy and practice can directly impact the public value created by<br />
any Electronic Governance investment. To justify continued or<br />
new investments in Electronic Governance, decision makers must<br />
increasingly provide evidence that the innovations they are<br />
supporting create public value. Decision-makers play a very<br />
important role in the management of a country. The decisions<br />
made will have an impact, both at present and in the future. As the<br />
Academia stakeholder, this paper shares the methods and theories<br />
which extend the understanding of Electronic Governance.<br />
Hopefully, this paper can contribute concrete solutions for<br />
specific challenges faced by governments, especially in making a<br />
decision about infant health improvement. To achieve effective<br />
decision making, it is important to know the areas or districts most<br />
in need of improvement. For a problem like this, ranking methods<br />
are necessary.<br />
To meet these social challenges, it is important for the<br />
government to plan and arrange budgets at the districts level that<br />
are appropriate to its need for improvement in particular matters.<br />
This paper focuses on districts ranking based on infant health<br />
indicators. Many researches about infant health have been done.<br />
Some of them are as follows. A research has shown that<br />
persistence of poverty and continuing unequal distribution of<br />
health care resources to pregnant women and young mothers<br />
render relative risks of neonatal and post-neonatal mortality 1.5<br />
times greater than that experienced by infants not born in poverty<br />
[1]. In addition, ‘poverty is infant health risk’ is a theoretical<br />
proposition according to Centers for Disease Control and<br />
Prevention [2]. OECD reported that the correlation between<br />
percentage of low birth weight infants and infant mortality rates is<br />
stronger in emerging countries [3]. Other research showed that<br />
adding a maternity clinic to a village decreases the odds of infant<br />
mortality by almost 15 per cent, in comparison to the risk before<br />
the clinic was added. An additional doctor reduces the odds by<br />
about 1.7 per cent [4]. Furthermore, the final model of Desai and<br />
Alva, shows that maternal education has a statistically significant<br />
impact on infant mortality and height-for-age in only a handful of<br />
countries [5]. According to those findings, an abstract concept,<br />
infant health relates to the six measurable indicators: poverty,<br />
infant mortality, low birth weight, health personnel, and education<br />
1
of mothers. Based on this reason, we decided to use these<br />
indicators to obtain the ranking of districts. The objective of the<br />
current research is to find which districts are the worst districts for<br />
infant health. Infant health is an important factor to be discussed<br />
because this factor is the result of many other factors related to<br />
socio economic components [6]. This research focused on five<br />
indicators to be investigated.<br />
Ranking methods based on multiple indicators using R open<br />
source software and hotspot detection using ULS software are<br />
introduced here as tools to support the Ministry of Health. This<br />
concept can be used as a micro tool in e-governance and is<br />
available to support e-health governance in implementing the full<br />
range of government activities, internal processes, the<br />
development of policy and services for citizens. The possible<br />
systematic process is as the following: idea -- algorithm –<br />
(implementation on R software) -- subroutine on C ++ (program<br />
language) – online user friendly interface display.<br />
The study area of this research is Java, one of the five biggest<br />
islands in Indonesia. The Capital city of Indonesia is located in the<br />
west area of Java. The percentage of population on this island is<br />
about 60% of the total population of Indonesia [7]. This is one<br />
reason why this island is interesting to be studied.<br />
The method of this research is prioritization based on partial order<br />
theory. Through this method, a ranking of the districts based on<br />
five and three indicators will be found. The present purpose is to<br />
provide convenient computational capability and visualizations<br />
for progressive or partial prioritization based largely on concepts<br />
of partial order theory and implemented in R [8] as illustrated in a<br />
context of infant health as a complex multidimensional domain<br />
that must be placed in public and private perspectives in pursuit of<br />
public health management. One of the practical perspectives in<br />
the health status of a district is concerned with infant health which<br />
has multiple indicators [9]. Here the focus is on placing the<br />
multiple dimensions of infant health in a professional and public<br />
perspective to support district improvement policy. Furthermore, a<br />
hotspot of these indicators is detected using ULS method.<br />
2. DATA<br />
As an abstract measure of a district, infant health is supported by<br />
five indicators as mentioned in section 1. Table 1 shows the data<br />
for this purpose consisting of five indicators of infant health<br />
[7][10]. They are the number of infant deaths (infd), the number<br />
of people in poverty (pov) in thousands, the number of infants<br />
with low birth weight (lbw), the percentage of deliveries in<br />
absence of health personnel (abhp), and average education<br />
shortfall of women (avedsf) in years. All variables are aggregates<br />
of district. The value of avedsf is computed by subtracting average<br />
duration of education in a district from maximum in all districts.<br />
The district column is the id for districts, infd is the number of<br />
infant deaths, pov is the number of people in poverty (in<br />
thousands), lbw is the number of infants with birth weight less<br />
than 2500grams, abhp is the percentage of deliveries (births)<br />
without health personnel presence, and avedsf is average of<br />
women education shortfall as explained earlier.<br />
The study area of this research is Java in Indonesia but omitting<br />
Banten province and Kepulauan Seribu districts because of<br />
incomplete data in those areas. Figure 1a is the map of Java<br />
(without Banten province and Kepulauan Seribu district) with<br />
district id, mapped by the R sp package [11][12].<br />
227<br />
Latitude<br />
10°�S<br />
Table 1. Leading lines of the dataset with infant health<br />
indicators as column criteria and districts as cases<br />
4°�S<br />
6°�S<br />
8°�S<br />
district infd pov lbw abhp avedsf<br />
1 61 125.6 145 20.02 4.4<br />
2 112 157.9 187 14.63 4.6<br />
3 78 149.1 130 16.19 3.7<br />
4 97 170.5 252 2.95 3.4<br />
5 83 171.2 250 0.51 3.6<br />
6 298 267.4 401 11.56 3.5<br />
... ... ... ... ... ...<br />
107 106 94<br />
104 105 99 93<br />
100<br />
79 95<br />
91<br />
92<br />
90<br />
63<br />
96<br />
80<br />
81<br />
87 98<br />
61<br />
89 88<br />
62 60<br />
101<br />
78<br />
97<br />
77<br />
64<br />
82<br />
86<br />
23<br />
29<br />
72 71 70 69 68 67 76<br />
26 27<br />
58 59<br />
28<br />
24 25<br />
66 65<br />
22<br />
46 37<br />
83 102 103<br />
47<br />
75<br />
44 45<br />
50<br />
52 57<br />
84<br />
85<br />
73<br />
21<br />
35 15<br />
51 74<br />
18 17 16<br />
48<br />
56<br />
20 3619<br />
34<br />
49 42 53 54<br />
14<br />
39 43<br />
33<br />
306<br />
38<br />
12<br />
40 55<br />
13<br />
2<br />
32<br />
11<br />
41<br />
1 3<br />
4 315<br />
7 8<br />
9<br />
10<br />
108<br />
106°�E 108°�E 110°�E 112°�E 114°�E 116°�E<br />
Longitude<br />
Figure 1a. Map of Java (without Banten Province and<br />
Kepulauan Seribu District) with district id as mapped by the<br />
R sp package [11],[12].<br />
Some districts have a capital city located in the centre with its<br />
own data. As an example, district 73 is in the middle of district 51,<br />
district 31 is in the middle of district 5, district 35 is in the middle<br />
of district 16, and there are 19 other city-type districts as well.<br />
3. DATA COLLECTION<br />
The data used in this study is secondary data derived from Data<br />
and Information Centers, Health Department of Indonesia [10].<br />
This secondary data is obtained from the reports of public health<br />
centers and hospitals in every district. The data are indicators of<br />
infant health in every district, i.e. the number of infant deaths, the<br />
number of babies with weight below normal, the number of births<br />
without any medical personnel present, and maternal education,<br />
while the number of people in poverty was obtained from<br />
Indonesian Statistics [7].<br />
The number of people in poverty is the population that is under<br />
the poverty line. The poverty line is used as a boundary to<br />
determine whether or not a person is poor. In 2007, the definition<br />
for the poor are the people who have an average per capita<br />
expenditure per month below the poverty line of Rp 211.726<br />
(about U.S. $ 20) [7].<br />
4. DATA PROCESSING<br />
The steps of data processing in this research are (1) preparing the<br />
data set for ORDIT into k+1 columns as shown in Table 1, where<br />
k is the number of indicators, first column is the case id, (2)<br />
obtaining the scatter plot and correlation coefficients of the<br />
indicators, (3) transforming the values of indicators to the ranks,<br />
(4) obtaining the ranking of the districts based on 5 indicators, 3<br />
indicators, and 2 indicators (salient5 and salient3, the ranking<br />
results of 5 indicators and 3 indicators, respectively) using ORDIT<br />
2
method, (5) preparing the data set for ULS process (hotspot<br />
detection) into 4 columns: id, number of cases, population size,<br />
and adjacent districts (6) detecting the hotspot area for each<br />
indicator, (7) comparing and summarising the results.<br />
In step (4), ranking is carried out for 5 and 3 indicators because<br />
those 3 indicators, i.e. infd, pov, and lbw have stronger<br />
correlations than the others. These results will be compared.<br />
Computations for steps (2), (3), and (4) use R open source<br />
software and computation for step (6) using ULS software. Figure<br />
1b presents the flowchart of data processing.<br />
Figure 1b. Flowchart of data processing<br />
5. METHOD<br />
The methods used in this research are ordering dually in triangles<br />
for ranking, and upper level set scan statistics for hotspot<br />
detection.<br />
5.1 Ordering Dually in Triangles<br />
Ordering Dually in Triangles (ORDIT) is a method for ranking<br />
purposes based on several indicators. Many objects can be ranked,<br />
such as persons, districts, schools, universities, and many others.<br />
ORDIT method in this research is used to rank the districts based<br />
on 5 and 3 infant health indicators.<br />
To obtain the ranking of the objects, this method uses<br />
mathematical concepts related to the partial order set (poset). The<br />
following subsubsections describe the ORDIT theory.<br />
In mathematics, especially order theory, a partially ordered<br />
set (or poset) formalizes and generalizes the intuitive concept of<br />
an ordering, sequencing, or arrangement of the elements of a set.<br />
A poset consists of a set together with a binary relation that<br />
indicates that, for certain pairs of elements in the set, one of the<br />
elements precedes the other. Such a relation is called a partial<br />
order to reflect the fact that not every pair of elements need be<br />
related: for some pairs, it may be that neither element precedes the<br />
other in the poset. Thus, partial orders generalize the more<br />
familiar total orders, in which every pair is related.<br />
5.1.1 Rating Relations/Rules for Ascribing Advantage<br />
This subsubsection describes the protocols for comparing cases or<br />
collectives of cases via ratings, rules and relations that ascribe<br />
advantage to some cases over some others or fail to do so for<br />
228<br />
particular pairs [7]. There are three possibilities in comparing<br />
pairs of cases, where one case is denoted by Г and the other by θ.<br />
“Г aa θ” wherein Г has ascribed advantage over θ. Г has<br />
subordinate status to θ which implies “θ aa Г”. “Г ii θ” whereby<br />
these are indefinite instances without ascribed advantage and<br />
without subordinate status, which implies “θ ii Г”. Thus the<br />
protocol either designates one member of a pair as having<br />
ascribed advantage and the other subordinate status, or that<br />
pairing as being indefinite. ff(aa) is the frequency of number of<br />
occurrences for the ascribed advantage. ff(ss) is the frequency of<br />
number of occurrences for the subordinate status. ff(ii) is the<br />
frequency of number of occurrences for being indefinite. Each of<br />
the N cases can be compared on this basis to all others in the<br />
deleted domain DD=N–1 of competing cases with the percent<br />
occurrence of these relations being tabulated as follows, AA =<br />
100 × ff(aa)/DD, SS = 100 × ff(ss)/DD, II = 100 × ff(ii)/DD.<br />
Clearly, AA + SS + II = 100%; and for later use let us define<br />
CCC = 100 – AA as the complement of case condition relative to<br />
ascribed advantage (AA) [8].<br />
5.1.2 Subordination Schematic and Ordering Dually in Triangles<br />
(ORDIT)<br />
Subordination can be symbolized diagrammatically [8] in a<br />
triangle depiction, where the point representing a district makes a<br />
triangle divided into two parts, ‘trapezoidal triplet’ (of AA, SS,<br />
and II) and a topping triangle (of CCC and II). The combination<br />
of these two parts forms a right triangle with the ‘tip’ at AA =<br />
100% in the upper-left and the toe at SS = 100% in the lower-right<br />
(see Figure 5). The hypotenuse is a right-hand ‘limiting line’ of<br />
plotting positions because AA+SS+II=100%. Topping triangle<br />
provides the basis for an ‘ORDIT ordering’ of the districts or<br />
instances.<br />
An idealized district has AA = 100% of the deleted domain (DD)<br />
of other districts, that is the frequency of ascribed advantage being<br />
equal to the number of competing districts, so if the ideal actually<br />
occurs, then the trapezoidal triplet becomes a triangle.<br />
The numbers for ORDIT can be coupled as a decimal value<br />
ccc.bbb. The ccc component is obtained by rounding CCC to two<br />
decimal places and then multiplying by 100. The bbb component<br />
is obtained by dividing SS by CCC, and imposing 0.999 as an<br />
upper limit. Then add these two values as ccc.bbb. This ordering<br />
is assigned the acronym ORDIT for ORdering Dually In<br />
Triangles. It preserves all aspects of AA, SS and II except for the<br />
actual number of districts. Simple rank ordering of ORDIT values<br />
becomes salient scaling of the district [8].<br />
5.1.3 Product-order Rating Regime<br />
A general relational rule for ascribing advantage is product-order<br />
whereby advantage is gained by having all criteria at least as good<br />
and at least one better. Conversely, subordinate status lies with<br />
having all criteria at least as poor and at least one poorer. This<br />
relational rule is applicable to all kinds of criteria as long as they<br />
have the same polarity (sense of better and worse). Scheme 2 in<br />
[8] Function Facilities gives an R function called ProdOrdr that<br />
determines ORDITs and salient scaling according to productorder.<br />
This function takes as its inputs a vector of IDs for<br />
instances and a data frame of same-sense criteria. All indicators<br />
are either positive sense or negative sense. Indicators in this<br />
research are negative indicators which means that the larger<br />
the value of the indicators, the more severe the district. The output<br />
is a data frame of ORDITs and salient scaling values<br />
3
5.1.4 Precedence Plots<br />
Based on computation of AA and SS for a particular district, the<br />
structure in the lower part of the subordination schematic can be<br />
used to prepare a ‘precedence plot’ for visualization (Figure 5).<br />
The precedence plot is a plot for AA (ascribed advantage) as Yaxis<br />
and SS (subordinate status) as the X-axis. The prominent<br />
position declines from top (upper-left) to toe (lower-right).<br />
Primary prominence varies vertically showing that there is a<br />
larger percentage of ascribed advantage (greater severity) with<br />
increasing height. Horizontal variation on a given level shows<br />
clarity of comparison. Farther to the right is greater clarity as<br />
more definite (less severe) with a larger percentage of subordinate<br />
status versus indefinite instances among the couplets where<br />
ascribed advantage (greater severity) is lacking. In other words,<br />
more indefinite instances constitute increased lack of clarity<br />
(incomparability in the usual parlance of partial ordering).<br />
Scheme 3 in [8] Function Facilities gives an R function named<br />
PrecPlot which accepts the output of the ProdOrdr function and<br />
produces a precedence plot.<br />
5.1.5 Representative Ranks<br />
Representative ranks show descriptive order statistics of indicator<br />
rankings for each district. Representative ranks are concerned<br />
with the rank distribution for any particular district. The rank<br />
numbers received by a given district across all criteria can be<br />
placed in a single array and sorted in ascending order. The<br />
minimum, median, and maximum ranks for the district are<br />
conveniently informative.<br />
5.2 Upper Level Set (ULS) Scan statistics<br />
By definition, a hotspot is a zone characterized by a high response<br />
rate, it makes intuitive sense that ULS method search for a hotspot<br />
begin with a cell with the highest response rate and annex to it<br />
other cells with high response rates. The need to bring a definite<br />
order for the search leads one to the concept of the ULS scan tree<br />
or just the ULS tree. Denoting for cell a the response rate ga =<br />
ya/na, a ∈ T over the connected region R, we define the ULS tree<br />
as follows:<br />
Let G = {ga | a ∈ T}<br />
Suppose r1 > r2 > … > rm are all distinct members of G.<br />
Define for i = 1, 2, …, m,<br />
Ti = { a ∈ T | ga = ri },<br />
and the upper level sets as unions of Ti’s,<br />
Ui = T1 ∪ T2 ∪ … ∪ Ti<br />
= { a ∈ T | ga ≥ ri }.<br />
Let Ci = set of connected components of Ui, i = 1, 2, …, m, and<br />
the reduced parameter space ΩULS = C1 ∪ … ∪ Cm.<br />
The ULS tree = (ΩULS) is a tree whose nodes are members<br />
of Ω ULS. The root of the ULS tree is Um = R. Let Z be a node<br />
belonging to the ULS tree. If all cells belonging to Z have the<br />
same response rate, then Z is a leaf node. Thus, members of C1 are<br />
leaf nodes. If not all cells in Z have the same rates then let e =<br />
min{ ga | a ∈ Z} and connected components of Z – {a ∈ Z: ga =<br />
e} are members of Z. [13]<br />
Since our search for a hotspot is based on cellular response rates,<br />
we assign a unique level to each node of the ULS tree in terms of<br />
its response rate and then scan the tree by level starting with nodes<br />
level 1 down. Members of C1 are level 1 nodes. The root is the<br />
level m node. In general, for 1 ≤ i ≤ m, the level of a zone Z is i if<br />
and only if min{ ga | a ∈ Z } = ri. Since each cell is introduced in<br />
229<br />
a unique node in the ULS tree, the ULS tree has at most N nodes.<br />
Hence |ΩULS| ≤ N, the equality holding if and only if m = N. [13]<br />
Several geometric properties should be satisfied by a collection of<br />
cells from tessellation of study area before it could be considered<br />
as a candidate for a hotspot cluster<br />
1) the union of the cells should comprise a geographically<br />
connected subset of the region R. Such collections of cells<br />
will be referred to as zones and the set of all zones is denoted<br />
by Ω. A zone Z∈Ω is a collection of cells that are connected.<br />
2) the zone should not be excessively large. This restriction is<br />
generally achieved by limiting the search for hotspot to zones<br />
that do not comprise more than fifty percent of the region.<br />
[14]<br />
6. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION<br />
6.1 Correlation Analysis and Descriptive<br />
Statistics<br />
Paired scatter plots make a simple way to see and get information<br />
about the strength of the relationship between two indicators.<br />
Scatter plots of pairs of infant health indicators are shown in<br />
Figure 2. If the observation points tend to be in a straight line,<br />
there is a correlation (relationship) between two variables<br />
(indicators). Table 2 shows the correlation coefficient between<br />
two indicators. Through this table it can be seen how strong the<br />
relationship between the two indicators is. According to Figure 2,<br />
there are tendencies of linear relationship between indicators infd<br />
and pov, infd and lbw, and pov and lbw. Table 2 shows that the<br />
correlation between infant death and poverty is 0.567. It can be<br />
said that there is a positive statistical association between those<br />
two indicators because it has p-value of 1.621e-10 (less than<br />
0.05). In statistics, if a parameter estimation (in this case is the<br />
coefficient correlation) has p-value of less than 0.05, it means the<br />
error probability of making conclusion is less than 5 percent. This<br />
is also true regarding infant death and low birth weight (r =<br />
0.4163; p-value = 7.425e-06); and for poverty and low birth<br />
weight (r = 0.399; p-value < 0.0001). There are positive<br />
relationships between infant death (infd) and absence of health<br />
personnel (abhp) and also between infd and average education<br />
shortfall (avedsf), even though both relationships are weaker. The<br />
relationship between infant death and births without health<br />
personnel (abhp) is stronger (r = 0.319; p-value = 0.0007531)<br />
than the relationship between infant death and average education<br />
shortfall (r = 0.290; p-value = 0.002375).<br />
Variability of the infant health indicators is shown by Figure 3a<br />
and 3b. Figure 3a shows boxplots of infm, pov (in thousands), and<br />
lbw. Thus, lbw is more variable than the other two indicators and<br />
contains outliers. Figure 3b shows boxplots of births without<br />
health personnel (%) and education shortfall.<br />
4
0 200 600<br />
0 10 30 50<br />
infd<br />
0 200 600 0 10 30 50<br />
pov<br />
lbw<br />
abhp<br />
0 200 400 600 0 1000 2000 0 2 4 6<br />
Figure 2. Scatter plots of five indicators of infant health<br />
Table 2. Correlation matrix of five indicators of infant health<br />
infd pov lbw abhp avedsf<br />
infd 1.000 0.567 0.416 0.319 0.290<br />
pov 0.567 1.000 0.399 0.317 0.559<br />
lbw 0.416 0.399 1.000 0.304 -0.005<br />
abhp 0.319 0.317 0.304 1.000 0.299<br />
avedsf 0.290 0.559 -0.005 0.299 1.000<br />
0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500<br />
infd pov lbw<br />
avedsf<br />
Figure 3a. Parallel Boxplots of infant health data (Infant<br />
deaths, poverty, low birth weight) in Java, 2007<br />
0 200 400 600<br />
0 1000 2000<br />
0 2 4 6<br />
230<br />
0 10 20 30 40 50<br />
abhp avedsf<br />
Figure 3b. Parallel Boxplots of infant health data (births<br />
without health personnel, average education shortfall) in Java,<br />
2007<br />
6.2 Ranking Process<br />
Better results of the ORDIT method will be obtained if the<br />
correlations between indicators are sufficiently strong. Based on<br />
Table 2, correlations between infd, pov, and lbw are higher with<br />
each other than the correlation between abhp and avedsf. For this<br />
reason, ranking of districts will be carried out based on 5 (all)<br />
indicators and 3 indicators (infd, pov, lbw). A comparison of the<br />
results will give a broader view of the ranking. Theoretically, rank<br />
results will be more representative, if the variables (indicators)<br />
have stronger relationship or higher coefficient correlation where<br />
infant health is an abstract concept and unable to be measured.<br />
Table 3 shows the place rank of each infant health indicator for<br />
the leading lines of the data sets by Function Facilities of R [8]<br />
function called PlacRank in Schema 1. The first column of the<br />
data frame to be ranked is assumed to contain case identifiers, and<br />
this column remains unaltered.<br />
Table 3. Head (first 6 lines) of the data frame in ranking<br />
obtained by applying the PlacRank function to place ranks of<br />
infant health indicators via the R commands [8]<br />
No. district infd pov lbw abhp avedsf<br />
1 1 85.5 77 82.0 30 28.5<br />
2 2 53.0 71 71.0 44 22.5<br />
3 3 75.5 72 86.5 41 54.0<br />
4 4 62.0 67 55.0 92 65.0<br />
5 5 72.0 66 56.5 98 57.5<br />
6 6 12.0 40 38.0 59 61.0<br />
Tables 4a and 4b show the head (first six lines) of the data frame<br />
obtained by applying the ProdOrdr function to the place ranks of<br />
infant health measurement. In the current content, the idea of<br />
‘better’ from reference [4] is replaced by ‘more severe’. Table 4a<br />
and 4b are the results of ProdOrdr for 5 indicators and 3 indicators<br />
respectively. Figure 4 is a scatter plot of these two salient scaling<br />
(rankings) based on 5 and 3 indicators. It shows that there is a<br />
linear tendency between those two ranking results with correlation<br />
0.82 (p-value < 2.2e-16). This means the rankings based on 5 and<br />
5
3 indicators are similar but not the same. In this case, the ranking<br />
process may use only 3 indicators, especially if the principle of<br />
parsimony is applied.<br />
Table 4a. Head (first 6 lines) of data frame obtained by<br />
applying the ProdOrdr function to place ranks of infant<br />
health measurement for 5 indicators via the R commands [4]<br />
CaseIDs AA SS ORDIT Salient<br />
1 13.08 7.48 8692.086 46.5<br />
2 13.08 7.48 8692.086 46.5<br />
3 12.15 19.63 8785.223 52<br />
4 5.61 30.84 9439.327 71.5<br />
5 3.74 28.97 9626.301 80<br />
6 21.5 6.54 7850.083 28.5<br />
Table 4b. Head (first 6 lines) of data frame obtained by<br />
applying the ProdOrdr function to place ranks of infant<br />
health measurement for 3 indicators via the R commands [8]<br />
CaseIDs AA SS ORDIT Salient<br />
salient3<br />
1 13.08 57.94 8692.667 79<br />
2 19.63 38.32 8037.477 58<br />
3 14.02 53.27 8598.62 76<br />
4 24.3 35.51 7570.469 51<br />
5 20.56 37.38 7944.471 57<br />
6 46.73 7.48 5327.14 22<br />
0 20 40 60 80 100<br />
45<br />
0 20 40 60 80 100<br />
salient5<br />
Figure 4. Scatter Plot of salient with 5 indicators and 3<br />
indicators as generated by R [8]<br />
Precedence plot of districts by product-order is shown in Figure<br />
5a and 5b. The labels on plotted points in Figure 5 are district<br />
numbers in the data file. These lines must be retrieved to<br />
determine identities of the respective districts. Table 6a shows the<br />
five most severe districts based on 5 indicators and Figure 6a<br />
shows the map of these districts. Location of the 3 districts (90,<br />
64<br />
61<br />
15<br />
93<br />
231<br />
87, 81) is in West Java, while one district (47) is in Central Java<br />
and district 58 is at the border of Central Java and East Java.<br />
Table 6b shows the 5 least severe districts based on 5 indicators<br />
and Figure 6b shows the map of these districts. Location of the 5<br />
least severe districts (city type) is in the central of its main district<br />
and almost cannot be seen from the map on Figure 6b; district 73<br />
is in the middle of district 51 in Central Java; district 31 is in the<br />
middle of district 5; district 106 is a small area in the west area of<br />
the island; district 35 is in the middle of district 16; district 36 is<br />
in the middle of district 19. The three districts (31, 35, 36) are in<br />
East Java area.<br />
AA as %DD<br />
AA as %DD<br />
0 20 40 60<br />
0 20 40 60 80<br />
90<br />
87<br />
47<br />
58 84<br />
0 20 40 60 80<br />
4758<br />
72<br />
44<br />
83<br />
45<br />
90<br />
61<br />
79<br />
81<br />
9<br />
SS as %DD (Deleted Domain)<br />
(a)<br />
77 30<br />
34<br />
31<br />
43 73<br />
0 20 40 60 80<br />
SS as %DD (Deleted Domain)<br />
35 36 75<br />
106<br />
95 77 30<br />
101 34 7536<br />
106 96<br />
103 78<br />
43 31<br />
7338<br />
(b)<br />
Figure 5. Precedence plot (based on place ranks) of districts<br />
labeled with district numbers for 5 indicators (a) and 3<br />
indicators (b), from R commands [8]<br />
6
Table 6a. Five most severe districts based on 5 indicators<br />
according to ORDIT ordering and salient scaling, as retrieved<br />
by R commands [8]<br />
Latitude<br />
10°�S 9°�S 8°�S 7°�S 6°�S 5°�S<br />
CaseIDs AA SS ORDIT Salient<br />
90 74.77 0 2523 1<br />
87 58.88 0 4112 2<br />
47 51.4 0 4860 3<br />
58 45.79 0 5421 5<br />
81 45.79 0 5421 5<br />
107 106 94<br />
104 10599<br />
93<br />
100<br />
79 95<br />
91<br />
92<br />
90<br />
63<br />
96<br />
80<br />
81<br />
10197<br />
82<br />
87 98<br />
89 88<br />
86<br />
61<br />
62<br />
78 77<br />
64<br />
72 71 70 69 68 67 76<br />
58<br />
60<br />
59<br />
23<br />
24 25<br />
26<br />
29<br />
27 28<br />
83<br />
66 65<br />
22<br />
37<br />
102 46 47<br />
75<br />
85<br />
103<br />
44 45<br />
50<br />
52 57<br />
21<br />
35 15<br />
84<br />
73 51<br />
74<br />
18 17 16<br />
48 56 20 3619<br />
49<br />
34<br />
42 53 54<br />
14<br />
39 43<br />
33<br />
306<br />
38<br />
40<br />
13<br />
55 2<br />
41<br />
32<br />
12<br />
11<br />
1 3 4 315<br />
7 8<br />
9<br />
10<br />
108<br />
106°�E 108°�E 110°�E 112°�E 114°�E 116°�E<br />
Longitude<br />
Figure 6a. Five most severe districts based on 5 indicators,<br />
mapped by the sp package of R [11],[12]<br />
Table 6b. Five least severe districts with 5 indicators<br />
according to ORDIT ordering and salient scaling, as retrieved<br />
by R commands [8]<br />
Latitude<br />
10°�S 9°�S 8°�S 7°�S 6°�S 5°�S<br />
CaseIDs AA SS ORDIT Salient<br />
73 0 63.55 10000.6 104<br />
31 0 71.03 10000.7 105<br />
106 0 71.96 10000.7 106<br />
35 0 81.31 10000.8 107<br />
36 0 82.24 10000.8 108<br />
107 106 94<br />
104105<br />
99 93<br />
100<br />
79 95<br />
91<br />
92<br />
90<br />
63<br />
96<br />
80<br />
81<br />
101 97<br />
82<br />
87 98<br />
89 88<br />
86<br />
61<br />
62<br />
78 77<br />
64<br />
72 71 70 69 68 67 76<br />
58<br />
60<br />
59<br />
23<br />
24 25<br />
26<br />
29<br />
27 28<br />
83<br />
66<br />
22<br />
46 65<br />
37<br />
102 103<br />
47<br />
75<br />
44 45<br />
50<br />
52 57<br />
84<br />
85<br />
73<br />
21<br />
35 15<br />
51<br />
74<br />
17 16<br />
48<br />
56<br />
19 18<br />
20 36<br />
34<br />
49 42 53 54<br />
14<br />
39 43<br />
33<br />
306<br />
38<br />
40<br />
13<br />
55 2<br />
41<br />
32<br />
1 3<br />
4 31<br />
5 7 8<br />
12<br />
11<br />
9<br />
10<br />
108<br />
106°�E 108°�E 110°�E 112°�E 114°�E 116°�E<br />
Longitude<br />
232<br />
Figure 6b. Five least severe districts based on 5 indicators,<br />
mapped by the sp package of R [11],[12].<br />
Table 7a and 7b present the 5 most severe districts and the 5 least<br />
severe districts, respectively, based on 3 indicators. Five most<br />
severe districts are shown in Figure 7a. Two districts (83 and 87)<br />
are located in West Java, and 2 districts (44 and 90) are located in<br />
the border area between West Java and Central Java, and district<br />
45 locates in Central Java, this district adjacent to district 44.<br />
Figure 7b shows five least severe districts. District 43 is a city in<br />
the south area of Central Java, district 73 is in the center of district<br />
51 as mentioned before, district 38, district 31, and district 35 are<br />
districts in East Java. All these districts are city type districts.<br />
Table 7a. Five most severe districts with 3 indicators<br />
according to ORDIT ordering and salient scaling, as retrieved<br />
by R commands [8]<br />
CaseIDs AA SS ORDIT Salient<br />
44 90.65 0 935 1<br />
83 87.85 0 1215 2.5<br />
87 87.85 0 1215 2.5<br />
45 84.11 0 1589 4<br />
90 76.64 1.87 2336.08 5<br />
Table 7b. Five least severe districts with 3 indicators<br />
according to ORDIT ordering and salient scaling, as retrieved<br />
by R commands [8]<br />
Latitude<br />
10°�S 9°�S 8°�S 7°�S 6°�S 5°�S<br />
CaseIDs AA SS ORDIT Salient<br />
43 0 79.44 10000.794 104<br />
73 0 88.79 10000.888 105<br />
38 0 91.59 10000.916 106<br />
31 0 93.46 10000.935 107.5<br />
35 0 93.46 10000.935 107.5<br />
107 106 94<br />
104105<br />
99 93<br />
100<br />
91 90<br />
79 95<br />
92<br />
63<br />
87 98<br />
61 60<br />
89 88<br />
62<br />
78<br />
96<br />
101 97<br />
77<br />
64<br />
82<br />
86<br />
23<br />
26<br />
29<br />
72 71 70 69 68 67 76<br />
80<br />
59<br />
27 28<br />
81<br />
58<br />
24 25<br />
66<br />
22<br />
46 65<br />
37<br />
83 102 103<br />
47<br />
75<br />
44 45<br />
50<br />
52 57<br />
84<br />
85<br />
73<br />
21<br />
35 15<br />
51<br />
74<br />
17 16<br />
48<br />
56<br />
19 18<br />
20 36<br />
34<br />
49 42 53 54<br />
14<br />
39 43<br />
33<br />
306<br />
38<br />
12<br />
40<br />
13<br />
55 2<br />
32<br />
11<br />
41<br />
1 3<br />
4 31<br />
5 7 8<br />
9<br />
10<br />
108<br />
106°�E 108°�E 110°�E 112°�E 114°�E 116°�E<br />
Longitude<br />
Figure 7a. Five most severe districts based on 3 indicators,<br />
mapped by the sp package of R [11],[12].<br />
7
Latitude<br />
10°�S 9°�S 8°�S 7°�S 6°�S 5°�S<br />
107 106 94<br />
104105<br />
99 93<br />
100<br />
91 90<br />
79 95<br />
92<br />
63<br />
87 98<br />
61 60<br />
89 88<br />
62<br />
78<br />
96<br />
101 97<br />
77<br />
64<br />
82<br />
86<br />
23<br />
26<br />
29<br />
72 71 70 69 68 67 76<br />
80<br />
59<br />
27 28<br />
81<br />
58<br />
24 25<br />
66<br />
22<br />
46 65<br />
37<br />
83 102 103<br />
47<br />
75<br />
44 45<br />
50<br />
52 57<br />
84<br />
85<br />
73<br />
21<br />
35 15<br />
51<br />
74<br />
17 16<br />
48<br />
56<br />
19 18<br />
20 36<br />
34<br />
49 42 53 54<br />
14<br />
39 43<br />
33<br />
306<br />
38<br />
12<br />
40<br />
13<br />
55 2<br />
32<br />
11<br />
41<br />
1 3<br />
4 31<br />
5 7 8<br />
9<br />
10<br />
108<br />
106°�E 108°�E 110°�E 112°�E 114°�E 116°�E<br />
Longitude<br />
Figure 7b. Five least severe districts based on 3 indicators,<br />
mapped by the sp package of R [11],[12]<br />
Ranking of districts is continued based on salient scaling of 5<br />
indicators (salient5) and salient scaling based on 3 indicators<br />
(salient3) as indicators for new ranks.<br />
Table 8a shows the five least severe districts; and Table 8b shows<br />
the five most severe districts. Here sal5 and sal3 (salient result of<br />
5 and 3 indicators) used as indicators to obtain ranking of the<br />
districts. It has positive sense, so smaller number of the salient<br />
result means least severe of districts.<br />
Table 8a. Five least severe districts with salient5 and salient3<br />
as indicators according to ORDIT ordering and salient<br />
scaling, as retrieved by R commands [8]<br />
CaseIDs AA SS ORDIT Salient<br />
35 99.07 0.00 93 1<br />
31 97.2 0.93 280.332 2<br />
36 95.33 0.00 467 3<br />
73 95.33 1.87 467.4 4<br />
43 94.39 2.80 561.499 6<br />
Table 8b. Five most severe districts with salient5 and salient3<br />
as indicators according to ORDIT ordering and salient<br />
scaling, as retrieved by R commands [8]<br />
CaseIDs AA SS ORDIT Salient<br />
47 1.87 91.59 9813.933 104<br />
83 0.93 96.26 9907.972 105<br />
44 0 92.52 10000.925 106<br />
90 0 96.26 10000.963 107<br />
87 0 98.13 10000.981 108<br />
Figure 8a and 8b shows the districts of Table 8a and 8b,<br />
respectively. Table 9 is a resume of all results of ORDIT rankings.<br />
The first column is the ids of districts, second, third, and fourth<br />
columns indicate whether the district is a member of 5 least or 5<br />
worst severe districts based on 5 indicators, 3 indicators, and 2<br />
233<br />
indicators (salient5 and salient3), respectively. The fifth column is<br />
a mark for a district as a member of all results.<br />
Latitude<br />
10°�S 9°�S 8°�S 7°�S 6°�S 5°�S<br />
107 106 94<br />
104105<br />
99 93<br />
100<br />
91 90<br />
79 95<br />
92<br />
63<br />
87 98<br />
61 60<br />
89 88<br />
62<br />
78<br />
96<br />
101 97<br />
77<br />
64<br />
82<br />
86<br />
23<br />
26<br />
29<br />
72 71 70 69 68 67 76<br />
80<br />
59<br />
27 28<br />
81<br />
58<br />
24 25<br />
66<br />
22<br />
46 65<br />
37<br />
83 102 103<br />
47<br />
75<br />
44 45<br />
50<br />
52 57<br />
84<br />
85<br />
73<br />
21<br />
35 15<br />
51<br />
74<br />
17 16<br />
48<br />
56<br />
19 18<br />
20 36<br />
34<br />
49 42 53 54<br />
14<br />
39 43<br />
33<br />
306<br />
38<br />
12<br />
40<br />
13<br />
55 2<br />
32<br />
11<br />
41<br />
1 3<br />
4 31<br />
5 7 8<br />
9<br />
10<br />
108<br />
106°�E 108°�E 110°�E 112°�E 114°�E 116°�E<br />
Longitude<br />
Figure 8a. Five best districts based on salient 5 and salient 3<br />
as indicators, mapped by the sp package of R[11],[12]<br />
Latitude<br />
10°�S 9°�S 8°�S 7°�S 6°�S 5°�S<br />
107 106 94<br />
104105<br />
99 93<br />
100<br />
91 90<br />
79 95<br />
92<br />
63<br />
87 98<br />
61 60<br />
89 88<br />
62<br />
78<br />
96<br />
101 97<br />
77<br />
64<br />
82<br />
86<br />
23<br />
26<br />
29<br />
72 71 70 69 68 67 76<br />
80<br />
59<br />
27 28<br />
81<br />
58<br />
24 25<br />
66<br />
22<br />
46 65<br />
37<br />
83 102 103<br />
47<br />
75<br />
44 45<br />
50<br />
52 57<br />
84<br />
85<br />
73<br />
21<br />
35 15<br />
51<br />
74<br />
17 16<br />
48<br />
56<br />
19 18<br />
20 36<br />
34<br />
49 42 53 54<br />
14<br />
39 43<br />
33<br />
306<br />
38<br />
12<br />
40<br />
13<br />
55 2<br />
32<br />
11<br />
41<br />
1 3<br />
4 31<br />
5 7 8<br />
9<br />
10<br />
108<br />
106°�E 108°�E 110°�E 112°�E 114°�E 116°�E<br />
Longitude<br />
Figure 8b. Five most severe districts based on salient 5 and<br />
salient 3 as indicators, mapped by the sp package of R<br />
[11],[12].<br />
Table 9. Five worst and five best districts as the result of<br />
ORDIT rankings<br />
Worst District salient5 salient3 salient53 Mark<br />
90 Yes Yes Yes √<br />
87 Yes Yes Yes √<br />
47 Yes No Yes<br />
58 Yes No No<br />
81 Yes No No<br />
44 No Yes Yes<br />
83 No Yes Yes<br />
45 No Yes No<br />
Best District<br />
73 Yes Yes Yes √<br />
31 Yes Yes Yes √<br />
106 Yes No No<br />
35 Yes Yes Yes √<br />
36 Yes No Yes<br />
43 No Yes Yes<br />
38 No Yes No<br />
6.3 THE RESULTS OF ULS HOTSPOT<br />
DETECTION<br />
The districts in the hotspot area as the result of ULS hotspot<br />
detection based on each indicator are shown in Figure 9. It shows<br />
that for the first three indicators hotspot area (a,b,c) is dominant in<br />
Central Java, but for the forth indicator (d), the hotspot area is<br />
8
dominant in West Java, while for the fifth indicator (e) the hotspot<br />
area comprises some districts of East Java<br />
Latitude<br />
Latitude<br />
9°�S 8°�S 7°�S 6°�S 5°�S<br />
Latitude<br />
9°�S 8°�S 7°�S 6°�S 5°�S<br />
10°�S 9°�S 8°�S 7°�S 6°�S 5°�S<br />
The Hotspot of Number of Infants Death in Java Island, 2007<br />
190<br />
266 89 196<br />
115<br />
174 28<br />
170<br />
86<br />
328<br />
244<br />
39<br />
109<br />
189<br />
413 85<br />
134 345<br />
60134<br />
114<br />
107<br />
392<br />
173 178<br />
10 44<br />
145<br />
169 78 170 210 83 208<br />
96<br />
329 125<br />
162<br />
83 223<br />
31<br />
56<br />
72 117<br />
115 177<br />
147<br />
186 69<br />
312 104 69<br />
663<br />
25<br />
392 270<br />
141<br />
217 142<br />
347<br />
96<br />
340<br />
14 372<br />
100 2<br />
47<br />
260 101<br />
111 66<br />
100<br />
133<br />
96 18<br />
62<br />
61<br />
63 253 46<br />
66<br />
37 32<br />
24<br />
85<br />
298 17<br />
82<br />
50<br />
187<br />
131 112<br />
174<br />
172<br />
84<br />
61<br />
97 6<br />
78 83 142 77<br />
285<br />
139<br />
6 22<br />
54<br />
108<br />
106°�E 108°�E 110°�E 112°�E 114°�E 116°�E<br />
Longitude<br />
ULS hotspot detection, mapped with R<br />
(a)<br />
The Hotspot of Number of People in Poverty (in thousands) in Java Island, 2007<br />
519.5<br />
229.6<br />
400.4<br />
111.7 231.2<br />
49.1 70.3<br />
371.6<br />
365.3<br />
701.6 267.5 319 258 203.7 215.4260.5<br />
352.3<br />
283.9<br />
394.6<br />
519.1<br />
297.8<br />
288.3<br />
325.5<br />
338.9 257.4<br />
297.6 273.6<br />
178.5 229.5<br />
321.5<br />
203.7<br />
435.5<br />
328.2 361.5<br />
26.2<br />
780 550.2<br />
270.5 300.4 270.4<br />
188.7<br />
11.5 223.3<br />
302.4 375.6 20.1<br />
74.9<br />
261.6143.8<br />
214.9 130.6 230.5<br />
420.6 102.212.1<br />
203<br />
21.3<br />
161.5380.1230.9<br />
278.7<br />
131.5 60<br />
34.9<br />
35.3 267.4 15<br />
93.9<br />
201<br />
277.1<br />
273.3 157.9<br />
56.6<br />
165.7<br />
301.2<br />
125.6 170.5 15.2<br />
199<br />
149.1 171.2 365.3<br />
417<br />
227.3<br />
213.1<br />
9470.7 141.7<br />
35.4 122.6 106.9 294.4<br />
35.9<br />
91.4<br />
235.8<br />
114.5<br />
361.7<br />
28.3 398<br />
161.8 234.4<br />
43.7<br />
22.6<br />
87.2<br />
187.7<br />
54.5 12.9<br />
171.8<br />
106°�E 108°�E 110°�E 112°�E 114°�E 116°�E<br />
Longitude<br />
ULS hotspot detection, mapped with R<br />
(b)<br />
The Hotspot of Low Birth Weight in Java Island, 2007<br />
610 129 261<br />
947 1962 215 392<br />
154<br />
815 90<br />
540<br />
212<br />
814<br />
238<br />
96<br />
386<br />
580<br />
1085 238<br />
490 299<br />
478 752<br />
172<br />
149<br />
113<br />
788<br />
60<br />
768<br />
172<br />
295 300 522 483 9 137<br />
931<br />
445<br />
436 345<br />
606<br />
125 189<br />
164<br />
130 85 144<br />
262 644<br />
208<br />
228 1307<br />
2464 111 105<br />
507<br />
62<br />
572 815 1003<br />
208<br />
276 413<br />
271<br />
36 971<br />
616<br />
357 83<br />
209<br />
556 295<br />
131 214<br />
422<br />
238<br />
274 43<br />
476<br />
86<br />
68 40 350<br />
156<br />
204 5<br />
164<br />
66 401 19<br />
220<br />
530<br />
409<br />
383 187<br />
164<br />
250<br />
176<br />
145<br />
252 11<br />
130 250 668 573<br />
388<br />
184<br />
1456<br />
106°�E 108°�E 110°�E 112°�E 114°�E 116°�E<br />
Longitude<br />
ULS hotspot detection, mapped with R<br />
(c)<br />
234<br />
Latitude<br />
10°�S 8°�S 6°�S<br />
Latitude<br />
The Hotspot of Non Health Personnel Assisted (in percentage) in Java Island, 2007<br />
6.3<br />
14.6 3.2 0<br />
26.6<br />
30.3 14.5<br />
11.7<br />
21.9<br />
43.8<br />
18.5<br />
22.5 10.5<br />
2.5 14.2<br />
43.3 39.7<br />
13.6<br />
21.6<br />
7.6 4.8<br />
18.7<br />
29.7<br />
3.2<br />
33.9<br />
13.5<br />
18.3<br />
37.3<br />
18.5 17.8 15.1 2.3 22 9.9<br />
22.6 21.2<br />
48.9<br />
6<br />
8.9 0<br />
20.6<br />
27.3<br />
28.2 8.7<br />
8.8 10.6<br />
5<br />
18.9<br />
47.6 22.8 22.7<br />
25.8<br />
24.1<br />
0.2<br />
12 5.9<br />
25.9<br />
15.8 9<br />
29.6<br />
0.2<br />
41.1<br />
4.8 9.5<br />
0 4.5<br />
4.5<br />
14 0.2<br />
2.4 11.9<br />
20.3<br />
12.4<br />
6.2 0<br />
9.1<br />
0.9<br />
7.3 9.8 10.4<br />
19.7<br />
6 7.2<br />
4.6 11.6 9.9<br />
19<br />
21.3<br />
14.5 11.3<br />
4.6 14.6<br />
0<br />
12.6<br />
17.6<br />
20.2<br />
3 2.4<br />
16.2 0.5 22.2 5.4<br />
19.3<br />
13.9<br />
0 0 8.9<br />
12.6<br />
106°�E 108°�E 110°�E 112°�E 114°�E 116°�E<br />
10°�S 9°�S 8°�S 7°�S 6°�S 5°�S 4°�S<br />
107 106 94<br />
104 105 99 93<br />
100<br />
79 95<br />
91<br />
92<br />
90<br />
96<br />
80<br />
81<br />
10197<br />
82<br />
87 98<br />
89 88<br />
86<br />
108<br />
83<br />
102 103<br />
84<br />
85<br />
ULS hotspot detection, mapped with R<br />
(d)<br />
Longitude<br />
The Hotspot of Average Education Shortfall in Java Island, 2007<br />
63<br />
62 61 60<br />
78 77<br />
64<br />
23<br />
29<br />
72 71 70 69 68 67 76<br />
26 27<br />
58 59<br />
28<br />
24 25<br />
66<br />
22<br />
46 65<br />
37<br />
47<br />
75<br />
44 45<br />
50<br />
52 57<br />
73<br />
21<br />
35 15<br />
51<br />
74<br />
17 16<br />
19 18<br />
48 56 20 36<br />
49 42 53 54<br />
34<br />
14<br />
39 43<br />
306<br />
33<br />
38<br />
12<br />
40<br />
13<br />
55 2<br />
32<br />
11<br />
41<br />
1 3 4 315<br />
7 8<br />
9<br />
10<br />
106°�E 108°�E 110°�E 112°�E 114°�E 116°�E<br />
Longitude<br />
ULS Hotspot Detection, mapped with R<br />
(e)<br />
Figure 9. ULS Hotspot districts of infd (a), pov (b), lbw (c),<br />
abhp (d), and avedsf (e) as generated by the R commands<br />
[11],[12].<br />
Table 10 shows the five worst districts for salient5, salient3 and<br />
salient53 and information whether the district is a hotspot or not a<br />
hotspot. There is no district of the first column as the hotspot<br />
based on indicator avedsf (average education shortfall), so this<br />
column is omitted. Districts 90 and 87 are strong enough to be<br />
considered as the worst districts of infant health.<br />
Table 10. Five worst districts for salients and ULS hotspot<br />
districts for each indicator<br />
Distr sal5 sal3 sal53 hinfd hpov hlbw habhp<br />
90 Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes<br />
87 Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes<br />
47 Yes No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes<br />
58 Yes No No Yes Yes Yes No<br />
81 Yes No No No No No Yes<br />
83 No Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes<br />
44 No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No<br />
45 No Yes No Yes Yes Yes No<br />
9
7. CONCLUSION<br />
According to ORDIT analysis with five and three indicators and<br />
sal5 & sal3 as indicators, the most severe districts of infant health<br />
are districts 90 and 87. The least severe districts are district 73,<br />
31, and 35 (all are cities). The most severe districts are in West<br />
Java. The two least severe districts are cities in Central Java and<br />
one least severe (best) district is a city in East Java. The least<br />
severe areas are city type districts. The most severe districts (90<br />
and 87) are also confirmed by the ULS method as the worst<br />
districts for infant health. These districts are in the hotspots area<br />
of three indicators. To improve infant health in Java, the<br />
government, especially the Health Department should give more<br />
attention to districts 90 (Indramayu) and 87 (Cirebon) which are<br />
the worst districts for infant health. Hopefully through this study,<br />
ORDIT ranking and ULS hotspot detection methods will be<br />
recognized to be useful micro tools to support decision makers in<br />
the e-governance.<br />
8. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS<br />
I would like to acknowledge the valuable guidance of Prof. G.P.<br />
Patil, Center for Statistical Ecology and Environmental Statistics,<br />
Department of Statistics, the Pennsylvania State University. Many<br />
thanks to the Directorate General of Higher Education Indonesia<br />
for financial support through the Doctoral Sandwich Program that<br />
I received.<br />
9. REFERENCES<br />
[1] Gortmaker, S.L. Poverty and Infant Mortality in the United<br />
States. American Sociological Review, 44, 2 (Apr. 1979),<br />
280-297.<br />
[2] Frieden, T.R. CDC Health Disparities and Inequalities<br />
Report – United States. Morbidity and Mortality Weekly<br />
Report. 60. 2011<br />
[3] OECD. Health at a Glance 2011: OECD Indicators, OECD<br />
Publishing. http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/health_glance-‐<br />
2011-‐en<br />
235<br />
[4] Frankenberg, E. The Effects of Access to Heath Care on<br />
Infant Mortality in Indonesia, Health Transition Review 5,<br />
(1995), 143 – 163.<br />
[5] Desai, S. and Alva, S. Maternal education and child health: Is<br />
there a strong causal relationship? Demography, 35, 1 (Feb.<br />
1998), 71-81.<br />
[6] Braveman, P., Cubbin, C., Marchi, K., Egerter, S., Chaves,<br />
G. Measuring Socioeconomic Status/ Position in Studies of<br />
Racial/Ethnic Disparities: Maternal and Infant Health, Public<br />
Health Reports: September–October 2001, Vol.116.<br />
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/<br />
PMC1497365/pdf/12042609.pdf<br />
[7] Biro Pusat Statistik, Indonesia Population by Province 1971,<br />
1980, 1990, 1995, 2000 dan 2010.<br />
http://www.bps.go.id/tab_sub/view.php?tabel=1&daftar=1&i<br />
d_subyek=12¬ab=1, 2010<br />
[8] Myers, W. and Patil, G.P. Preliminary Prioritization Based<br />
on Partial Order Theory and R Software for Compositional<br />
Complexes in Landscape Ecology, with Applications to<br />
Restoration, Remediation, and Enhancement. Environmental<br />
Ecological Statistics. 17, 4, 2010, 411-436.<br />
[9] Jahan, S. Poverty and infant mortality in the Eastern<br />
Mediterranean region: a meta-analysis. J Epidemiol<br />
Community Health 2008, 62, 745–751.<br />
[10] DEPKES RI. Bank Data Pusdatin-DepKes RI. 2009.<br />
http://www.bankdata.depkes.go.id/nasional/public/report/cre<br />
atetablepti<br />
[11] Roger,S.B., Pebesma, E.J., Rubio,V.G. Applied Spatial Data<br />
Analysis with R, Springer, Washington. 2008.<br />
[12] Moore, C. Mapping with R: Choropleth of 3rd grade reading<br />
proficiency in the Twin Cities, Article. April 19, 2008.<br />
[13] Patil, G.P., Joshi, S.W., Koli, R.E. PULSE, Progressive<br />
Upper Level Set Scan Statistics for Geospatial Hotspot<br />
Detection. Environmental Ecological Statistics. 17, 2, 2010,<br />
411-436.<br />
[14] Patil, G. P. and Taillie, C. Upper Level Set Scan Statistic for<br />
Detecting Arbitrarily Shaped Hotspots. Environmental and<br />
Ecological Statistics, 11, 2004, 183 – 197.<br />
http://www.stat.psu.edu/~gpp.<br />
10
Technological Assessment of e-government Web<br />
presence in Nigeria<br />
Awoleye, O. Michael<br />
National Centre for Technology<br />
Management (NACETEM), An Agency<br />
of the Federal Ministry of Science &<br />
Technology, P.M.B. 012, Obafemi<br />
Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, 20005,<br />
Nigeria<br />
+234-(0)7069197823<br />
awoleye@yahoo.co.uk<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
Government bringing innovation into its activities is a good<br />
gesture but innovation that constitutes peril due to inadequate<br />
technical capability necessitates re-assessment, hence this<br />
investigation.This study investigated susceptibility of some<br />
chosen government websites to infiltration due to flaws in the<br />
design of their websites. Sixty four websites of some<br />
organizations were randomly selected using an advanced feature<br />
of google to sieve organization’s websites that have adopted the<br />
use of country code Top Level Domain (ccTLD) i.e. the<br />
“.gov.ng”. The research was based on some major measuring<br />
parameters which are: Cross Site Scripting (XSS), Structured<br />
Query Language injection (SQLi), Cookie manipulation (CM),<br />
unencrypted password (UP) and broken links (BL). The sixty four<br />
(64) government websites chosen span 8 categories of sectors<br />
with a view to evaluating their immunity against cyber attacks. It<br />
was found that 27 (42.2%) of the websites are vulnerable to XSS,<br />
while 20 (31.3%) to SQLi. Also, 24 websites which represents<br />
37.5% of the websites examined are having the password inputted<br />
by the user unencrypted while a high percentage (70.3) have<br />
informational issues, like broken links which in itself may not<br />
constitute high vulnerability but could create susceptible platform<br />
which could permit infiltration. Thereafter, some appropriate<br />
policy directions which provide technical advice as to protect<br />
government resources available through the Internet were<br />
advanced. This tends to also increase citizens’ confidence on the<br />
adoption of the government web-presence initiative.<br />
Categories and Subject Descriptors<br />
K.4.6. [Security and Protection]<br />
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for<br />
personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are<br />
not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies<br />
bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for<br />
components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored.<br />
Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to<br />
post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission<br />
and/or a fee.<br />
ICEGOV '12, October 22 - 25 2012, Albany, NY, USA<br />
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1200-4/12/10...$15.00<br />
Ojuloge, Blessing<br />
National Centre for Technology<br />
Management (NACETEM), An Agency<br />
of the Federal Ministry of Science &<br />
Technology, P.M.B. 012, Obafemi<br />
Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, 20005,<br />
Nigeria<br />
+234-(0)8035762207<br />
blessingojuloge@yahoo.com<br />
236<br />
General Terms<br />
Management, Security, Performance<br />
Keywords<br />
Siyanbola, Willie O.<br />
National Centre for Technology<br />
Management (NACETEM), An Agency<br />
of the Federal Ministry of Science &<br />
Technology, P.M.B. 012, Obafemi<br />
Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, 20005,<br />
Nigeria<br />
+234-(0)8033449687<br />
williesiyanbola@yahoo.com<br />
Web presence, e-government, management, vulnerability, policy,<br />
cross site injection, SQL injection, security, performance, cyber<br />
security<br />
1. INTRODUCTION<br />
Advancement in Internet and its services has culminated into<br />
many applications and it provides information gathering platform<br />
for citizens and opportunities for businesses to thrive [1].<br />
Organizations and government bodies have leveraged severally on<br />
these facilities provided by the web for improved efficiency in<br />
service delivery, transparency, increased revenue, cost-saving and<br />
global competitiveness. The art of online administration of<br />
government activities is referred to as e-government [2]. By this,<br />
the government can reach more citizens without boundary<br />
irrespective of their locations at any point in time. And in turn, the<br />
citizens can also reach the government without the bureaucracy<br />
barrier [3].<br />
The understanding of these facts most especially the benefits,<br />
prompted the Nigerian Government to suggest to all its bodies at<br />
all levels (federal, state and local) to make their presence known<br />
on the Internet, by creating websites to deliver their services and<br />
for effective information exchange. It also mandated them to use<br />
the country code Top Level Domain (ccTLD), knowing the<br />
benefits derivable from such as well as its security implications.<br />
Using a ccTLD, the users are guaranteed genuineness of the<br />
domain since the registration of such domain is supervised. It is<br />
worth noting to state that Nigeria Internet Registration<br />
Association- NIRA (a non-government organisation) is<br />
responsible to managing the ccTLD for Nigeria, while National<br />
Information Technology and Development Agency (NITDA) has<br />
been saddled with the responsibility of managing the government<br />
sub-domain (.gov.ng) as a part of the entire ccTLD. The<br />
requirement for the registration processes of the domain is quite<br />
stringent and hence the likelihood of domain hijack or<br />
misrepresentation is remote. This is important because of the<br />
services that some of these organisations provide online which
include but not limited to: payment of tax, record keeping<br />
(financial records, medical records, intellectual property<br />
information, trade secrets and other citizens’ personal data) etc.<br />
Making some of these services available online presents a better<br />
and easy way of government-citizens’ relationship, most<br />
especially on discharging obligations within and across the<br />
parties. However, the concern now is the fear of adequate<br />
technical capability or awareness of susceptibility of the design of<br />
such platforms (websites) without given cognizance for avoidance<br />
of common programming errors which may jeopardize successful<br />
operation of the websites. A website is said to be vulnerable when<br />
it has the propensity for infiltration which may be as a result of<br />
flaws within the codes that made up the website, this is referred to<br />
application level [4] or server side attacks. Other issues of concern<br />
have to do with some underlying technicalities that can prevent<br />
unforeseen circumstances that may befall the successful operation<br />
of the websites.<br />
It has been reported in literature that dynamic web applications<br />
contain a wide range of input validation vulnerabilities such as<br />
cross site scripting [5][6][7][8][9] and SQL injection<br />
[10][11][12][13][14]. Because of the web popularity relative to<br />
the number of millions of Internet users, the internet has become<br />
prime targets for attackers [15] and today they are motivated by<br />
financial gains rather than just being destructive, Symantec (2007)<br />
as cited in [1]. Attacks against web applications constitute more<br />
than 60% of the total attack attempts observed on the Internet as<br />
showed in a report [16]. Also, in the study carried out by [6] it<br />
was reported that 82% of the e-government websites around the<br />
globe were vulnerable to Cross Site Scripting (XSS) and Structure<br />
Query Language injection (SQLi). It was further discovered in the<br />
study that 90% of European, 85% of Asian, 76% of the North<br />
American and 49% of African government websites are<br />
vulnerable to common web application attacks [6]. Apart from the<br />
specified web application attacks earlier mentioned, denial of<br />
service (DoS), unauthorized access to networks, theft of employee<br />
or customer information, online financial fraud etc are also known<br />
prevalent attacks [1].<br />
Furthermore, SQL injection and cross-site scripting may be used<br />
by attackers to alter back-end tables from databases and to launch<br />
phishing attacks on vulnerable servers. Most website owners fail<br />
to validate their application for common flaws and until now,<br />
there is no study that has provided empirical data on how<br />
vulnerable the Nigerian government websites are. It is in this<br />
context that this research is necessitated in order to create<br />
awareness for the government and its bodies on vulnerability level<br />
of their websites and the need to take necessary action. It also<br />
presents some policy suggestions to safeguard possible<br />
occurrences and to present measures to avert continued<br />
susceptibility.<br />
2.0 WEB APPLICATION SECURITY<br />
Web applications have become fertile ground for cyber attackers,<br />
attempting to penetrate systems and misuse private data. Cenzic, a<br />
web security firm, reported that almost 90% of web-related flaws<br />
were caused by web application vulnerabilities with the three<br />
most common types being: SQL injection, Cross-site Scripting,<br />
and Authentication vulnerabilities. The SAN Institute, a<br />
worldwide security organization, reported cross-site scripting,<br />
SQL injection and cross site forgery as major web vulnerabilities<br />
in 2007 [18]. It was further reported that, XSS is the most<br />
237<br />
dangerous and easily found web application security issue that can<br />
cause varieties of issues which may include defacement of web<br />
sites, insertion of hostile content, phishing attacks and allow<br />
hackers to take over a user’s browser. Details of these attacks<br />
shall be discussed in following sections.<br />
2.1 Cross site scripting (XSS)<br />
Cross site scripting is a vulnerability that allows an attacker to bypass<br />
client-side security mechanisms normally imposed on web<br />
content by the browsers. By finding ways of injecting malicious<br />
scripts, usually in the form of JavaScript, VBScript, ActiveX,<br />
HTML or Flash into a vulnerable application, an attacker may<br />
gain privileges to sensitive page-content of the web pages [19]<br />
Because a browser cannot know if the script should be trusted or<br />
not, it will execute the script in the user context and give attacker<br />
access to cookies or session tokens retained by the browser.<br />
Common attack vectors are search applications which reflect the<br />
search string, and parameters supplied in the URL.<br />
2.2 Structured query language injection<br />
(SQLi)<br />
An SQL injection attack consists of insertion or "injection" of a<br />
SQL query via the input data from the client to the application<br />
without proper filtering of dangerous script characters. A<br />
successful SQL injection exploit can read sensitive data from the<br />
database, modify database data (Insert/Update/Delete), execute<br />
administration operations on the database (such as shutdown the<br />
DBMS), recover the content of a given file existing on the DBMS<br />
file system and, in some cases, issue commands to the operating<br />
system [18][19].<br />
2.3 Cookie manipulation<br />
A cookie is a small piece of information usually created by the<br />
web server and stored in the web browser. Each time the user<br />
access the web server, this data is passed back to the server. The<br />
cookie contains information used by web applications to persist<br />
and pass variables back and forth between the browser and the<br />
web application. Client-side cookies can be persistent i.e. files<br />
stored on the client computer until an expiry date; or session i.e.<br />
files kept in the memory of the client computer until the session is<br />
ended. As a result of the cookie structure and their usage, all data<br />
stored in a client-side cookie could be easily read and<br />
manipulated.<br />
2.4 Unencrypted password<br />
One of the security features employed in a web application is<br />
password. Sensitive data such as credit card numbers, social<br />
security numbers sent into the server without using encrypted<br />
connection such as secure socket layer (SSL), can be intercepted<br />
by hackers. Encrypting the transmission of data makes it difficult<br />
to intercept sensitive information as it travels between two parties.<br />
3.0 METHODOLOGY<br />
The research was carried out on 64 Nigerian e-government<br />
websites randomly selected to determine their common web<br />
security issues. An advanced Google search feature was employed<br />
to elicit websites with a sub-domain of ‘.gov.ng’ and with a ‘php<br />
& html’ extension [6] Google retrieved a number of results but<br />
priority was given to the websites with the highest page rank, this
is with a view to using websites which files has been highly<br />
populated in the search engine database.<br />
3.1 Testing tool<br />
The second phase was to choose a software testing tool to scan for<br />
web vulnerabilities. Several criteria were part of the decision in<br />
choosing the testing tool. First, the testing software must be<br />
compatible with the windows operating system since the test was<br />
carried out on the researchers’ personal computer systems (PC).<br />
Secondly, the software must have specific vulnerability testing<br />
options to scan web sites, as opposed to common server-based<br />
scanning products. After review of different web scanners,<br />
Acunetix Web Vulnerability Scanner was employed. This is noted<br />
to be in the same category with Nmap, which has been widely<br />
used [1]. Acunetix was used to test different web application<br />
vulnerability issues including: Cross-Site Script (XSS), SQL<br />
injection (SQLi), cookie manipulation (CM), unencrypted<br />
password (UP) and broken links (BL) of the web pages, which are<br />
main targets here. The choice of these parameters is premised on<br />
the high impact of its severity compared to others. In addition to<br />
this testing tool, manual testing was also carried out on some few<br />
websites in a way as not to leave footprints on the website. This is<br />
necessary in order to confirm the results generated by Acunetix<br />
web vulnerability scanners.<br />
3.2 Procedure<br />
After launching the web scanner, the desired Universal Resource<br />
Location (URL) is entered in the wizard box provided and the<br />
‘go’ button is fired. If the Internet connection on the computer is<br />
available then the scanner will begin the process. The scanner<br />
(Acunetix), thus virtually crawl the website of any given URL and<br />
presents the analysis of the vulnerability for every run. The<br />
Internet connection used for the exercise is a 3.5G on a High<br />
Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSPDA). The scanning process<br />
took on average 25 minutes, although the times varied from 15<br />
minutes up to 1 hour depending on the size of the entire given<br />
website. The manual test for XSS as well as SQLi was carried out<br />
to confirm the results generated by the vulnerability scanner. This<br />
is possible when such scripts as alert (‘This website is<br />
vulnerable’) is inputted into any available input field<br />
such as: the search, feedback and form fields within the website<br />
and the action button is pressed thereafter. If the web page is<br />
vulnerable, a Java script enabled browser will show a java script<br />
pop-up alert window containing the text in the parenthesis, ‘This<br />
website is vulnerable’. Also to manually test for SQL injection<br />
vulnerabilities, a single quote ( ' ) can be used as input. The single<br />
quote is a special character in SQL, and if it is included in the<br />
SQL query it will most likely generate an SQL statement error.<br />
All the 64 Nigerian government websites were tested over a<br />
period of two weeks within the month of August 2011 and<br />
technical report was produced for each site, listing the types and<br />
numbers of specific vulnerabilities. Each report was divided into<br />
several sections listing four levels of security vulnerability: High,<br />
Medium, Low and Informational. High level – these are critical<br />
problems which could cause high risk damage to the website e.g<br />
website defacement [1], database manipulation and modification<br />
[6], phishing, identity theft [1] amongst others. Medium and Low<br />
level – these are problems that could pose some level of risk to<br />
users of the web application. Informational – these are messages<br />
that probably have little risk to users, but still should be analyzed<br />
238<br />
by web developers because of the possibility of creating high<br />
vulnerabilities. The sites tested were categorized into Agencies,<br />
Judiciary, Law Enforcement/Defence, Media, Ministries,<br />
Parastatals, States and Others categories.<br />
4.0 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION<br />
Out of the 64 Nigerian government sites tested, 27, which<br />
represent 42.2% were vulnerable to XSS while 31.3% are<br />
vulnerable to SQLi. It was also discovered that 37.5% and 70.3%<br />
were vulnerable to unencrypted password and broken links<br />
respectively. These findings are represented and summarized<br />
mathematically in algebraic expressions using set theory as shown<br />
in Table 1.<br />
Table 1: Algebraic representation of e-government vulnerabilities<br />
in Nigeria<br />
Algebraic<br />
Expressions<br />
Interpretations<br />
U = 64 the universal set, i.e total sample tested.<br />
n(XSS) = 27 the number of websites vulnerable to<br />
XSS.<br />
n(SQLi) = 20 the number of websites vulnerable to<br />
SQL injection<br />
n(UP) = 24 the number of websites vulnerable to UP<br />
n(BL) = 45 the number of websites vulnerable to BL<br />
n(SQLi ∪ XSS) =<br />
34<br />
n(SQLi ∩ XSS) =<br />
13<br />
n(SQLi ∩ XSS 1 ) =<br />
7<br />
n(SQLi 1 ∩ XSS) =<br />
14<br />
n(U - (SQLi ∪<br />
XSS) 1 ) = 30<br />
the number of websites vulnerable to<br />
both SQL injection & XSS<br />
the number of websites exclusively<br />
vulnerable to both SQL injection & XSS<br />
the number of websites vulnerable to<br />
SQL injection but not XSS<br />
the number of websites vulnerable to<br />
XSS but not SQL injection<br />
the number of websites vulnerable to<br />
other parameters under test but not XSS<br />
nor SQL injection<br />
Legend: SQLi – Structured Query Language injection<br />
XSS – Cross Site Scripting<br />
UP – Unencrypted Password<br />
BL – Broken Links<br />
Table 2 shows the distribution of vulnerability in each category,<br />
for example apart from other categories which constitute the<br />
highest percentage of XSS vulnerability; the judiciary followed by<br />
one out of every four being vulnerable 25% relative to the<br />
participation in the test.
Categories<br />
Only XSS<br />
(%)<br />
Table 2: Distribution of vulnerability in each category.<br />
XSS and SQLi Analysis CM &<br />
Only SQLi XSS &<br />
XSS None<br />
UP<br />
(%)<br />
SQLi (%) or SQLi(%) (%)<br />
(%)<br />
Agencies (n=10) 20 (2) 0 (0) 20 (2) 40 (4) 60 (6) 30 (3) 70 (7)<br />
Judiciary (n=8) 25 (2) 12.5 (1) 25 (2) 62.5 (5) 37.5 (3) 37.5 (3) 50 (4)<br />
Law Enf./Def (n=5) 20 (1) 0 (0) 40 (2) 60 (3) 40 (2) 40 (2) 80 (4)<br />
Media (n=2) 0 (0) 50 (1) 0 (0) 50 (1) 50 (1) 0 (0) 100 (2)<br />
Ministries (n=6) 16.7 (1) 16.7 (1) 33.3 (2) 66.7 (4) 33.3 (2) 33.3 (2) 66.7 (4)<br />
Others (n=7) 42.9 (3) 0 (0) 28.6 (2) 71.4 (5) 28.6 (2) 28.6 (2) 85.7 (6)<br />
Parastatals (n=13) 23.1 (3) 15.4 (2) 15.4 (2) 53.8 (7) 46.1 (6) 46.2 (6) 76.9 (10)<br />
States (n=13) 15.4 (2) 15.4 (2) 7.7 (1) 38.5 (5) 61.5 (8) 46.2 (6) 61.5 (8)<br />
* Please note that the values in parenthesis represent the actual number of the vulnerability found.<br />
XSS- Cross Site Scripting, SQLi- Structure Query Language injection,<br />
CM- Cookie Manipulation, UP- Unencrypted Password, BL- Broken Links<br />
Table 3: Type and magnitude of website vulnerabilities across categories<br />
Level of Severity/<br />
Category<br />
Highly Severe Less Severe<br />
XSS SQLi CM/UP BL<br />
Agencies 14.8 10.5 12 15.6<br />
Judiciary 14.8 10.5 12 8.9<br />
Law Enf./Def 11.1 10.5 8 8.9<br />
Media 0.0 5.3 4 4.4<br />
Ministries 11.1 15.8 8 8.9<br />
Others 18.5 10.5 8 13.3<br />
Parastatals 18.5 21.1 24 22.2<br />
States 11.1 15.8 24 17.8<br />
25.0<br />
20.0<br />
15.0<br />
10.0<br />
5.0<br />
0.0<br />
Figure 1: Pictorial representation of vulnerabilities across sectors<br />
239<br />
XSS<br />
SQLi<br />
CM/UP<br />
BL<br />
BL<br />
(%)
In Figure 1, the parastatals have the highest percentages of<br />
vulnerability in all the four parameters used in the research.<br />
Parastatals and Others categories have the highest vulnerability to<br />
XSS with 18.5% each. Ministries and States websites are more<br />
vulnerable to SQLi behind Parastatals with 15.8% each. Media<br />
houses category has the lowest percentage (5.3) of vulnerability to<br />
SQLi. Parastatals and States categories have the highest<br />
percentage of vulnerability to cookie manipulation and<br />
unencrypted passwords with percentages 24% each. Most of the<br />
categories had informational issues with their websites, Parastatals<br />
XSS &<br />
SQLi<br />
40%<br />
None<br />
46%<br />
XSS &<br />
SQLi<br />
33%<br />
None<br />
60%<br />
Agencies<br />
Only<br />
XSS<br />
20%<br />
Law Enforcement/Defence<br />
Ministries<br />
None<br />
33%<br />
Parastatals<br />
None<br />
40%<br />
XSS &<br />
SQLi<br />
15%<br />
XSS &<br />
SQLi<br />
20%<br />
Only<br />
XSS<br />
20%<br />
Only<br />
XSS<br />
17% Only<br />
SQLi<br />
17%<br />
Only<br />
XSS<br />
23%<br />
Only<br />
SQLi<br />
16%<br />
Figure 2: Pie charts showing vulnerabilities for categories of<br />
Government websites<br />
240<br />
(22.2%) and States (17.8%) categories have broken links in their<br />
websites.<br />
Table 3 gives the percentages of vulnerable websites for each<br />
category. ‘Others’ category has the highest ratio of vulnerability<br />
to either XSS or SQLi, followed by Ministries. More than 70% of<br />
‘Others’ category has vulnerability, while 38.5% of state<br />
government websites are vulnerable. Figure 2 illustrates the<br />
sectoral percentages representation of vulnerability to some<br />
parameters under test using pie charts.<br />
None<br />
38%<br />
XSS &<br />
SQLi<br />
25%<br />
Only<br />
SQLi<br />
50%<br />
XSS &<br />
SQLi<br />
29%<br />
None<br />
62%<br />
Judiciary<br />
None<br />
28%<br />
Media<br />
Others<br />
States<br />
None<br />
50%<br />
Only<br />
XSS<br />
25%<br />
Only<br />
XSS<br />
15%<br />
Only<br />
SQLi<br />
12%<br />
Only<br />
XSS<br />
43%<br />
Only<br />
SQLi<br />
15%<br />
XSS &<br />
SQLi<br />
8%
From table 3, it can be deduced that the website from the ‘Others’<br />
and Judiciary categories have the highest percentage of<br />
vulnerability to only XSS, while the Media category has the<br />
highest vulnerability to only SQLi. Out of the 8 categories<br />
examined, State category has the highest percentage (61.5) of<br />
websites that are not vulnerable to XSS or SQLi, use fewer<br />
technologies and have fewer numbers of pages in their websites,<br />
hence decreasing the possibility of introducing vulnerability in<br />
their web application.<br />
Table 3: Vulnerability Test Results<br />
High Level<br />
Agencies<br />
N=10<br />
Judiciary N=8 Law<br />
Enf./Def<br />
N=5<br />
* Numbers of websites are enclosed in parenthesis<br />
Table 3 shows overall vulnerability test results of 64 Nigerian<br />
websites. There was a wide range of total errors for each category.<br />
Within the ‘high level’, which relates to critical problems found in<br />
the sites, the 13 ‘States’ web sites had a total error count of 380<br />
(out of which a particular State Government website had 339),<br />
followed by Judiciary category with total error count of 249.<br />
Media and Ministries web sites had lower numbers of 1 and 64<br />
error counts respectively at this level. Results in the ‘medium/low<br />
error level’ showed that Parastatals websites had 40 errors while<br />
Law enforcement/defence, Ministries and Others categories had 3,<br />
3 and 2 errors respectively. Most of the sites did possess medium<br />
intensity issues, and only 2 Media websites did not have them,<br />
while a good number of 3 Law enforcement/defence, 4 Ministries<br />
and Others websites were free of problems at this level. Most sites<br />
across the categories did have informational warnings. There were<br />
a total of 117 warnings in Parastatals website, 3 in Media and 69<br />
in others websites.<br />
5.0 SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION<br />
It was shown in this work that most Nigerian government<br />
websites across federal, state and local government are vulnerable<br />
to different forms of attacks. This is due to application errors<br />
and/or deficiency in the design especially as it relates to coding of<br />
the back-end. An average of 53.1 percent of sites contains critical<br />
vulnerabilities (XSS and SQLi), 37.5% have medium-low level<br />
issues (cookie manipulation and unencrypted password) and 70.3<br />
percent contain informational issues (broken links) in their<br />
websites. This is an undesirable level of protection. As more<br />
Media<br />
N=2<br />
services are offered on a daily basis to the public through the<br />
portals and the number of government databases connected with<br />
these services are increasing, the risk of malicious data, identity<br />
theft and manipulating the integrity of the databases increases. It<br />
is therefore important that government take preventive measures<br />
now to prevent any eventualities, some of these are articulated in<br />
the policy recommendation in the next sections.<br />
Ministries<br />
N=6<br />
Others<br />
N=7<br />
Parastatals<br />
N=13<br />
6.0 POLICY RECOMMENDATION<br />
States<br />
N=13<br />
Total Errors 214(4) 249(5) 69(3) 1(1) 64(4) 76(5) 196(7) 380(5)<br />
Site with no<br />
Errors<br />
Medium/Low Level<br />
6 3 2 1 2 2 6 8<br />
Total Errors 18(3) 26(3) 3(2) 0 3(2) 2(2) 40(6) 24(6)<br />
Site with no<br />
Errors<br />
Informational<br />
7 5 3 2 4 5 7 7<br />
Total warning 38(8) 34(4) 25(4) 3(2) 31(4) 69(6) 117(10) 58(8)<br />
Site with no<br />
warning<br />
2 4 1 0 2 1 3 5<br />
241<br />
It is expedient that different organizations take necessary steps to<br />
close all possible loop holes that may be detrimental to their<br />
resources available on their websites. This may involve website<br />
validation or possibly an entire re-design. Before launching a<br />
website, it is a good practice to cross-check and validates all<br />
aspects of the design either by hosting it on a local server or on a<br />
test bed. By this procedure, software development cycle principles<br />
would have been followed, which the application is not out of<br />
order in this context. This involve: planning, requirements<br />
analysis, design & development, implementation (coding), testing<br />
& integration, evaluation (validation), release (launching) and<br />
support (maintenance).<br />
The government also has vital roles to play, this involve setting<br />
web standards as well as monitor and evaluate compliance. This<br />
standard will be for all the government Ministries, Departments<br />
and Agencies (MDAs) and could also extend to non-governmental<br />
bodies and private firms with a web presence activities within the<br />
country or are planning to have one. This standard should cover<br />
all areas of the website cycle which will not leave out: (i) The<br />
domain itself. First, this must be appropriate and must comply<br />
with country code top level if serious transactions involving<br />
ecommerce (for example) are to be allowed on it. (ii) The design<br />
and development up to evaluation in that order must be<br />
ascertained. (iii) Deployment and hosting must be guided; the<br />
country of the hosting service provider may be localized. The
facilities (both hardware and software types, versions etc) in the<br />
premise of the hosting provider must meet a set security standard.<br />
(iv) General management, this includes updating, upgrading and<br />
entire re-design etc, open source could be encouraged but with<br />
caution in this instance. Apart from the fore, the government<br />
should also commission a unit of an agency like National<br />
Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) for<br />
example, to monitor and evaluate compliance to the standards<br />
from time to time. If all these could be dutifully observed, then<br />
there is likelihood that the challenge of web insecurity will<br />
drastically be minimized.<br />
7.0 REFERENCE<br />
[1] Zhao, J.J. & Zhao, S.Y. (2010). Opportunities and threats: A<br />
security assessment of state e-government websites.<br />
Government Information Quarterly 27 (2010) 49–56.<br />
[2] Backus, M. (2001). E-Governance and Developing<br />
Countries: Introduction and examples. Report No 3, April<br />
2001. Available on<br />
http://www.ftpiicd.org/files/research/reports/report3.pdf<br />
[3] Awoleye O.M., Oluwaranti A.I., Siyanbola W.O. and<br />
Adagunodo E.R. (2008). Assessment of e-Governance<br />
Resource Use in Southwestern Nigeria. Proceedings of the<br />
2nd International Conference on Theory and Practice of<br />
Electronic Governance Cairo, Egypt. ACM International<br />
Conference Proceeding Series; Pages 154-159<br />
[4] Ali, A.B., Shakhatreh, Y.I, Abdullah, M.S. & Alostad, J.<br />
(2010). SQL-Injection Vulnerability Scanning Tool for<br />
Automatic Creation of SQL-injection attacks. Procedia<br />
Computer Science 3, pp 453–458.<br />
[5] Cook, S. (2003). A web Developer’s Guide to Cross<br />
Scripting.<br />
[6] Moen, V., Klingsheim, A.N., Simonsen, K.I.F. & Hole, K.J.<br />
(2006). Vulnerabilities in E-Governments. Proc.2nd<br />
International Conference on Global E-Security (ICGeS-06),<br />
ondon, England, April 20–22, 2006.<br />
[7] Christey, S., & Martin, R.A. (2007). Vulnerability Type<br />
Distributions in CVE. Document Version: 1.1, May 22,<br />
2007. available on http://cve.mitre.org/docs/vulntrends/vuln-trends.pdf<br />
[8] Higgins, K.J. (2006). Cross Site Scripting: Attackers’ New<br />
Favourite Flaw. Available on<br />
http://www.darkreading.com/security/applicationsecurity/208804050/cross-sitescripting-attackers-newfavorite-flaw.html<br />
[9] Bates, D., Barth, A., & Jackson, C. (2010). Regular<br />
Expression Considered Harmful in Client-Side XSS Filters.<br />
WWW 2010, April 26–30, 2010, Raleigh, North Carolina,<br />
USA. ACM 978-1-60558-799-8/10/04. Available on<br />
http://www.collinjackson.com/research/xssauditor.pdf<br />
[10] Halfond, W.G.J., Viegas, J. & Orso, A. (2006). A<br />
Classification of SQL Injection Attacks and<br />
Countermeasures. College of Computing Georgia Institute of<br />
Technology, 2006.<br />
[11] Huang, Y.W., Huang, S.K, & Lin, T.P. (2003). Web<br />
Application Security Assessment by Fault Injection and<br />
242<br />
Behaviour Monitoring. WWW2003, May 20-24, 2003,<br />
Budapest,Hungary. ACM 1-58113-680-3/03/0005. Available<br />
http://www2003.org/cdrom/papers/refereed/p081/FINAL_W<br />
AVES_WWW2003.htm<br />
[12] Bandhakavi, S., Bisht, P., Madhusudan, P., &<br />
Venkatakrishnan, V.N (2007). CANDID: Preventing SQL<br />
Injection Attacks using Dynamic Candidate Evaluations.<br />
WWW 2010, April 26–30, 2010, Raleigh, North Carolina,<br />
USA. ACM 978-1-60558-799-8/10/04. Available on<br />
http://cs.uiuc.edu/~madhu/ccs07.pdf<br />
[13] Lee, I. Jeong, S., Yeo, S. & Moon, J. (2011). A Novel<br />
Method For SQL Injection Attack Detection Based On<br />
Removing Sql Query Attribute Values. Mathematical and<br />
Computer Modeling, pp 1-11.<br />
[14] Xie, Y. & Aiken, A. (2006). Static Detection of Security<br />
Vulnerability in Scripting Languages. 15th USENIX Security<br />
Symposium, 2006. Available on<br />
http://theory.stanford.edu/~aiken/publications/papers/usenix<br />
06.pdf<br />
[15] Balduzzi, M., Gimenez, C.T., Balzarotti, D. & Kirda, E.<br />
(2010). Automated Discovery of Parameter Pollution<br />
Vulnerabilities in Web Applications.<br />
[16] SANS Institute (2009b). Top Cyber Security Risks -<br />
Executive Summary” September 2009. Available on<br />
http://www.sans.org/top-cyber-security-risks/summary.php<br />
[17] SANS Institute (2009a). SANS Top-20 2007 Security Risks<br />
(2007 Annual Update). Available on<br />
http://www.sans.org/top20/#s1.<br />
[18] Halkidis, S.T., Chtzigeorgiou, A. & Stephanides, G. A<br />
Practical Evaluation of Security Patterns. Available on<br />
http://users.uom.gr/~achat/papers/AIDC2006.pdf<br />
[19] OWASP Foundation (2007). The Ten Most Critical Web<br />
Application Security Vulnerabilities. Available on http://<br />
www.owasp.org/images/e/e8/OWASP_Top_10_2007.pdf
Session 9<br />
Social Media in Government
Exploring Social Media Usage in Saudi E-Government<br />
Websites<br />
Hend S. Al-Khalifa, Muna S. Al-Razgan, Nora I. Al-Rajebah and Ameera M. Almasoud<br />
Information Technology Department<br />
College of Computer and Information Sciences<br />
King Saud University<br />
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia<br />
{hendk;ma;razgan;nrajebah;amma;masoud}@ksu.edu.sa<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
Many governments worldwide have employed social media<br />
services to increase their openness and transparency. These<br />
services have played an important role in bridging the gap<br />
between governments and citizens and increase the interaction<br />
with each other. This paper explores the prevalence of social<br />
media services in Saudi e-Government agencies' websites and<br />
analyzes their patterns of usage.<br />
Using a comprehensive analysis of 170 Saudi government<br />
websites, we found that Twitter, Facebook and YouTube were the<br />
most commonly used social media services among e-Government<br />
agencies, and they were utilized as a one-way communication<br />
channel.<br />
Categories and Subject Descriptors<br />
J.4 [Computer Applications]: Social and Behavioral Sciences –<br />
sociology, psychology.<br />
General Terms<br />
Management<br />
Keywords<br />
Social Media, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Blog, E-government,<br />
Saudi Arabia.<br />
1. INTRODUCTION<br />
With the proliferation of an array of different social media<br />
services such as blogs, Facebook and Twitter, people became<br />
more connected to each other. Social media services are defined<br />
as “media for social interaction, using highly accessible and<br />
scalable communication techniques. It is the use of web-based and<br />
mobile technologies to turn communication into interactive<br />
dialogue” [1].<br />
In fact, there are many categories of social media sites based on<br />
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for<br />
personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are<br />
not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies<br />
bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for<br />
components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored.<br />
Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to<br />
post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission<br />
and/or a fee.<br />
ICEGOV '12, October 22 - 25 2012, Albany, NY, USA<br />
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1200-4/12/10...$15.00<br />
243<br />
the service they provide, for instance: Blogging services (e.g.<br />
Wordpress/Blogger), Media-sharing services, (e.g. YouTube<br />
"Video", Flickr "photos"), Social networking (e.g. Facebook and<br />
LinkedIn) and Micro-Blogging services (e.g. Twitter).<br />
Social media services are gaining popularity worldwide. Based on<br />
Alexa 1 ranking for top visited sites in the world, we can notice<br />
that 50% of the top ten most visited websites are social media<br />
services, which includes: Facebook, YouTube, BlogSpot and<br />
Twitter.<br />
Recently social media websites have been used to improve the<br />
relationship between government agencies and their citizens and<br />
to increase interaction. They provide good means of eparticipation,<br />
which offers "the opportunity to achieve and satisfy<br />
the need to be heard by politicians and participate in the decisionmaking<br />
and policy formulation processes through the use of ICT"<br />
[2]. In this respect, social media services were widely adopted in<br />
e-Government websites because they created fast and readily<br />
available communication channels with the citizens.<br />
Given the importance of employing social media services in<br />
today's e-Government websites; in this study we present the<br />
results of analyzing the prevalence and usage of social media<br />
services in Saudi Arabia e-Government agencies websites.<br />
In order to explore the prevalence of social media services in<br />
Saudi e-Government agencies websites, we first need to know<br />
what are the widely used social media services in Saudi Arabia?<br />
According to Alexa website, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and<br />
Blogspot, respectively are among the top ten most visited websites<br />
in Saudi Arabia 2 . Also the statistics presented in the "Internet<br />
World Stats" 3 show that there are more than 4.5 Million Saudi<br />
Facebook users on Dec 31, 2011; with a penetration rate equal to<br />
17.4%. Most of these users are under 30 years old. On the other<br />
hand, in September, 2011 the number of Saudi Twitter users has<br />
reached 127,457 users according to Arab Social Media Report [3].<br />
The previous numbers show an increased usage of social media<br />
among young Saudi citizens.<br />
Knowing these facts about the usage growth of social media<br />
services in Saudi Arabia, this study will answer the following<br />
questions:<br />
1<br />
The top 500 sites on the web by Alexa.com on March 26, 2012<br />
2<br />
Top sites in Saudi Arabia by Alexa.com on March 26, 2012:<br />
http://www.alexa.com/topsites/countries/SA<br />
3<br />
http://www.internetworldstats.com/middle.htm, Date Accessed 26 March<br />
2012.
1. What kind of social media services do Saudi e-Government<br />
websites use?<br />
This research question is meant to address the combination<br />
of technology, telecommunication and social interaction<br />
between the Saudi government and its citizen, and which<br />
tools of the social media is more suitable for Saudi citizens.<br />
Knowing these information will help in improving the<br />
service and delivery of information through the correct<br />
channel.<br />
2. Which e-Government agency is using social media services<br />
and tools and to what extent?<br />
Since the aim of this paper is to know which government<br />
agency is actively using social media and to what extent?<br />
Identifying this government agency will help in delivering<br />
our recommendations and better improve their services.<br />
3. In what capacity in terms of announcement, discussion,<br />
consultation, seeking ideas have social media been used in<br />
Saudi e-Government websites?<br />
Finding the answers to these questions will help in (1) providing<br />
recommendations to Saudi e-Government websites to better<br />
utilize social media services and (2) identify weaknesses in their<br />
current usage. Thus, this study provides the first comprehensive<br />
examination and analysis of 170 Saudi e-Government websites.<br />
The focus will be on top social media services used in Saudi<br />
Arabia, as mentioned before.<br />
In the following section, we present some related work on the<br />
usage of social media in e-Government context. In section 3, we<br />
describe the methodology we followed in order to collect Saudi<br />
government agencies websites. Then in section 4, we discuss our<br />
findings and answer the three posed research questions. Finally<br />
section 5 provides recommendations and future directions for this<br />
research.<br />
2. RELATED WORK<br />
In the past few years, we have witnessed the utilization of social<br />
media services by many governmental websites worldwide. The<br />
aim of the utilization was to provide a two way interactive<br />
communication channel with the citizens and to relate the<br />
government with their constituencies.<br />
Among the previous studies on the adoption of social media<br />
service in government agencies websites, is a study by Alam et al.<br />
[4] on the usage of Facebook in the Australian Taxation Office<br />
(ATO). They found that ATO used Facebook as a one-way<br />
communication tool to provide information about their e-Tax<br />
service.<br />
Similarly, Upadhyay and Ilavarasan [5] studied Facebook pages<br />
of three government agencies in Delhi, India. These include<br />
Municipal Corporation of Delhi, Delhi Traffic Police and<br />
Planning Commission. Based on the agencies usage the authors<br />
offered suggestions for policymaking to facilitate a wider and<br />
more effective reach of social media in the developing countries.<br />
On the other hand, Rojas et al. [6] studied the interaction of six<br />
territorial public entities in Colombia through Facebook and<br />
Twitter. They found that the usage of Twitter and Facebook by the<br />
244<br />
six entities was not as expected. As a result they provided a set of<br />
recommendations to improve eParticipation on Social Media.<br />
In another study based on a three-tiered approach to eParticipation<br />
(Inform, Consult and Empower) [7], Inform: about the existing<br />
policy, consult: by sharing knowledge and opinions, and<br />
empower: by pursuing particular issues to the policy actors. The<br />
authors found that the main challenge to their approach was not<br />
the technological barriers; instead it was the socio-political<br />
barriers.<br />
In a wider context, Chua et al. [8] analyzed 200 international<br />
government websites using content analysis and multiple<br />
regression analysis. They found that the prevalence of seven Web<br />
2.0 applications in descending order was: RSS, multimedia<br />
sharing services, blogs, forums, social tagging services, social<br />
networking, services and wikis. Finally, Gharawi et al. [9]<br />
introduced the perceived values and pressing issues which<br />
concerning practitioners that may complicate adoption of social<br />
media services in e-Government websites.<br />
From the previous research, we can see that many international<br />
government websites do use social media services; however their<br />
usage were very basic and did not fully utilize the potential and<br />
capabilities of social media. So, will this be the case with Saudi e-<br />
Government websites? The answer will be addressed in the next<br />
sections.<br />
3. METHODOLOGY<br />
3.1 Collection of Saudi e-Government<br />
Websites<br />
One hundred ninety four Saudi government agencies websites<br />
listed in the Saudi e-Government Portal (saudi.gov.sa) was<br />
considered in this study. These websites were visited to make sure<br />
that their addresses are correct. From the 194 websites only 170<br />
were working properly. Table 1 shows the number of collected<br />
websites based on their category type.<br />
Table 1. Number of e-Government websites in each category<br />
3.2 Methods of Data Analysis<br />
During the period between 2 ed and 28 th March 2012 three experts<br />
in social media domain were involved in the analysis. The first<br />
step was to count the appearance of four social media services,
namely: Twitter, Facebook, blogs and YouTube for each website<br />
in the e-Government categories (e.g. funds, municipality,<br />
ministries, universities supported by the government, etc.). For<br />
each social media service the expert codes it with either “yes” or<br />
“no” to denote its presence or absence. We also noticed while<br />
visiting some e-Government agencies websites the usage of other<br />
types of social media services such as Flickr, Linkedin, Google+,<br />
etc. Thus, they were counted.<br />
The second step was to observe and distill the usage patterns for<br />
each social media type based on the criteria shown in Table 2.<br />
Table 2. Criteria used for exploring the usage patterns for e-<br />
Government websites<br />
Social Media Type Criteria<br />
Twitter<br />
Facebook<br />
YouTube<br />
Blog<br />
4. FINDINGS<br />
• Number of followers<br />
• Number of tweets<br />
• Is it up-to-date?<br />
• Is it interactive?<br />
• Type of usage (e.g. news,<br />
announcements, answers, etc.)<br />
• Number of likes<br />
• Are user comments allowed?<br />
• Is it up-to-date<br />
• Is it interactive<br />
• Type of usage (e.g. news,<br />
announcements, answers, etc.)<br />
• Number of uploaded videos<br />
• Number of subscribers<br />
• Number of views<br />
• Is it up-to-date?<br />
• Type of videos<br />
• Are user comments allowed?<br />
• Is it up-to-date?<br />
• Type of posted topics<br />
4.1 Prevalence of Social Media Services<br />
To address our first research question "What kind of social media<br />
services do Saudi e-Government websites use?" Figure 1 shows<br />
the breakdown of social media usage based on their types for the<br />
170 different Saudi government agencies.<br />
245<br />
Figure 1. Percentage of Social Media usage<br />
We can see from the figure above that Facebook is one of the<br />
highly used services with 37%, next comes Twitter with 35%,<br />
then YouTube with 25%, and finally Blogs with only 3%. The<br />
usage of Facebook and Twitter are the most popular among Saudi<br />
agencies due to the high engagement of Saudi community in using<br />
these services. We also noticed that since Facebook and Twitter<br />
are becoming popular among young Saudi citizens, the usage of<br />
blogs has started to diminish.<br />
Figure 2. Percentage of Other Social Media usage<br />
We mentioned previously that there are other social media<br />
services that have been used in Saudi e-Government agencies,<br />
such as Flickr, Google+, LinkedIn, Forums, and Scribd. Figure 2<br />
shows the distributions of these services. The highest percentage<br />
is for Flickr which equals to 46%, the second highest is Linkedin<br />
with %21, the third one is Forums which equals to 15%, and the<br />
rest has been used in low percentage as shown in the figure above.<br />
4.2 Uses of Social Media Services<br />
To address our second and third research questions "Which e-<br />
Government agency is using social media services and tools and<br />
to what extent?" and "In what capacity in terms of announcement,<br />
discussion, consultation, seeking ideas have social media been<br />
used in Saudi e-Government websites?" an in-depth inspection<br />
was carried out on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, since they<br />
were the highly used social media services in Saudi e-Government<br />
websites.
4.2.1 Facebook Usage<br />
Figure 3. Percentage of agencies that use Facebook per<br />
category<br />
Figure 3 shows the usage of Facebook among Saudi government<br />
agencies; we noticed that the highest usage in descending order<br />
was in universities (80%), municipalities (56%), councils (51%)<br />
and funds (40%). The rest ranged between 33% and 14%.<br />
The high usage of Facebook among universities websites explains<br />
the popularity of social media services among the young Saudi<br />
generation.<br />
Also, we noticed that some agencies did not use Facebook, such<br />
agencies include: Diwans, Colleges, and Departments. This can be<br />
attributed to the fact that the number of agencies' websites under<br />
these categories was low, i.e. they usually consist of three<br />
websites in each category.<br />
Regarding the usage patterns of Facebook, we can find that news<br />
and announcements dissemination were the most commonly used<br />
patterns. To be more specific, Funds and Presidencies were so<br />
active in terms of updating their pages with news. However, all e-<br />
Government agencies interaction with the citizens via their<br />
Facebook pages used one direction without any discussion, which<br />
can be considered as poor interaction. This way of interaction<br />
might be attributed to the recent establishment of government<br />
agencies Facebook pages or the absence of a clear usage policy of<br />
such a media.<br />
4.2.2 Twitter Usage<br />
Figure 4. Percentage of agencies that use Twitter per category<br />
246<br />
In our analysis we found that there were 64 out of 170<br />
government agencies which have Twitter accounts. From Figure<br />
4, it can be clearly seen that the highest Twitter usage among the<br />
64 government agencies was present in the University category<br />
with a percentage of 72%. Municipality category comes second,<br />
with a percentage of 67% followed by Ministry, Principality,<br />
Fund, Council and other agencies categories that have a usage<br />
range of 38% to 43%. While Directorate, Commission,<br />
Presidency, and Establishment categories have a usage ranged<br />
from 17% to 22%. Similar to the findings of Facebook usage,<br />
College, Diwans, and Department categories were not using<br />
Twitter.<br />
Furthermore, among the 64 agencies which used Twitter, 77%<br />
were up to date with recent tweets. In general, utilizing Twitter to<br />
communicate with citizens is roughly a new trend in Saudi Arabia<br />
as many agencies created their accounts between 2010 and 2011.<br />
In terms of the different themes of usage, Twitter accounts were<br />
mainly used for disseminating news and announcements. Overall,<br />
Twitter is used as a one way channel to broadcast announcements<br />
and news benefiting from the growing interest in Twitter inside<br />
the Saudi society. Small amount of interaction was encountered,<br />
among all agencies, i.e. 22% were interactive. The Ministry and<br />
University categories have good interaction with their followers<br />
which appears in terms of Q&As and replies. Other Agencies like<br />
Saudi Arabian airlines and the National Center for Assessment in<br />
Higher education are very active as well. It seems that these<br />
agencies allocate enough resources (human and time) to interact<br />
with the citizens.<br />
4.2.3 YouTube Usage<br />
Figure 5. Percentage of agencies that use YouTube per<br />
category<br />
Figure 5 shows the usage of YouTube among Saudi government<br />
agencies. The highest usage was in: universities (31%),<br />
municipalities (19%), ministry (13%), other agency (10%), and<br />
the rest were below 8%. The agencies who do not use YouTube<br />
were Colleges, Diwans, Department, and Council. Their lack of<br />
usage might be attributed to the fact that videos are not needed in<br />
their line of business.<br />
Regarding the usage patterns of YouTube, we found that<br />
announcements, interviews, how-to's (direction) and events<br />
broadcasted in TVs were the most commonly used patterns.<br />
Moreover, in most agencies channels viewers’ comments were<br />
allowed. Finally, we can notice that most of YouTube channels
were recently established and they usually have less than 200<br />
videos uploaded.<br />
5. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION<br />
Social media is newly introduced in Saudi e-Government websites<br />
given the creation date of their accounts in different social media<br />
services. In this paper we have explored the prevalence of social<br />
media services among Saudi e-Government agencies and the<br />
attitude towards their usage.<br />
Our findings show that the use of Facebook and Twitter were<br />
admirable, given the small number of Saudi e-Government<br />
agencies officially using them. In fact, the usage of social media<br />
services was most common in Universities and Municipalities<br />
websites. Our analysis also showed that most e-Government<br />
agencies publish the same content on both Facebook and Twitter.<br />
In terms of their usage trends, we have noticed that either the<br />
agencies’ website was up-to-date and participated in more than<br />
one social media service, or the website is so simple, with no<br />
participation in any service. The apparent usage pattern, as we<br />
have stated previously, was for disseminating news and<br />
announcements, i.e. only as a one way communication channel.<br />
In order to overcome the problems found in current usage of<br />
social media services we provide the following recommendations<br />
for Saudi e-Government agencies:<br />
• Create a clear social media strategy that prevents any<br />
misunderstandings or misuse of the service and defines<br />
the overall goals of its usage.<br />
• Clarify the purpose of each social media service to the<br />
citizens i.e. whether it is for discussions, Q&As, or<br />
news/announcement channel.<br />
• Verify social media accounts to give them more trust and<br />
credibility.<br />
• For agencies from the same category or interest, it is<br />
advisable to get connected with each other, this will help<br />
service the Saudi citizens.<br />
• Allocate enough resources (personnel and time) in each<br />
government agency for moderating and managing social<br />
media channels.<br />
• Learn which social media is popular among Saudi citizen<br />
and engage and focus on that service.<br />
• Improve the current usage of social media services by<br />
adopting an interactive two-way communication channel<br />
with the citizens.<br />
• Consult and seek knowledge from the citizens about how<br />
to improve the agency social media service.<br />
247<br />
Finally, it is worth mentioning that since the usage of social media<br />
in Saudi government is very recent, there is no deep involvement<br />
yet between policy makers and Saudi citizens. Therefore, the<br />
recommendation was given to help improve the usage of the<br />
current services, and hopefully in the near future we reach the<br />
ultimate goal which is “inform-consult-empower” between policy<br />
makers and Saudi citizens.<br />
6. REFERENCES<br />
[1] “Social media - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.” [Online].<br />
Available: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media.<br />
[Accessed: 25-Mar-2012].<br />
[2] K. Ergazakis, K. Metaxiotis, and T. Tsitsanis, “A State-of-<br />
The-Art Review of Applied Forms and Areas, Tools and<br />
Technologies for e-Participation,” International Journal of<br />
Electronic Government Research, vol. 7, no. 1, pp. 1–19,<br />
2011.<br />
[3] “Arab Social Media Report,” Dubai School of Government.<br />
Available: http://www.dsg.fohmics.net/en/asmr3/. [Accessed:<br />
25-Mar-2012].<br />
[4] S. L. Alam, J. Campbell, and R. Lucas, “Using Social Media<br />
in Government: The Australian Taxation Office e-Tax<br />
Facebook Page,” in 2011 IEEE Ninth International<br />
Conference on Dependable, Autonomic and Secure<br />
Computing (DASC), 2011, pp. 1002–1009.<br />
[5] J. M. Rojas, C. J. Ruiz, and C. Farfán, “e-participation and egovernance<br />
at web 2.0 in local governments of Colombia,” in<br />
Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Theory<br />
and Practice of Electronic Governance, New York, NY,<br />
USA, 2011, pp. 301–304.<br />
[6] A. Upadhyay and P. V. Ilavarasan, “Social media, egovernance<br />
and developing countries: insights from India,”<br />
in Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Theory<br />
and Practice of Electronic Governance, New York, NY,<br />
USA, 2011, pp. 351–352.<br />
[7] Lee D., Loutas N., Sanchez Nielsen E., Mogulkoc E.,<br />
Lacigova O., Inform-Consult-Empower: A Three-tiered<br />
Approach to eParticipation. In Proceedings of 3rd ePart<br />
Conference, Delft, The Netherlands, 2011, pp. 121-132.<br />
[8] A. Y. Chua, D. Goh, and R. Ang, “Web 2.0 applications in<br />
government websites: prevalence, use and correlations with<br />
perceived website quality,” Online Information Review, vol.<br />
36, no. 2, p. 2–2, Apr. 2012.<br />
[9] M. Gharawi, N. Helbig, J. Hrdinová, and D. Werthmuller,<br />
“An exploratory study of social media adoption in<br />
government,” in Proceedings of the 4th International<br />
Conference on Theory and Practice of Electronic<br />
Governance, New York, NY, USA, 2010, pp. 359–36
Government Crisis Communication on the Microblog: A<br />
Theory Framework and the Case of Shanghai Metro Rear-<br />
End Collision<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
Crisis brings various damages including a tarnished reputation. To<br />
protect and restore its reputation is an important task for a<br />
government agency in times of crisis. A microblog, which is<br />
attracting more and more public attention, can be used as a<br />
platform for the government to communicate with the public in<br />
order to manage its reputation in times of crisis. However, there is<br />
not enough research done in this area. In this paper, the author<br />
develops a general framework for a government agency to<br />
conduct crisis communication on the microblog. At the end of the<br />
paper, the case of a Shanghai City Metro rear-end collision is<br />
introduced to show how the government can use the framework to<br />
respond to a crisis.<br />
Categories and Subject Descriptors<br />
K.4.m [Computer and Society]: Miscellaneous.<br />
General Terms<br />
Management, Measurement, Performance, Theory<br />
Keywords<br />
Microblog; Social Media; Public Relation; Crisis Communication,<br />
China<br />
1. INTRODUCTION<br />
1.1 Background<br />
On September 27, 2010, a rear-end collision occurred at Shanghai<br />
City’s Metro in China. This accident was first reported by a<br />
microblogger on Sina Microblog [42], a popular Chinese<br />
microblog website 1 .<br />
What makes this affair different is the responses made by the<br />
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for<br />
personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are<br />
not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies<br />
bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for<br />
components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored.<br />
Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to<br />
post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission<br />
and/or a fee.<br />
ICEGOV '12, October 22 - 25 2012, Albany, NY, USA<br />
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1200-4/12/10...$15.00<br />
1 http://www.weibo.com/<br />
Xiao Liang<br />
Department of Informatics<br />
University at Albany, SUNY<br />
1400 Washington Avenue<br />
Albany, NY 12222<br />
xliang@albany.edu<br />
248<br />
Shanghai Metro’s official microblog 2 . The response messages<br />
were widely spread, and both the responses and the Shanghai<br />
Metro received considerable acclaim.<br />
On one hand, this indicates that the public would like to see<br />
government agencies appear on a microblog in times of crisis; on<br />
the other hand, it raises the question of how a government agency<br />
could use microblogs in a crisis to facilitate crisis communication.<br />
1.2 Introduction of the Problem<br />
Crisis is the “perception of unpredictable event that threatens<br />
important expectancies of stakeholders and can seriously impact<br />
an organization’s performance and generate negative outcomes”<br />
[6]. One of the negative outcomes of a crisis is a tarnished<br />
reputation [10], which is the source of negative attitudes towards<br />
an organization [26]. Therefore, to protect their reputations<br />
becomes an important task for all organizations in times of crisis.<br />
Crisis communication is the approach aimed at maintaining and<br />
repairing reputation during a crisis. This approach, by definition,<br />
is “the dialogue between the organization and its public prior to,<br />
during, and after the negative occurrence. The dialogue details<br />
strategies and tactics that are designed to minimize damage to the<br />
image of the organization” [12].<br />
As a channel of communication, the media is an unneglectable<br />
constituent. Scholars assert that, according to different<br />
characteristics of the media, an organization should apply<br />
different strategies in order to achieve the best result [4]. The<br />
microblog, as a type of new media, is attracting more and more<br />
public attention. Many organizations have begun to use it as a<br />
platform to communicate with their publics during crises [31].<br />
However, there has not much research done in this area [31].<br />
This paper aims to provide government agencies with a general<br />
framework for harnessing the microblog to communicate with the<br />
public during a crisis. However, there is no one size-fits-all model;<br />
the general framework functions as a basic guideline allowing<br />
government agencies to develop specific strategies in different<br />
situations shaped by factors such as the responsibility of the crisis,<br />
the information required by the public, and the social value in<br />
which the organization is embedded. The model takes a stage<br />
approach, which views the crisis as a process composed of<br />
2 http://www.weibo.com/shmetro/
different phases. Four theories of crisis communication are<br />
discussed, and the common issues that the theories focus on are<br />
used to build the framework. Finally, the author uses Shanghai<br />
Metro’s crisis communication to show how a government agency<br />
can employ the microblog to communicate with the public in<br />
times of crisis.<br />
2. PREVIOUS STUDIES<br />
In this section the author first talks about the stage approach. The<br />
author then discusses four common issues affecting crisis<br />
communication strategies concerned by primary crisis<br />
communication theories. Finally, the author discusses some<br />
features of the microblog.<br />
2.1 Three Stages of a Crisis<br />
According to the stage approach, the development of a crisis can<br />
be divided into phases, according to which different tasks are<br />
assigned [14]. There are many stage models, among which the<br />
three-stage model is the most used [32]. The author will also use<br />
three-stage model due to its simplicity.<br />
Simple as the three-stage approach is, scholars try to assign<br />
various definitions to the phases [15, 30]. Coomb summed up the<br />
previous studies and proposed a summarized three-stage model.<br />
His model includes a pre-crisis stage, crisis event stage, and postcrisis<br />
stage [7].Specifically, the pre-crisis stage is when a crisis<br />
has not happened yet. In this phase, the tasks are to detect crisis<br />
signs, prevent possible risks, reduce the potential harm, and<br />
prepare for possible responses [7, 30]. The crisis event stage is<br />
when crisis has occurred and brought damages. The organization<br />
should recognize the crisis as soon as possible and make<br />
responses to the crisis so as to mitigate negative impact [7, 15].<br />
The post-crisis stage is when the immediate effect of a crisis is<br />
over [7]. In this phase the organization should learn from the crisis,<br />
monitor the public’s impression, and make sure that the crisis is<br />
truly over [7, 27].<br />
2.2 Communication Strategies<br />
In this section, the author discusses four common issues examined<br />
by primary crisis communication theories, namely the corporate<br />
apologia theory, image restoration theory, situational crisis<br />
communication theory (SCCT), and organizational renewal<br />
theory[1, 38].The corporate apologia theory focuses on the<br />
apology strategy in a crisis. The image restoration theory is<br />
concerned with strategies for repairing the reputation under attack.<br />
Apology is included in this theory as a general strategy. The<br />
SCCT argues that an organization should apply strategies<br />
according to the situation of the crisis. Lastly, the organizational<br />
renew theory encourages the organization to emphasize the<br />
positive side of the crisis. These four theories fall in the research<br />
area of public relations and recommend strategies for repairing<br />
and retaining organizational reputation in a crisis. Table 1 shows<br />
the features of each theory.<br />
Table 1. Crisis Communication Theories<br />
Theory Main Arguments<br />
Corporate Apologia<br />
o The theory focuses on apology strategies.<br />
o Depending on the responsibilities for the<br />
crisis, five strategies are suggested.<br />
o Strategies: denial, counterattack, excuse,<br />
promising not to do it again, and seeking a<br />
legal solution which is not a public relation<br />
stance.<br />
249<br />
Image Restoration<br />
SCCT<br />
Organizational<br />
Renewal Theory<br />
o This theory focuses on restoring<br />
organizational image when the image is under<br />
attack.<br />
o Two elements of an attack:<br />
-‐ The accused is held responsible for an<br />
action.<br />
-‐ The action is considered to be offensive.<br />
o Strategies:<br />
-‐ Denial and evasion (to the first element).<br />
-‐ Reducing offensiveness, and corrective<br />
action (to the second element).<br />
-‐ Mortification (general strategy).<br />
o Crisis strategies depend on the history of the<br />
crisis, previous reputation, and the<br />
responsibilities for the crisis.<br />
o Crisis clusters divided by the responsibility:<br />
victim cluster, accidental cluster, prevention<br />
cluster.<br />
o Strategies applied accordingly: denial,<br />
diminishing, and bolstering.<br />
o The theory is more prospective than<br />
retrospective. It emphasizes rebuilding.<br />
o Four facets of the theory: organizational<br />
learning, ethical communication, prospective<br />
vision, and effective organizational rhetoric.<br />
The theories mainly focus on four factors that an organization<br />
should consider when designing its crisis communication<br />
strategies. These four factors are the crisis situation, the<br />
stakeholders, the values, and the further view. In the following<br />
part of this section the author discusses the four factors one by one.<br />
2.2.1 Crisis situation<br />
The responsibility for a crisis and the level of damage are two<br />
aspects of crisis situations [2, 5].<br />
First of all, the responsibility for a crisis could affect the public’s<br />
attitude towards an organization. This phenomenon is explained<br />
by the attribution theory, which argues that audiences always<br />
search for the cause of an event and try to form attributions for the<br />
responsibility [41]. Various emotions, such as sympathy and anger,<br />
are experienced by audiences after they attribute the responsibility<br />
[41]. For example, if an organization is a victim of the event,<br />
audiences are likely to develop sympathy towards the organization<br />
[5]. Thus, the responsibility becomes an issue one should consider<br />
when designing a crisis communication strategy.<br />
The corporate apologia theory and image restoration theory stress<br />
the importance of crisis responsibility. Depending on whether the<br />
organization is responsible for the crisis, the corporate apologia<br />
theory suggests strategies such as denial, counterattack, excuse,<br />
promising not to do it again, and seeking a legal solution which is<br />
considered as a no-public-relation approach [16]. The image<br />
restoration theory proposes denial and evasion of responsibility<br />
[2].<br />
The SCCT sums up the work of the previous two theories. It<br />
identifies three clusters of crises according to the crisis<br />
responsibility taken by an organization: victim cluster, accidental<br />
cluster, and prevention cluster [13]. Strategies, such as denial,<br />
diminishing, and bolstering, are suggested by the theory [5].<br />
The perceived level of damage is another factor of a crisis<br />
situation. It is argued that if the crisis manager lessens the<br />
perceived harmfulness of the crisis or shows some control over<br />
the damage; then the reputation damage can be reduced [2]. The<br />
level of damages is thoroughly discussed by Benoit in the image
estoration theory. He termed it as “offensiveness of the wrongful<br />
doing” and took it as one of the components of an attack to the<br />
organization [29]. Benoit argued that the perceived offensiveness<br />
of an action is more important than the reality. In other words, the<br />
wrongful action might not be as heinous as it is perceived by the<br />
audience [2]; thus, the crisis manager should deliver information<br />
that will help the public to objectively assess the damage. The<br />
image restoration theory suggests some message options that can<br />
reduce the perceived offensiveness of wrongful actions, such as<br />
bolstering, minimizing the negative feelings (diminishing),<br />
differentiating the crisis from other similar crises, transcendence,<br />
attacking the accusers, and the compensation [2].<br />
2.2.2 Stakeholders<br />
Stakeholders are vital elements in crisis communication because<br />
they are the ones who are affected by the crisis and who form<br />
attitudes towards the organization. Specifically, the previous<br />
reputation among stakeholders and the needs of the stakeholders<br />
are two important elements which the organization ought to pay<br />
attention to.<br />
Research shows that a negative reputation can lead to additional<br />
damage during crises [21]. The SCCT takes the previous<br />
reputation as an important factor that affects the choice of crisis<br />
communication strategies [5]. Hence, instead of suffering the<br />
negative impact which results from a ruined reputation, an<br />
organization is better to build a sound relationship with the<br />
stakeholders before the crisis.<br />
Besides managing the organization’s reputation, to meet the needs<br />
of stakeholders is the first and foremost task during crises [5].<br />
Different stakeholders have different concerns and expectations.<br />
The paper only discusses some general needs in the crisis event<br />
stage and post-crisis stage respectively.<br />
The first need is to reduce uncertainties. A crisis usually breeds<br />
uncertainties [28]. On one hand, people need information to<br />
reduce uncertainties and thereby to make the right decision in<br />
order to minimize the damage [26]. On the other hand, people<br />
need information to diminish the pressure brought by uncertainties<br />
[5, 36].<br />
Secondly, in the post-crisis stage, stakeholders need compensation<br />
and emotional reparations. The corporate apologia theory stresses<br />
that an appropriate apologetic message should acknowledge all<br />
the stakeholders and express empathy to the injured individuals in<br />
the crisis [17]. The image restoration theory recommends the<br />
organization to compensate for the losses of the victims. If the<br />
compensation is accepted by the stakeholders, the image of the<br />
organization might be improved [2].<br />
Finally, it is worth noting that sometimes the organization does<br />
meet the expectations of its stakeholders. However, the action is<br />
not very well expressed. Hence, it is crucial to fill the gap between<br />
the expression and the action [9].<br />
2.2.3 Values<br />
Failing to meet social values, such as being dishonest, will hurt<br />
the organization’s reputation [11]. During the crisis, an<br />
organization faces different interest groups that have a variety of<br />
values. An effective solution is to stress some core values of the<br />
society [32]. Honesty, addressing responsibility, openness, and<br />
humanism are important values identified as by the literature [18,<br />
40].<br />
250<br />
Being honest means to be truthful and sincere [18]. Accepting<br />
responsibilities is considered ethical [40]. Openness requires the<br />
organization to make the information accessible to the public in<br />
order to reduce uncertainties and increase transparency [40, 43].<br />
Humanistic care is about offering help to the public physically,<br />
psychologically, and financially [40].<br />
2.2.4 The future<br />
That an organization should seek opportunities in a crisis and help<br />
the public to see the future is the core argument of the<br />
organizational renewal theory [39]. To correct wrongdoings and<br />
to learn from the crisis are two important aspects discussed by the<br />
four theories.<br />
Correcting the wrongdoing is regarded by the SCCT and image<br />
restoration theory as part of the diminishment strategy [2, 5]. The<br />
corporate apologia theory also values making statements to<br />
correct wrongdoings as a part of an effective apologetic strategy<br />
[16]. Moreover, the SCCT considers the history of similar crises<br />
to be a factor that can negatively affect crisis communication [5].<br />
To correct the wrongdoing is also a necessary action to renew the<br />
organization’s reputation and to prepare for a future crisis.<br />
Learning from a past crisis plays an important role in rebuilding<br />
an organization. An organization can learn from the crisis by<br />
evaluating its crisis response strategy as well as investigating the<br />
reason for the crisis. To improve the crisis response mechanism,<br />
to correct the reason for the crisis, and to rebuild the organization<br />
are some of the aims.<br />
3. FRAMEWORK<br />
3.1 Microblog<br />
In this section, the author discusses two important activities on the<br />
microblog and some techniques that can help an organization<br />
organize the information on a microblog.<br />
The microblog as a new meda is attracting more and more public<br />
attention [25]. Research shows that people react less negatively to<br />
crisis communication strategies on the microblog (twitter), and the<br />
public tries to seek and share information on the microblog in<br />
times of crisis [31]. Although there is research that has focused on<br />
using social media in crises in general, there is little research that<br />
specifically investigates the usage of the microblog in crises [31].<br />
In order to understand how the microblog can help with crisis<br />
communication, there is a need to first understand its major<br />
activities and how to handle the information on it.<br />
Two major activities on the microblog are collecting and<br />
disseminating information, which are supported by the<br />
information processing capability of the microblog. First, the large<br />
user group provides the organization with a resource for collecting<br />
information about stakeholders’ attitudes and expectations [35].<br />
Secondly, the large number of users also enables the organization<br />
to broadcast information to the relevant audiences. Third,<br />
information spreads quickly on the microblog. Due to mobile<br />
devices, such as smart phones, people can share information<br />
whenever they use their mobile devices. Moreover, the microblog<br />
is interactive. By using functions, such as “@”, comments, and<br />
private chats, the organization could both give feedback to and<br />
receive timely feedback from the public. Finally, people might<br />
argue that the blog is also interactive. However, since it is easy to<br />
create and share information on the microblog, the microblog is
more suitable for information disseminating within a limited time<br />
frame [34].<br />
Besides collecting and disseminating information, handling<br />
information on the microblog is another issue. Two major<br />
problems in terms of handling information are information<br />
overload [19] and the length limitation of each message. In Table<br />
2, the author suggests some techniques to assist in organizing and<br />
retrieving information, as well as breaking length limitation.<br />
Table 2.Information Overload and Length Limitation<br />
3.2 The Framework<br />
The framework is arranged by Coomb’s three-stage model. The<br />
stages are pre-crisis stage, crisis event stage, and post-crisis stage.<br />
Coomb also gives the tasks of each stage. The author will discuss<br />
each task in detail with respect of Coomb’s descriptions as well as<br />
the four factors that the author generalizes from primary crisis<br />
communication theories. Accordingly, the author then discusses<br />
what types of messages could be delivered and collected by the<br />
organization.<br />
3.2.1 Pre-crisis stage<br />
In the pre-crisis stage, the crisis has not happened yet. The task of<br />
this stage is to detect crisis signs, prevent possible risks and<br />
reduce potential harm, and prepare for a possible crisis response.<br />
Firstly, there are usually signs that indicate a possible crisis [8].<br />
However, it is not easy to detect those signals; therefore, it<br />
requires the organization to collect information systematically<br />
from both internal and external sources [8]. A government agency<br />
could take advantage of the large user group of the microblog<br />
[24].The general public and the opinion leaders [8, 22] are both<br />
sources of information [24]. The general public could express<br />
their concerns as well as report suspicious phenomena through<br />
comments, “@”, private messages, and so on. Moreover, opinion<br />
leaders and experts, who have knowledge on particular issues and<br />
the power to affect the public’s opinion, should not be neglected<br />
by government agencies [8, 22]. Besides, the comments on<br />
messages that an opinion leader has posted are also an information<br />
resource. Overall, the information for detecting crisis signs can be<br />
collected from both the public and the opinion leaders and experts.<br />
251<br />
The public’s concerns and attitudes, and the suspicious<br />
phenomena reported are the information a government agency<br />
should pay attention to.<br />
The second task is to reduce potential harm. One of the ways to<br />
reduce the harm is to educate the public so that they can make the<br />
right decisions when a crisis hits. On the microblog, the<br />
government can post educational messages enriched by pictures,<br />
videos, and external articles. However, posting educational<br />
messages is just one way to reduce the potential harm. The type of<br />
information delivered in order to degrade the potential harm<br />
depends on the crisis that an agency anticipates. In other words, a<br />
government agency should analyze the potential crisis and<br />
systematically design the microblog messages that will be helpful<br />
in reducing the harm.<br />
Thirdly, in order to prepare possible crisis responses, a<br />
government agency should consider the four factors that affect the<br />
strategies of crisis communication, namely the crisis situation,<br />
stakeholders, social values, and the future view. Accordingly, in<br />
the preparation stage, an agency should build sound informationsharing<br />
mechanisms on the microblog, establish a good reputation<br />
among stakeholders, understand the needs of stakeholders,<br />
comply with social values, and stress the future view.<br />
Build information-sharing mechanisms before the crisis has been<br />
discussed by scholars for a long time [20]. The public can be one<br />
of the grids that provide information about a crisis. The public can<br />
even spontaneously provide assistance during a crisis. A<br />
government agency may empower the citizen to become involved<br />
in such activities on the microblog.<br />
The microblog can be used as a platform to build a sound<br />
relationship with the public. Few studies have been done on how<br />
an organization should communicate with the public on the<br />
microblog in order to build a good relationship. However, we can<br />
use the studies on general online communication as a source of<br />
reference. Two major strategies to maintain good relationships<br />
have been suggested by scholars: communicated relational<br />
commitment and conversational human voice [23].The former<br />
requires the organization to show willingness to maintain a<br />
relationship with the public; the latter highlights the importance of<br />
the human voice of the people who form the organization [23]. On<br />
the microblog, to enhance relational commitment can be reflected<br />
in the agency’s involvement in the public’s affairs. Besides, to<br />
show openness in organizational affairs can also help to maintain<br />
commitment [34]. The humanity of a government agency can be<br />
reflected in microblog posts that use a personal voice instead of an<br />
official tone. The person in charge of the official microblog can<br />
also show personal opinions, which can help with expressing a<br />
human voice [23, 34, 37].<br />
Information about the public’s expectations (needs) will assist the<br />
government in coping with a crisis. Such information can be<br />
collected directly from the public’s comments, “@”, and private<br />
messages. Again, the opinion leaders and experts play a role as<br />
well.<br />
The fourth requirement is to deliver messages fitting with social<br />
values. The posts and discussions on the microblog can reflect<br />
some social values as well as rules in the world of the microblog.<br />
A government agency should continuously monitor the public’s<br />
values on the microblog. Table 3 shows strategies for the precrisis<br />
stage.
Table 3. Strategies for Pre-crisis Stage<br />
3.2.2 Crisis event stage<br />
In the crisis event stage, the tasks are to identify the crisis and to<br />
launch appropriate crisis responses.<br />
A crisis usually hits suddenly, leaving the organization and the<br />
public little time to respond [3]. Consequently, to identify the<br />
crisis at the first moment becomes vitally important. Online<br />
information dissemination is fast; thus, online media can be used<br />
as a channel to report the crisis. A good example for this is the<br />
Shanghai City Metro accident, which was first reported on a<br />
microblog by an ordinary citizen [42].<br />
After identifying a crisis, an organization should respond to it as<br />
soon as possible. In rest of Section 3.2.2, the author discusses the<br />
response strategy according to the four factors covered by popular<br />
crisis communication theories: the crisis situation, the<br />
stakeholders, the social values, and the future view.<br />
First of all, public-generated messages might contain clues of a<br />
crisis situation, such as the crisis responsibility/perceived crisis<br />
responsibility and the level of damage/perceived level of damage.<br />
Thus, the government agency can pay attention to both the factors<br />
involved in the crisis as well as the public’s attitude on the<br />
microblog. Moreover, the government should design crisis<br />
communication strategies according to the crisis situation.<br />
Secondly, the response messages posted on the microblog should<br />
meet the needs of stakeholders. On one hand, a government<br />
organization can make use of information that is collected in the<br />
pre-crisis stage; on the other hand, the organization can deliver<br />
information that meet the general needs of stakeholders, such as<br />
decision-making needs, the need to reduce emotional uncertainties,<br />
and the need for reparations and compensation. Importantly, if an<br />
organization meets the needs of the public, then it should be<br />
reflected in its messages.<br />
252<br />
Third, the response messages on the microblog should also be in<br />
accord with the core values of stakeholders. The public’s<br />
perception of social values and the rules of messages on the<br />
microblog should be collected and analyzed in the pre-crisis stage;<br />
thereby, the organization can deliver appropriate information in<br />
legitimate formats.<br />
Ultimately, to stress the future can be another task in this stage.<br />
The government agency can inform the public that they are<br />
correcting the wrongdoing as well as learning from the crisis. The<br />
rhetoric used in the posts underlining the future view should be<br />
positive [39]. Table 4 shows the strategies in the crisis event stage.<br />
Table 4. Strategies for Crisis Event Stage<br />
3.2.3 Post-crisis stage<br />
In this stage, the tasks are preparing for the next crisis, making<br />
sure the stakeholders are left with positive impressions, and<br />
checking that the crisis is truly over.<br />
Preparing for the next crisis includes activities such as evaluating<br />
the crisis response strategy and learning from the most recent<br />
crisis [7, 39].On the microblog, feedback is the material for<br />
evaluation and learning purposes. The public’s attitude displayed<br />
in each message can be used to evaluate whether the strategy was<br />
favored. The public’s needs in the crisis as expressed in their posts<br />
and comments can be used to adjust the crisis strategy during and<br />
after the crisis.<br />
Besides the evaluation and learning purposes, feedback can also<br />
be used for the purpose of investigating the public’s impression of<br />
the organization.<br />
Sometimes after the end of the immediate effects, the long-term<br />
impact of a crisis can last months or even years. For instance,<br />
even after physical and financial losses are compensated for,<br />
people still need time to seek emotional relief and rebuild<br />
confidence [5, 7]. Another example is that the organization needs<br />
time to investigate the responsibility for the crisis as well as the<br />
level of damage. In both cases, the organization should continue
collecting information about the crisis. On the microblog, the<br />
public’s feedback and the experts’ opinions should be monitored<br />
so as to help evaluate whether the crisis is truly over. If the crisis<br />
is not completely over yet, the organization should continue to<br />
apply response strategies depending on the crisis situation and the<br />
needs of the public. Table 5 shows the strategies for the post-crisis<br />
stage.<br />
Table 5. Strategies for Post-crisis Stage<br />
4. THE CASE<br />
In this section, the author will introduce the Shanghai City<br />
Metro’s crisis communication on the microblog.<br />
4.1 Introduction, Method, and Questions<br />
The rear-end collision happened at Shanghai City Metro’s Route<br />
No.10 on September 27, 2011. This accident was first reported by<br />
an ordinary microblogger on Sina Microblog [42].The first report<br />
appeared on the microblog website at 14:47 [42]. Before this post<br />
occurred, on the same day from 14:17 to 14:20, the Shanghai City<br />
Metro’s official microblog had posted three messages reporting<br />
that the equipment on Route No.10 had malfunctioned, and the<br />
train was required to slow down. At 14:40, five minutes before the<br />
first report of the collision, the official microblog made a post<br />
informing the public that they were controlling the amount of<br />
passengers connecting to Route No. 10. At 15:03, the official<br />
microblog informed the public that Route No.10 between Yili<br />
Road and Sichuan Bei Road was closed, and no passengers were<br />
allowed to access the train. Two minutes later, the official<br />
microblog made another post that repeated the content of the<br />
previous post, as well as provided information to assist the<br />
passengers in choosing other vehicles for transportation. In the<br />
next 48 hours, the official microblog responded to the crisis. The<br />
response was widely spread by the public and received many<br />
compliments.<br />
In this section, the crisis response made by the official microblog<br />
will be discussed. The questions are:<br />
1) How did the official microblog respond to the crisis?<br />
2) How does the response fit the framework proposed in this<br />
paper?<br />
The data was collected in December 2011. The 52 crisis-related<br />
messages posted and reposted between September 27, 2011 and<br />
253<br />
September 29, 2011 were examined. The author classified the<br />
messages by their main purposes. For instance, the official<br />
microblog apologized in many posts; however, the main purpose<br />
of only two posts was to apologize.<br />
Eight categories are identified. The apology category contains<br />
messages only expressing an apology. The human care messages<br />
show that the organization cares about the victim’s feelings. The<br />
future view category stresses what the organization is going to do.<br />
The responsibility category contains messages related to the<br />
responsibility for the crisis and the investigation into the<br />
responsibilities. Both the “current situation” and the “help<br />
information” help with reducing uncertainties. “Positive tone”<br />
tries to view the crisis from the positive side, such as how people<br />
have helped each other. Figure 1 shows the classification of the<br />
posts. Other relevant posts were searched by using the search<br />
function and keywords such as “passenger education,”“Metro<br />
safe,” etc.<br />
Figure1.Classification of the Posts<br />
These crisis responses will be discussed within the framework that<br />
the author proposed in Section 3. The author will especially focus<br />
on the crisis event stage.<br />
4.2 Pre-crisis Stage<br />
In the pre-crisis stage, the tasks are detecting crisis signs, reducing<br />
potential harm, and preparing for crisis responses.<br />
4.2.1 Detecting crisis signs<br />
First, in order to acquire external information for possibly<br />
detecting signs of a crisis, a government agency should have<br />
many followers and the concerned public on the microblog. The<br />
Shanghai City Metro’s official microblog has millions of<br />
followers, including individuals, relevant organizations, and even<br />
the news media. In the meantime, the official microblog follows<br />
various microbloggers such as individuals, experts, other<br />
organizations, and the news media, which is helpful in acquiring<br />
information from experts and opinion leaders. Besides, there is<br />
evidence indicating that the official microblog is aware of external<br />
information on the microblog. For instance, in August 2011,<br />
among 229 messages relating to Metro affairs posted by the<br />
official microblog, there were 82 messages from external sources.<br />
The messages were from comments, the accounts followed by the<br />
official microblog, and the people who “@” Shanghai Metro in<br />
their messages. In fact, during the crisis the official microblog<br />
posted 8 messages based on information provided by other
accounts, among which seven messages were from external<br />
resources and 3 help messages were generated by individual<br />
microbloggers.<br />
4.2.2 Reducing potential harm<br />
The second task in the pre-crisis stage is to reduce potential harm.<br />
The Shanghai City Metro’s official microblog tries to reach this<br />
goal by offering educational information so that the passengers<br />
could understand safe and dangerous behaviors on the Metro. The<br />
official microblog has two groups of messages under the tag of<br />
“To teach you how to take the Metro” and “safe Metro”. However,<br />
there is little information on what to do when collisions and other<br />
disasters happen.<br />
4.2.3 Preparing for crisis responses<br />
To prepare for possible crisis response is the third task of the precrisis<br />
stage. Three sub-tasks here are preparing to collect<br />
information on crisis situations, understanding the needs and core<br />
values of the public, and building a sound relationship with the<br />
public.<br />
In order to prepare for collecting useful information during a crisis,<br />
an organization should encourage the public to share information<br />
on the microblog. There is no evidence showing that the Shanghai<br />
City Metro’s official microblog is deliberately promoting such an<br />
information-sharing system; however, it does actively reply to and<br />
appreciate those who report suspicious behaviors and items. For<br />
instance, on August 29, 2011, a microblogger found a suspicious<br />
bag on the train and reported it to the official microblog. The<br />
official microblog informed the Metro staff to check the train and<br />
posted the result on the microblog. Another example is that a<br />
passenger complained about the Metro staff at the station asking<br />
him for his personal information. After investigation, the official<br />
microblog told the passenger that those people were not Metro<br />
staff and warned other passengers to stay alert. Such<br />
communication assists in managing the Metro and could be a<br />
strong beginning to building an information-sharing system.<br />
Another two sub-tasks in terms of collecting information to<br />
prepare a crisis response are to understand the needs of<br />
stakeholders and to investigate their values. As the author has<br />
argued in Section 3.2.1, such information can be collected from<br />
comments, “@”, private messages, messages produced by opinion<br />
leaders and experts, and so on. The Shanghai City Metro’s official<br />
microblog firstly has rich information resources, as is argued in<br />
Section 4.1; it also displays awareness of user-generated<br />
information by replying to comments and reposting messages.<br />
The author suggests the official microblog should also pay<br />
attention to the public’s opinion of social events and the way<br />
people communicate on the microblog in order to learn the rules<br />
of the microblog and values of the public/stakeholders.<br />
The final sub-task of preparing crisis responses is to build a good<br />
relationship with stakeholders. Two techniques are suggested by<br />
the author in Section 3.2.1, namely to show willingness to<br />
maintain the relationship and to communication with a human<br />
voice. The Shanghai City Metro’s official microblog engages in<br />
maintaining the relationship by involving the public in Metro<br />
affairs. It also shows enthusiasm to those who need help. For<br />
instance, a person lost the ID card on the train. The Metro<br />
broadcasted this information on the microblog so that this person<br />
could get the card back. Besides, the official microblog tries to<br />
respond to the public’s suggestions on the management issues of<br />
the Metro, which indicates the open attitudes of the Metro. The<br />
254<br />
human voice is about showing personal opinions on<br />
organizational affairs [23, 34, 37]. One example of this is that the<br />
official microblog forwarded the news that the ticket department<br />
of Metro Company visited a rest home for the elderly. Along with<br />
the “thumbs up” picture, the Metro made the comment that “to<br />
love old people is to love ourselves”. Moreover, the official<br />
microblog also displays Metro employees’ working lives along<br />
with pictures and explanations. For instance, the official<br />
microblog once forwarded a message with a picture of the dinner<br />
of a train operator who also used a microblog. The author<br />
understands that it is sensitive to express personal opinions on<br />
certain organizational affairs. Thus, such less sensitive affairs can<br />
be a good place for the official microblog to show the human<br />
voice.<br />
4.3 Crisis Event Stage<br />
In the crisis event stage, the tasks are recognizing a crisis and<br />
responding to the crisis. The rich information resources on the<br />
microblog can help with recognizing the crisis. In this section, the<br />
author only focuses on the strategies that the Shanghai City<br />
Metro’s official microblog has used to cope with the crisis.<br />
4.3.1 Crisis situation<br />
Firstly, crisis communication strategies should cope with the<br />
situation of the crisis; that is, the responsibility for the crisis and<br />
the level of damage. There were two messages made on<br />
September 28 that related to the responsibility for the collision.<br />
One message explained the reason for the accident and admitted<br />
that there were “relevant individuals” violating the “relevant<br />
rules” which led to the collision; the other message indicated that<br />
the “relevant department” and “relevant agency” had tested the<br />
“relevant equipment” of the Metro, and punishment would be<br />
applied to those responsible for the accident. The public’s<br />
attitudes towards these two messages were varied. For instance,<br />
the first message received 395 comments. There were 78<br />
messages doubting the investigation result, among which 35<br />
messages criticized the wording “relevant individuals” and<br />
“relevant rules” for the vagueness. People also complained that<br />
the message was too simplistic and gave no detailed information<br />
or systematic analysis. To the second message, people still had<br />
problems with the word “relevant”.<br />
According to the crisis situation, the official microblog apologized<br />
twice. The first apology was made during the crisis (at 20:18 on<br />
September 27): “This is the worst day in the history of Shanghai<br />
Metro. No matter what the reason is and who should take the<br />
responsibility, we regret the loss and the hurt experienced by the<br />
citizens and the passengers. We will help the injured and return to<br />
normal option as soon as possible. We will also assist in the<br />
investigation and accept the possible responsibility. We will learn<br />
from the accident and do better in the future. Although the<br />
apology is so powerless, we have to profoundly<br />
apologize.”Another apologetic message was posted at 14:52 on<br />
September 28, saying, “We appreciate all the criticisms…We will<br />
work hard…We apologize again”. The former message received<br />
9945 comments; while the latter received 112 comments. Some<br />
comments concerned the reason of the crisis. One comment was:<br />
“What we need is the reason and the responsibility for the<br />
accident instead of apology…” There were also voices of support.<br />
A microblogger commented, “I feel …this message expresses the<br />
good attitude and the willingness to take responsibilities…”<br />
Another comment said, “The communication is good. The Metro
is better than those government agencies that will never accept<br />
their faults.”<br />
The level of damage was also addressed. Four messages published<br />
information about the number of injured and their situations in the<br />
hospital. In a message posted at 17:43 on September 27, the<br />
official microblog claimed that according to the information from<br />
the hospital, 212 people were injured. It was also claimed that<br />
most of the victims were slightly injured. The wording “slightly<br />
injured” could be seen as fact information as well as a diminishing<br />
strategy. However, the audience showed suspicion of the data. For<br />
instance, one comment was: “How do you define the phrase<br />
‘slightly injured’?” Moreover, there were more than one comment<br />
indicating doubt about the number of injured persons. For instance,<br />
one microblogger claimed that the number of injured reported by<br />
Japanese TV (at 22:00 on September 27) was 271. However, the<br />
official microblog failed to respond to these different voices.<br />
Bolstering is also suggested by crisis communication theories [2,<br />
5]. This aims at increasing positive feelings towards the<br />
organization in order to reduce the offensiveness of the crisis [2].<br />
The official microblog tried to show concern for the passengers<br />
and the efforts they were making to mitigate the negative impact<br />
of the collision. For instance, the official microblog reposted a<br />
message (9:01 on September 28) with a picture of volunteers<br />
helping passengers. The official microblog commented: “We<br />
appreciate the citizen’s support. Watching the passengers living<br />
the station, we feel very sorry. Now we will do our best to check<br />
the route and return to normal option as soon as possible. Please<br />
trust us.” This message showed concern for passengers who were<br />
affected by the collision. It also showed people were helping each<br />
other. This message received 210 comments. There were 17<br />
comments indicating that what the public needs is the<br />
investigation into the responsibility for the collision and the<br />
reason of the accident, 10 comments concerning the future safety<br />
of the Metro, 13 messages blaming the Metro for trying to turn the<br />
bad event into a good one, and 8 comments blaming the Metro for<br />
talking rather than doing. However, there were still 26 comments<br />
supporting this post. One comment was: “The government does<br />
not usually speak in such a tone. The Metro’s public<br />
communication is praiseworthy. In my opinion, this crisis<br />
communication is acceptable and even touching. ” Interestingly<br />
enough, some of the microbloggers expressed their love of the<br />
city and the volunteers other than the Metro. One comment was<br />
“This is the spirit of Shanghai City (to help each other).” It seems<br />
that the official microblog successfully related the accident to the<br />
whole city.<br />
4.3.2 Meet the public’s needs<br />
The general public’s needs in the crisis event stage are the need<br />
for the organization to make decisions and reduce the negative<br />
emotions caused by uncertainties.<br />
The official microblog posted 18 messages with alternative bus<br />
transfer information. Pictures and tables were appropriately used<br />
here in order to bypass the limitations of the length of the text<br />
message. Moreover, the official microblog attempted to report the<br />
current situation of the crisis, including how many people were<br />
injured and the status of the train involved in the collision. Such<br />
information contributed to reducing uncertainty about the crisis.<br />
The reactions of the public were varied. Some were appreciative,<br />
saying, “The reaction of the Metro is quick and efficient.”<br />
However, there were still microbloggers showing their concerns<br />
255<br />
for the issues of who or what was responsible for the crisis. Other<br />
citizens were worried about safety issues.<br />
4.3.3 The social values<br />
The messages posted during the crisis should meet the<br />
requirements of social values. Some core values identified by<br />
scholars are honesty, responsibility, openness, and humanism.<br />
Many of the messages posted by the official microblog were with<br />
pictures from the scene of the accident, which increased the<br />
reliability of the Metro Company. What is more, the official<br />
microblog also cited posts from other microbloggers. However,<br />
the Metro failed to respond to the fact information that was<br />
different from the information posted by the official microblog,<br />
which hurt the trustworthiness of both the messages and the Metro.<br />
Moreover, there was no clear statement regarding the<br />
responsibility for the collision. We can see from the comments<br />
that people were angry about the vague descriptions of the<br />
responsible parties. However, the official microblog did express<br />
the willingness to release information. Messages tagged “the latest<br />
information” were used to release information about the crisis<br />
situation.<br />
For humanism, in their apology the Metro Company showed their<br />
regrets. They used the words “we regret the loss and the hurt<br />
experienced by the citizens and the passengers”. Besides, in one<br />
message it was shown that volunteers, police, and bus drivers<br />
were there to help passengers enthusiastically. In a message<br />
saying, “Watching the passengers leaving the State, we feel so<br />
sorry…”, the Metro showed concern to those who were involved<br />
in the accident. However, the official microblog did not<br />
particularly show sympathy for the injured.<br />
4.3.4 The future view<br />
The future view should stress the positive side, the future,<br />
rebuilding, and correcting mistakes. The official microblog did<br />
meet this requirement. In more than one message, the Metro use<br />
the words “We will”. For instance, in the apology messages, “We<br />
will learn from the accident…” and “We will work hard…” were<br />
used. In some messages, the official microblog cited pictures of<br />
people helping each other to remind the public of the positive side<br />
of the accident. Although the messages received support, such as<br />
“cheer up!” and “touching,” there were people who wished the<br />
Metro would act instead of only speaking.<br />
4.4 Post-crisis Stage<br />
In the post-crisis stage the tasks are preparing for the next crisis,<br />
namely learning from the crisis as well as evaluating the crisis<br />
response strategy; checking the public’s impression; and checking<br />
that the crisis is truly over.<br />
First, the organization showed its intention to learn from the crisis,<br />
at least in its apology. Moreover, the comments made by the<br />
public during the time of the crisis can be a good resource for the<br />
organization to evaluate its crisis communication strategies.<br />
Secondly, there was evidence indicating that the official<br />
microblog did try to follow the public’s comments and monitor<br />
the public’s impression. The official microblog replied to one<br />
citizen’s comment, “We appreciate all of the comments; even<br />
some of the comments are criticisms”.<br />
Finally, strategies such as apology, bolstering, and compensation<br />
can all be used in the post-crisis stage due to the lack of full
information in the crisis event stage. In the apology message,<br />
which appeared in the crisis event stage, there was no clear<br />
statement of responsibility. This vagueness could be due to the<br />
lack of information in the crisis event stage. However, at the postcrisis<br />
stage, there was no further statement about the responsibility<br />
for the accident. Instead, the official microblog posted one<br />
message which expressed the future view. The message (18:48 on<br />
September 29) received 52 comments. Other than support, the<br />
major issues as seen by the public were still the reason and the<br />
responsibility for the accident and the real actions taken by the<br />
Metro.<br />
5. CONCLUSIONS AND SUGGESTIONS<br />
In this paper, the author develops a general framework for a<br />
government agency to develop crisis communication on the<br />
microblog. Coomb’s three-stage model is used, and four issues<br />
concerned by primary crisis communication theories are discussed.<br />
The four issues are the crisis situation, stakeholders, the values,<br />
and the future view. In each stage of a crisis, the crisis manager<br />
should take into account both the tasks of each stage and the four<br />
issues when designing crisis communication strategies.<br />
The author also uses the Shanghai City Metro rear-collision as an<br />
example to show how a government can use the framework to<br />
communicate with the public on the microblog. The case enriches<br />
the framework in the following aspects.<br />
First, the primary concern of the public is the reason and the<br />
responsibility for the crisis. The statement of responsibility should<br />
not be vague and lacking in detail; otherwise, the public will be<br />
unsatisfied and may even develop a negative impression of the<br />
organization.<br />
Secondly, the strategies aimed at lessening the perceived level of<br />
damage should be based on facts. The organization should be able<br />
to convince the public; otherwise, such strategy will only lead to<br />
untrustworthiness. The microblog is interactive, which is an<br />
advantage when dealing with third-party information. When<br />
confronted by third-party information which is different from<br />
official information, the organization should actively respond in<br />
order to avoid the impression of being dishonest.<br />
People would like to see the organization admit responsibility and<br />
seek forgiveness. However, the apology as well as other strategies,<br />
such as positive tone and human care, should be accompanied by<br />
effective action taken by the organization.<br />
6. LIMITATIONS AND FURTUER<br />
RESEARCH<br />
First, evidence indicating that at least two crisis-related messages<br />
posted by the official microblog was deleted. Thus, there is no<br />
way of knowing whether the messages were consistent with the<br />
crisis communication strategy.<br />
Secondly, the four theories employed in this paper are mostly<br />
developed in business settings. Although scholars have applied<br />
them to government agencies, a thorough comparison and contrast<br />
of business and government settings will improve the<br />
effectiveness of these theories.<br />
Finally, in the paper, it was asserted that an organization should<br />
learn from the public by listening to their opinions on the<br />
microblog. A further study could be done on how a government<br />
256<br />
agency should collect and analyze the information on the<br />
microblog to understand and learn from the public.<br />
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Government Official Microblogs: An Effective Platform for<br />
Facilitating Inclusive Governance<br />
Xinping Liu and Lei Zheng<br />
Department of Public Administration, Fudan University<br />
619 Wenke Building, 220 Handan Road, 2000433 Shanghai, China<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
Applications of social media could bring more convenience to the<br />
government for getting public feedback, or more citizen<br />
participation, in order to provide more inclusive public services.<br />
Microblogs is one of those social media tools. Nowadays, all<br />
governments have begun to use government official microblogs to<br />
publish information, collect public opinions, and interact with the<br />
public. Based on current literature review and analysis, this paper<br />
first develops a theoretical framework on the effect that<br />
microblogs brings to public inclusive governance from the<br />
perspective of microblogs’ interaction object. Theoretically, this<br />
research indicates that microblogs have a positive impact on<br />
inclusive governance, but this effect remains to be tested by future<br />
practice. There are still some problems in current public<br />
interaction between governments and citizens through microblogs,<br />
and the government needs to change their musty ideas and guide<br />
the effective interaction actively. Finally, this paper further<br />
discusses limitations of this research and directions of future<br />
research.<br />
Categories and Subject Descriptors<br />
K.6.1 [Management of Computing Information Systems]: Project<br />
and People Management-Management Techniques<br />
General Terms<br />
Management, Measurement, Performance<br />
Keywords<br />
Government Microblogs, Governance, Social Media, China<br />
1. INTRODUCTION<br />
The development of ICTs has brought public governance new<br />
opportunities, as well as challenges. In the era of Web 2.0, a huge<br />
number of web-based applications have emerged. These<br />
applications rely on the concept of the user as a producer of<br />
information, which provide more possibilities for better<br />
governance [13], for example, government official microblogs.<br />
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Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to<br />
post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission<br />
and/or a fee.<br />
ICEGOV '12, October 22 - 25 2012, Albany, NY, United States, NY, USA<br />
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1200-4/12/10…$15.00.<br />
+86 13774260846, +86 13501838298<br />
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258<br />
Nowadays, countries around the world take seriously to apply<br />
social media like microblogs, and high-level officials from US,<br />
Britain, and Japan has been microblog users. Applications of<br />
social media could bring some improvements aiming at providing<br />
feedback to agencies, and more citizen participation. Also, agency<br />
staff could use social media for improving formal cooperation<br />
[13].<br />
By the end of 2010, Chinese microblog accounts have exceeded<br />
75 million. With its network effect taking shape, microblogs is<br />
playing a more and more important role in Chinese social and<br />
political life. The year of 2010 was named as “China’s first year<br />
in microblog's era” by Chinese citizens. By taking advantage of<br />
the rapidly growing microblog community, government could run<br />
official microblogs to interact with citizens, enhance government<br />
information services, keep tracking with public opinion, help with<br />
emergency response, improve government credibility and further<br />
promote the development of e-governance. Nowadays, many<br />
Chinese governments and officials have opened official<br />
microblogs to interact with citizens. Microblog, to some extent, is<br />
becoming a more and more useful tool for the government.<br />
However, compared to the traditional channels between<br />
government and citizens, what are the new changes of<br />
microblogs? What meaning does it bring to government<br />
governance? These are the main research questions of this paper.<br />
2. LITERATURE REVIEW<br />
As a new kind of social media and web2.0 tool, microblogs<br />
attracted much academic attention in recent years. The current<br />
studies are mainly focusing on the definition of microblog, its<br />
characteristics and its implications on government governance,<br />
especially on public participation.<br />
2.1 Definition of Microblog<br />
Microblog as one kind of social media has increasingly become an<br />
effective way of information dissemination and personal<br />
communications. Social media is “a group of Internet-based<br />
applications that build on the ideological and technological<br />
foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange<br />
of User Generated Content” [4]. With the help of social media,<br />
ordinary people have become producers of content as well as<br />
consumers so called “prosumers”, being capable of publishing<br />
their own contents on the Web. Microblog is one kind of social<br />
media using web 2.0 technologies, which make people<br />
communicate with each other without ant time and space<br />
constraints once the Internet is available. The users send message<br />
on these websites to interact with other people, and the maximum<br />
length of one message should be less than 140 words.
When it comes to the characteristics of microblog, it is commonly<br />
believed by the scholars that microblogs is a new kind of social<br />
media and Web 2.0 tool, with the main features include<br />
timeliness, simplicity, economy, grassroots, interactive, pluralism,<br />
autonomy, the original ecology, fragmentation, group<br />
polarization, and at the same time it could weaken the role of<br />
opinion leaders. Zhao and Lai [15] also argued that microblogs<br />
have 4A characteristics, including Anyone, Anywhere, Anytime,<br />
Anything, that is, anyone can become the microblog<br />
communicators and can transmit any information at any time and<br />
any place.<br />
2.2 Microblogging on Government Inclusive<br />
Governance<br />
With the development of international electronic public services,<br />
new information technologies has contributed a lot on the<br />
promotion of inclusive governance and improved the level of<br />
public participation. Governments has been increasingly paid<br />
more attention on providing diversified, personalized, ubiquitous,<br />
and high-quality public services, which has clearly showing the<br />
characteristics of e-inclusion" [5][6]. Also, in public participation<br />
area, successful public participation depends on diversification,<br />
inclusiveness and equality; and diversification means its<br />
participants are able to represent the view of people from different<br />
social fields, social hierarchy; inclusiveness refers to lowering the<br />
threshold of e-participation; equality involves equal participation<br />
[1]. Microblogs provide a useful platform to improve public<br />
participation.<br />
2.3 The Mechanism of Microblog’s Effects on<br />
Public Inclusive Governance<br />
As mentioned earlier, public participation requires people from<br />
different social fields, social hierarchy to participate equally [1],<br />
and microblogging reduce the threshold of public participation, so<br />
people could participate in anytime and anywhere. Therefore,<br />
microblogs expand the scope of public participation, and could<br />
provide more feedback to citizens.<br />
2.3.1 Different Types of Microblog’s Users: A Multi-<br />
Perspective<br />
Microblogs has significant differences from the traditional<br />
government portal, blogs and other forums. Their users on these<br />
websites overlap a lot, but still not the same. The characteristics of<br />
different website applications involve different active citizens.<br />
1) Personality. Previous research has proved that in the<br />
increasingly user-generated Web, users’ personality traits<br />
may be crucial factors leading them to engage in this<br />
participatory media [3]. The former researches established<br />
three personality traits that are central to social media use:<br />
extraversion, neuroticism, and openness to experience<br />
[3][10].<br />
2) Age: Correa et al. [3] also found that it was particularly<br />
important among the young adult and extraversion was the<br />
most important predictor of social media use. Prensky<br />
concludes that many digital immigrants confront each change<br />
in technology as something new to be mastered. Generally,<br />
young adult, the elderly who are open to new things and<br />
digital technologies tend to be more active in microblogs and<br />
other social media tools [8].<br />
259<br />
3) Gender: Gender presented another difference among<br />
personality traits. While extraverted men and women were<br />
both likely to be more frequent users of social media tools,<br />
only the men with greater degrees of emotional instability<br />
were more regular users. No significant relationship existed<br />
between women and emotional stability [3].<br />
4) Social ranking: the low threshold of microblogs and the<br />
characteristics of the grass-roots has weakened the role of<br />
opinion leaders which enables people from different social<br />
class to participate in public governance, and promotes the<br />
exchange of social heterogeneity groups [12], namely, people<br />
from different social classes, departments, and other ethics.<br />
5) Education Level: since microblog is easy to use, users could<br />
come from different education levels. Technology is not a<br />
barrier any longer, which could give the government more<br />
kinds of public opinions.<br />
6) Special Target Group: taking the disabled as an example,<br />
Zhao & Qiu [14] examined the significance of social media<br />
to disabled students, and argued that social media tools are<br />
vital to the lives of teenagers today because microblogs<br />
removes physical distances and can significantly expand the<br />
living space of youth who otherwise are confined by their<br />
disabilities. The Center for Technology in Government<br />
(CTG) identified that social media like microblogs could<br />
provide more service channels for the disabled [2].<br />
7) Space-time dimensions: Microblogs has 4A characteristics,<br />
that is, Anyone, Anywhere, Anytime, Anything [15], which<br />
expand the scope and depth of interaction and participation<br />
both vertically and horizontally.<br />
In summary, microblogs has not only expanded the scope of<br />
public participation, so that different personality traits, age, sex,<br />
social class, education level could have equal interactions with the<br />
governments, but also expanded the channels for participation.<br />
Moreover, it vertically breaks the time limit of interaction and<br />
weakens the barriers of geographic isolation to promote<br />
participation any time at anywhere.<br />
2.3.2 Governance in Microblog Era: Inclusive and<br />
Targeted<br />
Based on the literature review above, with the help of microblog<br />
platform, government expands their service scope effectively, and<br />
brings more G2C participation and interaction, which give great<br />
impetus to inclusive governance. Due to the particularity of online<br />
participation, more introverted people could participate more,<br />
which could also strengthen the interactive effects of other active<br />
users. Those digital immigrants like the elderly who are open to<br />
new things and digital technologies, and the digital natives, that is,<br />
young people, and can participate public affairs online, while they<br />
have limited channel to participate before. So microblogs can<br />
make up the general public participation. From the social level,<br />
citizens from varied levels can participate equally, and this could<br />
impel the government to promote public decision-making more<br />
democratization and deliver more equal public services<br />
effectively. Microblogs also enables those vulnerable groups to<br />
participate in the process of governance. From the space-time<br />
dimension, it brings more possibilities for the government to<br />
provide cross-regional (or even cross-border) services<br />
ubiquitously, and extends depth of inclusive governance.
It is worth mentioning that, while expanding the breadth of<br />
interactive citizens, microblogs could also strengthen the<br />
interaction more targeted. Interactive citizens could have a<br />
significant difference depend on different government<br />
departments or various events. For example, from gender<br />
perspective, women may mostly participate in microblogs for<br />
expressing their views, or expanding their social networks and<br />
social activities, while men may be for strengthening their<br />
relationship with others, learning about current political events.<br />
Therefore, education, tourism, food and other related government<br />
departments may be more favored by women, while<br />
transportation, defense, and public security will be paid more<br />
attention by men.<br />
3. METHODOLOGY AND RESEARCH<br />
PLAN<br />
This research will take an analysis on secondary data, including<br />
research reports, thesis and research papers. In order to ensure the<br />
impartiality of the findings, the reports selected in this article are<br />
not only from universities or other research institutes, but also<br />
those from enterprises and social organizations.<br />
There are many microblog platforms, like Sina, Sohu, Tencent,<br />
and so on. It could be a great challenge to discuss all the<br />
government official microblogs. Therefore, this paper simplifies<br />
the data collection and chooses Sina as an example. According to<br />
the DCCI survey in 2010, Sina is the most preferred microblog<br />
platform, which has the highest number of users or potential users,<br />
with the selection rate 69.7%. So I believe the status quo on Sina<br />
could reflect the reality of microblogs in China.<br />
4. ANALYSES ON STATUS QUO OF<br />
GOVERNMENT OFFICIAL<br />
MICROBLOGS<br />
In theory, microblog brings opportunities to the governments for<br />
inclusive and targeted governance by expanding the range of<br />
public participation. However, due to the development of China's<br />
microblog is not mature enough, so evaluation and discussion on<br />
the current status quo can provide recommendations for the<br />
development of the governmental official microblogs.<br />
4.1 The Existing Government Official<br />
Microblogs and its Populations of<br />
Concern<br />
1) Governmental institutions start opening microblogs: according<br />
to “2011 China Administrative microblog research report”<br />
(conducting by “Public Opinion and Communication Research<br />
Laboratory”, Fudan University), till March 20, 2011, 1708<br />
governmental agencies have opened real-name authentication<br />
microblogs, and the distribution of the government's official<br />
microblogs are not balanced either geographically or<br />
institutionally, including governmental level, institutional, and<br />
sectoral distribution [9]. The report further found that most<br />
Shanghai government officials registered there microblogs on the<br />
Xinmin Net (http://t.xinmin.cn), with the proportion up to total<br />
more than 84 percent, followed by Eastday (http://t.eastday.com/),<br />
which accounts for 15 percent account, while only 1 percent of<br />
them has registered on Sina or other microblog platforms. This<br />
situation is worthy of consideration, microblog is the interactive<br />
platform of government and the public, while most citizens are<br />
260<br />
mainly active on the website of Sina or other open microblog<br />
platform, how to promote the interaction between governments<br />
and the public if governments open their microblogs on other<br />
website like Xinmin or Eastday.<br />
2) The analysis of “Concern” subject of government official<br />
microblogs: for governments, microblogs is not only a platform<br />
for issuing information, but also to collect public opinions.<br />
According to a cursory analysis of governmental official<br />
microblogs “concerns”, different governments have various kinds<br />
of “concerns”. Most government microblogs has few “concerns”,<br />
and even many government official microblogs concerned no<br />
more than ten other microblogs. Those “concerns” are mainly<br />
from the mass media, government agencies or departments of the<br />
same level, other government agencies, government branches at<br />
lower levels which have business contact, government officials,<br />
corporate high level executives, academics and other citizens.<br />
Government official microblogs pay more attention to the mass<br />
media, government agencies (all levels), and government officials,<br />
while less on citizens’. Microblogs provide a more convenient and<br />
efficient platform for the government to collect public opinions,<br />
but its active attention to the practical needs of ordinary citizens is<br />
still relatively lack.<br />
4.2 The Main Characteristics of Sina<br />
Microblog Users<br />
Currently, many scholars have conducted lots of analyses on the<br />
characteristics of the user of the microblogs multi-dimensionally.<br />
On the segmentation of individual users, taking "behavioral<br />
loyalty" and "emotional loyalty" as two standards, Zheng [16]<br />
divided all the Sina individual users into three types, mild,<br />
moderate, and extreme, and she further analyzed the user<br />
difference in terms of gender, age, education, and income. Report<br />
from Beijing Online Media Association analyzed the<br />
characteristics of the early users of the microblogs, and find out<br />
that the microblog users can be divided into four categories,<br />
namely, self-expression type (46%), socially active (16%), discuss<br />
and participatory (16%) and diving-prefer type (21%).<br />
Specifically, microblogs has opened up the possibility of<br />
expanding interactive citizens or organizations, which could<br />
enhance inclusive governance. According to Sina’s White Paper<br />
on Chinese First-year microblog, among all the active users of<br />
Sina microblog, women occupy 65 percent, while men accounting<br />
for 35% [11].<br />
On the dimension of age, users from different ages use microblog<br />
on different purpose. Mainly of them are 20-30 years old, with<br />
main purposes to maintain contact with their friends, or to record<br />
their feelings, and to learn the social hot issues, while people from<br />
30 to 40 years old is more focus on learn the social issues and<br />
expanding the circle of friends; however, users over the age of 40<br />
pay more attention to understand the social hot issues, expressing<br />
their opinions, and expand their network; on the contrary, users<br />
under the age of 20 is more emphasis on recreation and leisure,<br />
recording their feelings, and making new friends [7]. Studies have<br />
shown that the younger age groups from 18-30 years old has a<br />
greater level of participation on microblogs, accounting up to<br />
67%, which means microblog users tend to be younger [16].<br />
From the view of income, occupation and education, data from<br />
Beijing Online Media Association shows that more than 63%<br />
microblog users has got a bachelor degree at least. Moreover,<br />
there is no significant income difference between microblog users
and non-microblog users. The number of microblog users with<br />
income of more than 5000 RMB per month is a little bit higher<br />
than those of non-microblog users, by 3 percent. Zheng [16]<br />
argued that current Sina microblog extreme users have lower<br />
education level and relatively low income.<br />
5. CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS<br />
The most important reason for government to use social media is<br />
to move closer to the users, in other words, “go where the mass<br />
go” [8]. Given the breadth of microblog users, government could<br />
achieve a more effective interaction and communication with the<br />
public by opening official microblogs. Theoretically, this research<br />
indicates that microblogs have a positive impact on inclusive<br />
governance, but this effect remains to be tested by future practice.<br />
It could expand the channels for vulnerable groups to participate<br />
more in public affairs, and it breaks the time and space isolation,<br />
and enables ubiquitous participation. With the help of microblog<br />
platform, government expands their service scope effectively, and<br />
brings more G2C participation and interaction, which give great<br />
impetus to inclusive governance. Upon the participation of<br />
different groups, government could conduct more targeted<br />
governance.<br />
Overall, microblog makes interaction between governments and<br />
citizens more easily accessed in terms of geography, time, gender,<br />
age, occupation, income, and education. The assessment results<br />
are consistent with the theoretical framework, but still need<br />
further discussion and verification. Government concerns on<br />
microblogs are still in a narrow range, and they needs to pay more<br />
attention on ordinary people. Although governments conduct<br />
more interaction on government official microblogs, the degree of<br />
participation still needs to be improved. Theoretically speaking,<br />
one can access to the Internet with a mobile phone, but microblog<br />
is still a new thing. The current use of it is still very limited, and it<br />
will take more time to develop microblogs and to promote its<br />
implications in public governance.<br />
According to DCCI's estimates, the annual growth rate of the<br />
various microblog accounts will be 140%-200% in the following<br />
three years, and the outbreak year of growth will appear in the<br />
years 2012, 2013 [11]. Government should pay close attention on<br />
the implications of microblogs continuously. Meanwhile,<br />
microblog is a grassroots media with no information<br />
“gatekeeper”, so government also needs to correct and clarify<br />
information timely.<br />
The limitations of this study are very obvious. Since the practical<br />
development of microblogs in China is still in its infancy stage,<br />
the discussions in this study are only a theoretical analysis. There<br />
are many other problems which need to be further solved, such as<br />
who are relatively active on what on microblogs, the public are<br />
concerning about what kind of topics, viewpoints on what kind of<br />
topics can be collected through the microblogs, what are the<br />
differences between microblog users and users of traditional<br />
media. The discussion on the status quo is mainly based on the<br />
assessment of current report, and lack of further empirical data<br />
validation. All these problems provide direction on further<br />
expanding and sublimation of this study.<br />
261<br />
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Models, Algorithms, and Applications. 2010.<br />
[13] Traunmüller, R. Web 2.0 Creates a New Government. K.N.<br />
Andersen et al. (Eds.): EGOVIS 2010, pp. 77–83, 2010.<br />
[14] Zhao, Y., and Qiu, W. The Potential of Social Media for<br />
Students with Disabilities. Gray, T., and Silver-Pacuilla, H.<br />
(eds.), Breakthrough Teaching and Learning: 2011: 71-86.<br />
[15] Zhao, Z., and Lai, X. Analysis of the implications of<br />
microblogs on the dissemination of news and information:<br />
based on Twitter.com, Socialist Theory Guide, 2010 (4): 93 -<br />
95.<br />
[16] Zheng, Y. The development of Sina microblog. Master's<br />
thesis from Beijing Jiaotong University. June 2010.<br />
[17] Zhou, C. Microblog: the implications of new network<br />
platforms on government affairs. E-commerce Journal, 2010<br />
(10): 39- 40.
Managing Chinese Government Microblogs:<br />
Enablers and Barriers<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
This paper examines the enablers and barriers for the effectiveness<br />
of Chinese government microblogs with regard to government<br />
information disclosure, public service and citizen participation,<br />
and then builds a theoretical framework.<br />
Categories and Subject Descriptors<br />
H.4.2 [Information Systems Applications]: Type of systems – egovernment<br />
applications<br />
General Terms<br />
Management, Human Factors, Theory<br />
Keywords<br />
Social Media, Government, China, Enablers and Barriers<br />
1. INTRODUCTION<br />
Since 2010, a great number of government microblogs accounts<br />
have been opened and run by Chinese government agencies to<br />
foster government information disclosure, public service and<br />
citizen participation. According to the Chinese Government<br />
Microblogs Assessment Report of 2011, the total number of<br />
Chinese government microblog accounts have exceeded 50<br />
thousand by the end of 2011 [1]. This paper examines the enablers<br />
and barriers for the management of Chinese government<br />
microblogs with an empirical study, and attempts to identify the<br />
social, economic, political, organizational and technological<br />
factors that could influence the effectiveness of government<br />
microblogs. It also explores the relationship among these factors<br />
and builds a theoretical framework. Based on the findings of the<br />
study, the paper also makes some recommendations to Chinese<br />
government agencies in order to improve the effectiveness of<br />
government microblogs.<br />
As part of a research project on government microblogging in<br />
China [2], this paper conducts an empirical study on the factors<br />
influencing the effectiveness of Chinese government microblogs,<br />
and explores the interrelationship among these enablers and<br />
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for<br />
personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are<br />
not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies<br />
bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for<br />
components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored.<br />
Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to<br />
post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission<br />
and/or a fee.<br />
ICEGOV '12, October 22 - 25 2012, Albany, NY, USA<br />
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1200-4/12/10...$15.00<br />
Lei Zheng<br />
Fudan University<br />
NO.220,Handan Road, Shanghai, China<br />
+86-21-55665676, 200433<br />
zhengl@fudan.edu.cn<br />
262<br />
barriers. This study employs two methods for data collection. One<br />
is focus groups carried out from April through June, 2011, with 78<br />
civil servants from Shanghai Municipal Government agencies and<br />
county governments, using brainstorming method to collect<br />
various viewpoints. The other is in-depth interviews conducted<br />
from July through October, 2011, using semi-structured<br />
questionnaires with managers of nine popular and influential<br />
government microblogs in Shanghai, as well as managers who are<br />
responsible for government customers, in the two major<br />
microblogs operating companies in China. The author records and<br />
transcribes the data collected, and analyzed the data with<br />
qualitative approach under the guidance of grounded theory by<br />
using Atlas.ti software. The research findings are as follows.<br />
2. FINDINGS<br />
2.1 External Enablers for Government<br />
Microblogs<br />
2.1.1 Growth in the Living Standards<br />
In recent years, Chinese people’s living standards have been<br />
greatly improved. The ownership rates of home computers and<br />
mobile phones are rising continuously, so is the rapid growth in<br />
microblog users. As interviewees mentioned, the increasing<br />
income of citizens has provided a basic foundation for the<br />
development and pervasiveness of microblogs.<br />
2.1.2 Rising Citizen Participation<br />
The rising intention of Chinese citizens to participate in public<br />
affairs in China has created favorable conditions for the<br />
development and management of government microblogs.<br />
Microblogs have gained wide public attention as a new tool of<br />
communication and interaction. Citizens use this platform actively<br />
to read news, express their opinions and participate in public<br />
affairs, which also propel government departments to open<br />
institutional microblogs to interact with the public. Therefore,<br />
some interviewees believe that it is the high time for government<br />
to operate microblogs.<br />
2.1.3 Policy Support<br />
Some civil servants pointed out that the existing national policy<br />
environment is also favorable for Chinese government to run<br />
microlbogs. In recent years, the government attaches importance<br />
to build a service-oriented government and harmonious society,<br />
and to achieve social management innovation. The central<br />
government introduces corresponding policies and regulations to<br />
promote government information disclosure. Overall, this policy<br />
environment promotes the disclosure of government information<br />
and citizens’ interaction with government.
2.1.4 Technological Maturity of Microblogs<br />
The microblog applications and platforms continue to mature,<br />
which guarantees the sustainable operation of government<br />
microblogs. Some interviewees pointed out that microblog<br />
platforms such as Sina and Tencent are easy to operate, stable in<br />
technology, and mature in functionality with friendly user<br />
experience. Therefore, the technological risks for the government<br />
to run microblogs have been minimized.<br />
2.1.5 International Influence<br />
In recent years, employing social media by government has<br />
become a global trend and has created huge impacts. In many<br />
countries, government agencies and senior officials use social<br />
media for political elections and political communication. Some<br />
interviewees in this research believed that this international trend<br />
has also influenced China to some extent, and propelled Chinese<br />
government agencies to run microblogs to interact with the public.<br />
2.2 Internal Enablers for Government<br />
Microblogs<br />
2.2.1 Leadership Attention and Supports<br />
The rapid development of microblogs has gained great attention<br />
from many government leaders. Some government microblog<br />
accounts were opened at their direct requests. One interviewee<br />
mentioned, “The leaders in our bureau placed serious emphasis on<br />
government microblogs. The project was fully funded and staffed,<br />
while trainings and working sessions were held regularly. Leaders<br />
in various offices and institutions opened their own personal<br />
microblogs to interact with our institutional microblog.”<br />
2.2.2 Abundant Information Resources in Government<br />
At present, government possesses a wealth of information<br />
resources to support the operations of government microblogs. As<br />
many civil servants mentioned, government is now the largest<br />
reservoir of authoritative, reliable and timely information in<br />
society, with strong potential to disseminate information, deliver<br />
targeted information services, and respond promptly to the public<br />
response.<br />
2.2.3 Advantages in Human Resources<br />
Some civil servants pointed out that the government had<br />
considerable advantages in human resources, which could<br />
contribute to the operation of government microblogs. The<br />
advantages are generally twofold. One is the human resources<br />
within the government. “China has a large number of civil<br />
servants”, an interviewee pointed out, “many of them are young<br />
and mastered with network technologies. They are potential<br />
microblog managers.” The other is the human resources outside<br />
the government. “Government can also use external human<br />
resources, such as experts, scholars and overseas returnees. These<br />
people could be invited as trainers and researchers to enhance the<br />
operational capability of government microblog managers.”<br />
2.2.4 Secured Funding<br />
The daily operation and management of microblogs require a<br />
certain amount of financial investment to cover personnel costs,<br />
training costs, equipment costs and communication costs. Many<br />
civil servants said, as long as the leadership paid attention to<br />
government microblogs indeed, funds would not be a big problem.<br />
Moreover, government microblogs are usually running on existing<br />
microblog platforms maintained by private companies. Given that<br />
ICT infrastructure had been considerably invested in many<br />
263<br />
government agencies, there wouldn’t be large additional<br />
equipment investment to run government microblogs.<br />
2.2.5 Adequate ICT infrastructure in Government<br />
Interviewees indicated that after years of e-government<br />
development, most government agencies has now possessed<br />
adequate ICT infrastructure, equipped with computers, servers,<br />
networks and other hardware facilities and software applications.<br />
The government's information security capabilities have also been<br />
greatly improved in recent years, and all these have provided a<br />
strong guarantee for the government to run microblogs effectively<br />
and safely.<br />
2.3 External Barriers for Chinese<br />
Government Microblogs<br />
2.3.1 Hackers and “Water Army”<br />
The ecological complexity of Internet society barricades the<br />
development of government microblogs. There are both angels<br />
and devils on the Internet. Some interviewees pointed out that<br />
hackers were hard to defend on the Internet. Government<br />
microblogs are especially threatened by hacking. Once the<br />
accounts were broken through, the negative impact would be very<br />
serious. A microblog manager stated: "Although Sina and Tencent<br />
claimed that they would ensure the security of government<br />
microblogs, these accounts are still at the risk of malicious<br />
intrusion. The account security is difficult to be guaranteed.<br />
Recently, one government microblog in Dalian City has just<br />
suffered a hacker attack.”<br />
“Internet water army”, a group of Internet also composes a<br />
challenge. The “army” refers to ghostwriters who are paid to post<br />
online comments with particular commercial or political<br />
intentions. These comments could manipulate, mislead and cover<br />
up public opinions for the benefits of special interest group, and<br />
make it hard for government to tell the true opinions of citizens<br />
and interact with citizens.<br />
2.3.2 Low trust in government and disinterests<br />
In addition, citizens’ low trust in government and disinterests to<br />
politics also exist on the Internet. Some interviewees<br />
acknowledged that citizens’ trust in government declines in recent<br />
years, and the government was facing a huge challenge. As for the<br />
posts published on government microblogs, “the public would<br />
hold a skeptical attitude. Thus government microblogs would not<br />
only have difficulties to play their roles, but also become the<br />
public laughingstock in some occasions, which couldn’t worth the<br />
candle.”<br />
Due to either low interests in public participation or suspicion of<br />
the government’s intention, some citizens don’t have much<br />
interest in interacting with government microblogs. Some people<br />
believe that government microblogs were opened up just for a<br />
“show”.<br />
2.3.3 Lack of Regulations<br />
Meanwhile, the ambiguity and absence of Internet regulations and<br />
policies also affect the performance of government microblogs.<br />
One interviewee pointed out: "The low threshold of posting<br />
information on microblogs and the inadequate review process<br />
make it hard to authenticate the information on microblogs. And<br />
there may be some ‘Internet Water Army’. Thus, the effectiveness<br />
of the government microblogs would be undermined. “Another<br />
civil servant mentioned: “At present, speech on the Internet is<br />
relatively free in China. Without a sound regulatory mechanism,
due to their tremendous influence, government microblogs may<br />
become the target of malicious attacks.”<br />
2.3.4 Digital Divide<br />
Some interviewees worried that the users of microblogs were<br />
mostly young people in middle class, while the elderly and poor<br />
could rarely use microblogs, not even use computers. This<br />
situation is unlikely to change in short term. After the opening up<br />
of government microblogs, non-users of micorblogs would be<br />
further marginalized and their interests might be ignored, which<br />
would exacerbate the digital divide.<br />
2.3.5 Fast Technological Upgrading and Substitution<br />
Some civil servants also doubted about the sustainability of<br />
microblogs and worried that they wouldn’t be popular for long<br />
due to the rapid IT advancement and upgrading. “Government<br />
websites, mayor’s mailboxs and the official blogs which were<br />
once hot for a time perhaps could be the lesson for government<br />
microblogs.” “What if microblogs have been abandoned by<br />
Internet users after the government had put a lot of manpower and<br />
material resources on microblogs? Wouldn’t it be worthless?”<br />
As the future of government microblogs still lies in uncertainties,<br />
consequently, microblog management has not yet become a<br />
routine work in government agencies with designated and fixed<br />
posts. Some civil servants worried that if they were assigned to a<br />
full-time job on microblog management, once their superiors shift<br />
their attention on government microblogs, their positions will be<br />
removed. One microblog manager gave a vivid description: “No<br />
one wants to work full-time on the microblog, because no one<br />
wants to ‘die’ on it”.<br />
2.3.6 Technological Risks<br />
Some civil servants also worried that, as a new phenomenon,<br />
microblog was not yet mature, and some risks were still unknown.<br />
For example, some interviewees said that “government<br />
microblogs were operated on external platforms, and the<br />
platform’s operation faults may lead to system errors and even<br />
crashes, resulting in unexpected consequences.”<br />
2.4 The Internal Barriers for Chinese<br />
Government Microblogs<br />
2.4.1 Lack of Institutions and Guidelines<br />
Because microblogs are new tools for government, some<br />
interviewees indicate that the government still lacks adequate<br />
institutions for the operation of government microblogs. In<br />
addition, in lack of effective and specific guidelines, microblog<br />
managers are confused with conflicting issues and hesitate to take<br />
measures. As results, the effectiveness of government microblogs<br />
is seriously affected.<br />
With regard to which department within the government should be<br />
responsible leading and managing government microblogs, there<br />
are no existing policies or regulations to follow in most<br />
government agencies. Nowadays, most leading departments of<br />
government microblogs are in the charge of Party Committees or<br />
publicity departments, and specific management teams and<br />
coordination teams for microblogs are quite different. In most<br />
occasions, government microblogs are operated by either the<br />
Internet Management and Publicity office, or General<br />
Administrative Office, or the Communist Youth League, or<br />
related functional departments. Both advantages and<br />
disadvantages are found with these different arrangements.<br />
264<br />
Besides, the interviews discovers that Chinese government<br />
agencies now mainly adopts two forms—part time jobs and shifts<br />
—to assign staff to the daily operation and management of<br />
government microblogs. The size of the operating teams ranges<br />
from one person to as many as ten members, and few departments<br />
introduce full-time posts for the management of government<br />
microblogs. A microblog operator mentioned, “We do our job in<br />
shifts. From Monday to Friday, the one who has spare time can<br />
post service tips or something at his or her convenience.” And due<br />
to the special nature of microblogs, the peak time of usage are the<br />
30 minutes before work in the morning, the lunch break and the<br />
evening session, while most civil servants work from nine to five,<br />
some of the microblog managers have to work overtime.<br />
Owing to the feeling of uncertainty towards government<br />
microblogs, some civil servants worried that once they worked on<br />
government micorblogs full time, their original jobs would be<br />
affected. Therefore, workers in some departments take shifts for<br />
the daily operation of microblogs. The shift lasts from three<br />
months to six months. The shift is temporary for a specific<br />
operator so that their original post won’t be influenced, and the<br />
operatoe on the shift is not required to work on other tasks until<br />
the shift is over. With this arrangement, the experience that a<br />
certain government microblog operator accumulated during his or<br />
her shift would hardly pass on to his or her successors. With their<br />
varied personal styles of different operators, the management<br />
stability of government microblogs is also jeopardized.<br />
2.4.2 Low Attention from Leadership<br />
Some government microblog managers mentioned that although<br />
their leaders requested them to open and run government<br />
microblogs, they didn’t pay attention to them fundamentally. That<br />
is to say, they just stress the importance orally, but do not provide<br />
matching personnel, financial and material resources. Some<br />
leaders did nothing more than coping with a task assigned by<br />
leaders in higher levels. In addition, the attention of the leadership<br />
frequently shifts, which would also affect the stable and<br />
sustainable operation of government microblogs.<br />
In particular, many civil servants pointed out that under the<br />
existing Chinese administrative system, the attention and support<br />
of superior leadership is extremely important to the development<br />
of government microblogs, and is the key to success. “The reason<br />
why some government microblogs are abandoned was that they<br />
didn’t earn full attention and support from the leadership.”<br />
Therefore, a lot of microblogs have become an object of “display”<br />
of the government, a microblog manager mentioned, "Currently,<br />
what concerns us most is the support of higher authorities."<br />
2.4.3 Lack of Resources<br />
Many government departments reported that in spite of the<br />
increasing tasks and workload of government microblogs, the<br />
necessary funds and resources still fell behind. As mentioned<br />
above, a good support of human, financial and material resources<br />
mainly depended on the attention earned from the leadership. At<br />
present, most government microblogs have no specifically<br />
allocated funds. The facility investment, daily operation expenses,<br />
communication costs, training fees, and personnel expenses (work<br />
allowances and bonuses) are not secured financially. Some<br />
departments stated clearly: “Our human and material resources are<br />
limited. We lack funds, equipment and professional supports.”<br />
Without secured specially allocated funds, the expenditures on<br />
government microblogs in many departments were mainly
appropriated from the budget for general administrations or other<br />
purposes. A government microblog manager illustrated: “The<br />
Bureau of Finance said that they haven’t listed this item in their<br />
budget in advance, so they could not allocate any fund for us.<br />
Therefore, this year we used the overhead cost, which is from the<br />
General Administrative Office’s expenditures.” “Other costs such<br />
as training and activities are not funded at all. Even our own<br />
finance staff wouldn’t approve them, not to mention the Bureau of<br />
Finance. ”<br />
2.4.4 Conservative and Closed Organizational<br />
Culture<br />
The study finds out that many government agencies shows<br />
apprehension towards external barriers and attacks. The<br />
government microblog managers worried that when the Internet<br />
users and opinion leaders questioned the contents on government<br />
microblogs, the government's authority would be directly<br />
challenged. “Government microblogs might be taken advantage of<br />
by interest groups, resulting in social discord. They may also give<br />
a vent for disadvantaged groups to show their angers and be<br />
threatened by malicious comments, which would pose negative<br />
impacts on the image of government.”<br />
Besides, the current messages and posts in government<br />
microblogs are too official, formal and rigid, and present<br />
themselves as government “bulletin boards”. “In the long run,<br />
government microblogs would inevitably lose their attractiveness<br />
and vitality, and ultimately become useless things.” a civil servant<br />
noted, “The current ‘leader first’ culture prevails within the<br />
government, forming an arrogant attitude of government on the<br />
Internet as well. It would inevitably intensify the tension between<br />
the government and the public, which would worsen the<br />
communication between them.”<br />
2.4.5 Bureaucratic Review Process<br />
As a novelty, government microblog is however restrained by the<br />
traditional bureaucratic review process currently. In fear of<br />
making mistakes when posting information and interacting with<br />
citizens, some government microblogs still adopt traditional<br />
review process and thereby reduce the speed and effectiveness of<br />
response. A government microblog manager pointed out: “the<br />
review process is also where the contradiction lies. If we response<br />
every microblog in accordance with the full-process review,<br />
timeliness will be hurt. With this process, we then could only take<br />
official and diplomatic phases to answer them.”<br />
Moreover, the leadership often lacks a thorough understanding of<br />
the features of microblogs and the way of managing them. Some<br />
leaders still adopts old ways to superintend government<br />
microblogs, and some of them are even blind commanders. Under<br />
their improper leadership, some microblog managers are very<br />
confused and frustrated. A government microblog manager<br />
mentioned “The leader who is responsible for government<br />
microblogs doesn’t have a good knowledge of them. He views<br />
operating microblogs as the same way as publishing a newspaper,<br />
and holds editing assemblies every morning and night.”<br />
2.4.6 Inadequate Personnel Capabilities<br />
Since managing government microblog is a fresh new task for<br />
agencies, many managers still lack management experiences and<br />
capabilities. For an instance, some civil servants worried about<br />
answering questions in specialized field raise by the public. “If<br />
you respond with insufficient or inaccurate information, you could<br />
265<br />
not satisfy the public needs; if you put aside questions, people<br />
would feel ignored. So it is quite a dilemma.”<br />
Therefore, many government microblog managers reflected their<br />
urgent need to receive professional trainings, particularly in the<br />
skills of attracting attentions and response in emergencies. “If you<br />
want to attract public attention, professional media packaging or<br />
trainings are very much needed to improve our management<br />
capabilities.” “I hope there are regular trainings, and show us how<br />
to deal with unexpected things. In addition, when a government<br />
microblog is just opened, it is actually our own staff who initiates<br />
the participation in the microblog. Therefore, these people must<br />
also be trained in dealing with complex situations.”<br />
Many government microblog managers also mentioned that the<br />
original workload for some civil servants was already very heavy.<br />
In microblog management, they felt hard to balance their new task<br />
with the old one. They were unable to response quickly or manage<br />
government microblogs at any time. A government microblog<br />
manager pointed out clearly: “there are only six people in our<br />
office. In order to take care of all the tasks, we could only take<br />
turns to work part-time on microblogs. Gradually we feel<br />
exhausted.”<br />
2.4.7 Lack of Cross-boundary Collaborations<br />
The study has found that most government microblogs are<br />
unlinked with each other, without information sharing or<br />
operational collaborations. Especially in dealing with<br />
emergencies, there are no joint efforts among institutions and<br />
individuals to enhance information dissemination and interaction.<br />
A microblog manager from the railway station cited an example:<br />
“our services are information-based. The source of information is<br />
rather important, but very often in emergencies the information<br />
from other transport units is way beyond our grasp. The customers<br />
were very confused and failed to receive information from our<br />
service counters. The truth is that we didn’t know the information<br />
they asked either, because we didn’t have any sources of<br />
information. Talking about this accident on high-speed railways,<br />
we didn’t receive any notifications from the dispatch center and<br />
other transportation partners. Actually, we knew about this<br />
accident by searching content by ourselves through other<br />
microblogs. Without any information provided by our partners in<br />
transportation, it is not surprising that we couldn’t serve the<br />
passengers well. All complaints are pointed to the front desk,<br />
because we are the service terminal. However, we have no<br />
partnership with other units.”<br />
2.4.8 Information Confidentiality<br />
The government has considerations for security and<br />
confidentiality towards the information published by microblogs.<br />
Some microblog managers worried that “Once the government's<br />
confidential information was revealed on the Internet, the situation<br />
would be difficult to restore”. This would make the government<br />
hesitate to publish information on microblogs.<br />
2.4.9 Information Accuracy<br />
Besides, some interviewees also worried that the limitation of 140<br />
characters for each message may result in information inaccuracy<br />
and ambiguity. “Different people have different interpretations of<br />
the contents, which would affect the accuracy and authority of the<br />
information published by government microblogs.”
3. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT<br />
This research is funded by the Shanghai Pujiang Plan and the<br />
Education Innovation Project by Education Committee, Shanghai<br />
Municipal Government.<br />
4. REFERENCES<br />
[1] China National Academy of Governance (2011). Assessment<br />
Report on Chinese Government Microblogging.<br />
[2] Zheng, L., et al (2011). Studying the Management<br />
Mechanism of Government Microblogs in China: A Research<br />
Plan. Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on<br />
Theory and Practice of Electronic Governance, ACM Press.<br />
266
Study on Social Media Applications by Government in<br />
Hong Kong<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
In the Web2.0 Era, social media is playing a more and more<br />
important role in government affairs. This paper conducts a<br />
research based on 44 accounts opened by Hong Kong government<br />
on five social media platforms, including Facebook, Twitter,<br />
YouTube, SinaMicroblog and Blog. The authors identify fourteen<br />
observation contents of those accounts in order to give a general<br />
picture of the current situation of Hong Kong government social<br />
media application. Finally, give some suggestions to mainland<br />
China social media application practice.<br />
Categories and Subject Descriptors<br />
K.6.1 [Project and People Management]: Management<br />
Techniques<br />
General Terms<br />
Management, Measurement, Performance<br />
Keywords<br />
Hong Kong, Government, Social Media, Application<br />
1. INTRODUCTION<br />
Chinese government agencies and officials have set up microblog<br />
accounts since 2008 and are facing many challenges. Even though<br />
western countries start early in government social media<br />
application, it’s hard to copy their experience due to China’s<br />
unique national contextual. Hong Kong Special Administrative<br />
Region, on one hand, shares the same language and culture origin<br />
with Mainland China. On the other hand, it started social media<br />
application in government earlier. Its experience will have a great<br />
reference value to Mainland China. Through observing 44 social<br />
media accounts of Hong Kong government agencies and officials,<br />
this essay studies the current situation of social media application<br />
by Hong Kong government and gives suggestions for the future<br />
social media practice of mainland government.<br />
2. LITERATURE REVIEW<br />
Many scholars have contributed a lot in the field of government<br />
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for<br />
personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are<br />
not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies<br />
bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for<br />
components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored.<br />
Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to<br />
post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission<br />
and/or a fee.<br />
ICEGOV '12, October 22 - 25 2012, Albany, NY, United States, NY, USA<br />
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1200-4/12/10…$15.00.<br />
Huina Xu and Qian Chen<br />
Department of Public Administration<br />
Fudan University<br />
220 Handan Road<br />
200433, Shanghai, China<br />
{11210170057, 10210170073}@fudan.edu.cn<br />
267<br />
using social media tools in recent days. David Landsbergen (2010)<br />
studies the use of social media by several departments within the<br />
city of Columbus, USA and discusses how social media provide<br />
the government a way to do things in way that government<br />
haven’t done before[1]. Enrique Bonson et al. (2012) find out that<br />
most EU local governments are using social media tools to<br />
enhance transparency[2]. Sergio Picazo-Vela et al. (2012) present<br />
the perceptions of risks, benefits and strategic guidelines about<br />
social media application in Central Mexico[3]. John Carlo Bertot<br />
et al. (2012) indicate how governments promote transparency and<br />
accountability through ICTs, social media, and collaborative egovernment[4].<br />
Chinese scholars also have done some researches<br />
on government using social media. The 2011 China government<br />
microblog research report generally introduced the current<br />
situation of government moicroblogs development in China[5].<br />
Yan Su (2011) introduces several examples of the internet and<br />
social media communication by Hong Kong government[6].<br />
Since Chinese government social media application is now facing<br />
many challenges, this study aims to analyze the current situation<br />
of Hong Kong social media application and give some<br />
suggestions to Mainland China.<br />
3. RESEARCH METHOD<br />
On the basis of non-participant observation and secondary data<br />
analysis, this article studies the current situation of Hong Kong<br />
government social media application from the public management<br />
perspective. This study conducts both quantitative and qualitative<br />
analysis by observing fourteen contents of Hong Kong<br />
government social media accounts. This study selects the research<br />
objects by applying the data provided on Hong Kong Government<br />
portal (www.gov.hk) which has set "social media links" that lists<br />
Hong Kong government agency and official social media<br />
accounts. According to the data updated on the website in April<br />
2011, a total of 44 social media accounts have been opened by 14<br />
Hong Kong government officials and 16 government agencies on<br />
five social media platforms including Blog, Facebook, Twitter,<br />
YouTube and SinaMicroblog. In reference to western countries’<br />
social media application handbooks while considered the actual<br />
situation in Hong Kong, this study identifies the following<br />
fourteen observation contents.<br />
1) Account owner: to distinguish whether the social media<br />
account is owned by government official or government<br />
agency;<br />
2) Social media types: to specify which social media platform<br />
the account belongs to: Blog, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or<br />
SinaMicroblog;
3) Established year: to specify the established year of the social<br />
media account;<br />
4) Account introduction: to find out whether the social media<br />
account identifies itself as government agency or official<br />
clearly;<br />
5) Account images/photos: whether the Hong Kong government<br />
social media account has its own account image or photo;<br />
6) Amount of followers: refers to the amount of followers who<br />
subscribe the government social media accounts;<br />
7) Amount of followings: refers to the amount of social media<br />
accounts that government social media accounts have<br />
subscribed;<br />
8) Type of followings: refers to the type of accounts that Hong<br />
Kong government agencies and officials subscribe;<br />
9) Amount of posts: refers to the amount of posts that released<br />
from the established date till April 20, 2011;<br />
10) Posting frequency: refers to how often Hong Kong<br />
government agency and official accounts post one piece of<br />
information;<br />
11) Content of posts: such as work-related information,<br />
entertainment information, personal views, etc.;<br />
12) Posting forms: to find out whether government agency and<br />
official accounts use pictures, video or other forms in posting;<br />
13) Language: refers to the type of language used in posting,<br />
including English, traditional Chinese and simplified<br />
Chinese;<br />
14) Interaction: to find out whether there is interaction between<br />
government social media account owners and netizens.<br />
4. RESEARCH FINDINGS<br />
4.1 Account Owners, Social Media Types and<br />
Amounts<br />
The figure 1 shows that the most widely used government social<br />
media types are Facebook and YouTube. The data also shows that<br />
Hong Kong government agencies and officials have different<br />
preference on social media types. Government agencies prefer<br />
opening accounts on Twitter, YouTube and Facebook, while<br />
government officials prefer Facebook and Blog.<br />
Figure 1. The number of Hong Kong government agency and<br />
official accounts on different social media platforms.<br />
The Figure 2 shows that nine out of thirty HK government<br />
agencies and officials have opened more than two social media<br />
accounts, among which seven are government agencies.<br />
Government agencies, compared with government officials, seem<br />
to open two even more social media accounts.<br />
268<br />
Figure 2. Number of social media accounts each Hong Kong<br />
government agency and official opens.<br />
4.2 Established Year and Newly-Opened<br />
Social Media Accounts by Year<br />
Figure 3 shows that Hong Kong government has opened social<br />
media accounts as early as in 2006 (Since the web design of<br />
Facebook is difficult for researchers to find the established year,<br />
Facebook is not included in this statistical analysis.). The annual<br />
amount of the newly-opened government social media accounts<br />
has raised up since 2009. Seventeen new social media accounts<br />
were established in year 2010, which seems to be the peak year of<br />
Hong Kong government social media application development.<br />
Figure 3. Newly-opened HK government accounts by year.<br />
Among seventeen newly-opened social media accounts in 2010,<br />
fourteen are opened by government agencies while three by<br />
government officials (Table 1). Government agencies social<br />
media applications appears to develop faster than government<br />
officials. Furthermore, most newly-opened accounts in 2010 open<br />
on YouTube and Twitter.<br />
Table 1. Newly-opened Hong Kong government social media<br />
accounts in 2010 on different social media platforms<br />
Hong Kong<br />
government<br />
officials<br />
Hong Kong<br />
government<br />
agencies<br />
Twitter 0 4 24%<br />
SinaMicroblog 1 2 18%<br />
YouTube 0 8 47%<br />
Blog 2 0 11%<br />
Percentage<br />
Total 3 14 100%<br />
4.3 Account Instruction<br />
Ninety-five percent of the Hong Kong government social media<br />
accounts clearly identify themselves as government agencies or<br />
officials. All of those accounts not identifying themselves are<br />
Hong Kong government official accounts opened on Facebook.
4.4 Account Images/Photos<br />
All the government social media accounts have their own images<br />
or photos. In terms of the consistency of images/photos of the<br />
same government agency/official on multiple social media<br />
platforms, this study finds out that three Hong Kong government<br />
agencies (Chief Executive's Office, Hong Kong Observatory and<br />
the Investment Promotion Agency) and one government official<br />
(Kenneth Chen, Deputy Secretary of Department of Education)<br />
use the same images and photo on different social media<br />
platforms. Another four government agencies, each of which has<br />
opened more than three social media accounts, use partly the same<br />
image on different social media platforms. One government<br />
agency, the Hong Kong Government, use different images on its<br />
Twitter and Facebook accounts.<br />
4.5 Amount of Followers and Followings<br />
The amount of followers of government agency and official<br />
accounts indicates the coverage and effectiveness of accounts<br />
among the netizens. The analysis of the amount of the followers<br />
of 36 Hong Kong government social media accounts (Since Blog<br />
doesn’t have the function of following, it is not included in this<br />
statistics.) shows that 78% government social media accounts<br />
have 100 to 10000 followers. Only a few accounts have either less<br />
than 100 or more than 10,000 followers.<br />
Compared to the large amount of followers of Hong Kong<br />
government social media accounts, most government agencies and<br />
officials follow only several accounts. Seventy-five percent<br />
government accounts only follow other government accounts,<br />
while 25 percent follow other government accounts as well as<br />
non-government accounts such as news and media, celebrities,<br />
companies, ordinary netizens, etc.<br />
4.6 Amount of Posts<br />
The amount of posts is calculated from the established date to<br />
April 20, 2011. Most Hong Kong government accounts post fewer<br />
than 1000 pieces of information till April 20, 2011. Only four<br />
accounts including Hong Kong Radio on YouTube, Independent<br />
Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) on YouTube and<br />
Government Information Services on both Twitter and YouTube<br />
have posted more than 1000 pieces of information. (Since the lack<br />
of data of the amount of posts on Facebook, accounts on<br />
Facebook are not included in the statistics.)<br />
A cross analysis of amount of posts and social media types<br />
indicates a significant difference among each platform. The<br />
amount of posts of 75% government accounts on Blog is less than<br />
100 while amount of posts on Twitter and SinaMicroblog is<br />
mostly between 100 and 1000. The amount of posts on Blog is<br />
smaller than that on other social media platforms (figure 4).<br />
269<br />
Figure 4. Cross analysis of amount of posts and social media<br />
types.<br />
4.7 Posting Frequency<br />
Posting frequency is calculated as follows: P (frequency) = (the<br />
total number of days from the established date to April 20, 2011) /<br />
(Amount of posts). The authors have classified the calculation<br />
result as follows: (0-1) represents that on average, posting one<br />
piece of information costs less than one day. (1-7) represents that<br />
on average, posting one piece of information requires one to seven<br />
days. (7-30) represents that on average, posting one piece of<br />
information costs more than one week (7 days) but less than a<br />
month; (30-50) represents that the average posting frequency is<br />
more than one month but within two months. Figure 5 shows that<br />
more than half of government accounts post information every<br />
one week. The average highest posting frequency is nine times a<br />
day while the slowest is every 40 days.<br />
Figure 5. Posting frequency of HK social media accounts.<br />
4.8 Content of Posts<br />
Based on observation, most information released by government<br />
accounts is related to the work of agencies and officials.<br />
Government official accounts release information not only related<br />
to their own work but also related to their after-work life and<br />
personal points of view. However, government agencies only<br />
release information related to the agencies themselves.<br />
4.9 Language<br />
Figure 6 shows traditional Chinese is the most widely used<br />
language in Hong Kong Government social media accounts. The<br />
study also finds that some government agencies (such as Hong<br />
Kong Observatory) launched one Chinese version account and<br />
one English version account on the same social media platform.<br />
Those two accounts update synchronously and the content of the<br />
posts are almost the same. Tracing back to the origin of those two<br />
accounts, the information is released in both Chinese and English<br />
in one account. After a period of time, this account is separated<br />
into two accounts, Chinese one and English one.
Figure 6. Language used in Hong Kong social media accounts.<br />
5. INSPIRATION AND SUGGESTIONS<br />
5.1 Government Social Media Applications<br />
and Effects are Influenced by the<br />
Characteristics of Social Media Platforms<br />
Based on the different characteristics of different social media<br />
platforms, the amount of posts, posting frequency and posting<br />
forms on different social media platforms vary a lot. Both the<br />
amount of posts and posting frequency on Blog are the lowest,<br />
compared with Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. In addition, the<br />
social media openness to the public has influence on the<br />
government social media applications. The study indicates that<br />
even though the established date of SinaMicroblog is later than<br />
other social media platforms, the amount of followers on<br />
SinaMicroblog is larger than that on Facebook, Twitter and<br />
YouTube. One possible reason is that SinaMicroblog mainly<br />
targets Chinese which have the largest population in the world. At<br />
the mean time, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are blocked in<br />
Mainland China.<br />
Each social media platform has its own characteristics which<br />
would attract different user groups. Government agencies should<br />
choose suitable platform to provide service to its target citizens.<br />
5.2 Government Social Media Applications<br />
and Effects are Influenced by the<br />
Characteristics of Government Agencies<br />
and Officials<br />
This study has shown that the functional difference of government<br />
agencies and officials would affect their performance on social<br />
media applications. For example, Government Information<br />
Service and Hong Kong Observatory are two different agencies.<br />
They vary in the command of information resources, posting<br />
techniques, and allocation of human resources and funds. As a<br />
result, their performance on social media applications differs a lot.<br />
Furthermore, the study has shown that government agencies open<br />
more social media accounts than government officials.<br />
Government agencies have professionals to manage accounts and<br />
funds to support the daily account maintenance. On the contrast,<br />
most government officials have to manage account by themselves.<br />
Each additional account would put extra burden on the officials.<br />
That may be the reason why government agencies seem to open<br />
more accounts than government officials.<br />
In general, different government agencies and officials have<br />
different command of posting techniques, human resources and<br />
funding, which would result in the performance difference.<br />
270<br />
Government should match their own characteristics with the<br />
social media platform to achieve the best results.<br />
5.3 The Normalization of Government Social<br />
Media Application Should be<br />
Strengthened<br />
This study has found out that there are still five percent<br />
government accounts not identify themselves. In addition, half of<br />
the government social media accounts, which open more than two<br />
accounts on different social media platforms, don’t share the same<br />
image or photo. Account identification and the same image would<br />
help to enhance the authority of government accounts and make it<br />
easier for citizens to recognize the government accounts.<br />
5.4 Followings Amount Should be Enlarged<br />
Compared with the great amount of followers of government<br />
accounts, the followings should be enlarged. It would help the<br />
government agencies and officials get close to the ordinary people<br />
and know what the people are thinking.<br />
6. CONCLUSION<br />
With the social media playing a more and more important role in<br />
public affairs, government using social media has become<br />
inevitable. Mainland china can learn from the experience of social<br />
media applications by HK government. First, mainland china can<br />
take advantage of different types of social media platforms to<br />
reach different netizens and realize the equalization of services<br />
supply. Second, mainland government agencies and officials<br />
should choose one or more suitable social media platforms and<br />
maximize the advantages of the platform. Third, government<br />
agencies and officials should follow more non-government<br />
agency accounts in order to hear the voice of the people. Finally,<br />
multiple languages should be used in social media applications to<br />
meet the needs of different people working or traveling in China.<br />
7. REFERENCES<br />
[1] Landsbergen, D. (2010). Government as Part of the<br />
Revolution: Using Social Media to Achieve Public Goals.<br />
Proceedings of the 10th European Conference on E-<br />
Government, pp. 243-250.<br />
[2] Bonsón, E., Torres, L., Royo, S., & Flores, F. Local egovernment<br />
2.0: Social media and corporate transparency in<br />
municipalities. Government Information Quarterly, pp.123-<br />
132<br />
[3] Picazo-Vela, S., et al., Understanding risks, benefits, and<br />
strategic alternatives of social media applications in the<br />
public sector, Government Information Quarterly (2012)<br />
[4] Bertot, J. C., Jaeger, P. T., & Grimes, J. M. Using ICTs to<br />
create a culture of transparency: E-government and social<br />
media as openness and anti-corruption tools for societies.<br />
Government Information Quarterly, 27(3), 264–271.<br />
[5] China official microblog research report. (2011). Public<br />
opinion and transmission laboratory.<br />
[6] Yan Su. Internet communication analysis of Hong Kong<br />
Special Administrative Region government. Journalism<br />
Lover, 2011(11), pp.74-75
Session 10<br />
ICT & Governance<br />
Transformation
E-Government and Transformation of Governance and<br />
Service Delivery in Bangladesh: A Developing Country<br />
Perspective<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
As elsewhere around the world, lately e-government has become a<br />
major component of governmental policy in Bangladesh. It has<br />
received a particular push with the launch of ‘Digital Bangladesh’.<br />
The twin pillars of the campaign - ‘connecting citizens’ and<br />
‘offering services to their doorsteps’ - are considered key to<br />
fighting poverty and achieving the Millennium Development<br />
Goals. While enthusiasm for e-government is widespread and a<br />
variety of programs are currently underway that offer endless<br />
opportunities for the future, in a developing country like<br />
Bangladesh road to e-government is not without pitfalls and<br />
challenges. This paper sheds lights on the trajectory of egovernment<br />
in Bangladesh with a particular focus on its current<br />
status and future goals. More specifically, it seeks to highlight<br />
some innovative e-government schemes and their impacts on<br />
service delivery processes and mode of interactions between<br />
government and citizens. The paper focuses on some key<br />
constraints that undermine and frustrate governmental drives for<br />
realizing the vision of Digital Bangladesh. It also comments on<br />
their policy implications.<br />
Category<br />
General Literature<br />
General Terms<br />
Management, Human Factors, Performance, Reliability and<br />
Security<br />
Keywords<br />
E-government, Digital Bangladesh, ICT Policy, Union<br />
Information Service Centres, Digital Divide<br />
1. INTRODUCTION<br />
Public governance around the world has long been subjected to<br />
widespread criticisms for poor performance and procedural<br />
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for<br />
personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are<br />
not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies<br />
bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for<br />
components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored.<br />
Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to<br />
post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission<br />
and/or a fee.<br />
ICEGOV '12, October 22 - 25 2012, Albany, NY, USA<br />
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1200-4/12/10...$15.00<br />
Noore Alam Siddiquee<br />
Department of Politics & Public Policy<br />
Flinders University<br />
Adelaide 5001, Australia<br />
+ 618 8201 2302<br />
noore.siddiquee@flinders.edu.au<br />
271<br />
rigidities, among others. Decades of public sector reforms appear<br />
to have done little either to improve the delivery of<br />
public services or to brighten the image of service providers.<br />
Inefficiency, lack of accountability and transparency, inflexibility,<br />
red-tape and corruption are among the multitude of problems that<br />
characterize public bureaucracies and service delivery systems.<br />
This is particularly the case in developing countries. The advent of<br />
e-government has offered real prospects of making a difference in<br />
this regard. E-government promises not only to improve<br />
efficiency in service delivery but also to promote transparency and<br />
accountability thereby reducing corruption and mismanagement in<br />
public governance [4; 16]. In addition, it is believed to promote<br />
innovation in delivery of public services, offer increased<br />
flexibility in the service use and foster people’s participation and<br />
empowerment [18]. In developing countries e-government has<br />
assumed an additional significance: it is expected to help eradicate<br />
poverty, boost national economic growth, reduce bureaucratic<br />
complexity and establish good governance [7].<br />
Thus it is nothing surprising that of late e-government has become<br />
a key component of public sector reform across the globe. So<br />
popular is the e-government today that it is hard to find a country<br />
that has not embraced it in recent years. As elsewhere, Bangladesh<br />
has followed the global trend. Since the adoption of e-government<br />
as a policy issue in late 1990s, the government of Bangladesh has<br />
initiated and implemented variety of measures seeking either to<br />
improve internal efficiency of the government agencies or to<br />
enhance external delivery of services to the citizens or both. Egovernment<br />
is seen as strategy for transforming public governance<br />
and service delivery, it is also viewed as a tool for fighting<br />
poverty and achieving Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).<br />
While enthusiasm for e-government is widespread and a variety of<br />
programs are currently underway as part of governmental aim of<br />
developing an efficient, accountable and citizen-centric public<br />
administration, in a developing country like Bangladesh the road<br />
to e-government is anything but smooth and straightforward. In<br />
fact, a large number of countervailing forces and barriers act to<br />
thwart and frustrate governmental drives in this regard. This paper<br />
reviews the trajectory of e-government in Bangladesh. Based<br />
mainly on secondary sources the paper seeks to highlight the roles<br />
of e-government in transforming governance and service delivery<br />
system and some of the constraints and challenges involved.
2. THE EVOLUTION OF E-GOVERNMENT<br />
IN BANGLADESH<br />
Even though development of an efficient, transparent and<br />
accountable system of administration has been a recurrent theme<br />
of all reform initiatives since Bangladesh gained her independence<br />
in the early 1970s, e-government has not found expression in the<br />
governmental policy discourse until the late-1990s. In fact, the<br />
ICT revolution and growth of e-commerce etc. elsewhere did not<br />
generate much interest among the Bangladeshi policy makers.<br />
Thus, the initial period was characterised by what could be termed<br />
as a combination of lack of interest, confusion and neglect on part<br />
of political and administrative leadership. After initial periods of<br />
confusion and inaction the first concrete step towards egovernment<br />
was made by the Awami League government<br />
following its assumption of power in 1996. It agreed to connect<br />
the country with the information superhighway, designated ICT as<br />
a thrust sector, waived taxes on computers and computer<br />
accessories and allocated US $6 million in 1997-98 annual budget<br />
towards supporting the development of ICT sector in the country.<br />
It also formed a Task Force with the Prime Minister as its head.<br />
Composed of representative of the government ministries, the<br />
private sector, academia and NGOs the Task Force was<br />
responsible for providing overall direction concerning the<br />
application of ICT in government in order to improve operational<br />
efficiency, enhance quality of services and advance public welfare<br />
by extending public services even to most remote areas. All this<br />
marked the beginning of Bangladesh’s journey towards egovernment.<br />
Following the political change in 2001 the new government<br />
continued the drives initiated by the previous regime. The<br />
formulation of ICT Policy, 2002 was among significant moves<br />
made during 2001- 2005 period. However, in the absence of<br />
coherent vision and well-designed strategies various agencies<br />
initiated and implemented e-government programs in isolated and<br />
uncoordinated fashion. With the launch of the Access to<br />
Information (A2I) programme in 2006 a new phase of egovernment<br />
development began. Located in the Prime Minister’s<br />
Office and supported by the UNDP the A2I program has played a<br />
catalysing role in promoting people oriented to e-government.<br />
Series of workshops and seminars organised under the A2I<br />
program have led to identification of a large number of citizen<br />
services for implementation at various levels. This has also<br />
encouraged various ministries and divisions of the government to<br />
initiate and implement a range of e-government programs aimed<br />
at offering enhanced services to their respective clients. The<br />
military backed care-taker government that was in power during<br />
2007-2008 was highly supportive of the e-government agenda: it<br />
played a vital role in successfully implementing web-initiatives<br />
and augmenting capacity and awareness at various levels. This<br />
may have marked a shift from infrastructure building towards<br />
delivery of services using ICT, still programs remained largely<br />
isolated and limited in scope.<br />
The incumbent Awami League government having assumed power<br />
in 2009 made e-government a priority and initiated<br />
comprehensive measures to this end. In line with its election<br />
manifestos the new government introduced a charter of change<br />
with ‘Digital Bangladesh’ as an integral component of its Vision<br />
2021. Conceived and implemented under the United Nations<br />
Development Program (UNDP) –funded Access to Information<br />
(A2I) program –Digital Bangladesh represents the cornerstone of<br />
272<br />
e-government in Bangladesh. The Digital Bangladesh agenda<br />
involves a digitised government, ICT enabled services, nationwide<br />
internet connectivity, high-tech parks for businesses and IT<br />
trained professionals. It consists of four pillars: (i) developing<br />
human resources suitable for 21 st century demands; (ii) connecting<br />
citizens in a meaningful ways; (iii) taking services to the<br />
doorsteps of the people and (iv) making private sector more<br />
productive and competitive through the use of ICT [10]. The<br />
Digital Bangladesh campaign has led to a more comprehensive,<br />
sustained and robust approach to e-government with emphasis on<br />
citizen-centred service delivery. Although the drives for<br />
infrastructure development continue in view of country’s overall<br />
e-government development index currently emphasis is placed on<br />
fostering integration and expansion of scopes for transactional<br />
services. Numerous programs and projects (as shown later) are<br />
being implemented towards realizing the vision.<br />
3. INSTITUTIONAL AND LEGAL<br />
FRAMEWORK<br />
E-government is a relatively new phenomenon in Bangladesh.<br />
Hence, the institutional, legal and regulatory framework for egovernance<br />
is still evolving. At the apex of the institutional<br />
framework for e-government in Bangladesh is the Prime<br />
Minister’s Office (PMO) that provides stewardship of the Digital<br />
Bangladesh program. The E-Government Cell established within<br />
the PMO provides policy directives and guidelines for the<br />
implementation of e-government programs including oversight<br />
and coordination of such initiatives. The National ICT Task Force<br />
(NTF) chaired by the Prime Minister is responsible for<br />
mainstreaming ICT throughout the public sector. Renamed<br />
recently as the Digital Bangladesh Task Force it is represented by<br />
stakeholders from the government, the private sector and the civil<br />
society. It is responsible for monitoring milestones in the<br />
implementation of Digital Bangladesh agenda and advising the<br />
government on policy matters and means of achieving goals<br />
identified. A number of government ministries have been given<br />
significant roles to play. The Ministry of Science and Information<br />
Communication Technology (MoSICT) is responsible for the<br />
development of infrastructure and human resources for successful<br />
application of ICT in the society. It also formulates ICT policies<br />
and oversees the implementation of such policies. Given that one<br />
of the responsibilities of the Ministry is to support the overall<br />
socio-economic development of the country through research,<br />
development, extension and successful utilisation of science and<br />
technology including ICT, it has undertaken and implemented<br />
variety of programs including the establishment of computer<br />
training centres throughout the country to impart ICT related<br />
knowledge and skills to government employees as well as<br />
members of the public. The Bangladesh Computer Council<br />
(BCC)- an autonomous agency established in 1990 provides<br />
technical assistance to the MoSICT.<br />
The development of telecommunications infrastructure is the<br />
responsibility of the Ministry of Post and Telecommunications<br />
(MoPT). It lends critical support to the e-government by<br />
promoting the growth of telecommunications sector<br />
commensurate with emerging demands and needs. While the<br />
ministry is responsible for the overall development of the<br />
telecommunications sector, Bangladesh Telecommunications<br />
Company Limited (BTCL) – a public limited company under the<br />
ministry has been mandated to provide basic telecommunications<br />
services throughout the country. It provides landline telephones
and domestic as well as international call services. Likewise, the<br />
Bangladesh Telecommunications Regulatory Commission<br />
(BTRC) - an autonomous body established under the Ministry in<br />
2002 is the licensing authority that regulates telecommunication<br />
service providers – both fixed line and mobile phones throughout<br />
the country. It is also responsible for promoting ICT application<br />
through, among others, oversight of the VSAT operators and<br />
internet service providers, the development of digitisation<br />
schemes and regulation of tariffs and standards. Table 1 lists<br />
major agencies involved along with their primary responsibilities.<br />
Table 1: Important Public Sector Actors in E-Government<br />
Government<br />
Ministry/Agency<br />
Prime Minister’s Office<br />
(E-Government Cell)<br />
Ministry of Science &<br />
Information and<br />
Communication<br />
Technology<br />
Bangladesh Computer<br />
Council<br />
Ministry of Post and<br />
Telecommunications<br />
Bangladesh<br />
Telecommunications<br />
Regulatory Commission<br />
(BTRC)<br />
Responsibilities<br />
Overall policy directions<br />
Policy formulation and<br />
mainstreaming ICT in the public<br />
sector<br />
Support MoSICT and provide<br />
training as well as advisory services<br />
to government and citizens.<br />
Develop telecommunication<br />
infrastructure and services<br />
Regulation of the<br />
telecommunications industry &<br />
licensing<br />
Ministry of Information Dissemination of information<br />
Ministry of Planning Support DBTF to realize its goals<br />
Ministry of Finance Support the e-government programs<br />
with appropriate allocation of funds<br />
Ministry of Education Development of curriculum for ICT<br />
education; computerisation of<br />
schools<br />
Ministry of Law, Justice<br />
and Parliamentary<br />
Affairs<br />
ICT Task Force/Digital<br />
Bangladesh Task Force<br />
National Information<br />
Management<br />
Committee (MoP)<br />
National ICT Education<br />
Task Force<br />
Review of ICT related laws and<br />
policies<br />
Mainstream ICT in the government,<br />
advise ministries/agencies and<br />
monitor progress<br />
Development of citizen<br />
identification card for service<br />
delivery purposes<br />
Advancing educational skills and<br />
quality through ICT<br />
273<br />
Source: Based on [14] & other sources<br />
Likewise, a set of policies and laws have been formulated and<br />
enacted in order to provide a legal framework for e-government in<br />
the country. The National ICT Policy formulated in 2002<br />
represents the first concrete measure that provides a<br />
comprehensive outline of the vision of e-government. The ICT<br />
policy 2002 presented e-government as a strategy for improving<br />
efficiency of the government, reducing wastage of resources and<br />
enhancing planning and raising the quality of public services. It<br />
also envisaged, among others, the establishment of<br />
telecommunication infrastructure nationwide, connecting to<br />
submarine fibre optic cable network, extending internet facility to<br />
rural areas, establishing cyber kiosks in post offices, Union<br />
Parishad and Upazila (sub-district) complexes, setting up an<br />
internet exchange and increasing the bandwidth capacity and<br />
availability [9]. Thus it had underscored the spread of ICT in<br />
governmental agencies across the country. The policy required<br />
each Ministry/Division to have an ICT unit comprised of ICT<br />
professionals and websites with policy documents and updated<br />
information.<br />
However, the implementation of the policy was anything but<br />
satisfactory. Among others, the lack of ownership and<br />
coordination among implementing agencies and absence of<br />
leadership have contributed to the failure of the policy. The<br />
Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Act was<br />
adopted in 2006. The Act was also intended to help prevent<br />
cybercrimes and safeguard online transactions so as to promote ecommerce.<br />
However, the Act could not be implemented in its true<br />
spirit as necessary rules and regulations were never introduced<br />
[9]. Following the launch of the Digital Bangladesh as the flagship<br />
project the government has promulgated a new ICT policy. The<br />
ICT Policy 2009 envisions the ICT as a tool to bring about<br />
‘transparent, accountable and responsible government’ [11]. It is<br />
fairly comprehensive for besides outlining specific objectives and<br />
priorities it has identified over 300 action items for<br />
implementation in key sectors of the economy in order to improve<br />
the delivery of services. It also seeks to develop human resources,<br />
enhance social equity and ensure cost-effective delivery of<br />
governmental services to support the national goal of becoming a<br />
middle-income country within 10 years and joining the ranks of<br />
developed nations within 30 years [11]. Another major legislation<br />
is the ICT Act 2009. This is, in fact, a slightly modified version of<br />
ICT Act 2006 which remained unimplemented. The Act provides<br />
legitimacy of the electronic records and digital signature. While it<br />
is true that the current legal framework of e-government is largely<br />
driven by ICT Policy 2009 and the ICT Act, 2009 a number of<br />
other tools and policy documents as listed in table 2 have had a<br />
significant bearing on e-government. Collectively, they provide a<br />
broad framework of e-governance in the country.<br />
Table 2: Major E-government Policies and Laws<br />
Policy/Legislation Objective(s)<br />
Telecommunications<br />
Act, 2001<br />
Facilitate liberalisation of<br />
telecommunications sector<br />
ICT Policy, 2002 Provide guidelines for development<br />
of the ICT sector
Internet Connection &<br />
Usage Policy, 2004<br />
Copyright (Amended)<br />
Act, 2005<br />
Provide a framework for the use of<br />
internet facilities<br />
Protect intellectual property rights<br />
and legalise electronic<br />
communication<br />
ICT Act, 2006 Provide legal basis of the ICT<br />
Right to Information<br />
Act, 2009<br />
Provide legal entitlement to citizens<br />
to seek public information and<br />
demand transparency &<br />
accountability of public institutions<br />
ICT Policy, 2009 Provide an up-to-date and<br />
comprehensive framework for the<br />
development of ICT with action<br />
plans consistent with Digital<br />
Bangladesh vision<br />
ICT Act, 2009 Improve legal structure of ICT by<br />
incorporating necessary<br />
amendments to ICT Act, 2006<br />
Broadband Policy, 2009 Facilitate the growth of high-speed<br />
internet services at an affordable<br />
price<br />
Telecommunications<br />
Act (Amended), 2010<br />
International Long<br />
Distance<br />
Telecommunication<br />
Services Policy, 2010<br />
Update Telecommunications Act,<br />
2001<br />
Facilitate low-cost ILDTS<br />
including VOIP services<br />
Source: Based on [14] and other sources<br />
4. TRANSFORMATION OF GOVERNANCE<br />
AND SERVICE DELIVERY: SELECTED E-<br />
GOVERNMENT PROGRAMS<br />
Although a late starter, the government of Bangladesh has<br />
initiated and implemented a large number of schemes with the aim<br />
of realizing the visions and goals as outlined above. More<br />
specifically, these programs seek to transform governance and<br />
service delivery system offering citizens with improved services.<br />
In this section of the paper we focus on selected e-government<br />
schemes that portray the current state of e-government in<br />
Bangladesh and the progress made to-date in various spheres.<br />
These are some well-known programmes and they capture G2C,<br />
G2B and G2G dimensions.<br />
4.1 Web-Presence of Government & Forms<br />
Concerted governmental drives during recent years have resulted<br />
in a considerable progress towards making government<br />
information and services available online. One clear indication is<br />
that most government agencies including ministries, divisions,<br />
departments and statutory bodies have web-presence with useful<br />
information and contact details. The national web portal of the<br />
government of Bangladesh (www.bangladesh.gov.bd) serves as a<br />
one-stop access to information and services offered by various<br />
274<br />
agencies and departments. Governmental websites and portals<br />
have begun to offer services beyond information dissemination.<br />
The Prime Minister’s Office has launched a website<br />
(www.forms.gov.bd) which has made virtually all government<br />
forms accessible online. This is a significant development in that<br />
the citizens and businesses are now able to access variety of forms<br />
without having to visit respective offices. This saves time and<br />
helps them avoid the hassle associated with visiting various<br />
agencies.<br />
4.2 Digitisation of Land Records System<br />
This involves digitisation of country’s complex and age-old land<br />
ownership records that are source of huge corruption and<br />
litigations. Following several successful pilot projects the<br />
government decided to spread the benefits of such experiments<br />
throughout the country. Currently in progress, this project would<br />
drastically reduce the complexities and corruption associated with<br />
land administration. This would greatly simplify land<br />
administration and put an end to the current practice where<br />
citizens need to visit more than 10 different agencies to obtain<br />
their records and/or to have them updated.<br />
4.3 Online Hajj Information Management System<br />
The Online Hajj Information Management system of the Ministry<br />
of Religious Affairs is an example of innovation in area of G2C<br />
service. In place since 2002 the portal serves as a source of<br />
information to thousands of pilgrims who go to Mecca to perform<br />
Hajj every year. Besides allowing verification of information like<br />
their location, health condition and flight details etc. the<br />
interactive features of the portal allow easy and reliable<br />
communication between pilgrims and their relatives.<br />
4.4 Land Resources Information System<br />
The Agro-Ecological Zone (AEZ) database of the Bangladesh<br />
Agricultural Research Council (BARC) contains information on<br />
country’s land resources including geography, soil, and climate,<br />
hydrology, cropping system and crop sustainability. This is used<br />
to generate readily accessible information of the physical land<br />
resources of the country for use by researchers, extension workers,<br />
and decision makers in land and agricultural resource<br />
management as well as for agricultural planning. This has served<br />
as the basis for the development of a more comprehensive and<br />
multi-scale GIS-based Land Resources Information System which<br />
helps deal with the intricacies of land resource planning under<br />
complex environmental conditions.<br />
4.5 Electronic Birth Registration System, RCC<br />
The Electronic Birth Registration Information System (EBRIS)<br />
introduced by Rajshahi City Corporation (RCC) with technical<br />
assistance from the UNICEF has earned award as an innovative egovernment<br />
at the local level. It allows registration of birth<br />
electronically, generates birth certificate and immunisation card<br />
for each newly born babies and list of babies due for vaccination<br />
on a particular day. The EBRIS has replaced the manual process<br />
of registration where multiple agencies were involved thus<br />
helping remove duplication of entries and other problem. Also, it<br />
has contributed to achieve near 100 % immunisation coverage in<br />
RCC area [1].
4.6 Computerisation of Railway Ticketing System<br />
Under one of the early e-government projects the Ministry of<br />
Communication computerised the railway seat reservation and<br />
ticketing system nationwide. In operation since 1996 this is now<br />
being expanded to e-ticketing where the passengers of inter-city<br />
trains will be able to purchase electronic ticket using mobile<br />
phones and other devices. This would help rail users to avoid<br />
hassle of travelling all the way to train stations and waiting in long<br />
queues for collecting tickets.<br />
4.7 Automation of Internal Processes: The<br />
Bangladesh Bank<br />
While the drives for process automation can be found in virtually<br />
every public entity, the Bangladesh Bank is among the handful of<br />
agencies that have been successful in integrating ICT in its core<br />
business processes. As such all aspects of its operation including<br />
internal management, export receipts and import payments and<br />
monitoring and supervision of commercial banks have been<br />
automated. It has also made a significant progress with electronic<br />
banking through the introduction of automated check clearance<br />
and e-payment gateway, online money transfers and payment of<br />
utility bills via the internet.<br />
4.8 HRM Database, Ministry of Public Administration<br />
The Ministry of Establishment - recently renamed as the Ministry<br />
of Public Administration was among the first to computerise part<br />
of its internal operation. The Personnel Management Information<br />
System (PMIS) is an online database that covers information of all<br />
class I officers of the government of Bangladesh. It has shown<br />
immense benefits for the ministry as well as the concerned<br />
officials. The supervisory authority uses the database for<br />
personnel management functions including the management of<br />
their annual confidential reports (ACRs). The respective officer<br />
can access his or her personal data sheet (PDS); it also allows<br />
him/her to request updating personal information to reflect<br />
changes to situation such as completion of a training program.<br />
This also helps them to track their career development and<br />
provide regular information on career opportunities.<br />
4.9 Process Automation, NBR<br />
As a result of the successful implementation of a number of<br />
donor-funded projects like Customs Administration<br />
Modernisation Project, Excise, Taxes and Customs Data<br />
Computerisation Project and Modernisation and Automation<br />
Project, much of the core businesses of the National Board of<br />
Revenue (NBR) have already been automated. Thus NBR has<br />
recorded a considerable success in its operations and objectives.<br />
For example 90% of country’s trade are now fully automated<br />
which reduces the cost of doing business on the one hand and<br />
facilitates trade and commerce on the other. This has also<br />
contributed to reduce tax evasion raising governmental revenue<br />
considerably. Significant progress has also been made with<br />
regard to e-taxation especially filing of tax returns by individuals<br />
and small businesses.<br />
4.10 E-Procurement<br />
Currently under active implementation the eGP project seeks to<br />
make public procurement system efficient, transparent and<br />
accountable. This would allow the entire cycle of procurement<br />
decisions and actions from the opening of tender to evaluation of<br />
bids and authorisation and final payment could be done<br />
275<br />
electronically. It will not only reduce time required in completing<br />
tender procedures, it will also reduce corruption leading to<br />
improvement in quality of government purchases. While the<br />
government plans to bring the entire public procurement system<br />
under e-procurement in phases, initially four government<br />
departments/agencies that handle lion’s share of government<br />
contracts - the Directorate of Roads & Highways, Local<br />
Government Engineering Department, Bangladesh Water<br />
Development Board and Rural Electrification Board - have been<br />
selected for the first phase of e-tendering pilot project (Daily<br />
Inqilab, 3 June, 2011).<br />
These alongside many other similar schemes in various spheres of<br />
public administration indicate a new trend where ICT is applied to<br />
improve internal efficiency of the government agencies at the<br />
same time making sure that the citizens and businesses get fast,<br />
reliable and hassle-free services. Clearly, e-initiatives cover all<br />
possible dimensions (G2C, G2B and G2G) of e-government and<br />
offer enormous prospects to redesign governance and service<br />
delivery in future. Progress already achieved, limited though<br />
compared to other similar contexts, like online presence of<br />
government agencies and interactive features is no less significant.<br />
When considered against e-government maturity models, it is<br />
evident that Bangladesh has progressed from information stage to<br />
permit online interaction and transactions with government<br />
agencies [for more on this, see 12, 3 & 4]. Such features allow<br />
citizens to download various government forms, policies and<br />
regulations and a range of other useful services at their own<br />
convenience. Also there are cases where people are able to pay<br />
utility bills, buy train tickets, register for admission into public<br />
universities and get results of public examinations using mobile<br />
phones. However, still benefits of e-government are limited due<br />
mainly to factors like insufficient infrastructure development and<br />
connectivity, inadequate interactive and transactional features and<br />
widespread digital divide in the society.<br />
5. BRIDGING DIGITAL DIVIDE: E-<br />
GOVERNMENT AT LOCAL &<br />
COMMUNITY LEVELS<br />
Such problems however have not escaped attention of the policy<br />
makers and other actors. This is evident in various efforts made to<br />
find innovative solutions to such problems thereby ensuring the<br />
benefits of e-government are widely shared. The Union<br />
Information & Service Centres (UISCs) are cases in point. Driven<br />
by the desire of achieving twin goals of Digital Bangladesh, i.e.,<br />
connecting citizens and delivering services at their doorsteps<br />
UISCs have been established throughout the country (Daily Star,<br />
1 Nov, 2010). Conceived and implemented under the UNDP<br />
funded A2I program, UISCs in fact represents a bold attempt at<br />
bridging digital divide and connecting the rural communities to<br />
the Internet. Equipped with computers and internet UISCs are<br />
now functioning in all 4501 unions – the lowest tier of local<br />
government offering useful services to citizens. The services<br />
offered in UISCs range from email, word processing, printing<br />
and scanning to access government forms, birth and death<br />
registration information, passport and visa support and<br />
information on public examinations to health, education and<br />
disaster management. Modelled on the successful Gyandoot<br />
project of Uttar Pradesh, India the UISCs are housed in in the<br />
local Union Parishad office and managed by local entrepreneurs.<br />
While the initial funding and hardware support came from the A2I
program and the Ministry of Local Government is responsible for<br />
coordinating the overall activities and building capacity by<br />
training relevant personnel [14] the sustainability of the scheme<br />
has been taken care of by involving local youths who run the<br />
centres and charge a modest fee for the services rendered.<br />
It is pertinent to note that a number of non-governmental<br />
initiatives have already laid the foundation for schemes like<br />
UISCs. NGO initiatives have demonstrated success in reaching<br />
out to the unreachable in the countryside. The GramenPhone<br />
Community Information Centres (GCIS) and Pallitathya Kendra<br />
(Village Information Centres) are among the leading nongovernmental<br />
initiatives in this area. GrameenPhone has set up<br />
over 500 information centres in remote locations seeking to<br />
enhance the rural communities’ access to internet and multi-media<br />
services. Managed by local entrepreneurs, who receive training<br />
and initial support from GrameenPhone, these centres offer wide<br />
range of off-line and on-line services. Usual GrameenPhone<br />
services (e.g., payphones and electronic recharge for prepaid<br />
mobile accounts services) aside, these centres provide internet<br />
surfing and emailing, chatting, computer composing, scanning and<br />
printing and information on health and education. Plans are<br />
underway to expand the range of services available via such<br />
centres. Similarly the initial success of the Pallitathya Kendra<br />
project of Development Research Network (D.Net) has led to its<br />
subsequent expansion. Currently, there are over 100 Pallitathya<br />
Kendras around the country that provide IT skills, training in<br />
computer operations, advanced IT courses, ancillary services and<br />
livelihood information. Citizens use these centres to access variety<br />
of information from common agricultural problems, socio-legal<br />
advice and financial services to medical issues [14]. An important<br />
feature of the PK is that mobile InfoLadies help make services<br />
available to those who cannot physically reach the centres. These<br />
Infoladies on their bicycles carry notes, phones and medical<br />
equipment thus making the services to those most disadvantaged<br />
and in the remotest corners of the country.<br />
The other initiatives that seek to address digital divide and make<br />
the benefits of ICT available to the disadvantaged groups include<br />
e-huts and Tathya Toris. BracNet - an affiliate of the Bangladesh<br />
Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC) established e-huts with<br />
the aim of making internet accessible to those living in rural areas<br />
at an affordable price. Currently e-huts provide technological<br />
solutions for small businesses and local people. BracNet aims to<br />
expand the scope and reach by multiplying the number of e-huts<br />
to 1000 - each serving as a one-stop shop for various types of<br />
digital services including internet browsing, basic computer<br />
training, broadband internet services, photocopying and scanning<br />
[6]. Likewise, Tathya Tori (information boat) project of the<br />
GrameenPhone is an innovative scheme that seeks to educate and<br />
empower river-based people with information and services [15].<br />
Under the support from CARE Bangladesh Tathya Toris are<br />
equipped with digital content and serve as mobile centres to<br />
provide internet and associated services to the people living in<br />
haor areas. Besides the provision of periodic medical services<br />
and computer training, Tathya Toris also make available<br />
information on agriculture, fisheries and other livelihood matters.<br />
6. MAJOR CONSTRAINTS &<br />
CHALLENGES<br />
It is obvious from the preceding discussions that Bangladesh has<br />
made slow but steady progress towards implementation of e-<br />
276<br />
government. Wide variety of measures undertaken and<br />
implemented in various spheres has helped raise country’s eprofile<br />
and readiness. However, still the overall progress is rather<br />
modest when considered against other countries around the world.<br />
The 2010 e-government survey ranks Bangladesh at 134position<br />
out of 185 nations globally [19]. Although Bangladesh has<br />
advanced from the earlier position of 142 in 2008 and placed<br />
herself ahead of Bhutan and Pakistan, on the whole this progress<br />
is far from satisfactory given the fact that compared to many other<br />
countries around the world and some of her neighbours (e.g. India,<br />
Sri Lanka and Maldives) this rank is abysmally low and the level<br />
of preparedness is far from what is required to provide integrated<br />
services to the citizens. Table 3 shows the current state of ICT<br />
infrastructure in Bangladesh and the nation’s overall position in<br />
World E-government Index. Currently, governmental drives for<br />
expanding the benefits of e-government are handicapped by a<br />
range of challenges and constraints:<br />
Table 3: Bangladesh’s Position in World E-Government<br />
Development Index, 2010<br />
World E-Government Development<br />
Index Rank<br />
Online Service Component (Rank 60)<br />
a. Points for emerging<br />
information service<br />
b. Points for enhanced<br />
information services<br />
c. Points for transaction services<br />
d. Points for connected<br />
approach<br />
Telecommunication Infrastructure<br />
Component (Rank 161)<br />
a. Estimated user per 100<br />
inhabitants<br />
b. Fixed telephone lines per 100<br />
inhabitants:<br />
c. Mobile subscriber per 100<br />
inhabitants<br />
d. Personal computers per 100<br />
inhabitants:<br />
e. Total fixed broadband per<br />
100 inhabitants:<br />
Human Capital Component (Rank 167)<br />
a. Adult literacy rate:<br />
a. Combined gross enrolment<br />
ratio for<br />
primary, secondary and<br />
tertiary schools:<br />
E Participation index (Rank 102)<br />
Source: [17: p. 117]<br />
2010 2008<br />
134 out<br />
of 190<br />
48<br />
44<br />
05<br />
15<br />
0.32<br />
0.84<br />
27.90<br />
2.25<br />
0.03<br />
53.50<br />
48.46<br />
0.1000<br />
142 out<br />
of 192<br />
NA<br />
NA<br />
NA<br />
NA<br />
0.31<br />
0.79<br />
13.25<br />
2.42<br />
0.00<br />
47.50<br />
56.01<br />
Rank 78<br />
6.1 Infrastructural Challenges<br />
The infrastructure serves as the backbone of e-government. It<br />
encompasses computers and telecommunications capacity in terms<br />
of wireless and broadband networks. In order to avail the fruits of<br />
ICT revolution compatible ICT infrastructure must be in place.<br />
Viewed from this perspective, the overall situation in Bangladesh<br />
is hardly satisfactory. Computer Ownership per 100 people is
abysmally low (2.25). In addition to those presented in table 3<br />
other evidence indicates a poor state of affairs. Internet penetration<br />
rate has been very low: there are only 204 internet service<br />
providers (IPS) 80% based in Dhaka, and the number of regular<br />
internet users is 3 million. Tele-density per 100 people is 32.04;<br />
number of fixed phone lines in 2007 of 1.12 mil and mobile phone<br />
users of 76.43 million (2011). In fact, inadequate infrastructure is<br />
a huge challenge for the government as well as the citizens.<br />
Despite very many efforts made to build strong ICT infrastructure<br />
still most government agencies operate with manual systems and<br />
procedures making digitisation of data an enormous task. The ratio<br />
of personal computers to staff of government offices has improved<br />
–but still low. This means that many of those junior officers and<br />
those working at the field levels are without much needed<br />
computers which hamper the delivery of services online. Also,<br />
government departments and agencies are not interconnected<br />
between themselves and with their field offices; the networking<br />
infrastructure is weak outside capital and major cities [12].<br />
Given the fact that ICT penetration in Bangladesh is still low,<br />
people having no or limited access to Internet are unable to enjoy<br />
the benefits of e-government, even if services are available<br />
electronically. Evidence shows that despite recent improvements<br />
in ICT infrastructure, Bangladesh is still at the bottom of network<br />
readiness index and ranked 118 among 133 countries [8]. The<br />
proportion of households with computers increased from 0.8 in<br />
2002 to 1.9 in 2007 and the proportion of households with internet<br />
has increased from 0.1 in 2002 to 1.3 in 2007. The problem is<br />
exacerbated by inadequate supply of electricity and the<br />
concentration of PC and Internet users in major cities and towns.<br />
Majority of the population in Bangladesh are without electricity<br />
and those having access to it also experience regular blackout and<br />
disruptions without notice. Likewise, computers are still too<br />
expensive for most Bangladeshi households and the Internet<br />
remains costly on the one hand and unreliable in most parts on the<br />
other. Even the introduction of mobile Internet and WiMax<br />
technology that promises to break the barrier of reaching the<br />
unreachable has recorded limited success given that very few<br />
users are currently prepared or trained to use such devices to<br />
access government information and services.<br />
6.2 Digital Divide<br />
Bangladesh is a country of extreme disparities. Such disparities<br />
seem to be widening in recent times as the vast majority of the<br />
population remain unaffected by the ICT revolution,<br />
notwithstanding the governmental drives to bridge the divide by<br />
making the ICT services to those who cannot afford them.<br />
Without doubt, the existing programs are steps in the right<br />
direction- but they are grossly inadequate to tackle the massive<br />
gaps created by the ICT revolution. The government is faced with<br />
an enormous challenge to ensuring that people of various socioeconomic<br />
strata have equitable access to services and benefits. As<br />
noted, access to Internet and ownership of PCs are<br />
disproportionately concentrated in Dhaka and major cities. It is<br />
true that the internet users and broadband networks are growing,<br />
however this appears to create further divide between the cities<br />
and rural areas, between the educated and affluent segments of the<br />
population and the poor and ordinary masses. Although data on<br />
gender, age of ICT users are unavailable, it is conceivable that the<br />
vast majority of those using ICT in Bangladesh are male and<br />
young – not female and elderly. Prevailing problems like massive<br />
277<br />
poverty and inequality, illiteracy and widespread corruption<br />
contribute to widen the gaps further under of e-government.<br />
6.3 Inadequate Human Capital<br />
Low levels of literacy among the general masses and lack of<br />
efficiency among the government servants responsible for<br />
implementing e-government initiatives frustrate governmental<br />
drives. It is ironical that despite being one of the most populous<br />
countries in the world, inadequate human capital continues to be a<br />
major barrier to e-government in Bangladesh. First, lack of literacy<br />
poses a formidable challenge to the development of a competent<br />
user group in the country. Currently Bangladesh’s Human Capital<br />
Index is only 0.5182 with adult literacy rate of 53.5% and the<br />
combined gross enrolment of primary, secondary and tertiary<br />
schools being 48.46% [19]. This low level of literacy makes it<br />
difficult for nearly half of the population fails to understand any<br />
meaning of e-government. Second, though projects are underway to<br />
promote IT literacy among the students the use of those equipment,<br />
especially in rural areas, is far from optimal because of such<br />
setbacks as interrupted power supply, poor location, unavailability<br />
of trained personnel, low motivation and awareness among those<br />
involved.<br />
Third, the current level of skills and expertise available in the public<br />
sector is inadequate. A recent study shows that 52% of the officers<br />
of the Bangladesh who are IT literate do not find their skills<br />
sufficient to perform daily work and only 38.7% use ICT in official<br />
activities. A vast majority of the officers (82%) felt that they needed<br />
training to be able to discharge their duties [13]. Training programs<br />
run by government and private institutions have generally failed to<br />
keep pace with the developments and growing demands; whatever<br />
training is available rarely need-based and carefully planned to<br />
allow application in the workplace. The Bangladesh experience also<br />
shows disconnects between high level policy development and lower<br />
level engagement and commitment, between infrastructure capacity<br />
and field level operations. Many public officials have access to<br />
computers and internet but they rarely make appropriate use of such<br />
facilities. It merely suggests that the potential of such tools remains<br />
mostly underutilised; they are used primarily for purposes other than<br />
service delivery for example word-processing, browsing the internet<br />
and for preparing presentational materials.<br />
6.4 Financial, Legislative and Regulatory Constraints<br />
E-Government in Bangladesh is still in its infancy. Despite the<br />
recent drives and programs, the vision of using ICT to improve<br />
governance and quality of life of citizens has not been fully<br />
embedded in the legal and regulatory framework [14] As<br />
indicated, the current legislative and regulatory framework of egovernment<br />
driven mainly by two important documents - the ICT<br />
Policy 2009 and the ICT Act 2009 has addressed many of the<br />
inadequacies and concerns, yet it fails to provide a comprehensive<br />
and robust basis for e-government. While the government aims to<br />
provide greater public access to ICT and facilitate transactions and<br />
services, the existing laws are insufficient in terms of privacy,<br />
security and intellectual property rights [14]. In the current<br />
context there is a feeling that a far more comprehensive legislative<br />
framework is required than at present, not just for tackling<br />
cybercrimes and for electronic certification and authentication<br />
purposes but also for standardisation of government data and<br />
information, security of shared services platforms and the like [2].<br />
Needless to add that poor legal and regulatory framework along<br />
with insufficient ICT infrastructure serves as a fundamental
constraint on online and integrated services. Also, a key challenge<br />
of e-government in Bangladesh is limited funding from the<br />
government and its heavy reliance on donor support. Budgetary<br />
allocation for e-government has remained inadequate; although it<br />
has increased in volume it continues to remain very low as a<br />
percentage of total developmental spending. The planned target of<br />
increasing governmental spending for ICT sector to 2% of the<br />
annual development plan (ADP) has remained far way off. In<br />
2009-10 budget the government allocated $ 20.83m to ICT<br />
development which represents a mere 0.43% of the total ADP.<br />
7. CONCLUSION<br />
It is obvious that Bangladesh has made slow but important<br />
progress towards implementation of e-government. Although<br />
initial drives began in the late 1990s, the e-government campaign<br />
received a major push in recent times which paved the way for the<br />
development of key ICT infrastructure – both hardware and software<br />
- and some important initiatives. Variety of schemes initiated<br />
and implemented since the early years have raised Bangladesh’s eprofile<br />
and e-readiness. Currently virtually all public agencies<br />
including those at the field level have their web-presence; they<br />
also offer informational and in limited cases, interactive and<br />
transactional services. Bangladesh has also seen the introduction<br />
of a number of innovative schemes that promise to transform<br />
nature of governance and pattern of interaction between the<br />
government and citizens and deliver significant gains in terms of<br />
efficiency, convenience and accountability, among others.<br />
Attempts are currently underway to expand the range of services<br />
that could be offered online and to ensure that those without<br />
access to new technology are able to enjoy the benefits of ICT<br />
revolution. Taken together they have marked the beginning of<br />
citizen-centric public administration: members of the public are<br />
now provided with alternative channels of accessing services in a<br />
more hassle-free environment.<br />
However, it must be emphasized that e-government has yet to<br />
bring about a fundamental change in public governance as most<br />
programs have not gone beyond informational and interactive<br />
stages and the vast majority of services continue to be provided<br />
through traditional channels. The expansion of e-government<br />
benefits has been handicapped by a range of constraints and<br />
limitations. As shown, the barriers and challenges that Bangladesh<br />
faces are complex and multi-dimensional which must be overcome<br />
in order to achieve radical change to the process of governance<br />
and service delivery. In fact, the experience of e-government<br />
around the world shows that there is no quick fix to such<br />
challenges. It requires robust leadership, continuous drive and<br />
innovation in different spheres where the government, the private<br />
sector, NGOs and members of the community all have important<br />
roles to play. Perhaps the most critical in this regard is the<br />
commitment and conviction on part of political and administrative<br />
leadership to carry this task forward. Without such commitment<br />
and sustained efforts the vision of Digital Bangladesh is unlikely<br />
to be realized.<br />
8. REFERENCES<br />
[1] Akther, M.S., Onishi, T. and Kidokoro, T. (2007).’ Egovernment<br />
in a developing country: citizen-centric approach for<br />
278<br />
success’, International Journal of Electronic Governance, 1(1): 38-<br />
51<br />
[2] Bangladesh Enterprise Institute (BEI) (2010). Realizing the<br />
Vision of Digital Bangladesh through E-Government, July.<br />
[3] Bhuiyan, M.S.H. (2010). E-Government Applications in<br />
Bangladesh - Status and Challenges, Paper presented at Fourth<br />
International Conference on Theory and Practice of Electronic<br />
Governance October 25-28, Beijing China.<br />
[4] Bhuiyan, S.H. (2011). ‘Modernizing Bangladesh public<br />
Administration through e-governance: Benefits and challenges’,<br />
Government Information Quarterly, 28: 54-65<br />
[5] Bhatnagar, S. (2004). E-Government: From Vision to<br />
Implementation, New Delhi: Sage Publications<br />
[6] Ebrahim, A. Pirson, M. and Mangas, P. (2009). ‘Brummer and<br />
the bracNet Investment’, Harvard Business School, April.<br />
[7] Faroqi, M.G. and Siddiquee, N.A. (2011). ‘Limping into the<br />
Information Age; Challenges of E-Government in Bangladesh’,<br />
Journal of Comparative Asian Development, 10(1): 33-61.<br />
[8] GITR (2009). The Networked Readiness Index & Ranking<br />
2009-2010, The Global Information Technology Report 2009-10,<br />
World Economic Forum.<br />
[9] Government of Bangladesh (GoB) (2002). National Information<br />
and Communication Technology (ICT), Policy 2002, Dhaka:<br />
Ministry of Science and Information and Communication<br />
Technology.<br />
[10] GOB (2009a). E-Government Bulletin January: Access to<br />
Information Program, Dhaka: Prime Minister’s Office<br />
[11] GOB (2009b). National Information and Communication<br />
Technology (ICT), Policy 2009, Dhaka: Ministry of Science and<br />
Information and Communication Technology.<br />
[12] Hasan, S. (2011). E-Government in Bangladesh Public<br />
administration: Impact on the Procedure of Interaction, PhD thesis<br />
submitted to the University of Sydney, August.<br />
[13] Hoque, S.M.S. and Zaman, F. (undated). ‘E-Government:<br />
Preparedness of the Bangladesh Civil Service’. Unpublished paper.<br />
[14] Institute of Governance Studies (IGS) (2009). Digital<br />
Bangladesh: The Beginning of Citizen-Centric E-Government? IGS:<br />
BRAC University.<br />
[15] Islam, M.A. and Tsuji, K. (2009).’Bridging digital Divide in<br />
Bangladesh: Study on Community Information Centres’, The<br />
Electronic Library, 29(4); 506-522.<br />
[16] OECD (2003). The E-Government Imperative, OECD E-<br />
Government Studies.<br />
[17] Rahman, T. and Khan, N.A. (2012). ‘Reckoning Electronic<br />
Government in Bangladesh’, International Journal of Public<br />
Administration, 35: 112-121<br />
[18] United Nations (UN) (2008). E-Government Survey: From E-<br />
Government to Connected Governance, Ney York.<br />
[19] UN (2010). Global e-Government Survey, 2010, UN<br />
Department of Economics and Social Affairs.
Evaluating and Assessing a Typology of Ubiquitous City<br />
Services by Classifying and Assigning Actual Services<br />
from an Inventory of Identified Services in Practice<br />
Jungwoo Lee<br />
jlee@yonsei.ac.kr<br />
Hyejung Lee<br />
h.jlee@yonsei.ac.kr<br />
Taesung Kim<br />
Yonsei University<br />
Yonsei University IT Policy & Strategy Research Institute<br />
Seodaemungu, Yonseiro 50, NMH 412 Seodaemungu, Yonseiro 50, NMH 412 Seodaemungu, Yonseiro 50<br />
120-749, Republic of Korea, Seoul 120-749, Republic of Korea, Seoul 120-749, Republic of Korea, Seoul<br />
+82-10-5398-7751<br />
+82-2-2123-4526<br />
+82-2-2123-8308<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
Two trends are obvious in urban management. Urban areas are<br />
increasing in scope and population worldwide, and ubiquitous<br />
services(u-services) are becoming critical in urban management<br />
worldwide. Though many u-services are under development, no<br />
consensus seems to be made concerning common typology,<br />
though a number of frameworks are suggested. In this study,<br />
efforts are concerted to heuristically validate a rather<br />
comprehensive typology of u-city services. Using 228 u-services,<br />
inventoried and presented in u-Eco City projects in Republic of<br />
Korea, classifying exercises are conducted, by three experts in the<br />
field, against a most popularly quoted typology. Findings indicate<br />
that the selected typology is high on comprehensively<br />
exhaustiveness and empirical applicability while low on mutual<br />
exclusivity, simplicity and theoretical contribution. Implications<br />
for improving the typology are suggested followed by limitations<br />
and directions for further research.<br />
Categories and Subject Descriptors<br />
K.4.0 [COMPUTERS AND SOCIETY]: General<br />
General Terms<br />
Design, Standardization<br />
Keywords<br />
U-City Services, Service Classification, Classification, Validation,<br />
Service Typology, Typology<br />
1. INTRODUCTION<br />
With the advances in ubiquitous technologies, attempts were<br />
made to change the paradigm of urban development by<br />
introducing those technologies into city planning and<br />
management. These attempts are attracting attentions from city<br />
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Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to<br />
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and/or a fee.<br />
ICEGOV '12, October 22 - 25 2012, Albany, NY, United States, NY, USA<br />
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1200-4/12/10…$15.00.<br />
279<br />
sgtkimts@yonsei.ac.kr<br />
administrators. Many cities are developing and implementing uservices<br />
using U-technologies, positioning themselves as u-city or<br />
smart city [1], [2], [17].<br />
U-services are (1) available to a large number of beneficiaries as<br />
they cover almost every dimension of human life and municipal<br />
administration; (2) likely to develop into convergence services by<br />
combining with many different functions; and (3) expected to help<br />
enhance efficiency through inter-service interactions unlike the<br />
existing unit services which are typically walled by functions. In<br />
reality, local governments are developing u-services independent<br />
from each other due to current institutional walls. This seems to<br />
lead into inefficiencies in u-service operations as well as<br />
overlapping investments [3], [4], [5].<br />
To overcome these problems, it is important to standardize uservices.<br />
Relevant authorities’ service systems which have been<br />
separately managed should be connected and talk to each other<br />
using a bit standardized definitions and technical details, enabling<br />
us to build integrated operations centers for different u-cities and<br />
services [17].<br />
These integrated operation centers may play a critical role in<br />
providing efficient u-services to its people and enhancing their<br />
convenience of living and quality of life by using state-of-the-art<br />
IT infrastructure and ubiquitous information services to make the<br />
urban environment more sustainable. For connection and<br />
expansion of u-services, it is necessary to classify the services<br />
first so that their types and interrelationships can be identified,<br />
theoretically and practically. For this purpose, previous studies<br />
have attempted to develop and synthesize a u-service typology.<br />
However, most of these typologies are based on theoretical or<br />
normative point of view. The appropriateness of these typologies<br />
is scarcely put into empirical verification.<br />
In this regard, this study selected a relatively comprehensive<br />
typology of u-services presented in a academic literature, and<br />
evaluate this typology, heuristically and intensively, using 228 uservices<br />
inventoried and identified in U-Eco City projects [1].<br />
Results of the study are presented at the end with suggestions for<br />
enhancements.<br />
2. RELATED WORK<br />
2.1 U-service typology<br />
Table 1 list the previous studies in which any type of u-service<br />
typology are presented. In studies conducted before 2008, the u-
services were mainly classified in terms of service providers,<br />
urban activities/functions and special differences. Many of those<br />
studies failed to depart from the patterns of classifying the<br />
services by pre-defined administrative functions. Moreover, they<br />
have a limitation in understanding inter-service relationships, due<br />
to the lack of view on bigger goals such as objectives, and<br />
methods of classifications [9], [10], [13], [15]. K. S. Jeong claims<br />
to propose an integrated typology combining and merging existing<br />
typologies [6]. His typology uses four larger categories, nine<br />
medium categories and thirty four small categories, covering<br />
physical space, electronic space, service types, and aspects of<br />
service providers, element technologies and values. It is claimed<br />
as a flexible, comprehensive and multi-dimensional typology that<br />
may allow components and elements of a city, providing criteria<br />
Table 1. Previous Typologies of U-Services<br />
for applying in a variety of combinations. In addition to Jeong,<br />
others also have proposed u-service typologies. However, no<br />
efforts have been concerted minimum level of evaluation of such<br />
typologies.<br />
These typologies seem to be not much based on empirical<br />
evidence but formed from a theoretical or normative perspective.<br />
The ideal typology of any kind in scientific research is based on<br />
empirical induction from corroborative data, but actually in social<br />
science research it is difficult to derive such an inductive model<br />
[13], [16]. Therefore, in social sciences, models of intentional<br />
classification are commonly used as alternatives, which are<br />
difficult to evaluate in terms of validity because they have not<br />
been verified with empirical evidence.<br />
Type Service category Service areas<br />
Personal Life Culture/Entertainment, Health/Welfare<br />
Industry classification,<br />
Industrial Economics<br />
KETI 2006 [15]<br />
Business/Commerce, Communications/Broadcasting/Publishing,<br />
Construction, Finance/Insurance, Logistics/Transportation, Information<br />
Public Administration General Administration, Social Security Administration<br />
Public sector<br />
Facilities management, Environmental,<br />
Security /Police/Safety, Transportation, Complaints/Administrative<br />
Service provider, Jung<br />
(2007)[9]<br />
Private sector<br />
Corporations<br />
Individuals<br />
Business/Commerce,Communications/Broadcasting/Publishing,Finance/Ins<br />
urance, Logistics/Transportation, Construction, Information<br />
Dwelling-houses, home, health/welfare, education,<br />
culture/recreation/tourism<br />
Industry support U-work, U-convention<br />
City activities and Community support U-government, U-administration, U-tourism, U-office/business, U-learning<br />
features, Lee (2007)<br />
[10]<br />
Life support<br />
Construct city<br />
U-home, U-health, U-Prevention/Police Administration<br />
U-Port, U-underground facility, U-Traffic, U-Facilities Management, U-<br />
Environmental Management<br />
City component‧<br />
features, Lim (2008)<br />
[12]<br />
Life<br />
Industry<br />
Public<br />
U-Dwelling-houses, U-Education, U-Broadcasting/Communication, U-<br />
Prevention/Police Administration<br />
U-Production, U-Business, U-Logistics, U-security<br />
U-Defence, U-administration, U-health/welfare, U-Culture/Tourism, U-<br />
Traffic/Transportation<br />
Environment U-environment, U-disaster<br />
Laws Regulations<br />
Spatial unit Building, street, district, facility, city, broadband<br />
Space factor<br />
Spatial facilities<br />
Comprehensive<br />
By whom<br />
typology for U-city Human factor<br />
For whom<br />
service, Jeong (2009)<br />
Goals<br />
[6]<br />
Activities<br />
Function factor<br />
media facilities, Unit Space control facilities, Community complex,<br />
integrated control center<br />
Public, private, public-private partnership<br />
Public agencies, citizens, Company<br />
Life support, business support, industrial support<br />
Living healthy, Security and Safety, Community, Education, Economy,<br />
Leisure, Culture<br />
Behaviours Living, Working, Moving, Playing, Cybering<br />
Commonalities Common-based services, Specialized services, Potential service<br />
Also, there are not many studies of the criteria that can be used to<br />
evaluate the social science models of classification. Since it is<br />
difficult to verify the social science models empirically, a<br />
theoretical evaluation must be involved, but there have been few<br />
attempts to study the criteria by which to verify them theoretically.<br />
Recently, in order to resolve the problem, Y. H. Chun suggested<br />
five conditions under which to evaluate the fitness of a typology<br />
[13]. This study aims to make clear the ambiguous definitions of<br />
u-services by empirically and theoretically evaluating Jeong’s<br />
280<br />
typology in view of the five conditions suggested and to suggest a<br />
way to build a better typology.<br />
2.2 General Conditions to be a Good<br />
Typology<br />
Chun suggested that the classification model for a desirable<br />
typology should meet five general conditions: 1) exhaustiveness,<br />
2) mutual exclusiveness, 3) parsimony, 4) empirical workability,<br />
and 5) theoretical fruitfulness [13], [16].
Exhaustiveness indicates that all categories should be included<br />
within a typology. For U-services, exhaustiveness has an<br />
important significance in that the U-services are not fixed or static<br />
but highly likely to develop into convergence services according<br />
to their necessity. If a U-service typology lacks exhaustiveness, it<br />
may be meaningless as a typology because it will not cover all of<br />
the U-services that can be created or terminated depending on<br />
environment.<br />
Mutual exclusiveness can be a good condition for typology in that<br />
confusion may be caused if there is a logical overlap between<br />
categories or if a single concept simultaneously falls into different<br />
categories, but actually it is difficult to meet in social sciences<br />
where each classification target does not have a rapid discontinuity<br />
between categories. In particular, the condition of mutual<br />
exclusiveness is difficult to satisfy in U-services that include many<br />
convergence services, and thus if this is taken into account, it will<br />
end up just in enumeration, not in classification.<br />
Parsimony is the concept that when other conditions are the same,<br />
the simpler classification model the better and the more<br />
complicated the worse. However, the parsimony a typology has is<br />
commonly against the practical value of the classification model.<br />
Accordingly, if a category becomes too wide for parsimony, the<br />
classification may be made simpler than necessary and thus not be<br />
of help in empirical studies or practical applications. For U-service<br />
classification models, it is difficult to ensure parsimony due to the<br />
complexity of U-services themselves. However, if the principle of<br />
parsimony is not met, the U-service classification models can end<br />
up merely serving for enumeration, not as typology, due to the<br />
complexity of services themselves.<br />
Empirical workability indicates that operations for measurement<br />
should be possible when verification is conducted with an<br />
involved person’s arbitrary decisions limited to a minimum in<br />
classification. However, the lack of such empirical workability is a<br />
troublesome problem which is present in most classification<br />
models available in social sciences and can be considered as an<br />
inherent limitation of social science research that takes advantage<br />
of abstract concepts.<br />
Theoretical fruitfulness is that it will be good if eventually a<br />
typology itself presents a generally acceptable theory. As<br />
mentioned above, this theoretical fruitfulness commonly conflicts<br />
with empirical workability. The reason is that due to the<br />
abstractness of classification criteria it is very uncommon that the<br />
classification models making theoretical fruitfulness actually<br />
extend to empirical studies.<br />
In this study, we selected Jeong’s typology and heuristically<br />
classified 228 unit U-services being currently developed in Korea<br />
after their application to the selected system. The results of<br />
classification were empirically analyzed in terms of whether they<br />
are compliant with the five conditions. Through the analysis this<br />
study identified the shortcomings of the total U-service typology<br />
and other things that need to be made up for in the system.<br />
3. ANALYSIS<br />
In evaluating the appropriateness of Jeong’s U-service typology,<br />
this study examined the distribution patterns and characteristics of<br />
current services by assigning 228 unit services to eight medium<br />
classification categories (i.e., spatial units, spatial facilities,<br />
service providers, beneficiaries, service objectives, urban activities,<br />
281<br />
human behaviors, and function-implementing methods), exclusive<br />
of laws/institutions.<br />
3.1 Procedure<br />
The medium category of “laws/institutions,” unlike other<br />
classification criteria, represents which laws include U-servicerelated<br />
provisions, rather than a set of actual services. This<br />
category was excluded because it was not fit for the purpose of<br />
this study, and eight other medium categories of actual services<br />
were used in this study.<br />
In the classification of U-services into eight medium categories,<br />
the 228 unit services were verified through in-depth interviews<br />
with three experts selected from those who participated in the U-<br />
Eco City project for two or more years. As the first activity of<br />
service classification, each expert reviewed a list of 228 Uservices<br />
and classified the U-services appropriately into one of the<br />
given categories. The second activity was to compare the Uservice<br />
classifications with those by two other experts. In the<br />
coherence of service classification, 195 (85.5%) of 228 unit<br />
services were consistently classified by all the three experts as<br />
“culture, tourism or sports” but the classification of 11 services<br />
(4.8%) was completely inconsistent among the experts who<br />
categorized them as “transportation, health care, facility<br />
management or labor/employment.”<br />
3.2 Heuristics Used<br />
Table 2(Fig. 1-8) shows how the services were categorized. The<br />
classification of 228 unit services by the given criteria revealed the<br />
following limitations: (1) the definitions of some small categories<br />
were unclear to use for classification purposes; (2) there was a<br />
preponderance of certain categories in the classification of Uservices;<br />
and (3) there were similar items overlapping between<br />
medium-categories.<br />
First, some classification criteria were unclearly defined. Two<br />
examples are the definition of information media facility services<br />
as types of “services provided from fixed facilities” and the<br />
definition of unit-space control facility services as types of<br />
“services limited to facilities and their attached facilities.” Both<br />
of the definitions reflect the concept of “services provided from<br />
facilities,” and accordingly this causes confusion when services<br />
are actually classified. For instance, the “traffic signal violation<br />
enforcement service” working on the road can be recognized as<br />
being provided from fixed facilities and at the same time viewed<br />
as that limited to attached facilities. Moreover, if it is unclear<br />
whether service beneficiaries are the public or business entities,<br />
the human behavior forms of moving and cybering can be<br />
considered for service classification. Second, when the 228 unit<br />
services were classified in terms of their names, some<br />
classification criteria were found to play only a nominal role rather<br />
than serve as typology. For example, in the service classification<br />
by urban activities, the category of “security/safety” represented<br />
95% of transportation services, 100% of crime/disaster prevention<br />
services, and 93% of facility management services; and the<br />
category of “leisure” included 94% of culture, tourism and sports<br />
services. This typology does not seem to reflect service types in a<br />
balanced way, and therefore further studies need to focus on<br />
reducing the uneven distribution of classification items and<br />
making classification criteria more practical. Third, there were<br />
similar items overlapping between medium categories. Especially,
such overlapping was prominent between the medium categories<br />
of urban activities and human behavior.<br />
In this study, urban activities were subdivided into life/health,<br />
security/safety, community, education, economy and leisure, and<br />
human behavior was classified into living, working, moving,<br />
playing and cybering. In the human behavior category, living,<br />
playing and working seem similar to life/health, leisure and<br />
economy, respectively, in urban activities. Actually, these<br />
similarities were found in the classification of U-services as well.<br />
In the medium category of “service objectives” with three small<br />
categories (i.e., life support, activity support and industrial<br />
support) thereunder, life support and activity support can be<br />
considered as corresponding to life/health and economy,<br />
respectively, in the urban activities category, and likewise they are<br />
also similar to living and working, respectively, in the human<br />
behavior category. Consequently, there are semantic overlaps not<br />
only between the three medium categories of service objectives,<br />
urban activities and human behavior under the large category of<br />
“functional elements” but between their subcategories as well. A<br />
solution to this overlapping problem is to develop different types<br />
of medium categories or provide small categories directly under<br />
the large category of “functions.” More studies will be needed on<br />
the way to improve the classification of functions by removing<br />
overlaps from small categories [Supplementary table 1].<br />
3.3 Analysis Results<br />
The present study analyzed a U-service typology empirically<br />
through the categorization of U-services. In light of the study<br />
findings, we can assume that Jeong’s U-service typology is high in<br />
exhaustiveness and empirical workability and low in mutual<br />
exclusiveness, parsimony and theoretical fruitfulness.<br />
1) Exhaustiveness: Unlike the previous studies which analyzed<br />
services from a single or two points of view, Jeong attempted<br />
to explain his typology from nine different points of view. In<br />
the process of analyzing 228 unit services, his typology<br />
covered all the services as classified. These facts indicate that<br />
Jeong’s typology is highly exhaustive.<br />
2) Mutual exclusiveness: Even though Jeong’s typology<br />
satisfies the condition of exhaustiveness, it is difficult to say<br />
that it is faithful to the principle of mutual exclusiveness,<br />
because of cases where a single unit service falls under more<br />
than one category simultaneously. Emergency medical<br />
service and U-ski service can be taken as examples of this.<br />
Emergency medical service is to give first aid to a patient<br />
while he/she is being carried in an ambulance, reviewing<br />
patient data with a doctor in hospital. U-ski service helps<br />
users to use ski equipment rentals and lifts conveniently and<br />
provides supports for skiers to monitor their movements and<br />
routes in play and check their achievement records. In this<br />
Table 2. Relevance of Jeong’s classification<br />
3)<br />
study, both of the two services were thought to take not only<br />
a form of life support—for example, making life more<br />
convenient or helping the ambulance crew save a patient’s<br />
life—but also a form of activity support—for example,<br />
helping skiers improve their performance. As a result, they<br />
overlapped between two different areas.<br />
Parsimony: Jeong’s typology consists of 9 medium categories<br />
and 34 small categories. It was a good attempt to try to cover<br />
all possible things on a categorical basis, but his typology is<br />
bad in terms of parsimony because it involves too many<br />
subdivision levels and thus takes a very complicated form.<br />
This low parsimony is also associated with overlaps between<br />
medium categories founded in the empirical analysis. It<br />
should be noted that it is somewhat inevitable to sacrifice<br />
parsimony for comprehensiveness and practicability, but if<br />
any typology does not maintain a certain level of parsimony,<br />
it may end up just enumerating or listing things, not<br />
analyzing them as intended.<br />
4) Empirical workability: This is that operations for<br />
5)<br />
measurement should be possible at acceptable level. Some of<br />
classification criteria were found unclear or ambiguous, but<br />
experts who participated in this study showed consensus in<br />
85.5% of the 228 unit services they categorized using the<br />
present typology. This indicates that the system has high<br />
empirical workability. In general, empirical workability is<br />
low in social science studies as abstract concepts are used,<br />
but Jeong’s typology ensures high empirical workability<br />
because his suggested classification criteria are based on<br />
substantial concepts.<br />
Theoretical fruitfulness: The primary purpose of developing a<br />
classification model is to discover a certain pattern and<br />
regularity from real-world information which appears messed<br />
up, scattered and diverse. In this sense, theoretical<br />
fruitfulness is an important principle for evaluating a<br />
classification model. In view of the current level of<br />
contribution, the U-service typology used in this study seems<br />
limited as it just takes a combination of other typology rather<br />
than advances a new theory. This limitation resulted in a<br />
preponderance of certain categories in the empirical analysis.<br />
For example, in the service classification by urban activities,<br />
the “security/safety” category represented 95% of<br />
transportation services, 100% of crime/disaster prevention<br />
services and 93% of facility management services; and the<br />
“leisure” category included 94% of culture, tourism and<br />
sports services. In short, the services were unevenly<br />
distributed among given categories, like a set of services<br />
entirely belonging to a single category. This indicates that the<br />
present typology failed to play its role properly.<br />
Summarizing all the findings above together, relevance of Jeong’s<br />
typology can be described as shown in Table 3.<br />
Exhaustiveness Mutual exclusiveness Parsimony Empirical workability Theoretical fruitfulness<br />
Suitability + - - + -<br />
282
Fig. 1 Spatial Unit<br />
Fig. 3. By whom<br />
Fig. 5. Objectives<br />
Fig. 7. Behaviour<br />
Table 3. Service Classification Results<br />
283<br />
Fig. 2 Spatial facilities<br />
Fig. 4. For whom<br />
Fig. 6. Activities<br />
Fig. 8. Commonality
4. CONCLUSION<br />
This study empirically evaluated the appropriateness of a Uservice<br />
typology by applying 228 unit U-services to Jeong’s<br />
typology for the categorization of the services. As compared to the<br />
previous studies of u-service typologies which regarded it as<br />
meaningful to develop a theoretical framework for classification<br />
of U-services, it is important to note that this study found the<br />
problems with the present typology via empirical heuristic<br />
application and identified problem areas. Jeong’s typology was<br />
found to have high exhaustiveness and empirical workability when<br />
the system was analyzed from empirical and theoretical points of<br />
view. Since u-services are variable according to service categories,<br />
they can be newly developed or combined when the needs for<br />
them increase in future with technological or environmental<br />
changes. The high empirical workability of the typology used in<br />
this study can be explained by the fact that there was a consensus<br />
of 85.5% among experts in U-services when they categorized the<br />
services using the typology. High empirical workability helps<br />
reduce confusion in a process of service development as it allows<br />
U-services to be accurately classified. The results from an<br />
empirical analysis suggest that the classification criteria should be<br />
defined more clearly so that empirical workability is enhanced.<br />
However, Jeong’s U-service typology needs to be improved in<br />
terms of mutual exclusiveness, parsimony and theoretical<br />
fruitfulness. Such typology provides a foundation in building a U-<br />
Eco City and must be organized for extension to broadband<br />
services. This study is significant in that it attempted empirical and<br />
theoretical analyses of a U-service typology and came up with<br />
ways to evaluate and improve the typology, but on the other hand<br />
its research methodology was limited to qualitative approaches. In<br />
order to recover this limitation, future studies will need to build an<br />
improved typology through a quantitative analysis of contents.<br />
5. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS<br />
This work was partially supported by Office of Research Affairs<br />
(2010-7-0571) at Yonsei University, Seoul, Republic of Korea.<br />
Authors also appreciate help and support of Ms. Hahyun Kim and<br />
Dr. Minjung Lee in preliminary analysis of this study.<br />
This research was partially supported by a grant (07High Tech<br />
A01) from High tech Urban Development Program funded by<br />
Ministry of Land, Transportation and Maritime Affairs of Korean<br />
Government. Preliminary results of this study have been reported,<br />
in Korean, in the Journal of Korean Society of IT Services, 11(1),<br />
pp. 325-340, in March 2012.<br />
6. REFERENCES<br />
[1] Ministry of Land, Transport and Maritime Affairs, U-Space<br />
Construction Technology, 2010<br />
[2] H.J. Woo, J.H. Lee, S.Y. Park, "Proposing User-Oriented u-<br />
Service Classification by Ubiquitous Characteristic", Journal<br />
of the Korea Society of IT Services, V.10 N.2, pp.119~139,<br />
2011<br />
284<br />
[3] H. J. Roh, "Analysis on the u-City Conceptual Design Factors<br />
from Ubiquitous Computing Technology", Master Thesis,<br />
Yonsei University, 2005<br />
[4] J. C. Kwon, "A study on Law and Institution environment for<br />
Development of U-city", National Information Society<br />
Agency (http://www.nia.or.kr/), 2006<br />
[5] H. M. Oh, A study on Service Convergence Roadmap for<br />
Ubiquitous Environment, National Information Society<br />
Agency (http://www.nia.or.kr/), 2006<br />
[6] K. S. Jeong, T. H. Moon, S. Y. Heo, "A Study on U-City<br />
Service Classification and the Service Framework for the<br />
Standardization of U-City Service", Korea Planners<br />
Association ,V.44, N.3, 2009<br />
[7] Gu Kim, "A study on U-City service priorities and the spread<br />
strategy", JOURNAL OF KOREAN ASSOCIATION FOR<br />
REGIONAL INFORMATION SOCIETY, V11 No. 1, pp<br />
127-148, 2008<br />
[8] S. J. Ahn, D. H. Oh, "A Study on the Classification Criteria<br />
of U-city based on the Characteristics of U-city Services",<br />
Journal of The Korean Urban Management Association v.23<br />
n.3, 2010<br />
[9] W. S. Jeong, B. S. Cho, "A Study on Priorities of u-City<br />
Services Using Weighted Model", Korea Spatial Planning<br />
Review, V52 N.3,pp 93-214, 2007<br />
[10] J.I. Oh, "Concept, Vision, and Vitalization Strategies of U-<br />
City", Journal of the Korean Information Science Sociaty,<br />
V.23. N.11, pp 21-26, 2005<br />
[11] J.G. Lee, H.S. Uk, "A Study on the diffusion and<br />
advancement of U-city service model", National Information<br />
Society Agency(http://www.nia.or.kr), 2006<br />
[12] C.S. Leem, E.J. Yu, B.G. Kim, N.S. Baek, Y.D. Son, "u-City<br />
PIPE Model", ITR report, IT Research & evaluation, 2008<br />
[13] Y. H. Chun, "The Diversity of Policy Tolls: Issues and<br />
Evaluations of Tool Classifications", Journal of<br />
Governmental Studies, V.13 N.4, pp. 1-37, 2007<br />
[14] K.S. Jeong, T.H. Moon, S.Y. Heo, "A Study on U-service<br />
Pool Evaluation and SRM Template for Development of U-<br />
City SRM", korea Planners Association, V.45 N.13, 2010<br />
[15] W.S. Jeong, B.S. Jo, H.S. Jo, “U-City Industry and Service<br />
Classification Trends”, Korea Electronics Technology<br />
Institute, http://www.eic.re.kr, 2006.08,<br />
[16] Yong-Sik Lee, "Policy Instrument Typology and<br />
Applicationon Sports for All Policy , Korea Sport Science<br />
Institute, Korean Journal of Sport Science, , Vol. 21, No. 3,<br />
1431-1440 2010.<br />
[17] J.W. Lee, S.H. Baik, C.H. Lee, "Building an Integrated<br />
Service Management Platform for Ubiquitous Ecological<br />
Cities", IEEE Computer Society, pp.56-63, 2011
SUPPLEMENTARY TABLE 1. RESULT OF SERVICE CLASSIFICATION<br />
Space<br />
Human<br />
Functions<br />
By spatial unit<br />
By function<br />
By whom<br />
For whom<br />
For what<br />
Activities<br />
Behavior<br />
C/S<br />
Domain<br />
Administration<br />
Traffic<br />
Health & welfare<br />
Environment<br />
Crime & Prevention<br />
Building 2 0 8 1 3 2 6 7 7 7 9 52<br />
Street 5 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 4 10<br />
District 1 0 3 1 1 0 0 0 2 0 0 8<br />
Facility 2 8 2 3 2 8 3 4 0 0 3 35<br />
City 7 22 12 7 9 1 6 3 2 4 1 74<br />
broadband 0 12 3 5 6 2 2 4 9 6 0 49<br />
Information media 11 13 19 8 6 1 9 4 9 10 4 94<br />
Spatial unit control 3 10 6 5 3 11 4 8 7 7 11 75<br />
Community management<br />
facility<br />
Facilities<br />
Management<br />
0 0 2 0 0 0 4 4 0 1 2 13<br />
Integrated control center 1 19 1 6 12 2 0 2 4 1 0 48<br />
Public 14 29 8 16 20 13 1 11 0 2 4 118<br />
Private 0 4 10 0 0 0 1 4 19 7 7 52<br />
Public-private partnership 1 9 10 3 1 1 15 3 1 8 6 58<br />
Public Agencies 8 3 1 11 12 10 0 2 0 0 0 47<br />
Citizens 7 39 22 8 9 3 17 16 6 6 16 149<br />
Businesses 0 2 5 0 1 1 0 0 14 11 1 35<br />
Life support 7 31 20 10 8 5 16 16 4 2 15 134<br />
Business support 8 11 9 9 13 9 1 3 12 11 2 88<br />
Industrial support 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 4 4 0 8<br />
Healthy living 0 1 16 14 0 0 0 0 0 0 4 35<br />
Security and safety 3 40 3 1 21 13 0 0 0 2 2 85<br />
Community service 11 1 9 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 4 27<br />
Education 0 0 0 0 0 0 16 1 0 1 0 18<br />
Economy 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 1 17 14 0 36<br />
Leisure and culture 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 17 3 0 7 28<br />
Living 0 1 17 3 13 3 1 1 0 0 5 44<br />
Working 15 7 10 15 8 11 16 3 19 17 4 125<br />
Moving 0 34 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 34<br />
Playing 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 15 1 0 6 24<br />
Cybering 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 2<br />
Common services 15 29 9 15 17 10 5 0 1 5 0 106<br />
Specialized services 0 13 19 4 4 4 17 13 19 12 17 119<br />
285<br />
Education<br />
Tourism & Sports<br />
Logistics<br />
Labor & Employ<br />
Other<br />
Service total<br />
Total<br />
228<br />
230<br />
228<br />
231<br />
230<br />
229<br />
231<br />
228
286
Explaining the eGovernment Paradox:<br />
An analysis of two decades of evidence from scientific<br />
literature and practice on barriers to eGovernment<br />
Alberto Savoldelli<br />
Independent Consultant<br />
C/ Via Piolti de Bianchi, 48, Milan, Italy<br />
+39 335 1309287<br />
savoldellia@gmail.com<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
Despite the plethora of research, policy analysis and practice<br />
works produced in the last two decades for explaining the<br />
potential of eGovernment and its impact on society, there is still<br />
very limited evidence that the promised productivity gains have<br />
been achieved. To date, its potential remains hypothetical. This<br />
eGovernment paradox contrasts the level of investments with the<br />
little impact produced and/or demonstrated so far. In this paper we<br />
attempt to provide an interpretation of this paradox, looking<br />
specifically at the sharp mismatch between the supply of online<br />
public services (deployment) and their usage (adoption), which<br />
we define as the “Adoption paradox”. The paper on the bases of a<br />
systematic review of the adoption barriers uncovered by almost<br />
twenty years of scientific and practitioner-generated analysis and<br />
evidence, rises the conclusions that, in most mature governments,<br />
the key barriers to real take up of eGovernment are those related<br />
to the lack of both a structured policy evaluation process and an<br />
effective stakeholders' engagement. The paper suggests that the<br />
critical success factor for eGovernment adoption is a transparent<br />
and trustworthy policy decision making process and that its key<br />
prerequisite is the definition and implementation of a well<br />
organized and fully participatory evaluation framework.<br />
Categories and Subject Descriptors<br />
J4 Social and behavioural sciences; K.4 Computers and Society;<br />
K.6 Management of Computers and Information Systems<br />
General Terms<br />
Management, Measurement, Performance, Economics,<br />
Evaluation.<br />
Keywords<br />
eGovernment adoption, Barriers, Drivers, Participation, Trust,<br />
Public Value, Policy Making, Digital Society<br />
1. INTRODUCTION<br />
We are now well into the second decade of Information and<br />
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for<br />
personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are<br />
not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies<br />
bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for<br />
components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored.<br />
Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to<br />
post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission<br />
and/or a fee.<br />
ICEGOV '12, October 22 - 25 2012, Albany, NY, USA<br />
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1200-4/12/10...$15.00<br />
Cristiano Codagnone<br />
Milan State University<br />
Via Conservatorio, 7, Milan, Italy<br />
+39 02 50321247<br />
cristiano.codagnone@unimi.it<br />
287<br />
Gianluca Misuraca<br />
European Commission, JRC-IPTS<br />
C/ Inca Garcilaso, 3, Seville, Spain<br />
+34 954 480 572<br />
gianluca.misuraca@ec.europa.eu<br />
Communication Technology (ICT) usage in public administration<br />
service delivery. First evidence of this can be found in the<br />
“reinventing government” movement launched in 1992-1993<br />
through the well-known writing of Osborne & Gablear [1-2]. As a<br />
result, a large body of inter-disciplinary scientific literature has<br />
accumulated and been critically reviewed [2-6]. Alongside this<br />
scientific literature, there is also a growing body of institutional<br />
and policy-oriented reports [7-12] and of practitioner-generated<br />
analysis, case studies, and measurement efforts [13-27].<br />
As yet, however, there is very limited evidence that these gains<br />
have been achieved and eGovernment’s potential remains<br />
hypothetical [7]; [13]; [14]; [28]; [29]. Not surprisingly, some<br />
authors have started to talk about the “eGovernment Paradox”<br />
[30]; [31]. This follows the more famous “IT Productivity<br />
Paradox” summarised in Robert Solow’s quip that “you can see<br />
computers everywhere but in the productivity statistics” [32];<br />
[33].<br />
It was not until the mid '90s that the large investments made by<br />
firms into ICT produced productivity gains. The reasons for this<br />
paradox were mainly: a) measurement error (input and output not<br />
properly measured); b) lag time (ICT take time before having an<br />
effect); c) redistribution of profit (the effect can be positive for<br />
some and negative for others leading to a zero sum where no<br />
aggregate effect can be demonstrated); d) mismanagement of ICT<br />
(ineffective deployment not matching ICT with complementary<br />
initiatives such as re-organisation).<br />
In the case of eGovernment, the paradox can be seen in the<br />
contrast between the level of investments and the little impact<br />
produced and/or demonstrated so far [30]. It may also be due to<br />
the fact that delivering citizen-centric eGovernment does not<br />
necessarily reduce costs [29]; [34]. Our view is that the most<br />
evident and straightforward “eGovernment Paradox” is the sharp<br />
mismatch between the supply of online public services<br />
(deployment) and their usage (adoption). In Europe, for instance,<br />
the traditional benchmarking of eGovernment services shows that<br />
supply has reached saturation for most common online services in<br />
a majority of countries [14]. Yet, citizens (and to a lesser extent<br />
companies) are still more likely to use traditional methods (e.g.,<br />
phone calls or in-person visits) than the Web to interact with the<br />
government [14]; [35].<br />
For Europe, a simple description (both longitudinal and crosssectional)<br />
of eGovernment benchmarking data and a look at<br />
Eurostat statistics about usage of eGovernment services clearly<br />
show this mismatch, The supply-side index stands at 70% on<br />
average and the average usage percentage is below 30% of the
adult population. A recent more sophisticated statistical analysis<br />
of this data concluded that there is no statistically significant<br />
correlation between the level of supply of eGovernment services<br />
and the level of usage [29]; [36]. The “Adoption Paradox”<br />
encompasses, in our view, several of the reasons cited by the<br />
authors who introduced the concept of the “eGovernment<br />
Paradox” and those who explained the more famous “IT<br />
Productivity Paradox”. It is almost self-explanatory that if<br />
adoption does not reach significant levels then the financial<br />
resources invested in eGovernment simply creates a stratification<br />
of costs and no benefits, either internal or external (as was the<br />
case at the beginning of Internet banking). So, it is strategic to<br />
investigate in depth the reasons for non-adoption, as they will<br />
include related issues such as the lack of restructuring of policy<br />
making and implementation processes, measurement problems, all<br />
of which explain the excessive time lag between the<br />
implementation of eGovernment and the delivery of its promises.<br />
In Section 2, we illustrate the method and conceptualisation used<br />
and in Section 3 we report the results of the systematic analysis of<br />
the adoption barriers uncovered by about twenty years of<br />
scientific and practitioner-generated analysis and evidence. In<br />
Section 4, we discuss in depth the key findings of our analysis.<br />
These show that in the most mature public administrations, the<br />
key barriers to a real take up of eGovernment are those related to<br />
the lack of a structured policy evaluation process and a lack of<br />
stakeholders' participation in the decision making process. Finally,<br />
Section 5 offers the conclusions and directions for future research.<br />
2. METHOD AND CONCEPTUALISATION<br />
The systematic and diachronic analysis of eGovernment adoption<br />
barriers is based on an extensive literature review of a wide range<br />
of scientific journals and papers published in the last two decades,<br />
as well as practitioner-generated analysis 1 . The results of the<br />
literature review have been classified by re-elaborating the model<br />
proposed in [37], to which we have added one more dimension of<br />
analysis that we have called “Political/Institutional”. This has<br />
been done in order to highlight specific barriers related to the<br />
public policy management process. In order to make the results of<br />
our analysis more intelligible and also actionable in terms of<br />
future redesign of the eGovernment policy design and<br />
implementation processes, we have further developed from the<br />
original and well known work of Layne & Lee, [38, further<br />
improved by Andersen [39] in 2006], our own version of the<br />
Maturity Model (MM) against which the barriers have been<br />
mapped. This re-elaboration integrated the original model with<br />
key characteristics of eGovernment that have been identified by<br />
several scholars in literature [6]; [13]; [16]; [18]; [40]; [41]; [42];<br />
[43]. Our conceptualisation of the MM is illustrated in Figure 1<br />
and it is explained here below. It must be stressed that this model<br />
is a hybrid conceptual mix of empirical and prescriptive elements<br />
in that the later stages of the model are based on very rare best<br />
practices rather than widely observed empirical experiments.<br />
The Maturity Model has two conceptual dimensions:<br />
• Process orientation. This dimension is defined as a<br />
combination of the following variables: a) level of<br />
1 The literature review includes journals such as Government Information<br />
Quarterly; Strategic Information Systems; Business Process Management<br />
Journal; Journal of Global Information Management; Information Polity;<br />
International Journal of Public Sector Management; International<br />
Journal of Public Information System; Public Administration Review).<br />
288<br />
integration within each single public administration [42]; b)<br />
level of integration across public administrations, in jargon<br />
“joined-up government” [40]; [42]; [44]; and c) degree of<br />
processes’ outcomes orientation [16].<br />
• Citizens centricity. This dimension is defined as a<br />
combination of the following variables: a) degree of civil<br />
servants acceptance of, and support to, eGovernment [45];<br />
and b) level of citizen involvement in eGovernment services<br />
design and development [18]; [46]; [47].<br />
Figure 1 – eGovernment Maturity Model Source: Authors<br />
elaboration on [38]; [39].<br />
In the space defined by the two axes, as illustrated in Figure 1, the<br />
Maturity Model is shaped by two key drivers:<br />
• People and Organization driver. This driver concerns: a)<br />
the depth of the cultural changes in relation to eGovernment<br />
both inside the administration and among citizens; and b) the<br />
level of digital divide within which eGovernment is<br />
embedded.<br />
• Technology and Information driver. It helps to determine<br />
which technological stage has been achieved by a given<br />
public organization and the level of integration and openness<br />
of public information and data to civil servants and citizens.<br />
As a result of combining the two dimensions and the two drivers,<br />
the following six stages of maturity can be identified:<br />
• Stage 1 – Web presence through a simple online<br />
transposition of administrative processes without a clear<br />
orientation to outcomes. Typical eGovernment initiatives at<br />
this stage focus on infrastructural projects aimed at bundling<br />
the territory with ICT networks.<br />
• Stage 2 – Communication backbones are laid down and wide<br />
local area networks are completed. At this stage integration<br />
initiatives at both organizational and technological level are<br />
promoted within (among departments) and across public<br />
administrations.<br />
• Stage 3 – At this stage, transaction services are deployed<br />
together with privacy and security solutions to support these<br />
transactions. Dematerialization initiatives are largely adopted<br />
together with significant back office simplification.<br />
Management changes are introduced inside public<br />
administrations. Civil servants’ and public managers’<br />
performance evaluation is largely based upon their capability<br />
to achieve simplification targets.<br />
• Stage 4 – Outcome-oriented processes are widely<br />
implemented thanks to ICT adoption. Actions aimed at<br />
reducing digital divide and stimulating adoption of
eGovernment services to a large extent of the population are<br />
also deployed. Some significant examples of information,<br />
data sharing and data integration among public organizations<br />
are also evident. Measurement systems of public values of<br />
eGovernment services are significantly implemented even if<br />
not fully integrated with policy decision-making processes.<br />
The evaluation of public administration managers is largely<br />
based on their capability to achieve outcome related<br />
objectives.<br />
• Stage 5 – A large extent of data and information are made<br />
available for all and some significant business initiatives<br />
based upon public sector information usage are in place.<br />
Cloud computing infrastructures and cloud repositories for<br />
public administrations data are also largely available and<br />
empowering actions aimed at stimulating citizens and civil<br />
servants towards ICT and eco-sustainability of eGovernment<br />
services are conducted. Measurement systems are fully<br />
implemented and linked with policy decision making<br />
processes.<br />
• Stage 6 – ICT is not anymore a barrier to the take up of<br />
eGovernment services and the behaviour for continuous<br />
improvement is pervasive in public administration also<br />
unleashing social innovation [48] is widely diffuse in<br />
designing and developing public services.<br />
It is clear that the MM applied to eGovernment is not independent<br />
from the broader level of maturity of the Digital Society [49]<br />
within which eGovernment deployment and adoption is embedded<br />
[29]. Yet, the process of digital maturation of a given society or<br />
local community is never as linear as the MM would suggest [6];<br />
[50]; [51]; [52]. Therefore for a long-term sustainability of<br />
eGovernment services we have also to understand the needed<br />
efforts that each public administration has to make for reaching<br />
the required level of maturity suitable for deploying and rollingout<br />
a given eGovernment product/service and, then, supporting its<br />
effective adoption and long-term sustainability [29]; [52].<br />
However in most mature administrations neither the level of<br />
digital divide nor the lack of ICT infrastructures seem to be<br />
among the most constraining barriers to eGovernment adoption. It<br />
is rather the lack of a structured and trustworthy decision making<br />
process, effectively involving citizens and stakeholders that slow<br />
down adoption, which in turn weaken the capability to effectively<br />
and timely absorb and use public funds [53]. In this respect the<br />
lack of formal methods for managing and monitoring<br />
eGovernment initiatives further compound the challenges of<br />
successful adoption of eGovernment services [37 - 54]. These<br />
barriers are more and more evident at local level [4], where there<br />
is still an high variance in performances as commented for<br />
instance in [14]; [55]. At the same time the local government<br />
represents the most favourable ground for enhancing citizen<br />
centred eGovernment services with a real engagement of<br />
stakeholders and beneficiaries and an effective empowerment of<br />
the local community [13]; [19]; [43]; [47]; [56], [57] as discussed<br />
in the next chapters.<br />
3. RESULTS<br />
In this section we first apply a synchronic perspective to better<br />
interpret the evolution of adoption barriers and then extract the<br />
key lessons learned. The synchronic perspective we adopted,<br />
foresees the following three periods of implementation of<br />
eGovernment: 1994-2004; 2005-2009; 2010-2012. The choice of<br />
analysing time periods that have different length is due to the need<br />
289<br />
of observing the eGovernment phenomenon of mature public<br />
administrations in their evolutionary pathways that were quite<br />
slow at the beginning as mainly related to deployment of ICT<br />
infrastructures and awareness actions (see MM in Figure 1) and<br />
faster as much as the pathways were related to deployment and<br />
take-up of eGovernment services:<br />
• 1994-2004: this period ranges from the start-up of the<br />
“reinventing government” [1]; [2]; movement, to the first<br />
review of the Lisbon Strategy [58] launched by the European<br />
Union in the year 2000 with the aim to promote ICT in all<br />
competitive domains, including public administration. The<br />
optimistic view on ICT performance and the Internet<br />
diffusion has led to emphasize the lack of telecommunication<br />
infrastructures [8] and their communication capacity [38] as<br />
key barriers to eGovernment adoption. Both of which in turn<br />
have been associated to the lack of institutional support and<br />
standards [8] as a source of “Political/Institutional” barrier.<br />
The concept of “trust in eServices usage by citizens” is often<br />
associated with the concept of “security in transactions”<br />
and “trust in government in preserving personal data<br />
privacy, once the citizens provided them for using an<br />
eService” [38]; [59]. “Managerial/Organizational” barriers<br />
were also important to overcome with particular reference to<br />
“shortage of ICT skills” in public administration [41], while<br />
[8] sees as important barriers the “information<br />
mismanagement and reluctance to share information among<br />
departments”.<br />
• 2005-2009: the period of implementation of the i2010<br />
strategy in the European Union [60]. ICT infrastructural<br />
problems are still considered relevant and in particular<br />
operational costs and maintenance of eGovernment systems<br />
are considered as crucial obstacle [4]; [9]; [20]; [40]; [44],<br />
especially at the local level where the lack of financial<br />
resources is more evident [4]; [9]; [42]; [55]. Technological<br />
and operational barriers are still mentioned, and the most<br />
noteworthy are the “lack of integration across government<br />
systems”, the “lack of knowledge regarding eGovernment<br />
interoperability”, together with the “lack of citizens’ trust<br />
about eGovernment services privacy and security”. Lack of<br />
ICT skills in governmental organization and lack of<br />
cooperation amongst departments together with resistance to<br />
change of the civil servants are also still mentioned [4]; [9];<br />
[40]; [42]; [43]. During this period, however, the most<br />
important barriers affecting eGovernment adoption are the<br />
lack of “evaluation and measurement of eGovernment<br />
services” [4]; [10]; [39], the “difficulties in establishing a<br />
firm connection between ICT innovation, benefits and<br />
outcomes” [3]; [9] and the “digital divide” [9]. Even if still in<br />
embryonic terms, during this period start to be considerd<br />
important barriers the “lack of demand side involvement in<br />
the eGovernment decision making process” [10], the “lack of<br />
trust on government and on government reform” [45] and the<br />
“cost of the services for the users and their perception of<br />
benefits” [4]; [62]; [63], together with the “lack of<br />
eGovernent policy framework that can be applied at local<br />
level” [4]; [42].<br />
• 2010-2012: this period starts from the launch of the so called:<br />
“Digital Agenda for Europe” [66] until today. Most recently<br />
the “political/institutional” barriers have been seemingly<br />
singled out as the most important obstacle for the full take up<br />
of eGovernment services, with particular reference to “lack
of citizens' participation to the policy making process” and<br />
“lack of measurement system on eGovernment process<br />
performances and outcomes” [7]; [51]; [64]; [65]. According<br />
to the authors discussing them, these barriers have the side<br />
effects of producing a “lack of transparency and trust on<br />
political decisions” [64]; [65]; [66], together with a “lack of<br />
trust and empowerment of the citizens” [13]. Such authors<br />
suggest a possible way for overcoming these barriers by both<br />
tackling the “lack of eGovernment policy framework that can<br />
be applied at local level” [14] and the “lack of formal<br />
methods for supporting eGovernment decision making<br />
process” [5]; [52]; [53]; [65]; [67]. An initial attemp of<br />
analising barriers related to the “lack of sustainability of<br />
eGovernment initiatives” is presented in [51]. At the same<br />
time “technological/operational” barriers seem less<br />
important for the scientific community except for the “lack of<br />
open sources and open data standards” [67] and the<br />
“shortage of financial resources in public sector<br />
organizations” [14]; while the “managerial/organizational”<br />
barriers are considered still important with particular<br />
reference to the behaviour of policy makers and civil servants<br />
in supporting actions enhancing trustworthiness of the<br />
citizens, by reducing “lack of trust in the government<br />
willingness to allow citizens to have their say if their views<br />
contradict official policy”, “lack of transparency and trust in<br />
government” and “lack of personalized and secure services”<br />
[18].<br />
In coherence with the MM (Figure 1), if we make a cross-analysis<br />
of the evolution of the barriers to eGovernment, we can say that in<br />
the last twenty years for the most mature public administrations,<br />
the technological barriers have been significantly reduced but<br />
eGovernment services adoption is far to be effective and there is<br />
no clear evidence of which benefits ICT offer to citizens. This<br />
situation is not so different from what private organizations met at<br />
the early stages of ICT introduction - between the ’80s and the<br />
’90s - where ICT has produced significant expectations. Also in<br />
the private sector at the very beginning of the technological<br />
revolution, ICT possibilities were overestimated [68], and the<br />
“manifesto” of Hammer and Champy [69] in 1993 was considered<br />
the ultimate solution for improving performance and<br />
competitiveness in any private organization. Just few years later<br />
(see [51]; amongst several other authors) ICT assumed the role of<br />
enabling factor for supporting organisational changes and<br />
business process integration [70], and the role of both “change<br />
management” and “customer satisfaction” became central for<br />
competitiveness. No more than fifteen years later similar ICT<br />
adoption pathways and pit-falls have been followed by the public<br />
sector, unfortunately without learning too much from mistakes<br />
and failed experiences occurred in the past in the private sector<br />
[42]; [45]. An evidence of such argumentation can be found by a<br />
comparison of the position papers that Accenture has written on<br />
eGovernment services adoption at the beginnings of the years<br />
2000 and what the same organization has recently considered as<br />
the best approach to the take up of eGovernment services. In the<br />
Accenture’s position paper of 2001 “multichannel delivery and<br />
CRM” were identified as “the key issues government had to<br />
consider to improve the level of online services provided to<br />
citizens and business” [15]; ten years later the same organization<br />
recognized that “only cultural changes in public sector workers<br />
and collaborative learning between citizens and civil servants,<br />
together with ICT as enabling factors, could support an effective<br />
eGovernment adoption” [21]. Therefore it seems now evident that<br />
290<br />
eGovernment adoption in mature public administrations is<br />
affected by the lack of trust on both government behaviour and on<br />
possible misuse of digital information provided by citizens to civil<br />
servants. These two aspects of the problem are more related to the<br />
stakeholders’ and citizens’ perception of the policy making<br />
process and their expectation on eGovernment services [28]; [71].<br />
As Van de Walle [54] says: “achieving good performances in<br />
public services by governments is only a partial way to achieve<br />
citizens satisfaction and to improve trust in government”, only a<br />
transparent and participative policy making process can close the<br />
gap [10]; [47]; [65], as shown in Figure 2, where only a well<br />
structured policy planning process fully integrated with a<br />
performance management system and truly participated by<br />
stakeholders and citizens, can support a wide adoption of<br />
eGovernment services and creating a well established Digital<br />
Society.<br />
But, what does it mean “better Policy Planning Process”? Which<br />
are its key components? Which are main barriers to its adoption<br />
and which are the real benefits gained by its use in public<br />
governance?<br />
Possible answers to these questions are discussed in the following<br />
section, where we have gone deeper in understanding the<br />
meanings and usefulness of Policy Planning Process in<br />
eGovernment adoption.<br />
Figure 2 – eGovernment services adoption virtuous cycle<br />
4. DISCUSSION<br />
From the findings of our review as presented in the previous<br />
section we identified the Policy Planning Process as the core area<br />
where public administrations must make improvements in order to<br />
support eGovernment adoption and the overall development of the<br />
Digital Society. In this section we go a step further discussing key<br />
barriers that hinder an efficient and effective Policy Planning<br />
Process. Before doing that we have to define such process and its<br />
main components.<br />
The Policy planning process. As Heeks [10] says: “Policy<br />
Planning Process has a circular lifecycle”. It starts from needs<br />
arising from the community where the policy makers have been<br />
elected and it follows several stages that describes a policy cycle<br />
as shown in Figure 3, that we have adapted from [10]; [72].<br />
• Step 1 – Policy Strategy Formulation. It is the key step<br />
because it provides motivations and justifications of why a<br />
certain Policy Programme has to be implemented.<br />
Unfortunately, policy makers often begin to formulate a
policy agenda, as Heeks [10] says, based on “poor<br />
comparative benchmark performances” and “scarcely<br />
quantified good news/benefits” of previous eGovernment<br />
initiatives done by the same administration and/or others in<br />
previous Policy cycles. Lack of impact evaluation of past<br />
policies [4]; [39] is certainly one of the main reasons<br />
justifying difficulties of policy makers in defining correct<br />
long-term strategic plans. Another negative effect of lack of<br />
impacts evaluation of past policies is the scarce public<br />
confidence in the results of policy decisions. Citizens<br />
perceive this as lack of transparency of Policy Planning<br />
Process, thus the distance between policy makers and civil<br />
servants on one side and citizens on the other increases [29];<br />
[57]; [65]. In this regard, it is common opinion among<br />
several authors [10]; [13]; [42]; [47] that Policies have<br />
serious difficulties in being adopted without an effective<br />
engagement of beneficiaries and stakeholders since the very<br />
beginning of the Policy Planning Process.<br />
• Step 2 – Policy Guidelines Definition and Approval,<br />
where Policy makers define the strategic objectives of their<br />
policy agenda. To be effective, these objectives, more<br />
commonly called “Outcomes” [6], should be based upon<br />
both citizens’ expectations and needs of stakeholders and<br />
beneficiaries. Unfortunately, often policy makers and public<br />
managers have serious difficulties in linking decisions on<br />
policy strategy (Step1), with outcomes definition (Step 2)<br />
[3]; [9]. On the contrary this link is very powerful for Public<br />
Administrations. Once more this problem is due to a Policy<br />
Planning Process scarcely supported by quantified data and<br />
information on previous policy impacts [21]; [42]. The<br />
consequence of this lack of information is that Policy Plans<br />
are driven by contingencies and constraints, rather than midlong<br />
term strategy and well grounded digital policy.<br />
• Step 3 – Policy Implementation Plan Design and<br />
Approval. Public managers, together with stakeholders,<br />
produce an Implementation Plan of possible eGovernment<br />
initiatives that should be coherent with Policy Guidelines<br />
defined in “Step 2”. Usually such initiatives take the form of<br />
a “Project Idea”, subjected to budget constraints and targeted<br />
project objectives. Often risk assessment actions, together<br />
with possible countermeasures, are also provided at this Step<br />
[11]. The most common problem that usually affects Policy<br />
Implementation Plan design and, then, the success of the<br />
entire Policy Planning Process, is the mismatch between<br />
policy outcomes (as defined in “Step 2”) and project<br />
objectives [12]; [73]. More often civil servants in charge of<br />
Policy Implementation Plan and Stakeholders interested to<br />
promote a given “project idea” are used to describe it in a<br />
quite optimistic way, overestimating challenges and without<br />
considering budget constraints that could reduce the breath of<br />
the project’s impacts. Another important barrier is the lack of<br />
a preventive sustainability assessment of the eGovernment<br />
service to be deployed [46], which quite often mines<br />
eGovernment project's uptaking.<br />
• Step 4 – Policy Implementation through Projects.<br />
eGovernment projects are selected in coherence with the<br />
Implementation Plan and then deployed on the territory<br />
through Projects. Starting from the “project ideas” approved<br />
in the previous “Step 3”, public administrations in charge for<br />
funding the projects launch procurement processes based on<br />
291<br />
technical and administrative specifications. Selected<br />
providers cooperate with beneficiaries and stakeholders for<br />
achieving the expected objectives and for producing the<br />
agreed project’s outputs. Project management capabilities of<br />
Civil servants are required together with good ICT skills and<br />
organizational knowledge [54]; [74]. Once more a key<br />
success factor of this step is the effective involvement of<br />
stakeholders and beneficiaries in project development and<br />
deployment [42]; [67]. To this regard some scholars believe<br />
this involvement would be more effective if anticipated at the<br />
initial stage of Planning Process (“Step 1”), thus citizens’<br />
trust [65] is increased and co-production initiatives [44]; [47]<br />
could have better chances to succeed. More common barriers<br />
are “the resistance to change of the civil servants” [64] and<br />
the “lack of motivation of public managers in sharing and<br />
opening data amongst organization and to the public” [7].<br />
Figure 3, Policy Planning Process Cycle (our elaboration from<br />
Heeks [10].<br />
• Step 5 – Policy and Projects monitoring. This is a<br />
fundamental stage for a successful policy cycle<br />
implementation. Unfortunately, quite often this step mainly<br />
addresses the in-itinere evaluation of on-going eGovernment<br />
initiatives, with a very limited and superficial evaluation of<br />
the outcomes/impacts produced by the policy plan [17]. This<br />
is because eGovernment projects, as all other public<br />
investments, need to demonstrate that the public money<br />
produced the output specified in the legal documents signed<br />
with providers. Usually no specific legal constraints are<br />
agreed between administrations and providers in relation to<br />
impacts on beneficiaries that a given project should obtain.<br />
Moreover, the cost of an effective measurement system of<br />
the impacts of the Policy Plan and the long time frame when<br />
these should be achieved, discourage administrations,<br />
especially local ones, to emphasize this step [7]; [51]. On the<br />
contrary this has to be considered a fundamental step of the<br />
Policy Plan, without which the level of trust between citizens<br />
[65] and Public Administration would be significantly<br />
reduces, further penalising eGovernment adoption.<br />
• Step 6 – Gap Analysis of the Policy Implementation<br />
Plan. This step is aimed at supporting policy makers to move<br />
on to a new cycle, with a new policy based upon key results<br />
of the previous one [10]. However, more often the<br />
importance of this step is underestimated because usually
very poor impact assessment activities are made by public<br />
administrations in the previous “Step 5” [4]; [39].<br />
In theory, policy makers can start policy planning life cycle once a<br />
policy cycle is completed and move on to a new one with new<br />
strategic objectives [10]. In practice this might not happen<br />
because the Policy Planning Process is highly context-dependent<br />
and extremely affected by contingencies and needs that might be<br />
present on the territory and that have a high degree of urgency.<br />
Unfortunately cases from unsuccessful adoption of eGovernment<br />
tell us how difficult it is to define a structured and comprehensive<br />
implementation of such process and its maintenance over time<br />
[60]. Table 2 shows the key barriers to an effective execution of a<br />
Policy Planning Cycle. This is particularly true at the local level<br />
where Policy Makers and Civil Servants are very close to citizens<br />
and stakeholders [13]; [76], and the presence of a well organized<br />
Policy Evaluation Process could produce more direct and<br />
trustworthy effects on eGovernment adoption [4]; [14]; [42]; [55].<br />
Table 2 – Barriers to eGovernment Policy Planning Cycle<br />
execution<br />
eGovernment<br />
Policy<br />
Planning<br />
Cycle<br />
Policy<br />
Strategy<br />
Formulation<br />
Policy<br />
Guidelines<br />
Definition and<br />
Approval<br />
Policy<br />
Implementatio<br />
n Plan (∑ i-n=<br />
Project ideas)<br />
Design and<br />
Approval<br />
Policy<br />
implementatio<br />
n through<br />
Projects<br />
Barriers<br />
• lack of evaluation and measurement of policy<br />
strategy [4]; [39];<br />
• lack of stakeholders and beneficiary involvement<br />
in needs identification [10]; [13]; [43]; [47];<br />
• lack of comprehensiveness and continuity of<br />
policies and programmes [8];<br />
• lack of clear vision [42]; [44];<br />
• lack of exAnte evaluation approach [12];<br />
• lack of a structured evaluation process circle with<br />
an effective engagement of stakeholders and<br />
beneficiaries [22]; [46];<br />
• difficulties in linking policy decision with<br />
outcomes objectives [3]; [9]; [76]<br />
• lack of stakeholders and beneficiary participation<br />
in policy objectives definition [10]; [7]; [43];<br />
• unclear policy management strategy [42]; [44];<br />
• mismatching between policy outcomes (if<br />
•<br />
defined) and project objectives [12]; [74];<br />
project selected on expected outputs and not on<br />
expected outcomes [17];<br />
• lack of stakeholders and beneficiary involvement<br />
in projects design and specification [13]; [43];<br />
[47];<br />
• lack of coordination and/or strategic planning<br />
[8];<br />
• lack of coordination and cooperation between<br />
departments and among administrations [40];<br />
[42]; [44];<br />
• lack of structured risk management procedures<br />
[11];<br />
• lack of stakeholders and beneficiary involvement<br />
in project development [18] [43]; [47]; [54]; [66];<br />
[68];<br />
• lack of project management expertise [54; [74];<br />
• lack of knowledge and skills for assessing the<br />
risk and making contingency plan [7]; [68];<br />
• resistance to change [65];<br />
• Government departments failing to agree and<br />
implement common procedures and standards to<br />
provide shared networked eGovernmnet services<br />
Policy and<br />
Projects<br />
monitoring<br />
and Gap<br />
Analysis<br />
[9];<br />
• Lack of motivation of public managers in sharing<br />
and opening data amongst organization and to<br />
public [7];<br />
• project monitored on achieved outputs and not on<br />
achieved outcomes [17];<br />
• Lack of evaluation and measurement procedure<br />
[4]; [39];<br />
• Lack of measurement system on eGovernment<br />
process performances and outcomes [7]; [52];<br />
[65]; [66];<br />
• Lack of involvement of citizens and stakeholders<br />
in monitoring projects and policies and for<br />
supporting their sustainability [23];<br />
• Lack of transparency of the monitoring process<br />
and its results on project impacts [23]; [66].<br />
5. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE RESEARCH<br />
Our analysis underlines how in the mature government (see the<br />
MM described in Figure 1) technological barriers to eGovernment<br />
adoption have been significantly reduced, but eGovernment<br />
services are far away to be adopted and there are no clear<br />
evidences of which benefits ICT can offer to citizens. Resistance<br />
to change by civil servants and policy makers are now considered<br />
the most important barriers, causing an evident lack of<br />
trustworthiness in the citizens towards political institutions. The<br />
consequences of these barriers is an unstructured and<br />
untrustworthy decision making process, that slow down adoption,<br />
which in turn weaken the capability to effectively and timely<br />
absorb and use public funds.<br />
292<br />
Two fundamental barriers emerge from our study:<br />
� lack of full involvement of stakeholders and beneficiaries<br />
since the very beginning of the Planning Process;<br />
� lack of an evaluation process that should be conducted in<br />
parallel with each step of the Policy Planning Process itself.<br />
This is especially true at the local level that on the contrary might<br />
benefit more thanks to the proximity among Policy decision<br />
makers, civil servants and citizens [14]; [55]; [57]. However as<br />
[65] and [71] clarify, the two key barriers to an effective Policy<br />
Planning Process are not independent from each other, but rather,<br />
they are the two faces of the same coin:<br />
Good Governance implies stakeholders and citizens participation<br />
that cannot be guaranteed without transparency in the decision<br />
making process; high level of transparency cannot be achieved<br />
without a trusted and robust evaluation process.<br />
Figure 4 shows the circularity of both planning and evaluation<br />
processes and their interaction with the stakeholders and<br />
beneficiaries. As described in the figure, the inner circle<br />
represents the Policy Planning Process, while the outer one<br />
describes the Evaluation Process where the ex-Ante evaluation<br />
receives as input the results of the ex-Post evaluation of the<br />
previous Policy Planning Cycle and then, it produces as output the<br />
objectives of the new Policy Planning, that will be subject to both<br />
an in-itinere evaluation and a new ex-Post one. The middle circle<br />
defines the links between the two other circles. The two processes<br />
run in parallel and the key aspect of both is the active involvement<br />
of stakeholders [23]. Moreover the evaluation process that has the<br />
aim to assess the Public Value of a given Policy Strategy, by<br />
measuring the degree of achievement of the Policy
Implementation Plan’s outcomes and the quality 2 of<br />
eGovernment products and services, in the most transparent and<br />
participatory way as possible [11]; [24]; [86], presents the still<br />
unresolved problem of measuring these values in each step of the<br />
Policy Planning Cycle, maintaining the coherence of each<br />
measure and preserving the characteristics of transparency and<br />
reproducibility of the measurement. In this regard, scientific<br />
literature provides several examples of metrics which can be<br />
utilized for quantifying public value to a given eGovernment<br />
Project [81 - 82]. Some of them have been defined also by the<br />
authors of this article in the EU funded eGovernment Economics<br />
Project (eGEP) [83 – 85]. However the majority of them have<br />
been developed to benchmark eGovernment initiatives once they<br />
are already in place and none of them has the capability to<br />
evaluate a Policy Implementation Plan and, at the same time, the<br />
eGovernment projects it underlines. Finally in Figure 5 we have<br />
defined the key drivers for eGovernment adoption that in our<br />
opinion have to be considered to overcome the barriers identified<br />
in our analysis.<br />
Figure 4 – Circular nature of the Evaluation Process and its<br />
relationship with Policy Planning Circle<br />
Figure 5 defines the relationships among key drivers of<br />
eGovernment adoption, starting from the Parasuraman & Grewal<br />
model [87]: eGovernment adoption depends on both high service<br />
and product quality, together with a meaningful Public Value of a<br />
given service [17]; [44]; [61]; [73]; [85]. However, these drivers<br />
are filtered by public opinion’s perceptions on both the value of<br />
service/product deployed and the level of transparency of the<br />
related decision making process [65]; [66]; [76]. Positive<br />
perception of value of both the eGovernment initiatives and<br />
transparency of the decision making process, increases the<br />
citizen’s trust in policy makers and public administration and it<br />
stimulates eGovernment adoption.<br />
2 Measure of the quality of the outputs of eGovernment projects can be<br />
addressed under different perspectives [78-79]. However in our opinion,<br />
the quality of eGovernment Projects should be mainly measured in respect<br />
to the contribution of eGovernment services to increase participation and<br />
co-production (see Figure 1 - eGovernment adoption Maturity Model),<br />
thus the quality dimension should help to understand which is the<br />
capability of a given project to prevent lock in situations and to promote<br />
open technologies/services [80].<br />
293<br />
A higher level of public participation in the decision making<br />
process can improve the quality of the product and services and<br />
their public values and thus it can increase both citizen’s positive<br />
perception and trust of policy makers and public administration<br />
[20]; [26]. The scientific community has already proposed several<br />
approaches to assess citizens perceptions on a given policy<br />
making process [13]; [43]; [65]; [87]; and many have attempted to<br />
explore how to stimulate public participation for a better quality<br />
of eGovernment services and their adoption [39]; [22]; [26]; [27];<br />
[57]; [66]. There are also some examples of practical usage of<br />
citizens satisfaction surveys for create better eGovernment Policy<br />
Programmes, like the “Common Measurement Tool” developed<br />
by the Canadian Government that defined specific guidelines for<br />
assessing the citizens’ satisfactions on eGovernment services<br />
performances [88]. However several authors agree that still exist a<br />
lack of measurement systems in eGovernment process<br />
performance and outcomes [7]; [29]; [51]; [64]; [65]; [87].<br />
Figure 5 – Key drivers of eGovernment adoption: authors'<br />
adaptation from Parasuraman&Grewal [87].<br />
This is particularly true at local level where there is little evidence<br />
of Policy Evaluation Frameworks suitable for supporting Policy<br />
Making Processes [14]; [29]; [55]; [56]; [88]. The scope of this<br />
paper was therefore to contribute closing this gap and identifying<br />
the key barriers and drivers aimed at supporting the full adoption<br />
of eGovernment services towards the realisation of a well<br />
established Digital Society. In future research we aim at further<br />
enhancing the findings of this analysis contributing to the<br />
development of policy evaluation methodologies, frameworks and<br />
related models that can effectively assess the policy planning<br />
process and the impact of eGovernment, including in particular<br />
the ''openness dimension'' that underlines a transparent and<br />
trustworthy participatory policy-planning process.<br />
Disclaimer<br />
The views expressed in this paper are purely those of the authors<br />
and may not in any circumstances be regarded as stating an<br />
official position of the European Commission.<br />
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Investigating the Relationships between Accountability<br />
and Governments’ Transformation to eGovernment<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
Many countries are moving towards eGovernment for ensuring<br />
higher efficiency, transparency and accountability in the public<br />
administration. Accountability, the obligation to justify one’s<br />
conduct, has been widely discussed in the social, public and<br />
political spheres. However, it is not so well understood how and<br />
to what extent Government’s accountability is affected with the<br />
transformation to eGovernment. This paper focuses on this aspect<br />
by means of literature review and analyzing indexes related to<br />
eGovernment and the factors associated with accountability<br />
available during the period 2005 -2010. The findings show that<br />
the relationship between accountability and eGovernment among<br />
the countries as whole is not straightforward as it depends on the<br />
characteristics of the individual governance. However, evidence<br />
in general shows that strong accountability, which is measured<br />
here through a level of integrity, influences the government to<br />
adopt eGovernment as it helps to open up the government and its<br />
policy process to its citizens and other stakeholders.<br />
Categories and Subject Descriptors<br />
K.4 [Computers and Society]: General, Public Policy Issues<br />
General Terms<br />
Management, Measurement, Performance, Human Factors<br />
Keywords<br />
eGovernment, Democracy, Accountability, Integrity<br />
1. INTRODUCTION<br />
Accountability is a distinct feature of social life [1] that refers to<br />
that “an actor feels an obligation to explain and to justify his or<br />
her conduct to some significant other” [2]. Accountability has<br />
been much talked in sphere of our lives especially for ordered<br />
social, public and political conducts.<br />
In this contemporary knowledge based society where the<br />
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for<br />
personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are<br />
not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies<br />
bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for<br />
components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored.<br />
Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to<br />
post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission<br />
and/or a fee.<br />
ICEGOV '12, October 22 - 25 2012, Albany, NY, United States, NY, USA<br />
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1200-4/12/10…$15.00.<br />
M. Sirajul Islam and Åke Grönlund<br />
Örebro University<br />
School of Business (Informatics)<br />
Fakultetsgatan 1, SE-70182, Sweden<br />
+46 76 17 17 193, +46 70 58 51 790<br />
{sirajul.islam, ake.gronlund }@oru.se<br />
297<br />
influence of technologies and human values are unavoidable,<br />
accountability is treated as not only a moral obligation or sense of<br />
responsibilities [3][4] but also as one of the key indicators for<br />
performance measurement which is very evident in the<br />
contemporary public administrations. The United Nations (UN)<br />
defines accountability in public administration as an obligation of<br />
the government officials regarding handling of public resources<br />
and answerability on deviating from any stated performance<br />
objectives [5]. According to this definition, the key<br />
responsibilities of the public administration include not only to<br />
work for operational efficiency and effectiveness, but also to<br />
ensure operational transparency and establishing trust internally<br />
and externally. In a democratic environment, the government<br />
officials are held accountable explicitly as well as implicitly for<br />
their deeds and actions to the society in general and the citizens in<br />
particular. Appropriate use of Information and Communication<br />
Technologies (ICTs) in the public administration is expected to<br />
enhance operational efficiencies and thus paves the way for<br />
improved accountability and administrative effectiveness.<br />
The World Bank [6] defines eGovernment as the use of ICTs by<br />
the government agencies “that have the ability to transform<br />
relations with citizens, businesses, and other arms of government.<br />
These technologies can serve a variety of different ends: better<br />
delivery of government services to citizens, improved interactions<br />
with business and industry, citizen empowerment through access<br />
to information, or more efficient government management. The<br />
resulting benefits can be less corruption, increased transparency,<br />
greater convenience, revenue growth, and/or cost reductions.”<br />
Supplement to this definition, the UN [7] describes eGovernment<br />
as a powerful tool for enhancing the public sector together with<br />
citizens that can address particular development issues in a<br />
transformative society. Nowadays, eGovernment has been a way<br />
of realizing the vision of a global information society as “many<br />
countries are experiencing its transformative power in revitalizing<br />
public administration, overhauling public management, fostering<br />
inclusive leadership and moving civil service towards higher<br />
efficiency, transparency and accountability” [7]. Therefore,<br />
governments of those countries are inclined to transform their<br />
governance to eGovernment gradually. However, research shows<br />
that considering eGovernment as an automatic means of dramatic<br />
change in the public sector accountability is a ‘myth’ [8]. In fact<br />
there is a lack of clarity regarding to what extent and how the<br />
transparency, accountability and eGovernment are associated to<br />
each other [9]. This paper therefore aims at investigating ‘how is<br />
accountability affected when governments transform to<br />
eGovernment?’ by means of literature review and analyzing
available indexes and factors of eGovernment and accountability<br />
of the last five years.<br />
2. LITERATURE REVIEW<br />
“Accountability is a fundamental but underdeveloped concept<br />
[...]” [10]. It comes through a sense of moral responsibility at both<br />
the supply (i.e. the government) and demand (i.e. the citizens)<br />
ends. According to Smith et al. [4], responsibility is a concept that<br />
emerges in a social relationship in the causes of actions and<br />
events, which in turns depends on the person’s knowledge,<br />
capacity, ability to act appropriately as well as access to the<br />
appropriate resources. In addition to human values and qualities,<br />
discretion is an inseparable element of accountability that<br />
ultimately decides whether a particular action from an agent will<br />
be exposed or not in a given situation [4]. Accountability in public<br />
administration is varied depending on the functional spaces and<br />
nature of relationships among the internal as well as the external<br />
stakeholders. Romzek and Dubnick [10] describe four alternative<br />
systems of public administration (Figure 1), each of which is<br />
based on two critical factors – sources of agency control and<br />
degree of control over agency actions.<br />
Figure 1. Types of Accountability Systems [10]<br />
Among these alternatives (Figure 1), bureaucratic accountability<br />
systems are widely used mechanisms that depend on the<br />
organized and legitimate relationship between a superior and a<br />
subordinate as well as close supervision on a stated administrative<br />
rules and regulations. Legal accountability, which is closely<br />
related to bureaucratic accountability, is associated with frequent<br />
application of control to the administrative activities. Such a<br />
controlling application is depended on the relationships between<br />
the internal and external agencies, where external agency is<br />
considered as the ‘lawmaker’ and the internal agency (i.e. the<br />
public administrator) as the ‘executor’. Professional<br />
accountability involves an obligated responsibility of sincerely<br />
meeting the expected performance by the assigned employee with<br />
the expertise or special skills. Finally, political accountability is<br />
related to the democratic pressure that mainly concerns about the<br />
representation of the public administrator to certain<br />
constituencies, such as general public, elected officials, clients<br />
and heads of the agencies, special interests groups and future<br />
generations. Romzek and Dubnick argue that political<br />
accountability is seen on ethical dimension as such systems may<br />
promote favoritism and even corruption in the public<br />
administration. They further state that “the urge for political<br />
accountability, for example, is reflected in open meeting laws,<br />
freedom of information acts, and ‘government in the sunshine’<br />
statutes passed by many states and local governments [in the<br />
US].” [10]<br />
298<br />
Within the systems [10], the processes of accountability can be<br />
evident in three stages – (i) the information provision stage, (ii)<br />
the debating stage, and (iii) the judgment stage. The validity of<br />
information is enquired in the information provision stage, while<br />
it subsequently goes to debating stage for appropriateness of<br />
actions followed by rewarding or sanctioning of the taken actions<br />
in the judgment stage [4]. In this case, ICTs based<br />
communication has potential role over the information provision<br />
stage as such communication and data processing facilities can<br />
make the information easily accessible to wide audience. This<br />
explains that eGovernment is an essential enabler for enhancing or<br />
improving administrative integrity, transparency and<br />
accountability on an ethical dimension. However, there are some<br />
arguments that contradict the positive views on eGovernment in<br />
relation to accountability [8][9][11][12]. According to Kraemer<br />
and Dedrick [11], “In general, computing [in organizations] tends<br />
to reinforce existing tendencies, and by itself is not likely to affect<br />
organizational structure in significant ways”. In this regard, Wong<br />
and Welch [8] argue that the relationship between eGovernment<br />
and accountability is a conditional one as change in the<br />
accountability level depends on the context and characteristics of<br />
the public administration or the kind of bureaucracy.<br />
3. METHOD<br />
This study relies on the arguments on accountabilities in relation<br />
to ICTs available through on-line reports and research papers. In<br />
order to determine the relationship between accountability and<br />
eGovernment, three kinds of indexes are used, these are – UN<br />
global eGovernment indexes, Global Integrity indicators and<br />
EIU’s index of global democracy. There are so far no explicit<br />
indicators that would explain a comparative accountability status<br />
of a country. The 2010 Global Integrity indicators (GII) [13]<br />
scorecard assesses the existence, effectiveness, and citizen access<br />
to key governance and anti-corruption mechanisms through more<br />
than 300 actionable indicators, including some indicators related<br />
to country level accountability. The indicators, which are<br />
associated with the major issues of accountability, are fairly<br />
related to the accountability systems as discussed by Romzek and<br />
Dubnick [10] in the literature study as above. For example,<br />
bureaucratic systems can be related to the third category of GII<br />
(i.e. Government Conflicts of Interest Safeguards & Checks and<br />
Balances), while legal and professional systems can be fitted to<br />
the sixth category of GII (i.e Anti-Corruption Legal Framework,<br />
Judicial Impartiality, and Law Enforcement Professionalism).<br />
‘Public requests for government information’ is one of the<br />
indicators of GII that is close linked to the political accountability<br />
systems. As for an indicative comparison, a table (Appendix 2<br />
available at http://tinyurl.com/cp8ua6m) has been formulated that<br />
shows various performance indications during the period between<br />
2005 and 2010. The list of countries (40 in this study), as shown<br />
in the table, are chosen based on availability of Integrity data of<br />
the last three surveys covering 2006 to 2010 conducted by the<br />
Global Integrity [13].<br />
4. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION<br />
The integrity indicator is closely associated with accountability<br />
systems of the respective countries. Accountability performance<br />
in an environment of transformative governance cannot only be<br />
understood by the various parameters of Integrity [13], but also by<br />
the structure of bureaucracy which can also be well perceived by<br />
the characteristics of a regime, such as full or flawed democracy,
hybrid or authoritarian regime. Bovens [2] in this regard contends<br />
that “public accountability is not just the hallmark of democratic<br />
governance, it is also a sine qua non for democratic governance”<br />
Several regression analyses (Appendix 1 available at<br />
http://tinyurl.com/cp8ua6m) have been done in order to find<br />
relationships among the three variables - eGovernment,<br />
democracy and integrity. Results show that there are positive<br />
correlations exist among these variables, although the strengths of<br />
coefficient of the correlation varied under certain situation. The<br />
multiple regression tests indicates that 37% change in country’s<br />
eGovernment initiatives can be explained by the changes of<br />
democracy and integrity. On the other side, simple regression<br />
shows that democracy and integrity are both strongly correlated.<br />
However, while it comes with eGovernment (Y), country’s levels<br />
of democracy (democratic, flawed, hybrid and authoritarian) are<br />
weakly related. Furthermore, integrity (Y) is strongly correlated<br />
with eGovernment (X).<br />
According to data exhibited in Appendix 2 (available at<br />
http://tinyurl.com/cp8ua6m), determining relationship between the<br />
performances of country’s eGovernment (i.e. 40 countries in this<br />
study) and the other accountability indicators or vice-versa over<br />
the years (2005 to 2010) is not so straightforward. In general,<br />
USA, Canada and Japan demonstrate optimistic association<br />
among these three indicators – eGov, integrity and democracy.<br />
Bulgaria and South Africa have ‘strong integrity’ performance,<br />
but comparatively shown low rankings. One of the explanations<br />
could be that these two countries are quite new in converging to<br />
democracy in comparison to the latter three countries. Except<br />
Kazakhstan, countries with ‘moderate’ integrity either have<br />
flawed democracy or combination of both democratic and<br />
authoritative (i.e. hybrid) structures. According to eGovernment<br />
rankings, their status are highly diverged, for example – Colombia<br />
is the 31 st , while Ghana is at the 147 th position. The case of<br />
Kazakhstan seems interesting as the country is governed by an<br />
authoritarian regime [14], but ranks at the top 50 of global<br />
eGovernment index and holds a ‘fairly moderate’ integrity over<br />
the years. Kazakhstan’s integrity scorecards of the last three<br />
surveys [13] show that they have better performances in anticorruption<br />
measures, election integrity with voting and citizen<br />
participation, procurement process, government oversights and<br />
controls, and rule of laws. However, they are weak in facilitating<br />
public access to information and media, civil service regulations<br />
and ensuring government accountability at the executive,<br />
legislative, judiciary and budgetary processes. Except this, all the<br />
(forty) countries with authoritarian regimes have either ‘week’ or<br />
‘very weak’ integrities and most of them are placed at bottom half<br />
of the eGovernment indexes. Countries like Cameroon, Nigeria,<br />
and Yemen are far away in the ranking of integrity, eGovernment<br />
and democratic representations. Moldova and Bangladesh are<br />
weak in democracy, but demonstrate linear progresses in both<br />
integrity indexes and transforming to eGovernment. Bangladesh is<br />
progressing in the eGovernment indexes within the ‘weak<br />
integrity’ and hybrid structure of regime.<br />
Therefore, it appears that there is a relationship between the<br />
nature or characteristic of regimes and their transformation to<br />
eGovernment. But, how is the integrity affected that could<br />
determine accountability of a country? If we take USA as a bestcase<br />
example, we can see from their integrity scorecards that they<br />
have strong performance in some key areas of governments’<br />
integrity. These are [13], media and access to information, citizen<br />
299<br />
participation in the election, executive, legislative and budgetary<br />
accountabilities, audit institutions, anti-corruption, rule of law and<br />
law enforcement. On the other-side, they have weak presence over<br />
the national ombudsman.<br />
The above results also indicate that we cannot draw a straight line<br />
among the countries as whole in order to determine the<br />
relationship between eGovernment and integrity (as a proxy to<br />
accountability) or eGovernment and democracy. A good<br />
conclusion can be derived at just by analyzing individual country<br />
level performance in those indicators. According to this study, we<br />
found that out of 40 countries, only 9 of them have same level of<br />
indicators irrespective of their eGovernment status. For example,<br />
USA is 4 in all indicators and Yemen is 1 in all. 22 countries<br />
(55%) have similar association between their integrity and<br />
democracy indicators (for example, Argentina and Nepal).<br />
However, the relationship between eGovernment and integrity or<br />
eGovernment and democracy cannot be generalized as it is<br />
interestingly varied among the countries. 17 countries (43%) have<br />
same level of eGovernment and democracy indicators; whereas 13<br />
countries (33%) are with similar level of eGovernment and<br />
integrity (for example, Azerbaijan and Nicaragua).<br />
According to the above discussions and as for the research<br />
question of this paper is concerned, this cannot be so certain as to<br />
how and to what extent the elements of integrity in general and<br />
accountability in particular determine governments’<br />
transformation to eGovernment. Nevertheless, one thing is quite<br />
indicative that strong accountability provokes governments for<br />
strong transformation to eGovernment, whereas strong<br />
accountability depends on the strong democracy that at least<br />
comprises of congenial, transparent and result-oriented<br />
bureaucracy and strong judicial systems (for example USA,<br />
Canada and Japan). In this case, accountability is affected by the<br />
well-defined legal systems and the pressure coming from the open<br />
civil society due to strong presence of IC-based communications.<br />
5. CONCLUSIONS<br />
This paper addresses apparently an unexplored issue as how is<br />
accountability affected when governments transform to<br />
eGovernment. In doing so, it discusses the notion and<br />
characteristics of accountability in a special reference to ICTbased<br />
public administration and communications. The paper uses<br />
indexes of UN global surveys on eGovernment [7], global<br />
integrity [13] and EIU’s global democracy [14] published during<br />
the last five years (2005 -2010). The major finding is that<br />
accountability does influence the governments for transformation<br />
to eGovernment as it helps to open up the government and its<br />
policy process to internal as well as external stakeholders. More<br />
the transformation to eGovernment is, better indication for a<br />
democratic environment and administrative integrity. The study<br />
also indicates that to determine the influence of accountability to<br />
eGovernment transformation or vice-versa requires individual<br />
country level analysis. In fact the answer is not straightforward.<br />
The major limitation of this paper is that it attempts to address a<br />
complicated issue within a brief discussion. However, the findings<br />
can be used mainly for indicative purposes by the government<br />
officials and the researchers concerned about modernizing public<br />
administration and eGovernment. There are many unexplored<br />
elements in the integrity indicators [13] that need to be thoroughly<br />
investigated in order to better understand about the relationship
etween accountability and eGovernment. This suggestion can be<br />
treated as a call for future research as well.<br />
6. REFERENCES<br />
[1] Willmott, H. Thinking Accountability : Accounting for the<br />
Disciplined production of Self. In R. Munro J. Mouritsen<br />
(eds.), Accountability: Power, Ethos and the technologies of<br />
managing. London: International Thompson Business Press,<br />
1996.<br />
[2] Bovens, M. Public accountability. In The Oxford handbook<br />
of public management, ed. E. Ferlie, L. Lynne, and C. Pollitt,<br />
Oxford University Press, 2005, 182–208.<br />
[3] Johnssén, G. Accountability and Responsibility in e-<br />
Government. Presented at the 1 st Scandinavian Workshop on<br />
e-Government, Örebro, Sweden, 2004.<br />
[4] Smith, M., Noorman, M.E., Martin, A.K. Accountabilities,<br />
automations, Dysfunctions, and Values: ICTs in the public<br />
sector. London School of Economics, Working paper series<br />
169, 2008.<br />
[5] Armstrong, E. Integrity, Transparency and Accountability in<br />
Public Administration: Recent Trends, Regional and<br />
International Developments and Emerging Issues. United<br />
Nations Public Administration Network (UN-PAN), 2005.<br />
[6] World Bank. Definition of e-Government. 2005 Available at<br />
http://go.worldbank.org/M1JHE0Z280<br />
300<br />
[7] United Nations E-Government Survey 2010. United Nations<br />
Public Administration Network (UN-PAN), 2010.<br />
[8] Wong, W., Welch, E. Does E-Government Promote<br />
Accountability? A Comparative Analysis of Website<br />
Openness and Government Accountability. Governance, 17,<br />
2, 2004, 275-297<br />
[9] Orelli R.L., Padovani, E., Scorsone E. E-Government,<br />
Accountability, and Performance : A Comparative Analysis<br />
Between European Governments. EGPA 2009 Conference,<br />
Malta September 2-4, 2009.<br />
[10] Romzek, B. S., & Dubnick, M. J. Accountability in the<br />
public sector: Lessons from the challenger tragedy. Public<br />
Administration Review, 47, 3, 1987.<br />
[11] Kraemer, K., Dedrick, J. Computing and Public<br />
Organizations. Journal of Public Administration Research<br />
and Theory, 7, 1997, 89–112.<br />
[12] Heintze, T., Bretschneider, S. Information Technology and<br />
Restructuring in Public Organizations: Does Adoption of<br />
Information Technology Affect Organizational Structures,<br />
Communications, and Decision-Making. Journal of Public<br />
Administration Theory and Research, 10, 2000, 801–830.<br />
[13] Global Integrity Report- 2010. Global Integrity, Washington<br />
DC, USA, 2010.<br />
[14] Democracy Index -2010. Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU),<br />
2010.
Technologies, Tools and Web 2.0 in Support of Public<br />
Administration Workplace Communications<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
The aim of this paper is to investigate which are the technologies,<br />
tools and web 2.0 applications that support public administration<br />
workplace communications. The paper begins with e-<br />
Administration and web 2.0 uses in the context of public<br />
administration 2.0. Then the attention is focused on workplace<br />
communications review and technologies, and tools, which<br />
influence their efficiency and effectiveness. For the purpose of<br />
detailing the used public administration technologies and tools,<br />
O*NET database is investigated in terms of the governance and<br />
public management and administration occupations. In order to<br />
determine, to what extent the identified technologies, tools and<br />
web 2.0 applications are used in practice, an empirical survey is<br />
developed and carried out in “Information services and<br />
technologies” Directorate at Sofia Municipality. The paper<br />
concludes with a proposed PA 2.0 workplace communications<br />
model.<br />
Categories and Subject Descriptors<br />
H.3.5 [Online Information Services]: Data Sharing, Web-Based<br />
Services; H.4.1 [Office Automation]: Groupware, Spreadsheets,<br />
Time Management, Workflow Management; K.4.3<br />
[Organizational Impacts Automation]: Computer-Supported<br />
Collaborative Work<br />
General Terms<br />
Management, Performance, Economics, Human Factors<br />
Keywords<br />
ICT, Web 2.0, Public Administration, Communications<br />
1. INTRODUCTION<br />
“E-Government” refers to the use by government agencies of<br />
information technologies that have the ability to transform<br />
relations with citizens, businesses, and other arms of government.<br />
These technologies can serve a variety of different ends: better<br />
delivery of government services to citizens, improved interactions<br />
with business and industry, citizen empowerment through access<br />
to information, or more efficient government management,<br />
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for<br />
personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are<br />
not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies<br />
bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for<br />
components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored.<br />
Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to<br />
post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission<br />
and/or a fee.<br />
ICEGOV '12, October 22 - 25 2012, Albany, NY, United States, NY, USA<br />
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1200-4/12/10…$15.00.<br />
Milena Krumova<br />
Technical University – Sofia, Bulgaria<br />
Sofia 1000, bul. Kl. Ohridski 8<br />
+359 899 283987<br />
mkrumova@tu-sofia.bg<br />
301<br />
increasing revenue or re-structuring of administrative processes.<br />
[27]. The use of ICTs reflects on: (1) simplify and improve the<br />
internal administrative operations of government and their<br />
relations with other bodies involved in public management and<br />
service delivery; (2) facilitate public service interaction between<br />
government, citizens and other stakeholders, thus enabling better<br />
citizen participation and overall monitoring and evaluation of<br />
decision-making processes and their implementation; and (3)<br />
ensure inclusiveness and equal opportunity for all [14].<br />
According to M.Batorski and D.Hadden, e-Government did not<br />
achieve expected results because enabling technology was Web<br />
1.0 oriented. Social networking provides governments with a new<br />
paradigm: knowledge release rather than knowledge control.<br />
Government software technology can be categorized with the<br />
following framework [1]:<br />
o Internal: internal by governments<br />
o External: external to government with government<br />
involvement<br />
o Structural: follow government structure and mandate<br />
o Social: enable collaboration.<br />
eGovernment, both in practice and in concept, has been one of the<br />
important developments in public administration. The dynamic<br />
changes within the e-government reflect on the public<br />
administration internal and external communications and the<br />
services. The changes are strongly related to the people - public<br />
administrators and working requirements to them. Are they<br />
prepared to use technologies, tools and web 2.0 at their daily<br />
activities and communications?<br />
1.1 Research Objectives<br />
Fundamental and vital to public administration (PA) workplace<br />
communications is the information transmitting and making<br />
oneself understood by another or others. Communications are one<br />
of major challenges because they are a key for providing<br />
information, which results in efficient and effective performance<br />
in PA. The main goal of this study is to examine what are the<br />
main technologies, tools, in particular web 2.0 applications that<br />
support PA workplace communication? It seeks to increase the<br />
understanding that the effective use of technologies, tools and web<br />
2.0 (TTW2.0) possesses potential for communications<br />
improvement.<br />
1.2 Research Questions<br />
What are the major characteristics of e-Administration and PA 2.0<br />
in the context of TTW2.0?; How can PA workplace<br />
communications be improved by TTW2.0?; What are TTW 2.0
that the PA employees need to be well prepared for to work<br />
with?/How are TTW2.0 related to PA occupations according to<br />
O*NET?; In terms of workplace communications, is there a gap<br />
between TTW2.0 within O*NET and the used ones in it and a real<br />
working environment (Sofia Municipality “Information services<br />
and technologies” Directorate)?<br />
1.3 Research Method<br />
In order to meet the research goal, various methodologies were<br />
applied, such as, literature review, a desk-based review,<br />
interviews, web search and a web survey. The survey has been<br />
designed as a blend qualitative and in a small scale quantitative<br />
research technique.<br />
1.4 Structure of the Paper<br />
The paper i) starts with review about e-Administration and PA<br />
2.0. The advantages of technologies usage are outlined. The<br />
workplace communications and the communication itself are<br />
presented in the context of PA. Then, ii) it continues with O*NET<br />
database research related to the Government & Public<br />
Administration occupations. iii) The identified TTW2.0s are<br />
summarized. iv) Based on identified TTW2.0, a survey has been<br />
designed and empirically applied at Sofia Municipality<br />
“Information services and technologies” Directorate. The survey<br />
aimed to identify: “Where are the TTW2.0 used at and how<br />
communications can be improved? Is there a gap between<br />
necessary knowledge, skills and competencies to work with<br />
TTW2.0 and a real working environment in regards to workplace<br />
communications“. The results are presented and discussed. v) The<br />
paper ends with TTW2.0 uses for PA and a proposed abstract PA<br />
2.0 workplace communications model.<br />
2. E-ADMINISTRATION<br />
Electronic public administration or e-Administration is one of the<br />
main eGovernment domains: eSociety; eAdministration; eCitizens<br />
& eServices (Figure 1) [7]. e-Administration is the effective<br />
management of the coordination and control of processes and the<br />
electronic information they create. It has two fundamental<br />
objectives: to increase the efficiency of administrative processes<br />
within institutions and to lessen the administrative burden faced<br />
by all staff during this process [11].<br />
eGovernment domains<br />
1<br />
Building<br />
external<br />
interaction:<br />
eSociety<br />
2<br />
Improving<br />
government<br />
processes:<br />
eAdministration<br />
1<br />
Connecting<br />
citizens:<br />
eCitizens and<br />
eServices<br />
Creating empowerment<br />
Making strategic<br />
connections in government<br />
Managing process<br />
performance<br />
Effective and efficient<br />
communication processes<br />
Improving time<br />
management<br />
Cutting process costs<br />
Figure 1. eGovernment domains<br />
e-Administration is also viewed as an Information and<br />
Communication Technologies (ICT) and tools, with the goal<br />
302<br />
being to improve productivity and performance. It expresses a<br />
mechanism that transforms: traditional offices into paperless<br />
offices, paper processes into electronic processes, internal<br />
communications with other offices and organizations and public<br />
organisms with initiative and transparency. e-Administration<br />
brings many advantages: interoperability, with the administration<br />
and citizens; integration of services that allow total and horizontal<br />
access to information; teleprocessing, telecommunications,<br />
official and administration communication is carried out<br />
electronically; bidirectional communications system; email,<br />
sending documents via email; electronic signature and validation.<br />
e-Administration brings the administration closer to citizens,<br />
integrates administrations, offers the private sector and<br />
associations complete electronic services. It offers citizens and<br />
public administrators 1 new communication channels. A key<br />
purpose of the e-administration is to improve the internal<br />
workings of the public sector by cutting process costs, managing<br />
process performance, creating strategic connections within<br />
government bodies, and creating empowerment (Wikipedia). e-<br />
Administration can encompass both intra-office and inter-office<br />
communication.<br />
JRC study about ICT- driven models of eGovernment, including<br />
eAdministration, tried to provide input for longer-term strategic<br />
planning. A list of technologies was prepared, focusing on the<br />
disruptive potential of the technologies themselves: mobile<br />
devices (PDAs, wearable computers, MP3-players, mobile<br />
phones) intelligent agents (and robotics), sensors, language<br />
processing and semantic technologies, serious games, RFID and<br />
biometrics, ICT infrastructures (WiFi, WiMAX, Broadband), web<br />
technologies (social software) and GRID [8].<br />
3. PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION 2.0<br />
Social computing (also known as Web2.0) is spreading in all<br />
spheres of life including government and public administration. A<br />
research named “Web 2.0 in Government: Why and How?”<br />
addresses the general issues about web 2.0 applications relevance<br />
for the government context: what way web 2.0 is likely to have an<br />
impact on government; how significant could this impact be and<br />
how web 2.0 applications are implemented in the government<br />
context [19].<br />
Definition (Wikipedia): Web 2.0 is web application features that<br />
facilitate participatory information sharing, interoperability, usercantered<br />
design, and collaboration on the World Wide Web. Web<br />
2.0 allows users to interact and collaborate with each other in a<br />
social media dialogue as creators of user-generated content in a<br />
virtual community, in contrast to websites where users<br />
(consumers) are limited to the passive viewing of content that was<br />
created for them. It has been also described as: “a fusion of<br />
sociology and technology, transforming monologues (one-tomany)<br />
into dialogues (many-to-many) and is the democratization<br />
of information, transforming people from content readers into<br />
publishers.” Web 2.0 is created to actively communicate and<br />
participate on the Internet, [16] not just to read a content, listen to<br />
or observe. Much of web 2.0 activities involve individual users<br />
coordinating with others, through many to many communication<br />
channels (Figure 2). Web 2.0 promotes many to many interaction<br />
1 Public administrators are public servants working in public departments<br />
and agencies, municipality, at all levels of government. A civil servant<br />
or public servant is a person in the public sector employed for a<br />
government department or agency.
with resources, peers and experts within and beyond the<br />
organization area. Public servants can use blogs and wikis,<br />
participated in web conferencing and developed podcasts and<br />
videos and become more efficient in their workplace<br />
communications thus indirect influence over quality of public<br />
services.<br />
Wikis<br />
Tagging<br />
Social<br />
networking<br />
Media<br />
sharing<br />
Social<br />
bookmarking<br />
Blogging<br />
Media<br />
manipulation<br />
Many to many<br />
communications<br />
channels<br />
Web 2.0<br />
activities<br />
Figure 2. Web 2.0 activities<br />
Collaborative<br />
editing<br />
Recommender<br />
systems<br />
Conversational<br />
arenas<br />
Virtual<br />
worlds<br />
Syndication<br />
An important shift was seen not just as the use of particular tools<br />
or techniques, but to the fostering of digital engagement. This<br />
involves:<br />
o dialogue: moving from broadcast to conversation;<br />
o not only listening but responding;<br />
o two-way collaboration sharing information, data, discussion;<br />
o opening spaces for peers to interact - facilitating communities;<br />
o moving audience from awareness to action.<br />
Web 2.0 covers a range of technologies. The most widely used are<br />
blogs, wikis, podcasts, information tagging, prediction markets,<br />
and social networks [3] (Figure 3).<br />
303<br />
Web 2.0<br />
technologies<br />
Wikis, commenting,<br />
shared workspaces<br />
Blogs, podcasts,<br />
videocasts, peer to<br />
peer<br />
Prediction markets,<br />
information<br />
markets, polling<br />
Tagging, social<br />
bookmarking/<br />
filtering,<br />
user tracking,<br />
ratings, RSS<br />
Social networking,<br />
network mapping<br />
Figure 3. Web 2.0 technologies<br />
Broad<br />
collaboration<br />
Broad<br />
communication<br />
Collective<br />
estimation<br />
Metadata creation<br />
Social graphing<br />
Broadly discussed in e-Administration field, web 2.0 technologies<br />
enable communication, collaboration and content creation,<br />
individually or together, and then publish to a workplace<br />
community. PA 2.0 can link familiar productivity tools to intranet<br />
publishing and search capabilities, thus public administrators can<br />
communicate and collaborate more efficiently with greater<br />
flexibility and access to information [11]. There are three key<br />
characteristics of web 2.0 applicable to PA: open - accessible and<br />
transparent; social-based on people and contacts/communications<br />
between them and user-oriented [2].<br />
Many initiatives have adopted web 2.0 applications in the<br />
government context. There are relevant applications in the private<br />
sector, which could be transferred to the government context.<br />
According to “E-Government Survey 2012” there has been a<br />
drastic rise of social media at the public administration [26].<br />
Web 2.0 affects different domains of public administrators’<br />
activities. While the debate is mostly focused on the impact in<br />
citizen-government relations (the so-called front-office) at<br />
present, analysis show that web 2.0 applications are also relevant<br />
for the back office activities of public administration [19].<br />
4. PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION<br />
WORKPLACE COMMUNICATIONS<br />
Definition (Wikipedia): Communication is the exchange of<br />
thoughts, messages, or information, as by speech, visuals, signals,<br />
writing, or behavior. According to Herbert A. Simon, who is<br />
known for his theory of administrative behavior “without<br />
communication there can be no organization”. In the context of<br />
internal communication, there are four tasks: categorize the types<br />
of information necessary to be communicated to employees for<br />
the effective functioning of the institution; identify the current<br />
delivery methods for communicating internal information; assess<br />
the effectiveness of the current methods, and recommend<br />
guidelines for effective communication [10]. The PA<br />
communications can be inter-relationship of public servants with<br />
the citizen and “extra-organizational”, communications with<br />
institutions [13]. There are a number of PA communications:<br />
formal and informal; vertical and lateral; verbal and non-verbal.<br />
They can be also viewed as occurring at intranet, extranet or<br />
internet environment [21] (Figure 4).<br />
Category of technology
Without any regards to the form of communication, the<br />
communication itself plays a very important role in the PA. A<br />
number of variables influence the PA effectiveness of<br />
communications. Some are found in the environment, intranet<br />
environment, extranet or internet in which communications take<br />
place, some in the personalities of the sender and the receiver, and<br />
some in the relationship that exists between sender and receiver.<br />
In the present context, PA communications are discussed within<br />
intranet environment. In the literature, there exist many studies<br />
concerning PA communications effectiveness and efficiency.<br />
INTRANET<br />
Workplace<br />
Communications<br />
EXTRANET<br />
Communications<br />
INTERNET<br />
Figure 4. Intranet (workplace) communications<br />
In his study, F. Petru examines the role of communication for the<br />
managerial process effectiveness of public administration [20].<br />
D.Špaček and J.Špalek analyze the relationship between<br />
electronic public administration and the present public<br />
administration model as developed within the reform of public<br />
administration in the Czech Republic, which has a significant<br />
impact on the information flows (communication) and certainly<br />
on the electronic public administration in the Czech context. The<br />
authors argue that, the quality of communication can be<br />
significantly influenced by utilization of modern ICT [25].<br />
“Digital Communities” study accent on wikis or similar tools,<br />
such as Microsoft’s SharePoint or others, that could be used to<br />
standardize business processes, functions and terms across an<br />
entire government. Web 2.0 and social networking preparedness is<br />
also discussed [5].<br />
In the next part of the current research, O*NET database will be<br />
investigated. O*NET is identified as a benchmark database for<br />
occupations [22, 23]. It contains information about hundreds of<br />
standardized and occupation-specific descriptors, including<br />
required technologies and tools for public administration related<br />
occupations.<br />
5. O*NET - TECHNOLOGIES AND TOOLS<br />
@ PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION<br />
OCCUPATIONS<br />
Occupational Information Network (O*NET) 2 is a comprehensive<br />
database of worker attributes and job characteristics [17]. O*NET<br />
is the replacement for the Dictionary of Occupational Titles<br />
(DOT). O*NET is being developed as a timely, easy-to-use<br />
resource that supports public and private sector efforts to identify<br />
and develop the skills of the American workforce. It provides a<br />
2 Occupational Information Network, http://www.onetonline.org/<br />
304<br />
common language for defining and describing occupations. Its<br />
flexible design also captures rapidly changing job requirements.<br />
O*NET database can serve as the engine that drives value-added<br />
applications designed around core information. It provides the<br />
essential foundation for facilitating career counseling, education,<br />
employment, and training activities [18]. The database, is<br />
available to the public at no cost, is continually updated by<br />
surveying a broad range of workers from each occupation. The<br />
database also provides the basis for Career Exploration Tools, a<br />
set of valuable assessment instruments for workers and students<br />
looking to find or change careers. Content Model, is the<br />
conceptual foundation of O*NET (Figure 5).<br />
Figure 5. O*NET Content model<br />
The Content Model embodies a view that reflects the character of<br />
occupations (via job-oriented descriptors) and people (via workeroriented<br />
descriptors). The Content Model also allows occupational<br />
information to be applied across jobs, sectors, or industries (crossoccupational<br />
descriptors) and within occupations (occupationalspecific<br />
descriptors). These descriptors are organized into six<br />
major domains: worker characteristic; worker requirements;<br />
experience requirements; occupational requirements; workforce<br />
characteristics and occupation-specific information. It provides a<br />
framework that identifies the most important types of information<br />
about work and integrates them into a theoretically and<br />
empirically sound system.<br />
Figure 6 shows the occupations related to information:<br />
knowledge, skills, abilities, and interests, general work activities,<br />
work context, including technologies and tools. Figure 6 shows<br />
the investigation path of the current research.<br />
The domains enable the user to focus on areas of information that<br />
specify the key attributes and characteristics of workers and<br />
occupations. Occupation-Specific Information is one of the<br />
domains. It consists of tasks - occupation-specific Tasks and tools<br />
and technology - Machines, equipment, tools, software, and<br />
information technology workers may use for optimal functioning<br />
in a high performance workplace. O*NET advanced search<br />
options allows users to browse by data or career cluster.<br />
Government and public administration career cluster includes:<br />
governance; national security; regulation; planning; revenue and<br />
taxation; public management and administration. In the current<br />
context, government and public management and administration<br />
career cluster are investigated. A number of occupations are<br />
included in each career cluster within O*NET. The investigated<br />
occupations within Public Management and Administration career
cluster were: Court Clerks; Court, Municipal, and License Clerks;<br />
Eligibility Interviewers, Government Programs; License Clerks;<br />
Managers, Municipal Clerks; Postal Service Clerks; Postal<br />
Service Mail Carriers; Postal Service Mail Sorters, Processors,<br />
and Processing Machine Operators; Postmasters and Mail<br />
Superintendents; Social and Community Service Managers. The<br />
investigated occupations within Governance career cluster were:<br />
Administrative Services Managers; Broadcast News Analysts;<br />
Chief Executives; Communications Teachers, Postsecondary;<br />
Eligibility Interviewers, Government Programs; Emergency<br />
Management Directors; General and Operations Managers;<br />
Legislators; Managers; Mapping Technicians; Postmasters and<br />
Mail Superintendents; Public Relations Specialists; Reporters and<br />
Correspondents; Social and Community Service Managers;<br />
Storage and Distribution Managers; Surveying and Mapping<br />
Technicians; Surveying Technicians; Transportation Managers.<br />
O*NET<br />
Bright<br />
outlook<br />
Job Zone<br />
Job family<br />
Career<br />
cluster<br />
Green<br />
economy<br />
sector<br />
Industry<br />
STEM<br />
Discipline<br />
Marketing, sales and services<br />
Education & training<br />
Architecture & construction<br />
Agriculture, food and natural resources<br />
Business, Management & Administration<br />
Art, audio/video technology & communications<br />
Health services<br />
Government & Public<br />
administration<br />
Law, public safety, corrections and security<br />
Human services<br />
Manufacturing<br />
Transportation, distribution & logistics<br />
Finance<br />
Hospitality & tourism<br />
Science, technologies, engineering and<br />
mathematics<br />
Information Technology<br />
The summarized technologies, tools and web 2.0 applications<br />
within O*NET database are as follows:<br />
o Tools: Computer/laptop; Calculators, printers; USB flash<br />
drives; Personal digital assistants PDA; Mobile phones —<br />
smartphones; Scanner; Electronic charts or maps or atlases;<br />
etc.<br />
o Technologies: Spreadsheet software: Microsoft excel; IBM<br />
lotus 1-2-3; Word processing software: Microsoft word;<br />
Electronic mail software: e-mail; Microsoft outlook;<br />
Microsoft project; Presentation software: Microsoft<br />
PowerPoint; Map creation software: mapping software; etc.<br />
Regulation<br />
National Security<br />
Public<br />
Management and<br />
Administration<br />
Governance<br />
Revenue and<br />
taxation<br />
Planning<br />
Figure 6. O*NET – Government & Public administration career cluster<br />
o Web: Web page creation and editing software: Facebook;<br />
Social media software; Blogging software; MySpace;<br />
Podcasting software; Website management software; etc.<br />
It can be concluded that even the fact that technologies and tools<br />
are in the core of e-governance and e-administration, in some<br />
governance and PA within O*NET database, there are no<br />
technologies and tools used. For example, the main activities of<br />
Municipal Clerks are: draft agendas and bylaws for town or city<br />
council; record minutes of council meetings; answer official<br />
305<br />
Skills<br />
Knowledge<br />
Education<br />
Abilities<br />
Interests<br />
Tools and<br />
technologies<br />
Work values<br />
Work styles<br />
Work context<br />
Work activities<br />
Tasks<br />
Wages &<br />
employment<br />
correspondence; keep fiscal records and accounts; prepare reports<br />
on civic needs, where no technologies and tools are used. The<br />
Web page creation and editing exists only in few governance and<br />
public management, and administration occupations, such as<br />
Public Relations Specialists or Reporters and Correspondents.<br />
6. EMPIRICAL SURVEY<br />
Technologies, tools and web 2.0 used in the survey are based on<br />
O*NET investigation. The aim of the survey was to establish
whether there is a gap and what Technologies, Tools and Web 2.0<br />
(TTW2.0) are used in workplace and how they can support<br />
workplace communications. The methodology for empirical<br />
survey was as follows:<br />
1) The questionnaire for the survey was designed. It includes<br />
four groups of questions regarding: (a) public administration<br />
workplace communications; (b) technologies, tools and web<br />
2.0 usages within workplace; (c) benefits from better<br />
communications on the workplace; (d) willingness to learn,<br />
to improve knowledge, skills and competencies to work with<br />
new technologies, tools & Web 2.0. The Technologies and<br />
Tools which are used in the survey are based on the O*NET<br />
investigation. Web 2.0 applications are chosen as a result of<br />
the literary research and discussions with experts in the field.<br />
Particular focus is given to respondents` willingness to learn<br />
about Technologies and Tools and Web 2.0, in order to<br />
improve their knowledge, skills and competencies.<br />
2) Some meetings and interviews were done with representative<br />
from the Sofia Municipality Directorate “Information<br />
services and technologies” which is the main administrative<br />
and territorial unit in Sofia. Based on discussions with the<br />
representatives a decision about which directorate will best<br />
correspond to the goal of the research was made. Most of the<br />
occupations within the Directorate of “Information services<br />
and technologies” are strongly linked to the technologies and<br />
tools.<br />
3) PA staff, who work in the Sofia Municipality Directorate<br />
“Information services and technologies”, were asked to<br />
respond to the survey and about more than half of them<br />
agreed to give their responds. This questionnaire asked each<br />
respondent question about his/her subjective impression of<br />
the technologies and tools used at the workplace. The given<br />
responses were for more than 90% of the questions.<br />
4) The results of the study are presented into four parts: Part 1:<br />
PA workplace communications; Part 2: Technologies, tools<br />
and web 2.0 usage within workplace; Part 3: Benefits from<br />
better communications on the workplace; Part 4: Willingness<br />
to learn how to work with new technologies, tools & Web<br />
2.0.<br />
5) Data collection period: March 2012 – April 2012.<br />
Responding to this survey was not mandatory. Data are<br />
collected directly from survey respondents. The gathering of<br />
responses was done by a free web based surveying tool. It<br />
allowed automatically responses collection and analysis. For<br />
some of the questions five point Likert scale was used.<br />
6) The results are discussed, summarizing the most important<br />
relations between the groups of questions. The study was<br />
conducted to find answers about: what is the usage of<br />
technologies, tools and web 2.0; are there link between<br />
communications efficiency and TTW2.0 usage; are there gap<br />
in TTW2.0 at the public administration workplace; how<br />
many public employees and professionals are ready and<br />
willing to learn for TTW2.0 for improving their knowledge,<br />
skills and competencies.<br />
Many initiatives are conducted for the e-government development<br />
on a national level in Bulgaria. In December 2011, a start was<br />
given to the electronic exchange of documents between five state<br />
administrations, Ministry of Transport, Information Technology<br />
306<br />
and Communications (MTITC), Ministry of Foreign Affairs,<br />
Ministry of Economy, Energy and Tourism, Road Infrastructure<br />
Agency and BULATSA, by sending and receiving documents<br />
electronically until today [12]. These administrations use the same<br />
document management system. The electronic exchange of<br />
documents today saves time, increases efficiency and reduces<br />
administration costs of departments. Sofia Municipality takes an<br />
active role in e-Government development projects, and it is<br />
planned to be a pilot Lot 3 beneficiary Municipality. Currently,<br />
Sofia Municipality use Document Management Software<br />
“АКСТЪР ОФИС” and most of workplace communications are<br />
done by electronic tools and technologies [24].<br />
6.1 Part 1 - Better Communications at<br />
Workplace<br />
This part of the survey includes 18 questions. The starting point is<br />
to identify how each one of the staff communicates at work, what<br />
does he/she think about personal barriers and what does the<br />
information depend on. At the begging the questions are focused<br />
on indirect factors which influence workplace communications.<br />
The survey data showed that all of the respondents like their job,<br />
and about 69,3% of respondents like to be connected during<br />
working time. The data showed that the majority of the<br />
respondents (77%) agree that the communication itself depends on<br />
the Internet and the net and that two side of the communication,<br />
sender and receiver, are equally important (92,3%). Most of the<br />
respondents (84,6%) communicate more often when they are at<br />
work than when they are at home. The respondents who prefer to<br />
receive information in communication verbally are 46,2%, but<br />
those who prefers to receive information by mail are 38,5 %, no<br />
one prefers using Skype. Next question is about how do<br />
employees prefer to communicate. The responses are similar to<br />
the previous ones: 7,7% prefer to communicate online, 30,8%<br />
Face to Face (F2F), 46,2% F2F&online and 15,4% said that it<br />
doesn’t matter. This comes to the conclusion that most of the<br />
respondents prefer to receive information and to communicate by<br />
using electronic technologies. But, in regards to communication<br />
with some colleagues, 53,8% of the respondents said that they<br />
prefer to communicate more via mail than F2F, about 30,8% can`t<br />
say, 15,4% don’t prefer to communicate via mail more than via<br />
F2F.<br />
It can be concluded that the team working environment is not so<br />
good and there is a presence of bad workplace relationships<br />
concerning some of the staff. Most of the respondents (84,6%)<br />
agree that “Better communication will improve time to finish<br />
work, quality of work and his/her labor cost”. “How often do you<br />
contact someone daily?”, 72,7% of the respondents need to<br />
contact someone at least 5 to 19 times per day. About 18,2% of<br />
them need to contact someone at work more than 50 times, which<br />
leads to the conclusion that about ¼ of the respondents dependent<br />
on communicating with other colleagues at work. The survey data<br />
showed that 92,3% feel happy to take part in community events<br />
and are always ready to support someone in her/his work. 61,5%<br />
of respondents said that his/her competency of working with tool<br />
and technology is extremely important to communicate effectively<br />
and for 38,5% they are important. The result is that technologies<br />
have the potential to improve communications at the workplace.<br />
6.2 Part 2 - Technologies, Tools and Web 2.0<br />
This part of the survey contains three subparts. The first subpart<br />
includes technologies (7 questions), the second one includes tools
(8 questions) and the third subpart includes web 2.0 (10<br />
questions).<br />
6.2.1 Technologies<br />
The point is to identify whether the administrators are familiar<br />
with technologies or not. The data showed that the majority of the<br />
respondents are familiar with the technologies. Map creation<br />
software is the least one that is being used at work (no one uses<br />
it), Microsoft Project (9,1%). Word processing software is used at<br />
work (36,4%) and 66,7% of the respondents use it at work & at<br />
home equally. The most used at work is electronic mail software<br />
and spreadsheet software, out of total 63,6% use electronic mail<br />
software at work and 36,4% use it equally at work and at home.<br />
6.2.2 Tools<br />
“How often do you use the tool in your work activities: during the<br />
whole day, half of the day, ¼ of the day, less than an hour or don’t<br />
use it?”. All respondents said that they use computer/laptop durind<br />
the whole day. 18,2% of total respondents said that they use<br />
mobile phones and Smartphones whole day, 9,1% of respondents<br />
use scaners actively. Less used are calculators, USB flash,<br />
electronic charts, map or attlases<br />
6.2.3 Web 2.0<br />
In this subpart of the survey, the questions are related to web 2.0.<br />
Are the employees familiar with web 2.0, do they use web 2.0 at<br />
work or do they not use it? The data shows that, some of them are<br />
well familiar, whereas others are not. 10% of respondent know<br />
about the Blogging, Online virtual games and worlds, Media<br />
sharing and social media software. Most of respondents are<br />
familiar with blogging and social media software but do not use<br />
them. Social networking (Facebook; LinkedIn; My space) is the<br />
most used by the respondents. Out of the total 41,7% use social<br />
networking at home. No one has blog. The survey data shows that<br />
most of the respondents are familiar with web 2.0 applications<br />
but, don`t use them at work. Despite that some of Web 2.0<br />
applications are not allowed to be used at the workplace, the<br />
respondents know about them and used some of them for years.<br />
33,3% of respondents declare that they have Skype account since<br />
3 to 4 years, 33,3% have Skype account for more than 5 years.<br />
Out of the total, 16,4% of the respondents have Facebook account<br />
for more than 5 years.<br />
307<br />
6.3 Part 3 – Technologies, Tools and Web 2.0<br />
Use at the Workplace Communications<br />
Third part of the survey (7 questions) point the effect of<br />
communications based on the technologies, tools and web 2.0<br />
uses. 33,3% of respondents strongly agree, that better<br />
communications will improve mostly working community and<br />
team working (25%). 75% of respondents declare they agree that<br />
the information flows transparency will be improved, 83,3% agree<br />
that information exchange difficulties will be diminished. Out of<br />
the total, 58,3% agree that better communications affect personal<br />
fulfillment, 66,7% agree that misunderstanding along the<br />
communications channels will decrease. 50% of employees<br />
declare that team working will be improved. Only 8,3% of them<br />
strongly disagree that better communications will improve<br />
personal fulfillment.<br />
6.4 Part 4 - Willingness to Learn<br />
Fourth part of the survey includes 8 questions. The survey data<br />
shows that the majority of the respondents strongly agree to learn<br />
in order to improve their knowledge, skills and competencies. The<br />
respondents agree that knowledge and competencies about new<br />
technologies, tools and web 2.0 will indirectly influence work<br />
efficiency. All respondents agree that they would spend time to<br />
learn, no negative response. Of the total, 16,7% are interested in<br />
learning about technologies, 8,3% are interested in tools, 8,3%<br />
are interested in web 2.0. Most of respondents (58,3%) would<br />
spend 6 hours weekly to learn, 16,7% would spend 2 hours<br />
weekly, 16,7% would spend 10hours, and only 8,3% would<br />
spend more than 10 hours weekly. “In case that you enroll in a<br />
learning course for technology, tools and Web 2.0, who will<br />
benefit from it?” 60% of respondents said that the benefit will be<br />
for him/her personally and the organization, 40% said that the<br />
benefit will be for him/her, organization and services.<br />
7. CONCLUSION<br />
This research paper tried to identify technologies, tools and web<br />
2.0 which support public administration communications, while<br />
focusing on the people in the process (Figure 7). Additionally to<br />
the eAdministration and public administration 2.0 literary review,<br />
an investigation within O*NET database was done. The paper<br />
looks at the key issue that the public administrators need not only<br />
to be knowledgeable, highly qualified, skilled and competent for<br />
doing their job, but much more to be familiar and prepared for<br />
using technologies, tools and mostly web 2.0 applications,<br />
relevant to his/her occupation at workplace.
Figure 7. Public Administration 2.0 workplace communications model<br />
Based on the technologies, tools and web 2.0 investigated in<br />
O*NET, an empirical survey was conducted at “Information<br />
services and technologies” Directorate at Sofia Municipality. The<br />
survey showed that the employees apply in their daily<br />
communications most of the analyzed technologies and tools. But<br />
it is identified a little gap in the knowledge of web 2.0<br />
applications. The employees agree that the efficient<br />
communications are a key gateway to success in their work. One<br />
of the most important conclusions is that there exists a potential<br />
for improving communications and that the staff is willing to learn<br />
in order to acquire new knowledge, new skills and develop<br />
competencies in the field of technologies, tools and web 2.0<br />
related to his/her occupation. The survey results do not tend to be<br />
a representative for all public administration offices. The results<br />
are related only to a particular administrative office, “Information<br />
services and technologies” Directorate at Sofia Municipality,<br />
where it was held, but they are a good base for more complex<br />
study at a district or a national level.<br />
8. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS<br />
Thanks to Research laboratory "Technologies and standards for elearning"<br />
TU-Sofia for support in this research. Thanks to Sofia<br />
Municipality, “Information services and technologies” directorate<br />
for support in the research implementation and respond to the<br />
request to participate in this study.<br />
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1313-1842, p.152-156, 2010<br />
[24] Sofia Municipality, http://www.sofia.bg/en/index_en.as<br />
[25] Špaèek, D., J. Špalek, Communication and Electronic Public<br />
Administration: Some Issues in the Context of the Czech<br />
System of Public Administration,<br />
http://unpan1.un.org/intradoc/groups/public/documents/nispa<br />
cee/unpan027501.pdf<br />
[26] United Nations E-Government Survey 2012 E-Government<br />
for the People, United Nations, 2012, p.3, p.29, Available<br />
from:<br />
http://unpan1.un.org/intradoc/groups/public/documents/un/un<br />
pan048065.pdf, p.7-8<br />
[27] World Bank,<br />
http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/TOPICS/E<br />
XTINFORMATIONANDCOMMUNICATIONANDTECH<br />
NOLOGIES/EXTEGOVERNMENT/0,,contentMDK:205071<br />
53~menuPK:702592~pagePK:148956~piPK:216618~theSite<br />
PK:702586,00.html
Transforming City Government: A Case Study of Philly311<br />
Taewoo Nam<br />
Center for Technology in Government<br />
University at Albany, SUNY<br />
187 Wolf Road, Suite 301<br />
Albany, NY12205, United States<br />
+1-518-442-3892<br />
tnam@ctg.albany.edu<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
This paper describes the transformation of a city government led<br />
by a 311 program, which provides a consolidated channel for nonemergency<br />
services and information. The paper first discusses the<br />
concept of “smart city” as a foundation for the examination of the<br />
311 program as a practice of government innovation. The paper<br />
then presents the details of the 311 program as instantiated in the<br />
City of Philadelphia. In-depth interviews with Philadelphia City<br />
government officials and managers responsible for creating and<br />
operating the City’s 311 system (Philly311) offer insights into the<br />
contributions the system is making to a more efficient, effective,<br />
transparent, accountable, and collaborative city government.<br />
Performance data provided by Philly311 enables more efficient<br />
resource allocation and informed decision making. Philly311 is<br />
credited with making the process of service delivery more<br />
transparent to the public, and providing traceability of requested<br />
services which imbues service departments with a sense of<br />
accountability. Service level agreements are providing measurable<br />
standards of municipal services and are used to support<br />
accountability in terms of service status. Regular reviews of<br />
service level agreements and content of the system are also<br />
recognized as promoting interdepartmental collaboration. 311<br />
systems are broadly recognized as powerful tools to engage<br />
residents in improving their neighborhoods. Institutionalizing<br />
interdepartmental collaborations emerged from the interviews as a<br />
critical capability in advancing from the initiation stage of<br />
Philly311-like systems to operations and refinement.<br />
Categories and Subject Descriptors<br />
H.4.2 [Information Systems Applications]: Type of systems —<br />
e-government applications.<br />
General Terms<br />
Management, Performance, Human Factors, Theory.<br />
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for<br />
personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are<br />
not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies<br />
bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for<br />
components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored.<br />
Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to<br />
post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission<br />
and/or a fee.<br />
ICEGOV '12, October 22 - 25 2012, Albany, NY, USA<br />
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1200-4/12/10...$15.00<br />
310<br />
Theresa A. Pardo<br />
Center for Technology in Government<br />
University at Albany, SUNY<br />
187 Wolf Road, Suite 301<br />
Albany, NY12205, United States<br />
+1-518-442-3892<br />
tpardo@ctg.albany.edu<br />
Keywords<br />
311, Non-emergency service, Contact center, Customer service,<br />
Smart city, Service level agreement, E-government, City<br />
government.<br />
1. INTRODUCTION<br />
The phrase “smart city” is used more and more regularly by<br />
elected officials, civil society, the private sector, and academia.<br />
Regardless of this emerging trend, there is no agreed-upon<br />
description of what “smart” implies in the context of a single city.<br />
Some recent conceptual studies have discussed a city’s smartness<br />
[1,4,6,17,20,21]. In these studies, a smart city is broadly<br />
understood as improvements in city infrastructure including<br />
information and communication infrastructures, and physical<br />
infrastructures such as roads, bridges, and buildings, services such<br />
as utilities, social services, and transportation, and a variety of<br />
resources such as natural resources, financial resources, cultural<br />
resources, and human capital. However, the concept of a smart<br />
city is still abstract and even ambiguous.<br />
There is another reason for the lack of agreement around the<br />
“smart city” concept. A smart city often comes across as a<br />
normative claim. People want the cities they are living in to be<br />
smarter; they want to close the gap between their current status<br />
and their expectations. Smart city strategies—e.g., integrating<br />
critical infrastructures and services, consolidating systems, and<br />
interconnecting networks—are emerging as responses to a variety<br />
of complex problems such as crime, health concerns, pollution,<br />
aging populations, deteriorating infrastructure, and traffic<br />
congestion, that cities are currently facing due to dense<br />
congregations of people in spatially limited areas [24]. The<br />
desirable status of being “smart” is an outcome sought by the<br />
public and city officials alike. In this sense, increasing attention is<br />
being paid to those city governments who are successful in<br />
transforming their cities through “smart city” initiatives.<br />
Discussions of and certainly research about smart cities must pay<br />
attention to the characteristics of the city governments that make<br />
their city smarter. Previous studies of smart cities emphasize<br />
smartness of government, administration, and public management<br />
as core factors in the creation of a smart city [6,20,21].<br />
Adopting the view of a smart city as one that has more innovative,<br />
more efficient, and more effective government, this paper<br />
employs a case study of Philly311, the City of Philadelphia’s 311<br />
non-emergency contact program, among a variety of current and<br />
best practice examples of government efforts to make cities<br />
smarter. The concept of “smart city” is used as a foundation for
the examination of the 311 program as a practice of government<br />
innovation, based on a review of current thinking about the<br />
dimensions and components of smart cities. Philly311 is,<br />
according to the Mayor of Philadelphia, Michael Nutter, one of<br />
his flagship initiatives being carried out to make the City smarter.<br />
A case study based on qualitative data from semi-structured<br />
interviews with the City’s executives, Philly311 staff, and<br />
managers of other related departments allows for a close<br />
examination of how the Philly311 service is helping make<br />
Philadelphia a smarter city.<br />
The remainder of this paper is structured into six sections. Section<br />
2 draws on recent research to outline the characteristics of a smart<br />
city and a smart government. Section 3 presents the methodology<br />
used in the study and introduces the case. Section 4 presents the<br />
case analysis with a particular focus on changes observed in city<br />
management and service delivery in the City of Philadelphia and<br />
considered to be consequences of the implementation of<br />
Philly311. Section 5 discusses challenges the City is facing in<br />
operating Philly311 and also opportunities Philly311 offers.<br />
Section 6 further discusses the impacts made by Philly311 as one<br />
instance of smart city initiatives. Section 7 concludes this paper.<br />
2. CONCEPTUALIZING SMART CITY<br />
AND GOVERNMENT<br />
Since we consider a smart city as transformation and innovation in<br />
city government, we use the “smart city” concept as a foundation<br />
to describe a practice of government innovation—in this paper,<br />
Philly311. This section introduces and discusses a set of working<br />
definitions of a smart city, followed by a review of the core<br />
components constituting the concept of a smart city derived from<br />
both academic and practical research. Finally, we discuss how a<br />
smart government is recognized as one of the core capabilities of<br />
a smart city.<br />
Table 1. Working definitions of a smart city<br />
� “An urban area functioning and articulated by modern<br />
information and communication technologies in its various<br />
verticals, providing ongoing efficient services to its population”<br />
[2].<br />
� “A city well performing in a forward-looking way in economy,<br />
people, governance, mobility, environment, and living, built on<br />
the smart combination of endowments and activities of selfdecisive,<br />
independent and aware citizens” [12: p. 11].<br />
� The foundational concepts are instrumented, interconnected,<br />
and intelligent city. “Instrumented refers to sources of near-realtime<br />
real-world data from both physical and virtual sensors.<br />
Interconnected means the integration of those data into an<br />
enterprise computing platform and the communication of such<br />
information among the various city services. Intelligent refers to<br />
the inclusion of complex analytics, modeling, optimization, and<br />
visualization in the operational business processes to make<br />
better operational decisions” [15: p. 1].<br />
� “A city striving to make itself ‘smarter’ (more efficient,<br />
sustainable, equitable, and livable)” [Natural Resources<br />
Defense Council: smartercities.nrdc.org]<br />
� “The use of Smart Computing technologies to make the critical<br />
infrastructure components and services of a city––which<br />
include city administration, education, healthcare, public safety,<br />
real estate, transportation, and utilities––more intelligent,<br />
interconnected, and efficient” [24: p. 2].<br />
311<br />
Several working definitions of a smart city can be found in the<br />
literature (see Table 1). They share some features as well as have<br />
some unique aspects. For example, while Giffinger et al. [12]<br />
view a smart city as one performing in a “forward-looking” way,<br />
the Natural Resources Defense Council considers “smarter” as<br />
more efficient, sustainable, equitable, and livable. Harrison et al.<br />
[15] conceptualize a smart city in a technological sense as<br />
instrumented, interconnected, and intelligent. Similarly,<br />
Washburn et al. [24] see a smart city as intelligent,<br />
interconnected, and efficient.<br />
The definitions from Anavitarte and Tratz-Ryan [2], Harrison et<br />
al. [9], and Washburn et al. [24] each emphasize the role of<br />
information and communication technologies (ICTs). The<br />
technologies include smart computing [24] and a range of<br />
instruments such as sensors, kiosks, meters, personal devices,<br />
appliances, cameras, and smart phones [15]. In sum, a smart city<br />
is defined with some key elements including meanings of<br />
smartness in the urban context, the role of technologies in making<br />
a city smarter, domains that need to be smart, and infrastructures<br />
and services that are provided to the population.<br />
The definitions taken together provide a roadmap for cities<br />
seeking to become smarter. Washburn et al. [24] highlight seven<br />
key areas where cities are investing in becoming “smarter”<br />
including city administration, education, healthcare, public safety,<br />
real estate, transportation, and utilities. Giffinger et al. [12]<br />
identifies six key aspects of a city where smart cities are seeking<br />
to have an impact from their investments: economy, people,<br />
governance, mobility, environment, and living. Chourabi et al. [6]<br />
put forth eight components of a smart city: technology,<br />
management and organization, governance, policy, people and<br />
communities, economy, built infrastructure, and natural<br />
environment.<br />
The components of a smart city included in the definitions are<br />
further specified in both academic literature and practical reports.<br />
Recent studies discuss definitional components and conceptual<br />
dimensions of a smart city. Nam and Pardo [20] suggest three<br />
conceptual dimensions of a smart city—i.e., technological<br />
artifacts, people and communities, and institutional<br />
arrangements—by exploring a wide array of recent research<br />
focusing on a smart city and/or similar (often interchangeably<br />
used) labels such as an intelligent city, innovative city,<br />
information city, knowledge city, and creative city, among others.<br />
Nam and Pardo [20] consider a smart city as a more<br />
comprehensive concept comprising such diverse similar labels.<br />
Technology is central to defining a smart city, but a smart city<br />
cannot be built simply through the use of technology. Importantly,<br />
technology is a means to enable social, environmental, economic,<br />
and cultural progress. Smart cities thus must be capable of<br />
sustaining such progress across the diversity of components and<br />
conceptual dimensions [1,17]. Along with this view, smart city<br />
initiatives driven by municipal governments can be characterized<br />
as innovation in multiple dimensions—i.e., technology,<br />
management, and policy [21].<br />
Three smart city ranking tools and frameworks merit attention as<br />
comprehensive sets of components of smart cities. The ranking<br />
system to score European medium-sized (population between<br />
100,000 to 500,000) cities (www.smart-cities.eu) includes six<br />
categories of smart city evaluation indicators: economy<br />
(competitiveness), people (social and human capital), governance<br />
(participation, transparent governance, the functioning of the
administration), mobility (transportation and ICT), environment<br />
(natural resources, environmental protection, sustainable resource<br />
management), and living (quality of life, cultural facilities, health,<br />
safety) [12]. IBM’s core city systems are categorized into three<br />
systems: operating systems (city services system comprising<br />
public service management and local government administration),<br />
user systems (citizens system comprising health, education and<br />
public safety, and business system), and infrastructure systems<br />
(transport system, communication system, water system, and<br />
energy system) [8,9]. In IBM’s framework, city governance and<br />
city strategy connect across the seven systems. Forrester<br />
Research’s white paper [24] suggests seven critical infrastructure<br />
components and services of a smart city including city<br />
administration, education, healthcare, public safety, real estate,<br />
transportation, and utilities.<br />
Table 2 compares the comprehensive sets of smart city<br />
components suggested by Chourabi et al. [6], European mid-sized<br />
city evaluation tool [12], IBM [8,9], and Forrester [24]. While<br />
each includes technology and government as components (public<br />
service management and local government administration), each<br />
model also stresses unique components.<br />
Table 2. Components of a smart city<br />
Chourabi et<br />
al. [6]<br />
European<br />
mid-sized<br />
cities [12]<br />
IBM [8,9] Forrester<br />
[24]<br />
Technology √ √ √ √<br />
Management &<br />
administration<br />
√ √ √ √<br />
Governance √ √ √<br />
City services √ √ √<br />
People and<br />
communities<br />
√ √<br />
Economy √ √<br />
Built<br />
environment<br />
√ √<br />
Natural<br />
√ √<br />
environment<br />
Note. City services broadly include transportation, safety, heath, water,<br />
energy, housing, and culture.<br />
As shown in Table 2, one of core components of a smart city is a<br />
smart government because a city government is a central actor<br />
that plays a pivotal role to lead and coordinate smart city<br />
initiatives and efforts. In the IBM core city system that Dirks et al.<br />
[9] suggested, the concept of a smart government comprises<br />
public service management and local government administration<br />
as key components. Thus city management and city services can<br />
be identified as two main dimensions of a smart government.<br />
Some previous conceptual studies defined the dimensions of<br />
management and service in smart city activities. Since a smart city<br />
is considered urban innovation, smart city initiatives can be<br />
characterized as government innovation in management and<br />
services [21]. Nam and Pardo [21] considered a smart city in the<br />
aspect of government management as enhancing efficient,<br />
effective management both in front-office and back-office<br />
operations of city government. They also defined managerial<br />
innovation of a smart government as “a mechanism to create<br />
managerial and organizational capabilities for effective use of<br />
technological tools and conditions” [21: p. 187]. On the other<br />
hand, Dirks et al. [8] defined a city services system as “the<br />
312<br />
operational activities and coordination of service delivery<br />
provided by the city authority” (p. 5). In particular, smart service<br />
means “tailoring services to the needs of individual citizens” and<br />
“using technology to integrate the information systems of<br />
different service delivery agencies to enable better services for<br />
citizens [8: p. 11].<br />
In line to these concepts of management and service as smart<br />
government dimensions, many discussions of a smart government<br />
have been recently made. According to Chourabi et al. [6],<br />
management and organization of a city government and its<br />
governance with other actors are key success factors of smart city<br />
initiatives. The smart city model suggested by Giffinger et al. [12]<br />
underscores smart governance as a larger category including a<br />
smart government. The smart governance component comprises<br />
participation in decision making and transparent governance. In<br />
the model of Giffinger et al. [12], the quantifiable measure of<br />
transparent governance represents citizen satisfaction with<br />
transparency of bureaucracy and with fight against corruption.<br />
Washburn et al. [24] saw efficient management of city operations<br />
and effective delivery of city services as key to smart government:<br />
An efficient city administration that provides services to<br />
its citizens and fosters businesses is essential to<br />
today’s service-based economy. A smart government<br />
service is informed about its city’s condition and is able<br />
to reach its citizens effectively. A core component of<br />
this function is using communication and collaboration<br />
technologies to manage city operations. … Moreover, it<br />
uses data and scientific analysis in all phases of the<br />
decision-making process to improve the economy and<br />
quality of life. (p. 5–6)<br />
Thus smart city administration should contribute to greater<br />
efficiency, effectiveness, and the improvement in decision<br />
making. Dirks et al. [9] identify local government expenditure and<br />
staff as prerequisites of a smart government. Elements of the<br />
smart system for management and operation include coordinated<br />
service delivery, e-government application, and the use of ICT for<br />
service delivery. Outcomes of a smart government appear as<br />
increased efficiency and effectiveness of service delivery [9: p. 5].<br />
To sum, a smart government is expected to increase efficiency,<br />
effectiveness, and transparency in organizational management and<br />
service delivery. A smart government also may promote<br />
coordination and collaboration among city departments and with<br />
other external organizations and citizens. Thus a smart<br />
government can facilitate non-governmental entities’ participation<br />
in decision making and monitoring of service delivery. In this<br />
sense, a smart government should include governance with both<br />
internal (within government) and external actors.<br />
Reflecting on this discussion, we create the metrics of assessing a<br />
smart government and will use it to the case of Philly311, as<br />
exhibited in Table 3.<br />
Efficiency<br />
Table 3. Metrics for assessing a smart government<br />
Effectiveness<br />
Transparency<br />
Governance<br />
Management Service
3. CASE STUDY METHOD<br />
This study uses case study methodology to understand why and<br />
how a social phenomenon of interest occurs [25]. The method<br />
helps develop preliminary understanding. Given the emerging<br />
nature of 311 contact centers and the paucity of academic research<br />
on the service centers, case study methodology is an appropriate<br />
approach to conducting this exploratory research [25]. This study<br />
is also inductive so that it contributes to building new<br />
understanding. This section describes data collection, data<br />
analysis, and the case of Philly311 non-emergency contact center.<br />
3.1 Data Collection<br />
In order to identify the relevant interview participants, purposive<br />
sampling was employed. Because of the relative newness of the<br />
research theme, the sampling technique is needed to identify and<br />
target individuals who could provide important information to<br />
understand the social phenomenon [11]. The director of Philly311<br />
as an initial informant was asked to recommend others who have<br />
sufficient information and knowledge in various aspects of 311<br />
operation. Interview participants were selected to avoid redundant<br />
knowledge and maximize new knowledge. Interviewees from<br />
different levels and functions include executive-level officials (the<br />
mayor, the managing director, and the deputy director), Philly311<br />
staff members (director, operation manager, and technology<br />
expert), and representatives of other service departments<br />
(commissioner and chief of staff) related to 311 operations.<br />
In December 2011, the authors conducted 16 semi-structured<br />
interviews with city government officials and managers with<br />
responsibility for managing and operating the City of<br />
Philadelphia’s 311 service center, Philly311. Each face-to-face<br />
interview lasted approximately one hour, and additional<br />
information was collected through follow-up email<br />
communication.<br />
Data was collected using the protocol jointly developed by the<br />
multinational “Smart Cities Service Integration” research team,<br />
which aims to explore the processes of smart city initiatives and<br />
their impacts on cities, people, and city governments. The study of<br />
Chourabi et al. [6] provides a conceptual background of the<br />
interview protocol. Table 4 presents a summary of interview<br />
questions included in the interview protocol.<br />
Table 4. Sample interview questions<br />
Categories Questions<br />
Case<br />
description<br />
� How did Philly311 start?<br />
� What are the main goals of Philly311?<br />
� What organizations are involved and how?<br />
Smart city � What does it mean for a city to be smart?<br />
� What are characteristics of a smart city?<br />
Management<br />
and<br />
organization<br />
� How is Philly311 organized and managed?<br />
(probes: organizational structure, business<br />
process, workflow, progress tracking, staffing,<br />
training, funding, etc.)<br />
� What organizational challenges is Philly311 facing<br />
in achieving its objectives?<br />
� How are those challenges being overcome?<br />
Technology � How is information and communication technology<br />
being used for Philly311? (probes: service<br />
channels, data analysis tools, system integration,<br />
social media use, etc.)<br />
313<br />
� What are the barriers or challenges to using<br />
technologies for Philly311?<br />
Governance � How is Philly311 governed? (probes: governing<br />
body, governance model, decision making<br />
process, and conflict resolution process)<br />
� What’s the authority and role of staff, partners,<br />
and stakeholders?<br />
� How are citizens and other organizations involved<br />
in Philly311?<br />
Policy � What is the relationship between Philly311 and the<br />
policy environment?<br />
Context � How does the larger environment of Philly311<br />
influence Philly311? (e.g., cultural, social, political,<br />
economic, demographic contexts)<br />
People and<br />
communities<br />
� How does Philly311 affect and is affected by the<br />
population and communities of the City?<br />
Economy � What is the impact of Philly311 on the City’s<br />
economy?<br />
Natural<br />
environment<br />
� How does Philly311 affect the City’s natural<br />
environment?<br />
The team also established criteria for case selection including a<br />
focus on service provision, transportation, and human services and<br />
selected cases must have a service integration component that<br />
crosses the boundaries of agencies within a city. Philly311 as a<br />
direct service delivery project and with a focus on city-level<br />
service integration met the selection criteria.<br />
3.2 Case Analysis<br />
Interviews were transcribed and analyzed following an inductive<br />
logic approach and using grounded theory techniques. Employing<br />
a qualitative analysis software tool (Atals-ti), we did a systematic<br />
iterative process of joint coding and analysis to minimize personal<br />
bias. Grounded theory refers to theory that is developed<br />
inductively from empirical data, and the grounded theory<br />
approach is a method of using empirical data without<br />
preconceived theories to generate or discover a theory [13,22].<br />
For this research, coding refers to a process of labeling,<br />
separating, compiling, categorizing, and organizing qualitative<br />
data [5,7,18]. Descriptive codes are used so that interview<br />
transcripts were coded in sentence or multi-sentence chunks.<br />
Glaser and Strauss [13] suggested the four stages of grounded<br />
theory analysis as follows:<br />
• Codes: identifying anchors that allow the key points of the<br />
data to be gathered<br />
• Concepts: collections of codes of similar content that allows<br />
the data to be grouped<br />
• Categories: broad groups of similar concepts that are used<br />
to generate a theory<br />
• Theory: a collection of explanations that explain the subject<br />
of research<br />
Corresponding to the research logic, Table 5 describes the scheme<br />
of this grounded theory analysis.<br />
Table 5. The scheme for the grounded theory analysis<br />
Categories Concepts Codes emergent from the data
Smart<br />
management<br />
Smart service<br />
delivery<br />
Technological<br />
factors<br />
Organizational<br />
factors<br />
Governance<br />
factors<br />
Efficient<br />
management<br />
Effective<br />
management<br />
Transparent<br />
management<br />
Managerial<br />
governance<br />
Efficient service<br />
delivery<br />
Effective service<br />
delivery<br />
Transparent<br />
service delivery<br />
Governance in<br />
service delivery<br />
Technological<br />
challenges<br />
Technological<br />
opportunities<br />
Organizational<br />
challenges<br />
Technological<br />
opportunities<br />
Governance<br />
challenges<br />
Governance<br />
opportunities<br />
Efficient resource allocation; saving<br />
budget; saving human resource;<br />
business process change<br />
Informed decision making; datadriven<br />
management; performance<br />
management; business process<br />
change<br />
Anti-corruption; integrity;<br />
transparency; open government;<br />
service level agreement<br />
Interdepartmental collaboration;<br />
external partnership; service level<br />
agreement<br />
Service integration; channel<br />
consolidation; shared service<br />
capability<br />
Customer-oriented service;<br />
professionalism; internal customers;<br />
external customers<br />
External accountability; internal<br />
accountability; service level<br />
agreement<br />
Citizen engagement; neighborhood<br />
engagement; community<br />
engagement; neighborhood liaison<br />
Under-equipping; cost of upgrading<br />
back-office technologies; timing of<br />
investment of the right technology at<br />
the right time; the digital divide<br />
Channel diversification; emerging<br />
technologies; smart phone<br />
Limited funding; limited operation;<br />
limited staffing; cultural conflict;<br />
interdepartmental difference<br />
Business process change; datadriven<br />
culture; performance-driven<br />
culture; customer-oriented culture<br />
Interdepartmental conflict; the lack<br />
of a formal governing body; informal<br />
interdepartmental collaboration;<br />
more burden for extensive data<br />
analysis<br />
Relational governance; mutual<br />
understanding; citizen engagement<br />
3.3 Case Description<br />
Philadelphia is one of the last cities of its size to activate a 311<br />
non-emergency toll-free number. On the last day of 2008, the<br />
mayor and the managing director of the City opened Philly311 as<br />
a concrete step toward the administration’s strategic goal of<br />
smarter, faster, and better government through customer service,<br />
government efficiency, and accountability. The basic idea—<br />
giving the public a direct way to request services or complain and<br />
using their feedback to hold government accountable—was not<br />
entirely new to Philadelphia. The City already had customer<br />
hotlines, but there was no single, consolidated contact point. The<br />
new 311 contact center absorbed the City Hall Switchboard, the<br />
Mayor’s Action Center, the Department of Licenses and<br />
Inspections’ customer line, and part of the Department of Streets’<br />
customer line. Philly311 offers various ways to contact the City:<br />
phone, in person (Philadelphia is one of a few cities with a walk-<br />
314<br />
in center), email, short message service (SMS), and social media<br />
(Twitter).<br />
4. PHILLY311 AND TRANSFORMING<br />
GOVERNMENT<br />
This section shares some of the finding from the interviews with<br />
Philly311 officials. Overall we heard about two kinds of changes<br />
in resulting in part from the Philly311 initiative; changes in<br />
management and service delivery. The 311-driven changes<br />
discussed below are expounded first in terms of efficiency,<br />
effectiveness, transparency, and governance (See Table 6).<br />
Table 6. Philly311: driving innovation<br />
Efficiency � Efficient use and<br />
allocation of resources<br />
Effectiveness � Informed decision<br />
making<br />
� Data-driven<br />
management<br />
Transparency � Anti-corruption and<br />
integrity<br />
Governance � Internal collaboration<br />
� External partnership<br />
Management Service Delivery<br />
� Frontline service<br />
integration<br />
� Shared services<br />
� Customer-oriented<br />
service<br />
� Professionalism<br />
� Internal and external<br />
accountability<br />
� Citizen engagement<br />
� Neighborhood<br />
engagement<br />
4.1 311-Driven Changes in Management<br />
The 311 service center is recognized as helping other departments<br />
use their resources more efficiently and effectively. One of<br />
Philly311’s objectives involves allowing agencies and<br />
departments to focus on their core mission and manage their<br />
workload efficiently (see www.phila.gov/311). Just as Baltimore’s<br />
original motive for launching its 311 was to reduce the crush of<br />
calls flooding into 911, Philly311 allows Philadelphia’s 911<br />
center to devote their resources to life-threatening and urgent<br />
situations. Philly311 also enables the City Council (the City’s<br />
legislative body) to use their resources more effectively, by saving<br />
their budget and staff time spent on facilitating constituent<br />
services. According to interviewees, this has freed Council<br />
resources, primarily the time of Council members, to other<br />
important needs of city residents.<br />
Furthermore, the information Philly311 provides to other<br />
departments is driving internal business process changes. One<br />
Philly311staff person gave an example of how Philly311 is<br />
contributing to informed decision making in the departments by<br />
helping them easily find hot spots.<br />
[XX department] had a fairly random process in how<br />
they prioritize replacement of street lights. Once we<br />
provide data, we are able to provide GIS map. That<br />
shows where the calls come from—hot spots. They can<br />
visually see the clusters. Now they have a data source.<br />
The data source actually gave them an opportunity to<br />
say “we need to do this.” Always right places.<br />
Interviewees consider Philly311 as crucial to their larger citywide<br />
performance management efforts. Data pulled from Philly311 can<br />
expose what residents care about most. This data is used to
discuss departmental performance at PhillyStat meetings, where<br />
the mayor, the managing director, relevant deputy mayors, and<br />
representatives from the departments and agencies meet regularly<br />
to track and monitor operational performance. The City’s<br />
performance management program now relies heavily on data<br />
from Philly311 and this type of data-driven management changes<br />
the roles of public managers. With the data provided by Philly311,<br />
they act as data managers and process managers as much as direct<br />
problem solvers.<br />
Philly311’s contribution to a smart government involves raising<br />
transparency and integrity in government processes. “[People]<br />
don’t need to know anybody anymore to get services,” said one of<br />
the executive-level interviewees. “Just call 311!” Other<br />
interviewees also agreed that Philly311 transforms the way the<br />
City does its business. Before 311, many citizens did not know<br />
where they should start to request a service. For service requests,<br />
some took advantages of contacting a council person as a<br />
representative of their community. Philly311 has become an<br />
equalizing strategy. Since its launch, citizens can see more clearly<br />
how their government works through Philly311. One interviewee<br />
said,<br />
People didn’t understand the process. The internal<br />
process was mystery. For example, we got a request—<br />
fix that property. We can say here is the process.<br />
Philly311 does that. That’s transparency. Now people<br />
can see what’s happening in the government.<br />
From a managerial perspective becoming a smarter city involves<br />
interdepartmental collaboration. In the case of Philly311, this<br />
takes the form of written service level agreements that codify each<br />
function of the City’s key service departments (i.e., Streets,<br />
Licenses and Inspections, Police, Water, Parks and Recreation,<br />
and Fairmount Park) with a specific timeframe for completion. A<br />
service level agreement refers to “an agreement between the<br />
provider of a service and its customers which quantifies the<br />
minimum quality of service which meets the business need” [16:<br />
p. 14]. It is also considered a formal contract between a service<br />
provider and its customers [14]. Philly311 staff collaborate on<br />
reviewing, updating, and revising both the formal contracts<br />
between Philly311 and other departments and the knowledgebase<br />
for readily available responses to service and information<br />
requests, through regular meetings with internal partners who are<br />
key to citizen service (the departments on service level<br />
agreements).<br />
The review and revision process allows those departments to learn<br />
about Philly311 operations and in turn allows Philly311 to learn<br />
about other departments’ jobs. Philly311 staff listen to them and<br />
work to understand their concerns. The partnership for the service<br />
level agreements increases transparency across city departments.<br />
“We get everybody’s input. People bring their concerns into the<br />
table,” said one Philly311 staff person. “We own the system and<br />
they own the content.” Hence the partnership of Philly311 with<br />
other departments is built, in part, on the integration of the<br />
departmental knowledge (content) into the 311 system.<br />
The management of Philly311 has been supported by strategic<br />
partnerships with external organizations. In the early stages of<br />
Philly311, private sector partners helped finalize a detailed<br />
strategy and implementation plan. They also contributed to<br />
relieving the burden on Philly311 caused by under-staffing,<br />
providing some of their experienced agents (on-loan call agents).<br />
Philly311 call agents benefited from private sector best practices,<br />
315<br />
and in turn the on-loan agents from private call centers learned<br />
more about how the City works. From the preparation period of<br />
Philly311 through its kick off to the present, the partnerships with<br />
the private sector has offered a mentoring opportunity for<br />
Philly311 agents and supervisors.<br />
4.2 311-Driven Changes in Service Delivery<br />
The 311 service center serves both as a front-line contact center<br />
and as a shared service center. Not only does it integrate frontline<br />
services by providing quick and easy access to non-emergency<br />
municipal services and information through a single, consolidated<br />
channel, but it also creates capabilities for shared service, which<br />
denotes “a generic service that is jointly developed by public<br />
agencies and can be used many times in different business<br />
processes of various government agencies” [19: p. 32]. Services,<br />
including the development costs of such services, can be shared<br />
by multiple agencies to avoid the redundant investments in similar<br />
functionality. Philly311 provides shared services to city<br />
departments through its consolidated channel for service requests<br />
and complaints. Shared services promise chiefly three benefits:<br />
reduced costs, improved quality of services, and fewer distractions<br />
[3,10,23]. One interviewee addressed Philly311’s moderate (but<br />
not as much as expected) effect in saving the City’s administrative<br />
costs.<br />
Shared services strategies are based on service level agreements.<br />
The agreements stipulate service standards that are measurable<br />
and can be used to support accountability (e.g., response times).<br />
For instance, a residential property that is not being maintained<br />
must be investigated by the Department of Licenses and<br />
Inspections within forty-five days. A dead animal must be<br />
removed by the Department of Streets in three days and an<br />
abandoned vehicle within thirty days. Similar to this, if a<br />
department has agreed in its service level agreements to deal with<br />
a citizen’s service task in X number of days, the customer should<br />
be informed of that service standard. The department is held<br />
accountable to complete the service in that amount of time or<br />
provide information back to Philly311 as to why the service could<br />
not be completed in the agreed-upon amount of time. City<br />
agencies perform hundreds of tasks, but Philly311 only handles<br />
the ones for which it can hold an agency accountable to the<br />
previously agreed upon service standard and timing.<br />
The 311 system serves for customers as an effective contact point.<br />
One of executive-level interviewees viewed Philly311 as an<br />
interaction tool, by saying “[Philly311] connects people to<br />
government as much as possible. It is interactive to see what’s on<br />
people’s minds.” Through integration of multiple channels for<br />
municipal services and information, Philly311 serves as a main<br />
gate to residents, businesses, and visitors of the City. As well,<br />
Philly311 becomes a front line of service agents reachable via the<br />
toll-free phone line and often digital media. One of the Philly311<br />
launch project team members said:<br />
311 is a front door. Before 311, Philadelphia had<br />
hundreds of front doors. Most were blocked, not open<br />
at all. The City created the best face of the front door<br />
for the City.<br />
The interviews highlighted the agreement among Philly311 staff<br />
that everybody is their customer—not just citizens, businesses and<br />
visitors to the City but other city departments as well. As evidence<br />
of this commitment, the mayor created a unique position among<br />
311 programs; the Chief Customer Service Officer. This role is
currently filled by Philly311’s Director. Given the Director’s dual<br />
roles, organizational responsibility for Philly311 extends to<br />
inspiring all city government officials to view themselves as city<br />
ambassadors who play a major role in building and maintaining<br />
the relationship with those who live in or do business with the<br />
City. Philly311 as a city agency also invests in building customer<br />
service skills through its Customer Service Leadership Academy,<br />
training customer service agents throughout city government. The<br />
program imbues them with customer service professionalism.<br />
Philly311, according to city officials, also serves an accountability<br />
role. For external accountability, callers, senders of emails and<br />
text messages, and walk-in customers receive a tracking number<br />
for their service request. This number allows requestors to followup<br />
either by calling back to the Philly311 Center or visiting the<br />
311 homepage. One executive-level interviewee said, “People<br />
want to see government working in a more connected through<br />
technology.”<br />
For internal accountability, data collected from Philly311 is used<br />
in conjunction with the PhillyStat process to track, evaluate, and,<br />
if necessary, correct service patterns in the departments. PhillyStat<br />
is the City’s performance review program in which the top<br />
leadership members participate. 1 During each regular meeting for<br />
performance management of PhillyStat, city leaders review<br />
departmental performance metrics and progress toward the<br />
mayor’s strategic goals, and each department has the<br />
responsibility to account for their performance in front of the<br />
City’s executives with respect to service standards put forth in the<br />
service level agreements. The guidelines described in the service<br />
level agreements and their use by departments, Philly311 and the<br />
PhillyStat process create a holistic accountability program that<br />
was noticeably absent before 311.<br />
The consolidated channel for non-emergency service and<br />
information requests enables and empowers people to engage in<br />
their communities. As one Philly311 staff member said “311<br />
enables citizens to become involved in their neighborhood by<br />
reporting a problem they see.” Respondents discussed how<br />
citizens are seeing how reporting a problem can impact the<br />
neighborhood—for example, requests for removing graffiti from a<br />
local park or clearing up a vacant property that can be potentially<br />
a place for crime—they are further inspired to become involved in<br />
improving the neighborhood they live in. They talked about the<br />
relationship between 311 services and citizen engagement in<br />
neighborhood environments around such issues as built<br />
infrastructure, public safety, and public facilities. With Philly311,<br />
according to city officials, citizens are seeing in a new way the<br />
connection between their efforts and the quality of life in their<br />
community.<br />
One of Philly311’s unique characteristics is its neighborhood<br />
liaison program. A neighborhood liaison serves their community<br />
by reporting issues directly to the Philly311 system (oftentimes on<br />
behalf of their neighbors) and provides the community with<br />
progress reports. Becoming a Philly311 liaison is open to any<br />
1 There are two types of PhillyStat meetings. PhillyStat Outcomes a<br />
high-level review of the Mayor’s goals and outcomes. PhillyStat<br />
Ops is an operational review of one department or agency, where<br />
performance targets are assessed in five key areas—operations,<br />
human resources, finance and budget, technology, and customer<br />
service within the individual department.<br />
316<br />
residents willing to participate in a two-hour training session,<br />
through which they are made familiar with various city<br />
departments and the electronic reporting system. Neighborhood<br />
liaisons have become important actors in the community by<br />
combining their new training with what they know about their<br />
neighborhoods and the wants and needs of the community more<br />
and better than outsiders. One Philly311 staff person said:<br />
The liaisons are community leaders. We train them to<br />
use our system. They have ability to put information<br />
directly into our system. That’s our strong connection in<br />
a different way of outreach. Multiple sources of<br />
information are embedded in neighborhoods.<br />
The neighborhood liaisons have become contact points for<br />
capturing and integrating service requests. They are critical to<br />
connecting the 311-enabled integrated services with the service<br />
needy, often poor, technology-illiterate, and living in distressed<br />
neighborhoods.<br />
5. CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES<br />
Philly311 was established under a very tight timeframe—11<br />
months from February to December in 2008. No other city of<br />
Philadelphia’s size launched a 311 center operation under such<br />
time pressure. The aggressive timeline itself was not a serious<br />
problem alone, but early challenges arose from unexpected global<br />
financial crisis. The subsequent budget crisis experienced by the<br />
whole city meant scaling back or postponing key elements of the<br />
project. The budget gap created two severe challenges: understaffing—six<br />
agents short of the operational goal of 57 agents and<br />
recruitment based on internal transfers of inexperienced agents<br />
from other departments—and under-equipping—the use of old<br />
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software.<br />
These challenges continued through to the present, but according<br />
to interviewees, the first year of Philly311 still provided a set of<br />
practical lessons about how a city with similar challenges could<br />
launch and operate a 311 system. They spoke of the critical role of<br />
strong executive support, strategic partnership with external<br />
organizations, and adaptation and flexibility in staffing and<br />
equipping in mitigating these challenges. One Philly311 founding<br />
official noted:<br />
We clearly could not move forward with upgrading with<br />
our CRM, and we didn’t change our recruitment<br />
strategies. The budget crisis impacted us in a<br />
significant way, but we were still able to achieve a<br />
majority of outcomes.<br />
These outcomes are the changes made by Philly311 in<br />
management and service delivery, as discussed in the preceding<br />
section. The major challenges and concerns faced in Philadelphia<br />
as they worked to transform their city government through 311 are<br />
introduced and discussed below followed by a discussion of new<br />
opportunities for change being uncovered in the current phase.<br />
5.1 Technology<br />
The technological challenges identified were primarily related to<br />
under-equipping. In particular, Philly311 wanted to upgrade back<br />
office software such as the CRM and database systems for<br />
information sharing. One Philly311 staff claimed, “We need the<br />
right technology at the right time.” Interviewees discussed how<br />
the City is recognizing an increasing number of Internet users<br />
accessing Philly311 through their smart phones instead of desktop
or laptop computers. Internet connection through mobile phones is<br />
increasingly being viewed as a strategy for closing the digital<br />
divide in the City. The extension of the 311 system to smart<br />
phones was considered by interviewees as a way to further<br />
promote citizen engagement and active feedback of 311 services<br />
from citizens, while also reaching out to a new segment of the<br />
community.<br />
5.2 Management and Organization<br />
Budgetary constraints generated organizational challenges in<br />
recruiting qualified call center agents and keeping call center<br />
operations open for 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. While these<br />
staffing challenges have continued since the launch of Philly311,<br />
the interviews revealed a new and related challenge. Philly311 as<br />
a city agency has a unique organizational culture distinguishable<br />
from other departments and agencies, because it serves as a leader<br />
and pioneer of customer services in the City government.<br />
According to one Philly311 staff person, call center agents may<br />
feel that they have to comply with a more rigorous internal<br />
standard for excellence in customer services, which is not required<br />
in other departments.<br />
Philly311 may offer government employees a new opportunity to<br />
see their job differently. The way service departments do their<br />
business changes due to the 311 center. Directors and managers in<br />
the city departments are seeing their job in a more efficient,<br />
effective, and transparent way. For example, one of Philly311’s<br />
missions is to “provide recommendations into ways to improve<br />
City government through accurate, consistent measurement and<br />
analysis of service delivery citywide” (see www.phila.gov/311).<br />
By the measurement and analysis, Philly311 helps city<br />
departments have better understanding of what they are doing and<br />
what others are doing. According to one executive-level<br />
interviewee, Philly311 is driving a cultural change in the whole<br />
city government to data-based, performance-driven, and<br />
customer-oriented culture, but that isn’t coming at a short horizon,<br />
given the interdepartmental differences in organizational culture.<br />
5.3 Internal and External Governance<br />
Internal governance-related and also cross-organizational<br />
challenges mostly lie in interdepartmental or interagency<br />
collaboration. A formal governance body for such collaboration<br />
does not exist, but instead some staff members of Philly311 meet<br />
key people from the departments on the service level agreements<br />
in a regular basis. Philly311 staff identified this process as<br />
informal. The City government considers expanding the scope of<br />
services and information provided by Philly311 by including more<br />
departments in the service level agreements. The process through<br />
which the current service level agreements were created is based<br />
on interdepartmental collaboration. To establish the<br />
interdepartmental agreements, Philly311 staff identified<br />
potentially high volume customers (departments) and contacted<br />
them. Through the meetings, Philly311 staff decided who has<br />
knowledge of city services and information. This process has been<br />
semi-regularized, but not based on a formal process. With this<br />
informal process, there is a challenge in bringing new service<br />
departments into the service level agreements, because Philly311<br />
does not have a formal governance body for organizing new<br />
interdepartmental collaboration and cooperation. The mechanism<br />
for interdepartmental workings on revising and updating the<br />
service level agreements currently relies on relational<br />
governance, which refers to governance by commitment, mutual<br />
317<br />
dependence, trust, and interpersonal relationships [14].<br />
Interviewees agreed the process has worked well so far, but<br />
recognized that the process needs to be formalized for expansion<br />
of the service level agreements and Philly311 functions.<br />
On the other hand, the interdepartmental governance around<br />
Philly311 allows Philly311 and the departments in the service<br />
level agreements to create mutual understandings of their jobs.<br />
The series of informal meetings have provided those city<br />
departments with a valuable opportunity for mutual learning.<br />
Furthermore, some Philly311 staff said the interagency<br />
relationship has shifted from competitive on customer services to<br />
complementary. At the beginning of Philly311, other departments<br />
and agencies had a concern that Philly311 takes their own jobs.<br />
Now the mutual learning has developed an understanding that<br />
Philly311 does help their jobs. In addition, Philly311’s past three<br />
years have changed the City Council’s early perception of the 311<br />
center and other departments as well. The City Council does not<br />
concentrate their energies any more on routine constituent<br />
services that they dealt with before 311 by receiving service<br />
requests and complaints pertinent to Council districts. Philly311<br />
reports to the City Council about the status of customer service<br />
delivery by Council districts, and the Council members appreciate<br />
data and information pulled from 311 as an effective tool to better<br />
understand their constituents.<br />
Another side of governance formed by Philly311 indicates the<br />
increasing interactions with citizens. Philly311 provides a new<br />
way by which citizens are involved in their neighborhood<br />
concerns. Philly311 receives requests for service, which may be<br />
the reports of community problems residents see: for example,<br />
removing graffiti, clearing up a vacant property, moving a vacant<br />
car, replacing a street light, and so on. Among them, some<br />
requests, despite a small portion in call volumes, reflect concerned<br />
citizens’ ideas and suggestions for improving neighborhood<br />
environments beyond reporting immediate problems. This citizen<br />
engagement category of calls to 311 merits attention from city<br />
managers, but inbound calls are currently analyzed in terms of the<br />
two main categories (information requests and service requests).<br />
Categorizing some calls into citizen engagement and further<br />
analyzing those calls in depth needs additional efforts of<br />
Philly311 agents.<br />
6. DISCUSSIONS<br />
While a growing number of conceptual studies are exploring cities<br />
and the meaning of being a “smart city”, relatively few studies are<br />
engaging in empirical investigations of smart city activities. A<br />
variety of existing theories and theoretical models of urban<br />
innovation are being considered by scholars in terms of their<br />
relevancy to city-level initiatives being carried out in the interest<br />
of becoming “smarter”. A challenge to such efforts is that, as of<br />
Table 7. Challenges and opportunities of Philly311<br />
Technology � Timing in upgrading<br />
software and systems<br />
Management<br />
and<br />
organization<br />
Challenges Opportunities<br />
� Limited funding<br />
� Cultural differences<br />
between 311 and other<br />
departments<br />
� New technologies to<br />
bridge the digital divide<br />
� Business process<br />
change<br />
� Change to data-based,<br />
performance-driven,<br />
and customer-oriented<br />
culture
Internal and<br />
external<br />
governance<br />
� Reliance on informal<br />
processes in<br />
interdepartmental<br />
collaboration<br />
� Additional efforts for<br />
analyzing calls for<br />
citizen engagement<br />
� Strengthening relational<br />
governance in<br />
interdepartmental<br />
collaboration<br />
� Providing a new way to<br />
citizen engagement<br />
yet, there is no consensus on what constitutes a “smart city”.<br />
Grounded in rich evidence from semi-structured interviews, this<br />
study considers Philly311 as a smart city initiative that contributes<br />
to making the city of Philadelphia more efficient, effective, and<br />
transparent and facilitating city-level governance. The study also<br />
suggests a model, grounded on empirical evidence without<br />
preconceived theories [13,22], to understand smart city programs.<br />
Figure 1. A smart city program model<br />
Organizational<br />
factors<br />
Technological<br />
factors<br />
Smart City Program<br />
To Make a City Government Smarter Efficiency<br />
Effectiveness<br />
Smart City<br />
Management<br />
Smart City<br />
Service Delivery<br />
Transparency<br />
Governance<br />
Cross-organizational<br />
factors<br />
This study explored impacts of a smart city initiative in the form<br />
of a 311 non-emergency service program. Philly311 as a smart<br />
city program is enabling more effective and efficient management<br />
while also informing service delivery strategies. It is also deeply<br />
embedded in a set of technological, organizational and managerial,<br />
and internal and external governance-related factors.<br />
The Philly311 service center serves residents, business, and<br />
visitors as a convenient front line of municipal services. Tailoring<br />
frontline services to the needs of individual citizens is a key to<br />
smart city service delivery [8]. Philly311’s back-end functions<br />
enable the city to gain more efficiency and effectiveness by<br />
allocating and using managerial and operational resources in a<br />
smarter way, based on performance data. City management<br />
leveraging these smart cities strategies and capabilities is thus<br />
contributing to efficiency, effectiveness, and the improvement in<br />
decision making [24]. Enhancing transparency and accountability<br />
of service delivery through Philly311 is also one of the ways to<br />
Philadelphia is becoming smarter. Enhanced transparency and<br />
accountability of city administration contributes to smart<br />
governance [12]. Externally, Philly311 allows citizens to engage<br />
more easily in their neighborhoods and communities. Internally,<br />
Philly311 enables and promotes interdepartmental collaboration<br />
and cooperation. Based on the practice in Philly311, this study<br />
suggests that a characteristic of a smart city engages various<br />
internal (city agencies) and external (individual citizens and civic<br />
groups) stakeholders in making community-related decisions [12].<br />
Some positive changes made by Philly311 are not without<br />
challenge, especially in terms of technology, management, and<br />
governance. This finding can be extended to practical implications<br />
for smart city initiatives. Budgetary constraints and under-<br />
318<br />
equipped technical conditions have continued since the launch of<br />
Philly311. While some smart city programs such as the 311 nonemergency<br />
contact centers consume capital budget, others may be<br />
conducted in a resource-saving way. The case of Philly311 offers<br />
various lessons for smart city practitioners. With the growing<br />
importance of Philly311 as a smart city program of the city, the<br />
data-driven and customer service-oriented culture is increasingly<br />
being imbued across the whole city government of Philadelphia.<br />
Mitigating inter-organizational tensions and conflicts is also vital<br />
to smart city management. In the case of Philly311, internal<br />
governance enables interdepartmental efforts toward producing<br />
service level agreements. Current informal governance<br />
mechanisms leave much room for improvement. To gain much<br />
attention and guarantee active participation of all related actors, a<br />
smart city program needs to be formalized and institutionalized by<br />
a city government.<br />
Philly311 also offers new ways to engage even more citizens in<br />
neighborhood issues. The challenge for cities is in understanding<br />
how best to create new policies and administrative processes to<br />
ensure as well as leverage such engagement. While the whole city<br />
government obviously takes benefits from Philly311 by making<br />
operational management and service delivery smarter, the 311<br />
service center exposes both challenges and opportunities.<br />
7. CONCLUSION<br />
Philly311 is being used as crucial part of the city administration’s<br />
strategy to transform the city government into a smarter, faster<br />
and better city. Interviews with key actors in the creation and<br />
operation of Philly311 shed light on its contribution to a smart<br />
government and ultimately a smart city. According to the<br />
interviewees, a smart government involves operating in a more<br />
efficient, effective, transparent, and open governance-facilitating<br />
way. In this paper, we suggested preliminary understanding of<br />
smart city initiatives in the context of the City of Philadelphia and<br />
its 311 non-emergency contact center. The understanding should<br />
be extended and generalized to other smart city programs. Further<br />
research will focus on more diverse cases of 311 contact centers.<br />
We will revisit findings from this study and extend them through<br />
comparative analysis with additional 311 service center cases as<br />
well as service integration efforts more generally.<br />
8. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS<br />
We thank the many City of Philadelphia government officials who<br />
spent time with us and openly shared their perspectives and<br />
valuable insights on Philly311, PhillyRising, and PhillyStat<br />
programs. We are also grateful to all members of the multinational<br />
research project titled “Smart Cities Service Integration.”<br />
This study is partially supported by a grant from the Social<br />
Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) of Canada<br />
and the home institutions of researchers who jointly work on the<br />
multi-national research project. The views and conclusions<br />
expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not<br />
necessarily reflect the views of the SSHRC or the home<br />
institutions of other researchers.<br />
9. REFERENCES<br />
[1] Allwinkle, S. and Cruickshank, P. (2011). Creating smart-er<br />
cities: An overview. Journal of Urban Technology, 18(2), 1–<br />
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[2] Anavitarte, L. and Tratz-Ryan, B. (2010). Market Insight:<br />
‘Smart Cities’ in Emerging Markets. Gartner. Available at<br />
www.gartner.com/id=1468734.<br />
[3] Bergeron, B. P. (2003). Essentials of Shared Services.<br />
Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.<br />
[4] Boulton, A., Brunn, S. D., and Devriendt, L. (2011).<br />
Cyberinfrastructures and “smart” world cities: Physical,<br />
human, and soft infrastructures. In P. Taylor, B. Derudder,<br />
M. Hoyler & F. Witlox (Eds.), International Handbook of<br />
Globalization and World Cities. Cheltenham, UK: Edward<br />
Elgar.<br />
[5] Charmaz, K. (1983). The grounded theory methods: An<br />
explication and interpretation. In R. M. Emerson (Ed.)<br />
Contemporary Field Research: A Collection of Readings.<br />
Boston: Little, Brown.<br />
[6] Chourabi, H., Nam, T., Walker, S., Gil-Garcia, J. R.,<br />
Mellouli, S., Nahon, K., Pardo, T. A., and Scholl, H. J.<br />
(2012). Understanding smart cities: An integrative<br />
framework. In Proceedings of the 45th Hawaii International<br />
Conference on System Sciences (pp. 2289–2297), January 4–<br />
7, Maui, Hawaii, USA.<br />
[7] Denzin, N. K. (2007). Grounded theory and the politics of<br />
interpretation. In A. Bryant & K. Charmaz (Eds.), The Sage<br />
Handbook of Grounded Theory. London: Sage.<br />
[8] Dirks, S. and Keeling, M. (2009). A Vision of Smarter Cities:<br />
How Cities Can Lead the Way into a Prosperous and<br />
Sustainable Future. Somers, NY: IBM Global Business<br />
Services.<br />
[9] Dirks, S., Keeling, M., and Dencik, J. (2009). How Smart is<br />
Your City?: Helping Cities Measure Progress. Somers, NY:<br />
IBM Global Business Services.<br />
[10] Dollery, B. and Akimov, A. (2008). Are shared services as a<br />
panacea for Australian local government? A critical note on<br />
Australian and international empirical evidence.<br />
International Review of Public Administration, 12(2), 89–99.<br />
[11] Floersch, J., Longhofer, J., Kranke, D., & Townsend, L.<br />
(2010). Integrating thematic, grounded theory and narrative<br />
analysis. Qualitative Social Work, 9(3), 407–425.<br />
[12] Giffinger, R., Fertner, C., Kramar, H., Kalasek, R., Pichler-<br />
Milanović, N., and Meijers, E. (2007). Smart Cities: Ranking<br />
of European Medium-Sized Cities. Vienna, Austria: Centre of<br />
Regional Science (SRF), Vienna University of Technology.<br />
[13] Glaser, B. G., & Strauss, A. L. (1967). The Discovery of<br />
Grounded Theory: Strategies for Qualitative Research.<br />
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[14] Goo, J., Kishore, R., Rao, H. R., and Nam, K. (2009). The<br />
role of service level agreements in relational management of<br />
information technology outsourcing: An empirical study.<br />
MIS Quarterly, 33(1), 119–145.<br />
[15] Harrison, C., Eckman, B., Hamilton, R., Hartswick, P.,<br />
Kalagnanam, J., Paraszczak, J., and Williams, P. (2010).<br />
Foundations for Smarter Cities. IBM Journal of Research<br />
and Development, 54(4), 350–365.<br />
[16] Hiles, A. N. (1994). Service level agreements. The TQM<br />
Magazine, 6(2), 14–16.<br />
[17] Hollands, R. G. (2008). Will the real smart city please stand<br />
up? Intelligent, progressive or entrepreneurial. City, 12(3),<br />
303–320.<br />
[18] Holton, J. A. (2007). The coding process and its challenges.<br />
In A. Bryant & K. Charmaz (Eds.), The Sage Handbook of<br />
Grounded Theory. London: Sage.<br />
[19] Janssen, M. and Wagennar, R. (2004). Developing generic<br />
shared services for e-Government. Electronic Journal of e-<br />
Government, 2(1), 31–38.<br />
[20] Nam, T. and Pardo, T. A. (2011a). Conceptualizing smart<br />
city with dimensions of technology, people, and institutions.<br />
In Proceedings of the 12th Annual International Conference<br />
on Digital Government Research, June 12–15, College Park,<br />
MA, USA.<br />
[21] Nam, T. and Pardo, T. A. (2011b). Smart city as urban<br />
innovation: Focusing on management, policy, and context. In<br />
Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Theory<br />
and Practice of Electronic Governance, September 26–28,<br />
Tallinn, Estonia.<br />
[22] Strauss, A., & Corbin, J. (1998). Basics of Qualitative<br />
Research: Techniques and Procedures for Developing<br />
Grounded Theory (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.<br />
[23] Walsh, P., McGregor-Lowndes, M., and Newton, C. J.<br />
(2008). Shared services: Lessons from the public and private<br />
sectors for the nonprofit sector. The Australian Journal of<br />
Public Administration, 67(2), 200–212.<br />
[24] Washburn, D., Sindhu, U., Balaouras, S., Dines, R. A.,<br />
Hayes, N. M., and Nelson, L. E. (2010). Helping CIOs<br />
Understand “Smart City” Initiatives: Defining the Smart<br />
City, Its Drivers, and the Role of the CIO. Cambridge, MA:<br />
Forrester Research.<br />
[25] Yin, R. K. (2009). Case Study Research: Design and<br />
methods (4th ed.). Thousands Oaks, CA: Sage.
Session 11<br />
IT Governance & Policy
A Literature Review: IT Governance Guidelines and Areas<br />
Ruben Pereira<br />
Instituto Superior Tecnico<br />
Av. Rovisco Pais, 1049-001 Lisboa<br />
+351 966474901<br />
rubenfspereira@ist.utl.pt<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
Lack of business/IT (BIT) alignment affects e-governance<br />
initiatives success. Information Technology Governance (ITG)<br />
has been recognized as a CIO top-10 issue for more than five<br />
years and has risen in priority between 2007 and 2009. Several<br />
Frameworks exist to help organizations in ITG implementation<br />
but lack scientific viewpoint, are complex, and also overlap each<br />
other. In this paper we make a literature review to leverage the<br />
ITG general guidelines and main ITG areas in order to provide a<br />
scientific viewpoint validation. We also evaluate our artefacts<br />
with expert’s interviews in order to provide practitioner viewpoint<br />
validation, and map our artifact with current theories. Finally, we<br />
conclude our research with main contributions and future work.<br />
Categories and Subject Descriptors<br />
H.1.0 [Models and Principles]: General.<br />
General Terms<br />
Management, Performance, Design, Standardization, Theory.<br />
Keywords<br />
IT, Governance, Management, IT Governance Guidelines,<br />
Literature Review, IT Governance Areas, e-Governance<br />
1. INTRODUCTION<br />
Many organizations have become totally reliant on IT for success<br />
and recognize that IT is becoming one of their main<br />
organizational assets [34][16]. However, government bodies have<br />
limited expertise in IT and are slow to leverage their potential for<br />
improving governance what can be fatal for organizations wishing<br />
to implement e-Governance solutions [31][23]. BIT alignment<br />
becomes crucial and ITG has been identified as an appropriate<br />
solution to deal with increasing IT changes and complexity. The<br />
purpose of this paper is to examine both the previous and the<br />
current research in ITG so a basis for further research and the<br />
identification of the main ITG guidelines and main ITG and<br />
Management (ITG/M) areas based on literature and experts’<br />
knowledge could be provided in order to help organization in<br />
future ITG implementations. Indeed, there are studies that show<br />
the positive effect of good ITG implementation in organizations<br />
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for<br />
personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are<br />
not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies<br />
bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for<br />
components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored.<br />
Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to<br />
post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission<br />
and/or a fee.<br />
ICEGOV '12, October 22 - 25 2012, Albany, NY, USA<br />
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1200-4/12/10...$15.00<br />
320<br />
Miguel Mira da Silva<br />
Instituto Superior Tecnico<br />
Av. Rovisco Pais, 1049-001 Lisboa<br />
+351 919671425<br />
mms@ist.utl.pt<br />
[50][27], nevertheless, there are also evidences that IT keep being<br />
badly managed and governed [29][14]. Such fact influences the<br />
success of e-Governance initiatives.<br />
Several Frameworks exist to help organizations in ITG<br />
implementation. However, organizations still prefer to design<br />
their own [5]. Such fact is not surprising since most Frameworks<br />
state that there is no single “best” IT organizational structure or<br />
governance arrangement because IT needs to respond to the<br />
unique environments within which exists [29][2] but don’t specify<br />
the factors that can influence each ITG implementation, are seen<br />
as complex [35], too general [32], lacking a theoretical foundation<br />
from a scientific viewpoint [17], and overlap each other [35].<br />
Such statements reinforce the possibility of improvements in the<br />
existing Frameworks.<br />
2. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY<br />
Few researchers attempted to perform empirical studies on ITG<br />
topic [6]. Hence, we constructed and evaluated new and<br />
innovative artifacts following the design research paradigm [21].<br />
Based on the four design artifacts produced by design science<br />
research in information systems - constructs, models, methods and<br />
instantiations - we will focus on constructs (ITG guidelines and<br />
ITG/M areas). Constructs are necessary to describe certain aspects<br />
of a problem domain [37], they provide the language in which<br />
problems and solutions are defined and communicated.<br />
The methodology applied is divided according to the two<br />
processes of design science research (build and evaluate). The<br />
literature review approach used in this paper follows the conceptcentric<br />
methodology of IS literature reviews as outlined in<br />
Webster and Watson [49]. In this article we evaluated our artifacts<br />
through interviews. In addition, by submitting scientific<br />
publications to respected international conferences, we also used<br />
the appraisal of the scientific community as evaluation criteria.<br />
3. LITERATURE REVIEW<br />
Since the 1990s ITG has been a concern. However, good ITG is<br />
no longer a “nice to have”, but a “must have” and can contribute<br />
to higher returns on assets at a time when business is spending<br />
increasing amounts on technology investment [48]. Indeed,<br />
Gartner states that ITG has been recognized as a CIO top-10 issue<br />
for more than five years and has risen in priority during the past<br />
two [16]. ITG potential is also in the fact that the most significant<br />
IT issues, currently and in the future, are not technology-related,<br />
but governance-related [18].<br />
3.1 IT Governance Guidelines<br />
Guidelines have been designed, used, and adopted in several<br />
domains [21][4][43]. As a result, they should be considered an<br />
instrument that ought not to be underestimated since guidelines
are necessary to obtain a uniformity regarding functionality, as<br />
well as a desired quality level [4]. Reviewing available literature<br />
on the subject under study is an essential part of developing<br />
guidelines which can be based on experience - either practical or<br />
theoretical [45]. We summarize our guidelines in Table 1.<br />
3.2 IT Governance/Management Main Areas<br />
Many frameworks exist and each one calls their processes/areas<br />
with different names which culminate in overlap and contribute to<br />
organization confusion as well as waste of resources [35].<br />
Therefore a formalization of ITG and ITM areas is needed. We<br />
summarize the ITG and ITM areas in Table 2.<br />
4. EVALUATION<br />
In order to validate our artefacts, besides the complete literature<br />
review and despite the little empirical work concerning ITG in the<br />
literature, we also mapped the artefacts with current theories and<br />
Table 2. Main ITG/M Areas summary<br />
Main Area Description Topics/subjects Literature Reference<br />
Strategy<br />
Management<br />
Service<br />
Management<br />
Resource<br />
Management<br />
Risk<br />
Management<br />
Development<br />
Management<br />
Architecture<br />
Management<br />
Project<br />
Management<br />
Quality<br />
Management<br />
Investment<br />
Management<br />
Outsourcing<br />
Management<br />
Support<br />
Management<br />
Compliance<br />
Management<br />
Improvement &<br />
Innovation<br />
Management<br />
Table 1. ITG Guidelines Summary<br />
Guidelines About what? What do we need? Literature Reference<br />
1 Where do we want to be? BIT objectives and vision<br />
BIT strategies<br />
BIT goals<br />
[34][41][27][48][16][12][43]<br />
[38][15][46][33]<br />
2 Where are we now?<br />
BIT alignment, maturity,<br />
BIT strategic plan<br />
Core competences, assess IT department and maturity,<br />
assess enterprise, assess BIT alignment<br />
[34][41][27][48] [16][12][43]<br />
[38][15][46][33]<br />
3 What do we need to get there?<br />
Structures, processes, and<br />
mechanisms<br />
Collect information about contingency factors of the<br />
organization, define the necessary mechanisms<br />
[1][13][9][29] [8][46][33] [2][22]<br />
4 How do we get where we want to be? IT processes Materialize the plan defined in the previous step [41][48][12] [44][43][15] [46][2]<br />
5<br />
How do we know we have arrived<br />
there?<br />
Metrics<br />
Measurements<br />
IT Balance Scorecard<br />
Enterprise Balance Scorecard<br />
[1][41][27][48] [44][8][39]<br />
[46][33][30]<br />
6<br />
Are we following the market’s best<br />
practices?<br />
Best practices<br />
Frameworks<br />
Be aware of best practices frameworks and standards [28][17][12] [8][11]<br />
7<br />
How do we know we are doing it<br />
right?<br />
Compliance<br />
Audit<br />
Audit regularly<br />
Internal and external compliance<br />
[41][36][24]<br />
8 How do we keep it on track?<br />
Improvement<br />
Innovation<br />
Collect information to I&I in order to prepare organization<br />
for current and future challenges<br />
[16][38][15] [2][24][19]<br />
Responsible for business/IT objectives and alignment, contingency<br />
factors, and other reasons pointed out as possible differentiators of ITGI.<br />
Responsible for service definition, service catalogue, service portfolio,<br />
service levels, and other subjects about provided services.<br />
Accountable for the correct management of the organization’s resources,<br />
like people, technology, applications, etc. Training is included.<br />
Responsible for the correct assurance of the business’ continuity by<br />
anticipating and preventing possible risks of the IT department, which are<br />
correlated with business risk.<br />
Responsible for the design and development of software as well as its<br />
maintenance.<br />
Responsible for the design of the necessary architectures for the good<br />
functioning of the IT department.<br />
Accountable for the management of the entire cross IT department<br />
project, all kinds of projects.<br />
Responsible for the assurance of the required procedures to guarantee<br />
functionality and provide services and products with the required quality.<br />
In charge of assuring the correct financial functioning of the IT<br />
department and of providing budget, costs, and financial plans.<br />
Manages all the aspects concerning outsourcers, as contracts, service<br />
levels, relations, etc.<br />
Responsible for user interaction and mainly keeps user satisfaction<br />
Accountable for the control of internal and external regulations, as well as<br />
report and measurement.<br />
Responsible for the management of the improvements and innovations<br />
that can be required or provided by the entire IT department.<br />
321<br />
also used the results of a series of experts interviews.<br />
We used structured interviews covering a diverse sample of<br />
organization types, sizes, and roles. By space limitations we won’t<br />
present interviewees details. The respondents have a lot of<br />
experience in the area. To support the interviews, we designed a<br />
questionnaire to lead the discussion. In the interviews, the<br />
majority of the questions weren’t open-response questions<br />
because of the nature of the information we need to elicit. The<br />
interviews were conducted over a one month period. Each session<br />
lasted from 60 to 90 minutes and was transcribed into digital data.<br />
We performed nine interviews with ITG experts who have<br />
strategic alignment and ITG knowledge in their organizations.<br />
Seven interviews were performed in Portugal and two in Ireland<br />
by Skype. The interviewees were 3 consultant organizations (1, 2<br />
and 7) and 6 non-consultant (3, 4, 5, 6, 8 and 9) organizations.<br />
Table 3 shows a summary of the results. We used “yes/no” to<br />
Demand Management, Market analyze,<br />
IT/Business strategy plan/definition/alignment<br />
Service Level Management<br />
Service Portfolio<br />
Human resource, Hardware, Software, Capacity<br />
and Configuration Mngt., Information Mngt.<br />
Disaster recovery, Backups and security<br />
Management, Business continuity, Identity and<br />
access Management<br />
Application Management<br />
Application maintenance<br />
IT architecture and engineering<br />
Infrastructure Management<br />
Project Portfolio Management<br />
Project Management<br />
Quality control<br />
Product Quality Management<br />
Portfolio and Value Mngt., Define budgets,<br />
Manage costs<br />
Manage contracts<br />
Control outsourcers<br />
Incident and Problem Mngt.<br />
Service desk<br />
[41][28][48][12][47]<br />
[39][15][46][2][11][19]<br />
[30]<br />
[34][24][26]<br />
[13][41][28][47][39][2]<br />
[19][30]<br />
[29][48][15][46][2]<br />
[11][30]<br />
[50][12][2]<br />
[13][41][12][47][39]<br />
[43][15][2]<br />
[13][41][16][12][39]<br />
[15][30]<br />
[42][40][7]<br />
[14][29][48][16][12]<br />
[15][39][46][2][24][30]<br />
[47][39][15][2][24]<br />
[20][3][10][25]<br />
Audit, Policy and Report Mngt., Internal Control [44][15][24]<br />
Analyze reports and options<br />
Prospection, Improvement and Innovation,<br />
Change Mngt<br />
[39][39][15][2][24][19]<br />
[30]
Interviewees<br />
Useful?<br />
Table 3. Interview Results<br />
Guidelines ITG/M Areas<br />
General?<br />
Complete?<br />
Remove step?<br />
Complete?<br />
Remove?<br />
Missing?<br />
1 Yes Yes Yes No No No Yes G G<br />
2 Yes Yes Yes No No No Yes G G<br />
3 Yes Yes No Yes Yes No No G G G G<br />
4 Yes Yes Yes No Yes No No G G<br />
5 No Yes Yes No Yes No No G G G<br />
6 Yes Yes Yes No Yes No No G G<br />
7 Yes Yes Yes No Yes No No G G G<br />
8 Yes Yes Yes No Yes No No G G G<br />
9 Yes Yes Yes No Yes No No G<br />
Strategy<br />
Investment<br />
highlight the positive and negative responses.<br />
The third interviewee was the only one to disagree with the<br />
proposed guidelines. He argued that guidelines 4, 6, and 8 are not<br />
needed and a new one about investment decision making between<br />
guideline 2 and 3 was missing. However, since we have strong<br />
literature support and only one interviewee mentioned this<br />
argument, we decided to keep the guidelines without changes. The<br />
fifth interviewee stated that such guidelines were not useful since<br />
COBIT already has guidelines with such abstraction. However<br />
COBIT has it for each COBIT process and not for general ITG<br />
implementation. Fifth, sixth and seventh interviewees affirmed<br />
that some factors were missing. Fifth, sixth and seventh<br />
interviewees stated that some factors were missing.<br />
Several conclusions could be withdrawn from the interviews:<br />
most of the interviews see the guidelines as useful, compete and<br />
general; Strategy Management and Investment Management are<br />
almost consensual between interviewees as the main ITG areas;<br />
all the areas without any appointment will be assumed as<br />
management areas<br />
This research provided us some important learning in ITG field.<br />
Based on both scientific and practitioner viewpoint with achieved<br />
the formalization of the contingency factors, ITG general<br />
guidelines and ITG/M main areas. Besides the consensual<br />
identification of the Strategy and Investment Management as ITG<br />
areas by practitioners, few other areas still dubiety in<br />
practitioner’s viewpoint.<br />
5. CONCLUSION<br />
Our research provides interesting contributions in a moment<br />
where BIT alignment becomes a crucial issue. The approach<br />
allows for a better understanding of the implementation of ITG in<br />
a corporate environment.<br />
Our artefacts are based on literature review giving them<br />
theoretical foundation. Yet, in order to keep providing practitioner<br />
viewpoint we also performed interviews with ITG experts. Then<br />
we argue that our artefacts were build under both scientific and<br />
practitioner viewpoint.<br />
Since current IT frameworks are complex and lack the correct<br />
initial roadmap with the identification of the general guidelines<br />
that organizations must follow in order to know what must be<br />
implemented or addressed first given the context of each<br />
organization, we argue that our general guidelines add valuable<br />
knowledge to ITG field and community. Moreover, current<br />
frameworks also overlap each other, then the formalization of the<br />
Compliance<br />
Risk<br />
Resource<br />
Architecture<br />
Innovation<br />
322<br />
main ITG/M areas also validated in both scientific and<br />
practitioner viewpoint is added value. Including BIT concerns in<br />
our artefacts we argue that we are proposing important artefacts in<br />
order to increase the e-Governance initiatives success in<br />
organizations.<br />
Future work must pass by the integration of the presented artefacts<br />
in an IT governance framework as well as a research in-deep of<br />
each identified area taking into consideration the most known<br />
frameworks applied in the area. Furthermore, real-world case<br />
studies should be performed.<br />
6. REFERENCES<br />
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Harvard Business School Press, Boston, Massachusetts,2004
Assessment of Success Factors of e-Government Project<br />
Implementation: Challenges for the Kosovo e-Government<br />
Perspective<br />
Artan Rexhepi, Blerim Rexha and Agni Dika<br />
Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering<br />
University of Prishtina<br />
10000 Prishtina,KOSOVO<br />
+377 44 115 651, +377 44 627 251, +377 44 500 721<br />
artan.rexhepi@uni-pr.edu, blerim.rexha@uni-pr.edu, agni.dika@uni-pr.edu<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
Among European countries, Kosovo is ranked low with respect to<br />
the provision of on-line e-Government services. The challenges in<br />
the introduction of e-Government in Kosovo were largely related<br />
to launching simple service delivery and integration of<br />
governments back offices. There is still a big disparity between<br />
what is being provided and what citizens’ requirements for the e-<br />
Government services are. This study has conducted a survey<br />
regarding the perception of current on-line e-government services<br />
among Kosovo citizens. By analyzing the current situation from<br />
the view of citizens, this paper analyzes the status, requirements<br />
and prerequisites for the implementation of a sustainable egovernment<br />
portal. The objective of this research is to emphasize<br />
the appropriate factors, ranging from information and<br />
communication services, application of electronic forms and<br />
provision of transaction services, electronic management of<br />
documents to the effective administration processes, which could<br />
significantly increase the likelihood of success of such egovernment<br />
projects. Based on the gathered and analyzed<br />
data, the paper discusses action recommendations for an<br />
acceptable and sustainable portal, which would be utilizable by a<br />
majority of citizens in Kosovo.<br />
Categories and Subject Descriptors<br />
J.1 [Administrative Data Processing]: Government<br />
General Terms<br />
Management, Documentation, Performance, Human Factors<br />
Keywords<br />
E-Government, Assessment, Kosovo, Electronic Government,<br />
Information and Communication Technology, Digital<br />
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for<br />
personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are<br />
not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies<br />
bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for<br />
components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored.<br />
Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to<br />
post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission<br />
and/or a fee.<br />
ICEGOV '12, October 22 - 25 2012, Albany, NY, United States, NY, USA<br />
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1200-4/12/10…$15.00.<br />
324<br />
Government<br />
1. INTRODUCTION<br />
There is currently no reliable assessment of the e-government<br />
indicators and parameters required for the measurement of the<br />
present e-government development in Kosovo. As per the UN<br />
DPADM E-country report, Kosovo’s progress to e-government<br />
was rated at its beginning, ranking with this Kosovo low with<br />
respect to provision of e-services to the citizens [1]. However,<br />
over the past few years the understanding of governance and egovernance<br />
by the Kosovo government has been continuously<br />
changed. There are growing pressures and expectations from the<br />
citizens to the public administration aiming for governance with a<br />
modern approach for an efficient and effective administration. In<br />
addition, the transition period has shown that the government<br />
needs to be more transparent and accountable to the public. This<br />
and the need for reorganizing many processes within the public<br />
sector, covering a wide range of tasks and work arrangements,<br />
have been understood and it has lead to initiatives, such as the<br />
Kosovo Strategy for E-Government [2]. Nevertheless, there is still<br />
a big gap evident between the political priorities and agenda on<br />
the one hand and the actual implementation and users<br />
expectations on the other hand.<br />
The initial requirements for the government start with a detailed<br />
remodeling of work processes within the public sector and by<br />
translating them into a digitalized e-service format model for<br />
citizens. The existing relationships between the government and<br />
the citizen will be therefore redefined by introducing new<br />
processes at work in the public sector and by opening new<br />
opportunities.<br />
The Kosovo Government’s E-Government Strategy 2009-2015<br />
has identified the major priorities and objectives that need to be<br />
realized. During the past few years, several projects were<br />
identified and fully or partly implemented as a basis for the<br />
provision of e-services, such as the central register of citizens, the<br />
register of economic entities and various registers of cadastre and<br />
immovable properties for land administration. Besides such<br />
important projects, there is now a need for development and<br />
implementation of new projects that will allow the provision of<br />
specific e-services, on the basis of which the ordinary citizens can<br />
experience the expected benefits of e-government and the<br />
information society.
Despite the fact, that the integration of e-government services in<br />
Kosovo through the governmental portal for both citizens and<br />
businesses is still in its initial phase, there are certain<br />
improvements evident, which were made by some institutions<br />
such as certain Ministries and municipal governments. However,<br />
most of them are primarily offering information to citizens, while<br />
the direct citizen interaction with the government is still in its<br />
development stage.<br />
A fully functional governmental e-portal as a one-stop access to<br />
the most important interactive and transactional e-services,<br />
leading to integrated delivery of all government services to<br />
citizens and businesses is one of the most important challenges in<br />
Kosovo. The development of technological, legal and institutional<br />
infrastructure will enable the development of such services to the<br />
level of performing full e-government transactions by citizens.<br />
However, while the ICT infrastructure remains one of the main<br />
pillars of the e-government, the importance of the technology<br />
aspect is regularly weighted more than importance of new or<br />
revised structures and processes within the public sector. The<br />
introduction of e-Government may show its expected benefits<br />
only if it is properly planned and if it owns a full social, cultural<br />
and political support [3] including the acceptance at the user side.<br />
For assessing the effectiveness and ensuring that the frequent<br />
rhetoric of a successful implementation of e-government is also<br />
matched by reality, the performance of the e-government project<br />
implementation needs to be measured [3]. The growing political<br />
interest for e-Government in Kosovo together with the increased<br />
idea that governments should be more accessible to the citizens<br />
through internet shows a big opportunity and a favorable<br />
momentum which needs to be appropriately exploited for<br />
enhancing the current level of e-government performance and for<br />
setting up new e-government projects. In order to prevent such an<br />
opportunity from disappearing, a quick and tangible success is<br />
required in the implementation of e-government projects for<br />
citizens. The success depends heavily on the simplification and<br />
implementation of information, communication and transaction<br />
processes respectively on the quality of administrative services,<br />
especially those which are fully transactional [4].<br />
With the objective of measuring the success of e-government, the<br />
aim of this study is the assessment the current developments of egovernment<br />
project implementation in Kosovo from the<br />
perspective of users at the demand side.<br />
2. E-GOVERNMENT PERSPECTIVE–<br />
BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY<br />
The main challenges faced currently by the public sector in<br />
Kosovo mainly relate to the issues of maintenance of databases of<br />
various organizational units, their processing and communication.<br />
These data are recorded and archived in different locations and<br />
media. The communication between specific institutions in the<br />
organizational view is very deficient, which is consequently<br />
causing delayed or wrong decisions and other mistakes in<br />
managing the processes within government institutions and the<br />
service delivery to citizens. There is a great potential to improve<br />
the information exchange by applying the information technology<br />
and communications, and thus directly increase the efficiency of<br />
the e-Governance.<br />
The Kosovo Government’s E-Government Strategy 2009-2015<br />
was released by the Department of Information Technology of<br />
Ministry for Public Services in September 2008 [2]. This paper<br />
325<br />
reflected the introduction of the Information and Communication<br />
Technologies environment, sets out the intentions of the egovernment<br />
programme by 2015, aims to clarify what are the<br />
goals for the e-government service delivery and confirms the<br />
continues commitment of the government for the development of<br />
standards, interoperability and the government enterprise<br />
architecture for achieving the goals of this strategy. It also briefly<br />
outlines the current activities undertaken across some of the<br />
government bodies for the achievement of these goals.<br />
The main goal is to give access to the citizens to government<br />
information and services, participate in the democracy using the<br />
internet and other technologies. The better service improves the<br />
relationships with citizens by achieving convenience and<br />
satisfaction, with this the internal performance of the government<br />
will be more integrated and efficient and the citizens participatory<br />
role in the decision making process will be increased.<br />
The starting point for this study is the fact that despite<br />
considerable investments and a large number of ongoing and<br />
completed technical assistance projects, the e-Government<br />
services in Kosovo have not experienced the anticipated take-up.<br />
A systematic consideration of e-service delivery arrangements is<br />
required, specifications must be drawn up with great care and<br />
therefore the public administration must ensure that particularly<br />
the requirements of citizens are addressed during the<br />
implementation of the e-Government project [5]. The common<br />
requirement for a successful product development and acceptance<br />
by the clients is the analysis of the needs of users and the concrete<br />
definition and detailed documentation and validation of these<br />
requirements [6], however, according to Horan [7], the e-<br />
Government research arena still suffers from a lack of users<br />
satisfaction measurements.<br />
3. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY AND<br />
DATA COLLECTION<br />
For the e-Government demand side measurement and evaluation<br />
one of the most important questions is the decision what to<br />
measure and how to design the survey. For this reason the most<br />
influencing factors for the success of e-Government are to be<br />
identified.<br />
The first task was to compile the list of factors to be surveyed,<br />
while the success factors have to be determined on an individual<br />
basis [8]. These factors need to be adjusted to the context of this<br />
specific research. The list of factors to be included shall only<br />
consist of qualities, which may have a particular significance for<br />
the information system [9]. It is assumed that there are only a<br />
limited number of success factors that have an impact on the<br />
overall success of information systems [10]. The selected success<br />
factors have to cover various fields of information systems such as<br />
provision of e-services, communication, competence of staff and<br />
the role of the information system [11]. The main objective of the<br />
assessment of success factors is to analyze the contribution of<br />
particular factors and through this to identify the strengths and the<br />
weaknesses in the implementation of ICT systems, which is a<br />
requirement for deriving necessary measures for the improvement<br />
of the overall success and assessment of its urgency [13]. The<br />
selection and evaluation of success factors in this research was<br />
based on the list of success factors and methods defined and used<br />
by Heeks [12], Hoffmann [13] and Salzmann [14].
In view of different theoretical approaches to e-government<br />
demand-side evaluation, a suitable and locally acceptable<br />
evaluation method was to be identified and to be used in this<br />
research for measuring the success of the e-government project<br />
implementation from the users’ point of view. The several egovernment<br />
surveys methods, which are generally used for data<br />
collection for the purpose of reviewing the existing performance<br />
of the e-government implementation, range from direct interviews<br />
with citizens or government officials [15], [16], focus groups [15],<br />
visits to government websites [17] to questionnaire surveys to<br />
citizens [18]. In order to include a large number of respondents<br />
from a broad territory, for practical reasons this survey has<br />
utilized the questionnaire survey method.<br />
An empirical study has been conducted for measuring the success<br />
of the e-Government project implementation. The research<br />
utilized a structured questionnaire used by Hoffmann [13] which<br />
was adjusted to adapt to local conditions. The questionnaire used<br />
for the collection of data included 23 questions classified to<br />
measure the citizens perception of the priority and performance of<br />
selected factors, important for the success of the overall egovernment<br />
information system. Apart from these, the<br />
questionnaire contained additional 20 questions typical to<br />
demographics, internet usage habits, their awareness on the<br />
availability and their expectations for e-government services.<br />
Some questions additionally referred to their opinion regarding<br />
the future development of e-government services. The questions<br />
on the success factors required the responder to assess the priority<br />
of every factor on a scale from 1 (not important) to 4 (most<br />
important) as well as the current performance of the same factor<br />
from 1 (not implemented in practice) to 4 (fully implemented in<br />
practice). (Questionnaire can be provided on request).<br />
The probability method used for the selection of the survey<br />
sample was based on random sampling. A total of 350<br />
questionnaires were used by targeting various citizens and in<br />
order to reflect the entire adult Kosovo population and to ensure a<br />
representative sample in terms of demographic and sociological<br />
structure, the questionnaires were distributed to random citizens<br />
through University students, employers of various private and<br />
public companies and institutions, unemployed and elderly people<br />
throughout 9 different Kosovo municipalities. For practical<br />
reasons the data collection was conducted in only 9 out of 37<br />
Kosovo municipalities. In order to have a adequate statistical<br />
representation of collected data, Prishtina, as the capital city,<br />
together with all six secondary municipalities, where the majority<br />
of the Kosovo population resides, were included in this sample.<br />
Additionally two smaller minority municipalities were also<br />
included of this survey in order to obtain a representative sample<br />
from various municipalities. Out of this number a total of 300<br />
questionnaires were validated and were selected for this empirical<br />
study, representing a sample size with a standard confidence level<br />
of 95% and confidence interval of 5.5%. The data collected<br />
through this survey was digitalized, coded and analyzed using<br />
statistical analysis software for descriptive statistics and<br />
relationships.<br />
The purpose of analyzing success factors is to evaluate the<br />
contribution of specific factors to the overall success of an<br />
information system and with this to determine the specific<br />
strengths and weaknesses in the implementation of information<br />
systems. The direct output is a set of required measures for<br />
326<br />
improvement of the overall success. The results of the study will<br />
be illustrated using available tools for graphical analysis.<br />
The profile diagrams and the portfolio matrix are used for the<br />
graphical evaluation of success factors. The priority and the<br />
perceived implementation of success factors are presented in the<br />
same diagram while their values are marked with corresponding<br />
points on a scale from one to four.<br />
The graphical portfolio matrix is used for the data analysis. This<br />
graphical tool is based on a two dimensional diagram,<br />
which illustrates the research results in a simple and<br />
understandable manner [13]. The portfolio matrix axes show the<br />
features explored, in which the priority/expectation is shown on<br />
the X-axis and the performance/implementation is shown on the<br />
Y-axis. In order to allow a simple evaluation of the results, the<br />
matrix is divided into nine clusters. All factors that are listed in<br />
the portfolio matrix by combining their characteristics fall<br />
into one of these matrix clusters. The clusters are used for<br />
gathering factors with similar characteristics in respective groups,<br />
for which pre-standard recommendations for action will be<br />
defined.<br />
This method is used for analyzing the success of implemented egovernment<br />
projects and to draw specific recommendations<br />
for further action in relation to improvement of the overall success<br />
of specific factors.<br />
4. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION<br />
The target survey population of this study comprised a<br />
representative sample of people residing in various Kosovo<br />
municipalities during 2011. The study population was comprised<br />
of 300 adult persons of various age groups. The Figure 1 outlines<br />
the age groups of the study population by gender: a total of<br />
38.3% of all male and female respondents were under age 25,<br />
31.7% were within the age group interval from 26 through 35,<br />
18% were between 36 through 45, 8.3% between 46 through 55<br />
and 3.7% above 55. In absence of final data from the 2011 census<br />
in Kosovo, for comparison purposes the Figure 2 shows the<br />
estimated population of Kosovo by age groups as assessed<br />
through the results of the 2009 labor force survey conducted by<br />
the Statistical Office of Kosovo.<br />
From the gender perspective, Figure 3 shows that 58.7% of total<br />
respondents were Males and 41.3% were Females and the gender<br />
differences were significant (χ2= 9.01, P=0.03, thus P
Figure 1. The structure of respondents by the age-group and<br />
gender<br />
Figure 2. Estimated Population by age-groups in Kosovo (%),<br />
2009 [19]<br />
Figure 3. The structure of respondents by gender<br />
327<br />
Figure 4. The structure of respondents by their employment<br />
The total percentage of unemployed respondents from this survey<br />
has not exceeded 2%, a figure below the assumed high rate of<br />
unemployment in Kosovo. It is however anticipated that the<br />
responders working in the informal sector have not declared<br />
themselves as on unemployment. As an additional comparison, a<br />
first important labor market indicator is the relative size of the<br />
working age population, e.g., the persons between the ages of 15<br />
and 64, which approximately defines the potential available<br />
manpower. In Kosovo, this figure from the 2009 SOK LFS is<br />
comparatively low with only 64.0%. The reason for this becomes<br />
apparent by looking at the age structure. Kosovo has a relatively<br />
young population, with almost one of the third of age 15 and<br />
under and 7.8% aged 65 or above.<br />
Traditionally the younger generations are more familiar and show<br />
more interest in information technologies and feel more motivated<br />
in using e-government. It shall be noted that such a young<br />
population structure during this survey, with a majority of survey<br />
responders younger than 35, represents a factor which may<br />
heavily shape the results of this study. It is however apparent that<br />
this factor coincides also with the general population structure and<br />
therefore appropriately corresponds to the real situation in the<br />
field.<br />
Table 1. The structure of respondents by education<br />
Level of Education N %<br />
Secondary School 134 44.7<br />
Tertiary/University degree 164 54.7<br />
Total 300 100.0<br />
The Table 1 outlines the structure of respondents by education.<br />
The survey revealed that the general interest in e-government in<br />
Kosovo is very high, since 92% of people questioned have<br />
confirmed that they would prefer to complete all administrative<br />
processes online, while only 7% of them were not interested in<br />
using administrative services online (Figure 4.). The usage<br />
statistics revealed that while 71% of respondents have indicated<br />
that they have visited the Kosovo e-government portal site, the<br />
percentage of internet users who have already used e-services is<br />
low (34%) (Figure 5.). As a comparison, Heeks [20] uses an
approximate figure of 60% of internet users in Europe and other<br />
developed and transition countries that have ever accessed egovernment<br />
e-services, mainly for information purposes, while<br />
only 10-25% of users have undertaken online transactions. On the<br />
other hand, the Kosovo survey revealed that 55% of people<br />
questioned would be interested for the provision of e-government<br />
services at a transaction level (Table 2.).<br />
Figure 5 The results of current use of e-government<br />
Table 2. Preferred level of interaction<br />
N %<br />
Information level 70 23.3<br />
Communication level 63 21.0<br />
Transaction level 167 55.7<br />
Total 300 100.0<br />
Table 3. Statistics of internet access at home<br />
What is the type of your internet access at<br />
home N %<br />
No internet access available 8 3.0<br />
Other modem/other narrow band 57 19.0<br />
Cable modem 230 77.0<br />
No answer 5 2.0<br />
Total 300 100.0<br />
Surprisingly, 95% of respondents have reported to have an<br />
internet access at home (Table 3.). The most reasons for the use of<br />
internet are emailing and communication (80%) and reading news<br />
(62%) while less than 18% of respondents have used the internet<br />
for purchasing products online and lesser for online banking.<br />
328<br />
Table 4. Internet usage statistics<br />
The use of internet N %<br />
Not using or very rarely use 1 0.3<br />
Less than 1 hour/week 15 5.0<br />
1 to 5 hour/week 96 32.0<br />
15 to 40 hours/week 125 41.7<br />
More than 40 hours/week 63 21.0<br />
Total 300 100.0<br />
The Table 4 reveals the current practices on the use of internet,<br />
showing that more than 62% of respondents are intensively using<br />
internet more than 15 hours weekly.<br />
Table 5. Assessment of overall governmental e-services<br />
The overall assessment of the online services<br />
offered by the public administration N %<br />
Nonexistent 65 21.7<br />
Inadequate 191 63.7<br />
Adequate 34 11.3<br />
Excellent 4 1.3<br />
No answer 6 2.0<br />
Total 300 100.0<br />
The Table 5 reveals that the majority of respondents<br />
(21.7%+63.7%) are not satisfied with the current level of<br />
government e-services. This majority’s assessment of e-services<br />
provided by the government is that these do not exist or are<br />
inadequately implemented. This is to some extend consistent with<br />
71% of participants that have visited the governmental portal vs.<br />
85% indicating that the current level of e-services is<br />
unsatisfactory. The individual evaluation of data received from<br />
the questionnaires of the 28% of respondents that have never<br />
visited the e-government portal (Figure 5.) shows that 84.5% of<br />
them have rated the online e-services as unsatisfactory.<br />
Table 6. Main reasons for the use of e-services<br />
N %<br />
Total 300 100.0<br />
Time saving 255 85.0<br />
Performing administrative tasks 243 81.0<br />
from Avoiding home waiting queues 227 75.7<br />
Shorten case processing and<br />
220 73.3<br />
response Immediate time notification about<br />
207 69.0<br />
missing Independence documents from office<br />
132 44.0<br />
working Cost savings hours<br />
130 43.3<br />
Other 4 1.3<br />
The respondents were also asked to provide their most important<br />
reasons for the use of governmental e-services. The main reasons<br />
presented, as shown in Table 6, were related to the time saving<br />
factor (85%), completion of administrative processes from home<br />
(81%), avoiding queuing at administrative offices (75%) and the<br />
quicker response time by the administration (73%). The majority
(69%) has also highlighted the importance of getting personal<br />
feedback from the government in case some documents would be<br />
additionally required during the administrative process.<br />
A more detailed review of the results show that the users are least<br />
satisfied with the communication with public servants by email,<br />
while the visual design, ease of use and navigation scored better<br />
(Figure 6.) (Table 7.). The factor of appointing a public servant as<br />
a contact person appears high in the list of citizens’ requirements<br />
for a successful e-government project implementation. While this<br />
question was unfortunately not detailed further in the<br />
questionnaire, it is most possible that this specific requirement is a<br />
result of the citizens’ overall distrust towards the public<br />
administration and their habits in dealing with the administration<br />
in traditional means through direct contact with the public servant<br />
in the administration office.<br />
The actual requirements for e-government services derive from<br />
the evaluation of citizens’ priorities that were provided for each<br />
success factor listed in the questionnaire. A high priority of a<br />
success factor is a demand for the information system [21].<br />
Figure 6 The average values of the perceived<br />
implementation/performance of success factors (shown in red<br />
color) vs. their priority (shown in blue color)<br />
Table 7. List of success factors that were assessed together<br />
with the calculated difference between their average priority<br />
and implementation values<br />
# Success factor Difference<br />
F-1 Multilingualism 0.3<br />
F-2 Unified appearance 0.8<br />
F-3 Visually attractive design 0.8<br />
329<br />
F-4 Easy to use 1.1<br />
F-5 Easy to navigate 1.2<br />
F-6 Large amount of information 1.3<br />
F-7 Cost saving factor 1.4<br />
F-8 Services supporting specific activities 1.4<br />
F-9 Provision of samples 1.4<br />
F-10 Grouping of services by life situation 1.5<br />
F-11 Client-oriented services 1.5<br />
F-12 Continuously updated content 1.5<br />
F-13 Integration of services between central and local<br />
level<br />
1.5<br />
F-14 Acceptance of digital signatures 1.6<br />
F-15 Large amount of services 1.6<br />
F-16 Support of general processes 1.6<br />
F-17 Simplification of administration processes 1.6<br />
F-18 Time saving factor 1.6<br />
F-19 Support of communication 1.7<br />
F-20 Appointment of a contact person 1.7<br />
F-21 Acceptance of e-mail messages 1.9<br />
F-22 Support for email notifications 1.9<br />
F-23 Rapid response by administration 1.9<br />
The Figure 6 details the average values of assessed<br />
implementation (shown in red color) in a scale from 1 (not<br />
important) to 4 (most important) vs. the average values of their<br />
priorities (shown in blue color) using a similar scale from 1 (not<br />
implemented) to 4 (fully implemented). The Table 7 provides the<br />
list of all measured factors and presents the calculated difference<br />
between the values of assessed implementation and the priority<br />
for each measured factor. The difference figure shows how large<br />
is the discrepancy between the citizens’ priority for a specific<br />
success factor and their assessment of its current implementation<br />
in practice.<br />
Figure 7. Portfolio matrix of implementation/performance vs.<br />
priority of identified success factors<br />
The actual values of success factors implementation and their<br />
priorities are shown with the portfolio matrix (Figure 7),<br />
illustrating that all success factors are located within a grouping<br />
cluster, which requires appropriate adjustment by increasing the<br />
level of their implementation. All success factors are placed just<br />
below the matrix cluster with highest priority and excellent<br />
implementation. Except the success factor F-1 (Multilingualism),<br />
which is considered appropriately implemented due to its slight
difference between its priority and actual implementation and its<br />
location in the edge of the cluster with highest priority and<br />
excellent implementation, all other success factors are located<br />
inside the cluster with high priority and lower implementation<br />
level, requiring immediate adjustment.<br />
5. CONCLUSIONS<br />
The survey conducted with this research presented the citizens’<br />
priorities and perceived performance of the public administration<br />
in the e-government project implementation. The research<br />
concludes with highlighting some key findings and<br />
recommendations as outlined below:<br />
o This study has confirmed that there is a gap between the<br />
citizens’ requirements and interests and the actual<br />
o<br />
implementation of governmental e-services in Kosovo, since<br />
more than two third of respondents, covered in this study,<br />
registered their disappointment that the current online<br />
services offered by the public administration in Kosovo are<br />
deficient and require immediate attention for improvement.<br />
Over 90% of respondents have declared that they regularly<br />
use internet more than 1 hour per week. More than 60% are<br />
using internet for more than 15 hours per week, showing that<br />
in relation to age and gender, the use of internet has rapidly<br />
increased among citizens in Kosovo resulting with a growing<br />
population of possible e-government users, which could<br />
directly benefit from a successful e-government project<br />
implementation.<br />
o The study has shown that the majority of respondents have<br />
expressed their interest for the use of e–services.<br />
o<br />
Remarkably, more than 55% of the respondents would like to<br />
change from the traditional way of dealing with the<br />
administration to a transaction based administration eservices,<br />
in contrast to just downloading or filling the forms<br />
online.<br />
Through the significant discrepancy between the priorities of<br />
citizens and the implementation of e-services in practice, this<br />
study has confirmed that the e-government Kosovo<br />
administration lacks its customer relation in the sense of<br />
tailoring their services towards customers’ needs. It should<br />
be also noted that one of the reasons, why most survey<br />
respondents were classifying the priority of all success<br />
factors fairly high, may be because of the fact that there is<br />
not yet an appropriate e-government practice in Kosovo. It<br />
could be expected that at a later stage the priorities of success<br />
factors may be differently assessed.<br />
o As long the citizens don’t know that e-services are available,<br />
they won’t use them. To deal with this problem, the<br />
government needs to market the available online services<br />
through press releases, flyers, promotional events and public<br />
service announcements [22] in order to approach the<br />
potential users that have not visited the governmental portal<br />
yet.<br />
o It is important to start implementing a generally accepted<br />
online payment modality, which would be accepted by the<br />
public and integrated as a standard tool within all relevant<br />
products developed by the central and local level of the<br />
public administration.<br />
o In absence of its own capacities, the government shall<br />
identify potential partners, who in collaboration with the<br />
330<br />
o<br />
public administration could assist the government in<br />
implementing certain online services for administrative<br />
institutions in the form of a public-private partnership.<br />
However, under a public-private partnership the government<br />
should continue to keep the key driver role for the promotion<br />
of e-government initiatives.<br />
The most critical factors that would contribute to the success<br />
of e-government in Kosovo relate to the change and<br />
simplification of administrative processes and the<br />
establishment of appropriate communication channels<br />
between citizen and administration, which would generate a<br />
sense of accountability and assurance. The political<br />
willingness, an adequate technological infrastructure and an<br />
overall client oriented development strategy remain the most<br />
critical factors for the e-government project implementation.<br />
As a further research it is recommended to conduct such empirical<br />
studies on a regular basis in order to follow up and compare with<br />
different empirical studies addressing comparable success factors.<br />
6. REFERENCES<br />
[1] Public Administration Country Profile for Kosovo, Division<br />
for Public Administration and Development Management,<br />
Department of Economic and Social Affairs, United Nations,<br />
December 2003.<br />
[2] Electronic Government Strategy 2009-2015, Ministry of<br />
Public Services, Department of Information Technology,<br />
October 2008<br />
[3] Asgarkhani M.: The Effectiveness of e-Service in Local<br />
Government: A Case Study, The Electronic Journal of e-<br />
Government Volume 3 Issue 4, 2005, www.ejeg.com<br />
[4] Becker J. et al.: e-Government Success Factors, EGOV<br />
Third International Confererence, Springer, 2004<br />
[5] Leitner C., eGovernment in Europe: The State of Affairs,<br />
EIPA Maastricht, 2004<br />
[6] van der Linden, F., Schmid, K., Rommes, E., Software<br />
Product Lines in Action, Springer Verlag, 2007<br />
[7] Horan, T., Abhichandani, T., Rayalu, R.: Assessing User<br />
Satisfaction of E-Government Services: Development and<br />
Testing of Quality-in-Use Satisfaction with Advanced<br />
Traveller Information Systems, 39th Hawaii International<br />
Conference on System Sciences, 2006<br />
[8] Lehner, F: Die Erfolgsfaktoren Analyse in der Informationsverarbeitung,<br />
Zeitung Betriebs-wirtschaft, 1995<br />
[9] Camp, O. Filipe, J., Hammoudi, S. Piattini, M., Enterprise<br />
Information Systems, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2004<br />
[10] Krcmar, H., Informationsmanagement, Springler Verlag,<br />
2005<br />
[11] Heinrich L.: Informationsmanagement, Oldenbourg<br />
Wissenschaftsverlag, 2005<br />
[12] Heeks, R. eGovernment for Development: Causes of<br />
eGovernment Success and Failure: Factor Model, IDPM,<br />
University of Manchester, 2003.<br />
[13] Hoffmann, R., Anforderungs- und Erfolgsanalyse von E-<br />
Government Anwendungen, VDM Verlag, 2008
[14] Salzmann, M. e-Government im Kanton Zuerich – Strategie<br />
und Umsetzung, Paul Haupt Verlag, 2004<br />
[15] Agimo.: E-Government Benefits Study. Australian<br />
Government Information Management Office:<br />
http://www.agimo.gov.au/archive/publications_noie/2004/10<br />
/annrep03-04/part_3_-_performance_report.html.<br />
[16] P. Crook, S. J. Rohleder, and A. Simmonds, CRM in<br />
Government: Bridging the Gaps. Atlantic and Europe,<br />
Accenture, 2003.<br />
[17] UNPAN. (2005, July) Global Readiness Report: From<br />
eGovernment to eInclusion.<br />
http://www2.unpan.org/egovkb/global_reports/05report.htm.<br />
[18] A. Dexter and V. Parr, Government Online Study, Taylor<br />
Nelson Sofres, 2003.<br />
331<br />
[19] Ministry of Public Services:, Series 5: Social Statistics,<br />
Results of the labor force survey 2009, Statistical Office of<br />
Kosovo (SOK) 2010,<br />
[20] Heeks, R.: Benchmarking eGovernment: Improving the<br />
National and International Measurement, Evaluation and<br />
Comparison of eGovernment, IDPM, University of<br />
Manchester, 2006<br />
[21] Scheer, A., ARIS Modellierungsmethoden, Metamodele,<br />
Springer Verlag, 1998<br />
[22] Eggers, W., Boosting E-Government Adoption, FTA Annual<br />
Conference, 2004,<br />
http://taxadmin.org/fta/meet/04am_pres/eggers.pdf
Computer Supported Contractor Selection<br />
for Public Administration Ventures<br />
Zbigniew Paszkiewicz<br />
Department of Information Technology<br />
Poznań University of Economics<br />
6 Mansfelda str., 60-854 Poznań, Poland<br />
+48 61 8480549<br />
zpasz@kti.ue.poznan.pl<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
Ventures undertaken by public administration significantly<br />
contribute to development of economy. Such ventures are usually<br />
complex, so they require effective collaboration of a number of<br />
autonomous organizations. To face the challenge of efficient<br />
cooperation, public administration should adopt the model of<br />
Virtual Organizations (VO). A key phase in each VO life-cycle is<br />
selection of partners which in case of public administration takes<br />
a form of public auctions. In this paper a Collaborative<br />
Contractor Selection method, denoted C-CS, is proposed to<br />
support selection of contractors for a portfolio of public ventures.<br />
In the C-CS method a number of requirements are considered<br />
associated with contractor offer properties, contractor<br />
competences, and social relationships among them. The selection<br />
is performed step by step as successive ventures are performed. If<br />
justified, the selection is done in collaboration between<br />
administrative units and potential contractors. The C-CS method<br />
provides an opportunity for better computer support of public<br />
auctions leading to more efficient and effective realization of<br />
public administration ventures.<br />
Categories and Subject Descriptors<br />
J.1 [Computer Applications]: Administrative Data Processing:<br />
Business, Government<br />
K.4.3 [Computers and Society]: Organizational Impacts:<br />
Reengineering, Computer-Supported Collaborative Work<br />
General Terms<br />
Economics, Human Factors, Performance, Design, Algorithms<br />
Keywords<br />
Public Administration, Virtual Organization, Agility, Adaptive<br />
Business Processes, Process Mining<br />
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for<br />
personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are<br />
not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies<br />
bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for<br />
components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored.<br />
Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to<br />
post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission<br />
and/or a fee.<br />
ICEGOV '12, October 22 - 25 2012, Albany, NY, United States, NY, USA<br />
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1200-4/12/10…$15.00.<br />
332<br />
Wojciech Cellary<br />
Department of Information Technology<br />
Poznań University of Economics<br />
6 Mansfelda str., 60-854 Poznań, Poland<br />
+48 61 8480549<br />
cellary@kti.ue.poznan.pl<br />
1. INTRODUCTION<br />
In every country, public administration is a significant economical<br />
actor, quite often a major one. Ventures undertaken by public<br />
administration are usually complex and cannot be handled by a<br />
single organization but require effective collaboration of a number<br />
of autonomous organizations from both the public and private<br />
sector. Cooperation on complex ventures is usually a challenge for<br />
public administrations. To face this challenge, public<br />
administration should adopt the model of Virtual Organizations<br />
(VO) [1, 2, 3] which permits to deal with complexity, pursuit for<br />
agility, and take advantages of broad use of information<br />
technologies in economic and managerial operations. VO is “a set<br />
of at least two autonomous partners, where at least one of them is<br />
an organization, cooperating within a particular structure of social<br />
and legal relationships in order to carry out a particular venture<br />
due to the demand from virtual organization clients and having a<br />
plan to carry out this venture” [4]. Partners collaborating within a<br />
VO are organizations – enterprises, public administration units,<br />
and non-government organizations – people, and information<br />
systems.<br />
The success of a VO strongly depends on ability of all<br />
participating organizations to efficiently and seamlessly cooperate<br />
via Internet. Good level of cooperation may be achieved by an<br />
appropriate selection of partners. In case of public administration<br />
ventures this selection takes a form of public auctions. In<br />
European Union, approaches to conducting a public auction are<br />
regulated by two main directives 2004/17/EC and 2004/18/EC [5].<br />
Due to importance and complexity of partner selection problem, a<br />
number of computer supported methods has already been<br />
proposed. Modern approaches to modeling cooperation among<br />
organizations are built around the concept of service and the<br />
paradigm of Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) [2]. Examples<br />
of methods supporting selection of partners and service for VO<br />
have been described in [6, 7]. In some of the proposed<br />
methods [2, 8] existence of Virtual Organization Breeding<br />
Environment VOBE is assumed. Public administration playing a<br />
role of VOBE is presented in [1]. So far, none of the proposed<br />
methods, has been evaluated for the use in public auctions.<br />
Existing methods have the following shortcoming preventing<br />
them from effective application to contractor selection for public<br />
administration ventures: (a) the aspect of past collaboration<br />
between potential contractors is not included; (b) it is assumed<br />
that the process model of a venture is known in advance and that<br />
it does not change; (c) all the partners are selected before a<br />
venture starts, while in practice new partners may be required<br />
when the venture progress, or some initially selected partners may
appear useless so the evolving aspect of the partner selection is<br />
not addressed.<br />
In this paper a C-CS method is presented in which selection of<br />
contractors based on multi-variant analysis is not seen as a single<br />
act, but as a process conducted in parallel to the public<br />
administration ventures. In the C-CS method legal restrictions<br />
following from the public auctions are taken into account. The C-<br />
CS method takes advantage of process mining techniques for<br />
analysis of past contractor selections and provides<br />
recommendations for ongoing and future contractor selections<br />
processes. The above features make the C-CS method well suited<br />
for big public administration ventures.<br />
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. In Section 2,<br />
the main law regulations concerning public contracts and public<br />
auctions are presented. In Section 3, the approach to selection of<br />
partners to portfolio of projects is justified. In Section 4, the<br />
proposed C-CS method supporting contractor selection is<br />
presented. Finally, Section 4 concludes the paper.<br />
2. PUBLIC AUCTIONS IN EUROPEAN<br />
UNION<br />
The aim of a public auction is to elaborate a public contract<br />
between one or more economic operators and one or more<br />
contracting authorities. Contracting authorities mean here the<br />
state, regional or local authorities, bodies governed by public law<br />
or their groups. An economic operator is understood as any<br />
organization which offers on the market products or services. An<br />
economic operator or a set of economic operators undersigning a<br />
public contract and responsible for its realization is called a<br />
contractor.<br />
European Union directives define five main procedures allowing<br />
contractors to be selected: open procedures, restricted<br />
procedures, competitive dialogue, negotiated procedures, and<br />
design contests. To establish a complex public contract defined as<br />
a one where “the contracting authorities: are not objectively able<br />
to define the technical means, capable of satisfying their needs or<br />
objectives, and/or are not objectively able to specify the legal<br />
and/or financial makeup of a project” competitive dialog or<br />
negotiated procedure procedures are used.<br />
Conduction of the competitive dialog and negotiations is based on<br />
collaboration that takes place on two levels: (1) inside public<br />
administration units, and (2) among public administration and<br />
candidates for contractors. Collaboration inside public<br />
administration units arises during preparation of public auction<br />
and during the interaction with candidate contractors.<br />
Collaboration concerns contractor selection participants<br />
comprising domain experts, public administration unit<br />
representatives, legal and technical advisors, non-government<br />
organizations, etc. Collaboration aims at: (1) definition of the<br />
contract notice content; (2) agreement on the set of economic<br />
contractors invited to take part in selection procedures;<br />
(3) evaluation of offer variants submitted by candidates during<br />
negotiations and dialog. Cooperation on the second level with<br />
economic contractor is the essence of negotiation and competitive<br />
dialog. It relies on exchange of information aiming at<br />
identification and definition of the means best suited to satisfying<br />
the needs of contracting authorities.<br />
333<br />
A basic observation is that public administration usually has to<br />
conduct not just one but a portfolio of projects. A common<br />
approach to management of such projects favored by public<br />
administration is selection of one contractor per project. In this<br />
approach, however, the managerial role of public administration is<br />
reduced to supervision. A contractor manages a network of<br />
specialized organizations executing different tasks comprising the<br />
project. Currently, public administration is focused on selection of<br />
contractors for single ventures in separation from one another,<br />
while paying not enough attention to the holistic view of the<br />
whole portfolio of ventures. As a result, contractor selection for<br />
public administration ventures is not performed effectively and<br />
often leads to non-effective realization of public ventures.<br />
Current approaches to contractor selection for public<br />
administration ventures has the following shortcomings:<br />
(1) limited support for analysis of potential contractors in terms of<br />
relationships existing among them, while these relationships can<br />
have a great impact on efficiency of realization of the portfolio of<br />
projects; (2) limited support for analysis of correlation among<br />
former and ongoing public auctions, while the result or the course<br />
of one public auction should be taken into account during others;<br />
(3) limited support for analysis of sets of economic contractors<br />
involved in many public auctions; (4) limited sharing of good<br />
practices concerning public auctions among public administration<br />
units due to the fact that such practices are difficult to be<br />
identified; such good practices may concern used requirements,<br />
definition of public auction scope, association among auctions and<br />
projects, economic contractors, experts, public administration<br />
units, non-government organizations involved in the selection<br />
process, and invited economic operators for negotiations.<br />
3. CONTRACTOR SELECTION FOR<br />
PORTFOLIO OF VENTURES<br />
To deal with drawbacks of the current selection process, it is<br />
necessary to change the approach to conduction of public auctions<br />
and management of public administration project portfolio. In this<br />
paper we propose to consider a portfolio of projects and apply a<br />
coordinated partner selection process in a number of auctions to<br />
all the projects contained in the portfolio, instead of selecting<br />
independently a contractor per project. The contractors selected<br />
need to be able to mutually communicate, synchronize, and<br />
cooperate to efficiently realize a set of projects. Thus, in the<br />
proposed approach analysis of interrelations among potential<br />
contractors is included. Public administration together with all the<br />
contractors (a contractor per project) constitute a VO within<br />
which they collaborate as partners to conduct a portfolio of<br />
projects. The Collaborative Contractor Selection (C-CS) method<br />
proposed in this paper in Section 4 refers to computer support of<br />
two the most complex cases of public auctions, i.e. competitive<br />
dialog or negotiated procedure.<br />
In the C-CS method the contractor selection for public<br />
administration venture is a process consisting of a set of possibly<br />
overlapping public auctions associated with a set of projects.<br />
These auctions lead to definition of a set of public contracts<br />
associated with the execution of projects comprising project<br />
portfolio. The input for starting a contractor selection process for<br />
public administration is a project portfolio. Contractor selection<br />
process encompasses: (1) definition of a set of public auctions to<br />
be conducted for the project portfolio, relationships existing<br />
among these auctions, and main assumptions of these auctions;
(2) conduction of the public auctions, where each auction is<br />
followed by establishment of a public contract for each project;<br />
(3) if applicable, as contractor selection proceeds (i.e. subsequent<br />
auctions are performed and concluded), redefinition of the set of<br />
auctions, relationships among them, their scope and assumptions.<br />
Step 3 captures the evolving aspect of contractor selection.<br />
Contractor selection is completed when all the projects from the<br />
project portfolio have assigned public contracts.<br />
4. C-CS METHOD<br />
The C-CS method is a refinement of the MAPSS method proposed<br />
in [8]. The refinement of the method encompasses: (1) selection<br />
of contractors for a subset of projects composing a portfolio–<br />
economic operators are not assigned to all the projects at once;<br />
(2) analysis of social relations among contractors selected during<br />
several public auctions; (3) collaborative approach to contractor<br />
selection involving interested parties; (4) support for contractor<br />
selection participant activities by recommendation of good<br />
practices in the form of activity patterns; (5) support for analysis<br />
of various variants of possible assignment of contractors to<br />
projects, where variant evaluation is based on requirements and<br />
preferences of selection process participants including social<br />
aspects.<br />
4.1 C-CS Concept<br />
It is assumed that a contractor selection process consists of a set of<br />
public auctions. he aim of each public auction is to find a<br />
contractor providing the best offer that observes the requirements:<br />
(1) defined in the public notice and (2) imposed on an auction as<br />
a consequence of already completed auctions. Such constraints<br />
usually take a form of social requirements. They follow from a<br />
holistic approach to selection of contractors for a portfolio of<br />
projects. Subsequent auctions may be organized in parallel to<br />
venture proceeding.<br />
A contractor specification is a set of requirements that an<br />
economic operator must satisfy to be assigned to a particular<br />
public contract. An offer specification is a set of requirements that<br />
an offer of an economic operator must satisfy to be assigned to a<br />
particular public contract. Social requirements concern<br />
relationships among contractors. An acceptable contractor is an<br />
economic operator satisfying requirements defined in the<br />
contractor specification. An acceptable offer is an economic<br />
operator offer satisfying requirements defined in the offer<br />
specification.<br />
Public contract specification is a pair: . An acceptable public contract is a pair<br />
. Requirements defined<br />
in a specification may refer to expected experience of contractor,<br />
financial stability, etc. Social requirements express dependencies<br />
among contractors being public auction outputs. Note that each<br />
acceptable contractor can be a VO. Thus, requirements defined in<br />
contractor specification may refer also to internal structure of such<br />
a VO, e.g., a requirement concerning maximum number of<br />
subcontractors. Social relationships may concern: past<br />
cooperation, recognition, former financial exchange, etc.<br />
4.2 Overview of C-CS Phases<br />
In every stage of contractor selection, the C-CS method consists<br />
of four phases and follows the general selection method<br />
334<br />
guidelines presented in [2]: (1) specification of public auctions<br />
envisioned for contractor selection stage – definition of<br />
requirements and associated evaluation criteria (preferences,<br />
fitness function); this phase is performed within public<br />
administration and its output is published in a form of contract<br />
notices; (2) contractor analysis prior negotiations – the set of<br />
acceptable public contracts is created and analyzed internally<br />
within public administration; the aim of the analysis is to define<br />
the best possible contractor group that the public administration<br />
will strive to achieve; such analysis is used for preparation of a set<br />
of economic operators to be invited to participate in negotiations<br />
or a competitive dialog; (3) contractor analysis during<br />
negotiations – the set of acceptable public contracts is created on<br />
the basis of acceptable offers submitted by candidate contractors<br />
during negotiation or competitive dialog; the aim of the analysis is<br />
to identify the group of best acceptable public contracts or<br />
indicate the shortcoming of the acceptable public contracts being<br />
currently negotiated; (4) stage conclusion – selection of the best<br />
acceptable public contract for each public auction envisioned in<br />
this contract selection stage.<br />
All the phases of the C-CS method are performed in a<br />
collaborative manner. Phase 1 assumes collaboration of public<br />
administration units, employees, domain experts and others.<br />
Phases 2-4 include in addition acceptable contractors.<br />
4.3 Information Model and Selection<br />
Technique<br />
The C-CS method is based on the concept of public administration<br />
being a VOBE [1]. It is assumed that public administration<br />
collects information concerning former public auctions and their<br />
results for future reuse. Collected information may include<br />
properly documented former experience of economic operators or<br />
recommendations from former clients. Such information refers<br />
both to single economic operators as well as relationships among<br />
them. Such information is stored in a repository consisting of four<br />
modules: (1) contractor and offer specification module – provides<br />
relevant information concerning economic operators, their<br />
operations and their offers (offer variants) submitted during past<br />
and current public auctions, (2) social network module – provides<br />
information about relationships among contractors and between<br />
contractors and their offers, (3) requirement module – provides<br />
information concerning requirements used in various public<br />
auctions; (4) participant’s activity module – stores information<br />
concerning activities performed by contractor selection process<br />
participants throughout selection processes.<br />
The C-CS method aims at finding a subset of economic<br />
contractors and offers submitted for an ongoing auction and stored<br />
in the repository that are best suited for activities analyzed during<br />
a given contractor selection stage. The contractor selection is<br />
performed on the basis of specification created in Phase 1. As the<br />
result of the specification phase, the formulated public contract<br />
specifications are published in a form of public notices and a set<br />
of requirements concerning social relationships. Requirements<br />
associated with specifications may be selected from the repository<br />
or created for the need of a particular contractor selection stage.<br />
Definition of requirements for contractor selection includes also<br />
definition of: (1) preferred value; (2) fitness functions. In Phase 2<br />
and Phase 3, contractor analysis is divided into two steps: (1)<br />
acceptable public contract analysis, (2) acceptable public contract<br />
group analysis.
In the acceptable public contract analysis step, on the basis of<br />
public contract specifications defined in Phase 1, a set of<br />
acceptable public contracts is created for each public contract<br />
specification. Identified acceptable public contracts are ranked<br />
according to the level of conformance to corresponding<br />
specification. The conformance is calculated on the basis of<br />
preferences and fitness functions defined in Phase 1. Analysis<br />
performed in this step is followed by effective selection of<br />
promising acceptable public contracts and rejection of those that<br />
should be disregarded. The number of potential acceptable public<br />
contract group that may be constituted for the contractor selection<br />
stage with acceptable public contracts identified in the previous<br />
step is usually high. The goal of acceptable public contract group<br />
analysis step is to search for a sorted list of acceptable public<br />
contract group ranked according to a fitness function. This step<br />
takes advantage of technique proposed as a part of the MAPSS<br />
method [8]. Genetic algorithm is used for generation of optimal<br />
acceptable public contract groups ranked according to a fitness<br />
function. In this phase each contractor selection participant may<br />
define his/her own fitness function. Thus, suggestion concerning<br />
best acceptable public contract groups may be different depending<br />
on a participant. In this phase, social relationships among<br />
acceptable contractors are verified and validated.<br />
In the stage conclusion phase, once all public contract<br />
specifications that are defined for contractor selection stage have<br />
assigned acceptable public contracts, this fact is registered in the<br />
repository. If applicable, this stage encompasses redefinition of<br />
the set of planned upcoming auctions, relationships among them,<br />
their scope and assumptions<br />
4.4 Recommendations During Contractor<br />
Selection<br />
Characteristics of a contractor selection process are such that in<br />
general prediction of its full course is impossible. Nevertheless,<br />
identification of its repeatable parts is useful in context of<br />
boosting efficiency of selection execution and promotion of good<br />
practices among selection process participants, especially those<br />
being representatives of public administration.<br />
Mechanism of recommendation in the C-CS method aims to<br />
detect activity patterns in contractor selection process, where<br />
activity pattern is a set of activities that are frequently performed<br />
in a structured way in a particular context by a contractor<br />
selection participant. Identified activity patterns are later<br />
recommended to other selection participants. Identification of<br />
activity patterns is possible due to information stored in<br />
participant’s activity module of the repository. To identify activity<br />
patterns, the approach presented in [4] is used.<br />
5. CONCLUSIONS<br />
The C-CS method contributes to increased efficiency of the<br />
contractor selection process. It is achieved by computer support<br />
for multi-variant automatic analysis of economic operators and<br />
offers submitted by them. A structured approach is proposed to<br />
definition and reuse of requirements, stored in a repository in a<br />
form of contractor or offer specifications. An important aspect of<br />
the C-CS method is an analysis of relationships among candidate<br />
335<br />
contractors from various ongoing or completed public auctions.<br />
Such analysis eliminates the risk of selection of a set of<br />
contractors unable to mutually collaborate which could lead to<br />
one or more project failures. Identification of activity patterns in<br />
every phase of the C-CS method addresses the problem of process<br />
evolution and unpredictability. Activity patterns allow good<br />
practices to be identified and reused. Recommendations generated<br />
on the basis of activity patterns enable more effective execution of<br />
contractor selections.<br />
6. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS<br />
This work has been partially supported by the Polish National<br />
Science Center. Grant no. DEC-2011/01/N/ST6/04205<br />
7. REFERENCES<br />
[1] Cellary, W., Picard, W., Agile and Pro-Active Public<br />
Administration as a Collaborative Networked Organization,<br />
in: Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on<br />
Theory and Practice of Electronic Governance<br />
ICEGOV2010, October 25-28, 2010, Beijing, China, ACM,<br />
2010<br />
[2] Rabelo, R., Gusmeroli, S., The ECOLEAD Collaborative<br />
Business Infrastructure for Networked Organizations, in:<br />
Camarunha-Matos, L.M, Picard, W. (eds), Pervasive<br />
Collaborative Networks, PRO-VE 2008, Springer, 2008<br />
[3] Janowski, T., Pardo, T. A., Davies, J., Government<br />
Information Networks - Mapping Electronic Governance<br />
cases through Public Administration concepts, in:<br />
Government Information Quarterly, vol. 29, Elsevier, 2012<br />
[4] Paszkiewicz, Z., W. Cellary, Computer Supported<br />
Collaborative Processes in Virtual Organizations , in:<br />
Proceedings of the 20th Annual World Business Congress,<br />
Poznań, Poland, pp. 85-94, IMDA Press, 2011,<br />
[5] Directives 2004/17/EC and 2004/18/EC of the European<br />
Parliament and of the Council of 31 March 2004<br />
coordinating the procurement procedures of entities<br />
operating in the water, energy, transport and postal services<br />
sectors<br />
[6] Ermilova E., H. Afsarmanesh: Competency and Profiling<br />
Management in Virtual Organization Breeding<br />
Environments. in: Camarinha-Matos, L.M., Afsarmanesh, H.<br />
Ollus, M. (eds.) Network-Centric Collaboration and<br />
Supporting Frameworks, pp. 131-142. Springer, 2007<br />
[7] Canfora, G., Di Penta, M., Esposito, R., Villani, M.L., An<br />
approach for QoS-aware service composition based on<br />
genetic algorithms, in: Proceedings of the 2005 conference<br />
on Genetic and evolutionary computation, pp. 1069-1075,<br />
2005<br />
[8] Paszkiewicz, Z., Picard, W. MAPSS, a multi-aspect partner<br />
and service selection method. in: L.M., Camarinha-Matos, X.<br />
Boucher, H. Afsarmanesh (Eds.), Collaborative networks for<br />
a sustainable world, 11th IFIP working conference on virtual<br />
enterprises, PRO-VE 2010 Boston, USA: Springer, 2010.
E-Government Success Factors in the Context of an ITenabled<br />
Budget Reform: A Questionnaire Report<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
The adoption of e-government initiatives is not in vacuum. They<br />
are usually adopted in complex settings influenced by not only IT<br />
factors but other factors from different structures, such as<br />
contextual, organizational, collaboration, knowledge, and trust.<br />
These structures come from the context in which the egovernment<br />
project is embedded. The goal of this research is to<br />
explore the multiple factors from various structures involved in egovernment<br />
success using a contemporary case of an IT-enabled<br />
budget reform in Mexico. This study comprises a descriptive<br />
summary of answers from a questionnaire applied over federal<br />
and state government officials who participated in this initiative<br />
who adopted it into their daily practice. Due to the context of the<br />
IT-enabled budget reform, questions about the factors from<br />
different structures including the budgeting structure were<br />
analyzed. General characteristics and potential benefits of the egovernment<br />
initiative were also examined. The main motivation<br />
of this study is to extend our understanding of possible enablers<br />
and inhibitors that public officials face during the adoption of egovernment<br />
projects into work routines and different contexts.<br />
Derived from the questionnaire results, a selection of 11 “practical<br />
advices” were identified as useful for a successful adoption of egovernment<br />
projects.<br />
Categories and Subject Descriptors<br />
J.1 ADMINISTRATIVE DATA PROCESSING [Computer<br />
Applications]: Government – applications, government.<br />
General Terms<br />
Management, Human Factors, Theory.<br />
Keywords<br />
Electronic Government; Success Factors; Questionnaire.<br />
1. INTRODUCTION<br />
Most of e-government projects involve a complexity of the<br />
multiple factors and actors involved in practice [18,19,24,34,38].<br />
In the literature, there are many frameworks that attempt to<br />
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Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to<br />
post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission<br />
and/or a fee.<br />
ICEGOV '12, October 22 - 25 2012, Albany, NY, USA<br />
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1200-4/12/10...$15.00<br />
Gabriel Puron-Cid<br />
Centro de Investigacion y Docencia<br />
Economicas (CIDE)<br />
gabriel.puron@cide.edu<br />
336<br />
integrate these multiple factors and actors involved in the<br />
implementation of e-government initiatives [18,19,34]. These<br />
efforts have contributed to our understanding of e-government<br />
mechanisms of success and failure, but neglect other interacting<br />
structures and actors involved in the phenomenon [18,19,24,34].<br />
Depending on the type of e-government, other relevant structures<br />
and factors need to be considered in practice and consequently in<br />
theory [8,18,19,34]. For this paper, structures are analytical<br />
dimensions considered in interaction in the adoption of egovernment,<br />
while factors are particular features of this<br />
interaction. This study accounts for the multiple success structures<br />
and factors, not only from information systems, but from other<br />
disciplinary fields and policy domains that are involved in the<br />
adoption of e-government [18,19,34].<br />
One of the most critical applications of e-government is present in<br />
the field of budgeting [34]. Because of the intensive informational<br />
content and technological use in the budget process, information<br />
systems have become central to budgeting operations in<br />
government, and vice versa [27,28]. As Joyce, Lee, & Johnson<br />
[26: 397] noted “Contemporary approaches to budgeting and<br />
accounting obviously require considerable amounts of information<br />
for decision making and evaluation. Information Systems, then,<br />
constitute an effort to bring about greater coordination of [diverse]<br />
organizational units in the collection, storage, manipulations,<br />
retrieval, and analysis of information.” This paper examines the<br />
multiple factors of e-government success by using an IT-enabled<br />
budget reform in Mexico as a contemporary e-government case in<br />
the field of budgeting. This case not only helps to understand the<br />
traditional structures from information systems and actors such IT<br />
staff members involved in e-government initiatives, but also it<br />
considers other critical structures and actors interacting as well<br />
from other fields and staff areas (i.e. budgeting, planning,<br />
management, evaluation, auditing, etc.). Since late 1980s,<br />
Mexican government has reformed its budget system involving<br />
the adoption of various information systems and managerial<br />
techniques across time. The last of these reforms, known as PbR-<br />
SED for its Spanish abbreviation of “Budgeting based on Results-<br />
Performance Evaluation System”, was recently designed and<br />
enacted in 2008 and its purpose is to transform the way agencies<br />
spend public resources based on results and cost savings, new<br />
information systems, and novel budgetary techniques. The PbR-<br />
SED represents an ongoing and complex transformation and is<br />
expected to condense multiple factors and actors from different<br />
organizations.<br />
This exploratory study comprises a descriptive summary of the<br />
answers of the questionnaire over the PbR-SED adoption. The<br />
questionnaire was applied over federal and state government<br />
officials who participated in the initiative. With a response rate of
14.9% (221 respondents), the goal of the questionnaire was to<br />
evaluate a variety of structures and factors deemed as influential<br />
for a successful adoption of the PbR-SED from the perspective of<br />
the public officials who adopt it. The structures revised were:<br />
general characteristics of the initiative, benefits of the initiative,<br />
contextual factors, budgetary and information systems factors,<br />
collaboration factors, and knowledge and trust factors. The main<br />
motivation of this study is to derive useful evidence for extending<br />
our understanding about possible obstacles and enablers of egovernment.<br />
The purpose is that e-government community of<br />
practitioners and scholars use these findings for advising a<br />
successful adoption of e-government into working routines and<br />
particular contexts. Derived from the analysis of the questionnaire<br />
results, a selection of 11 “practical advices” were identified as<br />
useful for a successful adoption of e-government. The structure of<br />
the paper is organized in six sections including these introductory<br />
remarks. The second reviews the literature about the multiple<br />
factors involved in e-government adoption. The third section<br />
details research design and methods. The fourth section discusses<br />
results of the questionnaire in seven subsections: 1) general<br />
characteristics of the initiative, 2) benefits of the initiative, 3)<br />
contextual factors 4) budgetary and information systems factors,<br />
5) collaboration factors, 6) knowledge factors, and 7) trust factors.<br />
The fifth section discusses 11 "practical advices" resulting from<br />
the analysis of the questionnaire which we believe are useful for a<br />
successful adoption of the e-government. The sixth section makes<br />
some concluding remarks.<br />
2. LITERATURE REVIEW<br />
The literature of the fields of information systems and budgeting<br />
was reviewed by considering that e-government initiatives for<br />
budget reforms engage in practice more than just information<br />
systems and technology components [6,14,23,29,34]. The review<br />
was not exhaustive, but sufficient for the purpose of exploration<br />
of the multiple factors and structures involved in e-government<br />
success. There are multiple disciplinary and paradigmatic<br />
inquiries to understand the compound effects of different<br />
structures and factors involved in the adoption of e-government<br />
initiatives [8,14,18,19,34,40]. This article classifies them in two<br />
categories: benefits of e-government and factors influencing egovernment<br />
success.<br />
In terms of benefits, the literature shares 8 potential benefits:<br />
increase efficiency and cost reduction [17,18,34]; improve public<br />
services [11,19,34]; strengthen accountability [15,34,35]; increase<br />
communication based on performance information [22,34];<br />
improve collaboration between different staffs [3,34]; improve<br />
collaboration between different organizations [3,9,16,34]; and<br />
increase knowledge sharing [31,34].<br />
In the case of factors, the literature can be classified into 5 groups:<br />
contextual, information systems, collaboration, knowledge, and<br />
trust. Because of the particular context of budgeting in which the<br />
e-government initiative is implemented, the literature of budgeting<br />
was revised and budgetary factors were included. Different<br />
authors have identified the role of contextual factors in egovernment<br />
success [5,8,30,34,40]. In particular, it is<br />
acknowledged the relevance of economic, social, political,<br />
institutional, and organizational contexts for e-government<br />
success [14,19,30,34,40]. Economic factors represent the<br />
pressures for resource allocation on IT-related projects [14,19,34].<br />
Social factors involve social challenges influencing e-government<br />
337<br />
adoption such as: security concerns, rapid technological change,<br />
reforms and other social demands [30,34]. Political factors include<br />
political support from top officials, legislators and policy makers<br />
[30,32,34]. Institutional factors refer to the legal framework in<br />
which e-government is embedded [8,14,19,34]. Organizational<br />
factors involve four dimensions: strategic alignment between egovernment<br />
and organization’s mission [6,14,34]; level of<br />
standard setting of government processes and activities [30,34];<br />
level of centralization [5,11,34]; and size and number of<br />
jurisdictions in terms of diversity of users or organizations<br />
involved in the project [8,11,34].<br />
Budget factors include four dimensions: methodology, strategy of<br />
implementation, and procedures. Methodology factors involve the<br />
information format, content and methods for budgeting and<br />
accounting [27,34,39]. Strategy of implementation factors are the<br />
intentions of designers of the reform [12,34,37] and the proposed<br />
direction of this change—top-down or bottom-up- [34,39].<br />
Procedures factors include the roles of budgetary authorities and<br />
their scope of action in the budget process [25,34,37,39].<br />
Information systems factors involve three dimensions of factors<br />
influencing e-government success: characteristics of official<br />
information systems [30,34]; interoperability issues from<br />
participant organizations [34,36]; and data integration as<br />
challenges of information sharing [2,10,34].\<br />
Collaboration factors occupy four structures: authority, leadership,<br />
governance, and resource sharing. Authority factors include the<br />
formal designation of responsible(s) of the project and the<br />
development of effective policies and technical standards<br />
[32,34,37]. Leadership factors consider support mechanisms to a<br />
leader or team as well as guided actions through policies and other<br />
boundary objects [32,34,41]. Governance factors are indicated the<br />
procedures and mechanisms for making and monitoring decisions<br />
regarding e-government such as selection of teams or networks,<br />
and other mechanisms of interaction between participants<br />
[1,33,34]. Resource sharing factors engage the potential inputs<br />
required for coordination and adoption of e-government in<br />
organizations such as financial, staff, technical infrastructure and<br />
training [27,34].<br />
Knowledge factors consider five dimensions: professional<br />
experience, teamwork experience, information systems<br />
knowledge, and budgetary knowledge. Professional experience<br />
considers specific task knowledge and expertise to conduct the job<br />
including professional background, job and operation experience,<br />
and training [11,34]. Teamwork experience implies abilities<br />
learned to work in team such knowledge sharing and previous<br />
experiences working in team [7,34]. Information systems<br />
knowledge suggests the technical expertise required to understand<br />
technology in use, data bases, and other information structures<br />
[31,34]. Budgetary knowledge represents the particular use of<br />
information from the budgetary field [27,34].<br />
Trust factors entail four dimensions: confidence based on<br />
budgetary knowledge; confidence based on information systems<br />
knowledge; clear roles and responsibilities; and motivation.<br />
Building confidence based on knowledge, in this case in the fields<br />
of budgeting and information systems, has been identified in the<br />
literature as crucial [27,30,34]. Clarifying roles and<br />
responsibilities has been also detected as influencial for building<br />
trust among participants in the initiative [13,30,34]. Finally,
creating different incentives and public recognition has also been<br />
influential to e-government success [21,34,37].<br />
3. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS<br />
This research applied a questionnaire to civil servants from<br />
various ministries and government agencies of the federal and<br />
state governments. The data of participants were collected from<br />
the lists of staff who participated in the official training of the<br />
PbR-SED initiative during 2009 and 2010 and contact information<br />
of high officials at the federal and state governments available<br />
online. 2.048 potential participants were first invited to participate<br />
during the month of June 2011. 566 emails were not valid or<br />
rejected by security measures from their organizations’ email<br />
administrators. Only 1,482 emails were sent back and valid. Only<br />
221 questionnaires were completed with a response rate of 14.9%<br />
in general. This rate is considered normal for research via<br />
electronic or online [4]. However, there are sections of the<br />
questionnaire that reported lower rates of response (in particular<br />
the last sections of the questionnaire). The questionnaire was<br />
designed and developed using an electronic tool called<br />
SurveyMonkey. The tool offers a platform that makes the<br />
questionnaire available online for participants. The questionnaire<br />
contains seven sections of questions (see Table 1). The first<br />
section welcomes and provides information about the study. The<br />
second section includes 12 questions of multiple choice about the<br />
general characteristics of the project (it considers an option for<br />
"others" in several questions). The third to the sixth sections, the<br />
questionnaire includes 105 questions using a 7-point Likert scale<br />
(from “totally agree” to “totally disagree” options), asking<br />
“Was… [factor]… influential for PbR-SED success?” or<br />
“Was…[benefit]…derived from the successful adoption of the<br />
PbR-SED?”.<br />
Only 54 questions are reported in this study in blocks of factors (8<br />
for benefits, 12 for contextual, 5 for budgetary, 5 for information<br />
systems, 9 for collaboration, 9 for knowledge, and 6 for trust).<br />
The last section of the questionnaire contains 8 questions about<br />
demographic aspects of respondents (see Table 1 for each<br />
dimension and type of factor). The results are presented in<br />
percents of two modalities of response: agreement and<br />
disagreement. The percent of respondents “agree” coded the<br />
opinions under the categories of "somehow agree", "agree" and<br />
"totally agree". The percent of respondents “disagree” coded the<br />
opinions under the categories from “neutral” to “totally disagree”.<br />
The average, standard deviation, and level of agreement of each of<br />
the 54 questions are reported.<br />
The questionnaire registered the opinion of public officials at<br />
different levels of responsibility in the areas of budget,<br />
management programs, information systems, and other areas. On<br />
average, respondents reported 16.4 years of job experience in<br />
government and 6.5 years of experience in actual position. The<br />
most common levels of education were undergraduate and<br />
graduate level mainly in the fields of accounting, economics,<br />
management, information systems, law and various engineering<br />
fields. The average age of respondents was 45 (with a minimum<br />
of 25 years and a maximum of 69 years). Gender of respondents<br />
was reported as 33.6% women and 66.4% men.<br />
Questions<br />
Table 1. Factors and Questions<br />
338<br />
Benefits<br />
1. Increase efficiency<br />
2. Cost reduction<br />
3. Improve public services<br />
4. Strengthen accountability<br />
5. Increase communication based on performance information<br />
6. Improve collaboration between different staffs<br />
7. Improve collaboration between your organization and others<br />
8. Increase knowledge sharing<br />
Contextual Factors<br />
1. Influence of present economic situation [Economic]<br />
2. New law, crisis or elections [Social]<br />
3. Social demand [Political]<br />
4. Support of top officials in your organization [Political]<br />
5. Support of congress people [Political]<br />
6. Budgetary norms and regulations [Institutional]<br />
7. Public investment norms and regulations [Institutional]<br />
8. Civil service norms and regulations [Institutional]<br />
9. Strategic planning in your organization [Organizational]<br />
10. Standards for processes and tasks in your organization [Organizational]<br />
11. Level of decentralization of decision making in your organization [Organizational]<br />
12. Size and number of jurisdictions in your organization [Organizational]<br />
Budget Factors<br />
1. Budgetary methodology for performance information<br />
2. Top-bottom strategy of implementation from the ministry of finance<br />
3. Strategy of implementation from the ministry of finance<br />
4. Flow for enter, revise, and authorize performance information in the budgetary process<br />
5. Official calendar of activities in the budgetary process<br />
Information Systems Factors<br />
1. Development and use of proprietary systems in your organization<br />
2. Previous experience developing information systems and data bases in your organization<br />
3. Official information system of the ministry of finance<br />
4. Definition of roles and accesses in the official information system<br />
5. Sharing data bases, catalogues, and tables with others<br />
Collaboration Factors<br />
1. Use of memos, internal norms and manuals to set rules in the initiative [Authority]<br />
2. Official designation of a responsible of the initiative in the organization [Authority]<br />
3. Use of official memos, internal norms and manuals to support the leader or team members<br />
responsible of the initiative [Leadership]<br />
4. Leadership of the person in charge or team members responsible of the initiative<br />
[Leadership]<br />
5. Designation of a multi-disciplinary team in the organization as responsible of the initiative<br />
[Governance]<br />
6. Meetings and its documents such as minutes, plans and other material [Governance]<br />
7. Staff assigned in the initiative [Resources]<br />
8. Technical infrastructure assigned in the initiative [Resources]<br />
9. Resources for training [Resources]<br />
Knowledge Factors<br />
1. Professional background [Professional Experience]<br />
2. Job experience [Professional Experience]<br />
3. Management operation experience [Professional Experience]<br />
4. Previous reform experience [Professional Experience]<br />
5. Knowledge sharing with members from different areas [Teamwork]<br />
6. Previous experience working with members from different areas [Teamwork]<br />
7. Budget management experience [Budgetary Knowledge]<br />
8. IS and technology use and experience [IS Knowledge]<br />
9. Official training [Training]<br />
Trust Factors<br />
1. Level of budgetary knowledge created confidence to work in the initiative [Confidence<br />
based on budgetary knowledge]<br />
2. Level of IS and technology created confidence to work in the initiative [Confidence based<br />
on IS knowledge]<br />
3. My role and responsibility in the initiative were clear [Clear roles and responsibilities]<br />
4. The role and responsibilities of other organizations and participants were clear to me [Clear<br />
roles and responsibilities]<br />
5. Attractive incentives to participate in the initiative [Motivation]<br />
6. My effort collaborating in the initiative was publicly recognized [Motivation]<br />
* Note: A 7-points Likert scale was used from “totally agree” to “totally disagree”.<br />
4. ANALYSIS OF RESULTS<br />
4.1 General Characteristics<br />
This section of the survey includes the opinion of respondents<br />
about the following features of the PbR-SED initiative: goals, type<br />
of staffs collaborating, organizations involved, roles and<br />
responsibilities, schemes of governance, and type of resources<br />
assigned to the initiative.
4.1.1 Goals for the e-government initiative. The results of the<br />
questionnaire show that establishing multiple goals for the<br />
initiative creates confusion. Few but well-defined and clear set of<br />
objectives generates certainty and perspective about the adoption<br />
of the initiative in the organization. Figure 1 presents an opinion<br />
from respondents over the perceived goals of the PbR-SED<br />
initiative. Only 35.2% of respondents believed that the main<br />
purpose of the PbR-SED is to develop administrative capacity.<br />
32.8% of respondents believe that the goal of the initiative is to<br />
comply with a legal mandate from the Executive or the ministry<br />
of finance. Only 21.9% of participants agree that the goal of the<br />
PbR-SED is to provide a specific solution for a problem in<br />
government through the use and analysis of performance<br />
information. Approximately 10% of opinions present "other"<br />
goals such as improving the planning, assessment, and budgeting<br />
operations of public spending. The lesson is that the establishment<br />
of multiple objectives for e-government creates confusion among<br />
the participants on the terms, scope and purpose of the initiative in<br />
their organization.<br />
Figure 1. Goals of the initiative (210 responses)<br />
4.1.2 Inter-disciplinary collaboration. Results from the<br />
questionnaire show the presence of collaboration between actors<br />
from different staffs than just information technology. Figure 2<br />
shows that the 22.4% of respondents involved in the adoption of<br />
the PbR-SED belong to budget staffs. However, the vast majority<br />
of participants come from different professional areas or staffs<br />
such as: planning (27.4%), management of public programs<br />
(18.4%), information systems (13.87%), and internal controls and<br />
audits (8.4%). The results of the questionnaire also identify staff<br />
from "other" areas such as evaluation, public investment, public<br />
works management, and other administrative officers. These<br />
results present evidence of the importance of the inter-disciplinary<br />
nature of collaboration among the different staffs involved in the<br />
adoption of the PbR-SED.<br />
This interdisciplinary collaboration also varies along the process<br />
of adoption. Table 2 shows different types of staffs collaborating<br />
across the stages of adoption of the e-government initiative. For<br />
example, staff members of planning areas have a very active role<br />
in all stages of adoption, followed by project leaders and budget &<br />
finance staff members. Members from information systems and<br />
management of programs staffs engage more actively at the stages<br />
of project planning, project design, development of information<br />
systems, and implementation. The results also identified members<br />
from "other" staffs, such as training, evaluation, internal controls,<br />
339<br />
and monitoring. On average, participants of the PbR-SED<br />
initiative spent 34.4% of their weekly time for the adoption of the<br />
PbR-SED. This is an important finding due to the need of<br />
recognition that initiatives like the PbR-SED consume<br />
considerable amounts of time and effort during the different<br />
phases of the project.<br />
Figure 2. Staffs involved in the initiative (206 responses)<br />
Table 2. Number of participants by type of staff and stage of<br />
adoption (204 responses)<br />
4.1.3 Inter-organizational collaboration. The literature has<br />
been predominantly aimed at studying the role of the legislative<br />
branch members and the executive office in e-government success<br />
[18,19,34,39,40]. Figure 3 shows that the first level of<br />
collaboration was given at the interior of the organizations rather<br />
than at the exterior. The first manifestation of collaboration of the<br />
PbR-SED initiative occurs across different staffs within the<br />
organization (inter-disciplinary collaboration). The second layer<br />
of collaboration happens between various organizations from<br />
federal, state or local levels of government (inter-organizational<br />
collaboration). After the internal level of collaboration, the<br />
collaboration between organizations and control agencies was<br />
critical. Our respondents also identified other levels of<br />
collaboration with different levels of government, private<br />
organizations, and international organizations such as the World<br />
Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the<br />
Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLAC), the Latin
American and the Caribbean Institute of Economic and Social<br />
Planning (ILPES). Collaboration with universities was also<br />
reported such as the Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM)<br />
and the Center for Economic Research and Teaching (CIDE). In<br />
“others” option, respondents considered coordination with certain<br />
agencies specialized in particular policy domains in Mexico like<br />
the National Council of Evaluation for Social Policy<br />
(CONEVAL), the National Commission of Housing (CONAVIS),<br />
the Mexican Youth Institute (IMJUVE), the National Institute of<br />
Women Affairs (INMUJERES), the National Commission on<br />
Human Rights, the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE), and the<br />
Superior Audit Organization. The results of the questionnaire<br />
made evident that inter-organizational collaboration is multilevel<br />
involving different organizations with different missions,<br />
functions and responsibilities.<br />
Figure 3. Types of inter-organizational collaboration in the<br />
initiative (210 responses)<br />
4.1.4 Governance scheme. The literature points out the<br />
predominance of the ministry of finance and other control<br />
agencies in the process of adoption of reforms. This represents a<br />
strong disincentive for implementer agencies to get involved in<br />
the process of adoption of the initiative [34]. Figure 4 provides an<br />
overview of the predominance of federal government in the<br />
governance scheme of the initiative progress. The oversight of<br />
control agencies in the federal government like SHCP, SFP and<br />
CONEVAL is stronger for the adoption of the initiative. However,<br />
there are instances of governance involving state and local levels<br />
of governments and very few cases from other organizations like<br />
the World Bank and the IDB. Puron-Cid [34] suggests that<br />
participatory governance involving organizations other than just<br />
control agencies may enrich the process of adoption and may<br />
ensure more innovation of the project in the organization.<br />
4.1.5 Strategies of resources supporting the initiative.<br />
Governance schemes are predominantly supervised by the federal<br />
government. Strategies of assigning resources to support the<br />
adoption of the initiative primarily come from the federal<br />
government as well. This type of “centralized” support of<br />
resources by control agencies at the federal level has advantages<br />
and disadvantages. The great advantage of this strategy is that<br />
offers a general framework for adoption across organizations<br />
based on incentives and resources. However, this scheme also<br />
suggests a lack of involvement by implementers due to the<br />
imposed structures for adoption, and their low investment and<br />
involvement in the project. Standard models of support may not<br />
340<br />
correspond to the needs of operation of implementer agencies.<br />
The questionnaire identifies five types of resources and source of<br />
support for the adoption of the PbR-SED initiative (see Figure 5):<br />
financial, training, information technology, ICT knowledge and<br />
staff, and experts and consultants.<br />
Figure 4. Types of organizations supervising the initiative (205<br />
responses)<br />
Figure 5. Types of support for the initiative (193 responses)<br />
On average, federal government assists on average 73% of these<br />
supports. In the same way, state governments operate on average<br />
17% of this aid and international organizations such as the World<br />
Bank and the IDB orchestrated on average 24% of this help. It is<br />
important to note that municipal governments presented almost no<br />
participation in these support strategies. Future research should<br />
corroborate if this pattern of support strategy corresponds to a<br />
shortage of resources, a lack of involvement, or a failure in the<br />
centralized design of the project at the federal level.<br />
4.2 Benefits<br />
Table 3 lists the results for the category of benefits of the adopted<br />
e-government initiative. The benefit with higher level of<br />
agreement is knowledge sharing. Respondents agreed that the<br />
PbR-SED helped members from different staffs to share expertise,<br />
knowledge and information across different areas like program
management, budget, and information systems (82.7%). The<br />
second largest benefit perceived by respondents was improving<br />
inter-disciplinary collaboration. Respondents consider that the<br />
PbR-SED makes more effective working relationships between<br />
different internal areas and staffs in the organization such as<br />
planning, budget, program management, and information systems<br />
(78.2%). With regards to the increase in communication,<br />
respondents felt that the PbR-SED generated performance<br />
information useful for decision-making of public programs<br />
(70.4%). Respondents consider more strengthened accountability<br />
between different staffs and areas within the organization as a<br />
benefit as well (69.8%). For the benefit of improving public<br />
services, respondents felt that the PbR-SED gave them rise to a<br />
better delivery of public services based on performance (66.5%).<br />
In terms of improving inter-organizational collaboration, a 64.2%<br />
of respondents consider that the PbR-SED resulted in a better<br />
collaboration between their organizations and other agencies and<br />
ministries. About the benefit of increasing efficiency, respondents<br />
perceived that the PbR-SED improves the organizations efficiency<br />
(60.9%). In contrast to the benefit of cost reduction, respondents<br />
have a divided opinion over whether the PbR-SED really saves or<br />
reduces costs (50.8%).<br />
Table 3. Benefits of e-government (179 responses)<br />
* Note: A 7-points Likert scale was used from “totally agree” to “totally disagree”.<br />
For the % agree, only the categories of "somehow agree", "agree" and "totally agree"<br />
were considered.<br />
These results present areas of improvement. On one hand, the<br />
adoption of PbR-SED has resulted in: better collaboration across<br />
different members within the organization (inter-disciplinary<br />
collaboration); a critical tool to enhance accountability within the<br />
organization; and an instrument to share knowledge and<br />
information among different areas of expertise like program<br />
management, budgeting, and information systems. However, there<br />
are some divided opinions if the PbR-SED has really improved<br />
efficiency in the organization, reduced costs, improved public<br />
services, and enhanced inter-organizational collaboration between<br />
different agencies and organizations involved in the initiative<br />
(inter-organizational collaboration).<br />
4.3 Contextual Factors<br />
Table 4 lists the results for each contextual factor. The contextual<br />
factors more influential in the adoption of the PbR-SED are the<br />
support of top officials (75.6%) and the usefulness of the strategic<br />
planning (75.0%). The first is political and the second is<br />
organizational. Other contextual factors were less influential but<br />
significant such as budgetary norms and regulations (75.0%),<br />
341<br />
level of standardization of processes and tasks (67.4%), level of<br />
centralization (64.5%), and size and number of jurisdiction<br />
(59.9%). The economic factor, social factors and the political<br />
factor of support of congress people present divided opinions<br />
about their influence on the success of the PbR-SED. In sum, the<br />
political factor of top officials support, the institutional factor of<br />
budgetary norms and regulations, and all organizational factors<br />
were considered influential.<br />
Table 4. Contextual factors of e-government (172 responses)<br />
* Note: A 7-points Likert scale was used from “totally agree” to “totally disagree”.<br />
For the % agree, only the categories of "somehow agree", "agree" and "totally agree"<br />
were considered.<br />
4.4 Budget & Information Systems Factors<br />
Table 5 lists the results for the budget and information systems<br />
factors. Three budget factors were considered influential by<br />
respondents: budgetary methodology for performance information<br />
(80.2%), top-bottom strategy of implementation (68.5%), and<br />
strategies of implementation of the ministry of finance (63.6%).<br />
Information systems factors presented lower levels of agreement<br />
about their influence on the adoption of the PbR-SED, but two<br />
factors figured among this battery of questions: development and<br />
use of proprietary information systems in implementer<br />
organizations (60.0%), and definition of roles and accesses in the<br />
official information system (59.9%). There were divided opinions<br />
for two budget factors: the influence of flow of performance<br />
information (54.3%) and official calendar (44.4%). Similarly,<br />
divided opinion was also present for some information systems<br />
factors such as: the official information system (57.4%), previous<br />
experience developing information systems and data bases in the<br />
organization (57.4%), and sharing data bases, catalogues, and<br />
tables (46.3%). In general, budget factors reached higher levels of<br />
agreement than information systems factors.<br />
Table 5. Budget & Information Systems factors of egovernment<br />
(162 responses)
* Note: A 7-points Likert scale was used from “totally agree” to “totally disagree”.<br />
For the % agree, only the categories of "somehow agree", "agree" and "totally agree"<br />
were considered.<br />
4.5 Collaboration Factors<br />
Most of collaboration factors were perceived by respondents as<br />
critical for adoption of the PbR-SED (see Table 6). For authority,<br />
the use of memos, norms and manuals to set rules (74.4%) and the<br />
official designation of a responsible of the initiative in the<br />
organization (69.9%) were considered important. In terms of<br />
leadership, similar use of memos, norms and manuals to support<br />
the people leading the project (76.9%) and the work of the<br />
leader(s) or team in charge of the initiative (67.9%) were<br />
considered influential. Governance presents contrasting results,<br />
while the designation of a multidisciplinary team to coordinate the<br />
initiative presents a considerable level of agreement (69.9%),<br />
mechanisms of governance such as meetings and its boundary<br />
objects such as minutes, plans and other material had lower<br />
percent of agreement (58.3%). Finally, the use of human resources<br />
presented higher level of agreement (64.7%) than the resources<br />
assigned to technical infrastructure (55.8%) and official training<br />
(50.0%). In sum, the role of authority, leadership and certain<br />
aspect of governance were evaluated by respondents as influential<br />
for a successful adoption of the PbR-SED initiative.<br />
Table 6. Collaboration factors of e-government (156<br />
responses)<br />
342<br />
* Note: A 7-points Likert scale was used from “totally agree” to “totally disagree”.<br />
For the % agree, only the categories of "somehow agree", "agree" and "totally agree"<br />
were considered.<br />
4.6 Knowledge Factors<br />
All knowledge factors obtained the highest levels of agreement<br />
across all factors in this study (see Table 7). In particular,<br />
professional experience showed to be highly critical for a<br />
successful adoption of the PbR-SED. Except for previous reforms<br />
experience (71.1%), professional background, job experience, and<br />
management operation experience presented higher levels of<br />
agreement more than 80%. In terms of teamwork, knowledge<br />
sharing across members from different staff areas presented<br />
84.9% level of agreement while previous experience working with<br />
members from other areas obtained 73.7%. These results suggest<br />
that previous experience is critical, but not as much as<br />
professional experience of individuals. Budget management,<br />
information systems experience and technology use also present<br />
important effects on the adoption of the PbR-SED with 75% of<br />
agreement across respondents. These findings are aligned with the<br />
idea that professional experience of participants in the initiative<br />
may be enriched or complemented by disciplines’ knowledge.<br />
Finally, the lowest level of agreement in this battery of questions<br />
for knowledge factors is the official training with 70.4% level of<br />
agreement. This evidence suggests that official mechanisms of<br />
increasing knowledge and experience prescribed by reformers<br />
“centrally” are not adequate for the particular needs and<br />
operations of implementer agencies.<br />
Table 7. Knowledge factors of e-government (152 responses)
* Note: A 7-points Likert scale was used from “totally agree” to “totally disagree”.<br />
For the % agree, only the categories of "somehow agree", "agree" and "totally agree"<br />
were considered.<br />
4.7 Trust Factors<br />
Most of trust factors obtained high levels of agreement about their<br />
influential effects such as (see Table 8): confidence based on<br />
budgetary knowledge (71.7%), confidence based on information<br />
systems knowledge and technology use (71.1%), and clear roles<br />
and responsibilities (78.3% and 69.1%). Only motivation factors<br />
presented low levels of agreement: incentives (39.5%) and public<br />
recognition (37.5%). Building trust is an important enabler for egovernment<br />
success not only by establishing clear roles and<br />
responsibilities, but by enhancing knowledge and expertise of<br />
participants across multiple disciplines (not just IT).<br />
Table 8. Trust factors of e-government (152 responses)<br />
* Note: A 7-points Likert scale was used from “totally agree” to “totally disagree”.<br />
For the % agree, only the categories of "somehow agree", "agree" and "totally agree"<br />
were considered.<br />
5. PRACTICAL ADVISES<br />
These results from the questionnaire allow us to derive 11<br />
“practical advices” for a successful adoption of e-government.<br />
There are five advises taken from the general characteristics<br />
section: (1) Avoid multiple goals for the e-government initiative;<br />
(2) establish inter-disciplinary mechanisms of collaboration<br />
343<br />
among participants from different staffs at the interior of the<br />
organization as first level of coordination of the e-government<br />
initiative; (3) establish inter-organizational mechanisms of<br />
collaboration among participants from different organizations as a<br />
second level of coordination of the e-government initiative; (4)<br />
define better and more complete governance schemes for the<br />
organization by creating channels of participation between key<br />
organizations, not just the traditional reformer agencies; in order<br />
to (5) establish strategies of support of the initiative by sharing<br />
financial, human, technological, training and knowledge<br />
resources. Results from the benefits section suggest that (6)<br />
specifying a clear set of goals and activities helps to direct action<br />
towards achievable plans. For agencies, it was easier to improve<br />
by having a clear set of goals and performance indicators for<br />
improving a particular public service than goals set in general<br />
terms. With the complex goals of the PbR-SED, respondents were<br />
only able to improve knowledge sharing and interdisciplinary<br />
collaboration, but efficiency, cost reduction, and public services.<br />
From the contextual section, (7) the lesson is to consider in<br />
advance potential economic, social, political, institutional, and<br />
organizational risks that may influence the adoption of the<br />
initiative. It was found that economic, social and political factors<br />
cannot be forecasted, but general trends can be detected and<br />
prevented for a better adoption of the initiative. Institutional and<br />
organizational factors may enable or inhibit internal strengths for<br />
e-government success. An analysis of contextual factors provides<br />
a useful map for where the initiative is standing. For budgetary<br />
and information systems’ components, it is critical to consider that<br />
(8) both work together not in isolation. Depending of the context<br />
and necessary fields of expertise required in the project, egovernment<br />
initiatives need to acquire relevant disciplinary<br />
knowledge and experience across participants for a successful<br />
adoption. For collaboration, (9) implementers should preview the<br />
multiple levels of collaboration. It is necessary to exercise clear<br />
mechanisms of collaboration such as authority, leadership,<br />
governance and different types of resources to support potential<br />
interdisciplinary and inter-organizational collaborations during the<br />
adoption of the initiative. In terms of knowledge, (10) reformers<br />
need to provide official training in different disciplines (not just<br />
budgeting) as an incubating step in the process of adoption. It is<br />
critical to pay attention of the professional experience, teamwork<br />
experience, and different disciplinary and areas of knowledge and<br />
expertise of participants, project leaders, members of teams, and<br />
people involved in the e-government initiative. Finally for trust,<br />
(11) there are motivational schemes that build confidence among<br />
participants and motivate participation and collaboration. This<br />
study found influential to build confidence the following<br />
mechanisms: promoting knowledge and expertise on the different<br />
areas or disciplines; setting clear roles and responsibilities; giving<br />
monetary and non-monetary incentives like public recognition.<br />
The lack of these trust builders may act as inhibitors of egovernment<br />
adoption.<br />
6. CONCLUSIONS<br />
This research provides evidence of the multiple structures and<br />
factors involve in e-government adoption. The results also suggest<br />
the multi-dimensional nature of the structures involved in egovernment<br />
success. It is not the intention to suggest that “all<br />
matters”, but to provide a conceptual map for evaluation that<br />
serves to diagnose what components of the initiative require the<br />
attention of both, reformers and implementers, for a successful<br />
process of adoption. The questionnaire as research instrument
showed to be useful, for collecting data from respondents from<br />
their natural settings. Using an online technique to collect<br />
responses was limited, but useful to collect the data across<br />
participants of the PbR-SED dispersed in the territory. This<br />
allowed less expensive and more control process of data<br />
collection. Particular attention of the phrasing of questions needs<br />
to be considered carefully for this type of research method. In<br />
particular, the section of questions valuated by using the 7-point<br />
Likert scale proved to be very useful for capturing the opinion of<br />
respondents. The dispersion of responses shows that the scale<br />
goes from high levels of agreement to low levels of agreement<br />
(disagreement). This dispersion was useful to scale the opinions<br />
about factors influence going from enabling or positive impact to<br />
inhibiting or negative impact over a successful adoption of the<br />
PbR-SED. In other words, the results show that there is a set of<br />
powerful enablers and inhibitors during the adoption of the PbR-<br />
SED initiative. For enablers (equal or higher than 5.0 on average),<br />
this study found some particular political, organizational, and<br />
budgetary factors, but among all collaboration, knowledge and<br />
trust factors obtained the highest levels of agreement about their<br />
influence on e-government success. For inhibitors, several factors<br />
across different structures showed low levels of agreement (less<br />
than 5.0 on average) meaning not necessarily no relation with egovernment<br />
success, but a negative impact on e-government<br />
success. Another important result from this study is that the<br />
connection between the goals of the e-government initiative and<br />
the benefits perceived is weak. This may be resulted from the lack<br />
of clarity about the goals and expected results of the PbR-SED in<br />
organizations creating confusion across participants of the project.<br />
In general, participants share knowledge and information,<br />
collaborate more with others, and are more accountable for what<br />
they do; however, they are unable of clear set of goals and<br />
performance indicators for improving efficiency, cost reduction<br />
and improving public services.<br />
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Public CIO, Figurehead or Decision-Maker? The case of<br />
Germany.<br />
Niels Proske<br />
University of Potsdam, Chair of<br />
Business Information Systems and E-<br />
Government<br />
August-Bebel-Str. 89<br />
14482 Potsdam, Germany<br />
+49 331 977 4681<br />
nproske@wi.uni-potsdam.de<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
In this paper, we analyze the position of CIO in the German states.<br />
In Germany, public CIOs range from figureheads to real decisionmakers.<br />
We identified three CIO types: first, the Political CIO,<br />
who has substantial resources but less IT competencies; second,<br />
the Operational CIO, who manages IT primarily close to actual<br />
projects; third, the Decorative CIO, who serves predominantly for<br />
public image. Thus, the institution of CIO moves between<br />
catchphrase and e-government enabler.<br />
Categories and Subject Descriptors<br />
K.6.1 [Project and People Management]: Strategic Information<br />
Systems Planning<br />
General Terms<br />
Management, Human Factors, Theory, Legal Aspects<br />
Keywords<br />
CIO, Leadership in Public Authorities, Empirical Comparison<br />
1. INTRODUCTION<br />
CIOs gladly accept prizes for excellent e-government strategies,<br />
give keynote addresses at fairs or conferences and are interviewed<br />
about the importance of collaboration under public authorities.<br />
But what is their actual impact on shaping and advancing the use<br />
of IT in the public sector? Whereas research has given a lot of<br />
attention to the position of Chief Information Officer in<br />
companies, their equivalents in the public sector however have<br />
been scarcely addressed by research. Given the public sector’s<br />
peculiar determining conditions that are likely to affect the CIO’s<br />
design and functions, findings from both science and practice,<br />
should not be transferred carelessly. Especially since high<br />
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for<br />
personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are<br />
not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies<br />
bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for<br />
components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored.<br />
Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to<br />
post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission<br />
and/or a fee.<br />
ICEGOV '12, October 22 - 25 2012, Albany, NY, USA<br />
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1200-4/12/10...$15.00<br />
Moreen Heine<br />
University of Potsdam, Chair of<br />
Business Information Systems and E-<br />
Government<br />
August-Bebel-Str. 89<br />
14482 Potsdam, Germany<br />
+49 331 977 4690<br />
mheine@wi.uni-potsdam.de<br />
346<br />
Norbert Gronau<br />
University of Potsdam, Chair of<br />
Business Information Systems and E-<br />
Government<br />
August-Bebel-Str. 89<br />
14482 Potsdam, Germany<br />
+49 331 977 4681 3372<br />
ngronau@wi.uni-potsdam.de<br />
expectations are tied to the introduction of the CIO position.<br />
Leadership failures or even the lack of adequate management is<br />
one of the biggest obstacles of e-government activities, which are<br />
for the most part activities of strategy and organizational change<br />
[2] [5] [10]. A lack of political guidelines and an often too late<br />
integration of crucial decision makers are constraining egovernment<br />
progress in general. As a mean to address these<br />
shortcomings, the concept of a Chief Information Officer, inspired<br />
by private sector, emerged in public sector.<br />
Introducing CIOs in the public sector indicates a shift towards<br />
greater centralization as well as recognition that in order to<br />
succeed in e-government a more holistic, inter-agency approach is<br />
necessary [7] [8]. Thought to bridge the gap between IT and<br />
highest-level executives [2], the position of CIO is also<br />
understood as institutionalization of the organization’s egovernment-strategy<br />
[6]. The rise of the CIO concept underlines<br />
in particular the strategic importance of e-government for<br />
organizational change in the public sector overcoming it’s<br />
limitation to merely technical means [4].<br />
CIOs in public sector are exposed to a particular environment,<br />
with political implications, directly affecting their working<br />
conditions. This leads to certain CIO models that often reflect<br />
both power structures and relevance attached to e-government.<br />
The objective of this paper is to explore and describe roles and<br />
functions of CIOs in German federal state governments and to<br />
assess whether this so gloriously titled position is actually more<br />
than just symbolic.<br />
2. DEFINITION OF TERMS<br />
The term Chief Information Officer firstly appeared in the early<br />
1980s in the private sector [1]. For W. R. Synnott the CIO is “the<br />
highest ranking executive with primary responsibility for<br />
information management. The CIO is responsible for the planning<br />
and architecture of the firm’s information resources, for<br />
promoting information technology throughout the firm, and for<br />
looking after the corporation’s investment in technology” [9]. The<br />
implementation is a visible expression of a changed view on<br />
information and information systems that had become a<br />
substantial production factor [12] and "can increase productivity<br />
and provide better management support" and hence created a new<br />
management dimension [11]. Focussing on hierarchy Boyle and<br />
Burbridge define the CIO position as "an executive with broad
esponsibility for information technology [...] who reports to a<br />
high-level corporate officer (e.g. president or CEO) [13]. Hence,<br />
the CIO is part of the organisation’s top management or at least<br />
directly tied to it. A clear definition of CIO position is almost<br />
impossible to give [1], which is predominantly due to the various<br />
roles and in the manifold modification of the CIO's<br />
responsibilities. Generally in public sector the concept of a CIO is<br />
well established for now almost two decades [5] [14]. Often their<br />
introduction is part of broader e-government initiatives such as egovernment<br />
strategies or similar action plans (e.g. in the state of<br />
Mecklenburg-Vorpommern), coalition agreements (e.g. in the<br />
state of Baden-Württemberg) or even by law (e.g. planned in the<br />
state of Berlin; Clinger-Cohen Act in the U.S.).<br />
However, it is hardly feasible to determine the specific date, when<br />
the first CIO position was created in a German state. In 2003 the<br />
German state of Hessen was the very first state, which has<br />
established a so titled CIO position. However, a similar position<br />
was already set up in 1996 by the German state of Hamburg,<br />
albeit as a department on a lower hierarchical level and not<br />
denominated as Chief Information Office. And even since 1985<br />
there is a so-called Federal Commissioner for ICT<br />
(Landessystembeauftragter) in the state of Baden-Württemberg, a<br />
position clearly assigned with CIO functions and a dedicated<br />
administrative body. Introducing a CIO position does not<br />
necessarily mean adopting an innovation but often merely<br />
establishing a prominent title, as will be shown later [2]. Today 13<br />
out of 16 federal states have established corresponding positions,<br />
even if the denomination is used rather rare.<br />
3. STUDY DESIGN<br />
We explore the design of CIO positions in public authorities by<br />
comparing the German states. The data collection is mainly based<br />
on content analysis. We used organization charts, schedules of<br />
responsibilities, coalition agreements and online presences of the<br />
16 states. Further, we conducted three expert interviews about the<br />
design and intentions of CIO positions in three German states.<br />
The following characteristics were collected:<br />
o Placing<br />
o Function<br />
o Level of separate resources<br />
o Relationship to other departments<br />
o Representation in the Federal IT committee<br />
The placing of the CIO concerns both vertical and horizontal<br />
dimension. The higher he is positioned in the hierarchy the more<br />
assertiveness can be assumed. However, in such a case he is most<br />
likely not involved in concrete IT affairs, because he has to direct<br />
several departments which may be far away from IT subjects.<br />
CIOs that are not on the level of a state secretary are actually able<br />
to operate as IT managers even though they are not authorized to<br />
issue directives. With a view to the horizontal placing it is crucial<br />
but not always in fact, that the CIO is positioned in that<br />
department that is in charge of statewide IT topics.<br />
CIOs fulfill several functions such as planning, governance and<br />
controlling of IT issues focusing on strategic tasks [1]. In our<br />
study the functional range of the CIOs is documented for every<br />
state and finally accounts for the identification of special CIO<br />
types.<br />
347<br />
To unfold full impact and to operate independently, the CIO<br />
should be equipped with resources, for example directly dedicated<br />
organisational units as well as budgetary means to initiate<br />
projects, assign studies and drive agenda setting. The importance<br />
of the CIO position should also be reflected in the crossdepartmental<br />
IT committees over which he has to preside. In this<br />
regard, there should be clarity about the relationship to the heads<br />
of IT on lower hierarchical levels within the specific departments.<br />
Every German state delegates a high-ranking representative (state<br />
secretary) to the Federal CIO council (IT Planungsrat), so do the<br />
the fereral government and representatives of the municipalities.<br />
The council is responsible for an overall IT steering. For the<br />
efficiency of each CIO position it is relevant whether the CIO is<br />
also member of the Federal CIO council. If not, it can be supposed<br />
that there is a lack of capacity to act at the interface of the own<br />
and the overall IT strategy.<br />
4. EMPIRICAL FINDINGS<br />
Altogether 13 federal states possess a CIO, which is not to say that<br />
among the remaining states CIO functions are not implemented.<br />
The word CIO seems to be a kind of catchphrase. Some federal<br />
states are afraid to use it, but actually have implemented an<br />
analogous position but put the phrase in brackets. Another<br />
symptom of this near-hype is that some states entitle a state<br />
secretary, who is busy being in charge of several sections, to a<br />
CIO. Under these circumstances the position is called Decorative<br />
CIO, who has in addition mostly no own resources. Otherwise,<br />
state secretaries are actually able to fulfil the CIO mission,<br />
provided that they have any resources they need, which are time,<br />
money, qualification and staff. In this case it is a Political CIO.<br />
The third type focuses on IT qualification and more operative<br />
tasks without neglecting strategic issues and is called Operative<br />
CIO. In the majority of cases our three CIO types are hard to<br />
distinguish from each other. Thus, the cases are assigned to the<br />
types by concentrating on the main points.<br />
4.1 Political CIO<br />
As a state secretary the Political CIO performs primarily strategic<br />
tasks. As its name implies, he distinguishes himself in his<br />
commitment to political offices. He is provided with authority to<br />
impact the IT governance, ideally cross-departmental. In the case<br />
of federal states, he is the head of IT for the whole state<br />
administration. The Political CIO has the budget responsibility. In<br />
collaboration with other federal states and face to face with local<br />
authorities he acts with the necessary power of representation.<br />
This CIO type is almost completely observable in the Free State of<br />
Bavaria. At first glance the state of Hessen possesses a similar<br />
CIO position, but actually it seems to be a position for special IT<br />
tasks (first, Digital Mobile Radio Network for emergency services<br />
& government agencies; and second, the activities in the Federal<br />
IT Council). The basic e-government department is not under his<br />
command. Without fixed coordination operations this situation<br />
tends to result in isolated CIO offices with a very decorative<br />
character. On the surface he appears as virtual head of IT. It is a<br />
peculiarity that the CIO is associated to two ministries, the<br />
Ministry of Interior and the Ministry of Finance. This is due to<br />
budget requirements. Requiring high spending but then enabling<br />
high savings, IT projects have strong financial impacts. Hence, it<br />
will be very advantageous, if CIOs have well-established and<br />
formal relations to both professional and financial departments.
4.2 Operative CIO<br />
The Operative CIO is characterized by his IT competence.<br />
Political CIOs are more often than not almost laymen in IT issues.<br />
The Operative CIO is head of the IT department without further<br />
engagements. Thus, he is able to concentrate on his root tasks. On<br />
management level the Operative CIO is involved in projects.<br />
Requests from other authorities like local communities or other<br />
federal states are addressed to him, even though he is not entitled<br />
to make binding decisions.<br />
The federal city state of Hamburg has an Operative CIO as<br />
described above. Hamburg provides both a global fund for IT<br />
projects and a pool with specialized staff. IT specialists are<br />
delegated to work on projects within the operating department. All<br />
in all Hamburg has a powerful CIO organization. The state of<br />
Saarland has also an Operative CIO, but not as ideal as Hamburg.<br />
Introducing a CIO organization means always a certain need of<br />
concentration. That did not succeed, because there are still two<br />
departments which handle statewide important IT issues. The CIO<br />
of the state of Saarland is positioned as a staff unit at the Ministry<br />
of Finance and is completely oriented on the project “IT reengineering”<br />
with the aim to consolidate. It seems that the CIO<br />
day-to-day business is not included.<br />
4.3 Decorative CIO<br />
Missing adequate resources Decorative CIOs are not able to reach<br />
significant results. They only serve for image brightening.<br />
Decorative CIOs have little or no managerial function. The state<br />
of Brandenburg has a CIO with only representative functions. The<br />
CIO is positioned deep within a department of the Ministry of<br />
Interior and he is ancillary to the head of this department, which is<br />
in charge of e-government and IT. Thus, Brandenburg has a CIO<br />
but nothing else. The state of Lower Saxony also holds a CIO with<br />
questionable reliability performance. Initially they recruited a CIO<br />
from the private sector. This year the position was upgraded. The<br />
state secretary took over additional task. To the present this is not<br />
communicated in detail, which indicates that this CIO design is<br />
located along the border to decorativeness.<br />
4.4 Synopsis<br />
Political CIOs are most common, seven german states have a CIO<br />
that predominantly serve political purposes. That may be because<br />
of their role in the federal IT council. The states seek to delegate<br />
representatives who are able to speak on equal terms (two out of<br />
three Decorative are also in the position of state secretaries).<br />
Another three states’ CIO positon can be classified as Operational<br />
CIO, three as Decorative CIO. Three German states have no CIO<br />
position so far.<br />
A further aspect is the department, in which the CIO performs.<br />
Traditionally IT issues are handled in the Ministry of Finance.<br />
That is because the first data possessing systems were introduced<br />
for the tax authorities. Six German CIOs are employed at financial<br />
departments. Another six CIOs are at the Ministry of Interior,<br />
which is as a rule in charge of Public Service Modernization.<br />
Possessing the CIO in the Ministry of Justice and Europe, Saxony<br />
is an outliner.<br />
Deriving from the localization of the state CIO in a certain<br />
ministry is the hegemony over priorities and aims associated to<br />
the use of technology [18] [19]. One can expect that a CIO<br />
employed at financial departments is more likely to stress the<br />
348<br />
potential of ICT to strengthen efficiency in order to save money,<br />
whereas a CIO at Ministry of Justice is more likely to focus on<br />
subjects such as data protection or the restriction of crossauthority<br />
exchange of data.<br />
5. EXPLANATION APPROACH<br />
One of the most fundamental lessons learned from evaluations of<br />
the New Public Management is to take into account the public<br />
sector’s specific conditions before transferring concepts from<br />
private sector, as both sectors differ in a couple of basic<br />
dimensions [15]. Although they clearly affect the CIO position in<br />
the public sector, we do not want to elaborate on these basic<br />
characteristics (such as stakeholder structure, orientation to the<br />
common good or administrative culture) but to stress those<br />
principles and conditions, which are directly tied to CIO’s<br />
capacity to act and might explain our findings.<br />
Probably as the most important difference, it starts with the<br />
position in organisation hierarchy. Whereas in private sector the<br />
CIO is member of the executive board or at least closely tied to it,<br />
there is no comparable body in state governments. Unlike the<br />
municipal level, where a central management body can be<br />
identified (albeit with significant differences to private sector), a<br />
state government’s cabinet combines the state ministers who lead<br />
their respective departments independently and under their own<br />
responsibility (departmental principle). It falls to the ministers, to<br />
decide whether, where and how tasks are to be administrated.<br />
For the CIO’s capacity to act consensus must exist on his crossdepartmental<br />
responsibilities, and his respective remit clearly<br />
defined, in particular if establishing the CIO function is<br />
accompanied by the delegation of hitherto decentralised functions.<br />
Some states and countries describe responsibilities, authority and<br />
the allocation of dedicated resources by specific legislation.<br />
Each type of CIO in public sector can be seen as an expression of<br />
certain political conditions, thus as the result of intense<br />
negotiations. Consensus is yet needed on where to establish the<br />
prominent position, a question that might easily become subject of<br />
envy, taking into account the idealistic understanding of<br />
technology as a metaphor for progress and innovation. And<br />
ministries are likely to seek being recognized as progressive and<br />
innovative. Willingness on to abandon and cede once owned<br />
responsibilities by delegating functions, capabilities or staff can be<br />
seen as huge challenge. Thus, public sector CIO is also always a<br />
moderator between the respective departments (and their IT<br />
managers) likewise towards politics.<br />
Considering constantly changing political power structures, hence<br />
changing policies and priorities, the need for consensus is a steady<br />
companion. For instance strategic and organisation wide planning,<br />
which is without doubt one of the CIO’s key field of activity, is<br />
subject to particular challenges specific to the public sector [3].<br />
But what if consensus is reached neither on where to establish a<br />
CIO function nor on its responsibilities or authority? A weak, thus<br />
rather decorative CIO is likely to be the result. If departments<br />
insist on keeping staff, capabilities or activities, if comprehensive<br />
planning is not wanted, the CIO’s room for manoeuvre will dry<br />
out. In case of Decorative CIOs a gap between the glorious title<br />
and the actual rather slight capacity to act is self-evident.<br />
But why do they introduce CIO-positions anyhow? From the<br />
perspective of sociological new institutionalism [17] [16] they do<br />
precisely because there is a need for decoration, in terms of a
substantial demand for highlighting ICT as metaphor for<br />
effectiveness, efficiency and performance, or just to be state-ofthe-art.<br />
Stakeholders demand public sector to be efficient, with<br />
sophisticated e-government as a catchy expression. Introducing a<br />
CIO appears to be a plausible response, even more if other states<br />
do. Even in case of insufficient political will, reluctance to agree<br />
on to delegate responsibilities and resources or political costs,<br />
estimated as too high, the subject of e-government appears well<br />
addressed when a CIO position is established.<br />
New institutionalism emphasises the role of legitimacy in order to<br />
ensure support and secure the organisation’s survival. By<br />
establishing a CIO position, as a significant institutional rule, that<br />
organisations incorporate, illegitimacy can be avoided. John W.<br />
Meyer and Brian Rowan describe a gap between the formal<br />
structure and actual work as decoupling, as a mean of dealing with<br />
conflicts. "Decoupling enables organizations to maintain<br />
standardized, legitimating, formal structures while their activities<br />
vary in response to practical considerations." [17] The type of<br />
Decorative CIO may be interpreted as a response to the<br />
simultaneousness of environmental demands and differing<br />
understandings of rational organizations but also to political costs<br />
that do not match the actual priority.<br />
6. FUTURE PROSPECTS<br />
This paper’s aim was to assess and describe the CIO position in<br />
German state governments and to point out the potential impact<br />
on e-government. Being still ongoing work, the paper sets a<br />
starting point to unfold a rich field of future research work. One<br />
subject of further research is to assess the actual impact,<br />
regardless of available resources or position in hierarchy, as<br />
personal attributes may outweigh shortcomings, such as the lack<br />
of a dedicated administrative body. Describing requirements for a<br />
full-spectrum CIO position [1] is stressing especially leadership<br />
competencies, networking abilities as well as being an innovator.<br />
Another desideratum of research is the assumption that<br />
establishing a merely Decorative CIO refers to differing<br />
estimations of a CIO’s impact on organizational goals and<br />
performance. Moreover the assumed link between the statewide<br />
policy of the Chief Information Officer and the determining basic<br />
priorities of the ministry he is assigned to is posing another<br />
interesting research question, in order to assess the impact of a<br />
CIO in the public sector.<br />
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(CIO): assessing its impact, Government Information<br />
Quartely, 17:1, 7-12, 2000.<br />
[15] Reichard, C.: Zur Naivität aktueller Konzepttransfers im<br />
deutschen Public Management, in: Edeling, T., Jann, W. and<br />
Wagner, D. (eds.): Öffentliches und privates Management.<br />
Fundamentally Alike in All Unimportant Respects?, Leske +<br />
Budrich, Opladen, 53–70, 1998.<br />
[16] DiMaggio, P.J. and Powell, W.W.: The iron Cage Revisited.<br />
Institutional Isomorphism and Collective Rationality in<br />
Organizational Field, in: Powell, W.W. and DiMaggio, P.J.,<br />
(eds.): The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis,<br />
University of Chicago Press, Chicago, London, 1991.<br />
[17] Meyer, J.W. and Rowan, B.: Instituationalized<br />
Organizations: Formal Structure as Myth and Ceremony. In:<br />
American Journal for Sociology 83, 1977.<br />
[18] Killian, W. and Wind, M.: Verwaltung und Vernetzung.<br />
Technische Integration bei organisatorischer Vielfalt am<br />
Beispiel von Agrar- und Umweltverwaltungen, Opladen,<br />
Leske + Budrich, 1997.<br />
[19] Pollitt, C.: Technological Change: A Central yet Neglected<br />
Feature of Public Administration. The NISPAcee Journal of<br />
Public Administration and Policy, III (2), 31-53, 2010
Session 12<br />
Implementation & Impact
Design and Implementation of a Public School<br />
Government-to-Employee System<br />
Carl Strang a<br />
a Capital Region BOCES<br />
900 Watervliet Shaker Road<br />
Albany, NY 12205<br />
+1 518 862 5300<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
In this paper, we describe NERIC Connect, a Government-to-<br />
Employee (G2E) system for public schools, which is a work in<br />
progress. NERIC Connect provides teachers and administrators<br />
with timely, contextually meaningful information and automated<br />
alerts, which can be used to catch students before they fall through<br />
institutional cracks. The system addresses the missed benefit<br />
resulting from islands of data contained in disparate, independent<br />
computer systems. Relying on any single view of the data is not<br />
sufficient for effective data-driven decision making. NERIC<br />
Connect provides a unified view that results in school district<br />
employees having actionable information that can be used to<br />
improve instruction.<br />
Categories and Subject Descriptors<br />
J.1 [Administrative Data Processing]: Administrative Data<br />
Processing – Government, Education; K.6.1 [Management of<br />
Computing and Information Systems]: Project and People<br />
Management – Strategic Information Systems Planning<br />
General Terms<br />
Management, Measurement, Performance, Human Factors<br />
Keywords<br />
E-government, Education, Government-to-Employee, Data-<br />
Driven Decision Making, Portal<br />
1. INTRODUCTION<br />
If children are our future, then ensuring that they receive a proper<br />
education is of critical concern to everyone. In the United States,<br />
the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) [1] attempts to do<br />
just that by making states and local school districts accountable<br />
for student outcomes via standardized assessments that are aligned<br />
with state and federal academic standards. Under NCLB, teachers<br />
are encouraged to provide instruction to ensure that each student<br />
meets or exceeds the assessed standards, and administrators are<br />
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for<br />
personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are<br />
not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies<br />
bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for<br />
components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored.<br />
Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to<br />
post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission<br />
and/or a fee.<br />
ICEGOV '12, October 22 - 25 2012, Albany, NY, United States, NY, USA<br />
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1200-4/12/10…$15.00.<br />
{carl.strang, ira.goldstein}@neric.org<br />
350<br />
Ira Goldstein ab<br />
b University at Albany: SUNY<br />
1400 Washington Avenue<br />
Albany, NY 12222<br />
+1 518 442 4687<br />
provided with data to monitor student progress and to make datadriven<br />
decisions. This paper addresses one approach to the open<br />
question of how best to provide teachers and administrators with<br />
meaningful access to disparate student data in order to make<br />
informed data-driven instructional decisions.<br />
Relying solely upon standardized assessments is not sufficient for<br />
effective data-driven decision making. In addition to standardized<br />
assessment results, various types of data, such as attendance, final<br />
examination results, and data acquired on intake can collectively<br />
form a comprehensive view that may be used to help improve<br />
education. The data can be used for curricula implementation,<br />
development of differentiated instruction, encouraging selfdirected<br />
learning, and professional development. Using<br />
educational theory as our lens, we find that teachers and<br />
administrators should base their decisions on the evidence<br />
provided by multiple data sources [2, 3]. For example, while<br />
standardized assessments can be used to inform a teacher about a<br />
given student’s level of mastery of a topic, this information needs<br />
to be put into context based upon the student’s attendance and<br />
performance in other classes, as well as the performance of other<br />
students working on the same topic [4]. Even though schools<br />
collect a large amount of data [5], simply collecting data is not<br />
enough to lead to instructional improvement or to effectively<br />
monitor key indicators of student success. Schools need systems<br />
that present data to teachers and administrators in the context of<br />
actionable information, but often do not have the means to<br />
implement complex data mining tools.<br />
According to Ackoff [6], data can be considered collections of<br />
raw facts or symbols. Information is data that has been processed<br />
to help answer “who,” “what,” “when,” and “where” questions.<br />
Knowledge is a collection of information that can answer “how”<br />
questions. Wisdom requires judgment and enables looking at what<br />
could be. Ideally, a G2E system should help teachers and<br />
administrators move from collecting data to acquiring wisdom.<br />
The New York State Education Department (NYSED) may not<br />
mandate any particular management software for functions such<br />
as payroll, accounting, or student information. It is the<br />
responsibility of each local school district to select the individual<br />
systems that best meet their needs. In the absence of mandated<br />
systems, islands of information often form within a given school<br />
district. It is not unusual to find that student information is stored<br />
redundantly in a school district’s student information, library,<br />
transportation, cafeteria management, and special education<br />
systems. Compounding the problem, neighboring school districts<br />
often adopt disparate systems, impeding the sharing of<br />
information and region wide data analysis.
NYSED is responsible for collecting, processing, and reporting<br />
the data needed to meet state and federal accountability<br />
requirements. As a result of NCLB, NYSED has mandated the<br />
electronic transmission of data for accountability reporting<br />
through a statewide network of reporting centers. This collection<br />
of data provides, in part, an opportunity for the standardization of<br />
data for purposes other than accountability reporting.<br />
The New York State Legislature created Boards of Cooperative<br />
Educational Services (BOCES), consortia referred to as<br />
intermediate service units, “for the purpose of carrying out a<br />
program of shared educational services” [7] to school districts<br />
within the state. School districts within New York State are able<br />
to acquire services from BOCES that a given district may be not<br />
be able to afford on their own. As of 2012, there were 37 BOCES<br />
that provided shared services to 688 school districts [8]. While a<br />
BOCES can offer services, it may not mandate adoption by the<br />
school districts in their catchment area.<br />
The BOCES’ have established 13 Regional Information Centers<br />
(RICs) to provide computing and networking services. One of<br />
these is the Northeastern Regional Information Center (NERIC),<br />
which has provided a variety of computer services to school<br />
districts for over 40 years. These services include payroll,<br />
accounting, student information, school lunch, and special<br />
education systems. NERIC serves 136 school districts and 7<br />
BOCES in a 17 county area in the northeastern corner of New<br />
York. This service area is home to districts located both in the<br />
northern part of the Appalachians and most of New York’s<br />
Adirondack State Park, two of the least populated areas of the<br />
state, as well as in small cities such as Schenectady and Albany.<br />
We describe one approach to address the missed benefits caused<br />
by of islands of data contained in disparate, independent computer<br />
systems. We begin with the premise that relying on any single<br />
view of the data is not sufficient for effective data-driven decision<br />
making. We create an extensible Operational Data Store (ODS)<br />
which draws the disparate data together. We provide a user<br />
friendly data dashboard that contextualizes the data and creates<br />
actionable information.<br />
2. GOVERNMENT TO EMPLOYEE<br />
SYSTEMS<br />
There are four main areas of e-government, government-tocustomer<br />
(G2C), government-to-business (G2B), government-togovernment<br />
(G2G), and government-to-employee (G2E) [9]. The<br />
objective of G2E is to improve internal efficiencies and<br />
effectiveness needed by government employees. Typical G2E<br />
services include payroll, benefits, travel, and training [9, 10].<br />
G2E systems should act as a foundation for the user experience,<br />
offer flexibility to users while adhering to governance tenets,<br />
include person-centric (e.g., social networking) components, and<br />
be based on an architecture which allows for a rapid response to<br />
changes in demand [11]. Given that the desired data is often<br />
stored in many different locations, a robust G2E system must have<br />
the ability to "mash-up" data from various sources [12]. Mash-ups<br />
take data from multiple sources and create a new service with a<br />
new purpose [13]. To assist in their adoption, G2E systems should<br />
meet the specific needs of employees [14].<br />
351<br />
3. NERIC CONNECT<br />
Relying exclusively on the results from standardized assessments<br />
is not sufficient for effective data-driven decision making. NERIC<br />
determined that teachers and administrators needed a way to bring<br />
together their disparate data in order to process, analyze and apply<br />
the data to the mission of educating students. Since 2006 NERIC<br />
has been working with the emerging technologies of data mining<br />
in order to develop a means for teachers and administrators to<br />
actively investigate the relationship between various data<br />
elements and student achievement scores on state exams. The first<br />
set of technologies NERIC published, referred to as NERIC IQ,<br />
provided an interactive interface that allowed the teachers and<br />
administrators to pivot on a variety of data elements as they<br />
related to one another. While a handful of districts adopted this<br />
system, the technologies never reached the hoped for level of<br />
utilization.<br />
Current research indicates that schools are challenged with finding<br />
the resources required to provide data analysts and data coaches<br />
who can help teachers learn to use the tools to mine data and to<br />
analyze the data once it has been mined [15, 16]. Specific<br />
recommendations include the development of user friendly data<br />
dashboards to help teachers contextualize data. In addition, it was<br />
recommended that this data be refreshed in a manner to provide<br />
timely and meaningful access [15].<br />
Districts do not make use of all their collected data [16]. Merely<br />
collecting the data necessary to create actionable information is<br />
insufficient. However, most school districts have no systems in<br />
place that present data in the context of actionable information.<br />
Furthermore, the development of systems that present actionable<br />
information takes time, money, and knowledge.<br />
Due to its role as a provider of integrated information technology<br />
related services to school districts, and having custody of the<br />
districts’ authoritative data, NERIC is uniquely positioned to<br />
address this void. NERIC Connect is envisioned as a G2E system<br />
that meets the goal of providing a single point of access for<br />
actionable information. This actionable information can be used to<br />
monitor student progress, helping to ensure that student<br />
intervention and new curricula better coincide with the needs of<br />
each student. Such a system will not, and can not, replace the<br />
teachers’ and administrators’ relationships with students. The<br />
intent is to help ensure that no student falls between the cracks by<br />
tracking and reporting key indicators of student success.<br />
3.1 Challenges<br />
School districts often implement separate computer systems for<br />
managing different aspects of student information. This results in<br />
information stored independently, and redundantly, in a school<br />
district’s various data systems. In addition, school districts in the<br />
same region often adopt disparate systems. Given a high rate of<br />
student transiency, the use of these disparate systems makes it<br />
difficult to transfer information when students move from district<br />
to district. Even when two districts adopt the same software,<br />
creative usage of the system can impede the sharing of<br />
information. For example, the authors are aware of one district<br />
that uses an asterisk in the “Tuition” field in order to indicate that<br />
the student completed their foreign language requirement.<br />
Teachers and administrators need to make informed, data-driven,<br />
instructional decision. Storing data in disparate systems can be<br />
considered the primary inhibitor to providing such access.
The United States Department of Education [17] found that only<br />
25% of all teachers reported having access to the prior year’s<br />
assessments for their current students and fewer than 11%<br />
reported having access to multiyear assessments. Teachers are<br />
increasingly using computer systems to input attendance, course<br />
scores, and interim assessment information. However, it may well<br />
be that teachers are accessing the system only for reporting<br />
purposes [15] and not for actionable information. This is not to<br />
say that the individual existing systems cannot produce reports.<br />
The mature and well-understood reports available from existing<br />
systems were developed for purposes other than programmatic<br />
and instructional interventions, and only include data from their<br />
one source. While these systems may excel at managing the data<br />
for a given function, they were not developed for the purpose of<br />
providing actionable information to teachers and administrators.<br />
At issue is the need to provide contextually meaningful reports<br />
which can be used to improve instruction. If existing systems<br />
cannot combine data from multiple systems, then alternatives<br />
must be considered. However, individual schools often do not<br />
have the development resources needed to implement solutions,<br />
even when the tools are available.<br />
The frequency with which data are refreshed is important in any<br />
decision making environment. The data refresh rate needs to<br />
reflect the speed or frequency of change. Data that are refreshed<br />
on a timely basis, and include school process related information,<br />
are exceptionally helpful. The process of refreshing data presented<br />
to teachers and administrators cannot be delayed in order to<br />
accommodate existing information processing cycles. Some data<br />
types, such as period-by-period student attendance, may need to<br />
be updated several times a day. It has been shown that refreshing<br />
data on a cycle greater than two weeks may be too long a period<br />
to effect meaningful interventions [18].<br />
3.2 Design<br />
NERIC Connect is built on Microsoft’s SharePoint environment.<br />
The SharePoint platform provides a secure environment to<br />
leverage Microsoft’s SQL (MSSQL) server technologies. MSSQL<br />
technologies are used extensively to provide role based, user<br />
specific contextualized and interactive data displays. SharePoint<br />
provides a simple, uncluttered, consistent user experience. NERIC<br />
Connect can run on any Web-enabled computer, offers automated<br />
workflow processes, integrates Microsoft Office products, and<br />
provides a centralized location for documents and collaboration.<br />
Built-in functionality allows for easy access to surveys, document<br />
management, and virtual meeting workspaces. NERIC Connect<br />
enables teachers and administrators to make better informed<br />
decisions by securely presenting critical information about their<br />
students from one central location, at anytime, from anywhere.<br />
NERIC Connect creates a mash-up of the data from multiple<br />
sources. It presents a customized user friendly data dashboard to<br />
help teachers and administrators contextualize their data. Each<br />
dashboard is generated in real-time, is specific to the user, and<br />
limits the data presented based on their role and responsibility. In<br />
other words, each user views their own customized dashboard that<br />
contains up to date information, that is specific to their needs, and<br />
that merges redundant data into a consistent presentation. The<br />
dashboard takes disparate data and provides actionable<br />
information that can be used to alert teachers to situations that<br />
may need their attention. For example, if a student skips their<br />
352<br />
math class, all of their teachers, not just the math teacher, become<br />
immediately aware of this change in behavior.<br />
In order to aid adoption, NERIC Connect offers several features<br />
which meet the needs of teachers and administrators. In addition<br />
to a contextually relevant dashboard, the system provides a<br />
dynamic collection of frequently used tools and documents. It also<br />
will provide a virtual classroom for safe, controlled collaboration<br />
between and among teachers and students.<br />
An extensive and extensible ODS (see Figure 1) was developed to<br />
provide a canonical model for data elements required for<br />
reporting. NYSED maintains a data warehouse, which is driven<br />
by NCLB and is primarily used for storing data for enrollment and<br />
assessment reporting purposes. However, the underlying data<br />
model is insufficient to provide the data required for producing<br />
actionable information to assist teachers and administrators in<br />
improving student performance. The ODS draws not only from<br />
the NYSED data warehouse; it also draws from student<br />
information, employee payroll, special education systems, as well<br />
as any district based data that contain key indicators of when a<br />
student may need intervention.<br />
Operational<br />
Data Store<br />
Employee<br />
Data<br />
Enrollment &<br />
Assessment<br />
Query<br />
Reply<br />
Application<br />
Server<br />
Extract<br />
Transformatio<br />
n Load<br />
Student<br />
Information<br />
Systems<br />
Figure 1- Logical Data Flow<br />
Web Front<br />
End<br />
District<br />
District<br />
Based<br />
Based Data<br />
Data<br />
Special<br />
Education<br />
The NERIC Connect system has a governance group and a<br />
development advisory committee comprised of chief school<br />
officers and other district administrators, as well as NERIC<br />
administrators and staff. Their purpose is to identify desired<br />
modification to the existing system and to plan for major updates<br />
and rewrites of the system that can lead to improving student<br />
achievement. These groups have already focused on the<br />
development of key indicators of student success.<br />
While performing data analysis of standardized assessments can<br />
reveal specific instructional gaps and provide accountability<br />
information, such analysis takes time to produce. In order to<br />
empower teachers so that they can provide timely interventions,<br />
school districts need to rely on more than just assessments. The<br />
governance group helps to develop, and to fine tune, the key<br />
indicators of student success, such as attendance information or<br />
even if the student has overdue library books. Key indicators do<br />
not need to imply causation; it is up to teachers and administrators<br />
to look at root causes. Key indicators of student success can be
considered markers that are able to draw attention to a potential<br />
problem and provide actionable information. Once the key<br />
indicators of success have been agreed to, “at risk” algorithms can<br />
be developed. If a student exceeds a predetermined threshold, then<br />
automated alerts are initiated. Multiple thresholds, or pools of<br />
thresholds, can be developed so that combinations of key<br />
indicators can be used to ensure that no student falls through the<br />
cracks. Specific “at risk” algorithms can be localized for a given<br />
district. One of the open tasks in this in-progress work is to<br />
determine if there are any best practices that can be used as the<br />
initial threshold(s).<br />
Unique to the BOCES/RIC model is the capability to provide<br />
application developers who work under the supervision of<br />
education administrators to evolve applications of information<br />
technology that meet more than just the needs of public education.<br />
They can evolve them to assist teachers and administrators in<br />
doing the work they are inspired to do.<br />
Representatives from the subscribing school districts and NERIC<br />
leadership and developers meet monthly to identify enhancements<br />
and modifications that integrate NERIC Connect technologies into<br />
the daily process of progress review and planning. These<br />
enhancements will help teachers make the best use of their time<br />
by providing a digital snapshot of student progress in their class,<br />
as well as throughout the school.<br />
4. CONCLUSIONS AND NEXT STEPS<br />
School districts maintain independent systems that accumulate<br />
data for a specific function (e.g., bus routing or grade reporting).<br />
Each of these systems provides only a partial view of the available<br />
data, and does not enable data-driven decision making. Driven by<br />
the educational theory that instructional decisions should be based<br />
on the evidence provided by multiple data sources, NERIC<br />
Connect addresses the open question of how best to provide<br />
meaningful access to disparate student data in order to make<br />
informed data-driven instructional decisions. NERIC Connect is a<br />
G2E system that mashes-up data from multiple sources and<br />
creates a new service with a new purpose. It helps teachers and<br />
administrators move from merely collecting data to having access<br />
to actionable information.<br />
NERIC Connect use is growing and evolving, and will be rolled<br />
out to additional school districts. Once these additional school<br />
districts are on board, the system will then begin to provide crossdistrict<br />
and region wide access to the data. Other plans include<br />
providing virtual classrooms to offer state of the art technologies<br />
to support constructivist learning pedagogy and collaboration<br />
capabilities from a myriad of internet enabled devices.<br />
5. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS<br />
The authors wish to thank the NERIC Regional Advisory<br />
Committee for their support of NERIC Connect.<br />
6. REFERENCES<br />
[1] An act to close the achievement gap with accountability,<br />
flexibility, and choice, so that no child is left behind. Pub L<br />
107-110, 115 Stat 1425. United States 2001.<br />
[2] Bernhardt V. L. Data tools for school improvement.<br />
Educational Leadership. 62,5 (2005), 66-9.<br />
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[3] Schildkamp K. and Kuiper, W. Data-informed curriculum<br />
reform: Which data, what purposes, and promoting and<br />
hindering factors. Teaching & Teacher Education. 26,3<br />
(2010), 482-96.<br />
[4] Black P. and Wiliam, D. Assessment and classroom learning.<br />
Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice. 5,1<br />
(1998), 7.<br />
[5] Stecker P. M., Fuchs, L. S., Fuchs, D. Using curriculumbased<br />
measurement to improve student achievement.<br />
Psychology in the Schools. 42,8 (2005), 795-819.<br />
[6] Ackoff R. L. From data to wisdom. Journal of Applied<br />
Systems Analysis. 16, (1989), 3-9.<br />
[7] Establishment of boards of cooperative educational services.<br />
NYS Ed Law §1950 1948.<br />
[8] New York State Education Department. Boards of<br />
Cooperative Educational Services (BOCES). 2011 [cited 9<br />
March 2012]; Available from:<br />
http://www.p12/nysed.gov/mgtserv/boces/<br />
[9] Siau K. and Long, Y. Synthesizing e-government stage<br />
models - a meta-synthesis based on meta-ethnography<br />
approach. Industrial Management & Data Systems. 105,4<br />
(2005), 443-58.<br />
[10] Evans D. and Yen, D. C. E-government: Evolving<br />
relationship of citizens and government, domestic, and<br />
international development. Government Information<br />
Quarterly. 23,2 (2006), 207-35.<br />
[11] Murphy J. Build an enduring portal strategy for a wave of<br />
change on the web.: Gartner; 2011. No.: G00213225.<br />
[12] Meng J. and Chen, J. A mashup model for distributed data<br />
integration. In Proceedings of International Conference on<br />
Management of e-Commerce and e-Government (ICMECG),<br />
Nanchang, China, 2009.<br />
[13] Di Lorenzo G., Hacid, H., Paik, H.-Y., Benatallah, B. Data<br />
integration in mashups. SIGMOD. 38,1 (2009), 59-66.<br />
[14] Ebrahim Z. and Irani, Z. E-government adoption:<br />
Architecture and barriers. Business Process Management<br />
Journal. 11,5 (2005), 589-611.<br />
[15] Means B., Padilla, C., DeBarger, A., Bakia, M., Department<br />
of Education Office of Planning Evaluation & Policy<br />
Development. Implementing data-informed decision making<br />
in schools: Teacher access, supports and use: US Department<br />
of Education; 2009.<br />
[16] Strang C. F. The systemic use of data to inform improvement<br />
in student achievement: A qualitative study of six school<br />
districts [Doctoral dissertation]. Albany, NY: The Sage<br />
Colleges; 2011.<br />
[17] Bakia M., Yang, E., Mitchell, K., Office of Planning<br />
Evaluation and Policy Development Policy and Program<br />
Studies Service. National educational technology trends<br />
study: Local-level data summary: US Department of<br />
Education; 2008.<br />
[18] Deno S. L., Reschly, A. L., Lembke, E. S., Magnusson, D.,<br />
Callender, S. A., Windram, H., et al. Developing a schoolwide<br />
progress-monitoring system. Psychology in the<br />
Schools. 46,1 (2009), 44-55.
E-Governance and Millennium Development Goals:<br />
Sustainable Development Perspective in Rural India<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
The year 2015 is fast approaching for the countries and the United<br />
Nations pursuing Millennium Development Goals (MDG). In the<br />
United Nation (UN) Millennium Summit 2000, 191 countries<br />
adopted the Millennium declaration. Information and<br />
Communication Technology (ICT) supported E-Governance is a<br />
critical element in achieving MDGs. National E-Governance<br />
strategies have hastened ICT interventions. Recent global<br />
assessments on MDGs suggest that though many countries have<br />
shown noticeable results in meeting MDGs with scope for<br />
supporting sustainable development strategies. In this paper, it is<br />
posited that efforts to meet MDGs in India need to have<br />
converged efforts at the village levels. This is desired because<br />
local development processes are likely to influence the national<br />
agenda. Village households being units of development processes<br />
need to understand the contours of MDGs and its effects in lives<br />
of the household. Use of E-governance supported services by<br />
these units for meeting MDGs has influences to meet sustainable<br />
development of the households. This paper includes studies in<br />
some sample villages in the state of Gujarat to examine the effects<br />
of E-Governance in meeting MDGs and sustainable development.<br />
It discusses the process of convergence and contributions of E-<br />
Governance services to meet MDG agenda and overall sustainable<br />
development.<br />
Categories and Subject Descriptors<br />
H5.2. [Information Systems]: Information Interfaces and<br />
Presentation- User Interfaces Evaluation/Methodology, Theory<br />
and Methods.D4.8. [Software Engineering Performance]:<br />
Measurement, Modeling and Prediction.<br />
General Terms<br />
Management, Measurement, Documentation, Performance,<br />
Design, Experimentation, Human Factors, Theory, Verification.<br />
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for<br />
personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are<br />
not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies<br />
bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for<br />
components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored.<br />
Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to<br />
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ICEGOV '12, October 22 - 25 2012, Albany, NY, USA<br />
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1200-4/12/10...$15.00<br />
Harekrishna Misra<br />
Institute of Rural Management Anand<br />
Anand, Gujarat, India<br />
91-2692-221612<br />
hkmishra@irma.ac.in<br />
354<br />
Keywords<br />
ICT for Development, E-Governance, Millennium Development<br />
Goals, Modeling Convergence, Sustainable Development, Citizen<br />
Centered Services<br />
1. INTRODUCTION<br />
MDG is considered as an important agenda for the United Nations<br />
(UN) with the aim to address poverty reduction globally. UN, in<br />
its Millennium Summit in the year 2000, resolved to acknowledge<br />
poverty as a global phenomenon. MDG having a set of eight goals<br />
aims to achieve targeted objectives by the year 2015 and<br />
recognizes inter-twined relationships among all these goals in<br />
order to foster sustainable development. UN, in its declaration,<br />
aims to address two major dimensions. One of the dimensions is<br />
to have commitment of developed nations to extend increased<br />
Official Development Assistance (ODA) with better export<br />
market for developing nations. The second dimension is to ensure<br />
that each developing nation has its own national policy with the<br />
objective to reduce the gap between goals and achievements<br />
[41],[42],[43],[33]. While the deadline for achieving MDG is fast<br />
approaching, the results of the planned activities under UN’s<br />
mandate are found to be discouraging and all the member<br />
countries are showing mixed results across all the eight goals.<br />
ODA has reduced over the years and the assistance has so far been<br />
0.31 percent of the Gross National Income against the UN’s target<br />
of 0.7 percent [44],[40],[39]. As regards role of E-Governance for<br />
development with specific reference to MDG, goal 8F suggests<br />
effective inclusion of ICT as component for the development<br />
process. While recognizing the progress in embracing E-<br />
Governance among all participating nations, UN acknowledges<br />
the persistence of digital divides in the form of affordability,<br />
access to technology, usage and usability of the services rendered.<br />
However, most of the countries have shown considerable progress<br />
in establishing ICT infrastructure and services to implement E-<br />
Governance strategies. World Summit on the Information Society<br />
(WSIS) have acknowledged the impact of E-Governance on the<br />
development and suggested a ten-point agenda for ICT related<br />
interventions for supporting sustainable development and achieve<br />
committed targets by the year 2015 [14],[15],[37],[38],[36]. In<br />
real terms MDG has not been able to focus on the role of ICT to<br />
ensure that all the goals are inter-twined for a converged effect on<br />
sustainable development.<br />
ICT for development globally has shown mixed results despite<br />
wider deployment and acceptance of E-Governance services[4].<br />
The core area of successful ICT enabled development processes<br />
has been limited to E-Governance efforts with direct support to
many of the MDGs. The direct impact has been in the form of<br />
establishing ICT infrastructure, networks among governments and<br />
access to telephony, television and other modes of<br />
communication. Despite mixed results, most of the countries have<br />
incubated E-Governance projects with the active participation of<br />
entrepreneurs from public, private and civil society organizations<br />
[3],[28],[14]. E-Governance projects are quite complex in nature<br />
due to the inherent characteristics of the development process<br />
involving government, society, citizen, market and business<br />
issues. Thus there is a need for understanding this complex<br />
phenomenon of convergence among various stakeholders<br />
involved in the development process so that citizens accept this<br />
new environment for fostering the development of their own life<br />
and the society as envisaged in MDGs and meeting sustainable<br />
development challenges.<br />
The paper is organized with the objectives of understanding the<br />
reasons for having mixed results despite clearly defined MDGs,<br />
and growth in E-Governance services. It also explores the effects<br />
of e-readiness for each of the MDGs based on primary surveys,<br />
their influences on overall sustainable development indicators.<br />
Organization of the paper is as follows. In section two, MDGs and<br />
E-Governance are discussed in order to establish proposed<br />
causality in achieving MDGs with support of E-Governance. In<br />
this section global perspectives are presented with specific<br />
references to Indian scenarios. This section includes discussions<br />
on sustainable development and possible roles of E-Governance<br />
and MDGs. In section three, research motivations are discussed to<br />
present the contributions of E-Governance services to achieve<br />
MDGs and overall sustainable development in local context. In<br />
section four, research methods are discussed to establish the<br />
proposed causality among various contributors to the overall<br />
success of MDGs. A research model is also developed to assess<br />
the contributing factors of E-Governance to achieve MDGs and<br />
overall sustainable development. Hypotheses are developed in this<br />
section to present various dimensions of the causality including<br />
the approach for their validations. In section five, data collection<br />
processes are discussed and analyses are presented. In section six,<br />
conclusions are discussed. In section seven limitations of the work<br />
and scope for further studies in this area are discussed.<br />
2. RESEARCH MOTIVATION<br />
As discussed in the introduction section, MDGs are now<br />
embedded in the policies of the member countries. Goal 8F of<br />
MDG recognizes the importance of E-Governance in meeting<br />
various objectives set in the MDG. In order to bring in more<br />
clarity in adopting E-Governance strategies for development<br />
WSIS has provided ten goals for the member countries<br />
[33],[10],[15]. In this section a link between MDG and E-<br />
Governance with WSIS agenda in the backdrop is discussed. In<br />
table 1 below agenda of WSIS and MDG goals with E-<br />
Governance focus are presented.<br />
Table 1. MDG and E-Governance Deliveries [15],[19],[26]<br />
MDG Goals Expected E-Governance Interventions<br />
1.Eradicate<br />
extreme<br />
poverty and<br />
hunger<br />
2.Achieve<br />
universal<br />
WSIS MDGs<br />
Connect Villages with<br />
e-services and establish<br />
access points<br />
Connect Universities,<br />
Colleges, Secondary<br />
Rise in individual<br />
income with eservices<br />
Increase supply of<br />
e-services of<br />
355<br />
MDG Goals Expected E-Governance Interventions<br />
primary<br />
education<br />
3.Promote<br />
gender<br />
equality and<br />
empower<br />
women<br />
4.Reduce<br />
child<br />
mortality<br />
5.Improve<br />
maternal<br />
health<br />
6.Combat<br />
HIV/AIDS,<br />
malaria, and<br />
other diseases<br />
7.Ensure<br />
environmental<br />
sustainability<br />
8.Develop a<br />
global<br />
partnership<br />
for<br />
development<br />
WSIS MDGs<br />
and Primary Schools,<br />
Public Libraries,<br />
Scientific and Research<br />
Centres<br />
World’s population<br />
should have access to<br />
Television and Radio,<br />
facilitate use of eservices<br />
to have<br />
information on internet<br />
in local languages<br />
trained teachers,<br />
establish networks<br />
among teachers,<br />
internet<br />
connectivity in<br />
schools, improved<br />
student/computer<br />
ratio; distance<br />
learning<br />
Focus on e-literacy<br />
among girls, adopt<br />
e-communication<br />
to encourage<br />
women to<br />
contribute to the<br />
society<br />
Increase in use of e-services by Health<br />
Workers, increase in awareness<br />
Enhance accessibility to specialists by village<br />
health workers through remote access, training<br />
through e-services<br />
Increase in use of e-services by Health<br />
Workers, increase in awareness<br />
Use of GIS and Remote Sensing Technologies<br />
enabled e-services, maintain transparency<br />
Ensure that World’s<br />
population have<br />
access to ICT<br />
Currency in<br />
databases, networks<br />
WSIS though has not been specific in setting the agenda for ICT<br />
interventions for implementing the MDGs (Goals 4,5,6,7), there<br />
are continued efforts in these areas. As per the predictions of<br />
WSIS, ICT interventions would be quite significant in the areas of<br />
mobile communications, basic radio and television services by the<br />
year 2015. Progress in the areas related to e-governments has also<br />
been quite reasonable as per WSIS study. But as per WSIS, the<br />
barriers for larger use ICT would be in the form of availability of<br />
electricity and internet. UN’s MDG report for the year 2010<br />
indicates that due to targeted interventions with sustained effort<br />
through political and administrative (including funding) support,<br />
there are significant progresses in achieving MDGs. However,<br />
many important goals are still unmet for the poor, living in remote<br />
areas, and the progress has been uneven. More importantly the<br />
report recognizes that gender inequality and women<br />
empowerment concerns are not adequately addressed which are<br />
preconditions for overcoming poverty, hunger and disease<br />
[1],[31],[30],[29].<br />
Linking E-Governance services to achieve MDGs is not a new<br />
approach [1],[29],[11]. While addressing the challenges for<br />
linking E-Governance with MDGs, UN has accepted various<br />
dimensions related to measurements including impact, policy<br />
development, resource mobilization, global alliance and initiatives
[43],[44]. E-governance at the national level has now progressed<br />
for supporting MDGs either directly or indirectly. Every nation<br />
now has adequate plans to display its e-readiness and has<br />
strategies to support the MDGs effectively [32]. It is thus<br />
imperative that each MDG needs to be assessed in terms of the<br />
contributions of E-Governance in meeting the agenda across all<br />
the levels of governance with adequate focus at the local level. In<br />
Indian context, this is more relevant as part of the development<br />
process because of the fact that local development has larger<br />
ramifications in meeting the national goals [29].<br />
Sustainable development strategies are constantly focusing on<br />
MDGs [12],[10]. E-Governance strategies are also being termed<br />
as effective contributors to sustainable development.<br />
Measurements of sustainable development and assessment of<br />
critical success factors of MDGs provide common base for<br />
understanding readiness of a nation to address sustainable<br />
development with social, economic and ecological dimensions. In<br />
this paper assessment of causality for achieving successful MDGs<br />
through E-Governance is explored. It considers dimensions<br />
related to sustainable development as important contributors. In<br />
Table 2 below the stated dimensions are related to the E-<br />
Governance readiness indicators with specific relationships with<br />
MDGs[19].<br />
Table 2. MDG and E-Governance Readiness<br />
MDG Goals E-Governance Readiness<br />
Indicators<br />
1.Eradicate<br />
extreme<br />
poverty and<br />
hunger<br />
2.Achieve<br />
universal<br />
primary<br />
education<br />
3.Promote<br />
gender<br />
equality and<br />
empower<br />
women<br />
4.Reduce<br />
child<br />
mortality<br />
5.Improve<br />
maternal<br />
health<br />
6.Combat<br />
HIV/AIDS,<br />
malaria, and<br />
other diseases<br />
7.Ensure<br />
environmental<br />
sustainability<br />
8.Develop a<br />
global<br />
partnership<br />
for<br />
development<br />
Government E-Readiness to<br />
provide support for<br />
economic issues at the local<br />
level. This readiness<br />
indicates citizens’ readiness<br />
to achieve higher income<br />
through better education,<br />
skills, reduction in<br />
information asymmetry,<br />
information on market<br />
Government E-Readiness to<br />
socially network the<br />
community, enhance<br />
awareness among women<br />
with multi-media services<br />
Government E-Readiness to<br />
network the community,<br />
enhance awareness and<br />
provide inputs to the citizens<br />
to use natural resources<br />
effectively with holistic<br />
environmental considerations<br />
Sustainable<br />
Development<br />
Dimensions<br />
Economic<br />
Social<br />
Environmental<br />
356<br />
Global readiness reports on E-Governance have maintained that<br />
national E-Governance efforts are likely to bring in the desired<br />
effects in achieving sustainable development indicators [25],[23].<br />
2.1 Research Model and Hypotheses<br />
Sustainable development is a complex and multifaceted issue that<br />
has been challenging each and every nation [12]. Various attempts<br />
are made to attain this through MDGs and there are various<br />
instruments used to assess the level of attainment of these goals.<br />
National E-Governance readiness for each nation has been a<br />
routine phenomenon that showcases readiness of each nation with<br />
benchmarking to provide insights to the efforts being made for<br />
attaining sustainable development goals though ICT interventions<br />
[14],[15]. These efforts, especially in the context of India, need to<br />
examine the causal relations among E-Governance readiness and<br />
sustainable development.<br />
This research includes assessment of following relationships:<br />
1. Contributions of E-Governance services in the village can be<br />
used for assessment of e-readiness to meet the MDGs.<br />
It is argued that e-readiness (excluding ICT infrastructure<br />
readiness which is a subset of overall e-readiness) is made<br />
available through E-Governance services. Such services need to<br />
be designed with active collaborations of citizens.<br />
2. E-readiness to support MDGs is likely to contribute to the<br />
empowerment of the village households for meeting sustainable<br />
development indicators in the village.<br />
It is argued that MDGs need to direct E-Governance services at all<br />
levels of the nation. This would facilitate creation of success<br />
factors for the E-Governance services provided. In absence of<br />
such directed efforts e-readiness may get limited to establishment<br />
of IT infrastructures.<br />
In order to answer the research questions some research<br />
hypotheses are proposed as discussed below. These hypotheses<br />
are leveled in three tiers.<br />
Tier-I Hypothesis: In Figure 1 the first hypothesis is presented. It<br />
posits that every goal under MDG at the local level is influenced<br />
collectively by the citizens, community groups and government<br />
agencies.<br />
H1<br />
Household<br />
Affinity<br />
Community<br />
Affinity<br />
Government<br />
Support<br />
MDG #<br />
Figure 1. MDG and Stakeholders<br />
Tier-I includes collective contributions from the local level<br />
citizens, community groups to successfully meet the MDGs. It is
strongly believed that local governance has far reaching effects at<br />
the national level in terms of sustainable development [21]. This<br />
is quite significant because of the local self governance in India<br />
has provided the rights to use and develop local resources for<br />
development. Government agencies are responsible to these local<br />
empowered agencies and extend support in terms of awareness,<br />
expertise and finance development interventions. Collective effort<br />
is therefore, essential to attain MDGs. It is because successful<br />
development process needs collective efforts from the planners<br />
and mediating agencies and the citizens [20],[42]. In such<br />
scenarios, the contributions are multilevel oriented and therefore,<br />
predictability of their contributions will be influenced by<br />
collective participation [20],[1].<br />
Hypothesis H1. Citizens, Community Groups, Government<br />
Agencies contribute collectively to the success of MDGs<br />
Tier-II Hypotheses: E-governance readiness is a major contributor<br />
to each and every MDG due to the enormous benefits of ICT<br />
envisaged in the MDG agenda. E-Governance aims to bring<br />
appropriate services closer to the citizens with optimized cost,<br />
time and relevance [1], [19], [3]. Thus it is important to find the<br />
causal effects of E-Governance efforts and their contributions to<br />
the MDGs. In order to measure this effect, it is posited that E-<br />
Governance supported efforts for MDGs are reflected through<br />
display of readiness across all the dimensions of sustainable<br />
development. It is also considered important that group of MDGs<br />
are likely to support a particular dimension of readiness for<br />
sustainable development. There is a continuous process adopted<br />
by World Bank, World Economic Forum through INSEAD and<br />
ITU etc. to look at the progress done in the areas of e-readiness. In<br />
Figure 2 below India’s position on e-readiness (reports of<br />
INSEAD are used here) is presented [2],[35]. This e-readiness<br />
exercise provides comprehensive analyses on various metrics<br />
driven performance assessment (termed as indices) of various<br />
countries participating in the process. Major indices which are<br />
presented in Figure 2 reflect the ICT adoption behaviour in India<br />
vis-à-vis global scenarios [6],[7],[8],[9]. Indices used in this<br />
assessment provide a percentile score. A higher percentile<br />
provides better status for the country. The percentiles are<br />
presented longitudinally by using data of INSEAD since the year<br />
2002. It may be noted that these e-readiness assessment<br />
indicators are useful to evaluate the role of E-Governance in<br />
meeting MDGs.<br />
Figure 2. ICT Indices for India [2]<br />
Eight MDGs envisaged for improving the quality of life of people<br />
in member countries are grouped as presented in Figure 2 and in<br />
the following manner. MDG#1 and MDG#2 are related to ereadiness<br />
for rendering services related information, optimizing<br />
cost and time of availing information on income generation<br />
opportunities, enhancing skills through education, government’s<br />
effort to use ICTs for providing networks among wage earners,<br />
357<br />
schemes for income opportunities and providing transparency in<br />
such processes. In India there are many E-Governance initiates<br />
aimed at all these defined areas of interventions including Unique<br />
Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) [35]. MDGs# 3,4,5,6<br />
relate to social issues which reflect in gender inequity, women<br />
health, HIV etc. In India, this is quite challenging because of<br />
various social, cultural and infrastructural issues [31]. It is noted<br />
that despite improvements in health services including National<br />
Aids Control Programme, National Rural Health Mission, rural<br />
India in particular is not recording encouraging results as per<br />
MDG reports [27],[29]. It is thus posited that social empowerment<br />
can be measured through e-readiness to support MDG#3,4,5,6.<br />
MDG<br />
#8<br />
MDG #7<br />
MDG #6<br />
MDG #5<br />
MDG #4<br />
MDG #3<br />
MDG #2<br />
MDG #1<br />
Figure 3. MDG and E-Readiness<br />
MDGs#7,8 encompass larger issues related to environment. In<br />
India e-readiness to support this cause needs active interfaces with<br />
networks, and awareness among the rural citizens. It is posited<br />
that role of E-Governance in these areas is expected to enhance<br />
the e-readiness in managing environment. In Table 3 various E-<br />
Governance programs are planned to meet the MDG agenda.<br />
Table 3: E-Governance Programmes in India [5],[6],[7]<br />
MMP Level Description of the Service<br />
Central Government Income Tax, Central Excise,<br />
Passports/Visa & Immigration, MCA<br />
21, National ID, Pensions, Banking,<br />
Insurance<br />
State Governments<br />
H23<br />
H22<br />
H21<br />
E-Readiness -<br />
Environment<br />
E-Readiness -<br />
Social<br />
Empowerment<br />
E-Readiness -<br />
Economic<br />
Empowerment<br />
H3<br />
Sustainable<br />
Developmen<br />
t<br />
Agriculture, Land Records, Transport,<br />
Treasuries, Commercial Taxes, Gram<br />
Panchayats, e-Health, Registration,<br />
Police, Employment Exchange, e-<br />
Districts (State can add 5 MMPs as
MMP Level Description of the Service<br />
Integrated<br />
per their choice)<br />
e-Business, Electronic Data<br />
Interchange, India Portal, Electronic<br />
Government Gateway, E-Courts, E-<br />
Office, E Procurement<br />
Hypotheses H2 in Tier-II includes e-readiness assessment of three<br />
dimensions of sustainable development with the considerations<br />
that MDGs need to harness the goals with active support of ICTs<br />
and E-Governance services in order to attain the objectives of<br />
sustainable development [6],[7],[8],[13]. Sustainable development<br />
requires holistic approach and thus there is a need to assess the<br />
strengths of E-Governance in meeting social, economic and<br />
environmental needs [19]. In the process, H2 posits three subhypotheses<br />
as follows:<br />
Hypothesis H21: E-Governance services available for MDG#1<br />
and MDG#2 collectively contribute to E-Readiness for Economic<br />
Empowerment<br />
Hypothesis H22: E-Governance services available for MDG#3,<br />
MDG#4, MDG#5, MDG#6 collectively contribute to E-Readiness<br />
for Social Empowerment<br />
Hypothesis H23: E-Governance services available for MDG#7,<br />
MDG#8 collectively contribute to E-Readiness for Environment<br />
In these hypotheses E-Readiness for Economic Empowerment,<br />
Social Empowerment and Environment are the latent variables<br />
which are measured through the contributions of the ICT enabled<br />
services for MDGs.<br />
Lastly in these Tier II hypotheses, it is posited that MDGs need to<br />
contribute to the overall sustainable goals in India and this is<br />
possible because of the sustainable development at the local levels<br />
[11],[12].<br />
Hypothesis H3: E-Readiness for Economic Empowerment,<br />
Social Empowerment and Environment collectively contribute to<br />
Sustainable Development.<br />
3. EMPIRICAL VALIDATION OF THE<br />
MODELLING<br />
This study involved primary survey among rural citizens, rural<br />
communities and government agencies who are major<br />
stakeholders in supporting MDGs. For the purpose some villages<br />
in the state of Gujarat were considered for pilot studies. The<br />
sample size was 194. This includes 24 government<br />
representatives, 52 village community members and 118 village<br />
citizens in eight sample villages in the district of Panchmahals in<br />
the state of Gujarat. This number was arrived during visits to eight<br />
villages where access could be possible due to the support from<br />
government officials and intervening agencies. In Figure 4<br />
sampling frame is presented.<br />
358<br />
Figure 4. Sampling Frame<br />
3.1 Validation of Tier-I Hypothesis<br />
The sampling indicates that samples are multi leveled and thus<br />
their collective orientation in assessing MDGs would be<br />
beneficial. In reality villagers, village community groups and<br />
government representatives are not same in numbers and their<br />
strength varies in the shape of a pyramid. Due to this structure of<br />
population, stratified layering of the sample respondents and<br />
divergence in their objectives in contributing to MDGs, dummy<br />
coding principle was chosen to validate the collective<br />
contributions [24]. In dummy coding one of the major<br />
considerations is to identify the controlling variable in the<br />
stratified layers. In this case, citizens are considered as the<br />
controlling variables because their contributions are deterministic<br />
for the success of MDGs. Communities and government<br />
representatives are mostly characterized as service provisioning<br />
and supporting agencies for overall progress of the citizens.<br />
Besides, citizen empowerment is quite critical in managing<br />
MDGs. Validations for H1 include dummy coding and ANOVA<br />
to predict the overall contributions through Dunnet values which<br />
is used for dummy coding [18]. For each MDG this validation<br />
procedure is adopted and in Table 4, variables and related<br />
measurement instruments are presented.<br />
Table 4: Variable Descriptions, Measurement Instruments<br />
Goal Variables Measurements<br />
1<br />
N=194<br />
Community<br />
Affinity<br />
E-<br />
Governance<br />
Support<br />
Household<br />
Affinity<br />
Community groups are using ICT to<br />
share information on Income generation<br />
Community groups are using ICT for<br />
networks<br />
Community groups have influence on<br />
Individuals<br />
Government representatives are using<br />
ICT to share information on Income<br />
generation<br />
ICT has enhanced transparency in<br />
getting wages<br />
Internet is available in village<br />
Information is useful<br />
Information is available on Mobile<br />
ICT has enhanced transparency in
Goal Variables Measurements<br />
2<br />
3<br />
Community<br />
Affinity<br />
E-<br />
Governance<br />
Support<br />
Household<br />
Affinity<br />
Community<br />
Affinity<br />
E-<br />
Governance<br />
Support<br />
Household<br />
Affinity<br />
4 Community<br />
Affinity<br />
E-<br />
Governance<br />
Support<br />
Household<br />
Affinity<br />
5 Community<br />
Support<br />
E-<br />
Governance<br />
Support<br />
Household<br />
Affinity<br />
6 Community<br />
Affinity<br />
getting wages<br />
Possibility has increased to enhance<br />
skill through ICT<br />
Parents are sending children to schools<br />
Community groups are using ICT to<br />
share information<br />
Community groups influence child<br />
education<br />
Availability of computers in schools<br />
Availability of internet in schools<br />
Teachers get support from teachers<br />
from other schools through computers<br />
Teachers get support for using library<br />
through internet<br />
Students are using computers<br />
Government representatives are using<br />
ICT to share information<br />
Availability of Teachers in the Schools<br />
Teachers are trained to teach ICT<br />
based courses<br />
Households are interested in ICT based<br />
education<br />
Community groups are using ICT to<br />
share information<br />
Volunteers are using ICT to share<br />
information<br />
Computers have local language<br />
interfaces<br />
Government representatives/volunteers<br />
are using ICT to share information<br />
Girls are using computers<br />
Broadcast media are used for<br />
disseminating information<br />
Community groups are using ICT to<br />
share information<br />
Health workers are using ICT to<br />
network with doctors and other<br />
agencies<br />
Government representatives/volunteers<br />
are using ICT to share information<br />
Information on child care is available<br />
Broadcast media are used for<br />
disseminating information<br />
Community groups are using ICT to<br />
share information<br />
Health workers are using ICT to<br />
network with doctors and other<br />
agencies<br />
Government representatives/volunteers<br />
are using ICT to share information<br />
Information on maternal care is<br />
available<br />
Broadcast media are used for<br />
disseminating information<br />
Community groups are using ICT to<br />
share information<br />
359<br />
Goal Variables Measurements<br />
E-<br />
Governance<br />
Support<br />
Household<br />
Affinity<br />
7 Community<br />
Affinity<br />
E-<br />
Governance<br />
Support<br />
Household<br />
Affinity<br />
8 Community<br />
Affinity<br />
E-<br />
Governance<br />
Support<br />
Household<br />
Affinity<br />
Health workers are using ICT to<br />
network with doctors and other<br />
agencies<br />
Government representatives/volunteers<br />
are using ICT to share information<br />
Information on HIV/AIDS care is<br />
available<br />
Broadcast media are used for<br />
disseminating information<br />
Community groups are using ICT to<br />
share information<br />
Government Representatives/<br />
volunteers are using ICT to share<br />
information<br />
Households are using ICT to remain<br />
aware of environmental issues<br />
Broadcast media are used for<br />
disseminating information<br />
ICT enabled Library and information<br />
services are available in the village<br />
Community groups are using ICT to<br />
share information<br />
Government representatives/volunteers<br />
are using ICT to share information<br />
Village has ICT enabled networks with<br />
other villages<br />
Broadcast media are used for<br />
disseminating information<br />
The measurement instruments are used with the help of Likert<br />
Scales in a five point scale (1- strongly unsatisfactory…., 5strongly<br />
satisfactory) [22]. In Table 5 below, a generic example of<br />
dummy coding structure is presented as applicable to MDG#1.<br />
Explanation of the Table is as follows. It is argued that households<br />
(citizens) control the overall objectives of MDGs. MDG#1 as<br />
explained in Table 5 below is the mean of the responses obtained<br />
from the subjects through Likert scale. This summative nature of<br />
Likert scale is used since all the independent items are proved to<br />
be reliable and are not mostly non-dimensional (Nunnally,1978).<br />
The purpose of dummy coding is to understand whether<br />
collectively respondents across the three layers (strategic, tactical<br />
and operational) do collectively display their holistic<br />
understanding in projecting preparedness as hypothesized as<br />
MDG#1. D1 and D2 are two dummy coded vectors associated<br />
with each group. In this case there are three independent groups<br />
for predicting validations of MDG#1 i.e. MDG#1Community Affinity,<br />
MDG#1Governmnet Support and MDG#1Household Affinity. As per dummy<br />
coding procedures, vectors are to be identified which is n-1 (i.e., if<br />
number of groups are 3, number of vectors would be 2). In this<br />
case number of groups are 3. Out of two vectors one vector in a<br />
group is assigned “1” whereas other vector is assigned “0”. All the<br />
vectors in one group are assigned with “0” which is termed as<br />
control group. For example, MDG#1Household Affinity, (MDG# 1) has<br />
three contributors i.e, Community Affinity (with 2 instruments (j))<br />
and position in the dummy table is 1 (i). Thus MDG#1 is thus<br />
∑MDG1ij /n where n=2 in this case. Likert values will have their<br />
mean which is dependent on number of measurement instruments<br />
used. MDG#1 will have sample response mean.
Stratified<br />
Layers<br />
Community<br />
Affinity<br />
E-Governance<br />
Support<br />
Household<br />
Affinity<br />
(Control)<br />
Table 5: Dummy Table for MDG#1 (sample data)<br />
Sample<br />
Size*<br />
(n)<br />
MDG# 1<br />
Objectives<br />
52 (Mean<br />
3.16, SD<br />
0.81,<br />
Cronbach<br />
Alpha<br />
0.719)<br />
24 (Mean<br />
3.14, SD<br />
0.86,<br />
Cronbach<br />
Alpha<br />
0.716)<br />
118 (Mean<br />
3.11, SD<br />
0.76,<br />
Cronbach<br />
Alpha 0.65)<br />
Dummy<br />
Code<br />
(D1)<br />
Dummy<br />
Code<br />
(D2)<br />
Remarks<br />
1 0 MDG1 =<br />
∑MDG1ij<br />
/n; i=1, j=n<br />
0 1 MDG1 =<br />
∑MDG1ij<br />
/n; i=1, j=n<br />
0 0 MDG1 =<br />
∑MDG1ij/n;<br />
i=1, j=n<br />
*N=194<br />
In Table 6 below the F-Test and other relevant results for MDG#1 are<br />
presented.<br />
Table 6: F-Statistics for MDG#1 through Dummy Coding (ANOVA)<br />
Sum of df Mean Square F- Sig.<br />
Squares<br />
Statistics<br />
a<br />
Regression 1.304 2 .652 3.194 .046<br />
Residual 19.193 191 .204<br />
Total 20.497 193<br />
N=194<br />
The major contributor for this regression is the F-Statistics which is<br />
observed as 3.914 and is above the desired value of 2.3 [18]. Thus the<br />
hypothesis H1 for MDG#1 is validated in favour of collectively predicting<br />
contributions of E-Governance in achieving MDG#1. In Table 7 below<br />
results for all the MDGs are presented.<br />
Table 7: F-Statistics for al MDGS through Dummy Coding<br />
MDG# F-Statistics<br />
(Observed)<br />
F-Statistics<br />
(Expected)<br />
1 3.194 2.3 .046<br />
2 6.574 2.3 .002<br />
3 25.925 2.3 .000<br />
4 8.524 2.3 .000<br />
5 10.694 2.3 .000<br />
6 4.807 2.3 .010<br />
7 18.516 2.3 .000<br />
8 10.053 2.3 .002<br />
N=194<br />
Significance<br />
(P-Value)<br />
360<br />
It may be noted here that results available through F-Statistics for all the<br />
MDGs supported hypothesis H1. Barring MDG#1 and MDG#6 where pvalues<br />
were statistically significant with more than 1 percent, all other<br />
MDGs predicted affirmatively the collective contributions of E-<br />
Governance services. It implies that households, community groups and<br />
government representatives collectively contribute to meet the MDGs with<br />
E-Governance support.<br />
3.2 Validation of Tier-II Hypotheses<br />
Hypotheses defined in Tier II i.e., H2 and H3; deal with latent<br />
variables in order to validate contributions of MDGs for attaining<br />
overall sustainable development. Dealing with latent variables to<br />
predict complex phenomena requires careful theoretical modeling.<br />
Theoretical models and their validations are restricted to depict<br />
behavior of the constructs through approximations. Virtually in all<br />
cases we do not expect to have a completely accurate description<br />
of reality. If the model helps us to understand the relations<br />
between variables matching (fitting) the data, we may judge it (the<br />
model) as validated [16],[17]. It is known that model tries to<br />
approximate the reality. During the validation process it is<br />
essential to understand the relationship among the variables<br />
governing the outcome of the proposed model. Adequacy of a<br />
model is typically determined using conceptual definitions of the<br />
unobserved (endogenous) variables, along with observed variables<br />
(exogenous). Increasingly, model-to-data fit and parameter<br />
estimates form measurement models that utilize structural<br />
equation analysis are being pursued. Model-to-data fit and<br />
parameter estimates are derived from the hypotheses and from<br />
structural models utilizing structural equation analysis. For<br />
theoretical model testing researchers tend to agree that specifying<br />
and testing models using unobserved variables with multiple item<br />
measures of these unobserved variables (endogenous) and survey<br />
data involves: i) defining model constructs, ii) stating<br />
relationships among these constructs, iii) developing appropriate<br />
measures of these constructs, iv) gathering data using these<br />
measures, v) validating these measures, and vi) validating the<br />
model (i.e., testing the stated relationships among the constructs)<br />
[16].<br />
In the case of validating Tier-II hypotheses, Structural Equation<br />
Modelling (SEM) is adopted using LISEL 8.8[17]. In Table 8<br />
constructs are presented with their role on the model proposed in<br />
Figure 3.<br />
Table 8. Variables Used for the Model<br />
Hypothesis Variables<br />
Endogenous Exogenous<br />
H21 MDG#1 E-Readiness -<br />
MDG#2<br />
Economic<br />
Empowerment(ErEco)<br />
H22 MDG#3 E-Readiness - Social<br />
MDG#4<br />
MDG#5<br />
MDG#6<br />
Empowerment(ErSoc)<br />
H23 MDG#7 E-Readiness -<br />
MDG#8<br />
Environment(ErEnv)<br />
H3 E-Readiness - Economic Sustainable<br />
Empowerment (ErEco) Development<br />
E-Readiness - Social<br />
Empowerment(ErSoc)<br />
E-Readiness –<br />
Environment(ErEnv)<br />
(MDG_Ready)
Hypothesis Variables<br />
Endogenous Exogenous<br />
H3 Social Development Sustainable<br />
Economic Development<br />
Environmental<br />
Sustainability<br />
Development<br />
(MDG_Ready)<br />
The model considered H3 as an important contributor to assess<br />
successful E-Governance services adoption for achieving MDGs.<br />
Figure 5. The Observed Model (Path Diagram using LISREL 8.8)<br />
It is posited that sustainable development needs to be pursued<br />
notwithstanding the adoption of MDGs listed in national agenda.<br />
Sustainable development is argued to have three major<br />
dimensions and rural India needs careful interventions to achieve<br />
them. In this research work, hypothesis H3 therefore, considers it<br />
important to include empowerment of citizens through economic,<br />
social and environmental dimensions.<br />
Table 9: Testing of Hypotheses proposed through the Model<br />
Hypothesis Path<br />
Coefficient<br />
T-<br />
Statistics*<br />
Remarks<br />
H21 0.35 16.27 Path coefficient is positive<br />
and t-statistics is<br />
0.35 16.37<br />
significant, Hypothesis<br />
H21 is validated<br />
H22 0.22 9.02 Path coefficient is positive<br />
and t-statistics is<br />
0.24 10.34 significant, Hypothesis<br />
H22 is validated<br />
0.31 11.94<br />
0.25 10.25<br />
H23 0.13 2.62 Path coefficient is positive<br />
and t-statistics is<br />
0.19 2.83 significant, Hypothesis<br />
H23 is validated<br />
H3 0.92 0.38 Path coefficient is positive<br />
-0.25 0.22<br />
except in the case of<br />
Environment where the<br />
0.36 1.61<br />
coefficient is negative and<br />
t-statistics is significant,<br />
0.48 13.91 Hypothesis H3 is not<br />
validated<br />
0.46 19.06<br />
361<br />
Hypothesis Path<br />
* p < 0.05<br />
Coefficient<br />
T-<br />
Statistics*<br />
0.48 20.82<br />
Remarks<br />
It may be noted here that H3 has been negatively influenced by<br />
the environmental factors. It means that e-readiness is not<br />
encouraging in the areas of environmental empowerment in the<br />
levels of households, communities and government agencies.<br />
Other hypotheses in Tier-II have shown positive contributors for<br />
attaining overall sustainable development. The overall model<br />
fitness exercise has generated following structural equation:<br />
MDG_Ready = 0.36*ErSoc -0.25*ErEnv+0.92*ErEco,<br />
Errorvariance = 0.033, R² = 0.97 ----------------------------(1)<br />
This equation (1) explains the relationship between Dependent<br />
Exogenous Variable “MDG_Ready” (Overall e-Readiness of<br />
MDG) and the Endogenous Variables “ErSoc”(contributions of<br />
e-Readiness to Social empowerment), “ErEco”(contributions of<br />
e-Readiness to Economic empowerment) and<br />
“ErEnv”(contributions of e-Readiness to support Environmental<br />
empowerment). This structural equation with R 2 of 0.97 has<br />
indicated a “good fit” [16],[34] and with less error variance of<br />
0.033. It implies that MDG readiness with E-Governance as a<br />
component is influenced by the E-Governance services aimed at<br />
social, economic and environmental issues. It is important to note<br />
that the structural equation showed a negative contributions of E-<br />
Governance services for ensuring environmental sustainability.<br />
This denotes that there is enough scope for policy makers to<br />
prioritize E-Governance efforts in this direction. As regards<br />
contributions of E-Governance services in other two dimensions<br />
of sustainable development, most of the contributions are towards<br />
economic empowerment (0.92) followed by social empowerment<br />
(0.36).<br />
Further analysis on overall readiness of MDG driven sustainable<br />
development “MDG_Ready” indicates that respondents have<br />
indicated almost equal concerns for e-Readiness across all the<br />
three sustainable development dimensions (Economic 0.48, Social<br />
0.46 and environmnet0.48). This implies there is scope for<br />
establishing ever increasing role of E-Governance services in<br />
attaining MDGs for sustainable development.<br />
4. CONCLUSION AND FURTHER<br />
RESEARCH<br />
MDGs are expected to achieve its targets with active<br />
collaborations of the citizens, government agencies and other<br />
stakeholders. E-Governance services are aimed at providing the<br />
basis of networking among stakeholders, and providing desired<br />
information and services to the citizens. This scenario, particularly<br />
in the rural environment and in developing countries, is a<br />
necessity in which E-Governance services are made available with<br />
optimized cost, time, and latency. In this research, it is posited and<br />
proved that collaborative efforts are possible through ICT enabled<br />
E-Governance services. It is also shown that E-Readiness needs to<br />
be assessed at the local level to achieve MDGs in a nation like<br />
India. Besides, MDGs need to extend its purviews to support<br />
sustainable development and thus overall effort is to be made to<br />
empower local level entities including citizens to contribute to this<br />
cause.
Global perspectives in providing E-Governance services for<br />
development indicate that e-readiness for India is of great concern<br />
and needs improvement in order to enhance its effectiveness.<br />
Most of e-readiness parameters assessed by the INSEAD indicate<br />
that the digital divide continues to exist despite improvements in<br />
many areas including individual readiness. However, analyses of<br />
the survey conducted in the sample eight villages in the district of<br />
Panchmahals in the state of Gujarat suggest that most people<br />
living in rural areas are yet to gain access to such services. Rural<br />
teledensity too is a prime concern in India despite mobile<br />
penetration having gone up. As regards services’ usage in India<br />
vis-à-vis global contexts as per INSEAD, India has not shown an<br />
encouraging performance and has been ranked low in all the areas<br />
including broadband services, bandwidth availability and network<br />
coverage etc. Thus it is important to note that there is a designreality<br />
gap in all the parameters that may be used to assess the role<br />
of E-Governance to support MDGs and sustainable development<br />
in Indian context. It is worth mentioning following statements<br />
that are relevant for Indian E-Governance and its role in<br />
supporting MDGs.<br />
“India lives in Villages”<br />
“ You must be the change you wish to see in the world”<br />
- Mahatma Gandhi<br />
“You have to decide whether development means affluence or<br />
whether development means peace, prosperity and happiness. “<br />
-Sunderlal Bahuguna<br />
“While the distribution of wealth and income need not be equal, it<br />
must be to everyone’s advantage, and at the same time, positions<br />
of authority must be accessible to all.”[27]<br />
It is imperative that MDGs in India need to ensure its<br />
contributions to sustainable development while making efforts to<br />
make quantifiable progress in achieving the goals. Role of E-<br />
Governance services needs to concentrate on bringing in<br />
transparency in government and governance while ensuring<br />
adequate measures in optimizing the costs and time for the<br />
citizens dwelling in the access layer of the governance. In India,<br />
people in this access layer form the core of the development<br />
process and they are poor. These people are still affected by the<br />
digital divides. In absence of an appropriate strategy to enforce<br />
convergence among E-Governance services and with an aim to<br />
empower people in access layer to collaborate, it would be<br />
difficult for India to have sustainable development despite<br />
improvements in MDGs.<br />
4.1 Limitations<br />
This research has several limitations. First, the research has been<br />
limited to a homogeneous sample of respondents in a particular<br />
district which does away with the scope for generalization. A<br />
larger number of samples need to be included covering diverge<br />
demographic areas with heterogeneity. Secondly, E-Governance<br />
services considered for the study are limited to government webaccess<br />
alone. Other sources like civil society and business<br />
organizations providing such services need to be included in order<br />
to make the analyses broad-based. Thirdly, User Centered Designs<br />
(UCD) are quite relevant in such studies to assess Quality of<br />
Services (QoS), cost and latency. These could not be assessed as<br />
most of these services are yet to be availed by the sample<br />
respondents. There is scope to include these dimensions while<br />
362<br />
validating the model (especially in capturing information needs of<br />
uses and their intentions to use E-Governance services).<br />
5. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS<br />
The author acknowledges the support of the SDTT, Panchmahals<br />
District Collectorate and Panchmahals District Milk Cooperative<br />
Union for the successful conduct of the study.<br />
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Harnessing Renewable Energy Technologies for ICT and<br />
e-Governance Services in Un-Electrified Communities in Rural Nepal<br />
Mona Sharma<br />
Winrock International<br />
P.O.Box 4927<br />
Kathmandu, Nepal<br />
977 1-4467087; 977 9851146002<br />
msharma@winrock.org.np; mona33sharma@gmail.com<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
The Government of Nepal’s electronic-governance initiatives<br />
remain beyond the access of the majority of Nepal’s population.<br />
Many are not even aware that such services exist. This is because<br />
due to Nepal’s difficult terrain, two vital vehicles for egovernance<br />
services -access to energy/the national electricity grid<br />
and internet penetration - are both negligible. Rural populations<br />
stand to benefit the most from e-governance services, yet they<br />
continue to be overlooked by government and non-government<br />
information and communications (ICT)-based development<br />
activities largely on grounds of lack of access to energy sources.<br />
A recently completed ICT project funded by Intel Corporation and<br />
implemented by Winrock International challenged this bottleneck<br />
to efficient rollout of e-governance services, and has demonstrated<br />
a successful shift in the national rural ICT paradigm. This paper<br />
communicates the experience of a pioneering community-based<br />
activity to extend electronic services, including e-governance, in<br />
remote un-electrified communities in Nepal. This public-private<br />
partnership between rural communities, local and national<br />
governments, and a non-government organization harnessed<br />
energy generated from small solar photovoltaic and micro-hydro<br />
systems to operate power-efficient ICT and e-services. The ICT<br />
infrastructure is housed in local government schools, and has<br />
enabled rural communities to access multifaceted e-services<br />
beyond the electricity grid network.<br />
Categories and Subject Descriptors<br />
K.6.1 [Management of Computing and Information Systems]:<br />
– Project and People Management – System Analysis and Designs<br />
General Terms<br />
Management, Documentation, Performance, Design, Reliability,<br />
Human Factors<br />
Keywords<br />
Renewable Energy Technologies; Nepal; Program Management<br />
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for<br />
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Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to<br />
post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission<br />
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ICEGOV '12, October 22 - 25 2012, Albany, NY, United States, NY, USA<br />
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1200-4/12/10…$15.00.<br />
364<br />
1. INTRODUCTION<br />
The Government of Nepal (GoN) has introduced numerous ICT<br />
interventions for development and poverty alleviation over the<br />
past five years. An E-Governance Master Plan has also been<br />
rigorously researched and developed. The focus of government<br />
and non-government ICT initiatives to date has been on rollout of<br />
infrastructure, hardware, software packages, online applications<br />
such as e-governance services, and capacity building of human<br />
resources. While all these aspects are crucial for effective<br />
implementation of ICTs nationwide, a major challenge continues<br />
to be largely overlooked: access to electricity to power equipment<br />
and deliver services. This paper chronicles the experiences and<br />
findings of a pioneering attempt to break this barrier by<br />
introducing power-efficient computing and electronic public<br />
services based on alternative energy sources. This pilot project has<br />
demonstrated to all stakeholders that ICT services and<br />
applications can be taken to the 60 percent of rural communities<br />
that currently remain beyond the national electricity grid (see<br />
Figure 1). The pilot was carried out in conjunction with GoN’s<br />
Alternative Energy Promotion Project (AEPC) and the High Level<br />
Commission for Information Technology (HLCIT) at the Ministry<br />
of Environment (MoE). AEPC has since incorporated the model<br />
in the national renewable energy technology (RET) expansion<br />
program, and replicated the community-based model in over<br />
twenty additional locations.<br />
2. BACKGROUND<br />
Nepal’s difficult topography has long challenged extension of<br />
basic services and infrastructure across the country. Road<br />
networks are limited; the national electricity grid currently serves<br />
only 40% of the population as illustrated in Figure 1 below. Even<br />
today, many communities walk days to district headquarters to<br />
access governance services such as birth registrations and transfer<br />
of deeds. Such communities would benefit immensely from<br />
access to E-governance and other online services in their own<br />
villages.<br />
Figure 1. National Electricity Grid of Nepal
GoN has addressed the challenge to nation-wide electrification by<br />
expanding access to RETs for electrification in rural areas. This<br />
government initiative promotes domestic and institutional<br />
electrification based on locally-available sources of renewable<br />
energy, including micro hydro and solar photovoltaic (solar pv)<br />
systems. Even where it is available, RET-based rural<br />
electrification systems are very limited as they are designed for<br />
lighting for a set number of households. They generally cannot<br />
support the power requirements of appliances, and basic ICT<br />
equipment. These compounded factors have resulted in limited<br />
access to, and expansion of ICT applications and electronicservices<br />
beyond urban and peri-urban areas. Nepal’s terrain has<br />
also impeded expansion of the internet backbone. Internet service<br />
providers are gradually extending connectivity through vertical<br />
spurs from the backbone, yet terrestrial systems are feasible only<br />
along the plains area. The majority of the country relies on<br />
wireless and satellite-based connectivity, which is expensive.<br />
Consequently, remote communities needing vital access to<br />
information and communications services, the potential key<br />
beneficiaries of the national E-Governance initiatives, remain<br />
deprived of electronic and ICT services. Public access services do<br />
not exist, and ICTs have been unable to be integrated into rural<br />
governance and education systems.<br />
2.1 Challenges to Rural ICT<br />
o Limited access to grid electricity<br />
o Limited power from RET-based power systems<br />
o Limited penetration of information ICT infrastructure<br />
o High power consumption of conventional computers<br />
o Inadequate integration of ICTs into rural tapestry<br />
o Inadequate rural-appropriate online-based applications<br />
3. APPROACH<br />
In this scenario, Winrock International has pioneered an approach<br />
to introduce and establish locally appropriate electronic services<br />
based on RET-power. Basic details are presented in Table 1; the<br />
geographic diversity of the pilot sites is presented in Figure 2.<br />
Name<br />
Table 1. Project Details<br />
Rural Livelihood Enhancement<br />
through Increased Access to<br />
Information and Communication<br />
Technologies project<br />
Location Four remote communities in rural<br />
Nepal<br />
365<br />
Timeline April 2009- February 2012<br />
The primary focus of the approach:<br />
o Increase public access to rural electronic and ICT services<br />
o Increase awareness of power-efficient options<br />
o Foster the right to information<br />
o Internet-based services to local communities<br />
o Renewable energy, rural ICT, and education services through<br />
partnerships<br />
o Ensure sustainability through partner networks<br />
o Computer and internet literacy<br />
− E-services, applications and services for MDGs<br />
− Poverty alleviation and overall development through<br />
access to information and communication on health,<br />
agriculture, and education<br />
3.1 Innovative Model<br />
The project has leveraged Intel funding to demonstrate maximum<br />
impacts on rural development by establishing the last mile of<br />
connectivity, and using the internet to enhance lives. Multistakeholder<br />
partnerships have been forged with government as<br />
well as non-government bodies to deliver appropriate internetbased<br />
services to local communities. Partners contributing to the<br />
project activities at various levels have contributed additional<br />
funds, forging a sense of ownership of the activity across sectors,<br />
and enabling multiple activities to be carried out towards the<br />
single common goal of sustainable rural development. The model<br />
is illustrated in Figure 3.<br />
Figure 2. Topographic map of Nepal indicating project<br />
districts
Figure 3. The Project Model<br />
Simultaneously, this has also strengthened the sustainability of<br />
services, as well as replication potential through the diverse<br />
networks of each contributing partner. The project facilitated<br />
access to electronic and ICT services in rural Nepal by mobilizing<br />
partnerships to provide a package for holistic rural development<br />
package, from installation of RETs; infrastructure for access to the<br />
internet; low-power hardware; to development of locally<br />
appropriate online products and internet-based services; and<br />
capacity building of locally-based internet service providers to<br />
ensure sustainable internet services.<br />
Figure 4 (L). Solar photovoltaic for ICT center<br />
Figure 5 (R). Microhydro powerhouse<br />
3.2 What We Did<br />
a) Power-efficient ICT facilities<br />
o Isolated micro hydro stations; solar photo voltaic<br />
systems<br />
o Low power equipment at school labs and telecenters,<br />
including Netbooks, Rural Connectivity Platforms<br />
(RCP) and other wireless media<br />
o Enabling environment and vehicle for e-governance in<br />
off-grid areas<br />
b) Dual purpose services<br />
o ICT labs school hours; rural telecenter non-school hours<br />
o Online and offline locally appropriate services<br />
366<br />
o Enhance poverty alleviation, attainment of Millennium<br />
Development Goals, and overall development through<br />
access to information and communication, and eservices<br />
c) Enabling rural E-services<br />
o Strengthening ICT service providers<br />
o Locally appropriate ICT-based applications<br />
o Channel for information dissemination for government<br />
initiatives across sectors, including health, agriculture,<br />
and e-governance<br />
o Rural access to government e-governance initiatives<br />
o Digital content and complete e-curriculum for six<br />
grades as part of the formal school curriculum<br />
o E-Granary type servers to house content for schools and<br />
public for offline use<br />
d) Multi-sector Public Private partnerships<br />
o Government Renewable energy, rural ICT, rural<br />
development Ministries<br />
o Rural schools and communities<br />
o Private ICT service providers and vendors, including<br />
internet service providers and equipment importers<br />
o Non-government agencies, including Open Learning<br />
Exchange and local community-based organizations<br />
(CBO)<br />
3.3 How We Did It<br />
The approach was two-pronged. First, the project leveraged ties<br />
between AEPC, communities and schools to establish computer<br />
labs and ICT service centers based on RET. Second, the project<br />
demonstrated the use of locally available micro hydro and solar<br />
photovoltaic, expanding the reach of electronic services to<br />
deprived rural areas. Figures 4 and 5 illustrate the power sources<br />
for two of the solar and micro hydro pilot sites.<br />
The internet facilities were housed in government schools for<br />
maximum development impact. Placement of these facilities in<br />
the schools is a deliberate attempt to avail children from deprived<br />
communities that may not have access to modern forms of energy<br />
to the benefits of electricity at least during school hours. The<br />
school children have used computer facilities as a computer<br />
laboratory in structured sessions during school hours. Before and<br />
after school hours, as well as during school breaks, the computer<br />
facilities have served as community-based rural ICT centers. By<br />
serving as rural ICT centers, the labs have provided wider<br />
communities reliable communication through the internet, and<br />
locally-appropriate internet based services. Figures 6 and 7, and 8<br />
and 9 illustrate both sets of services at the pilot schools. This has<br />
included information on health, education rights awareness, and<br />
agriculture among others. Facilities such as e-governance<br />
services, search for employment opportunities, and promotion of<br />
products for livelihood enhancement etc have also been provided.<br />
A structured tariff system for these services will support<br />
maintenance costs.
Figures 6 and 7. Computer classes at schools<br />
Figures 8 and 9. Public access services at telecenters<br />
4. THE OUTCOME<br />
a) Created enabling environment for rural ICT<br />
o Demonstrated use of low-power pcs in rural areas<br />
to the government and other stakeholders.<br />
b) Promoted government endorsement of ICT for rural<br />
development through cross-sector use of ICTs for<br />
education, e-governance, and agriculture.<br />
c) Fostered delivery channel for GoN E-governance and<br />
other electronic services.<br />
d) Demonstrated mainstream computer education through<br />
low-power computer labs in government schools.<br />
e) Incorporated ICT facilities for rural access in GoN RET<br />
extension strategy. This will contribute to the overall<br />
rural development, and attainment of MDGs resulting<br />
from access to power.<br />
f) Leveraged local development<br />
g) Service provider training for schools/rural ICT centers<br />
o Integrating E-teaching in schools<br />
o Providing public ICT services<br />
o Hardware and software fundamentals<br />
h) E-content and applications<br />
o Updating online platform for rural users<br />
o ICT-enabled full-year curriculum in Nepali,<br />
English, and Science Grades 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10<br />
Table 2. Impacts from four community-based pilot sites<br />
Beneficiary Group Direct Beneficiaries<br />
Schoolchildren 3200<br />
Individuals 5500<br />
Rural households 1100<br />
367<br />
5. SUSTAINABILITY<br />
5.1 Localized Services<br />
This approach is unique in that it presents a holistic approach in<br />
installing and using RET, and wireless technology to bring about<br />
direct economic impacts upon vulnerable communities. The<br />
project has been integrated into the local community to ensure<br />
optimum development impact, and respond to demand-based<br />
online resources and applications. Offline services and products<br />
have been integrated along with online services. Offline services<br />
have strengthened the business plan of the entrepreneurs as they<br />
cost much less to provide in terms of investment cost, but deliver<br />
constant fees for services. Offline services are integral in the<br />
initial phase to encourage rural clientele not used to online<br />
resources to enter the service facilities and gradually build<br />
comfort in using technology.<br />
Activity sustainability has been ensured by:<br />
1) Offsetting the access to energy, and upfront and operating<br />
cost barriers through multi-sector linkages<br />
2) Providing diversified use of the ICT center facilities to the<br />
local population as public access services<br />
3) Localizing content to meet needs at rural schools, including<br />
E-granary server and E-curriculum<br />
4) Creating ownership and demand for ICT services through<br />
partial subsidy towards local commitment to deliver Egovernance<br />
and other services<br />
5.1 Contributing to the National Agenda<br />
This initiative has addressed major barriers to national expansion<br />
of electronic services. This project has precipitated synergy<br />
between multi-sectoral activities, and mobilized financial and<br />
human resource investments from multiple players at the local as<br />
well as national level in order to translate technological scopes<br />
into direct impacts upon rural lives. Winrock International's<br />
previous efforts in rural information and communication activities<br />
strongly indicate that public-private-partnerships are a pivotal<br />
aspect of sustainability following project completion. Impacts on<br />
direct beneficiaries, the children from grades six through ten, and<br />
households in the vicinity in the four pilot sites alone has been<br />
immense, as indicated in Table 2. With the initiation of public<br />
access ICT services and computer classes using just 14 Netbooks<br />
per site in villages averaging 300 households, schools report<br />
enhanced enrollment in the pilot government schools, and better<br />
student retention and attendance rates as students are more regular<br />
in coming to school. Successful demonstration has made this<br />
model universally replicable in partner networks: MoE has<br />
delivered project-developed capacity building trainings in<br />
government rural ICT initiatives; AEPC has replicated the project<br />
model in their microhydro communities as ICTs enable access to<br />
crucial public services, and make productive use of the electricity<br />
generated. The project-developed curriculum has also been<br />
adopted as a locally-appropriate resource by many schools<br />
nationally. This level of commitment from the national to<br />
grassroots players is anticipated to continue to foster strong<br />
ownership of the approach, thereby supporting the development of<br />
locally-appropriate online electronic services and applications.
5.2 Challenges Remain<br />
a) Lobby with central and district governments for:<br />
− Integration into Computer Science curriculum<br />
− Qualified human resources<br />
− Rural development initiatives<br />
b) Inadequate human resources for ICT-aided teaching<br />
c) Communities not adequately e-ready<br />
d) High cost of bandwidth<br />
e) Keyboard issues with Netbooks<br />
− Dust infiltration<br />
368<br />
− Loose keys following constant use<br />
f) Frequent power fluctuations affecting power supply and<br />
connectivity<br />
6. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS<br />
Our thanks to ACM SIGCHI for allowing us to modify templates<br />
they had developed.<br />
7. REFERENCES<br />
[1] Nepal Living Standards Survey 2011. Central Bureau of<br />
Statistics, Kathmandu, 2012.<br />
[2] GoN E-Governance Master Plan and ICT Policies, 2011.
ICT-enabled Delivery of Maternal Health Services<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
Fresh opportunities are being created daily for the deployment of<br />
Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) [42]<br />
particularly in the area of poverty alleviation and sustainable<br />
economic growth in developing countries in particular. Therefore,<br />
the adoption of mobile telephones as service and information<br />
delivery tools and platform is expected to foster partnership and<br />
efficiency in improving health through dissemination of health<br />
information and data and supporting communication and<br />
collaboration within the entire health sector.<br />
This paper examines the integration of a sectoral policy and<br />
strategy in the area of health and national ICT Policy in the<br />
developmental context. Specifically, it investigates if a mobiletelephony<br />
based e-Health strategy has proven sustainable,<br />
stimulated acceptance of mobile phone-based health information<br />
or awareness of stakeholders on the benefits of mobile phonebased<br />
health information and services, thus accelerating the pace<br />
of reduction in maternal mortality in Ghana. The analysis<br />
presented in the paper is based on secondary material collected<br />
from government website and data directly obtained from<br />
policymakers and users involved in the initiative.<br />
Categories and Subject Descriptors<br />
Computers and Society, General<br />
General Terms<br />
Human Factors, Public Policy<br />
Keywords<br />
Mobile Phones, ICT4D, e-Governance, Development, Maternal<br />
Mortality, Ghana<br />
1. INTRODUCTION<br />
Nine years ago, the UN General Assembly endorsed the World<br />
Smmit on the Information Society, held in two phases, in Geneva<br />
003 and Tunis 2005. In particular, it encouraged governments, as<br />
part of their implementation of the Tunis Agenda for the<br />
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for<br />
personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are<br />
not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies<br />
bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for<br />
components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored.<br />
Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to<br />
post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission<br />
and/or a fee.<br />
ICEGOV '12, October 22 - 25 2012, Albany, NY, United States, NY, USA<br />
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1200-4/12/10…$15.00.<br />
Johanna E. Awotwi<br />
Centre for e-Governance<br />
P.O. Box MP 270<br />
Mamprobi- Accra, GHANA<br />
+233 (0) 243 408 047<br />
jeawotwi@ghanaceg.org<br />
369<br />
Information Society, to establish before 2010, “ comprehensive,<br />
forward –looking and sustainable national e-strategies, including<br />
ICT strategies and sectoral e-strategies, as integral parts of<br />
national development plans and poverty reduction strategies.”<br />
Responding to this call, most countries have met the WSIS target<br />
of developing national e-strategies by 2010. At least 84% of all<br />
economies have a national e-strategy in place, and at least 14<br />
economies are in the process of developing such a strategy [33].<br />
Ghana met the WSIS target for developing national e-strategies<br />
with, two policies which are driving ICT developments – ICT for<br />
Accelerated Development Policy (ICT4AD) and National<br />
Telecom Policy (NTP). The ICT4AD Policy has the overall<br />
objective of supporting an ICT-led socio-economic development<br />
process aimed at transforming Ghana into a middle income,<br />
information-rich, and knowledge-based society [24]. On the other<br />
hand, says the policy, the goal of the NTP is to establish market<br />
structures that will be most beneficial to Ghana’s citizens and<br />
businesses, and to set in motion the procedures and incentives that<br />
will boost the market’s development.<br />
Efforts have been made to implement some of the strategies<br />
enunciated in these two policy documents [20]. One such<br />
important e-strategy is the Health Sector ICT Policy and Strategy,<br />
2005 which underlining vision is to significantly enhance and<br />
improve all areas of health delivery. The strategy is specifically,<br />
meant to provide quality primary healthcare services that are<br />
affordable, sustainable and meet the needs of patients, by<br />
overcoming geographical barriers through ICTs [24]. For a lowincome<br />
country such as Ghana, the policy is welfare –oriented.<br />
It is instructive to note that ICT4AD Policy (2003) is currently<br />
under review after a review forum in May 2011. New thematic<br />
areas are being added to the policy including cyber security,<br />
climate control and green ICTs, Broadband Strategy and<br />
Geospatial policies [50].<br />
The main objective of this paper is to lay emphasis on integration<br />
of a sectoral policy and strategy on health in the developmental<br />
context; and to investigate if a mobile–telephony based<br />
intervention has proven sustainable, stimulated acceptance or been<br />
able to create awareness on benefits of mobile health information<br />
and services and the consequent impact on maternal mortality and<br />
governance in Ghana. The availability of up-to-date and accurate<br />
information, created and disseminated by ICTs, has decisive<br />
impact on peoples’ lives and on the socioeconomic development<br />
of a country as a whole says [53]. Further, “countries that have<br />
created an enabling environment are experiencing revolutionary<br />
effects especially in the governance, education, health and<br />
business sectors, as its citizens are now more empowered, can<br />
change the equilibrium of power and start creating choices and<br />
opportunities for themselves.” “Yet,” it continued, ‘there are
countries in Africa where people are not able to make informed<br />
decisions on their daily lives because of lack of access to ICTs,<br />
information and knowledge.”<br />
Ghana’s response to the above realities especially in the health<br />
sector is the focus of this paper with the recognition of the<br />
positive potential of mobile phones. The background of this paper<br />
will review ICT integration at both practice and policy levels in<br />
general and investigate attempts by Ghana, to initiate, formulate<br />
and implement national e-strategies with a view to achieving<br />
development goals. Section, 2 will focus on a short history of<br />
ICTs under eHealth. The analysis in this section will be on how<br />
developing countries disadvantaged due to lack of capital and<br />
knowledge of the internet and Information Technology [42] could<br />
carve out solutions which harness ICTs to improve internal<br />
administrations, with the potential for interactions with<br />
stakeholders to attain improved political representation,<br />
institutional effectiveness and economic management. Sections 3<br />
and 4 outline the general framework for analyzing the solutions or<br />
interventions through mobile telephony, with Ghana country data<br />
used, Section 5 dwells on acceptance, sustainability and<br />
acceptance impacts. Section 6 focuses on a review of the results,<br />
their implications, and concludes on possible future research<br />
directions.<br />
2. BACKGROUND<br />
[52] stresses that response to considerable challenges in providing<br />
high quality, affordable and universally accessible care have led to<br />
policymakers, donors and program implementers to search for<br />
innovative approaches, to eliminate the geographical and financial<br />
barriers to health. Consequently, lately, there has been an<br />
increasing interest in the potential of ICTs in resolving these<br />
issues. The use of mobile technology or m-health, a subset of ehealth,<br />
is growing in the low- and – middle income or developing<br />
countries.<br />
There is also the recognition that National e-strategies act as<br />
fundamental preconditions for bridging the digital divide, that is,<br />
the gap between people with access to ICT and those with limited<br />
or no access to them [30]; [36]. Further, e-strategies are believed<br />
to enable socio-economic development. The WSIS outcomes,<br />
according to the ITU, encourage countries to incorporate ICT into<br />
their national development plans and, in the particular case of<br />
lower income economies, to integrate national e-strategies into<br />
their poverty reduction plans. It defines for a better understanding<br />
of the concepts; ‘ICT strategy is a general plan on how to bring a<br />
society and its economy forward through the use of ICT; sectoral<br />
e-strategies, on the other hand, break down the general ICT<br />
strategy into policies for specific sectors, such as health, education<br />
or administration. Sectoral strategies are called “e” for electronic,<br />
followed by the name of the area the strategy applies to, for<br />
instance, e-health, e-learning or e-government. Together, ICT<br />
strategies and sectoral e-strategies constitute national e-strategies,<br />
which is the super-ordinate concept.’ As of April 2010, 163<br />
countries and territories, that is, 85.3 percent of all ITU Member<br />
States, already had a national e-strategy in place, while another 13<br />
countries and territories (6.8%) are currently formulating and<br />
adopting one. Six countries (3.2%) do not have a national estrategy<br />
in place, and the status of ICT strategy formulation in the<br />
remaining 9 economies (4.7%) is unknown, due to lack of<br />
information, the report declares. It is possible, however, that some<br />
of the economies in the latter group have also formulated an ICT<br />
370<br />
strategy or are in the preparatory process. In general, Africa is the<br />
continent with the lowest penetration of ICT, continued [30], as<br />
well as the region where the formulation of ICT strategies has<br />
taken place at the slowest pace. By the first phase of WSIS in<br />
2003, only 17 African countries had developed ICT strategies.<br />
According to a recent ECA survey however, 90 percent of the<br />
African countries consider ICT as their national priority. As<br />
suggested by the ITU, “Several ICT strategies are still lacking a<br />
real strategic approach. Despite the existence of numerous good<br />
practices and innovative and forward-looking strategies, some<br />
plans are merely a collection of initiatives and projects.<br />
Governments, societies and economies would benefit from an<br />
overarching strategic direction and from the formulation of a<br />
long-term vision. Further, sectoral e-strategies should be rooted in<br />
these overarching national e-strategies in order to unleash the full<br />
potential of ICT in each sector, making best use of existing<br />
synergies.” For instance, there should be coherence between a<br />
country’s health sectoral strategy and the National ICT Policy.<br />
The ICT4AD which was approved by the Ghanaian Parliament<br />
and Cabinet in early 2004 fully takes into account the aspirations<br />
and provisions of key socio-economic development framework<br />
documents including: The Vision 2020 Socio-Economic<br />
Development Framework; the Ghana Poverty Reduction Strategy<br />
(GPRS) (2002-2004) and the Co-ordinated Programme for<br />
Economic and Social Development of Ghana [18]. “The e-Health<br />
Strategy means application of the Internet and other related<br />
technologies in the healthcare industry to improve the access,<br />
efficiency, effectiveness and quality of clinical and business<br />
processes utilized by healthcare organizations, practitioners,<br />
patients and consumers to improve the health status of patients”<br />
[8].<br />
Several other governments have developed e-health strategies.<br />
The World Health Organization (WHO) defines e-Health as “...the<br />
use, in the health sector, of digital data - transmitted, stored and<br />
retrieved electronically- in support of health care, both at the local<br />
site and at a distance.” eHealth technologies are essential when<br />
they are integrated into health services that meet basic needs, have<br />
been proven to be cost-efficient and are evidence-based. They are<br />
evidence-based when they meet well-defined specifications and<br />
have been validated through controlled clinical studies or rest on a<br />
widely accepted consensus by experts. Some of the benefits of ehealth<br />
include faster and easier access to medical data; improved<br />
delivery of healthcare services, in particular in rural and remote<br />
areas, and the reduction of costs for healthcare services.<br />
Many ICT strategies include approaches for the adoption of egovernment<br />
which are the most common type of sectoral estrategies.<br />
Many of these sectoral strategies focus on improving<br />
the effectiveness and transparency of public administration<br />
activities by making use of ICT in government-to-government,<br />
government-to-citizen and government-to business. With its ICT<br />
strategies in place, Ghana’s Minister of Communications reported<br />
in October 2011 that, “in 2010, Ghana’s GDP expanded by 5.9%,<br />
with the Services Sector (dominated by ICT) contributing 32.8%<br />
and surpassing traditional agriculture.<br />
The ICT/Telecom industry is therefore playing significant and<br />
vital role in driving wider economic growth across the country<br />
and contributing substantially to the government kitty” [40].
3. E-HEALTH<br />
3.1 ICTs and Health Communication<br />
[26] suggests; there has been abundant anecdotal evidence that<br />
ICTs could be applied to livelihood enhancement and thus directly<br />
address financial poverty, but it was not at all clear that these<br />
applications were reproducible, scalable and sustainable. There<br />
has been significant focus on using ICTs to actually deliver<br />
healthcare (telemedicine) and as a way of educating people on<br />
health issues. Health is vital to development he adds and “the lack<br />
of adequate healthcare is one of the most onerous aspects of<br />
poverty” and in developing countries especially Sub-Saharan<br />
Africa, poverty has deepened the crisis in health-care delivery and<br />
the mass exodus of professionals to the developed world have<br />
further worsened this problem.<br />
The 2008 UN report on progress toward meeting the Millennium<br />
Development Goals (MDGs) indicates continuing dire conditions<br />
in crucial public health areas. Reliable information about the rates<br />
and trends in maternal mortality is essential for resource<br />
mobilization, and for planning and assessment of progress<br />
towards Millennium Development Goal 5 (MDG 5), the target for<br />
which is a 75% reduction in the maternal mortality ratio (MMR)<br />
from 1990 to 2015 [38].<br />
Ghana has an estimated population of 23.48 million accounting<br />
for 2.97% of the African population [62]; 49% of the population<br />
lives in urban areas (regional average 37%). Ghana has relatively<br />
better health system indicators in the region. In 2007, life<br />
expectancy was 57 years (52 years in the WHO African region<br />
and 57 years in low-income countries), maternal mortality ratio<br />
was 560 per 100,000 live births (900 in the region and 650 in low<br />
income countries), infant mortality rate was 73 per 1,000 live<br />
births (88 in the region and 80 in low income countries, antenatal<br />
care (at least 4 visits) coverage was 69% (45% in the region and<br />
38% in low-income countries) and proportion of births attended<br />
by skilled health personnel was 50% (46% in the region and 41%<br />
in low-income countries).<br />
[43] state there are a few concerns though. Ghana’s human<br />
development index (HDI) worsened from 0.563 in 2001 to 0.520<br />
in 2005 [23]. Similarly, infant mortality rate rose from 71 in 2000<br />
to 73 in 2007 [62].<br />
The level of health spending is low at 5.1% of GDP with<br />
household out-of-pocket spending accounting for 51.2% of it says<br />
[56]. It is therefore, worthwhile to find out whether access to<br />
proven and powerful ICTs can improve health indicators which<br />
also happen to be an ongoing debate. Does the process of social<br />
change through ICTs enhance positive health outcomes in low and<br />
middle income countries such as Ghana? A growing number of<br />
people are searching to understand the meaning of empowerment<br />
and ways it can be used to change their settings and lives. Most of<br />
the literature associates empowerment with personal control.<br />
[45] points out that "by empowerment I mean our aim should be<br />
to enhance the possibilities for people to control their own lives."<br />
The Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion notes that "people<br />
cannot achieve their fullest health potential unless they are able<br />
take control of those things which determine their health" [60]. It<br />
is obvious that lack of empowerment leads to poverty which also<br />
has an important informational dimension [19].<br />
371<br />
Poor people often lack access to information that is vital to their<br />
lives and livelihoods, including weather reports, market prices,<br />
healthcare information and income-earning opportunities. Such<br />
lack of information or empowerment, adds to the vulnerability of<br />
the people concerned. Infact, in terms of livelihood strategies,<br />
information plays a dual role: informing and strengthening the<br />
short-term decision-making capacity of the poor themselves, and<br />
informing and strengthening the longer-term decision-making<br />
capacity of intermediaries that facilitate, assist, or represent the<br />
poor. The contribution of ICT to poverty reduction through<br />
enterprise lies in its power to give poor women especially, and<br />
men access to improved information and better communications<br />
to help them build assets for better living conditions [19]. There<br />
has been considerable international discussion about the potential<br />
of ICTs to make major impacts in improving the health and well<br />
being of poor and marginalized populations, combating poverty,<br />
and encouraging sustainable development and governance [63].<br />
Used effectively ICTs have enormous potential as tools to<br />
increase information flows and the dissemination of evidencebased<br />
knowledge, and to empower citizens. However, despite all<br />
its potential, a major challenge is that ICTs have not been widely<br />
used as tools that advance equitable health care access.<br />
A critical mass of professional and community users of ICTs in<br />
health has not yet been reached in developing countries. Many of<br />
the approaches being used are still at a relatively new stage of<br />
implementation, with insufficient studies to establish their<br />
relevance, applicability or cost effectiveness [63]. This makes it<br />
difficult for governments of developing countries to determine<br />
their investment priorities.<br />
The topic of e-government and e-governance has become<br />
increasingly acknowledged over the last few years, and many<br />
governments desire for online services. However developing<br />
countries are disadvantaged due to lack of capital and knowledge<br />
of the internet and Information Technology.<br />
[42], while acknowledging what ICT brings through improved<br />
effectiveness & efficiency in governance, improved customer<br />
satisfaction and enhanced public participation in Government’s<br />
policies / decision and making processes and provision of quality<br />
services; said there are difficulties in bringing components that<br />
make these a reality. Reality involves a clear, well planned and<br />
easy to implement strategy, connectivity infrastructure such as<br />
broadband technologies, database management, and enabling<br />
technologies such as those for pervasive/mobile access amongst<br />
others [4].<br />
E-Governance in an implementation sense is restricted primarily<br />
to the use of computer based internet access to deliver services. In<br />
countries where the penetration of computers and internet is<br />
relatively low, such as in Ghana, there is an apprehension that the<br />
reach of e-Governance may be limited. Such limited reach of e-<br />
Governance has made governments think of new technologies,<br />
such as mobile phones, to reach the residents and to deliver public<br />
services.<br />
The use of mobile phones in healthcare settings can potentially<br />
deliver important benefits, because of their ability to provide and<br />
improve access to communication and information resources [13].<br />
Mobile phones have tremendous potential to expand the access to<br />
and reach of public services in developing economies. The<br />
relevance of mobile platform as a medium for delivery of public
services in Ghana is also evident from the subscriber base of<br />
mobile phones as seen in Chart 1.<br />
The use of mobile and wireless technologies to support the<br />
achievement of health objectives (m-Health) has the potential to<br />
transform the face of health service delivery across the globe and<br />
a powerful combination of factors is driving this change, [13]<br />
stresses. These include rapid advances in mobile technologies and<br />
applications, a rise in new opportunities for the integration of<br />
mobile health into existing eHealth services, and the continued<br />
growth in coverage of mobile cellular networks.<br />
According to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU),<br />
there are now over 5 billion wireless subscribers; over 70% of<br />
them reside in low- and middle income countries. The GSM<br />
Association reports commercial wireless signals cover over 85%<br />
of the world’s population, extending far beyond the reach of the<br />
electrical grid [59].<br />
A multitude of m-Health solutions have emerged over the years in<br />
countries such as Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa,<br />
which are leading the way in using mobile health services,<br />
according to the Global Observatory for e-Health at the World<br />
Health Organization (WHO). Getachew Sahlu of the WHO<br />
identified the convergence of the following factors as the driving<br />
force behind the current rapid m-Health growth in developing<br />
countries: (1) a record growth of mobile phone users, (2) rapid<br />
expansion of mobile networks, (3) the decline in mobile phone<br />
costs, and (4) the innovation in mobile technology [36].<br />
Mobile connects four times as many people as landline telephony<br />
because of its better reach, convenience, and functionality and its<br />
lower costs [31];[32]. Mobile telephony also surpasses the<br />
landline Internet by more than 3.5 billion users, reports [29],<br />
while driving economic growth and important societal benefits, as<br />
documented in the World Economic Forum’s Global Information<br />
Technology Report 2008–2009: Mobility in a Networked World<br />
and other research.<br />
At the recent Mobile World Congress held this year in Barcelona,<br />
Mr. H. Toure, Secretary-General of ITU confirmed, ‘Over the past<br />
twenty years or so we have seen an extraordinary transition from a<br />
world where most people did not have access to even basic<br />
telecommunications, to a world where we have six billion mobile<br />
cellular subscriptions, and where 2.3 billion people use the<br />
Internet. The key to this extraordinary communications miracle,<br />
he added, has of course been mobile, which has conquered the<br />
globe and brought ICTs within reach of virtually all of the world’s<br />
people [51].<br />
Mobile health solutions—whether used to automate electronic<br />
health records or treat chronic diseases—enable governments to<br />
more easily, quickly, and cost-effectively bring the benefits<br />
associated with access to comprehensive healthcare services to<br />
their citizens. Mobile remote monitoring devices and services that<br />
transmit information about the condition of patients and<br />
applications that remind patients when to take their medications<br />
will allow many more people to lead healthier, more independent<br />
lives[15]. Accordingly, a recent Juniper Research study forecasted<br />
remote patient monitoring using mobile networks to be a US$1.9<br />
billion market by 2013 [35].<br />
Table 1. Justifying mHealth<br />
372<br />
CHALLENGES EXPLANATION<br />
Infrastructure Absence of electricity in rural areas<br />
and low bandwidth<br />
Cultural attitudes Superstitions due to illiteracy<br />
Sustainability Lack of financial capability after<br />
initial donor assistance. Therefore,<br />
inability to afford technology<br />
upgrades<br />
Environmental Dusty regions affect equipment<br />
Human Resource Lack of ICT skilled personnel<br />
(Author)<br />
m-Health represents a cost-effective technology solution to many<br />
of these challenges if implemented correctly and brought to scale.<br />
The costs of mobile handsets and usage are declining as demand<br />
for mobile services increases and mobile networks are being<br />
rapidly expanded [36]. The use of mobile phones has been noted<br />
in the area of prevention and monitoring for pregnant women, to<br />
reduce infant and maternal mortality through treatment, and<br />
provide post-natal follow-up healthcare support [34].<br />
The discipline of m-Health has been gaining ground as mobile<br />
device penetration rates grow rapidly, increasingly prompted by<br />
plunging hardware and usage costs, as developing world<br />
consumers adopt this accessible communication technology<br />
[16];[28];[47];[27]. Case studies have been recorded in the<br />
instances of using Short Message Service (SMS) for HIV/AIDS<br />
prevention and control, and for treatment of tuberculosis in South<br />
Africa [46]; consultation services and dissemination of critical<br />
health information in rural communities in India [48]; [5]; and<br />
using Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) to collect data and teach<br />
medical students in Ghana and Uganda respectively 12].<br />
4. GHANA-CASE STUDY<br />
4.1 E-Health in Ghana context<br />
[49] state, “similar to Rwanda, Kenya and Ghana, in 93rd and<br />
97th position, respectively, suffer from low levels of ICT<br />
readiness due to the underdevelopment of ICT infrastructure and<br />
the lack of a widespread skill base that would enable society to<br />
make an optimal use of technology.<br />
However, according to [2], the services sector in Ghana recorded<br />
a 6.1% growth in 2010 compared with 5.9% in 2009. Financial<br />
services and expansion in the telecommunications industry<br />
continued to spearhead growth of the sector in 2010. The<br />
telecommunications sub-sector expanded by 10.8% in 2010<br />
raising total telephone access lines to about 17 million in 2010<br />
from 15.2 million in 2009. In 2010 Ghana achieved telephone<br />
penetration rate of nearly 74%, with mobile telephony accounting<br />
for about 98% of the total access lines. As at July 2011 the total<br />
telephone subscriptions in Ghana stood at 19,805,896 yielding a<br />
tele-density of 80.2%.<br />
This chart is distributed by Market Share as follows:-
Chart 1 [40] GHANA – Total Telephone Subscription<br />
The growth in penetration and use of mobile phones presents<br />
unprecedented opportunities to communicate with rural audiences,<br />
and may soon be the largest media opportunity in rural Ghana,<br />
especially for enhancing healthcare delivery.<br />
[50] informed in personal communication with the author that “as<br />
at the last count on March 2nd, 2012 the National Communication<br />
Authority (NCA) had registered over 25 million SIM cards and<br />
assuming 20 percent double or triple SIM registrations, we are<br />
likely to have over 80% of Ghanaians owning phones including<br />
citizens in the rural areas. This phenomenon has obviously made<br />
communication across the country very efficient and brought great<br />
relief to rural folks,” he added.<br />
Ghana’s health sector reforms were guided by five principles:<br />
integration, decentralization, partnerships, ownership, and<br />
common financing. During the process of decentralization,<br />
decision making authority and management of health care services<br />
was transferred from the national level to the regional and district<br />
levels [23]. With the unprecedented opportunities offered by<br />
mobile phones to communicate with rural audiences, Ghana’s<br />
Health Sector reforms made room for the maximum use of ICTs.<br />
The Ghana Health Service (GHS) intends to coordinate and<br />
mainstream all m-Health projects in Ghana to derive the<br />
maximum benefit for the people, ensure sustainability and<br />
ownership after the pilots by the current implementing<br />
organizations for the project to survive beyond the donor-funded<br />
period.<br />
4.1.1 Health Sector Strategies in Ghana<br />
Poor people often lack access to services, because of physical and<br />
financial barriers, lack of information, unavailability of care, and<br />
other factors [9].<br />
[14] adds, “Although developed-world newsflashes tell us that<br />
the whole world is “wired” and that people in the farthest reaches<br />
globally are able to surf the ’net, the reality is that the poorest of<br />
the poor do not have access to even the most basic of health<br />
information.<br />
A recent analysis showed that young women from the poorest<br />
households in 12 low and middle income countries were more<br />
likely to enter in early marriages, to have given birth at an early<br />
age, and to be less likely to be using maternal health services [54].<br />
It must be noted that the response to exploitation of ICTs in the<br />
health sector in Ghana has been only modest, what with continued<br />
low bandwidth problems causing a digital divide between the<br />
health headquarters in the capital and the various regions. The<br />
promise of mobile technology is what could speed up the<br />
transformation process- recognized by that part of the sector ICT<br />
373<br />
Policy and Strategy’s plan of work which states the wish to,”<br />
improve efficiency of health delivery by improving both<br />
management and technical efficiency of the sector through<br />
reliable information dissemination systems and by supporting the<br />
decision –making process through the prompt availability of<br />
information for all decision-makers” [24].<br />
The Mobile Technology for Community Health (MoTeCH)<br />
initiative recognized Ghana Government’s desire according to its<br />
ICT Policy to, “improve ICT infrastructure in the health sector by<br />
networking all health facilities and by providing adequate ICT<br />
tools and service delivery management.’’, albeit on a smaller pilot<br />
scale as a beginning. In 2007, strategies and priorities were<br />
articulated [21] within the context of Government’s development<br />
agenda as spelt out in the GPRS and of the three priority areas for<br />
transforming Ghana into a Middle Income Country by 2015<br />
include, Private Sector Development, Good Governance and<br />
Human Resource Development. The Ghana Reproductive Health<br />
Strategic Plan (2007-2011) includes six high-level objectives<br />
under its Safe Motherhood Policy, the first of which is to “reduce<br />
maternal morbidity and mortality.”<br />
In the author’s consultation with Ghana’s Head of Monitoring and<br />
Evaluation Department of the Ministry of Health Dr. A. Ofosu, he<br />
emphasized that ‘the use of mobile devices in the health sector in<br />
Ghana, has been increasing over the past five years. There are<br />
various pilot projects in Ghana where mobile devices are being<br />
used to; collect health data, facilitate Telemedicine, provide health<br />
messages to clients, follow-up children and women to reduce<br />
drop-out from service, manage logistics to reduce stock-outs,<br />
conduct Health Surveys and conduct facilitative supervision.’<br />
The mobile devices in use range from Pocket digital Assistants to<br />
simple phones and smart phones. Some of the initial pilots, using<br />
mobile devices, used pocket digital assistants, due to the low<br />
telephone network coverage. With the increase in availability of<br />
mobile communication service providers, phones of varying<br />
complexity have become the choice tool for use in various fields<br />
in health. Mobile technology holds immense potential for<br />
addressing health delivery bottlenecks. Indeed mobile devices will<br />
become as important as the stethoscope in the years ahead, Dr.<br />
Ofosu added.<br />
4.1.1.1 The Mobile Technologies for Community<br />
Health (MoTeCH) Initiative<br />
Improved maternal health, as is well known, is a major indicator<br />
for development and global initiatives to intensify policy<br />
intervention for maternal mortality began with the Safe<br />
Motherhood Initiative in 1987, a response to growing recognition<br />
that primary health-care programmes in many developing<br />
countries were not adequately focused on maternal health [10]. In<br />
an article by Rosemary Ardayfio titled ‘Improved Maternal<br />
Health. An Indicator of Development,’ reference was made to<br />
health delivery in the Northern Region ‘which is beset with<br />
several challenges including poor road networks, lack of<br />
electricity and inadequate community health workers’ [3].<br />
[1] in a paper, also discussing obstacles challenging maternal<br />
health in Ghana, listed them as limited geographical access by<br />
some clients, limited human resources; ageing midwives, and their<br />
numbers, inadequate funding, inadequate collaboration among
Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) and between<br />
MDAs and the Private sector, Socio-economic challenges, Lower<br />
literacy rate among females leading to low empowerment level,<br />
high poverty levels and poor health-seeking behaviours. Low risk<br />
perception. Service availability is also low and where available<br />
utilization is generally low especially in the rural and peri-urban<br />
areas, not forgetting harmful traditional practices.<br />
When ICTs are integrated into donor strategies implementation of<br />
programmes in developing countries produce effective results; the<br />
degree of corruption is reduced and democracy heightened.<br />
Within this context, the Ghana MoTeCH initiative which begun<br />
May 2010, aims to determine whether mobile phones can be an<br />
effective tool in managing healthcare data and transmitting health<br />
information to remote populations, with the ultimate goal of<br />
empowering rural folks by improving maternal and child health<br />
outcomes in rural Ghana. The project is led by the Ghana Health<br />
Services, in partnership with Columbia University’s Mailman<br />
School of Public Health and the Grameen Foundation. It is funded<br />
by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. MoTeCH is currently<br />
in its pilot phase, with plans to expand throughout Ghana in the<br />
future. The Upper East is one of the smallest and least urbanized<br />
regions in Ghana, with 85 percent of the population living in<br />
dispersed communities throughout the rural areas [58].<br />
The low population density and infrastructure barriers create a<br />
challenge for health care delivery, necessitating a communitybased<br />
approach. Over the past decade or so, Ghana has been<br />
operating its Community Health Planning and Services (CHPS)<br />
program, which utilizes traditional institutions and social<br />
networks with support from outreach nurses employed by the<br />
Ministry of Health to reach as many people in the rural areas as<br />
possible. It is on these CHPS centers and the nurses who work<br />
there, in particular, that MoTeCH focuses its efforts [[58] informs.<br />
The local communities’ aspect of the project investigates the<br />
question, “Can mobile phones be utilized to meaningfully answer<br />
questions and provide information to individuals in impoverished<br />
rural communities in a way that promotes better health<br />
practices[11];[6] evaluates the project as designed to answer<br />
policy questions regarding possible health service benefits of<br />
information technology. It is expected to build upon the promising<br />
healthcare reform efforts underway in Ghana by examining the<br />
feasibility of utilizing mobile phone technology for reforming<br />
routine health information operations and improving community<br />
healthcare worker efficiency and health service effectiveness. The<br />
project is working toward this goal by: reviewing existing health<br />
information systems and assessing community health service<br />
information needs, designing standardized registers for client<br />
information for community-based nurses; developing a<br />
community service delivery system for testing mobile phonebased<br />
information systems for improving maternal, newborn, and<br />
early childhood care; developing the district health management<br />
system software needed to accommodate mobile phonetransmitted<br />
service information; eavaluating the impact of mobile<br />
phone technology introduction on health service volume and<br />
delivery, and disseminating lessons learned about mobile phone<br />
applications to key stakeholders, policy makers, and health system<br />
managers so that, if effective, this type of data gathering can be<br />
replicated in similar settings [7].<br />
374<br />
Figure 1. Main Flows of Client and Reporting for MoTeCH<br />
Information Source: (Grameen Foundation, March, 2011)<br />
Figure 2. MoTeCH Impact (Author)<br />
are increasingly using mobile phones to create new livelihoods to<br />
enhance their lifestyles, while governments are using them to<br />
improve service delivery and citizen feedback mechanisms<br />
5. IMPACT ASSESSMENT<br />
5.1 Acceptance<br />
Mobile phones, are opening up a powerful new avenue of<br />
ommunication and information‐sharing for the population, and a<br />
alberg Global Development Advisors study, commissioned by the<br />
UN Foundation and Vodafone Foundation Technology<br />
Partnership notes that monitoring and evaluation efforts can face<br />
critical challenges in the short term, particularly with limited<br />
budgets to fund such activities such as the MoTeCH initiative<br />
[55]. As mHealth applications improve the process of data<br />
collection and the incorporation of data into decision making, will<br />
provide a foundation upon which to conduct long-term impact<br />
evaluations.<br />
In the MoTeCH context, one could safely say the target<br />
population has developed the capabilities for effective use of the<br />
mobile phone since the women feel less afraid and are more<br />
confident because the information conveyed is coming from<br />
health professionals. The messages are also helping them to
change their behaviour, improve their diet, seek care when they<br />
need it, and convince their husbands and families that many<br />
traditional beliefs and practices may not be good for the mother or<br />
baby [25].<br />
Nurses meanwhile are reporting that women are indeed coming to<br />
the health facility because of information received through the<br />
mobile phone. Additionally, the time that nurses save in not<br />
having to aggregate their monthly data returns manually, due to<br />
the electronic reports MoTeCH generates, means significantly<br />
more time can be spent on patient care. Efficiency and<br />
effectiveness are illustrated here.<br />
The Upper East Regional Director of Health Services, Dr Koku<br />
Awoonor-Williams, has said MoTeCH has improved health care<br />
delivery after its inception in some districts in the region There<br />
are improvements in deliveries from 45 percent to 52 percent and<br />
postnatal registrants from 26.9 percent to 63 percent [6]. This<br />
makes it possible to assert that MoTeCH has empowered pregnant<br />
women and new mothers to make the right choices concerning<br />
their conditions or even protected their human rights.<br />
5.2 Sustainability<br />
[28], in focusing on sustainable mobile Health or m-Health in<br />
developing countries, has noted that Health projects are far more<br />
likely to be sustainable in cases where buy-in from governmental<br />
or public bodies is secured. In this way, the project is<br />
institutionalized into existing government health programs and<br />
can receive budget attention. It is very important that a mobile<br />
Health project have the support of government. Ghana has done<br />
this through its Health Sector reforms which have made room for<br />
the maximum use of ICTs. The majority of m-Health projects are<br />
currently funded by international agencies or corporate social<br />
responsibility (CSR) initiatives of companies. For every m-Health<br />
project, therefore, it is critical to ensure that the program is<br />
aligned with the strategic goals of the national health system.<br />
Even though health sector funding has gradually increased over<br />
the years, the percentage that goes into actual service delivery<br />
remains low. About 90% of the health sector budget is spent on<br />
salaries and wages; since 2006 the share allocated to capital<br />
spending has dropped [41] continued. Current policy<br />
environments, business models and funding schemes around m-<br />
Health have fuelled the proliferation of pilot projects without<br />
enabling them to scale up in a meaningful, replicable way. An<br />
additional, and perhaps most significant, obstacle to improving<br />
and scaling the implementation of m-Health initiatives is the lack<br />
of monitoring and evaluation (M&E) and use of meaningful,<br />
consistent indicators and rigorous evaluation methods [36]<br />
laments. Additionally, [39] point out, “to overcome these<br />
obstacles around cost, access, and standards, healthcare systems<br />
must be highly innovative and inventive in their approach to<br />
delivering services. One way is to leverage the experience of other<br />
sectors that have used technology to improve their processes’ To<br />
avoid implementations such as MoTeCH being seen as a<br />
temporary project, visible ownership by the local implementation<br />
partner needs to be built in from the outset. Involvement of the<br />
375<br />
local partner needs to be not only in decision-making at the top<br />
but also in day-to-day management in the field [25].<br />
While these have been possible with the project, there is the need<br />
to step up future plans and actions of participants which could be<br />
used to customize future like-minded programs. As is well known,<br />
mobile phone usage in whatever field whether agriculture,<br />
banking and so on, derive from livelihood needs.<br />
The MoTeCH initiative recognized Ghana Government’s desire<br />
to, “improve ICT infrastructure in the health sector by networking<br />
all health facilities and by providing adequate ICT tools and<br />
service delivery management’’[24].<br />
The subject of long term sustainability is however in doubt. [25]<br />
believes that for MoTeCH system to survive beyond the life of the<br />
grant, ‘A broader country strategy for m-Health will help with<br />
sustainability.’<br />
This means if the Ministry of Health and Ghana Health Service<br />
could develop a comprehensive strategy for how m-Health will be<br />
approached, it should facilitate NGOs and other stakeholders<br />
coming together to design programs that fit together; a measure<br />
for continuous evaluation of systems, as one passes through<br />
various stages of implementation. Its framework too, can be tested<br />
on real or simulated environment to prove its worthiness the<br />
Foundation emphasizes.<br />
5.3 Awareness<br />
By mobilizing supply and demand, MoTeCH manages to deploy<br />
important and relevant messages to the target population.<br />
Community Health Workers (CHOs) transmit information<br />
obtained through the mobile phone to the patient database which<br />
in turn gets automatic reporting to the Ghana Health Service.<br />
Alerts and reminders are sent to CHO from patient database which<br />
facilitate scheduling of home visits in communities, ensure that<br />
services to pregnant women are provided in a timely manner.<br />
These include reminders on vaccinations for children. These<br />
reminders serve as awareness channels for the target population.<br />
There is broad agreement therefore, that access to communication<br />
is one of several essential components to enhance improvement in<br />
maternal health services. Here, the use of mobile phones has much<br />
potential. However, there is a need for robust evidence on<br />
constraints and impacts, especially when financial and human<br />
resources will be invested say [37].<br />
5.4 Implications of Mobile Phone Usage<br />
This paper believes in the suggestion that human capital is created<br />
by changing persons so as to give them skills and capabilities that<br />
make them able to act in new and improved ways. Development<br />
of the capabilities for effective use of a mobile phone also leads to<br />
enhancement of social capital or empowerment as noted<br />
elsewhere in this paper. Malcolm Gladwell said “poverty is not<br />
deprivation. It is isolation.” Often the “smallest technological<br />
advances create the largest social impacts” [22].<br />
Communication is important and universal and this paper affirms<br />
that mobile technology helps provide a cure against the isolation.<br />
6. DISCUSSION<br />
While the benefits are undeniable, mobility comes at its own<br />
price. It is imperative to plan extensively before deployment and
continue monitoring after implementation to prevent issues and<br />
maintain an optimal user experience. The benefits of mobile<br />
technology, combined with the improvement that mobile phones<br />
offer over PDA's in terms of data loss and uploading difficulties,<br />
make mobile phones a feasible method of data collection that<br />
needs to be further explored. Mobile-phone based technology for<br />
health is an emerging field in addressing health problems in the<br />
developing world declares [14], but it is imperative to note that<br />
most of the world –wide initiatives are disease specific and<br />
importantly, they are not integrated into health strategies, as<br />
Ghana is doing. Without integration into national ICT Policies,<br />
inefficiencies in this m-Health system remain unaddressed. For<br />
example, MoTeCH would have failed if PDAs and smart phones<br />
were used because they are expensive; this obviously makes<br />
impact of these initiatives more often than not “methodologically<br />
unsound”. MoTeCH is not disease-specific. Its focus is to improve<br />
access to a broad range of essential health services with special<br />
emphasis on pregnant women and infants.<br />
eHealth technologies according to [61] are essential when they are<br />
firstly, integrated into health services that meet basic needs,<br />
secondly, have been proven to be cost-efficient and also, when<br />
they meet well-defined specifications and have been validated<br />
through controlled clinical studies or rest on a widely accepted<br />
consensus by experts.<br />
The Head of Monitoring and Evaluation of the Ministry of Health<br />
in Ghana Dr Ofosu has admitted, during the author’s<br />
consultations, that the MoTeCH innovation was possible because<br />
of a mixture of factors including the significant health gaps,<br />
targeted private and public funding, and most important of all, the<br />
flourishing mobile markets. With the use of Mobile phones it is<br />
easy to track health outcomes and deviations may improve the<br />
healthcare system's ability to assess population health. Similarly,<br />
mobile applications could be used to track health trends as an<br />
early indicator of emerging health issues.<br />
On the question of trends that have developed as a result of the<br />
use of mobile technology, Dr. Ofosu mentioned that, the effect<br />
has been ‘huge’ in his words, ‘increase demand for services that<br />
makes service adjust to accommodate the increase contributes to<br />
improvement in quality of care.’ In other words, there is improved<br />
access to data for generating information for decision making.<br />
This definitely leads to an improvement in post-treatment<br />
understanding. Mobile technology gives pregnant women and the<br />
Community Health workers, a convenient medium to monitor ante<br />
and post natal instructions and double check prescriptions.<br />
Medication accuracy, a huge patient safety issue, could improve<br />
as a result. One can therefore, safely assume that MoTeCH mainly<br />
addresses information gap in pregnant women and the population<br />
- a way to advance the use of mobile telephony to support the<br />
achievement of the Millennium Development Goals for health.<br />
Research has revealed the beneficial outcome of savings of<br />
transportation costs, time and also the ability to reallocate the<br />
saved income from travel to other important activities. Overall,<br />
however, there is lack of empirical data and research concerning<br />
how the poor absorb the costs of mobile phones, and uncertainty<br />
about possible negative outcomes associated with the reallocation<br />
of cash resources such as between male and female household<br />
members [17]. Evaluation is part of a process that can determine<br />
cost-effectiveness, and involves educating the public about the<br />
benefits of m-Health, and leads to government policy – all of<br />
which were reported as among the most important barriers to m-<br />
376<br />
Health adoption by Member States [59]. Despite the need for<br />
evaluation, a survey found that results-based evaluation of m-<br />
Health implementations is not routinely conducted. Only 12% of<br />
Member States reported evaluating m-Health services. This may<br />
be because short term challenges of limited funding are faced by<br />
the implementing agencies. m-Health applications improve the<br />
process of data collection and the incorporation of data into<br />
decision making, Thus providing a foundation upon which to<br />
conduct long-term impact evaluations [57]. The use of mobile<br />
phones in the health sector as confirmed by [33] and, necessarily<br />
leads to; quick, timely high quality affordable healthcare for all,<br />
everywhere, at any time; overcomes shortage of healthcare staff<br />
and funding and optimization of patient care; Enhances preventive<br />
care; Protects human rights; and educates and thus empowers<br />
citizens, and so on.<br />
7. CONCLUSIONS<br />
Currently, there has been a proliferation of multiple approaches to<br />
thinking about health systems and there are many ways in which<br />
the term “health system strengthening” is used [37]. The<br />
penetration of mobile phone networks in many low- and middleincome<br />
countries surpasses other infrastructure such as paved<br />
roads and electricity, and dwarfs fixed Internet deployment. The<br />
growing sophistication of these networks – offering higher and<br />
higher speeds of data transmission alongside cheaper and more<br />
powerful handsets – are transforming the way health services and<br />
information are accessed, delivered, and managed. With increased<br />
accessibility comes the possibility of greater personalization and<br />
citizen-focused public health and medical care [59].<br />
Universally speaking, cellular technology has six main intrinsic<br />
features appropriate for its adoption in developing countries: low<br />
infrastructure investment, ease of use, low energy consumption,<br />
affordability of services and devices, surpassing unfavorable<br />
geographic structures and less vulnerability to vandalism and<br />
natural disasters than other technologies. With a myriad of<br />
obstacles preventing low-income countries from increasing their<br />
ICT uptake, this paper shows that Ghana’s MoTeCH project is<br />
truly cutting-edge. It fills critical knowledge gaps about the<br />
feasibility of using mobile phone technology to improve routine<br />
maternal health information operations, and demonstrates the<br />
possibility of using information systems as a tool to deliver<br />
community healthcare more efficiently and effectively [7].<br />
However, still in its infancy, mHealth runs the risk of not realizing<br />
full potential due to small‐scale implementations and pilot<br />
projects with limited reach. [37] has insisted in research work on<br />
the topic with others. The Ghana Health Service admits that little<br />
research has been done on the feasibility of utilizing mobile phone<br />
technology for reforming routine health information operations<br />
and improving community health care worker efficiency and<br />
health service effectiveness. Also, few studies have investigated<br />
the use of mobile phones as a data collection tool in low income<br />
countries. [46] suggests; with the increasing application of ICT<br />
and e-networks within countries, the concept of e-governance has<br />
arisen. E-governance deals with the whole spectrum of the<br />
relationships and networks within government that involve the use<br />
and application of ICTs as shown in Chart 1 of the MoTeCH<br />
initiative. Similarly, the advent of global ICT networks and<br />
globalization is challenging these recent concepts, and global ehealth<br />
governance is emerging as a major issue, Scott continued.<br />
A concluding question for future research is how to control
activities such as the MoTeCH partnership (health related and<br />
otherwise) that increasingly reside in the hands of globally<br />
distributed entities.<br />
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If We Build it Will They Come? A Mixed-Method<br />
Exploration of High Speed Broadband Access and<br />
Economic Development<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
High speed broadband internet is often heralded as an effective<br />
economic development tool. To realize the purported benefits of<br />
broadband services, federal, state and local governments are<br />
investing in its expansion. However, the relationship between high<br />
speed broadband and the economic health of North Carolina<br />
communities is unknown. Using quantitative and qualitative<br />
methods, this study explores the relationship between high speed<br />
broadband and the economic health and economic development<br />
activities in North Carolina.<br />
Categories and Subject Descriptors<br />
B.4.3[INPUT/OUTPUT AND DATA COMMUNICATIONS]:<br />
Interconnections (Subsystems) - Fiber Optics; C.2.5<br />
[COMPUTER-COMMUNICATION NETWORKS]: Local and<br />
Wide-Area Networks - High Speed (Fiber), Internet; G.3<br />
[MATHEMATICS OF COMPUTING]: Probability and Statistics<br />
- Correlation and Regression Analysis, Multivariate Statistics;<br />
K.4.2 [COMPUTERS AND SOCIETY]: Social Issues -<br />
Employment<br />
General Terms<br />
Measurement, Economics, Theory<br />
Keywords<br />
High Speed Broadband, Economic Development, ICT, North<br />
Carolina<br />
1. INTRODUCTION<br />
1.1 Background<br />
High speed broadband internet (hereafter referred to as<br />
broadband), defined by the FCC as a connection of at least 768<br />
kbps downstream and greater than 200 kbps upstream at the time<br />
of this analysis, is often heralded as an effective economic<br />
development tool. Proponents argue it should enhance<br />
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bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for<br />
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Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to<br />
post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission<br />
and/or a fee.<br />
ICEGOV '12, October 22 - 25 2012, Albany, NY, United States, NY, USA<br />
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1200-4/12/10…$15.00.<br />
Amy Huffman<br />
Center for Public Technology<br />
CB #3330<br />
Chapel Hill, NC 27599<br />
arhuffman7@gmail.com<br />
379<br />
communities’ ability to attract new businesses and industries<br />
while retaining and improving their existing businesses [6]. To<br />
realize broadband’s projected economic and social benefits,<br />
federal, state and local governments are investing in its expansion<br />
[9]. In North Carolina, several governmental agencies and nonprofits<br />
such as the Golden LEAF Foundation, MCNC, and local<br />
governments invested in building a broadband infrastructure with<br />
hopes of positive results [16]. However, the literature on the<br />
relationship between broadband and economic growth is mixed<br />
and little research on its impact on NC communities has been<br />
conducted to date.<br />
1.2. Literature Review<br />
While ample research on broadband’s overall impact on society<br />
exists, few studies focus exclusively on its impact on the<br />
economic health of local economies and their economic<br />
development efforts. However, several studies measure and<br />
analyze the relationship between broadband infrastructure and<br />
economic growth. Czernick et. al, argue an increase in broadband<br />
availability positively impacts economic growth at a macro-level<br />
as their data from 25 OECD countries over eleven years (1996-<br />
2007) to draw these conclusions [2]. Koutroumpis also studied 22<br />
OECD countries from 2002-2007 to measure broadband’s impact<br />
on economic growth using a structural econometric model<br />
measuring the supply of and demand for broadband infrastructure<br />
[10]. He found evidence for a significant causal positive link<br />
between broadband infrastructure and economic growth [10]. Lehr<br />
et al. found broadband access positively impacts economic growth<br />
through statistical analysis of broadband penetration at the state<br />
level nationwide, individual communities, and a matched sample<br />
analysis of residential and small businesses broadband use [11].<br />
Kolko found similar results in California [9]. Kolko’s research,<br />
however, questioned whether a causal relationship between<br />
broadband infrastructure and economic growth exists [9]. He<br />
noted it is unclear whether there indeed is a causal relationship or<br />
if the correlation is a function of advancements in other areas [9].<br />
Kolko also suggested that while broadband expansion offers some<br />
economic benefits, the economic benefits to individual citizens<br />
are limited [9].<br />
Ford & Koutsky studied the impact municipal investment in<br />
broadband expansion has on economic growth [6]. They used an<br />
econometric model to compare one county, Lake County, who<br />
possessed an extensive municipally-owned broadband network, in<br />
comparison to other counties in Florida [6]. The authors found<br />
Lake County’s economic activity doubled relative to comparable<br />
Florida counties [6]. In addition, the authors also argued<br />
municipal broadband infrastructure is more successful than
private broadband infrastructure in improving economic growth<br />
[6].<br />
Other studies focused on geography and demographics and their<br />
relationship to broadband’s economic impact. Horrigan et al.<br />
found that broadband use increases in larger cities, cities with<br />
large telecommunications-intensive economic sectors and other<br />
demographics heavily influence broadband use [7]. Kandilov and<br />
Renkow question whether an investment made by the US<br />
Broadband Loan Program or sheer proximity to urban areas is a<br />
better predictor of economic growth [8]. They used quantitative<br />
data and an econometric model to measure the impact the US<br />
Broadband Loan Program has had on increasing economic vitality<br />
in rural areas [8]. Their findings suggest the positive outcomes are<br />
not a result of the loan program, but of a specific location’s<br />
proximity to other urban areas [8].<br />
The FCC’s National Broadband Plan suggests the absence of<br />
broadband infrastructure is more important in a business’s<br />
location decision than the presence of broadband. The report<br />
predicts, “Communities without broadband infrastructure will find<br />
it more difficult to attract investment,” [4]. Similarly, in a survey<br />
conducted by the International Economic Development Council,<br />
broadband was determined to be one of many factors that<br />
influence business’s location decisions [14].<br />
Thus, while some studies suggest broadband is important in<br />
stimulating economic growth still others argue proximity to urban<br />
areas is more influential than broadband in increasing economic<br />
growth, indicating the disagreement among scholars on<br />
broadband’s influence on economic health in local communities<br />
[2, 6, 8, 10, 11]. To date, research also suggests businesses<br />
consider broadband during the location decision process, although<br />
the absence of broadband is more important than its presence in<br />
their decision [4, 14]. NC specific research is limited, and the<br />
relationship between broadband and economic growth and<br />
broadband and economic development efforts in NC communities<br />
is currently unknown.<br />
2. RESEARCH QUESTIONS<br />
As long as these gaps in the literature and empirical research<br />
remain, North Carolina local governments have little information<br />
on how their current broadband infrastructure impacts their local<br />
economy and even less information to guide their use of<br />
broadband to improve economic development efforts. This study<br />
seeks to understand the impact broadband has on the economic<br />
health of North Carolina counties and what some communities are<br />
doing to utilize broadband to improve their economic well-being<br />
through economic development efforts. To inform local<br />
governments how to best leverage broadband as an economic<br />
development tool while addressing the gap in the existing<br />
literature on broadband access and economic development this<br />
study addresses the following research questions:<br />
How has access to high speed broadband internet affected North<br />
Carolina communities’ 1 economic health?<br />
1<br />
For the purposes of this study, community(ies) is defined as a<br />
county or a municipality.<br />
380<br />
How are some North Carolina communities’ using high speed<br />
broadband internet to support their economic development<br />
efforts?<br />
3. METHODOLOGY<br />
3.1. Overview<br />
To understand the county level impact and the strategic<br />
implications of broadband on NC communities’ economies and<br />
their economic development efforts, a mixed-method, two phased<br />
approach was employed. North Carolina was chosen because of<br />
the author’s affiliation with the state as a North Carolina native. In<br />
addition, this study focuses on North Carolina as a complement to<br />
the current “Rural Broadband Initiative Evaluation,” of<br />
broadband’s impact in North Carolina being conducted by the<br />
UNC-School of Government’s Center for Public Technology [16].<br />
The county was the primary unit of analysis for phase one, while<br />
the level of analysis in phase two was the community, which<br />
includes two counties and one municipality.<br />
In phase one, a series of correlations were performed to first<br />
determine if a relationship between broadband and the economic<br />
health of communities existed. After a significant relationship was<br />
found, a multivariate regression was performed to determine the<br />
level of impact broadband has on employment growth in North<br />
Carolina’s 100 counties. Employment growth rate, a proxy for the<br />
health or performance of a local economy, from 2005 to 2010 was<br />
chosen as the dependent variable [1, 15]. Data were collected for<br />
the model’s seven independent variables: broadband penetration,<br />
proximity to urban county, projected education level, population<br />
density, median household income, annual average temperature<br />
(a proxy for climate as an influential factor in location decisions),<br />
and average unemployment rate. Each independent variable was<br />
chosen to represent different factors traditionally considered to<br />
impact employment growth rate [1, 15].<br />
In phase two, comparative case studies of three communities<br />
provide an in-depth understanding of broadband’s impact on<br />
economic development efforts at the community level,<br />
specifically addressing the second research question.<br />
Communities with known investments in high-speed connectivity<br />
were explicitly chosen so lessons on how to best use broadband as<br />
an economic development tool could be gained. Experts in the<br />
field identified several communities satisfying this requirement,<br />
after which a standardized selection method considering<br />
geography, jurisdictional type, economic tier level, as defined by<br />
the North Carolina Department of Commerce, and broadband<br />
ownership further narrowed the list of qualified communities [13].<br />
Catawba County, Rutherford County and the City of Wilson were<br />
selected based on their fulfillment of the selection criteria. Data<br />
were gathered through eleven semi-structured interviews with<br />
local government officials 2 and other experts identified through<br />
expert selection and snowball sampling. The interviews consisted<br />
of a standard set of fifteen pre-tested interview questions. Content<br />
analysis was performed then coded for theme development.<br />
3.2. Limitations<br />
2 Interviewees identities are anonymous and confidential, thus any<br />
identifier such as their position or title is not listed to further<br />
ensure their anonymity.
The methodology contains inherent limitations. The standard data<br />
available for measuring broadband penetration in the United<br />
States is a scaled measure rather than an exact number of<br />
households subscribing to broadband services, or the penetration<br />
rate. 3 The scaled measure is inherently a weak measure because<br />
of its inability to account for slight differences in the penetration<br />
rate. It only encapsulates large differences, thus a granular<br />
investigation of broadband’s impact on employment growth is not<br />
possible with the available data. However, until more granular<br />
data is made more widely available to researchers, the use of this<br />
data is standard. In addition, data for the penetration rate is not<br />
available at the county level prior to December of 2008 [5]. By<br />
2008, much of the broadband infrastructure had been installed in<br />
North Carolina, thus determining the precise economic effect<br />
broadband has on economic growth is not possible with the<br />
current data.<br />
The employment growth rate and unemployment rate data were<br />
skewed due to the financial recession between 2008 and 2010. As<br />
such, employment and unemployment growth rates were<br />
calculated from 2005-2010 to account for any variance the<br />
recession may have caused. The interviews were subject to<br />
respondent induced biases as most interviewees had a vested<br />
interest in their community’s high-speed broadband infrastructure<br />
and thus strongly believe it improves their economic development<br />
efforts. Finally, due to time and resource constraints,<br />
representatives of the business communities were not included in<br />
the interview sample. As such, secondary sources provide<br />
information on broadband’s effect on business’ location decisions.<br />
4. ANALYSIS<br />
4.1 Quantitative Analysis<br />
Understanding how broadband currently affects the local<br />
economy fosters the design of policies and strategies that more<br />
comprehensively address issues facing broadband expansion and<br />
its relationship to the local economy and economic development<br />
efforts. For this reason, a quantitative analysis, consisting of<br />
correlations and a multivariate regression, was undertaken to<br />
explore the relationship between broadband and the overall<br />
economic health of North Carolina counties.<br />
The correlation for broadband penetration and employment<br />
growth was .327, demonstrating a relationship between broadband<br />
and employment growth rate exists. The multivariate regression<br />
model, which controls for variables that typically influence<br />
employment growth, indicates broadband availability does not<br />
significantly influence the employment growth rate between 2005<br />
3 FCC Form 477 measures Residential Fixed High-Speed<br />
Connections at least 768 kbps downstream and greater than 200<br />
kbps upstream per 1000 Households (BTOP/BIP Definition) on<br />
a scale of zero to five on the following scale: 1=Greater than<br />
0 and less than/equal to 200 households connected per 1000<br />
households 2=Greater than 200 and less than/equal to 400<br />
households connected per 1000 households 3=Greater than 400<br />
and less than/equal to 600 households connected per 1000<br />
households 4=Greater than 600 and less than/equal to 800<br />
households connected per 1000 households 5=Greater than 800<br />
households connected per 1000 households<br />
381<br />
and 2010. As shown in Figure 1, the model’s adjusted r squared<br />
was .364, however, broadband penetration’s significance was<br />
.266, indicating it has no influence on the employment growth rate<br />
between 2005 and 2010.<br />
Model Summary<br />
Model R R Square Adjusted<br />
R Square<br />
Std. Error<br />
of the<br />
Estimate<br />
1 .639 .409 .364 5.19031<br />
Figure 1. Regression Model Summary<br />
Many factors could cause broadband’s lack of significance in<br />
influencing the employment growth rate. However, its lack of<br />
significance in the current model is at least in part due to the high<br />
level of penetration in North Carolina by 2008. For example, a<br />
2007 e-NC Authority report found that at that time broadband was<br />
available to 79.64 % of residents in rural counties and 86.98% of<br />
residents in urban counties [3]. As access increases, the relative<br />
level of its impact on economic growth diminishes or decreases<br />
[12]. Thus, it is likely North Carolina has already realized the<br />
majority of the possible economic gains broadband, as it is<br />
currently measured, fosters. Henceforth it is likely broadband’s<br />
impact on economic growth will be more localized, occurring at<br />
an individual community or even sub-community level; which<br />
may not hold significance at the county level if economic gains<br />
are not widespread.<br />
4.2 Qualitative Analysis<br />
The qualitative analysis’s primary goal is to provide an in-depth<br />
understanding of how broadband affects economic development<br />
efforts at the community level. The case studies were compared<br />
and contrasted on the following dimensions: background and<br />
contextual information, broadband’s use in supporting business<br />
recruitment, retention and expansion, and its use in other<br />
economic development efforts.<br />
4.2.1 Catawba County<br />
Catawba County’s broadband infrastructure was primarily<br />
installed by private providers who continue to provide services to<br />
both citizens and businesses. Between 400 and 600 residents per<br />
1000 residents have access to broadband in Catawba County. 4<br />
Catawba County primarily uses broadband to recruit, retain and<br />
expand businesses, specifically high-tech data centers. One<br />
interviewee explained broadband’s importance in the process in<br />
the following way: “Well, certainly with our focus on data<br />
centers, the broadband is not simply a requirement it is one of the<br />
most important priorities. Behind power, broadband availability<br />
with redundancies is the most important issue. That’s one of our<br />
three primary target markets. And so, the access to broadband is<br />
mandatory to be able to target that sector, and we’re counting on<br />
that sector as a strong component of our future economy.”<br />
Interviewees indicated without Catawba County’s broadband<br />
infrastructure Apple would not have located there. One<br />
interviewee said, “Let’s just say, the world’s largest technology<br />
4 As of December 2010. From FCC Form 477. The date is the<br />
same for Rutherford County and the Wilson.
company is now located in Catawba county and in North Carolina<br />
only as a result of having broadband capabilities. Every iPhone<br />
and iPad application is being shipped through Catawba County<br />
and North Carolina now. So that’s a pretty dramatic reality that<br />
we would have missed had broadband infrastructure not been in<br />
place.” While another interviewee described broadband to be as<br />
important as other utilities in terms of economic development<br />
when they said, “It’s a utility that’s expected.” In addition, the<br />
county experiences direct economic benefits in the form of jobs<br />
and capital investments as several firms responsible for fiber<br />
production are located in Catawba County.<br />
Catawba County also uses broadband to improve the citizens’<br />
quality of life and enable businesses to offer employees the option<br />
to telecommute, and to attract employees wishing to telecommute.<br />
As one interviewee explained, broadband enables people who<br />
want to relocate to Catawba County to do so even if their job is<br />
not located in the county. The interviewee said, “We’re finding at<br />
this point there’s a number of people relocating to Catawba<br />
County. And they’re relocating there because their job is actually<br />
giving them enough flexibility that they can work anywhere.”<br />
4.2.2 Rutherford County<br />
The primary broadband infrastructure in Rutherford County was<br />
funded and installed through a partnership with the county, the<br />
Golden Leaf Foundation and other funders, and local non-profits<br />
Polk Area Network for Government Academic and Enterprise<br />
Activities, PANGAEA, and Foothills Connect. Based out of Polk<br />
County, PANGAEA provides and sells fiber fostered broadband<br />
services to local government agencies, education facilities,<br />
healthcare providers, first responders and other non-profits [17].<br />
The broadband infrastructure serves between 200 and 400<br />
residential connections per 1000 households.<br />
Like Catawba County, Rutherford County uses their broadband<br />
network to recruit and retain high-tech firms. Rutherford County<br />
recruited Facebook and the State Data Center, two large<br />
organizations that interviewees said would not have located there<br />
but for their broadband network. As one interviewee said,<br />
“Indirectly I can definitely say Facebook would not have located<br />
one of their server farms in Rutherford County had there not been<br />
adequate broadband infrastructure in the county. The same can be<br />
said of the state data center which is also located in Rutherford<br />
County.”<br />
Rutherford County also uses broadband to support entrepreneurial<br />
development. A non-profit, Foothills Connect, used broadband to<br />
set up a website for local farmers to sell their produce to regional<br />
buyers. The program enables farmers to sell to customers and<br />
markets they would not have access to without the broadband<br />
facilitated program. An interviewee described the program as a<br />
place, “Where people will go online, they’ll register as customers<br />
and clients and they will order online directly from the farmers.<br />
And it all comes through the Foothills Connect Farmer’s Fresh<br />
Market website program. And this allows farmers who ordinarily<br />
would not have had access; you know easy convenience access, to<br />
these markets and these people and buying clubs, so that they can<br />
sell their produce. And what the Farmer’s Fresh Market Program<br />
does is it connects these clients with these farmers.”<br />
4.2.3 The City of Wilson<br />
Private providers and Greenlight, the city-owned broadband<br />
network established in 2008 by the City of Wilson, built Wilson’s<br />
infrastructure. As one of the only city-owned broadband providers<br />
382<br />
in North Carolina, Greenlight competes with private companies<br />
such as Time Warner and Century Link in selling broadband<br />
internet as well as television and phone services to Wilson’s<br />
citizens and businesses. Between 400 and 600 per 1000 residents<br />
have access to broadband in Wilson.<br />
Similar to Catawba and Rutherford Counties, Wilson also uses<br />
broadband to attract businesses, particularly high-tech firms.<br />
However, among the three communities, Wilson is the most<br />
proactive in using broadband to retain, expand, and support<br />
existing businesses. Wilson prides itself in providing high-quality<br />
products at a low cost, competitive with private providers, through<br />
Greenlight. Interviewees indicated local businesses subscribing to<br />
Greenlight’s services realize significant monetary savings, which<br />
can then be reinvested into their businesses. In addition, Wilson<br />
also uses their network to improve the quality of life their<br />
community offers citizens. One interviewee explained the network<br />
improves quality of life in the following way, “When you’re<br />
trying to attract pharmaceutical companies, high end technical<br />
companies, their employees and their staff are going to want very<br />
good connectivity at home as well so that they can telecommute<br />
when necessary or when that’s available to them. And we can do<br />
that through our broadband network.”<br />
5. FINDINGS<br />
5.1 Broadband Does Not Significantly Impact<br />
Employment Growth<br />
Similar to other studies, the quantitative analysis suggests a strong<br />
relationship between broadband and economic health does not<br />
exist. However, some studies have found it may impact some<br />
industry sectors, such as information technology, more than others<br />
[15]. Thus, analyzing broadband’s impact on each industrial<br />
sector could yield different results. In addition, as employment<br />
growth has been used as a proxy for the economic health of a<br />
community in this and other studies, and results have not been<br />
found, it is possible that employment growth rate is too broad or<br />
rough as a measure of economic health. Thus the use of a different<br />
dependent variable, such as the number of new business startups,<br />
could yield different results. Indeed, the qualitative analysis<br />
suggests there is a stronger relationship between broadband and a<br />
community’s economic health than the quantitative analysis<br />
demonstrates.<br />
5.2 Broadband is Important in Attracting and<br />
Retaining Businesses<br />
The qualitative analysis’s most significant finding is that<br />
broadband is used as a business attraction and retention tool by<br />
local government leaders involved in the business recruitment and<br />
retention process. Similar to findings from the literature, the case<br />
studies’ findings suggest broadband ranks as important as water,<br />
sewer and electricity to communities as they work to attract and<br />
retain businesses [6]. As one interviewee said, “…honestly I think<br />
that everyone needs to look at it as basic infrastructure like a<br />
water line or a sewer line because in the last few years that is<br />
basically what it has become.” The remaining ten interviewees<br />
echoed this sentiment, saying they viewed broadband as a utility<br />
or an essential part of their basic infrastructure in their<br />
communities. They also all said they use broadband to recruit<br />
businesses, especially high-tech data centers and firms. They do<br />
so through a variety of means, but primarily by providing
information about their broadband system’s speeds, rates and<br />
access. Each community stressed the importance of a high-quality<br />
broadband system with the capacity for high-speed uploads and<br />
downloads in attracting high-tech industries.<br />
All three communities also use broadband as a tool in aiding<br />
business retention and expansion, albeit less so than it is for<br />
business attraction. Interviewees from Catawba and Rutherford<br />
indicated the proliferation of broadband contributes to business<br />
satisfaction and enables expansion, thus improving business<br />
retention and expansion efforts.<br />
While it is evident broadband is important in business recruitment,<br />
retention and expansion, its importance relative to other factors<br />
influential in business location and expansion decisions is unclear.<br />
Some respondents indicated broadband was the most important<br />
factor in recruiting certain businesses while others believed it was<br />
important to have, but was not the most important factor. As one<br />
respondent stated, “I’ve had some other industries who have said<br />
it was not a significant factor or deciding factor, but was among<br />
the factors that led to their decision to locate.” Conversely,<br />
interviewees from Catawba and Rutherford County indicated that<br />
without their broadband infrastructure neither Apple nor<br />
Facebook, respectively, would have located in their communities.<br />
While it is unclear whether broadband is more important than<br />
other business location decision factors, it may create a serious<br />
disadvantage for communities without an existing adequate<br />
infrastructure. As one respondent noted, “Despite the economic<br />
downturn that we have been experiencing, not one person or<br />
business is using less data than they were using before the<br />
downturn. Every one of us expects to have more power,<br />
computing power, and communications power in our hands or on<br />
our desk despite the downturn. And so a community that doesn’t<br />
realize their future is tied to communications facilitated by<br />
broadband, they’re probably missing the biggest opportunity<br />
coming down the pipes.” Similarly, another respondent said, “If it<br />
(broadband infrastructure) is not there, they (businesses) won’t<br />
locate there.” Similar to findings in the literature, the negative<br />
impact of not having broadband seems it may be more significant<br />
than the positive impact of having broadband available in one’s<br />
community [4]. Through this study, it is evident some businesses<br />
view broadband as an essential utility or piece of infrastructure<br />
that needs to be present if they are to locate there. Thus, as the<br />
FCC’s National Broadband Plan predicted, it is possible<br />
broadband’s absence may be more significant as a deterrent than<br />
its presence is as an attraction for businesses [4].<br />
5.3 Broadband Can Support Other Economic<br />
Development Activities<br />
The qualitative analysis suggests broadband also affects nontraditional<br />
economic development activities or strategies such as<br />
entrepreneurial development and attracting quality employees<br />
improving citizens’ quality of life. Several interviewees noted<br />
broadband improved their citizens’ quality of life through the<br />
provision of faster internet access, and the provision of the<br />
opportunity to telecommute. As an interviewee from Wilson<br />
explained, the opportunity to telecommute is particularly<br />
important in attracting pharmaceutical and high-tech firms<br />
because their employees want and expect to be able to<br />
telecommute if permitted.<br />
383<br />
6. RECOMMENDATIONS FOR FUTURE<br />
RESEARCH AND CONCLUSION<br />
6.1. Recommendations for Future Research<br />
Although this study’s findings add to the existing literature on<br />
broadband’s impact on the economic health of local communities<br />
and its relation to economic development activities in some<br />
communities, many questions surrounding broadband and<br />
economic development remain. More research is needed to<br />
determine broadband’s importance relative to other business<br />
location decision factors, whether the lack of broadband indeed<br />
disadvantages communities and if so how it does so. In addition,<br />
more research is needed to determine whether the lack of<br />
broadband indeed is more significant as a disadvantage than its<br />
presence is as an advantage for communities. Future research<br />
should also focus on businesses and how different types of<br />
businesses use and view broadband.<br />
6.2. Conclusion<br />
While many questions remain, this study explores the relationship<br />
between broadband and the economic health and economic<br />
development activities in North Carolina, using quantitative and<br />
qualitative methods. The quantitative data shows there is no<br />
significant correlation between employment growth rate and<br />
broadband in North Carolina’s counties, however, the case studies<br />
indicate there is more to the story. Broadband may not impact<br />
total employment growth at the county level, but at a more local<br />
level, it is influential. As an interviewee said, “It particularly<br />
matters to those who either do not have an existing broadband<br />
network, or whose network does not meet the community’s<br />
needs.” Understanding broadband’s utility as a business<br />
recruitment, retention and expansion tool, as well as its ability to<br />
serve as an economic development tool in other ways can aid<br />
North Carolina communities in improving their overall economic<br />
health and become a competitive player in the local, state, national<br />
and global economies.<br />
7. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS<br />
I would like to recognize and thank my committee members:<br />
Shannon H. Tufts (chair), William Lambe, and Jonathan Morgan.<br />
8. REFERENCES<br />
[1] Coomes, Paul. A. “Economic Performance Measures for<br />
Metropolitan Areas,” Journal of Economic and Social<br />
Measurement, 24, 1998, 157-179.<br />
[2] Czernich, N., Falck, O., Kretschmer T., and Woessmann., L.,<br />
Broadband Infrastructure and Economic Growth. The<br />
Economic Journal, Vol. 121(552), 2011, 505-532.<br />
[3] E-NC Authority. High Speed Internet Access in North<br />
Carolina. 2007. Accessed on 2/24/12.<br />
http://ncbroadband.gov/baller_footnotes/34.html<br />
[4] Federal Communications Commission. (2010). Connecting<br />
America: The National Broadband Plan. Washington, DC:<br />
US Government Printing Office. 2010. p291.<br />
[5] Federal Communications Commission. Form 477 website.<br />
Retrieved on 10/20/12.<br />
http://transition.fcc.gov/wcb/iatd/comp.html
[6] Ford, G. S., & Koutsky, T.M. Broadband and Economic<br />
Development: A Municipal Case Study from Florida. Review<br />
of Urban & Regional Development Studies, Vol. 17(3), 2005,<br />
219-229.<br />
[7] Horrigan, J. B., Stolp, C., & Wilson, R. H. Broadband<br />
Utilization in Space: Effects of Population and Economic<br />
Structure. The Information Society, Vol. 22(5), 2006, 341-<br />
354.<br />
[8] Kandilov, I. T., & Renkow, M. Infrastructure Investment and<br />
Rural Economic Development: An Evaluation of USDA’s<br />
Broadband Loan Program. Growth and Change, Vol. 41(2),<br />
2010, 165-191.<br />
[9] Kolko, Jed. “Does Broadband Boost Local Economic<br />
Development? Public Policy Institute of California,” January<br />
2010. 1-34.<br />
[10] Koutroumpis, P. The Economic Impact of Broadband on<br />
Growth: A Simultaneous Approach. Telecommunications<br />
Policy, 33, 2009, 471-485.<br />
[11] Lehr, W.H., Osorio, C.A., Gillett, S.E, & Sirbu, M.A.<br />
Measuring broadband’s economic impact. Tepper School of<br />
384<br />
Business. Paper 457, 2005.<br />
http://repository.cmu.edu/tepper/457.<br />
[12] Mankiw, G. The Principles of Economics, 4 th Edition.<br />
Thomas-South-Western. 2007.<br />
[13] North Carolina Department of Commerce website. Retrieved<br />
on 9/1/11. http://www.nccommerce.com/researchpublications/incentive-reports/2011-county-tier-designations.<br />
[14] Settles, Craig. Community Broadband Snapshot Report,<br />
“Broadband’s Impact on Economic Development: The Real<br />
Deal,” International Economic Development Council, Sept.<br />
2010.<br />
[15] Shideler, D., Badasyan, N. and Taylor, L. “The Economic<br />
Impact of Broadband Deployment in Kentucky,” Federal<br />
Reserve Bank of St. Louis Regional Economic Development,<br />
2007, 3(2), pp. 90.<br />
[16] Tufts, Shannon. “Golden LEAF Rural Broadband Initiative<br />
Annual Evaluation Report,” December 2011. p26.<br />
[17] PANGAEA website. Retrieved on 12/12/2011.<br />
http://www.pangaea.us/company/history.php.
Session 13<br />
E-democracy & Participation 2
An e-Democracy experience: Digital Cabinet Office of Rio<br />
Grande do Sul State (Brazil)<br />
Marie Anne Macadar<br />
Pontifical Catholic University of<br />
Rio Grande do Sul<br />
Av. Ipiranga, 6681, Prédio 50<br />
Zip Code: 90.619-900<br />
Porto Alegre – RS - Brazil<br />
Phone: (55) (51) (3320-3524)<br />
marie.macadar@pucrs.br<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
This paper aims to identify the influence of institutional factors in<br />
implementing e-Democracy practices at the Digital Cabinet Office<br />
of Rio Grande do Sul State (Brazil). Institutional theory is used as<br />
the theoretical framework in this case study and supported the<br />
construction of the conceptual model based on some propositions.<br />
This is a research in progress and, therefore, just a few initial<br />
issues are pointed out. However, they show that the researchers<br />
must continue working in this case study in order to bring some<br />
contributions to e-Government theory.<br />
Categories and Subject Descriptors<br />
K.4.1 [Computers and Society]: Public Policy Issues - Use/abuse<br />
of power<br />
General Terms<br />
Management, Theory<br />
Keywords:<br />
e-Government, e-Democracy, Participation<br />
1. INTRODUCTION<br />
In the last decades, the social setting of human life has been<br />
remodeled by the technological revolution produced by<br />
Information and Communication Technologies [4]. Considering<br />
current technological changes, one feels the need for an effective<br />
ICT management in government. The Brazilian reform in public<br />
management idealized in 1995 has emphasized such a need. The<br />
term electronic government (e-Gov) has been introduced to refer<br />
to the use of ICT in public management for improving<br />
administration, for delivering government information and<br />
services, and also for introducing citizen engagement and<br />
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for<br />
personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are<br />
not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies<br />
bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for<br />
components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored.<br />
Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to<br />
post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission<br />
and/or a fee.<br />
ICEGOV '12, October 22 - 25 2012, Albany, NY, USA<br />
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1200-4/12/10...$15.00<br />
Gabriela Viale Pereira<br />
Pontifical Catholic University of<br />
Rio Grande do Sul<br />
Av. Ipiranga, 6681, Prédio 50<br />
Zip Code: 90.619-900<br />
Porto Alegre – RS - Brazil<br />
Phone: (55) (51) (3320-3524)<br />
gabiviale@terra.com.br<br />
385<br />
participation in government [5][10].<br />
Vanessa Marques Daniel<br />
Pontifical Catholic University of<br />
Rio Grande do Sul<br />
Av. Ipiranga, 6681, Prédio 50<br />
Zip Code: 90.619-900<br />
Porto Alegre – RS - Brazil<br />
Phone: (55) (51) (3320-3524)<br />
nessa.daniel@gmail.com<br />
Heeks and Bailur [11] regard the acknowledgement of contextual<br />
factors - besides technological ones - as a positive aspect in e-<br />
Government research. This study is, therefore, relevant since it<br />
aims to analyze the relation between institutional factors and the<br />
implementation of e-Democracy practices in Brazil.<br />
This research is in the context of IT government adoption and<br />
management for widening communication channels between these<br />
organizations and society by means of web portals for citizen<br />
participation. Our goal is to identify the influence of institutional<br />
factors in the implementation of e-democracy practices. The<br />
theoretical framework used here is institutional theory, which<br />
postulates that organizations tend to adopt similar structures<br />
forming a homogeneous field in order to get the recognition in the<br />
environment they are inserted. Institutional theory has constructs<br />
which allow the analysis of the organizational environment of<br />
public management and the influence of institutional factors in the<br />
adoption of technology in organizations.<br />
This paper is an early study about the Digital Cabinet in Rio<br />
Grande do Sul (Brazil) and, as pointed out before, institutional<br />
theory will provide our theoretical basis, briefly presented in<br />
sections 2 and 3 below. Section 4 shows the methodological<br />
aspects of the research and the propositions to be tested. The case<br />
study is then introduced in section 5 and final considerations are<br />
made in section 6.<br />
2. THE INSTITUTIONAL PERSPECTIVE<br />
AND GOVERNANCE<br />
There is a consensus that influential organizations have the power<br />
to legitimate others in their social environment and the ability to<br />
influence their decision-making process. In this context,<br />
governments are regarded as the organizations with more power<br />
to intervene in others [14]. However, King et al. [12] argue that<br />
institutional factors are essential components to understand the<br />
adoption of innovations in IT that cross-organizational borders.<br />
According to Scott [16], regulative, normative and cognitive<br />
factors exert influence on the adoption of IS in public<br />
administration. Regulative factors "involve the capacity to<br />
establish rules, inspect others' conformity to them, and, as<br />
necessary, manipulate sanctions-rewards or punishments-in
attempt to influence future behavior" (p.52)[15]. Processes<br />
attached to laws, norms or sanctions bring about pressure for<br />
adjustment in the organizational field. The normative pillar is<br />
conditioned to certification and accreditation. As pointed out by<br />
Scott: “These beliefs are not simply anticipations or predictions,<br />
but prescriptions-normative expectations of how specified actors<br />
are supposed to behave” (p.55)[15]. Last but not least, the<br />
cognitive system is related to common beliefs and shared logic<br />
and is supported by culture.<br />
Thus, institutional theory is concerned with aspects of social<br />
structure, reflecting on the processes by which structures –<br />
schemes, rules, norms and routines – are set as guidelines for<br />
social behavior [15]. Avgerou [1] suggested that new<br />
institutionalism provides a conceptual platform to analyze actions<br />
resulting from cultural processes and from the power underlying<br />
organizations and their social environment.<br />
2.1 Institutions and Organizations<br />
DiMaggio and Powell [6] questioned what makes organizations so<br />
similar to one another. For them, institutions in a given<br />
organizational field become homogenous in an effort to get<br />
legitimacy through isomorphism. The authors identified three<br />
mechanisms from which isomorphical institutional changes take<br />
place: coercive isomorphism, mimetic isomorphism, and<br />
normative isomorphism. As far as the adoption of technology is<br />
concerned, there is a tendency for similarity through different<br />
isomorphisms.<br />
One of the main propositions in institutional analysis is that<br />
organizations tend to be grouped together in fields and each field<br />
tend to develop similar structures and processes [1]. DiMaggio<br />
and Powell [6] define organizational field in institutional analysis<br />
as organizations which form a recognized area and undergo a<br />
process of homogeneity through isomorphism in order to become<br />
legitimate. This is a strong tendency for public organizations,<br />
which need to be legitimate to remain active in government, to<br />
share some similarities in structures and services.<br />
As pointed out before, DiMaggio and Powell [6] identified three<br />
mechanisms according to which institutional isomorphic changes<br />
occur: coercive isomorphism, which derives from political<br />
influences, mimetic isomorphism, which results from models of<br />
other organizations, and normative isomorphism, associated with<br />
professionalization.<br />
According to the authors, coercive isomorphism results from<br />
formal and informal pressures by organizations on which others in<br />
the same field depend, providing legitimacy to organizational<br />
structures, to their processes and results. Avgerou [1] adds that<br />
government mandates and legal systems in regional, national and<br />
international organizational contexts constitute forms of coercive<br />
pressure, and rules are the mechanism which determines<br />
structures and processes in the public sector.<br />
Avgerou [1] states that normative pressures refer to the effects of<br />
professional practice. DiMaggio and Powell [6] point out that an<br />
important aspect of professionalization, which provides<br />
isomorphism, is the support to formal education and the<br />
legitimacy provided by a cognitive basis coming from university<br />
specialists. They argue that normative mechanisms generate<br />
groups that occupy a similar position in the organization and share<br />
similarities in terms of orientation and control [6].<br />
386<br />
Mimetic mechanisms are defined by Avgerou [1] as the<br />
acquisition of structural and process characteristics from<br />
successful organization models. DiMaggio and Powel [6] believe<br />
that mimetic mechanisms can arise due to uncertainties resulting<br />
from the lack of understanding of organizational technologies<br />
taking other organizations as models. The authors claim that<br />
homogeneity in organizational structures derives from active<br />
search for models like the ones belonging to older organizations.<br />
2.2 Governance<br />
Following Bresser-Pereira [3], managerial public administration<br />
has come to existence at the end of the 20th century with the<br />
challenge to make the public sector more efficient and transparent<br />
to society. According to Diniz et al. [7], the use of IT has made a<br />
change in the model of public management possible with the<br />
arising of e-Government. This challenge for public organizations<br />
to remain in a complex and dynamic environment has driven<br />
organizations to adopt models focused on governance principles<br />
that ensure a more transparent result based management. The need<br />
for transparency and for results has emerged from environment<br />
pressure that public organizations should consider issues like<br />
efficiency, efficacy, transparency, and mechanisms of control and<br />
accounts of government. In order to do so, it is necessary for such<br />
organizations to adopt ICT resources as essential tools to<br />
strengthen governance and transparency in public organizations<br />
[2].<br />
2.3 Electronic Governance<br />
The use of ICT in the public sector, which used to be called<br />
electronic government in 1990, is now referred to as electronic<br />
governance or e-Government since it encompasses broader<br />
concepts like, for example, the application of ICT in public<br />
governance [5; 2]. According to Barbosa et al. [2], there are<br />
currently other IT applications to be considered besides the access<br />
to public services on the internet like, for instance, improvement<br />
of administrative processes, increase in efficiency, control of<br />
public policies, integration between governments and electronic<br />
democracy.<br />
Electronic governance comprises the use of IT not only for<br />
improving management of resources and governmental processes<br />
(public e-Administration) but also for upgrading citizens e-<br />
Services and for increasing citizens democratic participation in<br />
governments practices (e-Democracy) [5].<br />
2.3.1 Electronic Democracy<br />
Electronic democracy is concerned with a more interactive<br />
environment, creating opportunities for cooperation between<br />
citizens and social groups and, therefore, increasing political<br />
participation in decision-making processes [10]. For Frey [10], the<br />
governmental sector must have an active role in devising<br />
electronic governance practices meant to freshen up democracy.<br />
Furthermore, discussion forums should approach topics related to<br />
citizens' real life problems in order to make them engage in<br />
democratic practice.<br />
Digital forms of participation are mapped by Pell [14], who<br />
relates electronic democracy practices with information, enquiries<br />
and deliberation baselines. As far as baseline information is
concerned, Pell [14] makes reference to web sites, search engines,<br />
data bases and online discussion forums. On web search queries<br />
there are e-mails, referendums, electronic enquiries and electronic<br />
petitions. As for baseline deliberation, there are discussion groups,<br />
teleconferences, and community pages on the web. According to<br />
Pell, digital technologies can increase the number and the mode of<br />
such participation methods even further.<br />
3. METHODOLOGY<br />
This is a qualitative research which aims to understand an issue by<br />
examining a case study. Flick [9] states that in qualitative research<br />
there is a mutual interdependence of isolated parts in the process<br />
and, therefore, it is not possible to regard research stages as linear<br />
but rather continuous and related to one another.<br />
The research strategy chosen here is case study since it is our goal to<br />
focus on the study of a specific phenomenon, as pointed out by<br />
Eisenhardt [8]. The case was selected following Flick [9]’s criteria in<br />
the sense that a particularly typical single instance was chosen and<br />
analyzed consistently before any comparative analysis was carried<br />
out.<br />
Primary data will be collected during field research for<br />
investigating different facets of the case study. Then semistructured<br />
interviews with different stakeholders and the main<br />
actors involved in the implementation of the web portal will be<br />
conducted. Another research tool that will be used is document<br />
analysis since documents can provide important information to<br />
corroborate research results.<br />
The current research is still getting under way. A preliminary<br />
theoretical study has been made and an interview with the<br />
executive coordinator of the Digital Cabinet was conducted in<br />
December 2011.<br />
Proposition<br />
P1:<br />
Proposition<br />
P1a:<br />
Proposition<br />
P2:<br />
Proposition<br />
P2a:<br />
Proposition<br />
P3:<br />
Proposition<br />
P3a:<br />
Public organizations dependent on<br />
funding and on political influence are<br />
coerced into implementing e-Democracy<br />
practices due to coercive pressures<br />
Political influence and retention of<br />
funds by dominant organizations have<br />
an impact on coercive pressure for the<br />
implementation of e-Democracy<br />
practices by dependent public<br />
organizations.<br />
Public organizations which need<br />
acceptance in their organizational field<br />
tend to implement e-Democracy<br />
practices due to normative pressure.<br />
The existence of a desired behavior in<br />
the organizational environment reflects<br />
in normative pressure for the<br />
implementation of e-Democracy<br />
practices in public organizations.<br />
Public organizations that need<br />
legitimacy tend to use successful models<br />
in the implementation of e-Democracy<br />
practices due to mimetic pressure.<br />
The existence of successful models of e-<br />
Democracy practices in organizational<br />
environment result in mimetic pressure<br />
on the implementation of such practices<br />
by public organizations.<br />
387<br />
4. CONCEPTUAL MODEL<br />
On the basis of the theoretical framework adopted in this research,<br />
a conceptual model and some propositions were defined with the<br />
aim to analyze the influence of institutional pressures on the<br />
implementation of e-democracy.<br />
Figure 1: Conceptual model<br />
Table 1: Theoretical propositions<br />
5. THE DIGITAL CABINET: AN<br />
INTRODUCTION TO THE CASE<br />
The Digital Cabinet is the web portal to the State Government of<br />
Rio Grande do Sul (Brazil). It follows the concept of e-<br />
Democracy since it is characterized as a means of citizen<br />
engagement and participation. It is, as stated in the web portal<br />
(2011), "a space for participation which aims to encourage a new<br />
culture of governance in the public sector by creating new<br />
channels of communication and cooperation with society through<br />
the use of digital tools". It started operating in 2011 and has four<br />
tools: "Governor listens", “Collaborative Agenda”, "Governor<br />
answers" and "Governor asks".<br />
The tool "Governor listens" offers public hearings on the Internet<br />
for citizens to participate and chat with the government. The<br />
"Collaborative Agenda” consists in contributions from citizen<br />
members to bring issues forward and help make the governor's<br />
agenda on his visits to the countryside. The tool "Governor<br />
answers" constitute an environment in which members of the<br />
public can ask questions to the Governor and choose by vote a<br />
question they want to have answered on a video at the end of each<br />
month. Finally, “Governor asks” is a tool through which the<br />
Governor puts forward a given topic and citizens are asked to<br />
discuss it and give their contribution to the discussion of<br />
important local issues. The authors of the most voted<br />
contributions meet the governor personally and debate the topics<br />
with him.<br />
5.1 The Institutional Perspective of the Digital<br />
Cabinet<br />
The initiative of creating the Digital Cabinet, according to its<br />
executive coordinator, Mr. Fabricio Solagno, follows similar<br />
experiences around the world, especially in Obama's government<br />
in the US and in Canada. There are also reports of a similar<br />
experience by the Secretary for Communications in Ceará, Brazil.<br />
One of the main differences between the Digital Cabinet in Rio<br />
Grande do Sul (RS) and similar initiatives in Brazil is that<br />
participation tools are managed by Secretaries for<br />
Communications, which is not the case in RS. As pointed out by<br />
Solagno, "we are inside the Governor's cabinet and that's where all<br />
decision-making comes from".
Evidence shows that cognitive factors affect the implementation<br />
of e-Democracy practices. The cognitive pillar can be observed in<br />
the existence of a common sense on the benefits of creating a web<br />
portal for organized public participation in view of the legitimate<br />
experience of other successful web portals. The influence of web<br />
portals from other countries, for instance, the USA, was thus<br />
identified as a positive model to be followed and adapted to<br />
different demands.<br />
6. CONCLUDING REMARKS<br />
Considering the present situation of web collaboration, e-<br />
Democracy practices tend to be a requirement for new forms of<br />
government in order to meet the demands of contemporary<br />
society. Collaboration in e-Democracy digital environments can<br />
be seen as a gain not only for the population, which looks for<br />
ways of effective participation, but also for governments that<br />
expect to achieve legitimacy and recognition in the web.<br />
This paper reports a research in progress and, therefore, it is not<br />
meant to present an analysis of the case. It has been possible,<br />
however, to establish directives for further reflections on the<br />
matter. The first directive refers to the peculiarity of this case<br />
study, in special to its structuring (being inside the Governor's<br />
Cabinet), which being examined in the light of Institutional<br />
Theory, can shed light into important questions. A second aspect<br />
to be explored concerns the limitations of national and<br />
international cases of collaboration in government virtual<br />
environments and the effective participation of citizen in public<br />
decision-making. Limited experiences entail a specific and<br />
peculiar outlining to cultural, social, and political conditions.<br />
Once again Institutional Theory can be proved useful as a<br />
guideline to analysis. In the analysis of the only interview that<br />
has been carried out so far, it is possible to identify some<br />
influence of mimetic pressures in the implementation of e-<br />
Democracy practices which will be corroborated in a further stage<br />
of this research.<br />
7. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS<br />
Our thanks to CNPq and FAPERGS for partial support for this<br />
research. The authors also want to thank CAPES for the financial<br />
support given to take part in ICEGOV 2012.<br />
8. REFERENCES<br />
[1] Avgerou, C. 2002. Information systems and global diversity.<br />
Oxford University Press, New York.<br />
[2] Barbosa, A. F.; Faria, F. I.; Pinto, S. L. 2007. Governança<br />
eletrônica no setor público. In: Knight, P. T.; Fernandes, C.<br />
C. C.; Cunha, M. A. (Orgs). e-Desenvolvimento no Brasil e<br />
no mundo: subsídios e Programa e-Brasil. São Caetano do<br />
Sul: Yendis Editora.<br />
[3] Bresser-Pereira, L. C. B. 2002. Reforma da nova gestão<br />
pública: agora na agenda da América Latina, no entanto...<br />
Revista do Serviço Público, 53,1.<br />
[4] Castells, M. 2000. A The Rise of the Network Society: The<br />
Information Age: Economy, Society, and Culture Volume I<br />
(Information Age Series), Wiley-Blackwell; 2nd edition.<br />
[5] Cunha, M. A.; Annenberg, D.; Agune, R. M. (Prestação de<br />
serviços públicos eletrônicos ao cidadão. In: Knight, P. T.;<br />
Fernandes, C. C. C.; Cunha, M. A. (Orgs). 2007. e-<br />
Desenvolvimento no Brasil e no mundo: subsídios e<br />
Programa e-Brasil. São Caetano do Sul: Yendis Editora.<br />
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[6] Dimaggio, P. J.; Powell, W. W. 1983. The iron cage<br />
revisited: Institutional isomorphism and collective rationality<br />
in organizational fields. American Sociological Review, 48,<br />
2, p.147-160.<br />
[7] Diniz, E. H.; Barbosa, A. F.; Junqueira, A. R. B.; Prado, O.<br />
2009. O governo eletrônico no Brasil: perspectiva histórica a<br />
partir de um modelo estruturado de análise. Revista de<br />
Administração Pública (RAP), Rio de Janeiro, 43, 1, p.23-<br />
48.<br />
[8] Eisenhardt, K. M. 1989. Building Theories from Case Study<br />
Research. Academy of Management Review, 14, 4, p.532-<br />
550.<br />
[9] Flick, U. 1998. An introduction to qualitative research.<br />
London: Sage.<br />
[10] Frey, K. 2009. Perspectivas da democracia local na era<br />
digital. In: Cunha, M. A. V. C.; Frey, K.; Duarte, F. (Orgs.).<br />
Governança local e tecnologias da informação e<br />
comunicação. 1. ed. Curitiba: Champagnat.<br />
[11] Gil-Garcia, J. & Luana-Reyes, L. 2006. Encyclopedia of E-<br />
Commerce, E-Government and Mobile Commerce. IDEA<br />
Group Reference.<br />
[12] Heeks, R.; Bailur, S. 2007. Analyzing e-government<br />
research: Perspectives, philosophies, theories, methods, and<br />
practice. Government Information Quarterly, 24, p.243-265.<br />
[13] King, J. L.; Gurbaxani, V.; Kraemer, K. L.; McFarlan, F. W.,<br />
Raman, K. S.; Yap, C. S. 1994. Institutional Factors in<br />
Information Technology Innovation. Information Systems<br />
Research, 5, 2, p.139-169.<br />
[14] Peel, D. 2009. Utilizando tecnologias digitais para a<br />
ampliação da participação pública no planejamento. In:<br />
Cunha, M. A. V. C.; Frey, K.; Duarte, F. (Orgs.).<br />
Governança local e tecnologias da informação e<br />
comunicação. 1. ed. Curitiba: Champagnat.<br />
[15] Rodriguez, C. L.; Diniz, E. H.; Ferrer, F. 2007. Influência<br />
governamental e estratégias institucionais na difusão de<br />
inovações em economias emergentes. Revista de<br />
Administração de Empresas (RAE), 47, 1, p.10-21.<br />
[16] Scott, W. R. Institutional theory P408-14 In: Encyclopedia of<br />
Social Theory, George Ritzer, ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage,<br />
2004.<br />
[17] Scott, W. R. 2008. Institutions and organizations: ideas and<br />
interests. 3. ed. Thousand Oaks: Sage.
Social Inclusion and Digital Divide: eParticipation<br />
dilemmas in municipalities<br />
Lukasz Porwol<br />
DERI, NUI Galway, Ireland<br />
lukasz.porwol@deri.org<br />
John Breslin<br />
DERI, NUI Galway, Ireland<br />
john.breslin@deri.org<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
Citizen-participation faces a large number of obstacles.<br />
eParticipation is considered to be one of the key tools to ensure<br />
effective state-to-citizen communication. A number of initiatives<br />
have led to the creation of eParticipation platforms, enabling<br />
digital participation online via ICT technologies. Even though<br />
these solutions have been introduced, the overall citizen<br />
participation remains at a relatively low level, and in general<br />
eParticipation objectives have not been fully met. One of the main<br />
reasons identified, why the initiatives fall short on participation, is<br />
the problem of digital divide and social exclusion. We present a<br />
study on eParticipation in municipalities, based on an opinionmining<br />
project in an Irish city. We provide preliminary results and<br />
our conclusions after conducting a specific initiative. We identify<br />
key factors and decisions that have led towards a promising<br />
initiative in the field of eParticipation.<br />
Categories and Subject Descriptors<br />
H.4 [Information Systems Applications]: Miscellaneous<br />
General Terms<br />
Management, Design, Human Factors, Theory<br />
Keywords<br />
public participation, public forum, eParticipation, digital divide<br />
1. INTRODUCTION<br />
Citizen participation is an imperative in every modern<br />
Democracy. For much of the last century, individuals relied very<br />
much on the government regarding policy-making. However, in<br />
the latter part of the twentieth century, citizens’ expectations have<br />
grown such that they could influence more directly government<br />
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personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are<br />
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bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for<br />
components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored.<br />
Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to<br />
post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission<br />
and/or a fee.<br />
ICEGOV '12, October 22 - 25 2012, Albany, NY, USA<br />
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1200-4/12/10...$15.00<br />
Chris Coughlan<br />
Hewlett Packard, Galway, Ireland<br />
chris.coughlan@hp.com<br />
389<br />
Padraic O’Donoghue<br />
Civil Engineering, NUI Galway, Ireland<br />
padraic.odonoghue@nuigalway.ie<br />
Brendan Mulligan<br />
Udaras na Gaeltachta, Ireland<br />
b.omaolagain@udaras.ie<br />
decisions, particularly those that affect their everyday lives [19].<br />
The well-known democracy models such as Liberal, Republican<br />
or classic Aggregative are not sufficient anymore [12].<br />
The Deliberative model, focused on the opinion-formation process<br />
and built over ICT technologies (eParticipation), is considered<br />
possibly the best solution for future policy making. Studies show<br />
that the most effective eParticipation has been performed at the<br />
local government level, especially in municipalities [3].<br />
eParticipation tackles participation challenges and barriers to<br />
support greater citizen engagement [15]. eParticipation provides a<br />
technology-mediated interaction between citizens and the<br />
political/administrative elements of government expected to<br />
influence the decision-making processes [21].<br />
While the development of eParticipation has been rapid in recent<br />
years, it seems that overall citizen participation remains at a<br />
relatively low level, and in general eParticipation objectives are<br />
not fully met. The emphasis mainly on technology excellence<br />
without much attention to greater social inclusion and citizen<br />
engagement resulted in very minor improvements in participation.<br />
According to an OECD report [18], 78% of individuals have a low<br />
interest in policy and/or politics and 48% have a low level of trust<br />
in how the government uses its citizens’ input. Charalabidis [2]<br />
shows that the information dissemination aspect remains a weak<br />
point of most of the participation solutions so that eParticipation<br />
outcomes remain largely unknown to public. A nationwide survey<br />
on eDemocracy among US local governments [4] identified a<br />
number of barriers to eParticipation. The limitations refer mainly<br />
to social inclusion (small and not diverse enough shareholders set,<br />
educational and resources barrier) and digital divide<br />
(unrepresented groups, missing knowledge of technology and no<br />
support). The digital divide and social inclusion problem is<br />
mentioned many times in literature [6, 7, 24]. Multiple studies<br />
show that, in fact, some ICT-based government systems may raise<br />
barriers and create inequalities between digitally-included and<br />
digitally-excluded (who have limited or no access to computers or<br />
to the Internet, or find it difficult to use) citizens. The latter group<br />
is not offered appropriate alternatives and appropriate assistance<br />
to actively contribute to participation. That applies mostly to older<br />
generations and people from rural areas. Studies reveal that in<br />
some instances the use of new technologies does not lead to<br />
greater participation but rather increases the low-value and chaotic<br />
informal communication amongst individuals [9]. Considering the<br />
eParticipation barriers, the literature identifies a number of
success factors for eParticipation[22, 23, 8]: (I) Combining online<br />
with offline channels, (II) Promotion, (III) Usability, (IV) Security<br />
and Privacy, (V) Quality of participation, (VI) Broad stakeholders<br />
set, (VII) Topic and participation complexity, (VIII)Commitment<br />
by the government. The success factors clearly refer to digital<br />
divide (I , V, VI, VII) and social inclusion (II, III, IV, VI, VIII)<br />
identified as the main issues of modern participation.<br />
In this paper, we present a solution that attempts to overcome<br />
many of the eParticipation barriers, following the best practices<br />
and the success factors defined. We focus our approach on the<br />
proper communication channel alignment between citizens and<br />
decision makers. We propose a particular combinationof digital<br />
and non-digital solutions in order to achieve engaged and<br />
sustained participation.<br />
2. CITIZEN OPINION MINING SOLUTION<br />
Galway City has developed a national reputation as ”Grid-lock<br />
City” 1 . The traffic congestion that exists currently in the city has<br />
a negative impact on all those living and working in the city, and<br />
also on the economy of the city and region in terms of attracting<br />
industry, tourism and commercial activity. The Galway Transport<br />
Forum (GalwayTF) has been established as a volunteer initiative<br />
in order to identify a range of implementable short-term traffic<br />
measures that will help alleviate some of the current difficulties.<br />
The core idea behind the innovative solution was to face the<br />
participation barriers, especially in context of social inclusion and<br />
digital divide in order to provide broad and engaged participation.<br />
A diverse set of stakeholders set is one of the key elements<br />
associated with social inclusion. In order to ensure balanced<br />
policy-making process, it is very important to involve major<br />
stakeholder groups, ranging from government officials to ordinary<br />
citizens, at every stage of the eParticipation project [20]. The<br />
visibility and prominent participation of at least one stakeholder<br />
group at many different phases of the initiative is necessary for<br />
successful eParticipation [22]. According to the stakeholder<br />
theory [5], relationships with the stakeholders should be<br />
constantly, and carefully evaluated so the communities who are<br />
participating will engage appropriately. To ensure relevant input<br />
from a broad range of stakeholders, we have assembled a very<br />
diverse initiative group that includes: the Mayor of Galway (2011-<br />
12), Galway Chamber of Commerce, Engineers Ireland - West<br />
Region, representatives of the enterprise sector, academia<br />
(especially civil engineering, social science and computer<br />
science), along with independent volunteers. The need to address<br />
all citizen groups and decision-makers concerned with transport in<br />
Galway has been has reflected in the architecture of our<br />
eParticipation solution.<br />
GalwayTF has been designed to reach possibly wide range<br />
stakeholders and engage diverse groups of citizens. In order to<br />
maximize social inclusion and avoid digital divide, the<br />
architecture of the solution (Fig. 1) follows strictly the<br />
eParticipation best practices such as: ”Combining online with<br />
offline channels”, ”Promotion” and ”Quality of participation”.<br />
Citizens should not be limited or discriminated by any means in<br />
contributing to the initiative, whether it refers to availability of the<br />
technology, their education or resources. Many of citizens are still<br />
in the so-called digitally excluded group, therefore the<br />
1 Galway City Gridlock (24.01.2012): http://bit.ly/zc0LTu<br />
390<br />
eParticipation initiative should involve both online and offline<br />
actions [23]. The online suggestions should be reflected in real<br />
life and the whole process should run in a seamless loop between<br />
the real and online world. At every stage, all the stakeholders<br />
should feel rewarded for their contributions. To achieve this, we<br />
have implemented a digital forum supported by traditional paper<br />
exchange and mainstream media so that none of the citizens<br />
would be missed, especially those not digitally included. Digital<br />
technologies significantly increase access to and the availability of<br />
participation. Moving participation online increases the<br />
confidence of users and in general helps to avoid many of the<br />
common negative feelings that occur in real-life communication<br />
[10]. Online channels work favorably towards the young,<br />
educated and ’tech-skilled’ sector of the population. Solutions are<br />
perceived by this group as much more attractive if they are<br />
advertised online [2, 23, 22]. The digital channels we have been<br />
using include standard approaches such as online surveying and email<br />
in addition to social media frameworks like a discussion<br />
forum and a commenting facility. To ensure high quality input,<br />
the online survey has been specifically prepared and developed by<br />
social scientists and academics from the civil engineering domain<br />
and contains a total of sixteen questions. This survey was intended<br />
to be more detailed than the paper equivalent since online<br />
surveying offers less time pressure. The digitally-included society<br />
represents a high variety of users with different technological<br />
skills, and a significant portion still favors e-mail as their primary<br />
communication channel. The main input apart from the survey<br />
and email has been provided through forum and comments. While<br />
the survey is in principle a one-way communication tool, the other<br />
digital channels are bidirectional providing a wider<br />
communication bus between citizens and decision makers. The<br />
forum has been designed according to ”open, non restricted<br />
discussion” principle highlighted in the literature as crucial for<br />
proper, unlimited and not biased flow of discussions [20]. The<br />
forum has been realized as a blog where everyone is free to post<br />
an idea or a complaint on transportation or post a comment. Each<br />
idea can be voted, also a ranking of most popular contributions<br />
has been provided for greater information browsing capabilities.<br />
Figure 1 GalwayTF solution architecture<br />
Following the ”Usability” principle, the wide Social Media<br />
experience has been expanded by the specially created Facebook<br />
page and a Twitter stream that is synchronized with the forum. All<br />
the posts published on the forum are automatically forwarded to<br />
both social media accounts and the blog streams from both
networks are embedded on the central website. The usefulness and<br />
simplicity of Social Networking Platforms (SNS??P?) interfaces<br />
enabled people to integrate these sites into their daily practices [1]<br />
[14]. The SNS such as Facebook or Twitter have shown a<br />
significant contribution to public life, especially spreading<br />
information about disasters [13] as well as political events [17].<br />
It is argued that these technologies have great potential to provide<br />
on-line information and proper interaction with citizens<br />
Despite, the digital information technologies have been proven to<br />
be superior in many aspects over traditional information channels,<br />
a large group of citizens refrain from contributing in a digital<br />
form. Thus, it is important to ensure that all the individuals have<br />
the capability to participate [16]. This can be referred both to<br />
availability of the information about participation solutions but<br />
also barriers introduced by modern eParticipation tools, limiting<br />
the participation to the ”tech-skilled”. Information dissemination<br />
remains a weak point of most participation solutions. The nondigital<br />
communication channels applied in GalwayTF include<br />
paper surveys and classic media. The classic channels, unlike the<br />
digital, are mainly mono directional with the feedback coming<br />
from the target group. The mainstream media i.e. two local<br />
newspapers and a local radio station were the main dissemination<br />
channels for the initiative. Volunteers were assigned to collect<br />
surveys in some of the key public locations in the city over a four<br />
week timespan. The number of questions of the street survey has<br />
been limited to five so as to not to discourage potential<br />
contributors given that they may be under time constraints.<br />
Social inclusion is very important at the design and development<br />
stage but is also crucial at the maintenance stage of an<br />
eParticipation initiative. It is important to bring all the diverse<br />
stakeholders groups and keep them engaged while running the<br />
initiative. This guarantees sustainability and less biased, more<br />
constructive deliberation. There is a need for a government entity<br />
to remain constantly involved in communication with citizens<br />
[11]. The Mayor of Galway, representing local government, has<br />
been one of the key drivers of the initiative and contributed<br />
towards maintaining the participation and ensuring longer term<br />
viability of the initiative. The ”Topic and Participation<br />
Complexity” is very important both from the social inclusion and<br />
digital divide perspective as the contribution interface should not<br />
introduce a barrier to any citizen regardless the level of education<br />
or personal capabilities to deal with complex in- formation. The<br />
basic assumption of the project was that it should empower<br />
citizens to raise new topics relating to the everyday transportation<br />
problems. Citizens who are well informed via multiple channels<br />
and are aware of the mission of the forum have been able to focus<br />
their inputs to very constructive and informative suggestions. The<br />
interface has been modified and simplified over time to ensure<br />
clarity and functionality. The forum provides an on-line help<br />
section and guidelines facilitating the contributions. The ’contact<br />
us’ section includes technical support links for those experiencing<br />
problems with the interface. The maintenance level tackles also<br />
the ”Privacy and Security” concerns. To encourage citizens to<br />
contribute, multiple digital channels offer different levels of<br />
privacy and security. The surveys are being recorded anonymous<br />
and are specially encoded for greater security. Users while<br />
commenting are asked to provide the email so they can be notified<br />
when someone responds for their message. Posting on the forum<br />
has been reserved only for registered users to facilitate moderation<br />
and spam control. In any case, users are not obliged to provide<br />
their real credentials apart from a valid e-mail address. This<br />
391<br />
ensures a high level of privacy and while not limiting the<br />
participation.<br />
3. RESULTS<br />
The assessment of the results, captured while running the project<br />
from 21 Nov 2011 until 31 Jan 2012, indicates that the expected<br />
range of audience has been reached. In addition, there was<br />
significant engagement with local government officials (the<br />
Galway Transport Unit), the Gardai (Irish police) and public<br />
transport providers. Given the clear objectives and the opportunity<br />
to make a tangible impact, citizens have been actively encouraged<br />
to contribute [20] [8]. This also served to enhance the quality and<br />
relevance of the discussions and attracted people from many key<br />
businesses and organizations in the city. The combination of<br />
digital and non-digital project tools brought satisfactory feedback.<br />
The dissemination process, composed of 6 public announcements,<br />
through mainstream media brought around 2,500 people to the<br />
digital forum and spawned about 1300 contributions. After<br />
detailed semi-automatic (n-gram based), and manual verification<br />
of the results, we have identified almost 40 short term traffic<br />
enhancement measures which, if implemented, will have an<br />
immediate and positive effect on the city traffic. These numbers<br />
certainly show the success of the initiative, taking into<br />
consideration that Galway Urban Area counts only 76,000 people.<br />
The digital part of the initiative benefited significantly from nondigital<br />
dissemination methods. Data logs show great increases in<br />
online participation following each public announcement. The<br />
Social Media reach has been boosted by mainstream media<br />
publishing directly on Facebook and Twitter. In total Facebook<br />
generated over 78,000 impressions referring to our service. The<br />
ratio of 258 digital surveys to 120 paper surveys confirmed the<br />
assumption that more complex online version should not stop<br />
people from detailed contribution. The average time spent online<br />
at level of 10 min confirms also that people tend to sacrifice more<br />
time while contributing online. As expected the digital surveys<br />
were submitted rather by younger audience while the paper<br />
version represents the full spectrum of age groups. The welldisseminated<br />
and effective participation brought broader,<br />
international audience to the forum. We have recorded several<br />
contributions from UK, US and Germany. Recently, the<br />
University of St Andrews in Scotland has expressed their interest<br />
in GalwayTF project and sent a group of students to investigate<br />
our initiative.<br />
4. FUTURE WORK<br />
The possible outcome of the research presented, can be a<br />
multichannel framework for eParticipation that could be easily<br />
applied by local authorities and organizations. Most of the current<br />
eParticipation platforms suffer from over-structured and<br />
controlled discussions which introduce a form of censorship [20].<br />
The framework we propose assumes open discussions, with no<br />
particular constraints on structure (comment can be applied to a<br />
post or other comment). Citizens are free to post their own ideas<br />
and are not limited to discussion topics provided by decision<br />
makers or platform coordinator. Posts are rated and so citizens<br />
are empowered to select key issues and best solutions. In order to<br />
be sustainable, an eParticipation initiative needs to be constantly<br />
maintained and improved, following the best practice suggestions<br />
in the literature [20]. The enhancements are focused on<br />
simplification of the interface, hence providing easier access to<br />
participation. The improvements will be made both to the
structure of the forum as well as the look and feel and some of the<br />
Social Media technologies. The next stage of the project will<br />
bring better integration with Facebook and Twitter (Facebook app<br />
and dedicated Twitter web app). The Semantic Web technologies<br />
will be applied in order to enable easy deliberation data exchange,<br />
more effective discussion data browsing and transparency. We<br />
consider developing a mobile app for greater social inclusion and<br />
live transport reports. We plan to investigate further the impact of<br />
non-digital dissemination methods on the digital part of the<br />
initiative. Ideally we hope to get a dedicated column in a local<br />
newspaper where we could publish the results on a regular basis.<br />
This will help to make the non-digital dissemination more<br />
sustainable. We also consider the use of popular paper leaflets<br />
enriched with QR codes pointing to the relevant sections of the<br />
portal. This way the paper medium can be linked directly to the<br />
digital equivalent.<br />
5. CONCLUSION<br />
Modern digital participation tools, due to sociological<br />
circumstances and dependencies, are not yet an effective<br />
substitutefor the classic solutions and, to the date, are not able to<br />
replace them completely. Instead, the modern digital and nondigital<br />
solutions should be complementary in a seamless loop.<br />
eParticipation, in order to be successful, needs to take what is best<br />
from the traditional communication channels and enrich it with<br />
modern technologies for greater efficiency and range. This<br />
research shows that broad social inclusion is crucial for successful<br />
participation. The presence of key stakeholders from local<br />
government, business, and organizations guarantees constructive<br />
and engaged participation. The multichannel citizen-to-decisionmaker<br />
communication ensures richer and less biased deliberation<br />
where citizens feel rewarded for their contributions and are<br />
willing to participate more.<br />
6. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS<br />
The work supported by SFI under grant number SFI/08/CE/I1380<br />
(Lion 2) and the Cloud4SOA Project under grant 257953.<br />
7. REFERENCES<br />
[1] D. M. Boyd and N. B. Ellison. Social network sites:<br />
Definition, history, and scholarship. Journal of Computer-<br />
Mediated Communication, 13(1), 2008.<br />
[2] Y. Charalabidis, G. Gionis, E. Ferro, and E. Loukis. Towards<br />
a Systematic Exploitation of Web 2 . 0 and Simulation<br />
Modeling Tools in Public Policy Process. Ifip International<br />
Federation For Information Processing, pages 1–12, 2010.<br />
[3] C. Colombo. e-Participation Experiences and Local<br />
Government in Catalonia : An Explanatory Analysis. Ifip<br />
International Federation For Information Processing, pages<br />
82–94, 2010.<br />
[4] Department of Economic and Social Affairs Division for<br />
Public Administration and Development Management. E-<br />
Participation and E-Government: Understanding the Present<br />
and Creating the Future. Group, (July 2006), 2007.<br />
[5] R. E Freeman. Strategic management: A stakeholder<br />
approach, volume 1. Pitman, 1984.<br />
[6] eEurope Advisory Group. e-Inclusion:New challenges and<br />
policy recommendations. Current, 2005.<br />
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[7] J. B. Horrigan. On Demand Citizens: e-government at high<br />
speed. Pew Internet & American Life Project, 2005.<br />
[8] Z. Huang and L. Brooks. Evaluating Usability of Web-Based<br />
Electronic Government : Users Perspective. pages 456–465,<br />
2011.<br />
[9] M. S. Islam and S. Business. Towards a sustainable e-<br />
Participation implementation model. October, (October):1–<br />
12, 2008.<br />
[10] A. Joinson. The Oxford handbook of Internet psychology.<br />
Oxford handbooks. Oxford University Press, 2007.<br />
[11] M. M. Kamal. An analysis of e-Participation research:<br />
moving from theoretical to pragmatic viewpoint.<br />
Transforming Government: People, Process and Policy,<br />
3(4):340–354, 2009.<br />
[12] R. Kies. Promises and Limits of Web-deliberation. Palgrave<br />
Macmillan, 2010.<br />
[13] J. Kuzma. Asian government usage of web 2.0 social media.<br />
European Journal of ePractice (9). pp. 1-13. ISSN 1988-<br />
625X, 2010.<br />
[14] M. Lane and P. Coleman. Technology ease of use through<br />
social networking media. Journal of Technology Research,<br />
2010.<br />
[15] A. Macintosh. Characterizing e-participation in policymaking.<br />
Annual Hawaii International Conference on System<br />
Sciences (HICSS’04) - Track 5 - Volume 5, Washington,<br />
DC, USA, 2004. IEEE Computer Society.<br />
[16] A. Macintosh. Challenges and barriers of eParticipation in<br />
Europe? 2007.<br />
[17] E. Monte Lutz, SVP-Digital Public Affairs. The social pulpit.<br />
Edelman, 2009.<br />
[18] Public engagement for Better Policy and Services. OECD<br />
Studies on Public Engagement, 2009.<br />
[19] N. Roberts. Public Deliberation in an Age of Direct Citizen<br />
Participation. The American Review of Public<br />
Administration, 34(4):315–353, Dec. 2004.<br />
[20] J. Rose and O. y. Sæ bø. Designing Deliberation Systems.<br />
The Information Society, 26(3):228–240, May 2010.<br />
[21] O. Sabo, J. Rose, and L. Skiftenesflak. The shape of<br />
eParticipation: Characterizing an emerging research area.<br />
Government Information Quarterly, 25(3):400–428, July<br />
2008.<br />
[22] O. y. Sæ bø, L. S. Flak, and M. K. Sein. Understanding the<br />
dynamics in e-Participation initiatives: Looking through the<br />
genre and stakeholder lenses. Government Information<br />
Quarterly, 28(3):416–425, July 2011.<br />
[23] S. Scherer and M. A. Wimmer. A Regional Model for E-<br />
Participation in the EU : Evaluation and Lessons Learned<br />
from VoicE. Ifip International Federation For Information<br />
Processing, pages 162–173, 2010.<br />
[24] Carnegie UK Trust. Futures for civil society, 2007.
Studying Chinese Government Microblogs: Content and<br />
Interactions<br />
Tuo Zheng<br />
Department of Public Administration, Fudan University<br />
619 Wenke Building, 220 Handan Road, 2000433<br />
Shanghai, China<br />
+86 13917687422<br />
10110170039@fudan.edu.cn<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
This paper selects ten Chinese government microblogs at different<br />
levels, in different regions and different departments for studying<br />
their content and interactions. Specifically, it observes and<br />
analyzes messages’ number, message content, message types,<br />
message forms, message sources, directing, language styles,<br />
relevant stakeholders, and associated levels, attitude of comments,<br />
commenter’s types, and government responses. Based on the<br />
research findings, the paper provides some policy<br />
recommendations for government.<br />
Categories and Subject Descriptors<br />
C.2.3 Network Operations<br />
General Terms<br />
Management, Measurement, Performance<br />
Keywords<br />
Government institution microblog; Content; Interaction<br />
1. INTRODUCTION<br />
Microblogs is a network community based on huge grassroots netusers,<br />
which is also one of the social media tools. Many<br />
researches show that government can improve its transparency,<br />
enhance the interaction with citizens, keep on tracking with public<br />
opinions and so on by using microblogs.<br />
Statistical analysis and case study are used in this paper, which<br />
selects ten different Chinese government institutional microblogs<br />
at different levels, in different regions, and in different<br />
departments as the research objects.<br />
First, this paper will review the literature about social media.<br />
Second, the paper will introduce research methods and findings.<br />
Finally, based on the findings, we will provide some advices and<br />
recommendations for government.<br />
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for<br />
personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are<br />
not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies<br />
bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for<br />
components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored.<br />
Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to<br />
post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission<br />
and/or a fee.<br />
ICEGOV '12, October 22 - 25 2012, Albany, NY, USA<br />
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1200-4/12/10...$15.00<br />
393<br />
Lei Zheng<br />
Department of Public Administration, Fudan University<br />
619 Wenke Building, 220 Handan Road, 200433<br />
Shanghai, China<br />
+86 13501838298<br />
zhengl@fudan.edu.cn<br />
2. LITERATURE RIEVIEW<br />
2.1 Defining Social Media<br />
Social Media has been defined in a number of ways; some are<br />
more technology oriented, and others are more about what they<br />
can enable.<br />
Hansen (2011) points put the social media is a set of online tools<br />
that are designed for and centered around social interaction. In<br />
practice, social media serves as a catchall phrase for a<br />
conglomeration of web-based technologies and services such as<br />
blogs, microblogs (i.e., Twitter), social sharing services (e.g.,<br />
YouTube, Flickr, StumbleUpon, Last.fm), text messaging,<br />
discussion forums, collaborative editing tools (e.g., wikis), virtual<br />
worlds (e.g., Second Life), and social networking services (e.g.<br />
Facebook, MySpace) [8]. Besides, Kaplan (2010) defines social<br />
media as a social structure in which technology puts power in<br />
communities, not institutions, as well as a set of open, web-based<br />
and user-friendly applications that enable users to network, share<br />
data, collaborate and co-produce content [12].<br />
In an attempt to delimit a set of characteristics of based on<br />
properties, Spannerworks outlines some defining characteristics of<br />
social media [17]:<br />
(1) Participation: Social media encourage contributions and<br />
feedback from everyone interested, blurring the line between<br />
media and audience.<br />
(2) Openness: Most social media services are open to feedback<br />
and participation. They encourage voting, comments, and sharing<br />
of information. There are rarely any barriers to accessing and<br />
making use of content.<br />
(3) Conversation: Whereas traditional media is about broadcast,<br />
content transmitted or distributed to an audience, social media are<br />
better seen as conversational, two-way interaction channels.<br />
(4) Community: Social media allow communities to be formed<br />
quickly and communicate effectively around common interests.<br />
(5) Connectedness: Most kinds of social media thrive in their<br />
connectedness, exploiting hyperlinks and combining different<br />
kinds of media in one place.<br />
2.2 Government and Social Media<br />
Social media can be considered a disruptive technology for<br />
government, creating “disruptive innovation” in the digital
government as well as augmenting digital government with better<br />
services and management [10].<br />
These social network systems allow large scale distributed<br />
collaboration, information sharing and creation of collective<br />
intelligence in government areas at all levels from local to federal.<br />
Governments are facing unprecedented transparency requirements<br />
and openness, further encouraged through electronic grassroots<br />
mobilizations using social technology [15]. In U.S., Andrew<br />
Krzmarzick (2012) identified five levels of social use in Federal<br />
Government; 1) Informed Decision Making, 2)Communicate with<br />
Citizens and Other Agencies, 3) Internal Collaboration, 4)<br />
Research/Information Gathering and 5) Marketing and Promotion<br />
[16].<br />
NASCIO investigated the challenges of the state government<br />
using the social media in 2010. The outcome shows the main<br />
challenges are as follow: terms of service, privacy, records<br />
management, legal issue and so on. Meanwhile, Center for<br />
Technology in Government (CTG, State University of New York<br />
at Albany) conclude the value of social media for the government:<br />
greater competitiveness in employee recruiting, enhanced access<br />
for the disabled, creation of virtual communities, instantaneous<br />
information sharing, enhanced collaboration, enhanced public<br />
safety, information dissemination and exchange, “Coolness”<br />
factor, improved training capabilities, cost saving and so on.<br />
Meanwhile, they also conclude issues and concerns with using<br />
social media: legal and regulatory ramifications, security,<br />
accessibility, information overload, and so on [3]. Through<br />
empirical research, CTG also conclude eight essential elements to<br />
help the government to design social media policies: employee<br />
access, account management, acceptable use, employee conduct<br />
and so on [9].<br />
A paper named “Twitter Use by the U.S. Congress” focuses on<br />
how the government uses Twitter as a social media tool to interact<br />
with citizens, and the main object of study is the message issued<br />
by U.S. Congressman [11]. The research shows that the<br />
congressman using Twitter as a tool to issue the information and<br />
daily activities about themselves. Although, using of Twitter<br />
provides a channel to let the congressman and citizen<br />
communicate directly, it can't improve the government and<br />
legislative processes' transparent. From another view, Wigand<br />
(2010) demonstrated that government organizations in the U.S.<br />
promote their policies by using Twitter, suggesting that Twitter<br />
can help organizations to share essential information with the<br />
public effectively and induce the public (the ultimate beneficiaries)<br />
to participate in new projects [19].<br />
2.3 Opportunities for using Social Media in<br />
Government<br />
Web 2.0 technologies exploit Internet connectivity to support<br />
networking of people and information [13]. The impact of social<br />
media use in governments includes increased transparency and<br />
participation of citizens in decision-making and more<br />
collaboration between agencies [4].<br />
The ideas that democratic governments should be open, accessible,<br />
and transparent to the governed are not new ones, but they are<br />
receiving renewed emphasis through the combination of<br />
government reform efforts and the emergence of Web 2.0 social<br />
media tools that promote information sharing, integration, and<br />
public discourse [5].<br />
394<br />
In the broader domain of technology use in government social<br />
media bring forward a sense of modernization through the<br />
innovative interaction patterns they enable, and thus indeed<br />
challenge existing ways of work. The adoption and use of social<br />
media are overcoming a number of barriers at the level of<br />
technology, organizations as well as culture [6].<br />
2.4 Government’s Institutional Microblogs in<br />
China<br />
In China, a great number of government microblog accounts have<br />
been opened and run by Chinese government agencies to foster<br />
government information disclosure, public service and citizen<br />
participation after 2010. According to the Chinese Government<br />
Microblogs Assessment Report of 2011, published by the China<br />
National School of Administration, by the end of 2011, the total<br />
numbers of Chinese government microblog accounts exceeded<br />
50,000.<br />
A report named "Research of China Government's Institutional<br />
Microblogs" was issued in April 2011 by Public Topic Net<br />
(www.pubtopic.org) and Fudan University Public Opinion and<br />
Communication Research Lab. The report's data show the number<br />
of microblogs owned by non-government organizations is more<br />
than that of government officials' individual microblogs;<br />
governments in the south area of China has a stronger motivation<br />
to open a microblog account; the microblogs of police agencies<br />
are more service oriented. Furthermore, the report summarizes<br />
that microblogs have a significant effectiveness in promoting<br />
information sharing, collecting public opinions, improving public<br />
service and so on [14].<br />
Several scholars focus on studying on the use status and<br />
characteristics of government institutional microblogs. Bin Wang<br />
(2011) used the comparative study method to compare foreign and<br />
Chinese government's institutional microblogs. Chinese<br />
government is much more hesitant on developing institutional<br />
microblogs, and lack strategic development planning.[1]<br />
Yingxuan Dong (2011) concludes the features of government<br />
institutional microblogs are effectiveness, authority, convenience,<br />
grassroots, humanity, interactive, and inclusiveness. He thinks the<br />
institutional microblogs have important effect on information<br />
disclosure; public-service delivery; responding to citizens'<br />
questions and so on [22]. Several scholars studied several cases<br />
with an emphasis on the effect of microblogs in emergencies . The<br />
microblogs can improve the efficiency of information sharing,<br />
disseminate information to the public immediately, which has<br />
significant effect during emergency events [2][20][21]. Wanbao<br />
Gui (2011) used the Sina Weibo as a case, and collected 584<br />
messages from government institutional microblogs in a particular<br />
time period. He found that east-area governments are more<br />
positive on developing microblogs than the west; the higher of the<br />
government level, the fewer institutional microblogs exist; the<br />
majority of institutional microblogs belong to judicial departments<br />
[18].<br />
2.5 Research Gap<br />
According to the literature, many governments in the western<br />
countries take initiatives to use social media as the tools to<br />
communicate with the citizens and improve the governance<br />
ability. The experiences they gained could provide useful lessons<br />
for the Chinese government. In China, the governments also<br />
realize the importance of social media. Many Chinese scholars
also focus on the research of social media and government. Due to<br />
the research<br />
of government institutional microblogs, most of the papers in<br />
China have just conducted descriptive study, and we did not found<br />
any papers that study in-depth the content and interactions on<br />
government microblogs as well as their implications. This paper<br />
attempts to fill up this gap.<br />
3. RESEARCH METHOD<br />
The study explores the applications of government institutional<br />
microblogs, focusing on the interaction between government and<br />
citizens. The main methods are case study, observation, and<br />
content analysis.<br />
3.1 Cases Selected<br />
Government institutional microblogs for study are selected from<br />
the government category of the most influential microblog<br />
operator in China, which are called Sina Weibo. Various<br />
microblogs are selected to include microblogs run by police<br />
department, transportation department, municipal department and<br />
other government agencies, and to cover different levels of<br />
government, different regions, and different departments.<br />
“Influence” and "the number of followers" are also considered in<br />
choosing these microblogs.<br />
At last, ten different government institutional microblogs are<br />
selected, "Weibo Yunan", "Weibo Hebei", "Weibo Yinchuan",<br />
"Jinshan Communication", "The People's Government of Taoyuan<br />
County", "Weibo Ninghai", "Sichuan Transportation", "Civilized<br />
Hefei", "The People's Procuratorate of Hubei" and "Peace<br />
Southern-Guangdong". Two of them are provincial government<br />
microblogs, two are municipal government microblogs, two are<br />
county government microblogs, and four are government<br />
department microblogs, which covers the east, middle and west<br />
regions of China.<br />
3.2 Data Analysis Methods<br />
All messages posted during May 30, 2011 (0:00 AM) to June 5,<br />
2011 (0:00 PM) are collected from the ten selected government<br />
institutional microblogs. At last, 206 messages are studied. The<br />
coding and analytical framework of this study is designed after<br />
conducting four focus-group discussions with 80 government<br />
employess who work at different levels in Shanghai Municipal<br />
Government. Specific aspects are analyzed and coded such as<br />
messages’ number, message content, message types, message<br />
forms, message sources, directing, language styles, relevant<br />
stakeholders, associated levels, attitudes of comments,<br />
commenter’s types, and government responses (See Table 1). The<br />
processed data are then analyzed with descriptive statistics and<br />
cross-tab methods by using the software of SPSS.<br />
4. FINDINGS:STATISTICAL RESULTS<br />
4.1 Messages’ Number<br />
The table 2 shows the number of messages issued by each<br />
government institutional microblogs in the selected seven days.<br />
The number of “Weibo Yinchuan”’s messages are 60, accounting<br />
for 29.1% of all the messages. The least number of messages are<br />
2, which are issued by “The People's Government of Taoyuan<br />
County”.<br />
395<br />
Table 2: Messages’ number<br />
4.2 Message Content<br />
The message contents can be divided into four categories,<br />
Name Quantity Percentage<br />
Weibo Yinchuan 60 29.1<br />
Peace Southern-Guangdong 29 14.1<br />
Sichuan Transportation 25 12.1<br />
Weibo Ninghai 18 8.7<br />
Weibo Yunan 17 8.3<br />
Weibo Hebei 15 7.3<br />
The People's Procuratorate of<br />
Hubei<br />
14 6.8<br />
Jinshan Communication 13 6.3<br />
Civilized Hefei 13 6.3<br />
The People's Government of<br />
Taoyuan County<br />
2 1.0<br />
Total 206 100.0<br />
including Government Message; Public Service Message;<br />
News and Interaction Message. This categorization is nonexclusive,<br />
which means one message could be categorized into<br />
several categories. Specifically, the Government Message refers<br />
to messages for the internal purposes of government; the Public<br />
Service Message mainly contains the news like weather forecast,<br />
healthy advices and so on. The "News" covers the generic field<br />
and all recent events in society are included. Interaction Message<br />
is divided into four different levels, including Question<br />
Answering Message, Explaining Message, Comments Message<br />
and Advices Collecting Message. There are 88 Government<br />
Messages in the collected data, accounting for 42.7%; There are<br />
76, 50 and 40 News, Public Service Messages and Interaction<br />
Message respectively, accounting for 36.9%, 24.3% and 19.4%.<br />
The data show that most of the messages issued by government<br />
institutional microblogs mainly focus on the government’s<br />
internal business rather than on the public services and<br />
interactions with citizens.<br />
As mentioned above, the Interaction Message is divided into<br />
Question Answering Message, Explaining Message, Comments<br />
Message and Advices Collecting Message. The “Question<br />
Answering Message” means the government can answer citizens’<br />
questions through the Microblogs’ platform directly; The<br />
“Explaining Message” means the government can explain some<br />
specific questions; The “Comments” means the microblog site is<br />
also a platform for the government to make comments on some<br />
social events; The “Advices Collecting Message” means the<br />
government uses the microblog platform to collect comments and<br />
advices from the citizens. In the 40 Interaction Messages, the<br />
Comments Message accounts for 20 messages of all the<br />
Interaction Messages. The following is the “Question Answering<br />
Message”, the “Advices Collecting Message”, and the<br />
“Explaining Message”, occupied for 5, 3 and 2 messages. We can<br />
obviously find that the government doesn’t fully use the<br />
microblog’s available features to interact with citizens.
Figure 1: Message content<br />
4.3 Message Types<br />
Message types are divided into “Routine Message”, “Live<br />
Message” and “Emergency Message”. “Routine Message” means<br />
the regularly news published by the government, like the<br />
government's recent work, the news of government's projects.<br />
"Live Message" is the live webcast message concerned about the<br />
government's activities. "Emergency Message" is about the<br />
emergency events issued by the government, such as floods,<br />
hurricane. According to the collected data, the most number is<br />
“Routine Message”, 164, accounting to 79.6%. The least number<br />
is “Emergency Message”, accounting to 1.5%.<br />
Table 3: Message types<br />
Type Quantity Percentage<br />
Routine Message 164 79.6<br />
Live Message 39 18.9<br />
Emergency Message 3 1.5<br />
Total 206 100.0<br />
4.4 Message Forms<br />
During the observation, Message Forms are composed as<br />
following: "text", "picture", "music", "video", "link", "cartoon".<br />
Sometime, one Message is composed by several forms. The 203<br />
message contains the form of “text”, accounting for 98.5%. The<br />
message contains the forms of "picture", "cartoon", "link", and<br />
"video" separately accounting for 51, 46, 35, and 6. There is no<br />
message using the form of “music”.<br />
396<br />
Figure 2: Message forms<br />
4.5 Message Sources<br />
Message Sources is divided into three categories, “Spontaneous<br />
Message” means the message is issued by the government;<br />
“Forwarding Message with Comments” means the message is<br />
forward from other’s microblog with the government’s comment;<br />
“Forwarding Message without Comments” means the message is<br />
forward from other’s microblog without the government’s<br />
comment;. According to the collected data, the most number is the<br />
“Spontaneous Message”, 150, accounting for 72.8%. “Forwarding<br />
Message with Comments” and “Forwarding Message without<br />
Comments” just has 39 and 17.<br />
Figure 3: Message sources<br />
4.6 Directing<br />
The one of application of Sina Weibo is to use the “@” function<br />
to push the message to particular user directly, which could<br />
enhance the efficiency of information sharing. From the data,<br />
there are just two messages using the function.<br />
Table 4: Directing<br />
Yes or No Quantity Percentage<br />
Yes 2 1.0<br />
No 204 99.0<br />
Total 206 100.0
Facets Codes/categories<br />
Table 1. Multifaceted Coding Schema<br />
Messages’ Number The Total Number of Messages’ posted within 7 days<br />
Message Content Government Message; Public Service Message; News; Interaction Message<br />
Message Types Routine Message; Emergency Message; Live Message<br />
Message Forms Text; Picture; Music; Video; Links; Cartoon<br />
Message Sources Spontaneous Message; Forwarding Message with Comments; Forwarding Message without Comments<br />
Directing<br />
Language Styles<br />
Yes or No. It refers to the use of directing with the function of @ to direct a message to a specific<br />
individual or institution<br />
Formality, Humanity. The former refers to formal, official and rigid language styles, and the latter refers to<br />
lively, sentient and human expressions<br />
Relevant Stakeholders Government; Enterprise; Social Organizations; Medias; Society; Individuals<br />
Associated Levels<br />
Attitude of comments<br />
Message related to higher jurisdictions, governments and departments; Message related to local<br />
jurisdictions, governments and departments; Message related to other jurisdictions , governments and<br />
departments at the same level; Message related to lower jurisdictions, governments and departments;<br />
Message for generic levels<br />
Positive, Negative or Neutral. It refers to the attitude and manner indicated in the comments made by<br />
readers<br />
Commenter ‘s Types Individuals; Organizations<br />
Government Responses Yes or No. It refers to whether government responses to comments made by readers<br />
4.7 Language Styles<br />
According to the styles of the language, the message is divided<br />
into "Humanity" and "Formality". According to the data, the<br />
“Formality” style message is 166, accounting for 80.6%, which<br />
means the “Humanity” style message accounting for 19.4%. The<br />
data shows that the government institutional microblogs' message<br />
language style is too formal, which maybe lack of the humanity.<br />
Figure 4: Language styles<br />
4.8 Relevant Stakeholders<br />
According to the observation, the message is related to different<br />
stakeholders, like the government, the enterprise, the individuals,<br />
and some of the message is related several stakeholders at one<br />
time. From the data, 144 of message are related to the government,<br />
and 80 related to the society, 22 to the individuals, 13 to the<br />
enterprise, and 10 to the media.<br />
397<br />
Figure 5: Relevant stakeholders<br />
4.9 Associated Levels<br />
From the observation, the associated levels are divided into<br />
“higher jurisdictions, governments and departments”, “local<br />
jurisdictions, governments and departments”, “other jurisdictions,<br />
governments and departments at the same level”, “lower<br />
jurisdictions, governments and departments”, “generic levels”.<br />
According to the data, the 177 of message are related to “local<br />
jurisdictions, governments and departments” level, accounting for<br />
56.8%; the message related to “lower jurisdictions, governments<br />
and departments” level is 54, accounting for 26.2%; the message<br />
related to “generic levels” is 31, accounting for 15%; No message<br />
is related to the “other jurisdictions, governments and departments<br />
at the same level” level.
Figure 6: Associated levels<br />
4.10 Attitude of Citizens’ Comments<br />
Among 206 messages, 174 of them were commented by the netusers,<br />
accounting for 84.5%. According to the observation of each<br />
comment, 11 comments are negative, accounting for 5.3% in the<br />
174. 144 comments are positive, accounting for 68%.<br />
Table 5: Attitude of comments<br />
Positive or Negative Quantity Percentage<br />
Positive 11 5.3<br />
Negative 140 68.0<br />
Neutral 23 11.2<br />
Total 174 84.5<br />
4.11 Commenter’s Types<br />
In the 174 comments, 173 comments are issued only by individual<br />
users, 47 comments are issued only by organizations. Some of the<br />
comments are issued by the individuals and organizations both.<br />
Figure 7: Commenter’s types<br />
398<br />
4.12 Government Responses<br />
We also observe whether the government explain or response the<br />
users’ question, criticism and comment or not. Among the 206<br />
messages, 45 messages received government responses,<br />
accounting for 21.8%, and all responses are positive to explain the<br />
net-users’ question.<br />
Table 6: Government responses<br />
Government Responses Quantity Percentage<br />
Yes 45 21.8<br />
No 161 78.2<br />
Total 206 100.0<br />
5. FINDINGS:THE CROSS-TAB<br />
ANALYSIS RESULTS<br />
5.1 Crossed-tab Analysis between Message<br />
Sources and Message Types<br />
From the outcome of crossed-tab analysis between Message<br />
Sources and Message Types, the “Routine message” and “Live<br />
message” account for most part of the three message sources. The<br />
only three “Emergency messages” just issued by the government’s<br />
“Spontaneous message”.<br />
Figure 8: Crossed-tab analysis between message sources and<br />
message types<br />
5.2 Crossed-tab Analysis between Message<br />
Sources and Associated Levels<br />
From the outcome of crossed-tab analysis between Message<br />
Sources and associated levels, the message related to the “Local<br />
jurisdictions, governments and departments” level are extremely<br />
obvious in the governments’ “Spontaneous Message”, which<br />
means the governments are more active in dealing with the local<br />
information.
Figure 9: Crossed-tab analysis between message sources and<br />
associated levels<br />
5.3 Crossed-tab Analysis between Message<br />
Sources and Message Contents<br />
From the outcome of the crossed-tab analysis between Message<br />
Sources and Message Contents, in the “Spontaneous message”<br />
category, the “Government message” and “News” are obviously<br />
accounted the most part, accounting for 80%, and the “Interaction<br />
message” is accounted the least part; in the “Forwarding message<br />
with Comments” category, “the Interaction message” is accounted<br />
the most part, and the “Government message” is accounted the<br />
least part; in the “Forwarding message without Comments”<br />
category, the “Public Service message” is accounted the most part,<br />
accounting for 44%.<br />
Figure 10: Crossed-tab analysis between message sources and<br />
message contents<br />
5.4 Crossed-tab Analysis between Message<br />
Types and Relevant Stakeholders<br />
The Figure 11 shows the relationship between Message Types and<br />
Relevant Stakeholders. According to the analysis, the “Routine<br />
Message” related to the “government” is obvious higher than other<br />
groups. But the message related the “Society” is higher than others<br />
in the “Emergency Message” and “Live Message”. In a word, the<br />
“Routine Message” pays more attention to the “Government”, and<br />
the “Emergency Message” and “Live Message” pays more<br />
attention to the “Society”.<br />
399<br />
Figure 11: Crossed-tab analysis between message types and<br />
relevant stakeholders<br />
5.5 Crossed-tab Analysis between Message<br />
Types and Message Content<br />
From the outcome of crossed-tab analysis between Message Types<br />
and Message Content, the “Government Message” and “News” are<br />
the most in the “Routine Message”. But the “News” is the most in<br />
the “Live Message”.<br />
Figure 12: Crossed-tab analysis between message types and<br />
message content<br />
6. DISCUSSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS<br />
We will discuss possible reasons and effects of findings in this<br />
section. Furthermore, based on above findings, we wil provide a<br />
number of suggestions to the Chinese government agencies as<br />
follow:<br />
6.1 Improve the Interaction with Citizens<br />
Government institutional microblogs could improve the speed of<br />
government information, and provide new channels for the<br />
interaction between government and citizens. The citizens can ask<br />
questions to the government through the microblogs directly,<br />
meanwhile the government also can answer and reply to the<br />
citizens immediately in the microblogs platforms, which can
improve the government management efficiency, reduce the<br />
administrative costs and provide more convenience to the citizens.<br />
From the practice effect and data, the interactions in the Chinese<br />
government institutional microblogs are still in the insufficient<br />
level. In the all collected 206 message, only 45 of message got the<br />
response from the government. There are also some defects in the<br />
area of improving the communication efficiency on the<br />
government institutional microblogs, for example, just two<br />
messages use the function of directing, which can improve the<br />
speed of information sharing and point to point information<br />
forwarding. In addition, compared with the "spontaneous<br />
message", most of them are "government message", and the<br />
"interaction message" accounts a little. In the "interaction<br />
message", the total number of "question answering message",<br />
"explaining message" and "advices collecting message" are ten,<br />
accounting for 0.05%. There is more "interaction message" in the<br />
"forward message" category.<br />
Through the number of "spontaneous message", it seems that<br />
Chinese government agencies hope to use microblogs to enhance<br />
the publicity effect. But during the process of interaction, most of<br />
the government chooses to keep silence in order to avoiding the<br />
possible misunderstanding. However, the government agencies<br />
add more comments on the "forward message", which are less<br />
relevant with their own department. In addition, although it's not<br />
yet the mainstream way to interact with citizens though<br />
microblogs, the influence of microblogs will be more and more<br />
important with the number of users' rising.<br />
6.2 Increase the Transparency<br />
For the citizens, the government institutional microblogs play an<br />
important role on the area of improving the government<br />
information transparency. According to the data, the government<br />
institutional should enhance the ability of government information<br />
transparency.<br />
Before exploring the issue of government transparency, there are<br />
two conceptions needed to be clearly defined, which are<br />
“Government Transparency” and “Government Outreach”.<br />
Government Outreach means the government provides specific<br />
information to particular groups. However, government<br />
transparency is the government provides more transparent<br />
information to the citizens and enhance citizens’ the ability to<br />
question government. One scholar mentioned(Felten,2009):<br />
“Outreach means government telling us what it wants us to<br />
hear; transparency means giving us the information that we, the<br />
citizens, want to get.”[7]<br />
According to the different nature of messages, the research divided<br />
the message contents into four categories, including Government<br />
Message; Public Service Message; News and Interaction Message.<br />
Government Message and News account for most of the numbers<br />
in the all 206 messages. As we have analyzed, Government<br />
Message and News are more related to government outreach, and<br />
can’t improve the government transparency directly and<br />
effectively. Public Service Message and Interaction Message are<br />
the information what the citizens hope to be provided, but account<br />
for lower percentage in practice according to our study.<br />
6.3 Enhance the Public Services<br />
The data also shows that the government institutional microblogs<br />
pay much attention to the inner government issues and ignore<br />
400<br />
services to the outside public. According to the date analysis on<br />
the topic of "Relevant Stakeholders ", messages related to the<br />
government itself is more than 114, and the number related to the<br />
outside Enterprise, Media and Individuals is less than 30. In other<br />
words, the function of government to serve the citizens are<br />
seemingly ignored, and obviously this approach won’t improve<br />
effectively the interaction between government and citizens.<br />
From the analysis on "Message Content", Chinese government<br />
institutional microblogs issued more Government Messages and<br />
News and less Public Service Messages and Interaction Messages.<br />
In terms of "Message Types", the Daily Messages are more than<br />
Live Messages and Emergency Messages. Thus, it seems that<br />
current Chinese government institutional microblogs are used<br />
more for issuing daily government Messages and news through the<br />
new technical platform, and doesn't fully utilize other functions of<br />
microblogs, such as instant interaction to provide public services.<br />
6.4 Prevent Microblogs from Becoming a<br />
"Mini Government Websites"<br />
From the analysis on the type of "Message Forms" and "Language<br />
Style", most of the messages and interactions are too formal and<br />
has too much "Text". Many Chinese government institutional<br />
microblogs are used more like “a mini government websites”, and<br />
doesn’t fully take advantage of some unique features of<br />
microblogs as a Web 2.0 tools to interact with citizens. Therefore,<br />
we would like suggest Chinese government agencies to understand<br />
and utilize microblogs more comprehensively and interactively to<br />
enhance public services.<br />
7. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE STUDY<br />
This research studies the government institutional microblogs run<br />
on Sina Weibo, the most influential microblog operator in China,<br />
and ten government institutional microblogs at different levels, in<br />
different regions and different departments are selected for<br />
studying their content and interactions. The study indicates that<br />
government microblogs indeed provide a new interactive platform<br />
to the government and citizens. However, the study also finds that<br />
most messages on government microblogs are Government<br />
Messages and News, and only a few of them are Public Service<br />
Messages and Interactive Messages, which means that the<br />
government institutional microblogs are still used more as a<br />
government outreach platform rather than a service and interaction<br />
platform. Meanwhile, the study finds that government doesn't fully<br />
use the functions of microblog to post Emergency Messages and<br />
Live Messages. Most citizens have positive attitude towards<br />
government institutional microblogs. But compared with their<br />
attitude, government's responses are scarce and have only low<br />
level interactions with citizens, especially when facing questions<br />
and criticism from citizens.<br />
The paper has also some limitations. This paper only selected ten<br />
representative government institutional microblogs as case study,<br />
and the future research could further expand the same sizes and do<br />
more in-depth studies.<br />
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Session 14<br />
Information Structure
CRHIS: Cloud based Rural Healthcare Information System<br />
Manas Ranjan Patra<br />
Berhampur University<br />
Berhampur 760 007, India<br />
+91 – 94371-45430<br />
mrpatra12@gmail.com<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
Healthcare in developing countries has always been a major issue.<br />
In the Indian subcontinent the healthcare facilities are quite<br />
diverse as one travels from major cities to remote locations and to<br />
the rural areas. Whatever little healthcare has been possible in<br />
rural India is only because of the initiative of the Government or<br />
NGOs. No private player is interested to invest in the rural areas<br />
because of the possible poor return on investment. In this paper<br />
we study how modern ICT in general and cloud computing in<br />
particular can be used in the healthcare sector in order to facilitate<br />
improved medical services in the rural areas at reduced costs. We<br />
argue that cloud services stand as a potential alternative to<br />
facilitate rural healthcare information management in terms of<br />
cost reduction and resource utilization. At the same time it can<br />
improve maintainability and use of up-to-date technologies in the<br />
healthcare sector. The main objective of a Cloud based<br />
information system is to create secure and state-of-the-art facility<br />
to store patient data which can be accessed by the medical<br />
professionals and policy makers for disease diagnosis and control.<br />
A cloud based information repository system can offer new<br />
possibilities, such as easy and ubiquitous access to medical data,<br />
and opportunities to utilize the services of medical experts which<br />
are otherwise unavailable in rural areas. Here, we propose a cloud<br />
based model for building a rural healthcare information system.<br />
Design of an overall system along with the functional components<br />
is presented and the advantages, open issues and prospects for<br />
further improvement of this model is also highlighted.<br />
Categories and Subject Descriptors<br />
H.3.5 [Information Systems]: Information Storage and Retrieval<br />
- Online Information Services, data sharing, web- based services.<br />
General Terms<br />
Management, Design, Experimentation<br />
Keywords<br />
Cloud computing, Rural Healthcare, Information Services, IaaS.<br />
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Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to<br />
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and/or a fee.<br />
ICEGOV '12, October 22 - 25 2012, Albany, NY, USA<br />
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1200-4/12/10...$15.00<br />
Rama Krushna Das<br />
National Informatics Centre<br />
Berhampur 760 004, India<br />
+91 – 94370-64536<br />
ramdash@yahoo.com<br />
402<br />
Rabi Prasad Padhy<br />
Oracle Corporation<br />
Bangalore, 560029, India<br />
+91-98862-86444<br />
rabi.padhy@gmail.com<br />
1. INTRODUCTION<br />
Rural healthcare has been the primary mandate of different<br />
political parties in India. Attempts have been made to extend<br />
modern healthcare facilities to the large population living in the<br />
rural areas of the Indian subcontinent. But the ground realities are<br />
far from expectation. The major impediments are due to the<br />
inaccessibility of the remote locations and unavailability of<br />
facilities. Because of this even doctors are not interested to serve<br />
in those remote and underdeveloped areas of the country. As a<br />
result the patients travel long distances and spend a lot of money<br />
in order to get treatment. But those who cannot afford leave it to<br />
their fate and simply depend on the treatment they receive from<br />
the local health workers. Moreover, the rural people are deprived<br />
of modern healthcare facilities like regular health checkups,<br />
clinical tests, proper diagnosis, expert advices etc. This poses a<br />
major challenge even before the scientists and technocrats to<br />
provide affordable solution towards healthcare for the people<br />
living in rural areas. Now with the proliferation of computers and<br />
internet connectivity it is possible to think of ICT enabled<br />
solutions to the healthcare related problems in rural India. Of late,<br />
even in developing countries cloud based services have been<br />
explored as a possible technological solution to large scale<br />
information management though there have been implementation<br />
challenges and cost based issues [1]. In spite of criticisms with<br />
respect to ownership, cost benefit, risk and security issues [2]<br />
several initiatives are already underway to adopt cloud based<br />
solutions to a myriad of applications. The opportunities to<br />
improve healthcare services using cloud infrastructure has been<br />
envisaged in [3]. Cloud based patient record keeping system<br />
proposed in [4][5] is an innovative area in the field of healthcare<br />
which can enable doctors to view patient health records from<br />
anywhere and at any time in order to provide expert advises and<br />
monitor treatment. Some advanced applications like management<br />
of medical image data in a cloud computing environment which<br />
can be accessed through handheld mobile devices has been<br />
proposed in [6]. The possibility of real time health monitoring and<br />
analysis of patient data has been propounded in [7] for ECG data.<br />
The use of sensors to gather patient data and uploading to a cloud<br />
environment for further analysis has been introduced in [8].<br />
Similarly, a smart card enabled patient record keeping system has<br />
been proposed in [9].<br />
In this paper, we investigate how cloudy computing can provided<br />
affordable solution to many of the problems encountered in rural<br />
healthcare services. Several dimensions of rural healthcare are<br />
investigated and the prospects of sharing resources in term of<br />
infrastructure, software and applications to facilitate healthcare<br />
related data processing is explored.
2. HEALTHCARE IN RURAL INDIA<br />
Healthcare system in India is still in a nascent stage. Though the<br />
urban population have some access to healthcare at a higher cost<br />
but studies indicate that healthcare in rural India is still a<br />
neglected sector. This is largely due to lack of infrastructure and<br />
specialist doctors in the rural areas. Even the ones who study<br />
medicine prefer to work in cities rather than going back to their<br />
own villages to serve the rural people. Private players have<br />
succeeded in providing the best of the medical facilities in cities<br />
but they have shown little interest to invest in the rural areas. This<br />
is because the private investors are skeptical about their return on<br />
investment as the rural people have limited paying capacity.<br />
Therefore, whatever healthcare is available in the rural areas is<br />
only because of the government initiatives.<br />
There is a great demand for healthcare in the rural areas. Patients<br />
need to be treated for malaria, polio and other typical diseases<br />
normally seen in rural areas because of lack of proper sanitation<br />
and unhealthy environment. Leave aside the treatment; even there<br />
is little facility to diagnose dreaded diseases like AIDS, cancer,<br />
and tuberculosis. Child care and regular checkups during<br />
pregnancy is again a neglected subject in the rural areas. Of<br />
course, over the years the Government of India has focused on<br />
reducing the burden of illness and mortality among women and<br />
children through a number of development and public health<br />
programs such as the Integrated Child Development Services<br />
(ICDS). Awareness generation among the rural mass,<br />
infrastructure development and evolving mechanism to ensure<br />
that various healthcare programs introduced by the Government<br />
are implemented to perfection is of paramount importance.<br />
A typical healthcare system infrastructure in India is depicted in<br />
figure 1.<br />
NATIONAL LEVEL<br />
Ministry of Health & Family Welfare<br />
PROVINCIAL LEVEL<br />
Department of Health & Family Welfare<br />
RURAL AREAS<br />
Community Health Centre<br />
Primary Health Centre<br />
Sub-Centre<br />
Village Health Guides<br />
DISTRICT LEVEL<br />
District Hospitals<br />
URBAN AREAS<br />
Hospitals<br />
Dispensary<br />
Figure 1. Healthcare System Infrastructure in India<br />
The doctors in the primary/community health centers in the rural<br />
areas are mostly inexperienced. Therefore, when a patient arrives<br />
for treatment the doctors try to diagnose the disease and carry out<br />
preliminary investigations. If the disease is minor doctors treat the<br />
patient but if it is beyond their capability they send the patient to the<br />
nearest district hospital. Depending on the seriousness of the disease<br />
and availability of facilities to treat the patient the case is further<br />
referred to the next higher level hospital with better medical<br />
facilities. In such cases, whenever a serious patient is taken to<br />
another hospital, invariably the same medical tests are conducted<br />
403<br />
due to unavailability of proper reports and patient history from the<br />
lower level hospitals. Therefore, there is an obvious delay in starting<br />
proper treatment and in many cases there is further deterioration of<br />
the patient and in some cases even the patient succumbs to death. If<br />
the required information would have been available at the right time<br />
proper diagnosis could have been possible and treatment could have<br />
been initiated immediately.<br />
2.1 Patient Information Management<br />
Information management in hospitals, dispensaries and healthcare<br />
centers particularly in rural areas is a difficult task. Today High<br />
quality healthcare depends on extensive and carefully planned<br />
patient information processing. Many of the rural healthcare units<br />
still depend on paper-based record-keeping system wherein<br />
patient information is maintained in pen and paper. This results in<br />
difficulty in accessing patient information.<br />
2.2 Medical Infrastructure<br />
The quality of medical infrastructure deteriorates as one move<br />
down the hierarchy in figure 1. Even if certain medical<br />
instruments are available but in many cases those are not<br />
operational for lack of maintenance. This becomes a hurdle for<br />
proper diagnosis. Moreover, there is no way to analyze patient<br />
data both due to unavailability of expert doctors and necessary<br />
computer-aided diagnostic tools in the rural healthcare centers.<br />
2.3 Disease Control and Monitoring<br />
Certain rural areas are prone to specific type of diseases, for<br />
example malaria, filariasis etc. Similarly, there is seasonal<br />
outbreak of epidemics, flu or diarrhea because of certain local<br />
factors. Such cases are to be monitored carefully and must be<br />
brought under control at the earliest. Unless the Government gets<br />
the right information at the right time about the affected areas,<br />
remedial measures cannot be initiated immediately to deal with<br />
the situation. Many-a-times lack of communication of the ground<br />
realities becomes a bottleneck for the Government to respond<br />
quickly.<br />
3. PROPOSED CLOUD BASED SYSTEM<br />
3.1 Cloud based System<br />
Cloud based systems are being developed to deliver hosted<br />
services over the Internet. These services are broadly divided into<br />
three categories, namely, Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS),<br />
Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS).<br />
The basic aim here is to provide a virtualized environment so that<br />
a client can make use of state-of-the-art resources such as servers,<br />
software, storage etc. instead of buying those resources rather pay<br />
based on usage. Such a notion is quite appropriate for developing<br />
healthcare system for the rural community. This is because it is<br />
not possible to build infrastructure at each and every primary<br />
health centre considering the cost, unavailability of experts to<br />
operate the equipment and even from the maintenance point of<br />
view. Thus cloud can provide an innovative and cost effective<br />
solution to modernize healthcare information management in rural<br />
areas. Once patient data is collected and stored in a cloud it can be<br />
easily accessed by expert doctors for analysis and further action.<br />
Thus medical staff from one institution can monitor patients<br />
located at another distantly located hospital.
3.2 Design Requirements<br />
There are certain basic requirements that must be addressed in the<br />
design of a rural healthcare information system.<br />
3.2.1 Patient data collection<br />
Whenever a patient visits a Primary Health Centre(PHC), the PHC<br />
doctor performs certain preliminary investigation which may<br />
involve pathological and clinical tests. Such data need to be<br />
maintained in proper format to facilitate diagnosis and future<br />
reference. Thus there is need for suitable methods to collect,<br />
process and transmit patient data to specific locations. The<br />
penetration of desk top/laptops computers in rural India can easily<br />
address this concern.<br />
3.2.2 Data transmission<br />
If patient data need to be transmitted to other locations for further<br />
analysis and for expert views then there must be facility for<br />
secured transmission over a communication network. National<br />
Informatics Centre (NIC), which is the largest public sector unit<br />
of government of India has already extended network connectivity<br />
to block levels and even to many of the rural areas in the form of<br />
IT kiosks managed by NGOs. Therefore the NIC network is the<br />
best way to be used for data transmission.<br />
3.2.3 Storage and distribution of data<br />
NIC has already started providing IaaS for data storage. Once data<br />
is loaded to the cloud it can be accessed by authorized doctors and<br />
other stakeholders.<br />
3.2.4 Availability of medical equipment<br />
Patient data is not enough but one would require sophisticated<br />
medical equipment for diagnosis and data analysis. To create such<br />
facilities in rural areas is a difficult proposition. But such facilities<br />
are available either in the hospitals at the provincial level or in<br />
national level or in designated national level medical research<br />
institutes. Such centers can be integrated with the cloud<br />
infrastructure to take advantage of the facilities. Thus, the system<br />
should be flexible and extensible so that heterogeneous equipment<br />
can be added to the system.<br />
3.2.5 Scalability<br />
The system should be scalable so that more and more rural<br />
healthcare units can be integrated to make use of common<br />
facilities.<br />
3.2.6 Security and reliability<br />
The system must guarantee confidentiality and integrity of patient<br />
data. Only authorized doctors/persons should have access to data.<br />
Whenever needed the required medical data must be available in<br />
spite of operational problems.<br />
3.3 Proof-of-Concept Design<br />
The proposed high level design model is depicted in figure 2.<br />
Patient data is collected at different PHCs and entered into a local<br />
database. Data is then sent to a database server maintained at the<br />
district/provincial level where it can be organized and suitably<br />
indexed so that it can be accessed through user-friendly interfaces.<br />
Specialist doctors available at the district/provincial level can<br />
access the data for diagnosis and can guide the treatment to be<br />
404<br />
administered to the patients. The data is then filtered and loaded to<br />
the cloud services which can be later shared by experts and<br />
authorized stakeholders for taking decision at a higher level. The<br />
filtering process can involve aggregation of patient data (in case<br />
tests have been conducted at different places) and preliminary<br />
analysis, before the data can be loaded to the cloud. The stored<br />
data can be delivered to authorized medical professionals/users<br />
after proper authentication using suitable content delivery<br />
services.<br />
Expert analysis, Disease<br />
control, Planning<br />
Diagnosis by experts,<br />
data analysis, filtering<br />
(Provincial medical centers)<br />
Further test inputs,<br />
specialist views, data<br />
indexing<br />
Patient Data<br />
(<br />
collection at<br />
Rural Health Centers<br />
Figure 2. Rural Healthcare Information System<br />
4. CLOUD SERVICE PROVISIONING<br />
4.1 Cloud connectivity<br />
The connectivity and configuration of the cloud based rural<br />
healthcare Information system is based on the service provider<br />
policy and location (i.e., cloud data center location). Internet is the<br />
main communication link between the service provider and a rural<br />
healthcare center. Users access cloud services using networked<br />
client devices, such as desktop computers, laptops, tablets and<br />
smartphones. Many of the cloud applications do not require<br />
specific software on the client so that cloud applications can be<br />
accessed through web browsers. A typical connectivity between<br />
cloud data center and rural healthcare centers is depicted in figure<br />
3.<br />
4.2 Authenticated Access<br />
As patient data is vital, access to such data requires proper<br />
authentication. Only the concerned medical personnel should be<br />
allowed to access patient data and for specific use. One must<br />
enforce well-defined access policies to ensure that only authentic<br />
doctors, nurses or other concerned users access the patient data.<br />
This is achieved by deploying an authentication server which can<br />
authenticate each and every access request to use the cloud<br />
resources.
Cloud<br />
Data<br />
Center<br />
Internet<br />
Service<br />
Provider<br />
(A)<br />
Link Load Balancer<br />
Physical<br />
Link<br />
VPN Link<br />
Link Load Balancer<br />
Physical Link<br />
VPN Link<br />
Link Load Balancer<br />
Internet<br />
Service<br />
Provider<br />
(B)<br />
Rural Healthcare<br />
Center – 1<br />
LAN<br />
Database<br />
Server<br />
Application<br />
Server<br />
Rural Healthcare<br />
Center – 2<br />
LAN<br />
Database<br />
Server<br />
Application<br />
Server<br />
Figure 3. Connectivity between cloud data center and rural<br />
healthcare centers<br />
4.3 Use of Open Source Software<br />
Different modules responsible for storing and processing patient<br />
data are being implemented using MySQL, PHP, Apache, running<br />
on virtual machines managed by Open Nebula [10]. We are also<br />
considering ANEKA as the middleware for cloud computing [11].<br />
5. CONCLUSIONS<br />
In this work the need for an information system to facilitate rural<br />
healthcare has been highlighted. The proposed cloud based<br />
solution is aimed at providing a cost effective way of dealing with<br />
the patient information for remotely located areas in India. The<br />
practical advantages of this solution are cost-effectiveness, ease of<br />
deployment, availability of data for analysis anywhere on the<br />
globe. Since availability of doctors with different expertise in a<br />
single location, that to in rural areas, is not practicable; now with<br />
the proposed cloud based solution it is possible to provide medical<br />
assistance to remote patients without actually moving to those<br />
locations. Further, doctors of established hospitals with better<br />
facilities can remotely monitor critical patients, thus helping to<br />
improve the quality of medical service even in rural areas. From<br />
the software engineering perspective, the proposed design<br />
promotes re-usability of services which are deployed at different<br />
locations and has the capability to leverage different medical<br />
institutes and research centres to use services through a SaaS<br />
model. This also reduces investment on hardware and expensive<br />
medical equipment and software licensing costs. Further the<br />
patient data collected over a period of time can be used to build a<br />
knowledge base of different diseases, affected areas, their causes<br />
which can facilitate policy makers and researchers to take<br />
remedial measures and plan for disease control.<br />
405<br />
In this work we have not addressed the issue of data security and<br />
quality of service which is a challenging area of research in cloud<br />
computing. We shall look into these aspects in future to improve<br />
the performance and trustworthiness of the proposed healthcare<br />
system. Further, as our next research agenda we shall explore the<br />
use of mobile phones (which has a greater penetration in rural<br />
India) to transmit data to database servers managed at the<br />
provincial level. Further wherever possible, recording patient data<br />
using sensors is yet another alternative to reduce the amount of<br />
manual error during data entry. This can enable faster and direct<br />
transfer of data to the cloud infrastructure for diagnosis and expert<br />
advice in case of critical patients.<br />
6. REFERENCES<br />
[1] Greengard, S., Cloud Computing and Developing Nations.<br />
Communications of the ACM, 53, 5, 2010, 18-20.<br />
[2] White, J., Cloud Computing for Healthcare Organizations: Is<br />
there a Silver Lining? ASPEN Report, December 2010,1-8.<br />
[3] Mu-Hsing Kuo, A., Opportunities and Challenges of Cloud<br />
Computing to Improve Healthcare Services, Journal of<br />
Medical Internet Research, 13, 3, 2011.<br />
[4] Binczewski, A., Kurowski, K., Mazurek, C., and Stroinski,<br />
M., A Concept of a Patient-centered Healthcare System<br />
Based on the Virtualized Networking and Information<br />
Infrastructure. In Proceedings of the eTELEMED 2011 : The<br />
Third International Conference on eHealth, Telemedicine,<br />
and Social Medicine, IARIA, 2011, 51-58.<br />
[5] Pardamean, B., Rumanda, R.R., Integrated Model of Cloud-<br />
Based E-Medical Record for Health Care Organizations,<br />
Recent Researches in E-Activities, 157-162.<br />
[6] Somasundaram, M., Gitanjali, I.S. Govardhani, T.C., et al.<br />
Medical Image Data Management System in Mobile Cloud<br />
Computing Environment, Proc. of the International<br />
Conference on Signal, Image Processing and Applications<br />
IPCSIT 21 IACSIT Press, Singapore, 2011, 11-15.<br />
[7] Pandey, S., Voorsluys W., Niu, S., An autonomic cloud<br />
environment for hosting ECG data analysis services, Future<br />
Generation Computer Systems 28, 2012, 147–154.<br />
[8] Suresh, R., Robin, C.R.R., An Efficient VOIP Enabled<br />
Health Monitoring System using Cloud Computing, Proc.<br />
International Conference on Emerging Technology Trends,<br />
2011, 6-14.<br />
[9] Karthikeyan, N., Sukanesh, R., Case Study on Software as a<br />
Service Based Emergency Healthcare in India, European<br />
Journal of Scientific Research, 69, 3, 2012, 461-472.<br />
[10] Erdogmus, H., Cloud Computing: Does Nirvana Hide behind<br />
the Nebula? IEEE Software, 26, 2, 2009, 4-6.<br />
[11] Chu, X., Nadiminti, K., Jin, C., Venugopal, S., and Buyya,<br />
R., Aneka: Next Generation Enterprise Grid Platform for e-<br />
Science and e-Business Applications. Proc. of the 3rd IEEE<br />
International Conference on e-Science and Grid Computing,<br />
IEEE CS Press, Los Alamitos, CA, USA, 2007, 10–13.
Data collection in a degraded network: case of<br />
developing countries or countries in crisis<br />
Fidèl Jiomekong Azanzi<br />
Université de Yaoundé<br />
jiofidelus@yahoo.fr<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
An essential component in public administration (health systems<br />
management, municipality management, environmental<br />
protection, agriculture etc.) is the data collection service. Data<br />
collected concerns key information that can improve the living<br />
conditions of populations (epidemiological data, environmental<br />
data, weather data etc.). This collection is difficult in developing<br />
countries or in situations of crisis (notably natural<br />
disasters). Current solutions are inadequate, for they assume the<br />
availability of client terminals, the presence of outstanding<br />
(Internet) communication networks, or they provide a service<br />
based on a primitive communication via SMS and data furnishing<br />
through mobile phones which are prone to data entry errors. In<br />
this paper, we propose a compromise between these<br />
approaches. A dedicated language allows the definition of input<br />
masks with which are generated (i) HTML forms enabling a<br />
reliable entering of data from a computer (ii) in which formats of<br />
SMS messages have to be exchanged between the input terminal<br />
and the data processing server. The implementation of this<br />
approach is based on a Model-Driven Architecture (MDA)<br />
technology, and it has been applied to Health Information Systems<br />
(HIS).<br />
General Terms<br />
Management, Documentation, Performance, Reliability, Security,<br />
Languages.<br />
Keywords<br />
E-governance, network architecture, GSM, SMS, degraded<br />
networks, Health Information System.<br />
1. INTRODUCTION<br />
Knowledge and information are essential to meet the opportunities<br />
and challenges related to health, social, economic and<br />
technological transformations. However, their usefulness depends<br />
on their effective communication to the public and public<br />
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for<br />
personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are<br />
not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies<br />
bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for<br />
components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored.<br />
Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to<br />
post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission<br />
and/or a fee.<br />
ICEGOV '12, October 22 - 25 2012, Albany, NY, USA<br />
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1200-4/12/10...$15.00<br />
Laurent Broto<br />
Université de Toulouse<br />
broto@irit.fr<br />
Maurice Tchuente<br />
Université de Yaoundé<br />
Maurice.Tchuente@ens-lyon.fr<br />
406<br />
Daniel Hagimont<br />
Université de Toulouse<br />
hagimont@enseeiht.fr<br />
authorities. In the context of public administration, information is<br />
all relevant data whose collection, processing, interpretation and<br />
use contribute to the achievement of a governmental<br />
mission. Such data may be environmental data, health data,<br />
etc. To be disseminated, information passes through transport<br />
networks (land way, air way, naval route) or by Computer<br />
network (Intranet or Internet). But, because of their states or<br />
nonexistence, these different means of communication do not<br />
always ensure the transmission of information to the extended<br />
territory. In developing countries or countries affected by<br />
disasters, they are usually combined to meet the needs. A<br />
multimodal network is a network that combines multiple modes of<br />
transportation in the exchange of information. Indeed, the Internet<br />
is often damaged or non-existent surface communication<br />
channels, air or water are not always suitable, making it difficult<br />
to exchange information with some rural areas, causing timeliness<br />
problems and difficulties in their check up. This can have serious<br />
consequences, for example, in the health sector, a late declaration<br />
of an epidemic may be fatal to the population. However, to serve<br />
citizens effectively, engage stakeholders in decision-making,<br />
governments must establish a robust, secure and efficient system<br />
for data exchange. E-governance can help to build this system by<br />
providing a solution to the problem of data collection.<br />
E-governance is the use by the public sector of Information and<br />
Communication Technology (ICT) to improve the exchange of<br />
information and services and to encourage citizen participation in<br />
the process of decision-making and make government more<br />
responsible, transparent and efficient[1]. Our approach is<br />
therefore the usage of e-governance to improve the exchange of<br />
data in developing countries or countries in crisis. It will rely on a<br />
media that is fast and efficient (GSM) for data transmission.<br />
In this paper, we present rapid state of the art architectures and<br />
existing technologies, their characteristics, their limits; then we<br />
propose an approach to combine the modern technology based on<br />
degraded telecommunication networks; finally, we conclude with<br />
some perspectives.<br />
2. EXISTING ARCHITECTURES<br />
To provide governments with useful information, data collection<br />
must meet a number of criteria:<br />
Completeness: The data supplied must contain all necessary<br />
information;<br />
Readiness: the data must arrive on time to decision makers;
Reliability of data: data collected must be reliable, they must not<br />
contain erroneous or inconsistent data;<br />
Security: Data must be accessible only by authorize persons;<br />
Versatility: it must be adapted to the type of data collected;<br />
Robustness should be able to use the system in degraded<br />
conditions (crisis countries, developing countries).<br />
In a broad sense, this data collection is generally established<br />
according to the client-server model:<br />
o The client uses a data collection terminal that can be a sheet<br />
of paper, a computer or mobile phone. The client is the data<br />
collector. This is usually a staff in a public service (doctor<br />
who treats local populations, secretary, municipal agent,<br />
agricultural agents etc.).<br />
o A medium that connects the customer's terminal to the server<br />
from the center of decisions. This medium may be the Internet<br />
or mobile phone through computer network or a USB key into<br />
a car, in case of transmission by surface or aerial (roads,<br />
rivers, airplanes);<br />
o Multiple protocols can be used to route data collected at the<br />
client to the server: SMS, MMS, HTML, WML, i-HTML, text<br />
file or data collection sheets. The protocols are generally<br />
dependent on the transmission medium;<br />
Once in the server at the center of decision, the data is stored in a<br />
database to be further processed.<br />
Below we give details the three main implementation of this<br />
client-server architecture.<br />
2.1. Computer-Internet-Server (CIS)<br />
We are here as part of a standard web application: the client is a<br />
computer (or smartphone) and the communication medium is<br />
Internet. The protocol for data exchange is usually the HTML<br />
language or assimilated. This architecture is commonly<br />
implemented in industrialized countries in almost all sectors<br />
(banks, municipalities, health, politics etc.). It has been used in<br />
France in 2010 for the prevention and monitoring of diabetes [6]<br />
and described in [11] as a good tool for e-democracy.<br />
This architecture ensures the timeliness of data because the data<br />
transmission medium, the Internet is fast enough in terms of time<br />
required by health systems. With data exchange protocols used,<br />
the chances of obtaining reliable data are large. Indeed,<br />
information gathered can be typed and verified (entered in a<br />
form), the controls (either automatically by the web servers) and<br />
transmission errors prevented by TCP/IP protocol. These<br />
protocols will also help ensure a high level of security by<br />
encrypting data. This system is also versatile: only the server<br />
needs to be updated in case of modification of the application.<br />
However, this architecture can be deployed in a context in which<br />
the Internet is degraded or nonexistent as in countries in crisis<br />
(war, natural disaster) or the developing countries. It does not<br />
answer our criteria for robustness.<br />
2.2. Mobile-GSM-Server (MGS)<br />
This architecture consists of a cell phone as a client. The person<br />
responsible for collecting the data types of SMS or MMS<br />
containing data to be transmitted. SMS or MMS messages are<br />
then transmitted via the Global System for Mobile communication<br />
407<br />
(GSM) to the server. The GSM network is the most common<br />
worldwide, it is often used in the management of health crises in<br />
developing countries or countries hit by natural disasters that see<br />
their wire line telecommunications infrastructure destroyed. It was<br />
used in China in 2005 after the earthquake [16], in Cameroon in<br />
2010 during the cholera outbreak [8], and in many other countries<br />
in Africa [2, 4, 5, 10, 15].<br />
This solution ensures the timeliness of data as SMS and MMS<br />
messages are sent immediately. But completeness is not always<br />
guaranteed because the data being entered into SMS or MMS, it is<br />
possible that the data collectors forget to enter some data which<br />
are confused (inverted data, invalid data). Security is not<br />
guaranteed because the data are difficult to quantify. Finally, it is<br />
not versatile because the change in one component can affect the<br />
data collector and require a new formation of the latter. It is robust<br />
against GSM networks as well resist natural disasters and are<br />
present in most countries.<br />
2.3. Human-Route-Server (HRS)<br />
For this architecture, the client is a person who collects the data<br />
with a data collection sheet paper or a computer for data capture<br />
and recording in file that can be stored on removable media. Note<br />
cards or removable media are then transmitted via the road, air or<br />
river. This system is one that is most prevalent in developing<br />
countries with no electronic system of data collection or in areas<br />
where Internet and GSM networks are absent. It is used in most<br />
countries south of Sahara in Africa [7, 12, 14].<br />
This increases the chances of obtaining reliable and complete data<br />
because the information collected may be typed (with spread<br />
sheets in the case of computerized data input or when integrating<br />
data in the case of data input on papers). Meanwhile, timeliness of<br />
data is not always guaranteed because the distance between the<br />
server and the client is often far apart and roads are bad. Data<br />
security can be ensured through file (encryption) but more<br />
difficult in the context of paper records. This system is not as<br />
versatile an update paper forms or entry program on a computer<br />
disconnected from the network is a difficult operation. For against<br />
this approach is robust: it can use on a multitude of medium (road,<br />
air, sea).<br />
2.4. Synthesis<br />
Given the table 1, no approach satisfies all the criteria of data<br />
collection systems of NHIS simultaneously. The next section<br />
presents our approach which opens way for the simultaneous<br />
consideration of all these criteria.<br />
Table 1. The different architectures<br />
architecture completeness promptness reliability<br />
CIS Good Good Good<br />
MGS Bad Good Bad<br />
HRS Good Bad Good<br />
architecture security versatility robustness<br />
CIS Good Good No<br />
MGS Bad Bad Yes<br />
HRS Bad Bad Yes
3. OUR APPROACH<br />
3.1. Descriptions<br />
In our approach (the architecture is presented on figure 1), we<br />
distinguish three types of stakeholders:<br />
Data collector who is responsible for entering data. He uses on<br />
his client station a web browser and enters data through HTML<br />
forms;<br />
Administrator who builds masks seized to be used by the data<br />
collector (forms of epidemiological data collection, record to<br />
establish the birth certificates etc..). It uses a layout editor<br />
WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get);<br />
Engineer who built widgets used in the mask editing tool.<br />
A widget describes how this entry will be made on a form<br />
(HTML) and how it will be controlled on the client side<br />
(JavaScript).<br />
In order to satisfy all criteria simultaneously, we chose a hybrid<br />
approach based on the following design choices: to ensure the<br />
readiness and robustness, we rely on a rapid and widespread<br />
media: the GSM network to ensure reliability and data<br />
completeness, we rely on standard forms (which check the data<br />
entered) to ensure the safety and versatility we rely on proxies<br />
(mandatory servers) in which can be adapted and specialize<br />
different treatments of the data entered.<br />
In this architecture, the administrator builds input masks<br />
according to its data needs and the available widgets. These entry<br />
forms are sent to proxies to generate two entities:<br />
the HTML form, generated by proxies on client machines,<br />
equivalent to the input mask set. These forms allow HTML in a<br />
browser input data by the data collector. Instrumented by Java<br />
Script scripts, they provide a upstream check of the validity of<br />
data; a format representation of the messages exchanged on the<br />
network. These message formats are used by proxies to set the<br />
construction of messages sent from clients to the server (data<br />
entered in the spread sheets). These messages should be as small<br />
as possible to limit the number of SMS sent and format of ASCII<br />
characters.<br />
For example, the administrator can define a mask form that will<br />
contain two fields: a person's sex and age. From this form and the<br />
definition of widgets, the following HTML code can be generated<br />
to the destination browser data collector:<br />
<br />
<br />
function validate()<br />
{<br />
if(document.form1.age.value99)<br />
{<br />
alert("age must be between 0 and 99 years");<br />
}<br />
}<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Age : <br />
Sexe : Homme<br />
Femme<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
This generation is local and does not cost anything in terms of<br />
network. The message containing the mask (message sent via<br />
SMS) may contain: S, A. where A is the name given to the age<br />
fields and S is the name given to the Gender field. The description<br />
408<br />
of widgets is already known by proxies, the network cost is<br />
negligible (1 SMS) to send this mask.<br />
Figure 1. Our approach architecture.<br />
3.2. Implementation<br />
In the following, we present the field in which we chose to<br />
implement our approach and methodology that we used to<br />
implement it.<br />
3.2.1. Methodology<br />
We chose to use model Driven Architecture (MDA). These<br />
methods rely on the use of meta-models (Domain Specific<br />
Language or DSL), consistent with these models and DSL tools.<br />
DSLs are languages specific to a particular area. A DSL is a<br />
language and like all languages it has syntax. This syntax is<br />
divided into two parts: the set of domain elements (abstract<br />
syntax) and the representation (concrete syntax) that can be either<br />
graphical or textual, knowing that an element can have several<br />
different representations (corresponding to an abstract<br />
syntax several concrete syntax). These DSLs are used to build<br />
tools that allow entry of a conforming model in DSL.<br />
The engineer has at his disposal a tool to describe the widgets<br />
used in the masks. Each widget has a name and a description<br />
HTML and Java Script. All of these widgets from the abstract<br />
syntax.<br />
By giving the HTML and Java Script code verification, it gives a<br />
first concrete syntax that will be the HTML form with the<br />
verification code JavaScript. Once the DSL defined, description of<br />
new widgets is sent via SMS to proxies and a second concrete<br />
syntax is generated: the representation format masks. Finally the<br />
tool used by the administrator is automatically generated. When<br />
adding or editing a mask, this mask is sent to new proxies.<br />
Finally, when the data collector completes and submits a form, the<br />
proxies marshaling unmarshalling and the arguments for sending<br />
SMS to the server. In the following, we present the scope of our<br />
approach.<br />
3.2.2. Health Information System<br />
A health system is a set of organizations, institutions, resources<br />
and people whose main objective is to improve health [9]. Only<br />
accurate and reliable can help to develop a policy based on<br />
evidence that can lead the optimal management of health<br />
programs and, especially, to trigger actions that can improve wellbeing<br />
of the population. Thus, the performance of health systems<br />
depends critically on the performance of National Health
Information System (NHIS). A National Health Information<br />
system (NHIS) is a set of people, procedures and materials<br />
organized to provide timely information, in an appropriate health<br />
program and the systems international exchange of health<br />
information. This information must be complete, accurate and not<br />
outdated (at a given time). In addition, security in this area is<br />
essential. The information should therefore be granted only to<br />
authorized persons [3, 13].<br />
We have implemented our approach in the NHIS data<br />
collection. Data collection is to transmit the epidemiological data<br />
of physicians treating patients to centers of decision. This part is<br />
particularly important in developing countries or in countries in<br />
crisis. Indeed, the technologies used in industrialized nations are<br />
not generalizable to developing countries (lack of reliable<br />
communications networks) or countries in crisis (destruction of<br />
these networks).<br />
To validate our approach, we implemented the data collection<br />
sheet to mandatory reporting of diseases and epidemic-prone<br />
diseases in Cameroon. Generally, the data collected in the NHIS<br />
in Cameroon is collected in paper format and transmitted by<br />
road to the Ministry of Public Health [7].<br />
We propose an implementation of electronic data collection that<br />
use the Internet when it is available and use our approach when<br />
Internet is not available. The proxy has been implemented with<br />
XML (to build our DSL), XSLT (for transformation to XML to<br />
HTML and HTML to the text); data is entered by the client in<br />
HTML format. Data is check up (for example, the number of<br />
cases of disease must be greater than or equal to the<br />
number of deaths). They are converted into text by XSLT and<br />
transmitted to the server via the GSM network. Once in the<br />
server, the SMS data is retrieved at the level of the modem server<br />
and forwarded to the proxy server. The proxy server transforms<br />
and interprets the data, performs the necessary treatment and<br />
records in the database. At the server, other checks are performed<br />
(eg, data consistency compared to the size of the population).<br />
Information such as the date of data transmission is generated at<br />
the server level and stored in the database.<br />
4. CONCLUSION<br />
Data collection in developing countries or in situations of crisis<br />
requires solutions to constraints such as reliability and seized<br />
communications. Current solutions are based on primitive entry<br />
services (entry SMS from mobile phones) or Web applications<br />
making unrealistic assumptions about the available networks and<br />
terminals.<br />
In this paper, we proposed a solution based on GSM<br />
communications, network easily deployed in developing countries<br />
or counties in crisis, and on entry forms deployed to proxies to<br />
ensure consistency of data entered. This approach reduces the<br />
volume of data exchanged and was implemented by leveraging<br />
technology in the field of MDA. The implementation of a<br />
prototype of this data collection service and its assessments<br />
regarding the gain in message size are in progress.<br />
Our approach can be deployed in any type of administrative or<br />
public service, in contact with the public (front office) or not<br />
(back office). For users, whatever their place of residence (city or<br />
country), the information service and/or online approach may be<br />
open 7 days on 7, 24 hours on 24. Our solution is better and more<br />
comfortable to use (no queues) and quality (information sourced<br />
409<br />
and sometimes more accurate, simplified procedures, with less<br />
paperwork and less effort to provide data to fill in the form), also<br />
transparency (the user can find out the processing of his<br />
application, etc.).<br />
The main perspective of this work concerns the implementation to<br />
other environments or constraints. We made the assumption based<br />
GSM communications. Our solution should allow for adaptation<br />
to other communication networks. Similarly, we have assumed an<br />
input from the terminal web and it should be possible to adapt to<br />
other modes of data entry.<br />
5. REFERENCES<br />
[1] Grönlund, Å. Horan, T. INTRODUCING e-GOV: HISTO-<br />
RY, DEFINITIONS, AND ISSUES. Communications of the<br />
Association for Information Systems. 15, (2004), 713-729.<br />
[2] Tatem, A. Qiu, Y. Smith, D. Sabot, O. Ali, A. Moonen, B.<br />
The use of mobile phone data for the estimation of the travel<br />
patterns and imported Plasmodium falciparum rates among<br />
Zanzibar residents. BioMed Central. 8, (2009), 287-289.<br />
[3] HMN. The need for strong health information systems,<br />
(2010).<br />
[4] Khatry-Chhetry Mukund Bahadur, Peter J. Murrayb. Cell<br />
phone short messaging service (SMS) for HIV/AIDS in<br />
South Africa: a literature review. PMID. 10, (2010) 31-39.<br />
[5] Randrianasolo, L. Raoelina, Y. Sentinel surveillance system<br />
for early outbreak detection in Madagascar. BMC Public<br />
Health. 10, (2010), 31-39.<br />
[6] MEDES. Imogene. http://code.google.com/p/imogene/, 2010.<br />
[7] Ministère de la Santé Publique, Cameroun. Système National<br />
d'Information Sanitaire, formulaire de recueil de données<br />
pour le rapport mensuel d'activités dans les hôpitaux centraux.<br />
2010.<br />
[8] OMS. Capital Santé. N° 3, (2010).<br />
[9] OMS. A propos des systèmes de santé.<br />
http://www.who.int/healthsystems/about/fr/, (2010).<br />
[10] Okoro, E. Sholagberu, H. Kolo, P. Mobile phone ownership<br />
among Nigerians with diabetes. African Health Sciences. 10,<br />
(2010) 183-186.<br />
[11] Waller, P. Livesey, P. Edin, K. e-GOVERNMENT IN THE<br />
SERVICE OF DEMOCRACY UK. ICA Information. N° 74,<br />
(June 2001).<br />
[12] Réseau de métrologie sanitaire au Cameroun. Cellules des<br />
informations sanitaires, Cameroun, 2007.<br />
[13] UNHCR. Manuel de référence du Système d'information<br />
sanitaire (SIS), 2010.<br />
[14] UNHCR. La boîte à outils du Système d'information sanitaire<br />
(SIS). http://www.unhcr.fr/4b5dc5ae9.html, 2010.<br />
[15] UNICEF. RapidSMS. http://www.rapidsms.org/, 2006.<br />
[16] Yang, C. Jun, Y. Xiangshu, L. Use of mobile phones in an<br />
emergency reporting system for infectious disease surveillance<br />
after the Sichuan earthquake in China. Bull World<br />
Health Organ. 7, (2010) 619-623.
The Secure Platform Problem<br />
Taxonomy and Analysis of Existing Proposals to Address<br />
this Problem<br />
Michael Schläpfer<br />
ETH Zurich<br />
Universitätsstrasse 6<br />
CH-8092 Zurich<br />
+41 44 632 91 96<br />
michschl@inf.ethz.ch<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
One of the main open issues in electronic government is the fact<br />
that the individual users’ multi-purpose computing platforms are<br />
used. In terms of security, no guarantee is given since these<br />
platforms are not under the government authority’s control. Even<br />
worse, the number of malware infected computing platforms<br />
increases. This so-called Secure Platform Problem and approaches<br />
aiming to solve it are objects of investigation in this work. We<br />
define criteria that need to be ensured to address this problem.<br />
Furthermore, we propose a taxonomy to classify existing<br />
approaches. Based on the classification and the criteria, we<br />
analyze the different types of approaches by providing concrete<br />
examples. Hereby, we show that none of the existing approaches<br />
fully meets our criteria. Thereby, we focus on the most security<br />
critical class of electronic government services, namely electronic<br />
voting over the Internet. However, most of the discussed<br />
approaches as well as the criteria and classification can also be<br />
applied to other governmental applications.<br />
Categories and Subject Descriptors<br />
K.6.5 [MANAGEMENT OF COMPUTING AND<br />
INFORMATION SYSTEMS]: Security and Protection –<br />
authentication, invasive software, physical security, unauthorized<br />
access.<br />
General Terms<br />
Security, Human Factors, Design, Reliability, Verification<br />
Keywords<br />
Electronic Government, Internet voting, Secure Platform Problem,<br />
Insecure Client Problem, Untrusted Terminal Problem<br />
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for<br />
personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are<br />
not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies<br />
bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for<br />
components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored.<br />
Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to<br />
post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission<br />
and/or a fee.<br />
ICEGOV '12, October 22 - 25 2012, Albany, NY, USA<br />
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1200-4/12/10...$15.00<br />
410<br />
Melanie Volkamer<br />
Technische Universität Darmstadt<br />
Hochschulstrasse 10<br />
64289 Darmstadt, Germany<br />
+49 6151 16 5422<br />
melanie.volkamer@cased.de<br />
1. INTRODUCTION<br />
Web applications become more and more important and a<br />
growing number of security-critical services are provided over the<br />
Internet. The latest advances are, to provide citizens with<br />
governmental services over the Internet, even with online voting<br />
techniques for political elections and referenda what we refer to as<br />
internet voting throughout this paper. One of the main open issues<br />
of electronic government is that the individual user’s multipurpose<br />
computing platform is used as the interface to the service.<br />
Since this platform is not under the authority’s control, no security<br />
guarantees can be given. Even worse, the increasing complexity<br />
of the operating systems leads to a growing number of malware<br />
indicating that it is reasonable to not trust any user’s personal<br />
computer at all. The same applies to mobile computing platforms<br />
such as mobile phones and tablet computers. In the context of<br />
internet voting, this so-called Secure Platform Problem was first<br />
mentioned by Ron Rivest [24]. The problem is also known as the<br />
Untrusted Terminal Problem or the Insecure Client Problem and<br />
is not voting specific but applies to any electronic communication<br />
application. However, compared to other domains, the problem<br />
appears to be most influential in electronic government services<br />
and especially in internet voting. Vulnerabilities in voting systems<br />
endanger democracy in its entirety. Furthermore, compared to<br />
other applications, voters have to be anonymous in order to ensure<br />
ballot secrecy.<br />
Many voting protocols, such as [5], [15], and [7] have been<br />
proposed in the last thirty years and some have already been used<br />
for legally binding elections on different levels. Examples include<br />
Estonia, Switzerland, and the Netherlands (compare to [28] for an<br />
overview of all three elections). But most of these voting<br />
protocols and systems in use do not even mention the Secure<br />
Platform Problem, while others trivially assume the voter’s<br />
equipment to be trustworthy, arguing “up-to-date” operating<br />
systems and anti-virus programs, as well as vote updating being<br />
viable solutions to address the problem.<br />
However, there exist few publications proposing solutions to<br />
(partially) address the Secure Platform Problem in internet voting<br />
[19][32]. In addition, several solutions for user and transaction<br />
authentication in e-banking are available which can be adapted for<br />
governmental web services like internet voting as we will show.<br />
The fact that these proposed and existing techniques are rarely<br />
applied in governmental web services, yields that the people in
charge are either not aware of the Secure Platform Problem or the<br />
approaches are not known enough, yet. This is not surprising as<br />
there is no comprehensive document describing the different<br />
concepts including their advantages and disadvantages as well as<br />
the remaining risks.<br />
This work aims to narrow this gap. We present a taxonomy to<br />
categorize existing approaches and define criteria, an adequate<br />
solution for the Secure Platform Problem should meet.<br />
Furthermore, we provide an overview of existing proposals to<br />
address the Secure Platform Problem proposed for different<br />
applications and analyze them according to the previously defined<br />
criteria.<br />
Furthermore, we intend to raise awareness for this problem that is<br />
mostly neglected and to support decision makers in electronic<br />
government projects with an overview of the currently most<br />
relevant approaches to meet the Secure Platform Problem<br />
including their limitations. Additionally it should encourage<br />
developers to integrate one or more of these approaches in their<br />
products, and researchers to find more adequate solutions.<br />
1.1 Related Work<br />
To our knowledge, no comprehensive overview and discussion of<br />
solution approaches for the Secure Platform Problem exists.<br />
However there are few works addressing subsets of existing<br />
approaches.<br />
The author of [32] describes and compares five different<br />
approaches to address the problem. The discussion is brief and<br />
does only address a fraction of the approaches discussed in this<br />
work.<br />
[19] provides a good introduction and overview of the Secure<br />
Platform Problem. The author classifies some meaningful<br />
approaches and concludes that dedicated hardware devices can<br />
provide the highest security level against the Secure Platform<br />
Problem while he does not analyze this branch of solutions in any<br />
detail due to the expected costs for development, distribution and<br />
maintenance.<br />
The common conclusion of the above authors is that none of the<br />
existing approaches is applicable for large-scale elections.<br />
1.2 Structure of this Work<br />
Section 2 provides an overview of the Secure Platform Problem.<br />
We introduce a new informal adversary model and express the<br />
adversary’s capabilities. In Sect. 3 we formulate the criteria we<br />
used to discuss the different existing solution approaches as well<br />
as a simple taxonomy, which serves to classify the approaches in<br />
Sects. 4 – 6. Section 7 concludes this work and summarizes some<br />
open issues for future work.<br />
2. PROBLEM DESCRIPTION<br />
In this section, we explain the Secure Platform Problem and<br />
define a new adequate adversary model.<br />
In the context of security critical communication an adversary’s<br />
ultimate goal is to violate confidentiality and/or integrity of<br />
messages sent and received by users. For the purpose of this paper<br />
we define a powerful adversary capable of entirely controlling the<br />
platform of the user. Thus, the adversary does not only control the<br />
network between the user’s computing platform and the<br />
411<br />
authority’s trusted server, but also acts as the user’s interface to<br />
the network. We abstract from the untrusted platform and assume<br />
it to be part of the adversary-controlled network. Communication<br />
takes place between the user and the adversary as well as between<br />
the server and the adversary. Hence, all communication between<br />
the user and the server is sent through the adversary. Note that the<br />
user is not a machine but human and thus is very limited in terms<br />
of computation power and memory. Fig. 1 depicts our adversary<br />
model. This model extends the common formal protocol analysis<br />
models based on the well-known Dolev-Yao-style adversary [8].<br />
User<br />
Trust-base<br />
Untrusted<br />
Platform<br />
Adversary<br />
Server<br />
Figure 1. Secure Platform Problem Adversary Model<br />
We add a trust-base to our model, in order to address those<br />
approaches, which introduce techniques to execute certain<br />
trustworthy functionality outside the influence of the adversary.<br />
The functionality and especially the communication capabilities<br />
of the trust-base depend on the individual approaches as well as<br />
on the respective implementation details.<br />
Since we focus on the client-side Secure Platform Problem only,<br />
we assume the server-side as well as the user to be trustworthy.<br />
More specifically, we do not consider the case where users intend<br />
to collaborate with the adversary as it would be the case for vote<br />
selling in internet voting. Furthermore we do not take into account<br />
the adversary to be physically present to influence the user.<br />
Our adversary model yields the following capabilities. We recap<br />
the fundamental capabilities of the Dolev-Yao adversary and<br />
extend them with human capabilities. In particular we assume that<br />
the adversary:<br />
o can learn messages sent from the user to the untrusted<br />
platform;<br />
o can learn messages sent from the server to the network and<br />
further to an untrusted platform;<br />
o can learn messages sent from the trust-base to an untrusted<br />
platform or directly to the network;<br />
o can drop messages to replace them with own messages 1 ;<br />
o can manipulate and fabricate arbitrary messages according to<br />
publicly known knowledge and previously sent messages;<br />
o can perform every publicly known function;<br />
o knows all implementation details of all used systems;<br />
o can act as a human 2 .<br />
1 We do not consider denial-of-service attacks in this work.<br />
2 Note, for example, that strategies against Completely Automated<br />
Public Turing tests to tell Computers and Humans Apart<br />
(CAPTCHAs) exist.
Although the above assumptions describe a powerful adversary,<br />
the capabilities are limited. In particular, the adversary:<br />
o cannot break cryptography;<br />
o cannot overhear or manipulate communication between the<br />
user and the trust-base;<br />
o cannot access knowledge dedicated to the user, the trust-base<br />
or the server;<br />
o cannot manipulate the trust-base.<br />
3. EXISTING APPROACHES<br />
In this section, we introduce the properties that will be used to<br />
later on discuss and compare existing approaches. While we are<br />
mainly interested in confidentiality and integrity of messages, we<br />
settle for the following more precise definitions and describe how<br />
they are related. Note that the following criteria and taxonomy<br />
hold for security-critical systems in general. However, we will<br />
take internet voting and corresponding solutions as an example to<br />
discuss the different approach classes in Sects. 4 – 6.<br />
3.1 Criteria<br />
While we are mainly interested in confidentiality and integrity of<br />
messages, we settle for the following more precise definitions and<br />
describe how they are related.<br />
3.1.1 Confidentiality<br />
An approach supports user-to-server-secrecy if it is not possible<br />
for the adversary to learn a secret that the user submitted to server.<br />
This means that the user has the opportunity to submit a message<br />
secretly to the authority’s server and hence privacy holds.<br />
3.1.2 Integrity<br />
If it is possible for the server to verify the integrity and<br />
authenticity of a received message with respect to the user-sent<br />
message, we say the approach supports user-to-server-integrity.<br />
Note that individual verifiability in internet voting allows the<br />
voter to verify that the server correctly received the voter’s ballot.<br />
But this is not enough to ensure vote integrity since the voter must<br />
also be given the possibility to complain in the case the<br />
verification fails. Moreover, individual verifiability also requires<br />
integrity and authenticity of messages sent from the server to the<br />
user in order for the user to be able to verify what message the<br />
server actually received. From the authority’s perspective, vote<br />
integrity is then given by the fact that the user did not complain.<br />
3.1.3 Further Criteria<br />
Especially but not exclusively in internet voting, an application<br />
should provide anonymity. We say an approach supports useranonymity<br />
if it is not possible for the adversary to reveal the<br />
origin of a message sent to the server. Note that it is possible for a<br />
user to send messages that are not secret but cannot be linked to<br />
the sender and thus privacy holds too.<br />
Beside security properties other non-functional properties such as<br />
user-friendliness, cost-efficiency, and practicality for large-scale<br />
settings must be considered as well. Although we focus on<br />
security, we also discuss these properties where it applies but we<br />
do not define any measurement for that.<br />
412<br />
3.2 Taxonomy of Approaches<br />
Following, we propose a taxonomy to give an overview and to<br />
classify the different approaches. In scientific literature mainly<br />
two different classes of solutions for the Secure Platform Problem<br />
can be found. While one class aims to make the platform<br />
trustworthy, the other class of approaches assumes the user’s<br />
platform to be insecure. See Fig. 2 for an overview of the classes<br />
that are covered in this work.<br />
In the following sections we refer to this taxonomy, summarize<br />
concrete examples, and discuss them according to the above<br />
criteria. Particularly, Sect. 4 examines approaches to make the<br />
platform trustworthy. Approaches distrusting the user’s platform<br />
are discussed in Sect. 5, where we summarize approaches without<br />
trusted devices and Sect. 6, where we discuss solutions based on<br />
dedicated trusted devices.<br />
Trusted<br />
Computing<br />
Bootable<br />
Clean OS<br />
Trustworthy<br />
Platform<br />
(Sect. 4)<br />
Humancomputer<br />
Crypto<br />
Guidelines and<br />
Education<br />
Solution<br />
Approaches<br />
Codebook<br />
Crypto<br />
Distrusted<br />
Platform<br />
w/o Trusted<br />
Devices<br />
(Sect. 5)<br />
Trusted<br />
Devices<br />
(Sect. 6)<br />
Procedural Standalone Connected<br />
Figure 2. Taxonomy of Analyzed Approaches<br />
4. TRUSTWORTHY PLATFORM<br />
Approaches in this category aim to improve the user’s platform<br />
integrity in a way that it becomes trustworthy. These approaches<br />
lead to the situation where the platform becomes the trust-base<br />
and users no longer access the communication interface to the<br />
adversary.<br />
4.1 Trusted Computing<br />
The key idea of applying Trusted Computing [29] techniques to<br />
overcome the Secure Platform Problem is to use an appropriate<br />
security architecture based on a security kernel and special<br />
Trusted Computing hardware. [1] and [33] discuss the application<br />
of this approach for internet voting in detail.<br />
Trusted Computing efficiently overcomes malicious software on<br />
the user’s computing platform because an eligible message can<br />
only be created after successful verification of the system’s<br />
integrity. However, there are still open problems with Trusted<br />
Computing, such as in remote attestation [31]. Moreover, the<br />
concept is not widespread enough, users might already have a<br />
personal computer with integrated Trusted Platform Module but<br />
the security architecture and security kernel are still missing. It is<br />
questionable whether or not this technique will be applied on a<br />
large scale in near future. However, the approach would allow<br />
convenient and user-friendly solutions for secure services, even<br />
for internet voting as this would all run in the background.<br />
4.2 Bootable Clean Operating System<br />
Otten [22] recommended developing a special voting operating<br />
system based on an open-source operating system that boots and<br />
runs directly from a read-only data medium such as a CD or<br />
DVD. This medium would then be distributed to all users. After<br />
having received, users need to configure their computer to boot
from this medium. Additional security checks and secure<br />
distribution are required to overcome the risk of getting a<br />
malicious medium that, for example, communicates with a<br />
malicious server.<br />
While this approach overcomes many Secure Platform Problem<br />
related issues, it does not meet the particular problem of a<br />
manipulated BIOS. Such an attack allows the adversary to load a<br />
malicious environment in which the secure operating system is<br />
virtually executed without the user or the authority noticing it.<br />
Avoiding this kind of attack is only possible by applying Trusted<br />
Computing hardware as described before. Therefore, it does not<br />
ensure secrecy, nor integrity in our adversary model. However<br />
one has to keep in mind that developing such low-level attacks is<br />
not a trivial task and an adversary would have to cope with a<br />
variety of different hardware settings to successfully mount a<br />
large-scale attack in such a setting. Challenges include developing<br />
a CD or DVD that boots from all the different hardware and<br />
software settings around and that all necessary drivers are<br />
provided to be able to automatically connect to the Internet. This<br />
may lead to high development, distribution, and maintenance<br />
costs. Another difficulty for the authority is to verify that users<br />
really used the clean operating system and that it was running on<br />
hardware, not in a virtual machine potentially under the<br />
adversary’s control.<br />
4.3 Guidelines and Education<br />
A simple approach to address the Secure Platform Problem is the<br />
provision of special guidelines and the education of users in how<br />
to protect their own computer systems from malware. Examples<br />
include the guidelines provided for the student elections in Austria<br />
[30] and those developed by the German society of computer<br />
scientists [11]. They include information about software updating,<br />
firewall-settings and how to verify SSL certificates.<br />
This approach claims to reduce the probability that malware<br />
infects a user’s system. However, only standard and well-known<br />
attacks can be prevented and it is questionable whether a<br />
sufficient fraction of users are able to follow the guidelines and to<br />
really protect their systems. In addition, users cannot be forced to<br />
apply the security guidelines. Regarding user-friendliness, it is<br />
likely that many users would not follow the instructions because<br />
of additional work. Note that in contrast to e-banking the laziness<br />
of an individual user in e-voting not only impacts herself but the<br />
outcome of the election, i.e., the entirety of the participating users<br />
is affected. Furthermore, an adversary could distribute modified<br />
guidelines to mislead inexperienced users to behave incorrectly<br />
and thus to put themselves at risk.<br />
5. WITHOUT TRUSTED DEVICES<br />
Distrusting the user’s computing platform leads to the need of<br />
establishing a secure channel directly between the user and the<br />
server. This channel can either be established using cryptography<br />
or by an out-of-band channel that is not under the adversary’s<br />
control.<br />
5.1 Human-Computer Cryptography<br />
Human-computer or paper-and-pencil cryptography has a long<br />
history and given enough time, pencils, and paper, humans may<br />
theoretically perform every computation a computer can do. In<br />
terms of our model, such approaches aim to provide the user with<br />
413<br />
the capabilities to encrypt and authenticate messages directly.<br />
Hence, a trust-base is not needed and all the defined security<br />
properties can be achieved. However, the vast majority of humans<br />
lack sufficient memory and computation power to perform strong<br />
cryptographic operations in a reasonable amount of time.<br />
Nevertheless, some interesting approaches such as [16] and<br />
Schneier’s Solitaire algorithm [27] were proposed. For example,<br />
in Solitaire the randomness in a shuffled deck of playing cards is<br />
used for the encryption of messages but the approach has some<br />
weaknesses.<br />
Bertà examined in [3] the human limitations with respect to<br />
encrypting and authenticating sufficiently large messages in<br />
practical settings. He concludes that no sufficiently strong<br />
cryptographic protocol to encrypt or authenticate messages exists<br />
such that humans could apply it.<br />
Because of the obvious lack of user-friendliness we do not<br />
consider human-computer cryptography as a practical solution for<br />
the Secure Platform Problem.<br />
5.2 Codebook Cryptography<br />
Although humans are not good in performing reasonably strong<br />
cryptographic operations, they are considerably strong in<br />
comparing patterns. This fact is exploited by the concept of<br />
codebook cryptography. The idea is that prior to the<br />
communication, the trusted server encrypts all possible messages<br />
and then distributes the corresponding codebook, i.e., the cleartext<br />
/ cipher-text mapping, over an out-of-band channel 3 to the<br />
user. The user chooses a clear-text message and looks up the<br />
corresponding cipher-text (code) to be entered into the untrusted<br />
platform. The platform then sends the cipher-text to the server.<br />
Hence, the adversary does not learn the clear-text message and<br />
since not in possession of the codebook, the adversary cannot<br />
replace the message with another one that is accepted by the<br />
server. Thus, this approach is resilient against the Secure Platform<br />
Problem but needs a secure out-of-band channel for distribution.<br />
Following we present some widely discussed examples of this<br />
approach for electronic voting.<br />
5.2.1 Code Voting<br />
Chaum was the first who applied this concept to internet voting<br />
[5]. The key idea of Code Voting is that the user gets a code sheet<br />
together with the general election information via mail. The code<br />
sheet links each candidate or party to a random alphanumeric<br />
code. In order to cast a vote for a specific candidate, the user<br />
enters the corresponding code into a text-field. This code is<br />
submitted to the authority that is able to derive the user’s choice<br />
by mapping the code back to the candidate. Since not in<br />
possession of the code sheet, the untrusted platform (i.e., the<br />
adversary) can neither derive the user’s choice nor change the<br />
ballot’s content to another meaningful choice. Helbach and<br />
Schwenk [14] as well as Oppliger et al. [20] proposed different<br />
improvements like additional verification codes that are sent back<br />
from the server for individual verifiability. To overcome the votebuying<br />
problem the authors in [21] introduced an additional<br />
finalization code. Ryan et al. recently suggested in [26] and [13]<br />
to use Code Voting in combination with Prêt-à-Voter in order to<br />
3 In this case the trust-base represents the out-of-band channel that<br />
provides confidentiality and integrity of the received codebook.
allow individual verifiability. In this approach, the server can only<br />
send a valid confirmation code to the user if a majority of trustees<br />
confirm the correct recording of the voting code that was sent by<br />
the user. The main disadvantage of the Code Voting approach<br />
concerns user-friendliness, which decreases in particular for<br />
implementing complex ballots with multiple candidates to choose<br />
from. In addition, a trusted procedure to generate and distribute<br />
the code sheets is required what introduces additional complexity<br />
and costs.<br />
5.2.2 Prêt-à-Voter<br />
Another elegant implementation of codebook cryptography can be<br />
found in Prêt-à-Voter [25], where the candidate list is permuted<br />
and the permutation is encrypted. While Prêt-à-Voter was<br />
proposed for poll-site-based settings, it could be adapted for<br />
internet voting too. The user receives the ballot paper with the<br />
permuted list of candidates and the encryption of the permutation<br />
via mail. Then, she enters the index of the chosen candidate<br />
together with the encryption of the permutation (which could also<br />
serve as a ballot sequence number). The permutation is decrypted<br />
by the authority’s server and is used to derive the user’s choice.<br />
However, since using a permuted list of valid choices, the<br />
platform, although not able to learn the user’s choice, can mount a<br />
randomization attack by choosing a different index and therefore<br />
user-to-server-integrity is not provided while secrecy holds.<br />
5.2.3 CAPTCHA<br />
In [21] the authors propose the application of visual CAPTCHAs<br />
(Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and<br />
Humans Apart) to overcome the Secure Platform Problem.<br />
Candidates are displayed in a random order and represented by<br />
visual CAPTCHAs. This approach is simple to be integrated in<br />
any internet voting system. Its user-friendliness is questionable.<br />
While people might know this kind of images from other<br />
applications, it is often difficult to figure out what is displayed.<br />
Besides the fact that our model assumes an adversary with human<br />
capabilities, who is able to solve CAPTCHAs, it is particularly<br />
easy for the adversary to perform a randomization attack by just<br />
randomly choose a CAPTCHA different from the user-chosen<br />
one. A more advanced approach is discussed in [23]. Here,<br />
arbitrary CAPTCHAs, which are not related to the candidates’<br />
names, appear next to the actual candidate’s name, while the<br />
candidate order can stay as it is. The user decodes the CAPTCHA<br />
related to her favorite candidate and enters the resulting code into<br />
a text-field. Automated breaking of these CAPTCHAs becomes<br />
more difficult because of the fact that the adversary does not<br />
know the encoded clear-text in advance. However, it still does not<br />
solve the Secure Platform Problem in our adversary model.<br />
5.3 Procedural Approaches<br />
Some approaches suggest adapting the voting process in order to<br />
overcome various problems in internet voting. Some of the<br />
proposals can even be applied to mitigate the Secure Platform<br />
Problem and are therefore discussed here.<br />
5.3.1 Vote-Updating<br />
The general idea of vote-updating is that the user can update the<br />
electronic vote as often as she wants, ideally from different<br />
devices. In hybrid systems, the user can even replace the<br />
electronic vote on election day by a traditional paper ballot at the<br />
414<br />
polling station. There are several different approaches to enable<br />
vote-updating, while they have different advantages and<br />
disadvantages as shown in [12].<br />
Enabling vote-updating, the adversary looses certainty about how<br />
the user really voted since she may have used another device or<br />
went to the polling station on election day to cast a different vote.<br />
Correspondingly, the adversary will not know for sure whether the<br />
modifications will influence the result or not. Of course, this only<br />
applies if the votes cannot be linked to the users.<br />
Vote-updating helps particularly in the case where users distrust<br />
the voting system after casting their vote. For instance, this is the<br />
case when they misinterpret information presented to them, detect<br />
malware on their computers, or if they are not convinced that the<br />
ballot was properly sent and stored. However, statistics in Estonia,<br />
where internet voting, is used for political elections since 2007,<br />
indicate that only few people update their vote [9]. It might be the<br />
case that very few incidents happen but more likely most users are<br />
simply not able to notice manipulations and blindly trust their<br />
systems.<br />
Vote-updating is easy to implement and to understand by users.<br />
However, a challenge is to ensure that only one vote is counted<br />
and no problems with replay-attacks or delays on the network can<br />
cause that an earlier cast valid vote is counted. Opponents of voteupdating<br />
argue that this approach influences the value and<br />
character of an election. They argue that the act of casting a vote<br />
is something special and should not be repeatable because<br />
otherwise it might get the character of a game.<br />
5.3.2 Anonymous Voting<br />
Anonymous voting allows the user to cast a ballot without the<br />
adversary being able to link the ballot to its origin. The following<br />
protocol serves as simple example for anonymous voting. Prior to<br />
the election the user gets an official letter from the election<br />
authority, containing credentials that allow the person in<br />
possession of these credentials to cast exactly one eligible ballot<br />
and the authority does not know who got what credential. Now the<br />
user uses a public computer in an internet cafe that cannot be<br />
associated to her and enters the received credentials to prove<br />
eligibility. Then she enters the favorite candidate and submits the<br />
vote together with the credentials to the election authority’s<br />
server. The adversary learns the candidate whom was voted for<br />
but does not learn who voted. Hence, voter privacy holds. It is<br />
obvious that in this simple example neither secrecy nor integrity<br />
holds, unless combined with other approaches. A more advanced<br />
example for this category is based on blind signature schemes that<br />
have been proposed for the first time in [10] and was later used in<br />
many other protocol proposals. While this approach is more<br />
sophisticated from a cryptographic point of view, it does address<br />
the Secure Platform Problem to the same extent as the simple<br />
protocol above. Under the assumption that the untrusted system<br />
does not know the identity of the user who is using it, useranonymity<br />
is given but neither secrecy, nor integrity.<br />
5.3.3 Test Ballots<br />
Test ballots are dedicated ballots the adversary cannot distinguish<br />
from real ones. The user casts one real ballot and some test ballots<br />
in random order. Since the adversary does not know the real ballot<br />
he may manipulate one or more test ballots. After the election, the<br />
processing of all test ballots is made fully transparent to a group<br />
of auditors or even to the public for verification. Successful
attacks require the adversary to manipulate a large number of<br />
votes and therefore it is likely to detect at least a fraction of the<br />
manipulations. The approach does not provide integrity of the real<br />
vote itself but strongly indicates possible manipulations by<br />
analyzing the proper handling of the test ballots. To detect<br />
manipulations in the context of the Secure Platform Problem, the<br />
test ballots must be individually verifiable by the user. Hence, the<br />
test ballots are exposed after the election’s vote casting phase and<br />
the adversary learns the real ballot.<br />
6. TRUSTED DEVICES<br />
In the context of e-banking, a variety of technical solutions for<br />
user and transaction authentication have been presented and even<br />
deployed on a large scale. In the following we will analyze these<br />
approaches regarding the security criteria that we defined and give<br />
some hints on how such approaches could be adapted to internet<br />
voting.<br />
Solutions based on trusted devices can be classified into<br />
standalone approaches, where the trusted device (TD) is not<br />
attached to the user’s untrusted platform, and connected<br />
approaches, where the trusted device is connected to the<br />
adversary, for example, to the user’s platform. The term trusted<br />
indicates that users must trust the devices to offer trustworthy<br />
functionalities and that they securely store confidential data. If the<br />
device additionally stores a specific user’s secret information,<br />
such as cryptographic keys, we call the device a personal trusted<br />
device (PTD). Examples of personal trusted devices are smart<br />
cards. They can perform certain cryptographic operations and<br />
store individual secret information, i.e., the user’s secret key.<br />
Since additional devices are required to access the smart cards,<br />
users need to trust these devices too. Hence, in smart card based<br />
approaches the card readers are also part of the trusted device. In<br />
our model, the trust-base is the user’s smart card including the<br />
reader that is used to access the card.<br />
6.1 Standalone Trusted Devices<br />
Standalone trusted devices could be seen as calculators. The user<br />
communicates directly with the device and no communication<br />
takes place between the trusted device and any other party than<br />
the user.<br />
Challenge-response authentication protocols for e-banking<br />
solutions that use a smart card reader with a pin pad and a display<br />
are an example for this category of approaches. The bank first<br />
sends a challenge code through the user’s untrusted platform to<br />
the user who in turn enters this code into the card reader together<br />
with the bankcard’s PIN (personal identification number) for<br />
accessing the card. The card then computes a MAC (message<br />
authentication code) 4 of the challenge code and secret information<br />
stored on the card. This MAC is displayed to the user through the<br />
reader’s display. Finally, the user enters the MAC into the<br />
untrusted platform and submits it back to the bank. If the response<br />
code corresponds to a valid MAC, the bank is convinced that the<br />
correct card (containing the secret information) as well as a person<br />
who knows the correct PIN to access the card are involved in the<br />
protocol run.<br />
4 Other cryptographic operations can be used and in practice,<br />
asymmetric cryptography is often applied, where the challenge<br />
code is signed using the secret key stored on the card.<br />
415<br />
To adapt this approach to internet voting, such a device could be<br />
used to encrypt and authenticate the ballot. The user enters the<br />
candidate choice directly into the PTD and gets back an encrypted<br />
ballot, for example, represented as an alphanumeric code. The<br />
user enters the encrypted ballot into her untrusted platform and<br />
submits it to the server. Such an approach can be used to provide<br />
“digital” code voting without a separated out-of-band channel.<br />
The initial vote codes are digitally provided to the users via their<br />
untrusted platforms. The vote codes are then used like the<br />
challenges in the above described challenge-response authentica-<br />
tion example. The user enters the MAC of a secret key and the<br />
vote code that corresponds to her choice into the untrusted<br />
platform to submit this vote to the server. The authority in<br />
possession of the same secret key computes the MACs for all<br />
candidate codes and compares them with the received MAC to<br />
derive the user’s choice. Furthermore, the server could again<br />
compute the MAC of the received MAC and send it back to the<br />
user as a confirmation code that can be verified by the user when<br />
again performing the same operation using the PTD. In practice a<br />
more sophisticated scheme is required to prevent the authority<br />
from learning individual users’ votes.<br />
Since no clear-text referring to a user’s choice is submitted to the<br />
adversary, the approach supports user-to-server-secrecy. The other<br />
way round the user can use the trust-base to decrypt messages<br />
encrypted by the server. The setting provides user-to-serverintegrity<br />
if combined with a verifiable confirmation code as<br />
described above. However, user-friendliness is questionable since<br />
the user must relay all encrypted communication between the<br />
trust-base and the server. In the case of a few short codes, this<br />
may be applicable but not necessarily in complex elections where<br />
the user must choose multiple candidates.<br />
6.2 Connected Trusted Devices<br />
In contrast to standalone TDs, connected TDs are attached to the<br />
adversary, in most cases to the user’s untrusted platform, thus<br />
there is a communication channel between the adversary and the<br />
trust-base. Simple approaches offer specific functionalities to the<br />
platform they are attached to such as securely storing secret<br />
information. More sophisticated networked devices are able to<br />
directly communicate with the remote server. Generally, the more<br />
functionalities a TD offers, the more vulnerabilities may occur.<br />
However, in our model we limited the adversary’s capabilities by<br />
assuming that the adversary cannot manipulate the trust-base.<br />
The communication interfaces of a connected TD directly affect<br />
the possible security guarantees of any protocol making use of it.<br />
To make this clear, we will summarize the possible<br />
communication capabilities of the trust-base, provide examples,<br />
and discuss the properties of each setting.<br />
6.2.1 No Communication Between User and Trust-<br />
Base<br />
The trust-base has no interface to communicate with the user and<br />
all communication is based on the untrusted platform (which is<br />
part of the adversary). Particularly the user can only communicate<br />
with the adversary and neither secrecy nor integrity can be<br />
achieved with respect to our model. The only guarantee in this<br />
setting is that during the protocol run, the TD is attached to a<br />
computer, which is reachable by the adversary.
Widely deployed examples for this setting are smart cards in<br />
combination with class 1 card readers directly attached to the<br />
platform via USB. Unfortunately, the adversary immediately<br />
learns every message sent by the user, particularly the PIN that<br />
protects access to the card. Hence, after the first time the user<br />
enters the PIN, the adversary may arbitrarily use the card and<br />
perform whatever cryptographic operation the smart card offers,<br />
as long as it is attached to the untrusted platform. Applying this to<br />
internet voting the user does not know what is being processed by<br />
the TD and in a setting where vote updating is allowed, the user<br />
does not even notice that the smart card is being used at a later<br />
time to replace a vote. Another example are hardware tokens like<br />
the mIDentity developed by Kobil [17] for e-banking and other<br />
sensitive applications where a browser runs in a “secure”<br />
environment on the TD. However, as there is no communication<br />
between the trust-base and the user none of the defined security<br />
properties are guaranteed with respect to our model.<br />
6.2.2 Unidirectional Communication from the User<br />
to the Trust-Base<br />
The TD provides an input interface to the user such as a pin pad<br />
and the user can send clear-text messages to the TD, which are<br />
encrypted afterwards. Hence, such approaches provide user-toserver-secrecy<br />
as well as user-to-server-integrity. Depending on<br />
the protocol, the user can even verify the correct reception of the<br />
message (individual verifiability). To do so, the user enters her<br />
choice together with a random number into the TD, which in turn<br />
encrypts these messages with a secret key as well as a hash value<br />
thereof. The secret key is shared between the server and the TD.<br />
The TD sends the encrypted values to the adversary for submitting<br />
them to the server. After reception, the server first decrypts them<br />
and verifies their integrity before sending the random number<br />
back to the adversary as confirmation. The adversary provides this<br />
confirmation to the user and the user is convinced that the server<br />
received the correct message if and only if the confirmation<br />
corresponds to the previously entered random number. Since the<br />
adversary cannot break cryptography, the best strategy would be<br />
to guess the random number, which is not feasible for large<br />
enough numbers. In this setting the server cannot send any secret<br />
or authentic message to the user because the TD is not able to<br />
communicate with the user differently than through the adversary.<br />
Examples include smart cards in combination with class 2 readers.<br />
These readers provide a pin pad to prevent the platform from<br />
learning the PIN since it is directly entered into the trusted card<br />
reader. Because the adversary does not learn the PIN, unnoticed<br />
access to the smart card’s functionality is prevented.<br />
6.2.3 Unidirectional Communication from the Trust-<br />
Base to the User<br />
The TD has an output interface such as a display or a speaker. The<br />
adversary learns every message sent by the user. Therefore A can<br />
learn every message sent by the user and again the adversary may<br />
learn the PIN to access TD’s functionality. It is possible to avoid<br />
this, for example, by displaying a randomly permuted pin pad on<br />
the untrusted platform’s display on which the user has to enter the<br />
PIN [4]. The corresponding permutation is displayed on the TD’s<br />
display. Every time the TD is accessed it challenges the user,<br />
using the output interface. Moreover, the TD’s output interface<br />
can be used to verify that the server received the correct message.<br />
To do so, the server sends confirmation messages, which the trust-<br />
416<br />
base is able to decrypt and verify. The verification result is then<br />
provided to the user. Hence, depending on the concrete<br />
implementation, secrecy and integrity from the user to the server<br />
as well as vice versa can be achieved. Thus, it overcomes the<br />
Secure Platform Problem but requires sophisticated user interfaces<br />
to assure secrecy and therefore lacks user-friendliness for practical<br />
applications. User-to-server-integrity can conveniently be<br />
achieved by individual verifiability. More specifically, the PTD’s<br />
trustworthy output interface can be used to verify information<br />
received by the server.<br />
Examples are smart cards and readers with only a confirmation<br />
display. The display can be used to verify data that will be<br />
processed by the smart card. Another example. Which is already<br />
widely applied in e-banking is transaction authentication.<br />
Confirmation information of every transaction entered by the user<br />
is sent over a dedicated channel to the user. The user verifies the<br />
correctness and authorizes the transaction. One concrete<br />
implementation is based on short messages and mobile phones as<br />
TDs. The user enters the desired transaction into the untrusted<br />
platform and sends it to the bank’s server. The server generates a<br />
transaction authentication number (TAN) and sends a short<br />
message containing the beneficiary’s account number, the<br />
amount, and the TAN to the user’s mobile phone. Now, the user<br />
verifies the correctness of the transaction information. If verifica-<br />
tion is successful, the user authorizes the transaction by entering<br />
the TAN into the untrusted platform to send it to the server. The<br />
server compares the received TAN with the expected TAN and<br />
accepts the transaction if they are equal. This concept could be<br />
used for internet voting to allow individual verification but it is<br />
only secure as long as the adversary cannot break confidentiality<br />
and integrity of the short messages sent by the authority’s server.<br />
Unfortunately today’s implementations cannot prevent either.<br />
Moreover, it is questionable whether it is reasonable to assume<br />
mobile phones to be trustworthy. In near future communication<br />
platforms may conflate and voting as well as short messaging may<br />
be performed using the same platform, which introduces the<br />
Secure Platform Problem again.<br />
6.2.4 Bidirectional Communication between the<br />
Trust-Base and the User<br />
The trust-base provides an input as well as an output interface to<br />
communicate with the user. In this setting the user may enter<br />
confidential messages directly into the TD. In contrast to the<br />
setting where communication exclusively takes place from the TD<br />
to the user, user-friendliness is improved because of the fact, that<br />
security-critical messages can directly be entered, thereby<br />
conveniently enabling user-to-server-secrecy. User-to-serverintegrity<br />
is based on the ability of the TD to encrypt (and sign)<br />
messages. This setting also allows individual verifiability based<br />
on the TD’s trustworthy output interface to the user.<br />
Examples are smart cards in combination with class 3 readers.<br />
These devices offer a high degree of security and a convenient<br />
way for the user to securely communicate with the trusted server.<br />
More complex solutions allow the TD to directly communicate<br />
with the server using standard network communication protocols.<br />
The Zone Trusted Information Channel (ZTIC) [2][34] was<br />
recently developed by IBM and is widely deployed by a popular<br />
Swiss bank. The ZTIC is a networked USB-attached smart card<br />
reader for application and transaction authentication in e-banking.<br />
The device consists of a small display and a few buttons. Trans-
actions with yet unknown recipients have to be verified by the<br />
payer using the device’s display and authorized by pressing a<br />
respective button on the device. The device communicates<br />
directly with the bank’s server using the untrusted platform as a<br />
network proxy only. Adapting such a solution for internet voting<br />
offers a high degree of security while being convenient with<br />
respect to user-friendliness.<br />
Borchert et al. propose the use of camera-equipped mobile phones<br />
for user and transaction authentication in e-banking. They provide<br />
a variety of ideas and implementations [4]. However, we do not<br />
consider mobile phones to be trustworthy for internet voting<br />
applications.<br />
7. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK<br />
The Secure Platform Problem is one of the most serious problems<br />
in any online application and thus needs to be addressed in<br />
particular if it comes to e-governmental and internet voting<br />
applications. We introduced in this paper an adversary model that<br />
reflects the Secure Platform Problem as well as criteria which<br />
needs to be ensured in this model. We provided a taxonomy of<br />
approaches. We classified these approaches into those that aim to<br />
improve the trustworthiness of the user’s platform and those that<br />
distrust the user’s platform completely. We described and<br />
analyzed existing approaches to address the Secure Platform<br />
Problem in the context of remote electronic voting. The results<br />
can be summarized as followed:<br />
Distrusting the platform requires a secure channel directly from<br />
the user to the election authority’s server. This channel can be<br />
established either without or with trusted devices. We pointed out<br />
that approaches without trusted devices are more cost-efficient,<br />
while they also lack user-friendliness.<br />
Trusted Computing offers convenient options for highly security<br />
critical applications such as internet voting. However, it is unclear<br />
whether corresponding operating systems and software will be<br />
available and used by a sufficiently large group of users in the<br />
foreseeable future. We noted that one must still trust the various<br />
manufacturers to have properly implemented the Trusted<br />
Computing hardware and software. For political systems where<br />
users participate only every couple of years, e.g., in elections,<br />
codebook cryptography seems to offer the most promising<br />
solution approaches. Trusted devices without communication<br />
interface to the user are useless regarding the Secure Platform<br />
Problem, more sophisticated solutions have great advantages with<br />
respect to user-friendliness as well as concerning the level of<br />
security obtainable. The high operational costs for maintenance,<br />
distribution, and support may not be in due proportion to the<br />
benefits for many voting settings unless the devices can be used<br />
for other applications too (e.g., e-banking or other frequently used<br />
e-government services). However, in countries like Switzerland<br />
where all citizens participate at political decisions several times a<br />
year, the use of special-purpose trusted devices might be<br />
applicable.<br />
Thereby, we believe to raise awareness for the Secure Platform<br />
Problem that has been mostly neglected in past. We further<br />
believe that the results of this paper support decision makers in<br />
electronic government projects with an overview of the currently<br />
most relevant approaches to meet the Secure Platform Problem<br />
including their limitations. Additionally, we strongly believe that<br />
this paper encourage developers to integrate one or more of these<br />
417<br />
approaches in their products, and researchers to find more<br />
adequate solutions.<br />
Combinations of the discussed approaches may have effects on<br />
the security properties as well as on user-friendliness. An example<br />
is the combination of vote updating with codebook cryptography<br />
in internet voting as it is implemented in the Norwegian system<br />
[18]. Therefore, as future work we plan to analyze different<br />
combinations of existing approaches.<br />
We exclusively focused on the client-side Secure Platform<br />
Problem and assumed the voter to be trustworthy. In specific<br />
settings like in internet voting this assumption does not<br />
necessarily hold. Therefore, we plan to examine existing<br />
approaches in the context of the entire voting system.<br />
Furthermore, it needs to be examined whether particular<br />
approaches impact verifiability or other important requirements<br />
which needs to be ensured in the context of internet voting. For<br />
instance, Code Voting requires a secure process for generating<br />
and distributing the code sheets since voter privacy must also hold<br />
against the authority. This will be part of future investigations,<br />
too.<br />
8. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS<br />
We would like to thank Rolf Oppliger and the members of the<br />
Swiss E-Voting Competence Center for the fruitful discussions<br />
and valuable inputs. This research is partly supported by the Swiss<br />
Federal Chancellery.<br />
9. REFERENCES<br />
[1] A. Alkassar, A.R. Sadeghi, S. Schulz, and M. Volkamer.<br />
Towards Trustworthy Online Voting. In Proceedings of the<br />
1st Benelux Workshop on Information and System Security–<br />
WISSec, 2006.<br />
[2] M. Baentsch, P. Buhler, R. Hermann, F. Höring, T. Kramp,<br />
and T. Weigold. A Banking Server’s Display on Your Key<br />
Chain. ERCIM News, pages 44–45, 2008.<br />
[3] I.Z. Berta and I. Vajda. Limitations of humans when using<br />
malicious terminals. Tatra Mountains Mathematical<br />
Publications, 29:1–16, 2004.<br />
[4] B. Borchert. Trojanersichere Online Accounts. http://wwwti.informatik.uni-tuebingen.de/~borchert/Troja/.<br />
[5] David Chaum: Untraceable Electronic Mail, Return<br />
Addresses, and Digital Pseudonyms. Commun. ACM 24(2):<br />
pages 84-88. 1981.<br />
[6] D. Chaum. Surevote: technical overview. In Proceedings of<br />
the Workshop on Trustworthy Elections (WOTE’01), 2001.<br />
[7] M. R. Clarkson, S. Chong, and A. C. Myers. Civitas: Toward<br />
a secure voting system. IEEE Symposium on Security and<br />
Privacy, pages 354–368, May 2008.<br />
[8] D. Dolev and A. Yao. On the Security of Public Key<br />
Protocols. IEEE Transactions on Information Theory,<br />
29(2):198-208, 1983<br />
[9] Estonia. Statistics of Internet Elections in Estonia.<br />
http://www.vvk.ee/ voting-methods-inestonia/engindex/statistics.
[10] A. Fujioka, T. Okamoto, and K. Ohta. A practical secret<br />
voting scheme for large scale elections. In Proceedings of the<br />
Workshop on the Theory and Application of Cryptographic<br />
Techniques: Advances in Cryptology, ASIACRYPT ’92, pages<br />
244– 251, London, UK, Springer, 1993.<br />
[11] Gesellschaft für Informatik. Information für GI-Mitglieder zu<br />
möglichen Sicherheitsproblemen auf Client-seite bei<br />
Vorstands- und Präsidiumswahlen mit dem<br />
Onlinewahlverfahren. Technical report, https://www.giev.de/fileadmin/redaktion/Wahlen/handreichungen_gi_online<br />
wahlen.pdf, 2007.<br />
[12] R. Grimm and M. Volkamer. Multiple Cast in Online Voting<br />
- Analyzing Chances. In R. Krimmer, editor, Electronic<br />
Voting 2006 - 2nd International Conference, volume 86 of<br />
LNI, pages 97–106, Bonn, 2006.<br />
[13] J. Heather, P. Y. A. Ryan, and V. Teague. Pretty good<br />
democracy for more expressive voting schemes. In<br />
ESORICS, pages 405–423, 2010.<br />
[14] J. Helbach and J. Schwenk. Secure Internet Voting with<br />
Code Sheets. In VOTE-ID, pages 166–177. Springer, 2007.<br />
[15] M. Hirt and K. Sako. Efficient receipt-free voting based on<br />
homomorphic encryption. 19th international conference on<br />
Theory and application of cryptographic techniques, pages<br />
539–556, 2000.<br />
[16] T. Matsumoto. Human-computer cryptography: An attempt.<br />
In Proceedings of the 3rd ACM Conference on Computer<br />
and Communications Security, pages 68–75. ACM, 1996.<br />
[17] mIDentity from KOBIL.<br />
http://www.kobil.com/index.php?id=49&L=0.<br />
[18] H. Nore. Open source remote electronic voting in norway.<br />
Presentation at the Council of Europe, Strasbourg 16/11-<br />
2010, 2010.<br />
[19] R. Oppliger. How to address the secure platform problem for<br />
remote internetvoting. SIS, 2:153–173.<br />
[20] R. Oppliger, J. Schwenk, and J. Helbach. Protecting Code<br />
Voting Against Vote Selling. In Sicherheit, pages 193–204,<br />
2008.<br />
[21] R. Oppliger, J. Schwenk, and C. Löhr. Captcha-based code<br />
voting. In R. Krimmer and R. Grimm, editors, Electronic<br />
Voting, volume 131 of LNI, pages 223–222. GI, 2008.<br />
[22] D. Otten. Mehr Demokratie durch Internetwahlen?<br />
Presentation at Nixdorf Forum, Paderborn, 2005.<br />
418<br />
[23] S. Popoveniuc and P. L. Vora. Remote ballot casting with<br />
captchas.<br />
http://www.seas.gwu.edu/~poorvi/RemoteBallotCasting.pdf,<br />
2008.<br />
[24] R.L. Rivest. Electronic voting. In Proceedings of Financial<br />
Cryptography 01, pages 243–268. Springer, 2001.<br />
[25] P. Ryan and S. Schneider. Prêt à Voter with Re-encryption<br />
Mixes. In Proceedings of Computer Security, ESORICS<br />
2006, pages 313–326. Springer, 2006.<br />
[26] P.Y.A. Ryan and V. Teague. Pretty good democracy. In<br />
Proceedings of the 17th International Workshop on Security<br />
Protocols, Cambridge, UK, 2009.<br />
[27] B. Schneier. The solitaire encryption algorithm,<br />
http://www.schneier.com/solitaire.html, 1999.<br />
[28] G. Schryen and E. Rich. Security in Large-Scale Internet<br />
Elections: A Retrospective Analysis of Elections in Estonia,<br />
the Netherlands, and Switzerland. Trans. Info. For. Sec.,<br />
4:729–744, December 2009.<br />
[29] Trusted Computing Group.<br />
http://www.trustedcomputinggroup.org/.<br />
[30] Team of oeh-wahl.gv.at. Sicherheitsempfehlung für<br />
Endbenutzer. Technical report, http://www.oehwahl.gv.at/Content.Node/E-<br />
Voting_Sicherheitsempfehlung.pdf, 2009.<br />
[31] L. van Doorn. Trusted computing challenges. In Proceedings<br />
of the 2007 ACM Workshop on Scalable Trusted Computing,<br />
STC ’07, pages 1–1, New York, NY, USA, 2007. ACM.<br />
[32] M. Volkamer. Evaluation of Electronic Voting -<br />
Requirements and Evaluation Procedures to Support<br />
Responsible Election Authorities, Volume 30 of LNBIP.<br />
Springer, 2009.<br />
[33] M. Volkamer, A. Alkassar, A.R. Sadeghi, and S. Schulz.<br />
Enabling the Application of Open Systems Like PCs for<br />
Online Voting. In Proceedings of Workshop on Frontiers in<br />
Electronic Elections. Citeseer, 2006.<br />
[34] T. Weigold, T. Kramp, R. Hermann, F. Höring, P. Buhler,<br />
and M. Baentsch. The Zurich Trusted Information Channel –<br />
An Efficient Defence Against Man-in-the-middle and<br />
Malicious Software Attacks. Trusted Computing-Challenges<br />
and Applications, pages 75–91, 2008.
Session 15<br />
Measurement 2
Anti-Corruption Online Monitoring Systems in Brazil<br />
Ricardo Matheus<br />
University of São Paulo<br />
Araújo street, 124. São<br />
Paulo – SP – Brazil<br />
+55(11) 7227-7521<br />
ricardomatheus<br />
@gmail.com<br />
Manuella M Ribeiro<br />
Fundação Getúlio Vargas<br />
Araújo street, 124. São<br />
Paulo – SP – Brazil<br />
+55(11) 7633-1678<br />
maiamanuella<br />
@gmail.com<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
Since the development of electronic government, the main area<br />
using information and communication technologies in<br />
governments were financial control and tax payment. However,<br />
recently, this scenario has been changing and new forms of ICT<br />
have been used. One of this new form is the anti-corruption online<br />
monitoring systems. It is a new channel where all of information<br />
about governments is published on transparency portals and there<br />
is a complex system to receive inquires and charges, kind of<br />
ombudsman through the Internet. It was conducted an exploratory<br />
study of sub-national initiatives from Court of Accounts to find<br />
initiatives and a structured review of websites. The States Courts<br />
of Accounts are the entity responsible to control State<br />
Governments in Brazil. The final considerations reveals what are<br />
the limits and challenges of anti-corruption online monitoring<br />
systems have in terms of technological use, as web 2.0, social<br />
networks and others innovations perceived on the international<br />
literature review.<br />
Categories and Subject Descriptors<br />
J.1 [Computer Applications]: Administrative Data Processing –<br />
government<br />
General Terms<br />
Management, Theory.<br />
Keywords<br />
Anti-Corruption, Electronic Government, Electronic Governance,<br />
Latin America, Brazil.<br />
1. INTRODUCTION AND<br />
CONTEXTUALIZATION<br />
The Federative Republic of Brazil is the biggest country in South<br />
America, with around 190 million of habitants spread in<br />
8.514.876 km2 [1]. Brazil is also the first economy of South<br />
America and the 7th of the world [2]. The capital is Brasilia,<br />
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for<br />
personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are<br />
not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies<br />
bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for<br />
components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored.<br />
Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to<br />
post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission<br />
and/or a fee.<br />
ICEGOV '12, October 22 - 25 2012, Albany, NY, USA<br />
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1200-4/12/10...$15.00<br />
419<br />
José Carlos Vaz<br />
University of São Paulo<br />
Araújo street, 124. São<br />
Paulo – SP – Brazil<br />
+55(11) 2174-6800<br />
vaz<br />
@usp.br<br />
Cesar A de Souza<br />
University of São Paulo<br />
Araújo street, 124. São<br />
Paulo – SP – Brazil<br />
+55 (11) 3091-5892<br />
calesou<br />
@usp.br<br />
situated at the very center of the country, but the biggest and most<br />
economically dynamic city is São Paulo, at the Southeast. The<br />
country is divided in 26 States and 5.565 cities [1], which are<br />
federative units – which mean they are autonomous and have their<br />
own Legislative and Executive powers. The cities became<br />
autonomous after the Constitution of 1988, which marked the end<br />
of military dictatorship in the country, after 21 years. It is<br />
interesting to notice that, during the design of the same<br />
Constitution, it was tried to establish a parliamentary system, but<br />
the population, through a plebiscite held in 1993, chose the<br />
Presidential system of government.<br />
Recently, the Association of Brazilian Magistrates, pointed out at<br />
"Confidence Barometer in the Brazilian Institutions", that two of<br />
the three institutions with the worst ratings are linked to the<br />
Legislature [3]. This fact shows how necessary is to open<br />
Legislative Power and produce better governance of this actions<br />
and, recently, several public policies towards the idea of social<br />
control are reconfiguring relationships between state, society and<br />
market [4, 5]. The State is not seen anymore in Brazil as a<br />
promoter of policies top-down approach, but a mediator of social<br />
relations, with policies built collectively [5]. The society is called<br />
to be responsible also for the policies pursued by the government,<br />
and this space is that the concept of governance is gaining<br />
strength, the possibility of connectivity and transparency in<br />
government.<br />
Some of these innovations are from the use o ICTs in public<br />
administration, the e-government, and close impact of the<br />
government bureaucracy re-engineered during the State Reform in<br />
the 80’s and 90’s. On the Legislative Power, the wave of<br />
modernization came through the 'Interlegis Program' [6] focused<br />
on modernization and integration of Legislature at federal, state<br />
and municipal levels. Its modernization improved public policies<br />
to promote more transparency and interaction of that Power with<br />
society. With the ICTs on the legislative power, the scenario<br />
changed some States Courts of Accounts (SCAs), where computer<br />
applications and software were created and offered to citizens the<br />
possibility of social control improvements of government actions,<br />
increasing chances of corruption combating. Our goal in this<br />
article is to find the limits and challenges of anti-corruption online<br />
monitoring systems have in terms of technological use, as web<br />
2.0, social networks and others innovations perceived on the<br />
international literature review.
2. LITERATURE REVIEW<br />
2.1 Electronic Government<br />
First we must point out that the E-Government is a concept still<br />
under construction often being confused with e-governance and<br />
computerization and use of ICTs by the government [7]. This<br />
means that no concept is widely accepted or rejected. Our study<br />
finds that electronic government is defined largely by the use of<br />
ICTs, especially the computerization of the public sector and<br />
using the Internet as a communication medium, but also uses<br />
other means of communication, not only focus on the use of<br />
computers [4]. Nevertheless, there is a consensus that the main<br />
medium used in e-government is the Internet, especially due to<br />
technological factors. Others point out that this trend will diminish<br />
over time, with the development of new information technologies<br />
[8, 9]. Moreover, it is noted that the overall e-government<br />
initiatives have always been a feature in common: the use of ICTs<br />
by government [10, 11, 12, 13].<br />
As in most Latin American countries [14], Brazil, e-gov had her<br />
embryo with the computerization of the federal state apparatus in<br />
the 70s [15, 16]. During the 90s, we had the spread of commercial<br />
Internet in Brazil, with the emergence of a National Research<br />
Network and the early government websites in 1995 [17], and in<br />
1998 the Brazil already had a good network of services through<br />
the use of ICTs, such as electronic commerce [18], the delivery of<br />
income tax, access to government information [7] and a host of<br />
other services online [19, 20, 21, 22].<br />
2.2 Electronic Governance<br />
From the electronic government concept being understood as a<br />
promoter of the rights of citizenship, such as social control,<br />
combating corruption and citizen participation, the State may<br />
extend the use of traditional e-government, based on process<br />
improvement and fiscal revenue economic, to expand the dialogue<br />
and meeting public expectations. This is when we went to egovernance,<br />
another concept that also is still no consensus<br />
prevailing in academia [9]. One of the issues found in the<br />
literature on the topic of e-governance are the possibilities and<br />
limits they have in making changes in the relationship between<br />
civil society and governmental sphere [23]. Among authors who<br />
believe in e-governance as a promoter of socioeconomic<br />
development, public management, increasing transparency and<br />
combating corruption, especially by means of citizen participation<br />
[24, 25, 26]. In Latin America we also found a similar trend of<br />
global research. Although some authors point to certain spots,<br />
such as transparency, and fighting corruption, and citizen<br />
participation, all authors who deal with Latin America point to a<br />
certain optimism about the e-governance, especially for<br />
socioeconomic development, public management, increasing<br />
transparency and combating corruption, especially by means of<br />
citizen participation [10, 27, 28, 29].<br />
In Brazil, e-Governance, according to [30, 31], is related to<br />
improved quality, efficiency, effectiveness, transparency and<br />
oversight of government entities. [25] points out that egovernance<br />
can go beyond the availability of government<br />
information. It can universalize the provision of public services<br />
and serving as an information channel and uninterrupted<br />
communication between the remote and public administration and<br />
population, with the advantage of promoting transparency,<br />
especially in the accounting area, as occurs in the portal of the<br />
420<br />
Federal Government Transparency. And that e-governance was<br />
characterized as the promise of wider interaction with citizens,<br />
and always focused on delivering services, which leads us to<br />
believe that we will inevitably develop a so-called electronic<br />
democracy [32]. However, our concept shows that e-governance<br />
is one of the impacts of the introduction of e-government<br />
successful, public management and offer a channel for dialogue of<br />
the population's demands and actions of government, with greater<br />
legitimacy, notably through the dissemination of information from<br />
all areas of public administration, with full public access to<br />
services provided by the Internet, cell phones, television and<br />
interact seamlessly and remotely, to promote substantial increase<br />
transparency, not only of the accounting reports of the<br />
Administration, but also the actions taken by all branches of<br />
government and administrative spheres of government.<br />
2.2.1 Electronic Governance and the promotion of<br />
rights of social control of public management<br />
The right to social control of public management refers to<br />
monitoring the formulation of policies and government initiatives<br />
by citizens and their organizations. This category of rights creates<br />
conditions for the establishment of trust between rulers and ruled,<br />
and gives legitimacy to the actions of the latter [7]. The initiatives<br />
are related to these rights are the checks and balances and the<br />
disclosure of government activities. The right to social control<br />
depends crucially on access and availability of government<br />
information, or is directly related to the right to public<br />
information. The experiences found in this category can monitor,<br />
assess and monitor government performance. For example, the<br />
publication of financial statements, reports on activities of public<br />
institutions, progress of works and dissemination of bidding. With<br />
the use of ICTs the right to social control of government can be<br />
promoted by the possibility of facilitating access to information,<br />
especially using the Internet. The Internet is a fast, relatively<br />
inexpensive and easy to use that enhances the promotion of this<br />
right. Examples of using ICTs to promote this right may be cited:<br />
the dissemination of government information over the Internet,<br />
sending through the provision of listed phone via text message,<br />
the complaint online, among others.<br />
1.1.1 Combating Corruption, Transparency,<br />
Accountability and Social Control<br />
The theme of fighting corruption, transparency, oversight and<br />
accountability are closely linked. No doubt that transparency can<br />
generate a significant increase in social control by citizens, thus<br />
hindering some deviations and biases of Public Management, such<br />
as corruption and ‘clientelism’, the political patronage [33]. Thus,<br />
through social control easier, the citizen would exercise more and<br />
better their right of participation and accountability of actions and<br />
accounts of government [34]. Although we believe that these<br />
concepts are inseparable, this article divides the four concepts into<br />
smaller, more detailed chapters, entitled Anti-corruption,<br />
transparency, accountability and social control, trying to get better<br />
division of the references and definitions of the concepts proposed<br />
and studied.<br />
Combating corruption in Brazil has gained great prominence<br />
through increased surveillance of domestic institutions of<br />
government as the comptroller General's Office and the Audit<br />
Courts throughout Brazil. Despite evolution of fighting corruption<br />
in these instances, the authors describe that popular participation
is essential to curbing corruption, a concept which we believe is<br />
also in line with our expectations, as no social control and<br />
accountability, there is no really diminish the maximum all the<br />
deviations and acts of corruption within the country. ICTs,<br />
particularly the Internet, may increase the potential for<br />
transparency in basic processes made by e-gov. According to [35],<br />
the proper use of information is the best vaccine to combat<br />
corruption. So there is no doubt that the Anti-Corruption Tools<br />
Online does not resolve the problem of corruption, but will<br />
certainly fight them. We reaffirm the role of other institutions<br />
such as the TCEs and the Comptroller General's Office and the<br />
Court of Audit, as major allied agencies to promote the fight<br />
against corruption through their respective legal and<br />
administrative. [36] recommends the wide dissemination of these<br />
tools online that can provide the empowerment of political<br />
decisions, and we anticipate that the online public consultation<br />
can perform this role of offering space and 'voice' in public policy<br />
debates subnational and even national As exemplified with<br />
regulatory agencies and ministries of Brazil.<br />
This article will understand how the concept of social control the<br />
way in which the company directly control the state, adding<br />
branches and alternative institutions such as the comptroller and<br />
internal Audit Courts. Brazil recently drafted a law called the<br />
Statute of the City (Law 10257) that projects the population<br />
participate in the decision of public administration, according to<br />
the guidelines of the City Master Plan. However, we should point<br />
out that there is still a difficulty to implement systems of citizen<br />
participation due to bureaucracy and lack of culture of citizen<br />
participation in the country, but internationally recognized as the<br />
Digital Participatory Budget in Belo Horizonte [37, 38]. Exactly<br />
what pointed [39] two decades ago, wondering when Brazil could<br />
actually have citizen participation to promote social control and<br />
accountability. We also question the public administrators about<br />
his actions, as we point accountability, referring to the provision<br />
of accounts and definitions of the objects of actions. However,<br />
this action a citizen needs information, to question their leaders.<br />
[40] emphasizes the interdependence between social control and<br />
accountability, being essential to the transparency of decisions of<br />
public officials. Nevertheless, it is shown that the administration<br />
acted with economy, efficiency and honesty.<br />
The concept of transparency can be understood in two aspects<br />
according to [25]. The first indicates the concept of transparency<br />
as a synonym for publicity, and the second as transparency and<br />
the availability of data, considering the transparency with data<br />
access, digital inclusion and availability of data, particularly<br />
regarding the frequency and timeliness of information contained<br />
portals and government sites, according to the words mentioned<br />
by [7], recognizing the information as a public right of every<br />
citizen. Furthermore, some authors suggest there is no reason why<br />
public managers do not have their acts, accounts and information<br />
content without confidentiality are not available for the population<br />
[41]. Obviously, there is a rule on publicizing for acts of<br />
administration, provided for in the Constitution that allow for<br />
confidentiality of certain information especially essential to the<br />
security of society and the state, such as cases of national security,<br />
law enforcement investigations or interests of the Directors.<br />
Therefore, we believe that the true meaning of transparency is the<br />
opening of the supply of information, free and universal access,<br />
constant update, posted to a single channel of communication and<br />
interaction with citizens and with search tool to help citizens find<br />
the theme you want fast.<br />
421<br />
1.1.1.1 Citizen Participation and Electronic<br />
Democracy<br />
According to some authors [7, 42, 43], we can point suggests that<br />
the public's right to be heard by governments. That we would<br />
characterize as more collaborative democracy, listening and, of<br />
course, filtering the demands of society. However, the tool online<br />
public consultation is one element that can indeed improve society<br />
participation in the development of programs, laws and various<br />
other matters that the Brazilian government has historically done<br />
without consulting the public [42]. [8] suggests that ICTs have<br />
come so that citizens could come together and form groups to<br />
discuss public policy forums and legitimizing and facilitating<br />
interaction within communities, especially in sub-areas. [27]<br />
points to several international examples of good use of public<br />
consultations online, online forums and other tools for citizen<br />
participation through a model of electronic democracy.<br />
3. METHODOLOGY<br />
The first step of the research was an exploratory search on the<br />
Internet of 27 Court of Accounts, looking for portals of<br />
transparency and anti-corruption online systems. This paper<br />
considered to the search that anti-corruption online systems are<br />
online delivery of information via electronic forms or through<br />
electronic mail, to combat corruption as Latin American literature<br />
review considers [27, 44]. The complaint in this online survey is<br />
being perceived as sending the complaint to the government via<br />
electronic form or through an online based web platform. In Latin<br />
America the most common kind of form is via electronic mail,<br />
however, several let through telephone and mail.<br />
Further, the second step was a structured analysis of websites<br />
portals of SCAs in Brazil during 2 months of 2011 – May, June.<br />
The search reveals four web platform for anti-corruption; Mato<br />
Grosso, Paraíba, Piauí and Paraná. The third step was to compare<br />
what have been finding on international literature review about<br />
web 2.0 usage and new ICTs for anti-corruption and transparency<br />
that we pointed out in our literature review. Every finding about<br />
ICT usage on the website was noted and them checked to a list<br />
from literature review. The results reveals limits and challenges of<br />
anti-corruption online systems and some recommendations were<br />
purposed for problems we found in the exploratory and structured<br />
analysis of website, several in according with our literature<br />
research in the area.<br />
4. RESULTS AND ANALYSES<br />
Several concepts among the possibilities of ITC usage by<br />
governments, transparency, civil participation and combating<br />
corruption are evidently limited in Brazil. For example, is noted in<br />
all websites that the notion of transparency is limited to offer for<br />
citizen the counts of Public Administration. It is like “we gave the<br />
numbers, now you are by yourselves”. Regardless of Federal<br />
Constitution previse the definition and several laws about<br />
transparency in Brazilian governments, the notion is around the<br />
idea of advertising data by the government. There is no action<br />
toward a development of infra-structure or even web 2.0 usage,<br />
following civil society step, as the use of social networks, blogs<br />
and others web tools. The majority of them of five anti-corruption<br />
online systems showed that there is more challenges than good<br />
perspectives in relation what literature review recommends.
Among the main limitations and challenges to improving Tools<br />
Online Anticorruption state courts of auditors can highlight the<br />
lack of integration of technology platforms and systems, such as<br />
photographs, interactive maps, PDF documents, spreadsheets and<br />
easy access to e-mail or phone number and address of the<br />
ombudsman, which could further enhance the work of these tools<br />
installed in some of Brazil TCEs. Among the universe of TCEs<br />
studied, the state of Mato Grosso is one of the most complete<br />
systems studied, as it enables the citizen can have the information<br />
easily deployed platform solutions.<br />
The challenges of improving the Anti-Corruption Online Tools of<br />
TCEs are based on the production of programs that can<br />
increasingly expand their database, since the ideas are being<br />
implemented, fitting for the near future, to reconcile more<br />
databases have not included in the system for the production of<br />
thematic maps, graphs and other models to attract non-traditional<br />
society to control the public sector and the actions of government.<br />
As an example of this database can highlight the transparency of<br />
the Portal, which has all the information about large projects such<br />
as the Bolsa Familia – biggest social policy in Brazil that aims the<br />
poverty reduction. However there is still no trace of these public<br />
policies georeferenced and can be pursued. Who undertake a<br />
project to that effect, have an anti-corruption online increasingly<br />
transparent and probably more efficient. By means of social<br />
control held by the citizen through more transparent information,<br />
the TEC will be helped and can probably find more irregularities<br />
and improves the use of public money thus preventing fraud,<br />
embezzlement and corruption within the public administration.<br />
Despite some improvements in certain uses of the Internet-based<br />
technologies, we have not seen an intensive practices already<br />
adopted by society and the general market, such as social media<br />
(Twitter, for example), channels like blogs and discussion forums<br />
on certain situations or cases that come to the fore by the<br />
company, use of mobile technologies, such as sending text<br />
messages and videos and pictures messages (SMS and MMS), and<br />
the use of Web 2.0 technologies, increasing the interaction<br />
between citizen and government, called e-governance. The short<br />
results are above.<br />
4.1 Structured Review of State Court of<br />
Accounts Websites<br />
The SAS of Mato Grosso is one of Supreme Audit most advanced<br />
in the area of promoting the transparency of data from the<br />
municipalities and the state, especially in the area of the industry<br />
works. Introducing an anti-corruption online innovator in public<br />
works, the SAS of Mato Grosso available to its citizens GEO-<br />
Obras, a promising system in social control and fighting<br />
corruption as it provides public notices, photographs, maps,<br />
search option by type of work, city and state of the work. Another<br />
positive point is the tool found in this section called the<br />
ombudsman, which can be triggered by citizen participation,<br />
controlling the actions of public administration in the state. To<br />
learn more about this tool TEC Mato Grosso [45].<br />
The SAS Paraíba is one of the Courts of Auditors, which achieved<br />
a good level of transparency of data and information from the<br />
State and the Municipalities of Paraíba. The anti-corruption tool<br />
called SAGRES online [46] is one of the innovations in TEC of<br />
Paraiba and provides citizens with information of revenues,<br />
expenditures, commitments and lenders at a single site, and also a<br />
422<br />
search tool that can be done through data as the year, Municipality<br />
and other categories, showing the complexity of the tool online.<br />
Standing out in the National scene, the SAS of Piaui [47], is a<br />
court of Auditors has also advanced in the area of transparency of<br />
information and use of ICTs, emerging standards and outdated<br />
static pages with no interactivity or search system to the citizen.<br />
The anti-corruption OBRAS-WEB tool is a breakthrough in the<br />
area of transparency, together with other programs studied in this<br />
work. For example, there is a search engine that can find work<br />
throughout the state, reporting data, the individual nature of the<br />
works, the value of the contract and even state of the work. As a<br />
challenge to improve the tool, which is worth to highlight the<br />
inclusion of an area of ombudsman, thus offering the power of<br />
citizen participation, channeling complaints in one place and<br />
instructing citizens to contribute in combating corruption in public<br />
administration State and municipalities.<br />
The SAS is one of Parana [48] of Supreme Audit Brazilians who<br />
valued the use of ICTs to promote transparency of data and<br />
information concerning their works done by the government. This<br />
appreciation led to the creation of anti-corruption tool called the<br />
Public Works, where the citizen can know the status of state and<br />
municipal works, made from the use of public money in the state.<br />
As challenges to improve this tool, we highlight the lack of an<br />
ombudsman for easy access to the tool, as in other TCEs and also<br />
a section in which there is photographic record, proving that the<br />
works were made and according to the notices, deadlines and<br />
guidelines established by the rules and laws of the State.<br />
4.2 Anti-Corruption Online Monitoring<br />
Systems of State Court Accounts of Brazil<br />
Pros Cons<br />
ñ� Use of Geocoding;<br />
ñ� Tracking public policies<br />
and public works;<br />
ñ� Possibility to increase<br />
transparency of data for social<br />
control citizen<br />
ñ� Use ICT to promote citizen<br />
participation: Extension of<br />
models of tools aimed at helping<br />
citizens' participation in external<br />
control conducted by the SAS;<br />
ñ� Although in its infancy, the<br />
use of new social technologies<br />
and multimodal to combat<br />
corruption, such as:<br />
ñ� Web Radio;<br />
ñ� Twitter;<br />
ñ� SMS to complaints and<br />
grievances;<br />
ñ� Ombudsmen Online;<br />
ñ� Multimodal channels of<br />
information;<br />
ñ� Cadastral surveys of<br />
municipalities and processes that<br />
are being judged;<br />
ñ� Provision of informational<br />
ñ� Database of<br />
Online Tools Anti-<br />
Corruption is incipient. Not<br />
envision the integration of<br />
information and<br />
georeferencing of these data<br />
are already collected by the<br />
Courts of Auditors, as<br />
studied in LRF and other<br />
laws;<br />
ñ� Works and<br />
services can be easily<br />
cataloged (photos, files,<br />
digital purchases and<br />
procurement) and broadcast<br />
channel does not exist for<br />
this purpose, only the ECA<br />
MT;<br />
ñ� Withdrawn use of<br />
mobile technologies<br />
(although there is deep use<br />
of complaints, grievances<br />
and so on. via text<br />
messaging services and<br />
video messages and images;<br />
ñ� Poor use of social<br />
technologies, such as<br />
twitter, only the TEC has a
feedback regarding complaints;<br />
ñ� Providing information<br />
about the tax situation before the<br />
TBI of all municipalities in the<br />
state;<br />
ñ� Use of WEB TV online<br />
assistance for plenary sessions of<br />
TCEs<br />
ñ� Proposed establishment of<br />
the National Council of Supreme<br />
Audit: Standardization of<br />
decision making, evaluation and<br />
trials of accounts and processes,<br />
ultimately, who controls the<br />
controllers?<br />
profile of Piaui in such<br />
communication portal;<br />
ñ� Use bit-depth<br />
technology forums and<br />
blogs online, with<br />
discussion of controversial<br />
issues and cases of raised<br />
public interest, such as<br />
complaints made by media<br />
and so on;<br />
ñ� Infrequent use of<br />
electronic media<br />
technologies, such as radio<br />
web system, RSS 'feeds' and<br />
also other technologies that<br />
have already been<br />
assimilated by society.<br />
5. LIMITS AND CHALLENGES OF<br />
ONLINE MONITORING SYSTEMS IN<br />
LATIN AMERICA<br />
From the understanding by the public administration that the<br />
information is a civil right [7], the search for greater transparency<br />
must be the greatest extent possible. This means that the<br />
information in the case of electronic shopping, should not be<br />
played anyway in the Portal of the government only as "goodwill"<br />
or even because the legislation requires and therefore was<br />
considered as an example of transparency in government<br />
procurement. Even if a citizen does not want to see this<br />
information at any given time, it should be there by chance might<br />
be challenged at any time for all concerned.<br />
The initiatives of Transparency Portal appear to cover this concept<br />
of transparency than the principle of publicity. To determine the<br />
degree of transparency in the different public entities by the use of<br />
e-government would be interesting for a future study to construct<br />
an assessment tool to check the possibilities of increasing<br />
transparency, ie the construction of indexes that measure the<br />
different levels transparency which are government agencies.<br />
Should be cataloged the existing features and adding others in<br />
order to create a possibility of further increasing transparency in<br />
public sites.<br />
ICTs, particularly the Internet, can increase the possibilities for<br />
increased transparency for government services in basic processes<br />
such as procurement and disbursement of resources, the facility<br />
can be accessed by anyone and anywhere. The benefits of<br />
increased transparency in the gates shown, for example, are as<br />
diverse as the promotion of citizenship rights, such as the right to<br />
social control of public administration.<br />
However there are limitations, including the digital divide. Even if<br />
the government makes available all the site information about the<br />
different governments in a clear and accessible if the company<br />
does not have access to technology or field to use the same<br />
capabilities to fight corruption will be invalid and the path to full<br />
citizenship digital will be missed .<br />
Information should be available to society. Not only by the<br />
provision in the law, which requires publicity of the acts of<br />
government, but by allowing the participation and citizen control:<br />
"The participation and social control over the government depends<br />
on the flow of information" (VAZ 2005).<br />
423<br />
If the information is not available or is insufficient, the possibility<br />
of e-Government to facilitate the right to information and<br />
therefore the fight against corruption, is drastically reduced.<br />
Information technology and communication will not be<br />
promoting the rights of citizenship itself, but also depends on a<br />
culture of transparency in both the society is prepared to control<br />
and understand the Public as this act for the access to information.<br />
Although the Audit Courts are traditional entities, currently<br />
undergo significant changes, either in their legal frameworks as<br />
well as in its modernization and intensive use of modern<br />
management techniques and ICT. These changes have opened<br />
opportunities for the setting of efficiency, transparency, social<br />
control and fighting corruption were propitiated by SASs.<br />
Regarding the most recent innovations in the structure of CT, this<br />
study examined further the computerized systems of control<br />
online. Through a search of the portals of all courts found some<br />
modernization initiatives using ICTs to promote social control and<br />
transparency of accounts and other public policies. The result<br />
proved that some courts have innovations that tend to incorporate,<br />
as well as geo-referenced information, pictures and even channels<br />
of complaint online. But the fact is that some courts have gone<br />
further than others in this requirement of creating a simple and<br />
direct channel for transparency and combating corruption through<br />
social control made directly by the population.<br />
Importantly, previous studies on state courts of accounts have<br />
pointed to certain inequalities between the organs. While some<br />
state courts of auditors had a more modern apparatus, with the<br />
bureaucracy of higher education, others had no such institutional<br />
framework, favoring the incompatibility of operational capacity<br />
and meet the new requirements imposed by law and even civil<br />
society. Therefore, despite the efforts of PROMOEX, still<br />
recognize a great imbalance of staff and equipment that public can<br />
not get results in the area of combating corruption and promoting<br />
transparency in this institutional problem, not by failure of law<br />
enforcement or political incompatibility of the state.<br />
As already highlighted in the text, it was possible to establish<br />
connections between changes in constitutions imposed and even<br />
assignments of SASs. These legislative changes such as Law of<br />
Fiscal Responsibility, brought new demands on SASs. Especially<br />
when blamed for overseeing all the organs and instruments of<br />
state government and municipal levels, ie, a challenge that is<br />
being improved each year and as projects such as the Anti-<br />
Corruption Online Tools and the growing trend of building chat<br />
channels to promote transparency and social control made by the<br />
citizen are being built. This is due to the importance that SASs<br />
were essentially the same after these revolutions in the legislation<br />
for monitoring and assessment of Brazil's public accounts.<br />
Further study of the object, which were the tools of the Anti-<br />
Corruption Online SASs, electronic government and electronic<br />
governance and another series of studies on could not be left out<br />
because they were fundamental to building the theoretical<br />
framework, allowing a accurate observation that the e-government<br />
can influence the model of public administration we have in the<br />
future, as beyond saving, agility and other goodies coming from<br />
the introduction of e-government in other areas of public<br />
management, we can also improve service delivery public and the<br />
creation of a full and legitimate channel of communication<br />
between government and citizens for transparency and combating<br />
corruption.
Furthermore, our study demonstrates the promotion of change in<br />
perspective of social control and transparency and ease of<br />
inclusion of some political actors who do not currently have a<br />
"voice" to participate in decisions of public administration and<br />
also promote social control. It is recalled that some tools may<br />
often have a low level of demand on citizens, however, we must<br />
consider is that citizens have a right to information anytime you<br />
want, ie access to information should be universal and free entire<br />
population, regardless of their demand be higher or lower.<br />
Another problem that must be overcome is the content of the<br />
information and data that should always be expanded and also<br />
have a constant update. Outdated sites can not offer some depth to<br />
the information that citizens may be controlling constantly the<br />
Public Administration.<br />
Therefore, we can state that the initiatives studied here can, and<br />
should be an inspiration to all states and municipalities to produce<br />
from its peculiarities, models similar Tool Online Anti-Corruption<br />
and single channels for receiving complaints of corruption by<br />
society and providing information on government by promoting<br />
transparency of information and government actions.<br />
Finally, we should acknowledge the contribution of this work,<br />
though more descriptive, for a better understanding of the Anti-<br />
Corruption Online tools and issues related to the processes of<br />
social control and transparency of public data, such as accounts<br />
and policies public works, etc.. Furthe, we must credit the advance<br />
of research in the modernization of courts of auditors state in<br />
Brazil. Because it is a very recent case, this work served to<br />
consolidate some data, find the State of the Art these online tools<br />
and also some data on the structure of the courts that are currently<br />
being implemented.<br />
In fact, this study examined in more detail the technical and<br />
managerial aspects of the modernization process and timing issues<br />
gave less weight to the political aspects. Future work can proceed<br />
on this job, trying to measure the impacts of Anti-Corruption<br />
Online tools or even what the state of the art of all SASs on the<br />
issue of transparency, social control and promote practices that<br />
promote citizen participation to combating corruption,<br />
embezzlement and improper spending in public administration.<br />
2007.<br />
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[39] Campos, Anna Maria. Accountability: When can we translate<br />
it to Portuguese. Revista de Administração Pública, Rio de<br />
Janeiro, v. 24, n. 2, p. 30-50, fev./abr. 1990.<br />
[40] Akutsu, L.. Government Portals in Brazil: accountability and<br />
delegative democracy. In: X International Congress of<br />
CLAD on State Reform and Public Administration, Santiago,<br />
Chile, 18 to 21 October 2005.<br />
[41] Speck, B. W.. Paths of Transparency. University of<br />
Campinas Press. 2004.<br />
[42] Pinho, José antonio Gomes de. Investigating e-government<br />
portals of states in Brazil: a lot of technology, poor<br />
democracy. Public Administration Journal – Rio de Janeiro<br />
42(3):471-93, May/June. 2008.<br />
[43] Vale, Paulo H. M. Electronic government in the dimensions<br />
and capacity-management, e-participation and etransparent:<br />
identifying aspects of electronic governance in<br />
64 municipalities in the metropolitan area of Belo Horizonte.<br />
PhD Thesis. Belo Horizonte: Fundação João Pinheiro. 2006.<br />
[44] MATHEUS, R. ; RIBEIRO, M. M.. Anti-corruption online<br />
tools in Latin America. In: III International Conference on<br />
Electronic Governance, 2009.<br />
[45] MATO GROSSO, State Court of Accounts Portals of<br />
Transparency: http://geoobras.tce.mt.gov.br/cidadao/.<br />
Accessed at: 12 May, 2011.<br />
[46] PARAIBA, State Court of Accounts Portals of Transparency:<br />
http://sagres.tce.pb.gov.br/estado_empenhos01.php.<br />
Accessed at: 18 May, 2011.<br />
[47] PARANA, State Court of Accounts Portals of Transparency:<br />
www.controlesocial.pr.gov.br/ObrasPublicasConsultar.asp.<br />
Acessed at: 24 May, 2011.<br />
[48] PIAUÍ, State Court of Accounts Portals of Transparency:<br />
srvapp.tce.pi.gov.br/obrasweb/. Accessed at: 08 June, 2011.
E-Government Portals in Central America: A Preliminary<br />
Evaluation and Ranking (2011-2012)<br />
Rodrigo Sandoval-Almazan<br />
Universidad Autónoma del<br />
Estado de México<br />
rsandovala@uaemex.mx<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
Developing e-government strategies and particularly Internet<br />
portals could be considered an important trend for public<br />
administrations worldwide. These government-wide websites<br />
could potentially provide useful information and services and, at<br />
the same time, become the gateways for citizen participation and<br />
collaboration with government. However, the development of<br />
these tools and their potential impacts are not the same for<br />
developed and developing countries and there is not enough<br />
research about less developed nations. This paper applies a<br />
multi-dimensional evaluation model to the national portals of<br />
Central American countries (2011-2012) and starts providing<br />
some of the necessary knowledge about this particular reality.<br />
The model was first used in 2005 for evaluating Mexican state<br />
portals and has been systematically refined during the last 7<br />
years. The results clearly identify important gaps and<br />
opportunities for improvement in most Central American<br />
countries.<br />
General Terms<br />
Measurement, Performance, Reliability, Human Factors,<br />
Standardization, Theory, Legal Aspects, Verification<br />
Keywords<br />
Central America, e-government portals, metrics, e-government,<br />
assessment<br />
1. INTRODUCTION<br />
E-government has become an important strategy for<br />
governments around the world. E-government implementation<br />
has reached all levels of government. However the development<br />
and potential impacts of these tools and applications have not<br />
happened equally in all countries. For instance, Central<br />
American nations have lower levels of interaction with ICT and<br />
technology caused by infrastructure limitations, budget<br />
limitations or lack of knowledge about these technologies<br />
[23][8]. The problem of e-government implementation has been<br />
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for<br />
personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are<br />
not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies<br />
bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for<br />
components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored.<br />
Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to<br />
post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission<br />
and/or a fee.<br />
ICEGOV '12, October 22 - 25 2012, Albany, NY, USA<br />
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1200-4/12/10...$15.00<br />
J. Ramon Gil-Garcia<br />
Centro de Investigación y Docencia<br />
Económicas<br />
joseramon.gil@cide.edu<br />
426<br />
Nancy Karina Saucedo Leyva<br />
Universidad Autónoma del<br />
Estado de México<br />
nancykarinasl@hotmail.com<br />
studied in several ways, from the e-readiness perspective to the<br />
ranking or evaluation of several issues – e-participation,<br />
interoperability or organizational – leading this to an egovernment<br />
divide, that reflects e-government gaps among the<br />
countries of a region [3]. On the other hand, Central American<br />
countries are the ones that need the most the advantages of egovernment<br />
technologies in order to share information,<br />
collaborate with other countries, save costs, and improve their<br />
organizational capabilities on issues such as border control,<br />
terrorism, migration, and drug trafficking. This transnational<br />
information sharing is another e-government trend that will be<br />
achieve in other countries, pushing the Central America region<br />
to achieve this challenge [24][16].<br />
A new kind of electronic governance is reaching the Latin<br />
American region and several scholars are now doing research on<br />
the institutional impact of e-government [13], as well as on the<br />
adoption of e-government [10] on some Latin American<br />
countries such as Mexico, Argentina, Dominican Republic, and<br />
Brazil, among others [7][14]. However, there is not enough<br />
research to measure and evaluate e-government in Central<br />
American nations, and to provide practical recommendations to<br />
improve these countries’ level of e-government and the<br />
functionality of their portals. This paper presents preliminary<br />
results of an ongoing research that measures the national portals<br />
of Central American countries using a multidimensional<br />
evaluation model based on the evolutionary approach and<br />
initially developed in 2005 for the Mexican e-government state<br />
portals.<br />
We evaluated the portals of Central American countries in 2011<br />
and 2012 and this paper presents the preliminary results of this<br />
assessment effort. The paper is divided in five sections,<br />
including these introductory comments. Section two presents a<br />
review of recent literature on assessment models and presents<br />
some advantages and limitation of the evaluation model we<br />
propose. Section three describes the research design and<br />
methods for the two-year evaluation. Section four summarizes<br />
the main findings and compares the results of 2011 and 2012.<br />
Finally, section five provides ideas for future research and<br />
highlights some practical recommendations for Central<br />
American countries.<br />
2. LITERATURE REVIEW<br />
State websites can be considered government-citizen<br />
communication systems via a computer and the Internet [18].<br />
There are different models that explain the processes of
development and evolution of Internet sites [11]. In recent years,<br />
different approaches to understand and evaluate e-government<br />
have also been proposed (for reviews see [15], [17] and [25]).<br />
One of the most frequently used approaches is the evolutionary<br />
perspective, which creates stages and analyzes e-government<br />
initiatives according to the characteristics and technical features<br />
found in each of these stages (i.e., presence, information,<br />
integration).<br />
This approach has the assumption that there is an evolution<br />
towards electronic government [4, 11]. Some authors contend<br />
that each one of the stages is already electronic government.<br />
Others delimit in which phases a government can be considered<br />
truly electronic. Recent research demonstrates that evolutionary<br />
approaches are useful to understand and evaluate e-government<br />
phenomena, but they also have important limitations [6, 17]. The<br />
evolutionary approach is useful for the evaluation of web portals<br />
because it attempts to measure the degree of innovation and<br />
provides clear guidance for the development and improvement<br />
of current government websites [21].<br />
However, evaluating e-government initiatives, including web<br />
portals, is more difficult because they can have characteristics<br />
and features identified with multiple stages and different degrees<br />
of maturity. There are several limitations identified for the<br />
evolutionary approach. For instance, Bannister states the<br />
question if the benchmark promotes the advances of egovernment?<br />
What is the purpose of the benchmarking? [1].<br />
Similarly, Goldkuhl and Persson address directly to the stage<br />
model: Are higher stages inherently better than lower stages?<br />
[5]. Finally, Kunstelj and Vintar propose a different way to<br />
assess e-government development based on reasonable holistic<br />
principles rather than a stage model [9]. However, models based<br />
on the evolutionary approach could be multidimensional and<br />
relatively comprehensive. The evaluation model used in this<br />
paper considers multiple elements as complementary<br />
components rather than consecutive stages [12][19, 20].<br />
Information, Interaction, Transaction, Integration, and<br />
Participation are proposed as complementary components,<br />
which can be used to characterize the development of<br />
government websites [20].<br />
3. METHOD<br />
Based on seven years of experience using and refining an<br />
assessment model for government portals, we evaluated the<br />
Central American countries in 2011 [22]. For this paper, we<br />
evaluated the portals again in 2012 in order to compare<br />
differences and similarities between 2011 and 2012. In this way,<br />
the 26 Central American national web portals were evaluated on<br />
August 2011 and February-March 2012. Following the original<br />
assessment tool, the features and content of the portals were<br />
measured using 143 questions clustered into five components.<br />
Each government portal was evaluated in a 60-minute session.<br />
We made a pilot review of potential portals, collecting different<br />
URL’s, and make sure that for each country we obtain the<br />
official government website and not a tourism-related or other<br />
kind of website. As mentioned before, our model is based on<br />
five main components (see Table 1).<br />
Table 1. Components of the Evaluation Model<br />
Component Description<br />
427<br />
Information Greater number of web pages: Statewide portal<br />
as the entry point with links to most of the state<br />
pages. More dynamic information (frequent<br />
updates).<br />
Interaction Forms that can be downloaded<br />
Two-way communication through electronic<br />
mail<br />
Use of search engines<br />
Use of chats, forums or other forms of<br />
interactive communication (service related)<br />
Transaction On-line services (secure and completely online),<br />
including electronic payments (e.g., credit<br />
cards).<br />
More customization (use of passwords, citizen<br />
profiles, etc.)<br />
Portal organized according to people’s needs<br />
instead of government structures.<br />
Integration Portal with a single point of checkout (multiple<br />
agencies, different functions, different levels of<br />
Political<br />
Participation<br />
Style and<br />
Design<br />
government).<br />
Electronic Vote, online participation.<br />
Format, usability, downloading speed, etc.<br />
4. PRELIMINARY FINDINGS<br />
This section describes the main findings and a comparison of the<br />
results of the evaluation performed to the Central American<br />
countries in 2011 and 2012. There are some clear changes in the<br />
evaluation when comparing the results from the two years. In<br />
2012, the websites of Jamaica and Turks and Caicos Islands<br />
could not be measured because they were not available during<br />
the time this research took place. Only one country kept about<br />
the same level of functionality (El Salvador). Sixteen countries<br />
(61.5%) obtained a lower score and, consequently, a lower<br />
position in the ranking in comparison to 2011. In contrast, seven<br />
countries (27%) increased their score in 2012 (see Table 2).<br />
Table 2. Ranking of Central American Countries<br />
RANKIN<br />
PAÍS TOTA TOTA<br />
G<br />
L 2011 L 2012<br />
1 Bahamas 19.85 31.19<br />
2 Puerto Rico 29.03 23.65<br />
3 Martinique 11.76 23.42<br />
4 Trinidad and Tobago 21.79 22.86<br />
5 Honduras 13.39 22.10<br />
6 Panamá 24.72 21.63<br />
7 Costa Rica 14.78 21.58<br />
8 El Salvador 18.49 18.41<br />
9 Granada 22.99 17.64<br />
10 Dominica 17.76 17.49<br />
11 Antigua y Barbuda 17.75 17.06<br />
12 Guatemala 12.25 15.88
13 Guadaloupe 31.74 14.19<br />
14 Aruba 14.92 12.65<br />
15 St. Vincent and the<br />
Grenadines<br />
17.35 12.60<br />
16 República Dominicana 16.83 11.88<br />
17 Saint Lucia 12.60 11.38<br />
18 Belice 13.88 10.78<br />
19 Cayman Islands 16.93 10.64<br />
20 St. Kittis and Nevis 19.52 9.60<br />
21 Virgin Islands 8.11 8.99<br />
22 Nicaragua 4.98 8.19<br />
23 Cuba 12.24 7.65<br />
24 Barbados 15.21 6.79<br />
25 Jamaica 11.89 0.00<br />
26 Turks and Caicos Islands 11.90 0.00<br />
Most of the changes from 2011 to 2012 are small; a few points<br />
below, except for Guadaloupe, St Kittis and Nevis and Barbados<br />
which dropped significantly. Similarly, Guadaloupe was in the<br />
first place and fall to the tenth position of the ranking. A<br />
potential explanation is that these three countries did well in<br />
some of the components of the ranking but did not do well in<br />
others. For instance, these three countries are very low in the<br />
transaction and participation components.<br />
The global average of the ranking 2012 is 14.55 two points less<br />
than the previous ranking (16.64 points). In terms of each<br />
component, most of them present lower average scores in<br />
comparison with 2011. The exception is the Participation<br />
component that has an important increase (see Table 3).<br />
Table 3. Average Points by Component - Central America E-<br />
Government Websites Ranking (2011 and 2012)<br />
2011 2012 Difference<br />
Information 27.94 23.98 -3.96<br />
Interaction 15.88 15.68 -0.2<br />
Transaction 3.35 2.52 -0.83<br />
Integration 31.96 24.91 -7.05<br />
Participation 4.06 5.65 1.59<br />
Total Rank 16.64 14.55 -2.09<br />
In addition, the changes on every component of the egovernment<br />
ranking are diverse. Table 4 shows the countries<br />
that showed an important change in each of the components.<br />
Only 11 percent of the countries have an important change in all<br />
components. In contrast, most countries changed on style and<br />
design component.<br />
Table 4. Central America E-government websites ranking<br />
2012<br />
COMPONENT 2011 2012<br />
INFORMATION Guadaloupe Bahamas<br />
428<br />
INTERACTION<br />
TRANSACTION<br />
INTEGRATION<br />
PARTICIPATION<br />
STYLE AND<br />
DESIGN<br />
Granada<br />
St. Kittis and Nevis<br />
Panama<br />
Granada<br />
Guadaulope<br />
Puerto Rico<br />
Guadaulope<br />
Guadaloupe<br />
Puerto Rico<br />
Trinidad and Tobago<br />
Panama<br />
Granada<br />
Republica<br />
Dominicana<br />
Bahamas<br />
Dominica<br />
Trinidad and Tobago<br />
Granada<br />
Costa Rica<br />
St. Vincent and the<br />
Grenadines<br />
Barbados<br />
Jamaica<br />
Trinidad and Tobago<br />
Panama<br />
Honduras<br />
Bahamas<br />
Trinidad and Tobago<br />
Puerto Rico<br />
Bahamas<br />
Martinique<br />
Bahamas<br />
Martinique<br />
Costa Rica<br />
El Salvador<br />
Panama<br />
Honduras<br />
Bahamas<br />
Dominica<br />
El Salvador<br />
Guatemala<br />
Puerto Rico<br />
Trinidad and Tobago<br />
5. FINAL COMMENTS<br />
The purpose of this paper is to present preliminary results from<br />
our evaluation of government portals in Central America. A<br />
multi-dimensional evaluation instrument was applied to 26<br />
Central American countries in 2011 and 2012. According to our<br />
findings, there is little progress towards more sophisticated egovernment<br />
in the region. In fact, most of the components<br />
included in the evaluation obtained lower average scores in<br />
comparison with 2011. In addition, it seems clear that certain<br />
countries have eliminated some information and applications,<br />
leading them to fall in the ranking (such as the Guadaloupe case)<br />
Other countries such as Bahamas climbed six positions in the<br />
ranking and obtained the first place. In contrast, St. Kittis and<br />
Nevis fell down 13 positions in 2012 in comparison with 2011.<br />
This country obtained a lower score in the information,<br />
integration and participation components in comparison with<br />
previous year. The recommendations for cases like this are to (1)<br />
review the information flow, dynamic information, updated<br />
information; (2) integrate the information with other internal<br />
websites, and (3) to recover their participation channels from<br />
previous years and to introduce new ones.<br />
This kind of feedback could be produced for every country on<br />
the ranking, and could potentially help to identify strengths &<br />
weaknesses within each component. This could also help to<br />
understand the country’s status and evolution in terms of egovernment<br />
implementation in general and Internet portal<br />
functionality in particular. In general terms, there are some<br />
important differences between 2011 and 2012 and these<br />
differences could be related to unequal knowledge about egovernment<br />
implementation, but also to political, economic, or<br />
social conditions currently affecting particular countries.<br />
These preliminary findings are part of an ongoing research effort<br />
that attempts to understand e-government in the Central America<br />
region. Further research is needed to understand the potential<br />
causes of the differences and similarities identified in the two<br />
evaluation efforts. A quantitative approach that correlates
multiple organizational, institutional and contextual variables<br />
with the general score and each individual component of the<br />
ranking could be very useful. In depth case studies, using a<br />
qualitative approach could also help to understand some details<br />
in the countries that improved or obtained a lower score in 2012.<br />
E-government metrics and evaluation is an important field of<br />
research to understand the status and evolution of e-government<br />
around the world. It could also help countries to foster egovernment<br />
implementation with practical recommendations.<br />
There could be many evaluation models and we are not arguing<br />
that this is the best one. However, we think that evaluating<br />
government portals in Central America could be considered an<br />
important and necessary first step towards more sophisticated<br />
studies on e-government implementation in the region. This<br />
paper represents one of the first attempts to understand this<br />
phenomenon in Central America and hopefully will start a<br />
dialog about how information technologies could improve the<br />
information, communication and sevices between governments,<br />
citizens, businesses and other stakeholders.<br />
6. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS<br />
This work is partially supported by “Diálogo Regional sobre la<br />
Sociedad de la Información (DIRSI)”, Lima, Perú.<br />
7. REFERENCES<br />
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Evolving e-Government Benchmarking to Better Cover<br />
Technology Development and Emerging Societal Needs<br />
Kim Andreasson<br />
DAKA Advisory<br />
Alvgatan 3<br />
432 38 Varberg, Sweden<br />
+1 646 845 9782<br />
kim@dakaadvisory.com<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
Many international e-government benchmarks seek to measure<br />
progress towards various versions of a digital society, and in this<br />
endeavor include a component of e-government. But because<br />
comparable international e-government data are scarce, most<br />
reports rely on the United Nations E-Government Development<br />
Index, specifically its Online Service Index as a benchmark.<br />
However, this assessment only captures national level initiatives<br />
at a broad level and does not link evaluation to outcomes and<br />
impacts, i.e. e-government performance relative to investment.<br />
This paper briefly reviews the current UN framework and assesses<br />
how it can evolve to meet new demands, such as calls to better<br />
connect investments to policy goals, and evolving user behavior.<br />
It also places this in the context of new technology trends, like<br />
mobile and social media which have not yet been fully embraced<br />
by e-government but which are likely to become increasingly<br />
important. Similarly, important trends in benchmarking and in<br />
benchmarking tools are surveyed.<br />
For example, is it possible to measure outcomes in a cost effective<br />
manner? What might be the role of non-UN data and of web<br />
metrics and social media analytics? How could relevant data and<br />
other information be better presented to countries and decisionmakers<br />
in order to strengthen the goal of using the UN survey to<br />
support learning and improvement? In this context, the paper<br />
outlines the next feasible steps which the UN and similar<br />
benchmarks might adopt, including how the framework might be<br />
applied to local level assessments.<br />
Categories and Subject Descriptors<br />
K.4.1 [Public Policy Issues]<br />
General Terms<br />
Measurement, Documentation, Performance, Design<br />
Keywords<br />
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for<br />
personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are<br />
not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies<br />
bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for<br />
components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored.<br />
Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to<br />
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ICEGOV '12, October 22 - 25 2012, Albany, NY, United States, NY, USA<br />
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1200-4/12/10…$15.00.<br />
Jeremy Millard<br />
Danish Technological Institute<br />
Kongsvangs Allé 20<br />
2000 Aarhus C, Denmark<br />
+45 72 20 14 17<br />
jrm@teknologisk.dk<br />
430<br />
Mikael Snaprud<br />
Tingtun & University of Agder<br />
N-4791 Lillesand, Norway<br />
+47 91 862 892<br />
mikael.snaprud@tingtun.no<br />
E-Government, United Nations, Technology Trends,<br />
Benchmarking Trends, Benchmarking Tools, Benchmarking<br />
Framework<br />
1. INTRODUCTION<br />
Benchmarking the information society is important in order for<br />
policy-makers to understand it and how to achieve better<br />
outcomes from additional investment.<br />
The benefits of a digital society are everywhere: the 2011 Future<br />
of the Internet Economy report from the OECD says that between<br />
2000 and 2009 investments in ICT contributed more to GDP<br />
growth than all non-ICT investments in a majority of its Member<br />
States. [1] Also in 2011, the McKinsey Global Institute, a<br />
consultancy research arm, estimated the Internet's share of GDP to<br />
be greater than many traditional industries. [2] Currently, the<br />
report said, the Internet contributes 3.4% across the G8 countries,<br />
South Korea, Sweden, Brazil, China, and India. Among mature<br />
economies, 21% of growth in the last five years has come from<br />
the Internet.<br />
The potential benefits also increase as more people take part in the<br />
digital society. One example of how rapidly people are coming<br />
online is in Europe where 34% of individuals were regularly using<br />
the Internet in 2003; in 2011, the number stood at 68%, according<br />
to Eurostat the European statistics office. [3] The rise is also<br />
global in nature. According to the International<br />
Telecommunications Union (ITU), a specialized agency of the<br />
United Nations (UN), the number of Internet users globally has<br />
increased from 6.4 per 100 people in 2000 to 29.7 in 2010. The<br />
agency predicts that the world will go from two billion Internet<br />
users in 2010 to five billion in 2015. [4]<br />
Because of the potential benefits, understanding and measuring<br />
the factors behind the digital society are increasingly important as<br />
countries become more connected and interconnected. Prominent<br />
examples of research reports that use international benchmarks to<br />
measure progress towards various aspects of a digital society<br />
include the World Economic Forum’s Global Information<br />
Technology Report, the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Digital<br />
Economy Rankings, the Nokia Siemens Networks Connectivity<br />
Scorecard, and the Partnership on Measuring ICT for<br />
Development, coordinated and funded by the International<br />
Telecommunications (ITU), a specialized agency of the UN, the<br />
European Commission and Waseda University.<br />
One commonality between such efforts to measure digital<br />
progress is that they include a component of electronic<br />
government (e-government). The development of e-government<br />
has also been rapid by any measure but a commonly cited
example is online tax filing. According to the Internal Revenue<br />
Service about 4m people filed electronically in the United States<br />
in 1990, the first year such method was available. [5] In 2000, the<br />
number had reached 35m. Two years ago, nearly 100m people<br />
used e-file. One reason for the rapid rise is the fact that<br />
government realizes its potential: “Governments are increasingly<br />
becoming aware of the importance of employing e-government to<br />
improve the delivery of public services to the people,” said the<br />
2003 UN World Public Sector Report. [6]<br />
The potential benefits of e-government extend beyond service<br />
delivery as it can also improve accountability and performance<br />
assuming it can increase usage and security. But measuring egovernment<br />
across the world is difficult and because comparable<br />
international e-government data are scarce, many prominent<br />
benchmarks, such as those cited above, all rely on the United<br />
Nations (UN) E-Government Development Index, in particular its<br />
Online Service Index subset as a benchmark. However, this<br />
assessment only captures national level initiatives at a broad level<br />
and does not link evaluation to outcomes or impacts, i.e. egovernment<br />
performance relative to investment.<br />
This paper reviews the UN approach, introduces current egovernment<br />
trends that affect measurement and explains how a<br />
revised framework can be developed to meet these new<br />
developments. Because of the demand for measurement at all<br />
levels, the paper ends with a brief discussion of the revised<br />
framework’s applicability to local level assessments.<br />
2. THE UNITED NATIONS<br />
E-GOVERNMENT SURVEY<br />
2.1 Objectives<br />
The global rise of e-government and its importance to<br />
development broadly and the information society specifically has<br />
been illustrated in numerous reports, but in none more so than the<br />
biennial Global E-Government Development Reports from the<br />
UN, published in 2003, 2004, 2005, 2008, 2010, and 2012 (plus a<br />
2001 pilot report or a predecessor of the reports, depending on<br />
how you view it).<br />
The objective of the reports is to assess trends in e-government in<br />
order to “inform and improve the understanding of policy makers’<br />
choices to shape their e-government programs,” according to the<br />
2004 report. [7] More recently, according to the 2010 report, the<br />
survey measures “the willingness and capacity of countries to use<br />
online and mobile technology in the execution of government<br />
functions,” and compares the performance of the 193 UN member<br />
states relative to each other. [8]<br />
Given its worthwhile objective and the fact that comparable<br />
international data are scarce, the UN reports have become the de<br />
facto e-government benchmark used in numerous reports<br />
measuring the digital society. However, relatively little attention<br />
has been has been paid to the UN methodology. The following<br />
section introduces the current framework based on publicly<br />
available information.<br />
2.2 Methodology<br />
The E-Government Development Index is a composite index<br />
based on three indicators, which are weighted equally. First, the<br />
Online Service Index (OSI), which measures a country’s<br />
availability of e-government information and services through<br />
original research. Second, the human capital index, which is<br />
431<br />
derived from data primarily from the United Nations Educational,<br />
Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) with additional<br />
data from the United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP)<br />
Human Development Report, most recently the 2009 version.<br />
Third, the telecommunications index, which is provided by the<br />
ITU.<br />
The human capital and telecommunications infrastructure indices<br />
are less relevant for the purposes of this paper because they are<br />
provided by third parties. Instead, this paper focuses on the OSI,<br />
which is the most prominent component of the overall index and<br />
what makes the UN assessment unique.<br />
To measure e-government, the OSI employs a supply-side<br />
measurement technique, which means quantitatively evaluating<br />
websites through content analysis. It is a common approach to<br />
measure e-government as researchers take a pre-defined survey<br />
questionnaire and examine which information and services are<br />
available on various websites and, to some extent, their<br />
sophistication. For example, how many national government<br />
websites around the world have a feature that offers to send alerts<br />
to mobile phones? (In 2010, the answer was 25 out of 192.) Once<br />
the entire survey questionnaire is completed, scores are simply<br />
tallied up.<br />
From the abridged UN methodology in the most recent report, and<br />
the reports from the expert group meetings, a biennial exercise in<br />
which select experts gather to discuss the UN survey and its<br />
methodology, 1 one can deduce the following about the UN egovernment<br />
supply-side approach: [9]<br />
o Every UN member state, currently 193, is assessed. This<br />
provides a broad international comparison.<br />
o A ‘national portal’ or other official website of each UN<br />
member state is selected for assessment, as well as associated<br />
ministry websites (e.g., education, health, labor, social<br />
welfare and finance). Where more than one national website<br />
or associated portal exists, the features on relevant sites for<br />
which links are provided are also assessed. This offers a<br />
defined set of websites for assessment.<br />
o A large number of e-government features and services are<br />
assessed, each allocated to a four stage model: emerging,<br />
enhanced, transactional and connected. In addition, eparticipation<br />
features are assessed and the results calculated<br />
as a separate index.<br />
o A set of researchers visits the websites, survey in hand, and<br />
assesses whether the features in the survey exist or not. The<br />
team is instructed to take a citizen approach: if an item can’t<br />
be found within a reasonable period of time, then it is<br />
deemed not to exist (as an ordinary citizen would also give<br />
up and instead call the government). This is important<br />
because the UN survey is not based on whether features<br />
actually exist but rather whether researchers can find them.<br />
o Almost all questions in the survey call for a binary response<br />
of yes or no, with “yes” given one point and “no” zero.” In<br />
theory at least, this gives a quantifiable objective assessment.<br />
Either a feature is findable or it is not, and no value<br />
1 For the methodology, please refer to pages 119-125 of the most<br />
recent report (UN 2012); the report from the EGM can be found<br />
at http://www2.unpan.org/egovkb/
judgments are made about the quality or sophistication of the<br />
feature itself.<br />
While the underlying survey questionnaire has been adjusted and<br />
updated over time, the overall supply-side approach has remained<br />
consistent.<br />
3. THE TECHNOLOGY MARCHES ON<br />
Over the next five to ten years there are important technology<br />
trends which e-government is, or should be, well placed to address<br />
or benefit from and which any evaluation framework must take<br />
into account. These include the increased power of data, network<br />
developments and the cloud, mobility and social media.<br />
3.1 Big Data, Open Data<br />
Public sector data, also enhanced by compatible data from<br />
companies and communities, are set to become a prime resource<br />
for e-government development. Such data include trade, business<br />
development, health, education, environment, care, transport,<br />
crime and public order, as well as user and behavioral data when<br />
aggregated so that individuals cannot be identified.<br />
The ‘big data’ resources now available in some countries are<br />
being used for policy modeling, visualization and simulation, as<br />
well as data mining and pattern recognition using ICT and<br />
semantic web applications. Combining these tools with analytical<br />
methods (statistical, contextual, quantitative, predictive, cognitive,<br />
etc.) leads to the new discipline of ‘analytics’ which some<br />
governments are already starting to employ to dramatically<br />
increase their operational efficiency and effectiveness. For<br />
example, Singapore’s government addresses policy issues through<br />
joined-up government to support broader desired outcomes, such<br />
as economic vitality and foreign investment. [10] Its Land<br />
Transport Authority (LTA) deployed the world’s first congestion<br />
charging system and has since innovated elements of its business<br />
model. LTA has seen an 80% reduction in revenue leakage from<br />
“lost transactions”, while tripling its performance capacity to 20<br />
million fare transactions per day. At the same time, its ability to<br />
look holistically across the network to help manage current<br />
demand allows it to predict future needs and sustainable solutions<br />
to accommodate a growing population.<br />
Many public sector data in aggregated form are now also being<br />
made publicly available in machine-readable and linked formats<br />
for use by companies, social entrepreneurs, communities, hackers,<br />
etc. 2 This is not solely about encouraging a better informed and<br />
more transparent society. It can also lead to economic gains, as a<br />
result of re-use or recombination of these data in creative ways.<br />
Government, with minimal cost to itself, can make large amounts<br />
of data available so others can build innovative apps and eservices.<br />
This makes sense since governments are often not best positioned<br />
to extract commercial value from their own data. According to the<br />
European Commission [11] open government data policies will<br />
increase direct business activity in Europe by up to €40 billion per<br />
year, which translates into adding 0.3% of GDP. The same study<br />
showed overall benefits, including direct and indirect effects,<br />
could be up to €200 billion per year, or 1.7% of GDP. An<br />
Australian study in September 2011 [12] found that open data<br />
2 For example: the US (data.gov), UK (data.gov.uk), France<br />
(data.gouv.fr) and Australia (data.gov.au).<br />
432<br />
unlocked value equal to 5 times the cost of opening the data.<br />
Specifically, the estimated value of new economic activity plus<br />
cost savings was AU$25 million/year after bearing a cost of $4.6<br />
million/year.<br />
An important premise in many, though not all, of these initiatives<br />
is that tech communities are better able to make government data<br />
useful than the governments themselves. For example, in 2009 the<br />
‘Apps for Democracy’ competition in Washington DC awarded<br />
$20,000 in prizes for developers and yielded 47 web, iPhone and<br />
Facebook apps in 30 days with a value to the city of $2,300,000. 3<br />
Peter Corbett, CEO for iStrategyLabs and organiser of the<br />
competition said "I think the government realises that they don't<br />
have all of the money to do things people want them to<br />
do……government forgot that the biggest asset that they have are<br />
actual citizens… [and] many developers work free.."<br />
To encourage government data owners to publish their data, Tim<br />
Berners-Lee, also called the father of the world wide web, has<br />
proposed a five star scheme to rate Linked Open Data (LOD).<br />
LOD are data designed for linking with other data which are<br />
released under an open license and do not impede free reuse. Stars<br />
are awarded for the online availability, properties of the data<br />
format to facilitate re-use and linking to non-government data.<br />
3.2 Network Developments and the Cloud<br />
ICT is being increasingly seen as a utility in the same way other<br />
basic infrastructures like electricity and transport systems already<br />
are. Thus, who provides it and how will not be important for many<br />
users, although its quality, resilience, reliability and price will be.<br />
ICT will soon become an ambient technology, i.e. systems and<br />
services which are everywhere, fully interoperable and truly<br />
convergent (in both technical and non-technical terms).<br />
An evolution has already started towards wide-scale ubiquitous<br />
seamless networks, networked and distributed computing, open<br />
semantic web, large scale distributed databases and artificial<br />
intelligence. According to Tim Berners-Lee, we are indeed on the<br />
verge of the age of the semantic web which exploits the Internet<br />
of data rather than the Internet of documents we now have. This is<br />
built on a new RDF (Resource Description Framework) standard<br />
for metadata in the same way as document standards currently use<br />
HTML or XML. This will enable intelligent uses of the Internet<br />
like asking questions rather than simply searching for key words,<br />
as well as more automatic data exchanges between databases and<br />
the Internet of things and places. It is noteworthy, however, that<br />
the implementation of RDF still remains largely unrealized. [28]<br />
The dramatic growth of cloud computing is part of these<br />
developments, i.e. whereby shared resources, software, and data<br />
are provided to computers and other devices on demand. The<br />
fundamental concept of cloud computing is that the processing<br />
and the related data are not in a specified or known location.<br />
Generally, cloud computing users do not own the physical<br />
infrastructure, thereby avoiding capital expenditure by renting<br />
usage from a third-party provider. They consume resources as a<br />
service and pay only for resources that they actually use.<br />
In the UK sharing data across new internal cloud computing<br />
systems is part of a radical plan that it claims could save up to<br />
£3.2bn a year from an annual bill of at least £16bn. The key part<br />
3<br />
http://www.appsfordemocracy.org/ (accessed 28 November<br />
2009)
of the new strategy will be the concentration of government<br />
computing power into a series of about a dozen highly secure data<br />
centers, each costing up to £250m to build. These are replacing<br />
more than 500 presently used by central government, police forces<br />
and local authorities which are frequently run at far below their<br />
capacity because they are dedicated to one department.[13]<br />
The cloud is not only about data storage, however, but<br />
increasingly about the ubiquitous availability of services, content,<br />
and platforms for any type of ICT-based activity. The European<br />
Commission is already sponsoring research [14] into the benefits<br />
of public cloud services based, for example, on service component<br />
building block modules which can be shared across silos<br />
(ministries and other government agencies), so that each module<br />
only needs to be developed once. In turn, this opens the possibility<br />
for non-public sector actors to also develop and contribute their<br />
own modules. In future, therefore, users are likely to be able to<br />
ask specific and personal questions of the government cloud<br />
resources, as well as put together their own unique combination of<br />
public services and content.<br />
3.3 The Mobile Miracle<br />
A particularly exciting development in e-government is the rise of<br />
mobile devices, which are increasing access rates. The ITU<br />
estimates that 5.3 billion people around the world have a mobile<br />
phone subscription, with 3.8 billion in the developing world. [15]<br />
The combination of 3G networks and smart phones also means a<br />
growing portion of them will have Internet access through their<br />
mobile devices.<br />
Mobile government, or m-government, has consequently<br />
increased in importance as an alternative form of access to public<br />
sector information and services globally. In the developing world<br />
it provides an avenue through which countries can leapfrog<br />
traditional infrastructure development and their constituents can<br />
get online quickly. In the developed world, it has also proven<br />
useful in enhancing convenience, flexibility, and productivity and<br />
governments are offering mobile specific services to constituents.<br />
Globally, m-government is not simply changing the scale of egovernment<br />
but is also set to fundamentally change its nature:<br />
o Mobiles are highly convenient, carried around everywhere,<br />
always on and relatively cheap;<br />
o Mobiles provide service personalization and precision with a<br />
huge and growing user base;<br />
o Mobiles add ‘where, when and who I am’ to services:<br />
precisely targeted, location and context based whenever you<br />
want them.<br />
o Mobile apps based on open public data and citizen-generated<br />
data and knowledge are democratizing service design and<br />
delivery ─ all can participate as both suppliers and users.<br />
The Singaporean m-government portal 4 offers more than 100<br />
services specifically designed for mobile phones.<br />
3.4 Social Media and Web 2.0<br />
Social media as the main set of tools riding on the Web 2.0<br />
revolution, allow users to do more than just retrieve information<br />
but also contribute data as well as exercise some control over<br />
4<br />
http://www.ida.gov.sg/Programmes/20060419144029.aspx?getP<br />
agetype=34<br />
433<br />
these data. Web 2.0 sites typically have an ‘architecture of<br />
participation’ that encourages users to add value to the application<br />
as they use it. A Web 2.0 site, like Facebook, Twitter and<br />
YouTube, gives its users the choice to interact or collaborate with<br />
other users as well as service providers in a social media dialogue<br />
around user-generated content in a virtual community. This is in<br />
contrast to Web 1.0 websites where users are limited to the active<br />
viewing of content created and controlled by others.<br />
In the context of e-government, this means that citizens and<br />
businesses are able to change from passive consumers of services<br />
and content to active (co-) producers. On the one hand,<br />
governments can set up a personal two-way dialogue with<br />
individuals or groups of citizens, and potentially use the ‘wisdom<br />
of the user crowd’ to ‘crowdsource’ content and service inputs.<br />
On the other hand and independently of government, citizens are<br />
also starting to dialogue and share more with each other than the<br />
public authorities, increasingly relying on this ‘social signal’ to<br />
get what they need, potentially by-passing and usurping the role<br />
of government. For example, ‘patients know best’ 5 is the world's<br />
first patient-controlled medical records system, based in the UK<br />
and also integrated into its National Health Service secure<br />
network. It allows patients to dialogue with each other, as well as<br />
work closely with clinicians and managers to better manage their<br />
own health. This is co-production and partnership in action.<br />
Very few governments are currently exploiting the benefits of<br />
social media. They are often seen as a risky and costly alternative<br />
to existing channels. However, one such is the Office of Children<br />
and Family Services in New York State (OCFS) 6 , which at the<br />
end of 2009 adopted several social media tools, namely Twitter<br />
and Facebook, to communicate directly with the public, external<br />
media and between regional offices within the agency about all<br />
issues related to OCFS’ policies, services and activities. In 2010,<br />
the Public Information Officer stated that he was able to show<br />
“direct significant cost savings” because the social media are<br />
essentially free and easy to use compared to other less effective<br />
channels which were then closed.<br />
There are, however, emerging concerns regarding the impact on<br />
privacy from using some of these free services. The French<br />
national data privacy authority (CNIL) has recently sent 69<br />
questions to clarify the consequences of a new privacy policy for<br />
Google’s users: whether they have a Google Account, are non<br />
authenticated users, or are passive users of Google’s services on<br />
other websites (advertising, analytics, etc.). These questions were<br />
sent on behalf of and in cooperation with the Article 29 Working<br />
Party that gathers EU data protection authorities. 7 Some<br />
governments have also started to prepare guidelines for the use of<br />
social media in government, such as Difi in Norway. 8<br />
4. THE E-GOVERNMENT E-EVOLUTION<br />
An increasing amount of public sector information and services is<br />
finding its way online. In the EU15, which has long tracked the<br />
5 http://www.patientsknowbest.com/<br />
6 http://www.ocfs.state.ny.us<br />
7 http://www.cnil.fr/english/news-andevents/news/article/googles-new-privacy-policy-cnil-sends-adetailed-questionnaire-to-google/<br />
(Accessed 15. April 2012)<br />
8 http://www.difi.no/filearchive/veileder-i-sosiale-medier-forforvaltningen-pdf-.pdf<br />
(Norwegian only, Accessed 15. April<br />
2012)
percentage of online availability of 20 specific public services, the<br />
number has risen from 20% in 2001 to 90% in 2010. [16] Around<br />
the world, according to the 2012 UN report, only three countries<br />
did not have a government website: Central African Republic,<br />
Guinea and Libya.<br />
However, e-government also extends beyond delivery of services<br />
and is key to the broader efficiency and effectiveness of public<br />
sector operations through joined-up governance, as well as to<br />
societal development issues generally and the information society<br />
specifically. “Reliable and relevant e-government measurement<br />
can offer crucial signposts to point policy makers and<br />
practitioners in the right direction,” said the 2010 UN report.<br />
4.1 A Lack of Usage<br />
Despite an increase in online and mobile users, one of the greatest<br />
challenges to more effective e-government is for people to use it.<br />
If nobody uses them, it doesn’t matter how many services are put<br />
online or how good they are.<br />
Currently there is a gap between the availability of government<br />
information, i.e. the supply of services, and the demand for them.<br />
In the EU15, the percentage of people who used the Internet for<br />
interaction with public authorities increased from 26% in 2005,<br />
the first year of measurement, to 35% in 2010; far below the<br />
growth in the availability of online services. [17] Even in South<br />
Korea, the number one country in the 2010 UN survey, only 47%<br />
of constituents use e-government according to a 2010 report,<br />
though 73% of them are aware of it. [18]<br />
In part in order to highlight lack of demand, many benchmarking<br />
reports have added, or enhanced, a measure of usage. The<br />
Economist Intelligence Unit, for example, called its 2009 report<br />
The usage imperative and added three “usage” indicators, scored<br />
by the company’s country analysts, including the use of online<br />
public services by both businesses and citizens for which it looked<br />
at the extent to which they use services such as tax filings and<br />
online procurement. [19]<br />
4.2 Opening up Government<br />
Open government initiatives are meant to enhance transparency,<br />
improve accountability while providing public sector data, such as<br />
budgets, to users in formats that permit data mashing, i.e. finding<br />
new ways to use and correlate data with other factors and in the<br />
process stimulate innovation.<br />
Such initiatives are increasingly common at all levels and across<br />
the world. In the European Union (EU), the 2010 European<br />
eGovernment Action Plan to 2015, for example, looked to<br />
enhance online transparency in order to promote both<br />
accountability and trust in government. [20] In the United States<br />
(U.S) president Barack Obama has promised “an unprecedented<br />
level of openness in government” to increase transparency,<br />
participation and collaboration through portals such as data.gov.<br />
[21]<br />
In Kenya, President Mwai Kibaki announced the Kenya Open<br />
Government Data Portal in 2011, the first of its kind in sub<br />
Saharan Africa. Recognizing the need to make information<br />
publicly available, President Kibaki said he hoped that<br />
constituents will use the government website as a way to hold<br />
government accountable for its use of public resources. [22]<br />
434<br />
Open government is being looked at in various ways but perhaps<br />
the most important is transparency in assessment and allowing<br />
users to use the data collected. The World Economic Forum<br />
(WEF), which continues to measure digital progress primarily<br />
through its Networked Readiness Index (NRI) as presented in The<br />
Global Information Technology Report, announced in 2010 a new<br />
data sharing platform to “provide users with a set of tools to<br />
explore the impact of information and data technology on a range<br />
of socio-economic areas.”<br />
4.3 The Need for Trust and Security<br />
An unintended consequence of reliance on e-government,<br />
increased online participation and enhanced transparency is the<br />
greater need for trust and security. If a distributed denial of<br />
service (DDoS) attack shuts down government websites or<br />
malicious software (malware) is installed to steal users identity<br />
when using online services, trust will erode, as will the full<br />
potential of e-government.<br />
This is already a problem: only 12% of European users feel<br />
completely safe in making transactions online, making trust and<br />
security one of seven key initiatives in the Digital Agenda,<br />
Europe’s strategy for a successful digital economy by 2020. [23]<br />
To date, cyber security has been largely neglected in international<br />
benchmarks but this may be changing. The European Commission<br />
has identified trust and security as a priority area.<br />
4.4 Delivering on its Promise<br />
Fundamentally, e-government is about improving public sector<br />
efficiency and performance, potentially saving time, effort and<br />
money for government and constituents alike.<br />
It starts in the (back) office. Government needs to transform itself<br />
and enhance horizontal (across agencies) and vertical (higher or<br />
lower levels of government) integration across a host of issues in<br />
order to meet the demands of the digital era. Constituents should<br />
not need to know what government entity is providing the services<br />
they are looking for but rather they should just be able to go to a<br />
single website, such as a national portal, from which they should<br />
find all services from multiple government agencies on any topic,<br />
hence the national portal concept. Many countries, such as the<br />
U.S. with its usa.gov domain, have established a central<br />
government portal which would supposedly make it a one-stopshop<br />
for constituents to find information online.<br />
But there is also a greater need to better link e-government<br />
evaluation and investment to e-government policy and<br />
development outcomes, i.e. performance. In fact, the 2010 UN<br />
report acknowledges that “Ultimately, the challenge is to assess<br />
impact. A few studies exist about the utility citizens derive from<br />
e-government, mostly relating to the performance of government<br />
in developed countries, but even less is known about the impact of<br />
e-government programmes on national development goals.”<br />
However, efforts to better link investment to outcomes are gaining<br />
traction. In 2009, the European Commission presented the i2010<br />
High Level Group: Benchmarking Digital Europe 2011-2015 a<br />
conceptual framework, which suggested that a measure of ICT<br />
impact be added to the current framework of supply while<br />
acknowledging that “Linking surveys to measure ICT impacts is<br />
one of the main statistical challenges ahead.” [24]
5. BENCHMARKING TRENDS AND<br />
TOOLS<br />
A number of global trends in benchmarking, as well as in the tools<br />
available, can be seen both in e-government but also more broadly<br />
in information society and related areas.<br />
5.1 Three Main Benchmarking Trends<br />
Three core shifts of relevance to eGovernment benchmarking can<br />
be observed: up the value chain, down the hierarchy, and across<br />
and out of government, as illustrated in Figure 1. [25] 9<br />
Figure 1: main trends in benchmark<br />
5.1.1 Up the Value Chain<br />
Benchmarking is increasingly focusing on measures which are<br />
higher up the value chain. Historically, e-government<br />
benchmarking has encompassed only inputs and outputs on the<br />
supply side, such as the resources used by government and the<br />
number and sophistication of services put online, regardless of<br />
whether they were used or not. Many benchmarks are now<br />
focusing more and more on outcomes and impacts. On the supply<br />
side these include back-office process re-engineering, as well as<br />
productivity and efficiency measures, such as the number of cases<br />
dealt with. On the demand side, they include e-service take-up,<br />
the user experience, life events, user satisfaction, as well as<br />
impacts like job creation, economic growth, competitiveness,<br />
inclusion and cohesion.<br />
5.1.2 Down the Government Hierarchy<br />
The policy focus is shifting down the government hierarchy to<br />
regional and local governments, to front line staff and even to<br />
users and their intermediaries. Benchmarks have often neglected<br />
to address and capture developments at the local level and at the<br />
user interface where design, standards and outcomes might be<br />
difficult to capture. Thus, rather than relying solely on surveys of<br />
central government administrators, benchmarks should also<br />
examine feasible ways to include assessments of local<br />
administrations, staff and users (family, community, civil<br />
9 Also based on unpublished work undertaken for the European<br />
Commission in 2012 in preparation for the 2012 European egovernment<br />
benchmarking survey, together with Gwendolyn<br />
Carpenter of the Danish Technological Institute and Helen<br />
Rebecca Schindler of RAND Europe.<br />
435<br />
organizations) and panels. The development of user-centric<br />
measures across the main areas of service provision at local level<br />
will be needed, for example in care, housing, education, crime,<br />
transport, environment and health. For the transformation<br />
potential of e-government to become noticeable to users,<br />
frequency of use, local context and the specificity of service to<br />
everyday life situations all matter.<br />
5.1.3 Out of the Government Institution<br />
The third main benchmarking trend is moving beyond only<br />
government measures. There is a host of other actors at different<br />
levels becoming increasingly involved in e-government. Thus, an<br />
attempt should be made to take account of these different<br />
stakeholder groups in designing and implementing the<br />
benchmarking survey. This might necessitate using new diverse<br />
sources of data, many of which are likely to emanate from these<br />
groups themselves, and other knowledge and resource inputs. For<br />
example, how to capture local and especially location-specific eservices<br />
used frequently, even everyday, in addition to the more<br />
familiar national, centralized administrative services which are<br />
used just once or twice a year. Both are important, but to date only<br />
the latter have been captured.<br />
5.2 New Benchmarking Tools<br />
Much of the technology driving e-government, including the<br />
trends identified in section 3 above, is also being used to develop<br />
new tools for benchmarking and evaluation. Some of the most<br />
important are as follows.<br />
5.2.1 Analyzing Transformation in the Back-Office<br />
Most governments make use of internal monitoring tools to<br />
provide accurate metrics on the use of e-services. At the most<br />
basic level, every web server keeps configurable log files<br />
containing records of all its transactions. In addition, web log<br />
analysis software can provide a variety of statistics, highlight<br />
trends and projections, as well as provide reports and export result<br />
files. Take-up data are vitally important as efficiency and<br />
effectiveness objectives can only be achieved if governments<br />
manage the transition from paper-based to electronic procedures<br />
properly. The administrations already delivering e-government<br />
services are potentially the best and most accurate source of data<br />
on take-up. Their web administrators could routinely register data<br />
on a wide range of web metrics concerning traffic, visitors,<br />
activities performed, transactions, etc. These are objective and<br />
comprehensive data, while the usage metrics measured through<br />
user and supplier surveys suffer from accuracy and reliability<br />
problems, caused by lack of understanding by users of service<br />
definitions and subjective bias issues. Of course, web metrics also<br />
have their pitfalls.<br />
o They have little meaning unless they are aggregated,<br />
analyzed and evaluated (for example assessing their<br />
evolution in time and the achievement of predefined targets<br />
and benchmarks).<br />
o Administrations generate and collect differing data on service<br />
usage and performance. In other words, there is no umbrella<br />
approach to data collection, so that comparability across<br />
administrations and domains (not to mention countries) is<br />
extremely low.<br />
o Whilst most administrations monitor these data at least<br />
occasionally, few assess them with an appropriate evaluation
methodology, and few national governments collect and<br />
compare these data at the national level.<br />
There is clearly a high potential value in the development of<br />
collaborative methods of collection, measurement and monitoring<br />
of e-government administrative data, leveraging web metrics and<br />
other performance data generated by e-government service<br />
providers. These data can be collected in direct contact with web<br />
administrators and lead to the analysis of usage statistics<br />
alongside life events for example. Use of web analytics is ideal for<br />
organizations and individuals who do not host websites on their<br />
own web servers and are mostly concerned with human activity<br />
on their websites. Most web analytics services are available for a<br />
monthly fee based on volume, although there are some available<br />
free of charge such as Google Analytics or Alexa.com. Web<br />
analytics can be used to supplement data collected by<br />
governments to provide insight into e-government usage.<br />
5.2.2 New Ways to Capture User Experience –<br />
Social Media Analytics and Crowd sourcing<br />
With the increasing digitalization of everyday life, much<br />
information on the experiences and satisfaction with egovernment<br />
services and the main barriers encountered could be<br />
found through the use of social media analytics and/or<br />
crowdsourcing. There is a variety of tools available – generally<br />
referred to as listening tools – including sentiment analysis, which<br />
allow the analysis of online conversations on websites such as<br />
Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, blogging sites and wikis.<br />
Governments can use sentiment analysis to assess positive or<br />
negative sentiment trends for selected topics over time. More indepth<br />
sentiment analysis can also shed light on relative sentiment,<br />
i.e. differentiated by service/life-events, administration or web<br />
site, as well as highlight hot-words and similar.<br />
However, the potential scope of social media analytics can be<br />
much broader and potentially also cover emerging and perceived<br />
issues; top influences in terms of authors, blogs, forums, etc.; key<br />
themes driving customer sentiment over time; top sites by selected<br />
types and concepts; high level affinity analytics; top channels; a<br />
drill down into key ‘hot spots’ or sentiment areas via an in-depth<br />
affinity matrix; social media image versus competitors; hot-word<br />
distribution (percentage of conversations associated with a<br />
particular hot-word); insight into sub facets, products or features<br />
driving positive and negative sentiment; and key themes that are<br />
opportunities to enhance customer perception.<br />
All these in turn can be used to define specific action items to tap<br />
into social media opportunities and mitigate potential risks, define<br />
top social media priorities and even draw up a detailed social<br />
media roadmap or strategy with clear milestones. Although, tools<br />
like these which can cope with large numbers of countries with<br />
different languages, and to guarantee statistical validity, are still<br />
immature, rapid progress is being made in this area. Such tools<br />
could potentially complement or replace traditional user surveys<br />
and allow for much more frequent monitoring or thematic<br />
monitoring, and potentially at considerably lower cost.<br />
5.2.3 Software-Powered Evaluation of e-Government<br />
Service Availability<br />
The second generation of web-crawlers, such as used in Norway’s<br />
eGovMonitoring project, offer an automated way to assess the<br />
availability of online services and thus could be a major building<br />
436<br />
block in the review of key e-government websites. The eGovMon<br />
project was established to create new open source tools to help<br />
improve the quality of public web sites. Twenty-two pilot<br />
municipalities have participated in the design and testing of the<br />
tools. eGovMon consists of a tool for running automated tests at<br />
regular intervals and combines two approaches:<br />
o The deterministic approach checks for distinct features which<br />
can be detected programmatically. For example, checking for<br />
the presence of RSS feeds, links to Facebook/Twitter within<br />
a web page or web site. Provided that the boundaries of the<br />
web site can be clearly defined, this approach is<br />
straightforward to apply and gives very reliable results.<br />
o The learning algorithm approach checks for features which<br />
cannot be programmatically determined. An example of this<br />
is checking whether a local government web-site has a help<br />
page assisting citizens in the use of social media. In contrast<br />
to for example an RSS link, a help page is not formally<br />
defined and a crawler can therefore not immediately<br />
determine whether a given page is a help page or not. A<br />
learning algorithm will find online services based on the<br />
features extracted from a set of manually selected examples<br />
of help pages. Such features can be the presence of words<br />
like ‘help’ and ‘question’. The frequency of the words in the<br />
data from these example pages (the training data), together<br />
with other features, are subsequently used to determine<br />
whether the pages being assessed are help pages or not.<br />
Learning algorithms cannot guarantee 100% correct results<br />
and additional manual quality assurance is required. As<br />
opposed to manual assessment, however, the effort needed to<br />
carry out the learning approach is almost independent of how<br />
many web sites are checked, which enables large scale<br />
monitoring.<br />
The results from the eGovMon project have been used to produce<br />
data on accessibility for mobile users and for people with<br />
disabilities as presented in the 2012 UN report. Some of these<br />
tools are also freely available as online services to provide<br />
evaluation results on demand. They currently support the<br />
identification of barriers for people with disabilities in web pages<br />
and in PDF documents. 10<br />
5.2.4 Smart Data Visualization<br />
The web is not just social but has also become more visual. There<br />
are plenty of examples of new mapping tools, like Andy Lintner<br />
on Beowulfe.com who responded to the 2011 BP oil spill – the<br />
Deepwater disaster in the Gulf of Mexico – with a map mash-up<br />
that compares the size of the slick to others elsewhere in the<br />
world. Or the OECD which in key policy areas has launched<br />
progress maps that feed off global indicators and are updated<br />
regularly. This initiative is called wikiprogress. The core mission<br />
of wikiprogress is to create a global information tool supported by<br />
a worldwide partnership of organizations and individuals wishing<br />
to develop new, smarter measures of progress. Wikiprogress aims<br />
to provide a health check for all societies that enable every citizen<br />
to better understand the economic, social and environmental<br />
factors that determine whether or not their lives are getting better.<br />
Wikiprogress is powered by an OECD indicator framework and<br />
clearly defined taxonomies. The tool empowers local partners to<br />
discuss and contribute.<br />
10 http://accessibility.egovmon.no/ (Accessed 15 April 2012)
These developments show that there is a growing expectation that<br />
data will be available, not only in paper format, but also online in<br />
open mashable formats, for example as maps, or data tables<br />
comparing one country against other countries of choice. In<br />
future, countries are likely to wish to create and update their own<br />
website or data dashboard to plot and manage their own progress<br />
in e-government by manipulating and presenting data in their own<br />
way but which also has international comparability. Data are<br />
likely to have their provenance in a variety of sources, including<br />
universities, research institutions and even responsible companies<br />
and civic institutions which could become actively involved in the<br />
benchmarking process.<br />
6. AN ENHANCED FRAMEWORK<br />
Several international benchmarks cite a need for major revisions<br />
to their models and one even changed its name to reflect this<br />
trend, as the EIU’s e-readiness rankings became the digital<br />
economy rankings. While a case can be made for a completely<br />
different methodology, most reports also recognize the need to<br />
balance progress with a measure of consistency over time,<br />
allowing them to retain their particular focus and strength. For<br />
example, the UN survey has always been unique because it<br />
combines a worldwide measure through a supply-side approach.<br />
The UN framework has worked remarkably well over time and is<br />
a welcome endeavor in measuring the movement of information<br />
and services online. However, most countries have now largely<br />
accomplished this task and as a result, such a framework needs to<br />
adapt to meet new measurement trends – and at all levels. The<br />
following are first step suggestions, to be seen in the context of<br />
the new trends and tools discussed in section 5 above, for<br />
developing e-government frameworks, some of which are also<br />
relevant for the UN survey.<br />
6.1 Increase the Transparency of Survey<br />
Methods and Data<br />
Beyond conducting a survey, why not also release the data? Many<br />
international reports (though certainly not all!) publish data in<br />
either an appendix or on a website. The open government trend is<br />
undeniable: opening up raw data to the world will allow<br />
organizations to use the data in new and innovative ways,<br />
hopefully mashing it into benefits far beyond a supply-side<br />
survey, such as linking the data to performance (see section 4.4).<br />
Releasing the full methodology and the questionnaire will allow<br />
stakeholders to review, comment, and contribute to enhancing the<br />
survey. It would also provide the opportunity to replicate the<br />
results, enhancing the rigor of the whole process.<br />
That organizations might try to ‘game’ the survey by<br />
implementing specific indicators is a potential down-side of this<br />
endeavor, but who has the most to lose by doing so? The survey<br />
by ranking them one point higher, the agency by expending the<br />
effort to put one more item online or the constituent receiving one<br />
more service? If the survey indicators were indeed transparent and<br />
agreed upon, it is likely to become a win-win-win.<br />
6.2 Encourage Governments to Supply Data<br />
When the UN survey began in earnest in 2003, even countries<br />
with advanced e-government programs had a finite number of<br />
websites associated with a specific topic. But the numbers of egovernment<br />
websites have grown and their sophistication has<br />
increased too. To spend hours looking for a specific indicator<br />
437<br />
across complex e-government websites, some of which will now<br />
require authentication, is possible, but increasingly implausible.<br />
This necessitates a fundamental shift in the supply side approach<br />
away from having researchers manually look for each indicator to<br />
preferably having governments provide them and verify their<br />
existence.<br />
A platform should be established where surveyed countries could<br />
input data on what they offer constituents in order to ease the<br />
survey process and enhance rigor. If the survey questionnaire and<br />
data were public (see section 6.1) it would also strengthen<br />
transparency and accountability while offering stakeholders the<br />
opportunity to benchmark themselves – what do I offer according<br />
to the list provided? – and come up with creative new ways of<br />
measurement. It would also create a platform where changes<br />
could be reported – and verified – in near real-time, helping<br />
policy-makers understand where they are and where they need to<br />
go instantly.<br />
This should be part of a mixed approach given that not all<br />
countries will be in a position nor wish to provide all relevant<br />
data. So, survey work is likely to still be required, especially for<br />
the UN survey where one of its strengths is that all countries are<br />
covered. But participation would be in countries’ interest.<br />
6.3 Automate and Innovate<br />
While an effort to encourage governments to supply their data is<br />
necessary, it is unrealistic to expect all to do so. But because the<br />
supply-side undertaking is increasingly a growing burden to<br />
researchers, innovation is also needed. One idea is to increasingly<br />
use automation to assess e-government indicators (another is<br />
search, see below).<br />
Automated assessments have grown in sophistication and while<br />
they may not be perfect, they will at least be consistently<br />
imperfect. (See also section 5.2.3) Finding various tools to<br />
automate surveys, or customizing one for the purpose, may have a<br />
cost but it will pay dividends over time as – eventually – the<br />
numbers of e-government websites will be insurmountable to<br />
research manually.<br />
One particular area in which automation is important is whether<br />
websites are accessible by mobile devices. The increasing<br />
numbers mean they are crucial to delivering services in a channel<br />
people use. For example, one can use automated supply-side<br />
assessment to verify that the websites on which government<br />
services are found meet the most basic mobile standards.<br />
6.4 Search for it<br />
In order to make it easier for constituents to find the information,<br />
data, and services they are likely to want, many governments<br />
around the world have integrated information on central<br />
government portals. Prominent examples of this approach include<br />
usa.gov, direct.gov.uk, and australia.gov. Theoretically this would<br />
make it easier to find government information; however, in<br />
practice usage of such portals may not even have led to higher<br />
usage. In the UK, for example, 40% of individuals used the<br />
Internet in 2010 to engage the public sector. In Sweden, a country<br />
without a central government portal, the equivalent number was<br />
62%. [26]<br />
While there are always exceptions, the question is whether such<br />
portals work? More important, is the amount of money spent on
integrating them worth it? Because a lack of measurement to<br />
performance (see below), we don’t know. But what we do know is<br />
that one of the biggest trends in e-government will be the move<br />
away from specific websites to search. Indeed, already in 2010<br />
only a small minority of UK users came in through the direct.gov<br />
portal (12%) with the majority arriving at their service of choice<br />
from search (52%) or via an external link (43%). 11 A constituent<br />
will no longer go to a central government portal to look for<br />
something but rather use Google, or another search engine, to<br />
simply search for the service or information desired.<br />
The current common approach is in effect not a measure of<br />
‘supply’ as a feature may exist in theory but if it is not found on<br />
websites then it is not counted. Adding searching for a service<br />
anywhere in a country’s e-government ecosystem to the arsenal of<br />
locating items from a supply-side perspective is an obvious<br />
addition considering the often meager usage numbers of portals<br />
and the high usage numbers for search engines. An updated<br />
survey should thus also cover assessments of search relevance.<br />
6.5 Link Survey to Performance<br />
Linking e-government performance as measured by the supplyside<br />
efforts to outcome, i.e. performance, is increasingly<br />
important. To date, however, such efforts have been minimal due<br />
to the difficulty in execution at all levels.<br />
“Just as there is tremendous complexity in public performance<br />
measurement in general, so too are there substantial definitional<br />
and methodological challenges in monitoring and evaluating the<br />
efficiency and effectiveness of public service delivery through<br />
online media,” says the UN 2010 report. But desk research can<br />
supplement online supply-side efforts in linking a survey to<br />
performance, a key measure of e-government. For example, a<br />
2009 book chapter used traditional supply-side analysis of the 239<br />
largest U.S. cities correlated with U.S. Census data to show that<br />
large cities, on average, have better e-government than small ones,<br />
likely an effect of the fact that there is often a fixed cost of system<br />
implementation, which decreases cost per user. [27] Qualitative<br />
analysis can also be linked to quantitative estimates using web<br />
analytics (see section 5.2.1) which, although biased and<br />
incomplete, tend to be consistently so thereby enabling relatively<br />
good country and longitudinal comparisons.<br />
In this way, it is possible to begin to answer the most fundamental<br />
of questions: is the money being spent on e-government worth it?<br />
Which organizations are spending the appropriate amounts? Are<br />
there organizations that spend less but achieve more? This<br />
exercise will entail asking those surveyed for their e-government<br />
budgets, usage statistics, satisfactions surveys, and data on cyber<br />
security, among others (also see section 6.2). If organizations do<br />
not provide such information, then their e-government website<br />
can be evaluated to see whether they do. Or search can be used to<br />
see whether any such data are available. If all else fails, so should<br />
the organization in this area: if money is being spent on egovernment<br />
but the results are not transparent or the benefits not<br />
being measured, why do it in the first place?<br />
6.6 Measurement at All Levels<br />
The UN survey fulfills an important international role in<br />
benchmarking the supply of e-government services across<br />
11 http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/news/digital-default-proposed-<br />
government-services<br />
438<br />
countries. But there is also great demand for e-government<br />
measurement surveys at all levels. This paper has outlined recent<br />
e-government, technology and benchmarking trends, and<br />
proposed a revised measurement framework to meet the demand<br />
at all levels.<br />
All politics is local as Tip O’Neill, the former speaker of the U.S.<br />
House of Representatives, used to say. Indeed, many public sector<br />
services are offered at the local level, which means that egovernment<br />
too needs to offer them locally. However, many local<br />
services are also increasingly integrated into national level<br />
websites – again, the user should not need to know who is<br />
offering them or at what level, but rather just how to find them.<br />
For example, South Korea’s national portal includes links to both<br />
national and local government services. 12 The Canadian national<br />
portal goes one step further and provides a ‘close to your home’<br />
feature through which one can locate services by postal code, city<br />
or province/territory. 13 The Australian national portal, meanwhile,<br />
offers an advanced search feature that filters results by, among<br />
others, local government services. 14 Australia’s portal also<br />
explains how constituents can file a complaint through a number<br />
of channels, including via email, fax, post or – in the most<br />
traditional way – by hand. 15<br />
Every case will be slightly different depending on the scope,<br />
specific measurement objectives and intended level of<br />
sophistication, all equations of time, money and effort. However,<br />
the basic approach will remain the same: to use a robust supplyside<br />
approach, which is customized for cultural and local needs<br />
and takes into account emerging trends in order to support the<br />
larger endeavor of linking survey performance to government<br />
performance.<br />
7. CONCLUSION<br />
As illustrated through the UN survey, supply side analysis<br />
remains a useful way of comparing relative development in the<br />
digital era. However, to fully capture the modern complexities of<br />
e-government across various levels, a revised framework is<br />
necessary, one that is sustainable into the future by having<br />
government supply the data for verification, providing policymakers<br />
with near real-time data, while supplementing the<br />
traditional efforts with additional automation and search. In this<br />
effort, additional improvements can be made in regards to adding<br />
measures of transparency, usage, security, and performance.<br />
E-government must be achieved through sustainable development,<br />
illustrating how investment is connected to outcome and how it is<br />
reflective, and supports an organization’s broader development<br />
goals. The UN approach is a good framework to start from. When<br />
we customize it, we can support the goal of linking the survey to<br />
performance.<br />
12<br />
http://www.korea.go.kr/new_eng/main/index.do<br />
13<br />
http://www.servicecanada.gc.ca/cgi-bin/hrsearch.cgi?app=hme&ln=eng<br />
14<br />
Select “search” and then “advanced search” on the portal to try:<br />
http://australia.gov.au<br />
15<br />
http://australia.gov.au/service/privacy-complaint-to-the-officeof-the-australian-information-commissioner
8. REFERENCES<br />
[1] OECD. Future of the Internet Economy: A statistical profile.<br />
June 2011 update<br />
[2] McKinsey Global Institute. Internet matters, the net’s<br />
sweeping impact on growth, jobs, and prosperity. May 2011<br />
[3] Eurostat. Individuals regularly using the Internet: Percentage<br />
of individuals aged 16 to 74 (Code tin00091):<br />
http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/tgm/table.do?tab=table&init<br />
=1&language=en&pcode=tin00091&plugin=1<br />
[4] International Telecommunications Union website.<br />
http://www.itu.int<br />
[5] Internal Revenue Service website. http://www.irs.gov<br />
[6] United Nations. World Public Sector Report 2003: E-<br />
Government at the Crossroads. Department of Economic and<br />
Social Affairs, New York, 2003.<br />
[7] United Nations. Global E-Government Readiness Report:<br />
Towards Access for Opportunity. UNDESA, New York,<br />
2004.<br />
[8] United Nations. Global E-Government Survey: Leveraging<br />
E-government at a Time of Financial and Economic Crisis.<br />
UNDESA, New York, 2010<br />
[9] United Nations. Global E-Government Survey: E-<br />
Government for the People, UNDESA, New York, 2012<br />
[10] Government of Singapore (2010) “New Singapore e-<br />
Government Masterplan to Connect with the People.”<br />
Government of Singapore. June 14, 2010.<br />
http://www.thegovmonitor.com/world_news/asia/newsingap<br />
ore- e-government-masterplan-to-connect-with-the people-<br />
33531.HTML (accessed March 2011).<br />
[11] European Commission (2011) ” Proposal for Amending<br />
Directive 2003/98/EC on re-use of public sector information”<br />
COM(2011) 877 final, Brussels, 12.12.2011<br />
[12] Government of Australia (2011) “Guidelines for open data in<br />
Australia”, September 2011: http://www.data.gov.au.<br />
[13] Government of UK (2011) “The G-Cloud Programme”,<br />
available from: http://gcloud.civilservice.gov.uk/<br />
[14] Junger (2010), “Future eGovernment: towards the cloud of<br />
public services”, <strong>proceedings</strong> of Eastern European<br />
eGovernment Days, 21-23 April 2010, Jean-François Junger<br />
of DG INFSO, European Commission.<br />
[15] International Telecommunications Union. October 19, 2010:.<br />
www.itu.int/net/pressoffice/press_releases/2010/39.aspx#url<br />
[16] Eurostat. E-government on-line availability: Percentage of<br />
online availability of 20 basic public services (Code:<br />
tsiir120).<br />
http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/tgm/table.do?tab=table&init<br />
=1&language=en&pcode=tsiir120&plugin=1<br />
439<br />
[17] Eurostat. E-government usage by individuals by gender:<br />
Percentage of individuals aged 16 to 74 using the Internet for<br />
interaction with public authorities (Code: tsiir130).<br />
http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/tgm/table.do?tab=table&init<br />
=1&language=en&pcode=tsiir130&plugin=1<br />
[18] Do Je-hae. The Korea Times. “E-Government Web Sites<br />
Underutilized,” February, 19, 2010:<br />
http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2010/02/117<br />
_61097.HTML<br />
[19] Economist Intelligence Unit. E-readiness rankings 2009: The<br />
usage imperative.<br />
[20] European Commission, eGovernment Action Plan 2011-<br />
2015, online at: http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/<br />
activities/egovernment/action_plan_2011_2015/index_en.ht<br />
m, last retrieved 13/03/2012.<br />
[21] Obama, Barack. Memorandum for the Heads of Executive<br />
Departments and Agencies: Transparency and Open<br />
Government. 2009:<br />
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Transparencyan<br />
dOpenGovernment/<br />
[22] The Kenya Open Data Initiative website.<br />
https://opendata.go.ke<br />
[23] European Commission. Digital Agenda website.:<br />
http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/digitalagenda/index_en.htm<br />
[24] European Commission. i2010 High Level Group:<br />
Benchmarking Digital Europe 2011-2015 a conceptual<br />
framework. 2009:<br />
http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/eeurope/i2010/docs/b<br />
enchmarking/benchmarking_digital_europe_2011-2015.pdf<br />
[25] Millard, J (2008) “eGovernment measurement for policy<br />
makers”, European Journal of ePractice, No. 4 Efficiency and<br />
Effectiveness, June 2008, European Commission, DG<br />
INFSO: http://www.epractice.eu<br />
[26] Eurostat. E-government usage by individuals by gender:<br />
Percentage of individuals aged 16 to 74 using the Internet for<br />
interaction with public authorities (Code: tsiir130).<br />
http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/tgm/table.do?tab=table&init<br />
=1&language=en&pcode=tsiir130&plugin=1<br />
[27] Reece, Bryan, and Kim Andreasson. Institutional E-<br />
Government Development. Handbook of Research on<br />
Strategies for Local E-Government Adoption and<br />
Implementation: Comparative Studies. Edited by Christopher<br />
G. Reddick. IGI Global 2009, pp. 137-162<br />
[28] Nigel Shadbolt, Wendy Hall, Tim Berners-Lee (2006). "The<br />
Semantic Web Revisited". IEEE Intelligent Systems.<br />
http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/12614/1/Semantic_Web_Revist<br />
ed.pdf Retrieved April 15, 2010.
Impacts of the Public Procurement Reform in Chile on the<br />
Municipal Level<br />
Gastón Concha<br />
University of Santo Tomás<br />
Vergara 301, Piso 3<br />
Santiago, Chile<br />
562.938.4609<br />
gconcha@santotomas.cl<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
This study measures the impact that the Reform of the System of<br />
Public Procurement, driven by Chile’s central government, had in<br />
the municipalities. Traditionally, local governments present<br />
unequal development, at least in terms of the level of resources<br />
and the size of population looked after. Moreover, many studies<br />
show that municipalities have lead the ranking in the perception of<br />
corruption in Chile. Two hypotheses were proposed. The first is<br />
that the impacts and benefits, that the Information and<br />
Communication Technologies (ICTs)-driven reform have had on<br />
public procurement tend to be less than desired. The second<br />
affirms that an e-procurement system can significantly augment<br />
the level of transparency; however, an automatic reduction in the<br />
level of corruption will not be apparent. The study was based on<br />
two surveys conducted with municipality buyers and vendors.<br />
Corruption and transparency were chosen as the primary focus.<br />
Other impacts measured include the efficiency of the internal<br />
processes, cultural aspects and normative and institutional aspects.<br />
The most relevant conclusions were two - the reform of public<br />
procurement in Chile increased the level of transparency; and the<br />
greatest transparency perceived in purchasing processes has not<br />
shown a lessening in the level of corruption.<br />
Categories and Subject Descriptors<br />
H.4.0 [Information System Applications]: General; C 4.0<br />
[Performance System]: Measurement techniques<br />
General Terms<br />
Management, Masurement, Performance, Human Factors,<br />
Standardization, Legal Aspects<br />
Keywords<br />
E-Procurement; Municipalities; ICT; Impact<br />
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for<br />
personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are<br />
not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies<br />
bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for<br />
components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored.<br />
Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to<br />
post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission<br />
and/or a fee.<br />
ICEGOV '12, October 22 - 25 2012, Albany, NY, USA<br />
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1200-4/12/10...$15.00<br />
440<br />
Roberto Anrique<br />
Business Technology Group<br />
Apoquindo 6410, Of. 212<br />
Las Condes, Santiago, Chile<br />
569.9318.3918<br />
roberto@btg.cl<br />
1. INTRODUCTION<br />
Public procurement mobilizes millions of dollars annually and<br />
fosters the development of private enterprises and public<br />
organizations. It approves large budgets that are sometimes spent<br />
on initiatives of questionable value. It awards big bids on public<br />
works to companies that are regularly questioned by the public<br />
opinion. In particular, it appears that a sense of “false<br />
transparency” persists in the processes of purchases and awards<br />
and in the quality of concrete results.<br />
To the extent that the public procurement is more transparent to<br />
the community, the sensitivity and the critical mindset grows, so<br />
is the case of the municipalities.<br />
According to the portal of the System of Procurement in Chile, the<br />
total amount of the procurement generated by the municipalities<br />
in Chile during 2009 corresponded to approximately 21% of the<br />
total compromised 1 . In the year 2009 the total sum of the ordered<br />
procurement reached $6,200,000 US dollars. That corresponds to<br />
$1,630,000 in purchasing orders.<br />
In the particular case of Chile, there has been a profound change<br />
in the processes of public procurement. New institutions have<br />
been created. These include the Dirección de Compras y<br />
Contrataciones Públicas and the Tribune of Public Contracting. A<br />
unique registry of state vendors has also been created. The register<br />
is administered by a private entity (Chileproveedores).<br />
Information technologies have been introduced to the processes of<br />
procurement, electronic catalogues for products and convenient<br />
frameworks agreements have been generated, and new vendors<br />
have been incorporated and trained. At the same time there exists<br />
a very significant advance in the transparency of public<br />
procurement. However, doubts persist with respect to the true<br />
impact of the reduction of corruption and the use of privileged<br />
information in the processes of acquisition, as well as the<br />
continuation of “favorite vendors” that make it difficult to have an<br />
environment of truly free competition. In the same sense the<br />
results of various surveys about technical organizations such as<br />
the CERC, CEP and the Instituto de Libertad y Desarrollo are<br />
worrying, as they show these institutions are among the most<br />
corrupt in the country.<br />
Confusion exists in many cases with respect to the impact on<br />
small-scale vendors. There are those who indicate that<br />
opportunities are opened for the SME (small and medium-sized<br />
1 Source:Chilecompra, 2009.
enterprises); however, there are others that indicate that the danger<br />
increases for the small companies due to the threat of much bigger<br />
providers with the economies of scale in costs and distribution.<br />
There is too controversy with respect to the politics of<br />
procurement and the System of Public Procurement in terms of<br />
whether they should or should not be neutral with respect to<br />
SMEs. In Chile, it can still be affirmed that there exists a relative<br />
neutrality in this aspect, 30% of the companies that sell through<br />
ChileCompra are SME and 67% are micro-companies.<br />
The manner in which the annual budget is inefficiently and<br />
perhaps “incomprehensibly” spent is too in discussion. With the<br />
introduction of electronic systems and their obligatory use, a<br />
centralization of information of the major part of the public<br />
spending has been achieved, detecting in many cases that more<br />
than 2/3 of the annual budget is spent in the last third of the year,<br />
generating an extreme concentration of spending and man-hours<br />
inverted towards the end of the year. As well as an inefficient<br />
consequence of the processes of restricted spending through the<br />
tight times for specification, analysis and the urgency to “spend<br />
the budget” in order to avoid asking for it in the next annual<br />
budget.<br />
This study aspires to put itself in charge of these perceptions, but<br />
focused on the reality for local government, specifically<br />
municipalities with their community of influence, by means of a<br />
search for facts and concrete fundamentals that permit a<br />
recounting of an objective description of the impacts and results<br />
of the modernization efforts of procurement on a national level.<br />
2. LITERATURE REVIEW<br />
There are two studies that we believe will help illustrate the<br />
objects of the present work and they will be briefly reviewed. The<br />
first of these is a report of the Aberdeen Group [1] that covers the<br />
best practices of e-procurement and the second is “The Evaluation<br />
of the Levels of Digitalization of Municipalities” developed by<br />
CETUC [5].<br />
Aberdeen Group highlights the following good and best practices:<br />
To elevate the acquisitions from traditional tactical transactional<br />
management, to a more strategic level. This implies that important<br />
changes need to be made to the politics inside of the institution,<br />
for example, the improvement of the personal profile that carries<br />
out acquisitions.<br />
Electronic catalogues of products should be managed by the<br />
vendors rather than internally.<br />
Reinforcement of the use of the key performance indicators (KPI)<br />
to measure costs, processes and to definitively know the greater or<br />
lesser success of the electronic procurement system. This should<br />
be accompanied by a system of selected incentives aligned with<br />
the objectives of business and the functions of acquisitions.<br />
In review of the three best practices listed above, the importance<br />
that the emergence of ICTs in the world of acquisitions and public<br />
institutions has had is confirmed. Traditionally, this was an<br />
activity of lesser importance; however, an awareness of the<br />
strategic relevance of obtaining the best value for money has<br />
developed, especially if it is public money. Consequently, society<br />
today is demanding a greater transparency and accountability;<br />
from there the impacts of the development of adequate measures<br />
can be seen. Without a doubt, the ICTs have had a significant<br />
contribution in the use of portals of procurement each time is the<br />
441<br />
portal more interactive and better integrated with the budget<br />
system. The portals have facilitated the processes of procurement<br />
and have obtained important savings in the transaction costs and<br />
in the prices of the goods and services provided. The saving has<br />
produced the effect of amplifying the traditional base of providers,<br />
contributing too to a better equality in the relationship with them.<br />
Also, it is interesting to reinforce as well that nowadays the<br />
modern vision of acquisitions is directed to buying solutions and<br />
services more than on a focus towards acquiring products itself or<br />
towards internal developments. For this reason the important<br />
change is explained in the externalization of services traditionally<br />
realized by an internal hand, for example, the internal<br />
developments of software, nutrition services, security etc.<br />
Aberdeen Group shows the benefits of the use of e-procurement in<br />
public and private institutions.<br />
Table 1. The benefit of e-procurement<br />
Area Before After<br />
Percentage of extracontractual<br />
procurement<br />
Duration of the cycle of<br />
purchasing<br />
Cost of the operation of<br />
purchasing<br />
Reduction in the price of<br />
Purchasing<br />
Percentage of procurement<br />
beneath the management of<br />
the Group of Purchasing<br />
38% 14,2<br />
20,4 days 3,8 days<br />
US$56 US$23<br />
- 7,3%<br />
56% 69%<br />
In Table 1, the significant impacts that have been achieved in the<br />
reduction of the cycle of purchasing can be seen. The same goes<br />
for the whole operation of the procurement, and in reducing the<br />
costs of the transaction. Additionally, it emphasizes the indicator<br />
of the percentage of spending that is under the control of the unity<br />
of acquisitions. This increase implies a better level of negotiation,<br />
better prices and a better investigation of what the market has to<br />
offer.<br />
The second study, CETUC [5], points specifically to the focus of<br />
our work: the municipalities of Chile. In this regard, the most<br />
relevant discoveries to the present study about the municipalities<br />
are highlighted below:<br />
Only one third of the municipalities have an area of information<br />
technology. These areas have as their principal function the<br />
maintenance of the applications and computers that operate in the<br />
municipality.<br />
A high participation in the instances of association concerning the<br />
ICTs is observed, like the Association of Municipalities, it<br />
indicates a high degree of interest in promoting the use of ICT by<br />
the majority of the municipalities 2 .<br />
The study shows that there are two factors that permit the<br />
segmentation of municipalities: the communal population and the<br />
level of poverty. Also, it is shown that the level of development of<br />
the ICTs is significantly different in correlation with these two<br />
factors.<br />
2 http://www.clubdelaexcelencia.cl
Not all the municipalities have the same technological needs.<br />
Recognizing this fact, this study affirms that it is key, as much in<br />
the moment of defining public politics as in the definition of the<br />
directions, to better the level of automation in each municipality<br />
in particular.<br />
One of the principal motivators of the incorporation of technology<br />
has been to better the internal municipal management. The study<br />
recognizes that most of the proposals for technological improving<br />
have been oriented towards providing satisfactory service to the<br />
citizens, whom are the principal beneficiaries of municipal work.<br />
The next section the study will analyze a few bibliographic<br />
references that are related to the impacts that a system of<br />
electronic procurement will produce in both public and private<br />
institutions. This information will help us to better understand the<br />
results in the application of the survey, improve its analysis,<br />
identify bias, make comparisons etc.<br />
2.1 Critical Success Factors<br />
In this section, we examine the literature to help identify the<br />
critical elements or factors that help to explain the process of<br />
adoption of public procurement reforms in a way that has a<br />
positive impact in fulfilling the stated objectives. These objectives<br />
can be extremely varied, for example: from widespread use to<br />
improved efficiency in its use, better access to information,<br />
increasing opportunities for the SMEs, improving transparency<br />
and decreasing corruption.<br />
One interesting impact for all of the governments is that of the<br />
SMEs, that is, to know what the factors are that help to the<br />
strengthen them. The goal is to make them more competitive by<br />
increasing the volume of the business to which they have access,<br />
though eventual positive externalities for example, access to<br />
training of their personnel, a greater use of the ICTs, etc.<br />
A few critical factors that are seen in the literature are delineated<br />
in the following:<br />
To make flexible the size of the orders dividing them along the<br />
time, so that they can adequate themselves to the generally limited<br />
production capacity of SMEs. The study of Arozamena and F.<br />
Weinschelbaum deepens this point [3]. Always and when the<br />
bigger division does not make prejudice the levels of transparency<br />
nor the eventual economies of scale that can occur. Therefore, the<br />
normative should proceed with prudence in these aspects.<br />
To facilitate the association between companies to add offering<br />
and to confront with better success the bidding of high volume.<br />
To establish financial measures that are less burdensome to<br />
facilitate participation, for example, the cost of the documentation<br />
for bids (access should be free in all senses), guarantees that are<br />
too high, to avoid delay in payments to seem as though it is an<br />
extended practice in the public sector.<br />
It is interesting to highlight the participation of SMEs in the<br />
Public Market of ChileCompra [23], given that its participation in<br />
business that reaches 38% of what is positively compare with 18%<br />
on the national level. The mechanisms that support the SMEs<br />
(included as well the named micro-businesses) that ChileCompra<br />
possesses are the following:<br />
Entrepreneurship Centers: They correspond to an infrastructure so<br />
that the users have free access to computers connected to the<br />
442<br />
Internet, to meeting rooms with clients or providers, to technical<br />
consultancy and training in order to acquire knowledge in relevant<br />
materials to the access of this market. The Management of<br />
ChileCompra counts 30 Entrepreneurship Centers in the country<br />
as a whole.<br />
Confirming or Advanced of the Payments to the Vendors: Permits<br />
the providers of the State to be paid in cash their invoices;<br />
advancing its payments through agreements with distinct financial<br />
institutions (the project recently finds itself in its first phase of<br />
implementation, because of which there are, as yet, no significant<br />
results).<br />
Ordering or credit against the order of purchase: ChileCompra,<br />
through its agreements with financial institutions, offers financing<br />
to cover resource necessities for the orders of purchases awarded<br />
through the system of the Public Market Portal to micro and small<br />
businesses providers of the State.<br />
Training: ChileCompra possesses a permanent and free offer of<br />
training and technical assistance services in these sectors.<br />
In agreement with the study on the implementation of eprocurement<br />
in Sweden [6], one critical element that is<br />
emphasized is not to lose focus on the people that are involved in<br />
the implementation of e-procurement and how they are affected.<br />
In this sense, the study concludes the importance of assigning<br />
resources for the education of people and not solely focusing on<br />
the possible savings that could result from the process of<br />
implementation.<br />
Another critical factor that the Swedish study highlights is that the<br />
key for an increase in the adoption of the activities of eprocurement<br />
through the public institutions are the regulations<br />
emanated by the central organization responsible for the<br />
acquisitions (Swedish National Financial Management Authority)<br />
that obligates institutions to use the system of acquisitions (for<br />
example the use of electronic invoices starting July 1, 2008).<br />
In general, this study shows that the users perceive benefits, such<br />
as savings in time, savings in cost, increase in the fulfillment of<br />
contracts with providers and a better control of spending due to<br />
the use of the system. Other notable benefits have to do with<br />
better access to information and in arranging a process of<br />
procurement more simplified and standardized. Additionally, the<br />
study identified benefits in coordination with deliveries. In<br />
summary, the use of electronic means in procurement is perceived<br />
as an increase in the efficiency process.<br />
2.2 Pending Challenges<br />
In the study carried out in Sweden for the public sector it shown<br />
that in general, in spite of the greater intensity in the use of the<br />
system and the greater cost realized, the system is still not used to<br />
its full potential.<br />
In the same study it is confirmed that new challenges are arising<br />
in relation with the introduction to e-procurement, as to the<br />
incorporation of new criteria for selection to interact with the<br />
proposals and procurement orders received.<br />
In agreement with Horwath’s study [11], where a few<br />
municipalities are present 3 , it is shown that due to the Information<br />
3 Municipalities of Santiago, Puerto Montt, Valparaíso y<br />
Talcahuano.
of the System of Public Acquisitions of the Direction of Public<br />
Procurement and Contracting and the administrative and financial<br />
systems accountable to the institutions that do not find themselves<br />
integrated, the institutions should digitize the information in two<br />
systems that function in parallel with each other.<br />
In agreement with the same study, it is made evident that there do<br />
not exist standardized models of contracts, nor are there<br />
standardized models of procurement documents.<br />
Another challenge that appears to be mentioned in the literature is<br />
the collaboration between colleagues in different agencies (IBM<br />
[12]). At the same time, to foster and encourage this cooperation,<br />
respecting the autonomy of the individual organisms seems to be a<br />
key challenge in this study.<br />
Additionally, we present a summary of the challenges that the<br />
World Bank [15] presents for electronic government procurement<br />
(e-GP).<br />
The Implementation of Reforms. Elements such as leadership,<br />
political agreements, global vision versus a system view,<br />
strategies based on phases versus achieving quick impacts (Quick<br />
Win), the obligatory use of the e-GP systems, the use of change<br />
management.<br />
To Increase the Benefits. The impacts are still low, because of this<br />
greater efforts and an establishment of better metrics are required.<br />
Likewise, it is necessary to adequately manage expectations;<br />
greater transparency translates into lesser rates of corruption, to<br />
reduce the barriers to increase the efficiency of the processes and<br />
to manage all the information in electronic formats.<br />
Integration of e-GP with other systems. There is a lack of<br />
integration throughout the whole cycle of procurement that<br />
includes other systems as well, such as: the budget and finances,<br />
the management of inventories, system of intelligence and<br />
business etc.<br />
Globalization of Public Procurement. At this point, the<br />
mechanisms of interoperability are very important in connection<br />
with other agencies within the country as well as foreign agencies,<br />
because of which, the use of international standards is a critical<br />
element.<br />
2.3 Cultural Factors<br />
One of the discoveries that this field offers us is the study of the<br />
implementation of e-procurement in Sweden [6], referring to the<br />
fact that it tends to minimize and underestimate the resistance to<br />
change of the employees. Another interesting aspect is that the<br />
technology is seen as a panacea that will resolve a large part of the<br />
problems; this is obviously a conceptual error, but in accordance<br />
with our experience, it is a vision that is still accepted by many<br />
sectors of the public world. Technology could be a general<br />
facilitator that, adequately managed, could produce an impact<br />
with respect to the work Jane Fountain and others have carried out<br />
[7]. The study realized by IBM [12] for the local government in<br />
Dublin signals very clearly that the experience indicates the<br />
initiatives to modernize the acquisitions and should be based on<br />
the processes, in an appropriate organizational structure and on a<br />
model of acquisitions before being incorporating a technology.<br />
2.4 Transparency and Corruption<br />
The international banks of development such as the World Bank,<br />
the Bank of Inter-American Development, The Asian Bank of<br />
443<br />
Development and institutions such as the OAS and the OCDE<br />
have been conducive to electronic procurement system in their<br />
countries, for a greater transparency of information and eventually<br />
less corruption, among other reasons. With this they will take the<br />
necessary precautions to better the transfers of resources in the<br />
countries that receive loans from them.<br />
With the goal of contrasting our hypothesis that the reform on<br />
procurement has not had a significant effect on the lessening of<br />
corruption of the municipalities, we have drawn upon a study<br />
conducted by the Instituto Libertad y Desarrollo. It is the annual<br />
survey of corruption [22] that this institution has been doing for<br />
years, where executives of the enterprises who interact with public<br />
services are consulted. In this study a scale from 0 to 10 measures<br />
the perception of corruption, where 10 indicated a maximum level<br />
of corruption and 0 the minimum. The evolution of the results<br />
from the year 2002 to 2008 is shown in Figure 1.<br />
Figure 1. The evolution of the perceived level of corruption in<br />
Chile.<br />
Observing Figure 1, a clear tendency of diminishing does not<br />
appear starting from the year 2005, the year that marks the start of<br />
the use of ChileCompra in the municipalities.<br />
In this same study perception of corruption by institutions, in<br />
municipalities, the rate of perception of corruption rises from 5.7<br />
to 6.0 between the years 2007 and 2008.<br />
With respect to the knowledge of the cases, the municipalities’<br />
increase from 20.6% to 26.6% between the years 2007 and 2008.<br />
Finally, the institutions that are most mentioned as “winning a<br />
bidding” by illegal measures the municipalities appear in second<br />
place in the ranking, but with a clear tendency to rise with the year<br />
2006 obtaining 13%; the year 2007 a 15% and 2008 a 21%<br />
From the previous analysis, it can be concluded that, in Chile at<br />
least, there has effectively been no impact to the levels of<br />
corruption because of the practices of better transparency in the<br />
acquisitions as a consequence of the reforms on procurement. The<br />
ease with which they should be able to realize the audits and a<br />
supposed better citizen control apparently has had no effect, at<br />
least in relation to the perception of corruption that this survey has<br />
determined.
3. HYPHOTESIS AND RELEVANT<br />
QUESTIONS<br />
We venture two hypotheses that we would like to validate in this<br />
study:<br />
The first one is that, in general, of impacts and benefits that the<br />
processes of reform to public procurement tend to have, those<br />
involving an intensive use of the ICTs, are less than that expected.<br />
At least, the expected results are not seen in the pre-defined time<br />
span, although there are effects that could potentially be seen in<br />
the future.<br />
The second one is that the effects of obtaining a greater<br />
transparency in procurement as a consequence of arranging a<br />
system of procurement based on the internet will not significantly<br />
change the perception of the level of corruption in the<br />
organization unless a profound cultural change is simultaneously<br />
exercised.<br />
The questions this investigation endeavors to respond to are:<br />
What are the critical elements that determine the success of a<br />
change on the practices of procurement in an organization as<br />
complicated as a municipality? What are the pending challenges<br />
on the municipal level with an end goal of taking advantage of the<br />
all the benefits that the reform to the System of Procurement<br />
would ultimately have? What are the factors of the culture of the<br />
organization that favor or reduce the impacts of a reform on<br />
public procurement accompanied by the introduction of<br />
information technologies? In what way and to what degree would<br />
greater transparency and citizen control involving a reform on<br />
public procurement would have on dissuading the practice of<br />
corruption in the municipalities?.<br />
4. METHODOLOGY AND RESEARCH<br />
PLANNING<br />
The present work of investigation is based fundamentally on the<br />
design and application of two surveys, one of the usual buyers of<br />
the municipality and the other towards the providers that<br />
habitually do business with them. To support the elaboration these<br />
two surveys, many diverse resources were consulted: relevant<br />
actors of the reform of procurement such as the General<br />
Comptroller of the Republic, the Director of Procurement and<br />
Contracting, institutions of investigation such as the Instituto<br />
Libertad y Desarrollo among others. Additionally, the survey was<br />
tested with a group of users and with ChileCompra, who<br />
moreover, supported the distribution of the survey and is a shown<br />
representative sample of the users. In complementary form, a<br />
bibliographical analysis was realized to ask for background and to<br />
support the design of the study and its posterior conclusions and<br />
analysis.<br />
5. THE MUNICIPALITIES IN CHILE<br />
As is known, the Municipalities are the public entity most close to<br />
the people and that have the greatest relevance to their daily life.<br />
For this reason, their management has a high impact and visibility<br />
to the citizen.<br />
5.1 Participation in Spending<br />
Nowadays there exist 345 municipalities that represent 21% of the<br />
total spending of the public sector, which represent the third type<br />
of public organization with the most spending, exceeding the $1<br />
444<br />
billion dollars annually. The spending of the municipalities<br />
represent 30% of purchasing orders (PO) from the public sector,<br />
with more than 55,000 PO annually, making this the type of<br />
public organization that realizes the most spending transactions 4 .<br />
5.2 Segmentation<br />
The municipalities have been segmented into three groups<br />
according to the amount of spending realized. Segment A consists<br />
of 11 municipalities with the most spending, representing 3% of<br />
municipalities, but 19% of the spending. Segment B consists of<br />
42 municipalities that represent 12% of municipalities and 29% of<br />
spending. Finally, Segment C consists of the 292 municipalities<br />
that represent in quantity 85% and 52% in the amount spending. 5<br />
Table 2. Segmentation of municipalities by amount of<br />
spending (2009)<br />
Segment<br />
Number of<br />
Municipalities<br />
Total Spending<br />
(Thousands USD)<br />
Average<br />
Spending<br />
(Thousands<br />
US$)<br />
A 11 3% 204.108 19% 18.555<br />
B 42 12% 318.480 29% 7.583<br />
C 292 85% 570.530 52% 1.927<br />
Total 345 100% 1.093.119 100% 28.066<br />
5.3 Complaints against Agencies<br />
The municipalities are the public organization with the greatest<br />
number of complaints. An analysis of the complaints presented<br />
through the platform of ChileCompra against the public<br />
organizations, indicates that complaints are associated with late<br />
payments (more than 30 days) and with irregularities in the<br />
processes of procurement. In case of municipalities, 71% of<br />
complaints are for late payments and 29% for denouncements of<br />
irregularities in the processes of procurements.<br />
Additionally, the municipalities are the ones with the biggest<br />
quantity of complaints that are still pending responses (66% of<br />
total pending complaints, see Figure 2).<br />
4 http://analiza.mercadopublico.cl<br />
5 Source: Business Intelligent Platform of Chilecompra, 2010.
Figure 2. Number of pending complaints by sector.<br />
6. SURVEYS OF THE MUNICIPALITIES<br />
Within the principal elements of the present investigation, a<br />
survey was of all buyers of the municipalities was carried out, as<br />
well as a survey of the all active vendors who had sold to the<br />
municipalities.<br />
6.1 Characterization of the Surveys<br />
In both surveys, an electronic data base supplied by ChileCompra<br />
was utilized. In the case of the buyers, the sample size was<br />
defined with the total of buyers from all municipalities (4.037<br />
buyers). In the case of vendors, the sample was selected from<br />
those who have been an active participant in business negotiations<br />
with the municipalities in the last two years (3.080 vendors).<br />
In Table 3 the quantity of active providers with municipalities<br />
between January and May of 2010 is presented, segmented by size<br />
of enterprise<br />
Table 3. Quantity of Providers of Municipalities by Size<br />
Segmentation by Annual<br />
Sales (UF)*<br />
Companies<br />
Trading with<br />
Municipalities**<br />
Participation<br />
(%)<br />
Large Over a 100,000 1.145 4.5%<br />
Medium 25,001 to 100,000 1.605 6.4%<br />
Small 2,400 to 25,000 5.817 23.7%<br />
Micro 0.1 to 2,399 16.538 65.8%<br />
Total general 25.105 100%<br />
Note: 1 UF is equivalent to 39.42 USD in June 30, 2010<br />
6.2 Validation of the Survey of the Buyers<br />
As part of the methodology, the survey of the buyers was<br />
validated by a group of users before its launch. The objective was<br />
to obtain feedback that would permit validation of the instrument<br />
in terms of the scope and coverage, as well as validate interest in<br />
responding.<br />
Once the survey was constructed, it was validated in three forms:<br />
It was turned by the person responsible of the spending of an<br />
445<br />
important municipality in Santiago; he was asked to respond and<br />
make some observations to improve the survey. A test of the<br />
survey was realized in electronic form to a group of buyers; the<br />
survey was turned into the Department of Study of ChileCompra<br />
for its commentaries and observations.<br />
6.3 Results of the Surveys<br />
6.3.1 Survey of Buyers<br />
147 responses were received from a total of 4037 sent (3.6%) that<br />
correspond to 112 municipalities within the whole country of 346<br />
(32.4%).<br />
To segment the municipalities by level of poverty 6 of the<br />
associated population, the below presents the distribution in Table<br />
4.<br />
Table 4. Segmentation of the responses by level of poverty of<br />
the commune<br />
Segmentation of sample Distribution Total<br />
by level of poverty<br />
of<br />
the responses<br />
Distribution<br />
Group of least poor (9,5% y 21,2% poor)<br />
31,3% 24%<br />
The comparison with the total of municipalities is presented in<br />
Table 4. Additionally, the sample is segmented by the size of the<br />
municipality. For this the volume of annual money spent was used<br />
as an indicator. Its comparison with the total distribution of<br />
municipalities is shown in Table 5<br />
Table 5. The Segmentation of the responses by volume of<br />
spending by municipality<br />
Segmentation by<br />
Volume of Spending<br />
Distribution<br />
of<br />
Responses<br />
Universal<br />
Distribution<br />
Small (US$2.873.652) 47% 52%<br />
In the following the most relevant results of the survey of the<br />
buyers is presented:<br />
67% of the surveys indicate more delays in the processing of<br />
awards using Chilecompra platform. In 2009, the municipalities<br />
received an average of 5.5 offerings for bidding. This response<br />
varies depending on the level of resources of the municipality.<br />
The responses of the more well off municipalities in this point<br />
decreased some 53.3% in contrast with the poorer municipalities<br />
where the percentage rose some 78.6%.<br />
6 Casen Clasification: Is a national survey periodically carry out<br />
by the Secretary of Planning of Chile to evaluate the socioeconomic<br />
state of the country and its impact to the social<br />
programs (http://www.mideplan.cl/casen)
58% of the buyers believe that the vendors are satisfied with the<br />
use of ChileCompra, while 20% perceive that they are not.<br />
79% of buyers say that they feel satisfied (or very satisfied) with<br />
ChileCompra.<br />
64% show satisfaction with ChileCompra Express (the use of<br />
Electronic catalogues of framework agreements); however, 18%<br />
do not use it. It seems interesting to emphasize that this response<br />
rose 31% in the case of municipalities with a less poor population.<br />
The benefit most mentioned by the use of ChileCompra Express<br />
(67%) is the reduction in time dedicated to purchase. The second<br />
benefit most mentioned (12%) is the reduction in the times of<br />
delivery by the vendors. However, the benefit of the reduction of<br />
prices only appears in third place with 11%. This percentage<br />
reduces to 5% in the less poor municipalities.<br />
47% say they do not use the files for the preparation of the Annual<br />
Spending Plan. In the case of the poorest municipalities, that<br />
percentage rises to 54%.<br />
The biggest difficulty mentioned in the use of ChileCompra is the<br />
failings in the system (70%). In second place, the change in<br />
platform is mentioned (37%). It is fitting to mention that a<br />
significant percentage (37%) identify the lack of access to the<br />
Internet as a significant problem. It is noted, too, that the failings<br />
in the system are perceived in a distinct form depending on the<br />
size of the municipality. In large municipalities this problem is<br />
reduced to 61% while in middle-sized municipalities it reaches<br />
83%<br />
With respect to the impact that the Law of Public Procurement has<br />
had on the process of purchasing, the following is highlighted: an<br />
increase in transparency (80%) and more precise rules for<br />
developing of awards and procurement documents (40%).<br />
20% of those surveyed declare that they have contracts in force<br />
that are governed by the old Law of Procurement.<br />
75% of those surveyed affirm that the use of ChileCompra has<br />
signified an increase in the use of the ICTs. In the case of the<br />
municipalities with the most resources at their disposal, only 3.4%<br />
mention that there has been no increase in the use of the ICTs.<br />
This percentage has risen to 15% for the smaller municipalities.<br />
63% declare that there has been no increase in the training<br />
programs as a consequence of the use of ChileCompra.<br />
31% declare that there has been an increase in the number of<br />
people who work in the area of spending as a consequence of the<br />
use of ChileCompra.<br />
67% indicate that they obtain savings by the lowering of prices. It<br />
is useful to highlight that 15% of those surveyed affirm that the<br />
savings surpass 6%. However, 33% declare that they have not<br />
obtained any savings.<br />
The biggest positive impact derived from the use of ChileCompra<br />
has been the increase in transparency (92%), as shown in Table 6<br />
Table 6. Processes positively impacted by the use of<br />
ChileCompra<br />
Impacted Processes<br />
% Importance<br />
Better transparency 92%<br />
Auditing and control 28%<br />
446<br />
Application of requests or final user<br />
requirements<br />
27%<br />
Reception of products 23%<br />
Budget process 17%<br />
Generation of reports 16%<br />
Management of plan of spending 16%<br />
Quality control 13%<br />
Administration of warehouse 11%<br />
50% declare they are satisfied with the system of codification of<br />
items and products and while 50% are not satisfied<br />
38% of those surveyed declare that the reform of public<br />
procurement, has contributed to an increase in the level of<br />
collaboration with other municipalities.<br />
The group of those surveyed confirms an increase in the level of<br />
collaboration with other municipalities, thanks to ChileCompra. It<br />
is highlighted that 73% of them have been able to share<br />
knowledge and 58% to share information with the vendors.<br />
6.3.2 Survey to the Vendors<br />
312 responses were received from a total of 3,980 providing<br />
companies (7.8%). This survey was given to those vendors who<br />
have had an active participation in business negotiations with the<br />
municipalities; this being that they have at least awarded some<br />
sort of bidding in the last 2 years.<br />
The distribution of the answers by the size of the vendors and the<br />
comparison with the universal distribution is shown in Table 7.<br />
Table 7. Distribution of responses by size of vendor<br />
Size of company<br />
in conjunction with annual<br />
sales of 2009<br />
% of<br />
distribution<br />
of responses<br />
Universal<br />
responses<br />
In conjunction<br />
with SII (%)<br />
Micro (less than 2.400 UF) 41,25 42,8<br />
Small (between 2.400 UF<br />
and 25.000 UF)<br />
34,32 37,7<br />
Medium (between 25.001<br />
UF and 100.000 UF)<br />
17,82 9,9<br />
Big (Greater than 100.000<br />
UF)<br />
6,60 9,6<br />
In the following, the most relevant results of the survey of sellers<br />
are presented:<br />
60% of those surveyed declare that there has been an increase in<br />
the use of ICTs as a consequence of the use of ChileCompra.<br />
72% declare that there has not been a significant change in the<br />
increase of training as a consequence of the use of ChileCompra.<br />
14.3% declare that sales have increased thanks to the framework<br />
agreements.<br />
50% indicate to be satisfied with the classification system of items<br />
and products.<br />
Within the positive impacts indicated by the providers, the<br />
management of the sales plan appears as the most mentioned.
49% of the providers indicate that the new Law of Public<br />
Procurements has facilitated their work in sales in the public<br />
sector. However, 18% of respondents indicate they are not<br />
familiar with said law. In the big companies, the percentage of<br />
respondents who are not familiar with the law is 18% and in<br />
medium-sized companies it is 31%.<br />
The greatest transparency and increase in the level of sales to the<br />
state appear as the two impacts most mentioned as a consequence<br />
of the reforms to the system of public procurement (please see<br />
Table 8).<br />
Table 8. Impacts of the improvements to the system of public<br />
spending<br />
Impacts of the improvements to<br />
the System of Public Spending<br />
% Mentioned<br />
Greater transparency 45%<br />
Greater sales and public organizations in general 45%<br />
Greater sales to municipalities 36%<br />
Better information 34%<br />
Agility in the process 30%<br />
Increase in equality in the process of spending 18%<br />
Reduction in costs 12%<br />
In response to the question, “Do you consider ChileCompra an<br />
effective tool to control possible irregularities in biddings<br />
originated in the municipalities?” 58% of those surveyed indicated<br />
that ChileCompra is not an effective tool.<br />
51% of those surveyed indicated that there does not exist<br />
sufficient channel to realize denunciations and/or complaints of<br />
regulators in the process of procurement of the state. However,<br />
31% declare that they do not know if such channels even exist.<br />
49% of those surveyed indicate that they have witnessed<br />
irregularities in the case of the biddings originating in the<br />
municipalities (with participation in the last 2 years).<br />
Of those who have witnessed irregularities in the municipalities,<br />
only 33% have denounced them.<br />
Of those who have denounced said irregularities, 97% carried this<br />
out through the mechanism of complaints of ChileCompra and<br />
16% through the Tribunal of Public Procurement (they are<br />
complementary mechanisms).<br />
Table 9 shows the reasons that are mentioned with respect to the<br />
decision not to denounce for irregularities in the processes of<br />
procurement of the municipalities.<br />
Table 9. Reasons for not denouncing irregularities<br />
Reason for not denouncing<br />
irregularities<br />
% Mentioned<br />
Denouncements have no effect 49%<br />
Scared of reprisal 45%<br />
Procedure is too tedious 38%<br />
“I don’t know how to make a denouncement” 25%<br />
Lack of proof 21%<br />
447<br />
7. CONCLUSIONS AND<br />
RECOMMENDATIONS<br />
In the following the principal conclusions of the study in relation<br />
with our hypotheses and the questions of the investigation are<br />
presented:<br />
It is observed that, in general, the objectives of the Reform to<br />
Public Procurement have been fulfilled. In particular, with<br />
rference to the increase in the levels of transparency and agility of<br />
the processes of procurement, along with contributing to saving<br />
and the efficiency of public expenses. The statements above are<br />
evidenced by the following results:<br />
An increase in transparency (80%) and more precise rules for<br />
developing bid documents and awarding (40%).<br />
67% of the surveyed buyers declare that the principal benefit of<br />
the use of feedback agreements (ChileCompra Express) has been<br />
the reduction in the time dedicated to spending.<br />
67% of the buyers indicate that they obtain savings by the<br />
lowering of prices, and 15% affirm that the savings surpass 6%. In<br />
this same way, is it interesting to emphasize that 75% of those<br />
surveyed affirm that the use of ChileCompra has signified an<br />
increased use of the ICTs.<br />
With respect to the impact in the market on the companies that<br />
sell to the municipalities it is highlighted that 60% of those<br />
surveyed declare having increased the use of the ICTs as a<br />
consequence of the use of ChileCompra.<br />
There appears to be no correlation between the increase in<br />
transparency and the significant reduction of the levels of<br />
corruption. The annual surveys realized by the Instituto Libertad y<br />
Desarrollo shows that the perception of corruption has not<br />
lessened in the last years, in spite of the results of the survey of<br />
the providers, where half declare that they have witnessed<br />
irregularities in biddings with municipalities.<br />
We conclude that, the critical elements that determine the success<br />
of a change in the practices of procurements in the municipalities<br />
are as follow:<br />
The reform should invoke a systemic model where all the actors<br />
involved are coordinated (technological, normative, cultural, and<br />
institutional).<br />
There should exist a wide, consistent, clear, and sufficiently<br />
specific legal framework, that gives incentive to the use of<br />
electronic commerce, such as the mechanism of purchasing. This<br />
framework should incorporate several institutions (Procurement<br />
Management Agency, Tribunal of Procurement, and Registry of<br />
Providers) and especially a governing organization that exercises<br />
a role of leadership and regulation.<br />
Mandatory use of the electronic systems by law.<br />
Continuing training in the use of the ICTs as a central driving<br />
force of the processes of change of the electronic procurement<br />
(processes, people, technology and implementation).<br />
Provision of a basic infrastructure of access to the Internet for the<br />
providing enterprises and public services.<br />
A plan of incorporation of buyers and vendors to use the system.
A strategy of evolution of the market of electronic spending from<br />
a simple transactional model to an integrated model to other<br />
systems with functionalities and services with additional value.<br />
In the following, the pending challenges on the municipal level<br />
are presented with a final goal to take advantage of all the benefits<br />
that a reform on the system of spending would have:<br />
To fulfill the promised payments with the vendors. This was a<br />
recurring problem in our survey and in the registered complaints<br />
in ChileCompra.<br />
To increase the uptime in the public marketplace platform, which<br />
are mentioned in a recurring manner in both surveys.<br />
To reduce the cycle time of the procurement process through<br />
specific features in the electronic platform of Chilecompra. It is<br />
observed that the offers through ChileCompra have doubled from<br />
3 to 6 (on average) by the process of procurement. This has<br />
produced an increase in the time of award, that in the survey was<br />
reflected in that 67% of those surveyed declared longer delay than<br />
before and in the cause of the poorest municipalities the<br />
perception of increased delay reached almost 80%. This, as a<br />
consequence, produces that this process does not form part of the<br />
current features of ChileCompra; therefore, it should be done with<br />
external systems. Naturally, the poor municipalities find<br />
themselves with fewer resources of support with respect to how<br />
this result would be explained. Consequently, the providers accuse<br />
with difficulty the non-fulfillment of the awarding period by the<br />
part of the municipalities.<br />
To carry out the publication on the Annual Plan of Spending, just<br />
as it is established in the Procurement Law (Nr. 19.886, article<br />
12), given that, according to the results that the survey obtained,<br />
only slightly more than half the municipalities realize. We believe<br />
that one possible cause that explains the situation is due to the<br />
system of the administration of the budget, which should include a<br />
plan of spending that, currently, is not integrated with<br />
ChileCompra.<br />
To increase the levels of training in the use of the ICTs, in<br />
particular in the poorest municipalities.<br />
To reinforce the diffusion and the use of the channels of<br />
complaints of irregularities in the community of the providers. It<br />
is appreciated that a significant percentage of providers (31%) are<br />
not familiar with the existing channels to realize denouncements<br />
of irregularities in the processes of procurement. However,<br />
ChileCompra has formal mechanisms of complaint and moreover<br />
there is the Tribunal of Public Procurement. The communication<br />
should consider the principle identifying motives for not<br />
denouncing irregularities among which could be the sense that the<br />
denouncement will have no effect, and the fear of reprisal.<br />
In the following, the factors of the organizational cultures are<br />
presented that favor or reduce the impacts in public procurement<br />
accompanied by the introduction of ICTs would have:<br />
One positive aspect that is the level of collaboration between<br />
municipalities (to share knowledge, information of providers and<br />
good practices) declared by the buyers (38%). We believe that this<br />
has produced as a consequence of activities of support and<br />
training coordination principally by ChileCompra, The<br />
Association of Municipalities and SUBDERE (diplomats,<br />
trainings, Programs of the Bettering of Management, among<br />
448<br />
other), of which have introduced a generating in the instances of<br />
collaboration.<br />
It is observed that, as both with buyers and vendors, there does not<br />
exist a correlation between the use of ChileCompra and the<br />
increase in the levels of training in ICTs.<br />
The most relevant conclusion of this study has been to<br />
demonstrate that the Process of the Reform of Public Procurement<br />
in Chile, in particular in the municipalities, has brought as<br />
consequence an increase in the level of transparency in the<br />
processes. However, it cannot be concluded that there has been a<br />
significant lessening in the level of apparent corruption. The<br />
previous leads to say that to produce an impact in the reduction of<br />
corruption; it is not enough to solely better the processes and the<br />
technologies of information. What is additionally requires are<br />
initiatives that point explicitly to modify the cultural standard<br />
associated with the involved actors.<br />
Another important impact generated by the use of the Public<br />
Market is the increase in the utilization of the ICT by the<br />
municipalities and their providers. This fact, due to its<br />
massiveness and multiplying effect, should too have an impact on<br />
a national level, given the closeness of the municipalities and its<br />
citizens.<br />
As the next steps of this study, we recommend the development of<br />
similar projects in different counties of the region too including<br />
other sectors that have been affected by the process of the reform<br />
of Spending (at least in Chile): State Universities, Public<br />
Hospitals and the Armed Forces<br />
8. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS<br />
This work was funded by IDRC 7 (International Development<br />
Research Center) with collaboration of National University of San<br />
Martín (Argentina) who authorized the preparation of this paper.<br />
This work is part of the ICT4GP (Information Communication<br />
Technology for Government Procurement) program.<br />
We would like to thank all those who collaborated to make this<br />
study possible. We would especially like to gives thanks to the<br />
support of ChileCompra, which provided key information and<br />
assisted in the distribution of the survey. In particular, we would<br />
like to emphasize the support and work of Guillermo Burr of the<br />
Department of Studies of ChileCompra for his assistance in the<br />
entire process related to the survey of buyers and vendors.<br />
9. REFERENCES<br />
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December 2004.<br />
[2] Albornoz, M.B.B y M Rivero, Experiencias Andinas de<br />
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[3] Arozamena L. and F. Weinschelbaum, Compras Públicas:<br />
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de 2010.<br />
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[5] CETUC, Evaluación de los Niveles de Digitalización de los<br />
Municipios, July, 2008.<br />
[6] Engström, Å., Wallström and Salehi-Sangari, E.,<br />
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[7] Fountain, J.E., Building The Virtual State, 2001.<br />
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[10] Horst, B., Cumplimiento de las Nuevas Normas De<br />
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2008.<br />
[12] IBM, Local Government e-Procurement Strategy Report,<br />
Cork County Council, Cork City Council, Dublin City<br />
Council, Kerry County Council in conjunction with staff<br />
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Government., April, 2003.<br />
449<br />
[13] Katz, J.M. Los Caminos hacia una Sociedad de la<br />
Información en América Latina y el Caribe, 2003.<br />
[14] Katz, J.M. El Papel de las TIC en el Desarrollo, 2009.<br />
[15] Knut L., Electronic Government Procurement: a New Era<br />
Key Advances & New Challenges, World Bank.<br />
Presentation in III Conference in Government Procurement,<br />
Washington, November, 2009.<br />
[16] OAS (Organization of American State), Perfiles de Sistemas<br />
Electrónicos de Compras Gubernamentales, Best<br />
Gubernamental Practices, Interamerican Agencies for<br />
Cooperation and Development, 2003.<br />
[17] Rivera, E., Nueva Economía, Gobierno Electrónico y<br />
Reforma del Estado: Chile a la Luz de la Experiencia<br />
Internacional, 2003.<br />
[18] Rose-Ackerman, S. La Corrupción y los Gobiernos: Causas,<br />
Consecuencias y Reforma, 2001.<br />
[19] Senge, P. et al., The Dance of Change, The Challenges of<br />
Sustaining Momentum in Learning Organization, 1999.<br />
[20] Singer, M et al., Does e-Procurement Save the State Money?<br />
Journal of Public Procurement, Volume 9, Issue 1, 58-78,<br />
2009.<br />
[21] Talero, E., Design Considerations for an Electronic<br />
Government Procurement Program, World Bank, 2001.<br />
[22] Von Baer E and Igor, O; Encuesta de Corrupción 2009: “Una<br />
Señal de Alerta”; Serie Informe Sociedad y Política Nº 113,<br />
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[23] Chilecompra, http://www.chilecompra.cl
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A Crowdsourcing Model for Public Consultations on Draft<br />
Laws<br />
Vasiliy Burov<br />
WikiVote!<br />
125047, Phadeyeva street, 7/1<br />
Moscow, Russia<br />
+79255024064<br />
burov@wikivote.ru<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
The paper discusses an innovative approach to lawmaking. In the<br />
proposed model a draft law is split into segments and improved by<br />
a network community which members can vote for the segments<br />
and suggest their own versions. Several cases of public<br />
consultations of Russian Laws based on Wikivote approach are<br />
presented and analyzed.<br />
Categories and Subject Descriptors<br />
K.4.3 [Organizational Impacts]: Computer-Supported<br />
Collaborative Work<br />
General Terms<br />
Management, Design, Human Factors<br />
Keywords<br />
Lawmaking, Wiki, Collaboration, Crowdsourcing<br />
1. INTRODUCTION<br />
In this paper we suggest a new collaboration strategy, aimed at<br />
emergence and development of network object centered<br />
communities and ecosystems. Within those ecosystems the most<br />
community supported document components are selected and the<br />
most productive and constructive collaboration participants are<br />
defined. With this strategy we can build various structured textual<br />
activities in the areas of legislation, business and society. To<br />
implement this strategy we designed methodological and software<br />
tools, based on combining idea management and wiki technology.<br />
Those tools are actively used in e-Government and Massively<br />
Distributed Collaboration.<br />
2. PRINCIPLES OF COLLABORATIVE<br />
LAWMAKING<br />
This model of participatory democracy suggests a transition from<br />
a culture of political rhetoric to a participatory culture built on<br />
crowdsourcing principles. Such a culture is based on attracting the<br />
open network community to participate in creative and<br />
collaborative problem solving. There have been several<br />
unsuccessful attempts to engage the network community in the<br />
lawmaking process. Those attempts have often been based on a<br />
naïve belief that publishing draft laws on the Web and inviting<br />
everybody to come and comment will automatically aggregate<br />
knowledge and improve the quality of the document. To the great<br />
disappointment of both organizers and participants this generally<br />
results in thousands of comments that cannot be aggregated in any<br />
way. Only very few of the comments and editing are actually<br />
valuable, and even those drown in the information noise [1].<br />
Evgeny Patarakin<br />
WikiVote!<br />
125047, Phadeyeva street, 7/1<br />
Moscow, Russia<br />
+79103880718<br />
patarakin@ wikivote.ru<br />
450<br />
Boris Yarmakhov<br />
WikiVote!<br />
125047, Phadeyeva street, 7/1<br />
Moscow, Russia<br />
+7215-6263616<br />
yarmakhov@ wikivote.ru<br />
Soliciting citizens’ expertise in law and regulation making<br />
processes requires special efforts towards network community<br />
building and the use of technologies that allow aggregating<br />
socially dispersed knowledge. To implement this idea we used<br />
Wikivote, our platform for collective improvement of structured<br />
legislative documents and building an expert community in the<br />
Democracy 2.0 framework. A number of collaborative projects<br />
aiming consensus construction and based on IBIS methodology<br />
were accomplished in the last 5 years [2]. We aim to create a<br />
collaborative environment for collaborative drafting, improvement<br />
and promoting draft laws within public and legislative projects.<br />
We have built a collaborative environment for collaborative<br />
creation, improvement and promoting bills within public and<br />
legislative projects on the crowdexpert.ru platform. Enacting a<br />
new law means that a community devises new rules which help it<br />
to become more efficient. Below are the principles on which<br />
legislative collaboration is based:<br />
1) Collaborative document creation and voting has a priority<br />
over document discussion. Our technology allows<br />
2)<br />
collaborators to create their own text versions, that could be<br />
voted for by other participants. The value of discussion is<br />
less than the value of collaboration. Contemporary<br />
collaboration does not always need discussions.<br />
The process of selecting text segments is based on the<br />
participants’ voting. All the votes should be counted but the<br />
weight of each vote depends on the participant’s impact and<br />
the estimation of this impact by the community. The more is<br />
the participant’s impact and its estimation, the more is the<br />
participant’s vote weight.<br />
3) Public document construction aiming at complex cloud<br />
issues has high educational value. The practice helps not<br />
only produce a quality document and build a community of<br />
people interested in its implementation, but promote an<br />
innovative document, maintain a new level of its<br />
understanding and perception by the society.<br />
The main direction of this practice may be defined not only as<br />
document improvement but also as a form of public attitude and<br />
support to innovations. Citizens are not only provided with<br />
educational innovations but are involved in collaborative<br />
innovations promotion.<br />
3. CASE STUDIES<br />
Participatory law-making sounds like a pretty radical direction for<br />
Open Government, and it is surprising to see that it has been<br />
establishing an especially strong foothold in Russia. Starting in<br />
2010, a number of collaborative projects for the improvement of
Russian Federation legislative proposals have taken place,<br />
including work on proposals for education, a very controversial<br />
fisheries bill, and Social Services Laws. These projects have<br />
attracted up to 6000 collaborators each, and represent very<br />
successful initiatives in citizen participation in legislative process.<br />
3.1 Collaborative Improvement of the<br />
Russian Law on Education<br />
A recent case of the described strategy is the Russian Law on<br />
Education improvement implemented at<br />
http://edu.crowdexpert.ru/ The project is supervised by the<br />
Russian Ministry of Education with the support of Wikivote! and<br />
the Public Opinion Foundation. The Web site contains a complete<br />
text of the draft law, which chapters and items were split in small<br />
segments. The project participants can create their own segment<br />
versions and vote for segments created by other participants. The<br />
site contains an additional section “The Law novels” with items<br />
which the new law brings into practice. The section “Critical<br />
questions” contains sharp issues of Russian education which the<br />
new law is supposed to solve. Initially the section contained<br />
questions posed by the Ministry of Education employees. The<br />
participants could post and vote for suggestions on the issues<br />
which they consider important and which require solution by the<br />
Law. This section was very important for evaluating expectations<br />
of the society. Totally more than 5700 Russian citizens joined the<br />
project. They created more than 2 000 comments, 170 solutions of<br />
critical questions and 400 versions of the Law items. The<br />
collaboration process was maintained and supported by project<br />
facilitators. Besides it was backed up by experts in legislation who<br />
monitored the consistency of the suggestions with the law. The<br />
collaborative process is a long term activity and consists of<br />
several steps. First the Ministry of Education put together the first<br />
draft of the Law. It was decomposed into segments and introduced<br />
to the network community for evaluation and improvement.<br />
Project designers drafted the second version of the draft law based<br />
on the improvements and suggestions. The process has been<br />
repeated and the third version of the law was drafted. The<br />
mechanism reminds of relationships between a consumer<br />
community and a software product testers. Developers create the<br />
first document version and introduce it to the community,<br />
consisting of different groups of the document consumers. Its<br />
participants test items of the document and suggest their<br />
improvements and edits. The most supported versions are<br />
reviewed by the developer and included onto the new document<br />
release which is enacted till the new release. The developer<br />
publishes the new release and makes explanations of the changes<br />
that have been made. Similarities between participants and testers<br />
in the Law on Education case could be traced even in titles and<br />
wordings of documents. We did not set any limitations on the size<br />
of the community, and social status, age or position of our<br />
participants. Still the project format allowed participants to selfogranize,<br />
make decisions and defend them.<br />
3.2 Collaborative Improvement of the<br />
Russian Law on Fisheries<br />
In July 18 – September 19 2011 we organized public consultations<br />
on the new Russian Bill on Fisheries (http://r.zakon-fom.ru/). It<br />
451<br />
attracted more than 5 300 Russian Citizens, who made more than<br />
2 000 comments and created about 300 versions of the Law items.<br />
The text of the bill was not large, so we did not have to break it<br />
into very detailed pieces. Some bill chapters were represented as<br />
final blocks and participants could build their own versions, which<br />
made navigation and orientation it the participant’s personal<br />
workspace much easier. On the other hand the bill attracted a lot<br />
of public attention and some participants acted destructively. The<br />
project administration had to take additional security measures<br />
and premoderate new items versions and comments. The project<br />
was supported by the Russian agency on Fisheries, which experts<br />
drafted the first version of the bill and monitored the participants<br />
suggestions. The experts made the second draft of the bill on<br />
Fisheries based on the public consultations on the bill made on the<br />
project Web site. After the edits were made, the new draft was<br />
posted on the Web site and the project participants reviewed and<br />
revised the draft items. The second draft attracted less attention of<br />
the community and received much less comments and<br />
suggestions.<br />
We also observed formation of groups, that supported only one<br />
suggestion and voted against all the other versions. We concluded<br />
that some participants join the project just to support a suggestion<br />
proposed by a particular group and important for a part of<br />
stakeholders, such as social groups, businessmen or the Ministry<br />
officials. This type of group behavior does not affect the version<br />
rating, as it depends on the level of community support given to<br />
the version. If a participant does not create their own version but<br />
just votes for and against other participants’ versions, their<br />
influence on the final result will be insignificant.<br />
4. CONCLUSION<br />
Described collaboration strategy, its methods and instruments can<br />
become the basis for new e-Work solutions aiming at creating<br />
structured documents. As an example the work of technical<br />
writers drafting product documentation can be totally transformed<br />
after involving in the process the product consumers. Another area<br />
of the public selection technology implication is education.<br />
5. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS<br />
The work reported here was supported by The Ministry of<br />
Education and Science of the Russian Federation.<br />
6. REFERENCES<br />
[1] M. Lips и A. Rapson, «Exploring Public Recordkeeping<br />
Behaviors in Wiki-Supported Public Consultation Activities<br />
in the New Zealand Public Sector», in Proceedings of the<br />
2010 43rd Hawaii International Conference on System<br />
Sciences, Washington, DC, USA, 2010, с. 1–10.<br />
[2] G. Anadiotis, K. Kafentzis, I. Pavlopoulos, и A. Westerski,<br />
«Building consensus via a semantic web collaborative<br />
space», in Proceedings of the 21st international conference<br />
companion on World Wide Web, New York, NY, USA,<br />
2012, с. 1097–1106.
A Novel Scheme of Government Information Sharing<br />
System for Implementing Paperless Government in Korea<br />
John (Jong Uk) Choi,<br />
JooWon Cho<br />
Sangmyung University<br />
juchoi@markany.com<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
Secure integration and interoperability are key issues in<br />
implementing ‘paperless’ digital government, and PKI scheme has<br />
been recommended for secure delivery of the document between<br />
government organizations. However, when requested documents<br />
safely arrive at other organizations, there are no ways to prevent<br />
illegal modification, editing using authoring tools, or transferring<br />
to the third parties.<br />
In this paper, we suggest a novel approach to implementing a<br />
government information sharing system: PKI, access control and<br />
forgery prevention which were employed in implementing<br />
Government Information Sharing (GIS) Center in Korea.<br />
Categories and Subject Descriptors<br />
D. 2.11 [Software Engineering]: Software Architectures –<br />
Domain-specific architectures.<br />
General Terms<br />
Security<br />
Keywords<br />
DRM, Forgery prevention, Access control, Public service<br />
1. INTRODUCTION<br />
Even if PKI scheme can provide very secure mechanism of<br />
authentication, confidentiality, and non-repudiation for sharing<br />
information between government organizations, still there remain<br />
several problems and potential risks. What PKI scheme can<br />
provide is to guarantee secure delivery of documents between two<br />
parties. However, even though the document has been delivered to<br />
the right person without any modification has been made, there<br />
remain a couple of potential risks: it can be modified at right<br />
person’s devices after delivery, or easily screen copied into a new<br />
file and transferred to the third parties. In other words, PKI<br />
scheme provides a secure delivery of a document between two<br />
parties or multi parties, but cannot guarantee secure ‘use’ of the<br />
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for<br />
personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are<br />
not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies<br />
bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for<br />
components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored.<br />
Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to<br />
post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission<br />
and/or a fee.<br />
ICEGOV '12, October 22 - 25 2012, Albany, NY, USA<br />
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1200-4/12/10...$15.00<br />
Dong Hwa Kim<br />
MarkAny<br />
dhkim@markny.com<br />
452<br />
Chang Hun Yoo<br />
MarkAny<br />
chyoo@markany.com<br />
document, protecting from misuse when it is delivered. Even<br />
though PKI procedures and certificates employed in GIS service<br />
can deliver requested documents safely to applicants, still there<br />
can be serious concerns: data leakage and illegal modification. In<br />
other words, even though PKI can provide user authentication,<br />
confidentiality, and non-repudiation in the process of document<br />
delivery, there are worries of illegal leakage to the third parties<br />
and possible forgery after it was safely received by the applicant.<br />
Because the data and documents delivered to the applicants are in<br />
digital form, they can be easily manipulated with authoring tools<br />
at applicant’s devices and copied on storage devices for transfer to<br />
third parties.<br />
In this paper, a novel approach for building an information<br />
sharing system is suggested, based on PKI infrastructure, access<br />
control technology, and forgery prevention technology. This<br />
approach was implemented in ‘Government Information Sharing<br />
Center’ in Korea. We provided this novel technology to the GIS<br />
(Government Information Sharing) center to make secure delivery<br />
and secure use of the documents.<br />
2. GOVERNMENT INFORMATION<br />
SHARING (GIS) CENTER<br />
Government Information Sharing (GIS) center in Korea was<br />
designed to increase productivity and efficiency of public service<br />
by decreasing time spent in manual delivery of documents and<br />
also by decreasing errors caused by manual input and delivery. In<br />
designing GIS center, employed were three components: PKI for<br />
authentication and authorization, E-DRM (Enterprise DRM) for<br />
preventing illegal access and information leakage, and 2D<br />
Barcode for preventing illegal modification of the data.<br />
2.1 e-Container<br />
When a user of GIS system sends request to the center using web<br />
application form with PKI certificates through web, an e-container<br />
is automatically generated. The request specifies the document,<br />
purpose, department and person, requested operations (‘read’,<br />
‘print’), and expire_ date. Currently, two operations are possible:<br />
‘read ’, and ‘print’ documents at applicant terminal. When the econtainer<br />
arrives at GIS center from applicant, validity of the<br />
request is checked with retrieval of employee (requester)<br />
information from database. Based on position, department, and<br />
job assignment, GIS system creates a ‘E-DRM right’ package<br />
which is included in the e-container. Then, the e-container is<br />
delivered to document source in which requested document<br />
resides.
Figure 1. Document Flow and E-DRM Package.<br />
After the server system at document source finishes review of the<br />
request package, requested document shall be sent to the applicant<br />
through GIS center delivery module, arriving at the terminal of<br />
applicants. E-DRM agent program resides at applicant’s terminal<br />
to control activities of applicant, according to the access right<br />
information. For example, the applicant does not have access<br />
right ‘to print document’, but tries to print document using<br />
network printer or virtual printer. In that case, printing should be<br />
blocked and in extreme case, the document should be erased from<br />
the applicant’s terminal or device.<br />
After establishing access right of the applicant, DRM server in<br />
GIS system encrypts document and right object (access control<br />
information) using first encryption key, and then delivers it to<br />
DRM distribution management unit. This process is very similar<br />
to the job of Right Object server in traditional DRM systems<br />
which creates a list of access control for a user and then encrypts<br />
before transferring control function to DRM agent at user side. In<br />
this stage, time stamp is used to prevent possible disputes over<br />
authenticity of the request and feedback.<br />
2.2 Enforcement of ‘Access Control’ at User<br />
Side<br />
When a document arrives at government officer’s device, PC or<br />
mobile devices, it should be decrypted at first, and controlled by<br />
E-DRM agent. Because e-container is encrypted with user’s<br />
public key and delivered to the applicant, the package can be<br />
decrypted only by right person who has a private key. When an<br />
applicant successfully decrypts the package and open the package,<br />
he/she can use it according to the predefined access right. First of<br />
all, if the user who receives the document package is not eligible<br />
for e-container, he/she cannot open the package in normal way<br />
and thus cannot read them. Even when the user opens the<br />
document in normal way but does not have the right of ‘save on<br />
the user devices’, he/she cannot save the document on the<br />
computer or other devices. Also, if the user does not have right of<br />
‘edit’, he/she cannot edit the document. Control of ‘print’ function<br />
can be enforced in the same way of the other functions, ‘save’,<br />
‘read’, and ‘edit’. Screen capture function at user PC can be<br />
.<br />
453<br />
deactivated when the user does not have right of ‘screen capture’.<br />
As there are available so many capture programs in internet sites,<br />
users can create a new file by capturing each page of the<br />
decrypted documents and by editing them into a file. However,<br />
the screen capture function is completely blocked by the E-DRM<br />
agent and thus no other ways are possible to go around it.<br />
2.3 Forgery Prevention Technology<br />
Forgery prevention technology has been employed in certificate<br />
printing in Korea for the past 10 years. Many government-issued<br />
certificates can be printed at home or office using normal printers.<br />
In order to prevent illegal modification of the certificate, used is<br />
2-D barcode which contains data in the certificates with format<br />
information and content data. 2-D barcode of the certificates is<br />
generated by converting paper certificates in the following way.<br />
In the first step, contents of the certificates with form information<br />
should be collected for conversion. Second, hash value is<br />
generated from the content data. Then, content data and hash<br />
value are encrypted and converted into 2-D high density barcode.<br />
Error-correction code (ECC) is included in the conversion<br />
process. This 2-D barcode can compress 442 bytes into the area of<br />
1 cm 2 . One of the advantages of this 2-D barcode is that any file<br />
format can be used in this scheme, including XML, HTML, Tiff<br />
Image, and others.<br />
3. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE<br />
RESEARCH<br />
In this paper, an access control and forgery prevention mechanism<br />
which is employed in Government Information Sharing (GIS)<br />
system is described. This description might be usefully employed<br />
in building paperless government systems in other countries.<br />
References<br />
[1] Arnab, A., and Hutchison A., Requirement Analysis of<br />
Enterprise DRM Systems, Proceedings Information Security<br />
South Africa, (Sandton, Johannesburg, 2005), available at<br />
http://pubs.cs.uct.ac.za/archive/00000205/.<br />
[2] Bajaj, A., Ram, S. IAIS: A Methodology to Enable Inter-<br />
Agency Information Sharing in eGovernment, Journal of<br />
Database Management, 14, 4, 2003, pp.59-80<br />
[3] Casey, T., Harbitter, A., Leary, M., and Martin, I. , Secure<br />
Information Sharing for the US Government, White Papers,<br />
Nortel Technical Journal (2008).<br />
[4] Chongthammakun, R., and Jackson, S.J. Boundary Objects,<br />
Agents, and Organizations: Lessons from E-Document<br />
Systems Development in Thailand, Proceedings of 2012<br />
45 th Hawaii International Conference on Systems Sciences,<br />
(Hawaii, 2012).
A structure oriented evaluation model for readiness of egovernance<br />
Uranchimeg Tudevdagva<br />
Mongolian University of Science and Technology<br />
Ulaanbaatar-46<br />
976-11-323579<br />
uranchimeg@must.edu.mn<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
This paper deals with a measure theoretical method for evaluation<br />
of logically describable target structures.<br />
The presented evaluation approach includes the following steps:<br />
key targets definition , sub targets description, general target<br />
structure formulation, selection of fitting assessment instrument,<br />
development of an adapted questionnaire or check list, data<br />
collection, data processing in sense of our general<br />
evaluation model and report of results.<br />
The advantage of presented model is that it is very versatile for<br />
applications where the target can be described by a logical target<br />
structure. By the measure theoretical background the evaluation is<br />
very objective. The scoring method in the whole becomes open,<br />
comprehensible and traceable.<br />
Categories and Subject Descriptors<br />
K.3.2 [COMPUTERS AND EDUCATION]: Computer and<br />
Information Science Education – Self-assessment.<br />
General Terms<br />
Management, Measurement, Performance, Standardization,<br />
Verification.<br />
Keywords<br />
Evaluation, evaluation model, evaluation theory, e-governance, egovernance<br />
assessment, logical target structure, scoring method,<br />
assessment method.<br />
1. INTRODUCTION<br />
E-governance is a complex topic which covers very different<br />
fields with own characteristics and special aims. If we want to<br />
score or to evaluate how a special sector of e-governance is<br />
achieving the given aims, corresponding or adapted evaluation<br />
approaches are required.<br />
Each consistent formulated aim possesses a logical inner<br />
structure. Hence, basic property of any evaluation approach<br />
should be that the method is compatible to logical structure of<br />
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Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to<br />
post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission<br />
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ICEGOV '12, October 22 - 25 2012, Albany, NY, USA<br />
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454<br />
Uyanga Sambuu<br />
National University of Mongolia<br />
Ulaanbaatar-46<br />
976-11-320159<br />
uyanga@magicnet.mn<br />
aims which we want to achieve. In this sense each evaluation<br />
begins with an analysis of the logical structure of key aims under<br />
consideration. If the logical structure of key aims is clear we can<br />
try to score how the aim has been achieved by measurement<br />
methods as they are applied in natural sciences, technique and<br />
other fields, too. Theoretical background or basis of<br />
corresponding methods of measurement is the general measure<br />
theory (see e.g. [1]).<br />
This paper presents a measure theoretical evaluation model which<br />
is oriented at the logical structure of key aims for scoring<br />
readiness of e-governance.<br />
The frequently applied additive models do not include an<br />
adequate reference to the logical structure of target. Readiness<br />
assessments provide important information to policy and decision<br />
makers for strategic planning of e-governance and its<br />
implementation [5].<br />
2. LOGICAL STRUCTURE AND<br />
EVALUTAION MODEL<br />
To evaluate how a special aim has been achieved we have to<br />
analyse the logical structure of considered target. We have to<br />
think about, what are the key targets, what are sub targets, what<br />
we want to evaluate or to check, how the key and sub targets are<br />
logically connected with each other.<br />
For instance, we want to score how successful the targets in sense<br />
of the online service index have been reached. This index is one<br />
of the three basic indices which is included into the calculation of<br />
the E-Government-Readiness-Index. Then we have first to find<br />
out the key targets. For this we assume, we have six key targets.<br />
We denote these targets by B1, B2, B3, B4, B5 and B6 and we<br />
suppose that our main target C is reached if all of our six key<br />
targets are reached.<br />
B1 B2 B3 B4 B5 B6<br />
Figure 1. Logical structure of key targets<br />
The target C is not reached if at least one of key targets is not<br />
reached. Then the main target C can be described as the logical<br />
intersection of key targets B1, B2, B3, B4, B5, B6 and we have<br />
!<br />
𝐶 = 𝐵 ! ∩ 𝐵 ! ∩ 𝐵 ! ∩ 𝐵 ! ∩ 𝐵 ! ∩ 𝐵 ! = !!! 𝐵 ! .<br />
This is visualized by Figure 1 via a series circuit.
We further assume that each key target can consist of sub targets<br />
or sub ordered targets where the key target is reached if at least<br />
one of the assigned sub targets is reached. This can be described<br />
by a logical union over the corresponding sub targets. For<br />
instance, if we assume, that our key target B1 is generated by five<br />
sub targets A11, ..., A15 then we have<br />
!<br />
𝐵 ! = 𝐴 !! ∪ 𝐴 !" ∪ 𝐴 !" ∪ 𝐴 !" ∪ 𝐴 !" = !!! 𝐴 !! . (1)<br />
The key targets B2,…, B6 can consist of further sub target, too.<br />
Figure 2 presents an example for a corresponding logical<br />
structure.<br />
A11<br />
A12<br />
A13<br />
A14<br />
A15<br />
A21<br />
A22<br />
A23<br />
Figure 2. Logical structure of main target<br />
In [3] a measure theoretical evaluation model is considered for<br />
evaluation of e-learning programs. Key idea of this model is that<br />
the target to be reached can be described via an adapted logical<br />
structure into which the key and sub targets under consideration<br />
are embedded. This approach is applied here to evaluation of<br />
readiness of e-governance.<br />
!<br />
Then a target structure 𝐶 = !!! 𝐵 !<br />
, defined by disjoint key<br />
! !<br />
targets 𝐵 ! ∈ 𝐴, i=1,…,r with 𝐵 ! = !!! 𝐴 !" , 1≤ 𝑠 ! ≤ 𝑠,<br />
!<br />
!!! 𝑠 ! ≤ 𝑠, where 𝐴 !" are corresponding sub targets of 𝐵 ! with<br />
𝑄 !" 𝐴 !" = 𝑞 !", can be scored by<br />
See Formula (7) in [4].<br />
A31<br />
A32<br />
B1 B2 B3 B4 B5 B6<br />
!<br />
! ! !<br />
𝑄 𝐶 = 𝑄 !!! 𝐵 ! = 𝑄 !!! !!! 𝐴 !"<br />
!<br />
!!<br />
= 1 − 1 − 𝑞 !"<br />
!!!<br />
!!!<br />
. (2)<br />
According to this formula the score of a target structure C can be<br />
reduced to the scores qij of included sub targets Aij. Unfortunately,<br />
these scores are not given a-priori and we need corresponding<br />
sample based estimation methods for these scores.<br />
There exist several possibilities obtaining corresponding sampling<br />
data. We can get samples by adapted checklists or questionnaires,<br />
by face to face or phone interviews, via online or web based tests.<br />
The result of such a questionnaire is a data vector<br />
𝑥 = 𝑥 !!, … , 𝑥 !!! , … , 𝑥 !!, … , 𝑥 !!! . Here denotes xij the result or<br />
answer to the question w.r.t. the sub target 𝐴 !". We assume that<br />
(!) (!) (!) (!) (!)<br />
𝑥 !" ≤ 𝑥!" ≤ 𝑥 !" holds to any given bounds 𝑥!" and 𝑥!" , 𝑥!" <<br />
(!)<br />
𝑥 !" . Then an estimation for 𝑞!" = 𝑄 𝐴 !" is given by<br />
∗ (!)<br />
𝑞 !" = 𝑥!" − 𝑥 !"<br />
A41<br />
(!) (!)<br />
𝑥 !" − 𝑥!"<br />
A51<br />
A52<br />
A53<br />
A61<br />
A62<br />
A63<br />
A64<br />
. (3)<br />
455<br />
If we have a sample of size n to our data vector 𝑥, then according<br />
relation (2) we get n estimation values 𝑄 ∗ ! 𝐶 , … , 𝑄 ∗ ! 𝐶 for<br />
∗(!)<br />
𝑄 𝐶 . Let 𝑞 !" be the estimation value for 𝑞!" according to (3) for<br />
the k th sample element then it holds<br />
!<br />
𝑄 ∗ ! 𝐶 = !!! 1 − !!! 1 − 𝑞 !"<br />
! !<br />
∗(!)<br />
By the method of moments we get then as estimation value 𝑄 ∗ 𝐶<br />
for 𝑄 𝐶 .<br />
𝑄 ∗ 𝐶 = 1<br />
𝑛<br />
!<br />
!<br />
!!! !!!<br />
! !<br />
∗(!)<br />
1 − 1 − 𝑞 !"<br />
!!!<br />
.<br />
. (4)<br />
If we calculate periodically such scores we obtain time series<br />
which describe the development of readiness of e-governance, for<br />
instance. Or, we can use the score values for a comparative<br />
consideration to recognize differences, developments or trends.<br />
3. CONCLUSIONS<br />
The presented at logical structure of a target oriented evaluation<br />
method is an alternative to today frequently applied linear<br />
evaluation models. The advantage of our method is that in<br />
contrast to additive evaluation approaches no weighting factors<br />
are needed.<br />
The method can be applied to a periodical evaluation of egovernance<br />
development or readiness of e-governance<br />
recognizing corresponding trends, developments or weak sectors.<br />
Based on adapted and open target structures this method could be<br />
a methodical base for the development of an open national or<br />
international assessment or self-assessment framework.<br />
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT<br />
This study has been supported by a Grant of Schlumberger<br />
Foundation.<br />
4. REFERENCES<br />
[1] Bauer, H. (2001). Measure and Integration Theory. Gruyter<br />
– de Gruyter Studies in Mathematics, Berlin.<br />
[2] Peter, H. R., Howard, E. F.(1993): Evaluation a systematic<br />
approach. 5 th ed., SAGE Publications, Thousand Oaks,<br />
California.<br />
[3] Uranchimeg, T., Hardt, W. (2011): A new evaluation model<br />
for eLearning programs. Technical Report CSR-11-03,<br />
Chemnitz University of Technology, Chemnitz, Germany.<br />
[4] Uranchimeg, T., Hardt, W. (2012): A measure theoretical<br />
evaluation model for e-learning programs. In Proceedings of<br />
the IADIS on e-Society 2012, March 10-13, 2012, Berlin, pp.<br />
44-52.<br />
[5] Zamira, D., Mohamed, Sh., Adegboyega, O. & Tomasz, J.<br />
(2010): Methodology for e-Government Readiness<br />
Assessment. Models Instruments and Implementation. April<br />
6-10, 2010, Orlando, Florida.
An Initial Exploration of Hyperlinks of African Government<br />
Portal Websites<br />
Abebe Rorissa<br />
Department of Information Studies, University at Albany, State University of New York<br />
Draper 113, 135 Western Avenue, Albany, NY 12222<br />
arorissa@albany.edu<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
This paper presents preliminary results of an exploratory analysis<br />
of hyperlinks from (outlinks) and to (inlinks) government portal<br />
Websites of African countries. Analyses of the data revealed the<br />
nature of the portal Websites and the countries in terms of their<br />
online presence and visibility.<br />
Categories and Subject Descriptors<br />
K.4.1. Public Policy Issues; K.4.3. Organizational Impacts; K.5.2.<br />
Governmental Issues<br />
General Terms<br />
Management, Measurement, Documentation, Performance,<br />
Design<br />
Keywords<br />
Government Portal Websites; Africa; Hyperlink Analysis<br />
1. INTRODUCTION<br />
African governments have fully embraced the Web over the last<br />
two decades to provide e-government services [2] and by the turn<br />
of the last decade of the new millennium, every African country<br />
had at least one e-government Website albeit at various levels of<br />
e-government service development [4]. During this same period,<br />
more and more African countries also recognized the power of<br />
government portal Websites as one-stop shops to promote and<br />
publicize their activities as well as provide essential information<br />
and government services.<br />
In order to interconnect various resources and provide easy access<br />
to information sources contained within their Web pages,<br />
government portal Websites use hyperlinks. The ability to<br />
interconnect a large number of Web pages, via hyperlinks,<br />
enabled us to organize information and knowledge in distributed<br />
environments. In addition, hyperlinks contain information that is<br />
implicit. For instance, a hyperlink could be “regarded as an<br />
endorsement of the target page” ([7], p. 27) and the more useful<br />
and informative pages are often those that attract more hyperlinks<br />
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components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored.<br />
Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to<br />
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456<br />
pointing to them. The fact that the number of Web pages that link<br />
to a particular page is an indication of its importance has been<br />
long established. For instance, Google’s<br />
PageRank algorithm [1], which works based on the premise that<br />
hyperlinks to a web page or inlinks are “trust votes”, takes this<br />
fact into account and ranks Websites accordingly.<br />
As part of an exploratory study, the current work is the first to<br />
look into hyperlinks of African government portal Websites and<br />
attempts to answer the questions: What is the nature of the<br />
hyperlinks of African government portal Websites? Does the<br />
nature of the hyperlinks vary by region and population size?<br />
2. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS<br />
A single official government portal Website for each country was<br />
identified through an extensive Web search during a one month<br />
period in March and April 2012. A search over the same four<br />
week period produced no legitimate Websites that could be<br />
considered government portals for Guinea, Guinea-Bissau,<br />
Somalia, and Tunisia. Of the 50 remaining African countries,<br />
33(66%) had portals while 9(18%) Websites of presidencies,<br />
5(10%) Websites of Ministries of Foreign Affairs, 1(2%) Website<br />
of a Ministry of Information, 1(2%) Website of a Prime Minister,<br />
1(2%) Website of a National Transitional Council were identified<br />
and considered for analysis. The numbers of outlinks and inlinks<br />
were determined using a combination of online tools such as Web<br />
crawlers (e.g., SocSciBot4 [6]) and methods. Care was taken in<br />
order to avoid counting internal links on the portal Website,<br />
sometimes included on a Web page for navigational purposes [5].<br />
3. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION<br />
The 50 African countries were divided into five groups matching<br />
the UN’s five regions of Africa. Northern Africa and Southern<br />
Africa, respectively, were regions with the least (Total=189,<br />
Median=25) and most (Total=1484, Median=67) number of Web<br />
pages on government portal Websites. It should be noted that<br />
because Tunisia’s portal was not available during data collection,<br />
its counts could not be added to the total for Northern Africa. A<br />
contributing factor for Southern Africa’s large number and<br />
median count of the number of Web pages could have also been<br />
Botswana’s contribution, with a portal Website that had by far the<br />
highest on the continent and 79.45% of the total number of Web<br />
pages on government portal Websites for Southern African<br />
countries. The median number of Web pages on a government<br />
portal Website for the continent was 38. Each region had median<br />
number of Web pages closer to the median number of Web pages<br />
on portal Websites for the entire continent (except, perhaps,<br />
Southern Africa due to, once again, Botswana’s count). The
egion that is more representative of the continent with respect to<br />
median number of Web pages is Eastern Africa.<br />
Once again, Eastern Africa, together with Northern Africa<br />
(Median=38) was more representative of the continent<br />
(Median=31) in terms of the median number of inlinks to<br />
government portal Websites whereas central African government<br />
portal Websites attracted the least number of inlinks (Median=10).<br />
Government portal Websites for Southern African countries<br />
attracted the most inlinks (Median=78), although Western African<br />
government portal Websites (with more countries, 14 versus 5)<br />
attracted the most number of inlinks (Total=12,811).<br />
The number of outlink counts, although understandably far greater<br />
than inlink counts, follow a similar pattern. The number of<br />
outlinks that point to domains and those that point to full URLs<br />
for the whole continent are close in terms of both total counts<br />
(216,525 for Domains versus 207,231 for URLs) and median<br />
values (852 for Domains versus 528 for URLs). The combined<br />
numbers of outlinks (Domain + URL) for two of the five regions,<br />
Southern and Western Africa (with 19 countries), are about three<br />
times as large as those for the other three regions and their median<br />
counts are larger as well. Southern Africa’s figures for outlinks<br />
are parallel to the total number of Web pages. It could be<br />
explained by the fact that the large number of pages is perhaps an<br />
indication of the varieties of information sources provided by the<br />
government portal Websites because they have to point to a lot<br />
more number of resources. The figures for Web impact factor<br />
show that regions with smaller number of Web Pages and outlinks<br />
on their government portal Websites have relatively less online<br />
impact, although the median Web impact factor values do not<br />
vary a whole lot among the regions (ranging from 0.39 to 2.08).<br />
In addition to the number of Web pages as well as the number of<br />
outlinks and inlinks for African government portal Websites as a<br />
continent, in order to see the effect of population size, further<br />
analyses were conducted. Five groups of the 50 countries were<br />
formed (with 10 countries in each group) due to the huge range of<br />
the population size (Min=89,188; Max=155,215,573). Forming<br />
groups of the countries based on range of population size with<br />
equal width (i.e., total range divided by the number of groups)<br />
would have created a group of one or two countries in some<br />
cases.The numbers of Web pages on government portal Websites<br />
for the five regions were, on average, not that different than each<br />
other. In fact, the least populous countries had, on average<br />
(Median=37), only seven fewer web pages on their government<br />
portal Websites than the most populous nations (Median=44). In<br />
actual fact, the government portal Websites for the least populous<br />
countries attracted a lot more hyperlinks or inlinks (Median=56)<br />
than the government portal Websites of the most populous nations<br />
attracted (Median=38). A bit of an anomaly in the figures for the<br />
median number of inlinks is the one for the second least populous<br />
countries with 13. The least populous countries, however, had<br />
government portal Websites with much more outlinks (Domain +<br />
URL), on average, than the most populous ones (Median=2,722<br />
versus Median=903). While the impressive figures for the least<br />
populous countries were due to the large number of outlinks from<br />
government portal Websites for Swaziland, the weak number of<br />
457<br />
total outlinks for Kenya (whose portal was not often accessible to<br />
the crawlers and tools used for the study), Tanzania, and DR<br />
Congo reduced that average for the most populous countries.<br />
When it comes to the Web impact factor, population doesn’t seem<br />
to be a huge factor with both the least and most populous<br />
countries having similar values.<br />
4. CONCLUDING REMARKS<br />
One sign that, in the last decade, there was a tremendous<br />
information and communication technology expansion in Africa is<br />
the rate of increase in the number of Internet users. Whereas the<br />
population of the continent's 50 countries considered for analysis<br />
in the current study in 2010 was a little under a billion, in a year,<br />
it grew to over a billion, an increase of a mere 1.5% [3]. During<br />
the same time period of one year, the number of Internet users for<br />
the same 50 countries grew by an impressive percentage of<br />
3080% [3]. With this increase in capacity and infrastructure<br />
comes increased e-participation and demand for e-services by the<br />
citizens in all aspects of their lives, including in their dealings<br />
with government. This is precisely one of the reasons why a study<br />
of African government portal Websites and the nature of their<br />
hyperlinks is necessary to measure their effectiveness as means of<br />
communication as well as information and service delivery tools<br />
that could boost a country's online visibility and effectiveness in<br />
online e-government service delivery. The current work is one of<br />
very few such studies. Although hyperlinks provide some<br />
information as to a Website's impact, value, and utility, contents<br />
of such Websites need to be investigated to give a fuller picture of<br />
the progress the continent made in terms of e-government<br />
development and service delivery.<br />
5. REFERENCES<br />
[1] Brin, S., & Page, L. (1998). The anatomy of a large-scale<br />
hypertextual Web search engine. Computer Networks and<br />
ISDN Systems, 30, 107–117.<br />
[2] Heeks, R. (2002). E-Government in Africa: Promise and<br />
practice. Information Polity: The International Journal of<br />
Government & Democracy in the Information Age, 7(2/3),<br />
97-114.<br />
[3] Miniwatts Marketing Group. (2012). Internet World stats:<br />
Usage and population statistics. Retrieved from<br />
http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats1.htm.<br />
[4] Rorissa, a., & Demissie, D. (2010). An analysis of African e-<br />
Government service websites. Government Information<br />
Quarterly, 27(2), 161–169.<br />
[5] Tang, R. & Thelwall, M. (2008). A hyperlink analysis of US<br />
public and academic libraries' Web sites. Library Quarterly,<br />
78(4).<br />
[6] Thelwall, M. (2001). A web crawler design for data mining,<br />
Journal of Information Science, 27(5), 319-325.<br />
[7] Thelwall, M. (2009). Introduction to Webometrics:<br />
Quantitative Web research for the social sciences. San<br />
Rafael, CA: Morgan & Claypool.
C-DAC Pan India Strategy in High Performance Computing<br />
For Human Advancement<br />
Kapil Mathur, Sandeep Agrawal, Sucheta Pawar, Abhishek Das, Goldi Misra<br />
High Performance Computing (HPC) Solutions Group<br />
Centre for Development of Advanced Computing<br />
Agriculture College Campus, Near District Industries Centre, Shivajinagar, Pune 411005, India<br />
+91-20-25520112<br />
{kmathur, sandeepa, suchetap, abhishekd, goldi}@cdac.in<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
In this paper, we explore the role of High Performance Computing<br />
(HPC) in India’s critical sectors viz. Agriculture, Industries,<br />
Education, Energy and Power, Defence, Water, Healthcare,<br />
Banking and Finance services, Science and Technology etc. Paper<br />
introduces strategies, efforts and initiative interjected by Centre<br />
for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) in<br />
strengthening proliferation of HPC in leading Government<br />
organizations, premier R&D laboratories, missions, programmes<br />
and Educational institutes across the nation. In addition, a brief<br />
insight is been provided regarding the HPC trends across the<br />
globe viz. USA, China, Japan, Europe etc. Furthermore, paper<br />
describes the HPC policies and initiatives undertaken by<br />
Government of India (GOI) for propagating HPC across scientific<br />
and research community and introduce nation’s presence on the<br />
global supercomputing landscape.<br />
Keywords<br />
C-DAC, HPC, R&D<br />
1. GLOBAL TRENDS<br />
Thirty countries have supercomputers listed in the TOP500 as on<br />
June 2012, USA (252), China (68), Japan (35), UK (25), France<br />
(22) and Germany (20) constitute 422 of the top 500<br />
supercomputers and have gone past the Petascale barrier alongwith<br />
Italy. Such huge computational assistance has strengthened<br />
the application areas from exploring of universe to molecular<br />
interaction and dynamics at very nanoscale.<br />
Energy efficiency and floor space are increasingly becoming<br />
important factors in the realization of huge systems, giving rise to<br />
hybrid systems such as CPU and GPGPU. While research on<br />
exascale computing is at a nascent stage, huge investments and<br />
initiatives in this direction are being considered by countries.<br />
New/improvised hardware and software technologies/algorithms<br />
are being explored by countries to address the future challenge.<br />
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for<br />
personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are<br />
not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies<br />
bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for<br />
components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored.<br />
Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to<br />
post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission<br />
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458<br />
Developments will require wide international collaborations along<br />
with initiatives such as International Exascale Software Project<br />
(IESP) and the European Exascale Software Initiative (EESI) have<br />
been taken. Similarly, “Interdisciplinary Programme on<br />
Application Software towards Exascale Computing for Global<br />
Scale Issues” with 10 M€ funding is a G8 Research Councils<br />
Initiative on multilateral research.<br />
2. SUPERCOMPUTING IN INDIA<br />
Indian Government’s initiative in supercomputing regime started<br />
in late 1980s with C-DAC developing India’s first supercomputer<br />
“PARAM 8000” in 1990, subsequently GOI is funding a range of<br />
small to midrange HPC centres across nation. In past 25 years C-<br />
DAC has delivered PARAM series of supercomputers and has<br />
taken many initiatives in widening the HPC accessibility and<br />
knowledge. For ensuring the broad accessibility of HPC resources<br />
across nation C-DAC has deployed the nation-wide Grid<br />
Computing infrastructure named as Grid “GARUDA (Global<br />
Access to Resources Using Distributed Architecture)”, it connects<br />
17 cities with the aim of promoting collaboration among<br />
Research, Industry, Academia, and Government through<br />
“National Knowledge Network” (NKN). C-DAC is widening the<br />
HPC knowledge through workshops, symposium, and training<br />
programmes for scientific R&D labs and Academic institutes.<br />
Making a gradual progress, in Nov 2007 India made a remarkable<br />
entry with Tata CRL's “Eka” rank #4 in top500 used for CFD,<br />
Atmospheric sciences, subsequently C-DAC's “Param Yuva”<br />
ranked #68 in Nov 2008, the latest June 2012 top500 list has 5<br />
HPC systems from India, CSIR C-MMACS, Bangalore; VSSC<br />
ISRO, Thiruvananthapuram are two systems in top 100 list with<br />
rank #58 and #86 respectively. GOI is investing around 1 billion<br />
dollar for establishing supercomputing infrastructure to address<br />
the critical sectors.<br />
2.1 HPC initiatives and strategies<br />
Planning Commission of India through its Five Year Plan<br />
implements various policies in different sectors of economic and<br />
scientific interest. GOI is developing the next generation<br />
supercomputer facility under its 12th five-year plan period.<br />
Planning Commission of India has set up a “National Council on<br />
Supercomputing” which has proposed the cloud-based<br />
supercomputing model with governing committee formulating<br />
strategies.
2.2 C-DAC<br />
C-DAC’s PARAM series of Supercomputers has shown its<br />
competency not only in developing capability in HPC but also<br />
delivering state-of-the-art technology systems in a time bound<br />
manner. For executing the supercomputing plan C-DAC has<br />
established two national supercomputing centres in India: 1)<br />
National PARAM Supercomputing Facility (NPSF) at Pune; 2) C-<br />
DAC’s Terascale Supercomputing Facility (CTSF) at Bangalore.<br />
These facilities provide access to Advance Computing<br />
infrastructure to various R&D organizations, industries and<br />
institutes. C-DAC has developed wide range of indigenous<br />
Hardware and Software HPC solutions viz Hardware accelerator<br />
like Reconfigurable Computing (RC) system, high performance<br />
network interconnection switch PARAMNet-3, GARUDA grid,<br />
Algorithm and solution development in different application<br />
areas, system software and tools development, end-to-end<br />
clientele HPC solutions.<br />
2.2.1 C-DAC in Academia<br />
C-DAC has taken national level initiatives in setting up state-ofart<br />
HPC facility and conducting Workshops, Training programs<br />
and Symposiums for Academic Institutes. C-DAC has started a<br />
certification course “C-DAC Certified HPC Professional<br />
(CCHPCP)” with the primary objective of standardizing HPC<br />
scale to map the HPC skill sets to both current and aspiring<br />
professionals in this domain, such initiative would help in creating<br />
huge pool of skilled HPC work force.<br />
2.2.2 C-DAC National/International level R&D<br />
Collaboration<br />
C-DAC addresses many important areas of national interest<br />
through R&D collaborations. Collaboration with NCMRWF<br />
helped the operational weather forecast cycle on PARAM system,<br />
development of Seismic data processing solutions for ONGC on<br />
PARAM system, providing turnkey consultancy to Bhabha<br />
Atomic Research Centre’s (BARC) fracture analysis code used in<br />
reactor safety analysis. C-DAC is collaborating in mission based<br />
projects with research organization like IITM under National<br />
Monsoon Mission (NMM) through concerted efforts by various<br />
research and academic institutes (both public and private) in India<br />
and abroad, aims to develop/improve the current generation of<br />
dynamical models to improve prediction of Indian monsoon<br />
rainfall. C-DAC provides consultancy for the establishment of<br />
National Agricultural Bioinformatics Grid (NABG) with a view of<br />
increasing the Agricultural yield.<br />
C-DAC’s international collaborations cover technical affiliations,<br />
joint research projects, scientists exchange programs & research<br />
initiatives. C-DAC has setup 50+ PARAM based systems till date<br />
in India and abroad, like in Russia, Singapore, Germany and<br />
Canada. Collaboration with ICAD; Moscow under Indo-Russian<br />
Long Term Program (ILTP) covering use of PARAM<br />
supercomputers, the joint research R&D venture was in the area<br />
of CFD and Climate Modelling. The Russian–Indian centre for<br />
Advanced Computing Research (RICCR) and C-DAC pursue<br />
joint research in the areas of Weather Forecasting, SDP, CFD and<br />
Parallel compiler. C-DAC on behest of MEA, GOI has setup HPC<br />
centres at Vietnam, Tanzania, Armenia and Ghana.<br />
459<br />
3. INDIA’S HPC ROADMAP<br />
GOI encouragement in developing the next generation<br />
supercomputer facility during 12th five-year plan period; this will<br />
conform to the advanced computing needs of various Government<br />
organizations, premier R&D labs and educational institutes. The<br />
cloud-based supercomputing network will be categorized into<br />
three different layers. The first layer will have 6-8 centers in<br />
petaflop range. The second layer will have 20 different centers in<br />
200-500 teraflops range. The third layer will have 50-75 centers in<br />
the 1-10 teraflop range. Indian Government is trying to build<br />
Supercomputing R&D platform by the coordinated efforts of HPC<br />
research scientists and the application domain expertise, as it<br />
would assist in development of comprehensive scalable<br />
application software utilizing the HPC systems very efficiently,<br />
many of the projects are been initialized with public and private<br />
collaborations.<br />
C-DAC in collaboration is establishing a HPC Academia<br />
Innovation Centre to enable the open sciences research<br />
community to take advantage of emerging technologies in HPC.<br />
HPC Academic Innovation Centre is first-of-its-kind initiative for<br />
accelerating adoption of HPC as tool in R&D at academic level.<br />
4. CONCLUSION<br />
For India to be second to none in the scientific and engineering<br />
R&D, it must be able to address all the driving forces through<br />
national initiatives and international collaboration. The initiative<br />
taken up by GOI will provide a quantum leap in establishing a<br />
firm HPC infrastructure across the nation. These initiatives for<br />
enhancing the capacity and capability building in HPC will<br />
require a conglomerated effort by both private and public sector<br />
alliances to address critical sectors. In addition to this, R&D<br />
through various international collaborations needs to be realized<br />
to remain abreast with the growing technological trends.<br />
C-DAC is focused on design and deployment of HPC solutions<br />
for premier R&D organizations along with enablement of<br />
advanced computational skills among scientists. Besides, to cater<br />
to the dire need of skilled HPC manpower C-DAC has been<br />
instrumental in proliferation of HPC in educational institutes<br />
through deployment of HPC facilities, conducting training<br />
programs, providing tailored made solutions and conducting HPC<br />
certification course. Today HPC has become an integral part in<br />
the development of products across many industry verticals, such<br />
proliferation will help in bridging the gap between students and<br />
industry professionals.<br />
5. REFERENCES<br />
[1] http://cdac.in/index.aspx?id=about<br />
[2] http://india.gov.in/sector.php<br />
[3] http://www.mea.gov.in/<br />
[4] http://planningcommission.nic.in/<br />
[5] http://top500.org
Crowdsourcing as Data Sharing: A Regional Web-based<br />
Real Estate Development Database<br />
Robert Goodspeed<br />
MIT Department of Urban Studies and<br />
Planning<br />
77 Massachusetts Avenue<br />
Room 9-415<br />
Cambridge, MA 02139<br />
+1 202-321-2743<br />
rgoodspe@mit.edu<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
The paper describes a web-based database of residential and<br />
commercial real estate development projects, created by a<br />
regional urban planning agency in Metropolitan Boston. In Phase<br />
I, now complete, the tool is used to facilitate inter-agency<br />
information sharing, demonstrating the ability of web-base data<br />
collection tools to increase information sharing between<br />
government agencies by reducing transaction costs. Phase II, now<br />
under development, will expand the functionality of the website to<br />
allow the general public to contribute information to the database,<br />
as well as view and download its contents. The project is unusual<br />
in its integration of a crowdsourcing paradigm with traditional<br />
methods of spatial information sharing. The project demonstrates<br />
the potential for technology to facilitate data sharing in favorable<br />
contexts where interorganizational relationships and sharing<br />
norms exist.<br />
Categories and Subject Descriptors<br />
H.4.2 [Information Systems Applications] – Types of Systems –<br />
database, spatial information. J.1 [Administrative Data<br />
Processing]: Government – urban planning.<br />
General Terms<br />
Management, Design, Theory.<br />
Keywords<br />
Crowdsourcing, spatial data sharing, urban development, Web<br />
2.0.<br />
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for<br />
personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are<br />
not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that<br />
copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights<br />
for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be<br />
honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to<br />
republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior<br />
specific permission and/or a fee.<br />
ICEGOV '12, October 22 - 25 2012, Albany, NY, USA<br />
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1200-4/12/10...$15.00<br />
Christian Spanring<br />
Metropolitan Area Planning Council<br />
60 Temple Place<br />
Boston, MA 02111<br />
+1 617-451-2770<br />
cspanring@mapc.org<br />
460<br />
1. INTRODUCTION<br />
Timothy Reardon<br />
Metropolitan Area Planning Council<br />
60 Temple Place<br />
Boston, MA 02111<br />
+1 617-451-2770<br />
treardon@mapc.org<br />
1.1 The problem<br />
Urban planners and policymakers in Metropolitan Boston often<br />
want to answer simple questions about the urban region, such as:<br />
how is the region growing? Where are new housing and office<br />
buildings being built? Is this growth harming sensitive<br />
environmental resources, like forest and wetlands? Is affordable<br />
housing being constructed near jobs and public services?<br />
Until recently, accurate data did not readily exist to answer any of<br />
these questions. Only large projects are permitted by the state, and<br />
the metropolitan region’s 101 independent municipalities makes<br />
tracking small projects difficult. Most importantly, it is difficult to<br />
discover the development “pipeline” – project proposals known to<br />
local authorities but not yet under construction. If available, this<br />
information could be used to for a wide variety of policy and<br />
planning purposes, including anticipating transportation<br />
bottlenecks and evaluating existing regulations.<br />
Sharing spatial information about cities is increasingly important<br />
given the accelerated pace of urban change, the need for<br />
monitoring to enable smart cities, and the public’s demands for<br />
greater transparency and open data. Set in a fragmented<br />
metropolitan area, this paper describes a data-sharing project<br />
designed to combine crowdsourcing methods with traditional data<br />
sharing approaches to improve sharing of real estate development<br />
project information among government agencies and the general<br />
public. The resulting database and web-based interface will be<br />
referred to as the “development database,” and a prototype is<br />
available online at http://dd.mapc.org.<br />
Metropolitan Boston includes 101 incorporated cities and towns,<br />
which range widely in population and government size and<br />
capacity. Municipal record-keeping practices vary widely, and<br />
include paper records, spreadsheets, and some digital permitting<br />
systems. Where digital data exists, municipalities have developed<br />
varied database schema that correspond with local land use<br />
regulations making data integration difficult. Other data sources,<br />
such as U.S. Census datasets or the database of large-scale<br />
projects subject to the Massachusetts Environmental Policy Act<br />
are incomplete, infrequently updated, and lack information about<br />
proposed projects still in early planning phases.
The Metropolitan Area Planning Council (MAPC) is an<br />
independent government agency charged with fostering regional<br />
planning and collaboration for 101 municipalities in Metropolitan<br />
Boston, a mission which includes developing and sharing<br />
information. However, the agency’s limited budget prohibits<br />
ongoing large-scale manual data collection. There are also many<br />
public agencies, advocacy organizations, researchers, and other<br />
stakeholders who would benefit from more accessible and<br />
accurate information about planned and proposed development<br />
projects in the region. MAPC developed this tool not only for<br />
specific organizational purposes, but to also create a new public<br />
resource fitting its broad mission of fostering collaboration and<br />
discussion.<br />
2. THEORY AND PREVIOUS WORK<br />
2.1 Theory<br />
The development database was initially developed to facilitate<br />
inter-agency spatial information sharing. Phase I demonstrated the<br />
usefulness of tools that reduce the transaction costs of information<br />
sharing, but also the ongoing barriers to information sharing<br />
explained by inter-organizational relations theory. In addition, it<br />
demonstrates how technology can substantially improve sharing<br />
for certain contexts. The second phase plans to combine interagency<br />
information sharing processes with crowdsourcing. For the<br />
purposes of this project, we define crowdsourcing as a method to<br />
collect data from a large number of people using nonmonetary<br />
incentives.<br />
In practice, many government agencies are hesitant to share<br />
information, even when it falls within their legal mandate or<br />
would advance the ideal of government transparency. One<br />
explanation for this behavior is inter-organizational relations<br />
theory, which argues organizations avoid data sharing since it<br />
results in a loss of autonomy and increased interdependence [1].<br />
Overcoming these barriers requires the negotiation of<br />
arrangements with mutual benefits, often requiring a lengthy<br />
process of problem-setting, cooperation, and coordination. A<br />
recent survey of inter-agency spatial information sharing found<br />
relationships started with staff interactions, but was often<br />
facilitated by formalized mechanisms such as contracts,<br />
regulations, and policies [2]. At a technical level, data sharing is<br />
further limited if the information resides in multiple information<br />
systems, or even paper records, and does not share a similar<br />
underlying structure. For information with modest sharing<br />
benefits, crafting data sharing agreements is cost-prohibitive for<br />
participants. In this case, absent a mandate, municipalities lack the<br />
resources and motivation to compile and report development data<br />
regularly.<br />
This project is also related to the e-government literature on<br />
intergovernmental information integration, an emerging area of egovernment<br />
research [3, 4]. Studies in this area use<br />
multidisciplinary methods to document the technology,<br />
organizational factors, interorganizaitonal context, and policy and<br />
social environment required for successful information<br />
integration. This project differs from much of the research in this<br />
area since it focuses on local government. The success of the<br />
project suggests local government is particularly ripe for technical<br />
innovation, since interagency norms of information sharing are<br />
present but technical infrastructures are lacking. In fact, the<br />
development database is an example of a locally-generated<br />
461<br />
infrastructure for information interoperability called for by<br />
Lansbergen and Wolken [5].<br />
Crowdsourcing is dividing a large task into small pieces that can<br />
be completed by a “crowd” of participants. A study of successful<br />
crowdsourcing projects argues participants can be motivated by<br />
either money, “love,” or “glory” [6]. Crowdsourcing has been and<br />
is used to collect spatial information for crisis response projects<br />
and to develop the Wikipedia of maps, OpenStreetMap.<br />
Goodchild has proposed the term “volunteered geographic<br />
information” to cover the expanding datasets compiled by<br />
volunteers [7]. Linders has proposed this form of “citizen<br />
reporting” fits into a broader spectrum of ICT-enabled<br />
coproduction of public goods, where governments facilitate data<br />
collection [8]. The development team is considering how to<br />
operationalize nonmonetary incentives for the members of the<br />
“crowd” through game mechanics, such as providing public<br />
recognition for users who contribute information.<br />
2.2 Data Crowdsourcing Examples<br />
This section describes two examples of similar projects that use<br />
crowdsourcing principles to collect spatial information about the<br />
urban environment.<br />
OpenStreetMap (http://openstreetmap.org) is often referred to as<br />
the Wikipedia of maps and geographic data. Anybody can login,<br />
create and edit this freely available world map. The project started<br />
in 2004, mainly as response to restrictive European public data<br />
policies and was the first high-profile project in the realm of<br />
volunteered geographic information. OpenStreetMap’s core is a<br />
simplified geographic data model, specifying “nodes” (points),<br />
“ways” (lines between points) and “relations” (relations between<br />
map objects), which are used to describe and map virtually many<br />
real world objects, such as streets, buildings, and other features.<br />
Since its beginning, the OpenStreetMap community has grown to<br />
about 700,000 users worldwide and provides detailed and up-todate<br />
maps for many parts of the world that are higher quality than<br />
available government or commercial maps.<br />
OpenTreeMap (http://opentreemap.github.com/) is an Open<br />
Source platform to search and contribute to a collaborative,<br />
interactive and dynamic map of a community's tree population.<br />
The project can be freely downloaded, customized and installed<br />
by any interested organization or community. It is not a hosted<br />
service and requires some resources to be deployed and used in a<br />
community or region. Users can sign-up and map, update data or<br />
add photos about trees in their community and work<br />
collaboratively on a publicly accessible tree inventory, which is<br />
traditionally a resource intensive process for local authorities.<br />
These two projects take different approaches to their geographic<br />
scale and user communities. OpenStreetMap maintains a<br />
centralized technical infrastructure for the world, and has<br />
developed a large user community who are able to edit any of the<br />
worldwide data. This approach seems suitable for a project with a<br />
simplified data model, a project goal to develop a worldwide map,<br />
and a small coordinating organization. The development database<br />
described in this article shares more similarities with the<br />
OpenTreeMap. In this case, an open source tool is designed to be<br />
implemented in specific places. This approach allows the system<br />
to be tailored to local conditions and implemented by local<br />
organizations which can leverage context-specific resources (such<br />
as interorganizational relationships and positive name<br />
recognition).
3. SYSTEM DEVELOPMENT<br />
3.1 Phase I<br />
3.1.1 Overview<br />
The first phase of the Development Database project,<br />
implemented in late 2010, involved developing a novel web-based<br />
database to collect information from municipal staff about<br />
recently completed and planned developments. MAPC has<br />
previously collected this information through telephone calls and<br />
paper and online surveys. The web-based tool was developed<br />
because it provided several advantages:<br />
o Municipal staff can identify the location of a project on a<br />
map, resulting in greater spatial accuracy than collecting only<br />
addresses;<br />
o Projects can be automatically labeled with the appropriate<br />
municipality and Transportation Analysis Zone (TAZ) based<br />
on the designated location;<br />
o Municipal staff can review, edit, and update data collected in<br />
a previous survey, completed in 2007.<br />
MAPC collects development information for a variety of planning<br />
purposes. In this case, the agency was updating population and<br />
employment projections for use by the Boston Metropolitan<br />
Planning Organization in their 2035 Regional Transportation Plan.<br />
MAPC distributed the database web address and use instructions<br />
to municipal staff by email, and 64 municipal representatives<br />
created accounts to verify or enter development project<br />
information, resulting in a database of over 1,100 projects. Several<br />
technically sophisticated municipalities, including Cambridge,<br />
Somerville, and Boston, provided information in spreadsheet<br />
formats (including latitude and longitude coordinates) exported<br />
from internal records systems. These were manually combined<br />
with the data from the web-based system. The quantity of<br />
development projects in those municipalities would have been<br />
overwhelming for staff to manually enter individually. Following<br />
receipt and input of all municipal submissions, MAPC staff<br />
reviewed all projects in the database to confirm their location and<br />
status. The final product was made available as a spreadsheet and<br />
shapefile available for download from MAPC’s website.<br />
3.1.2 Technical Architecture and Lessons Learned<br />
The development database web application was built with freely<br />
available open source software tools:<br />
o PostgreSQL with the PostGIS extension for spatial data is<br />
used as a database server;<br />
o Data modeling, data forms, user registration and<br />
o<br />
management is done with Django, a Python-based web<br />
framework;<br />
Leaflet is used as mapping tool for displaying basemaps such<br />
as OpenStreetMap, Bing Aerials or a custom MAPC<br />
Basemap) and a project point layer and also allows users to<br />
“drag and drop” markers on the map to add or adjust precise<br />
project locations.<br />
The interface for data manipulation was kept as simple as<br />
possible. Although the chosen software tools would allow more<br />
sophisticated functionality – for instance, instead of point<br />
locations project polygons could be drawn on a map – the strategy<br />
was to have low barriers for users in order to improve the<br />
response rate and level of user participation.<br />
462<br />
MAPC was fortunate to have a few friendly users during the first<br />
few days after the launch. This group provided feedback that<br />
helped to tweak the system and iron out elements in the interface<br />
that caused confusion for non-tech-savvy users. A quick round of<br />
usability tests before launch or roll-out would have been helpful to<br />
catch some issues in advance, and is the recommended method<br />
when primarily targeting a non-technical audience. The<br />
application must be easy to use in order to generate a valuable<br />
data stream in return.<br />
As a fallback, if users were not willing to use the online system,<br />
digital spreadsheets and paper maps were sent out to municipal<br />
staff on request. The strategy was maximize internal efficiency<br />
and have as many entries through the web application added and<br />
validated.<br />
From the perspective of the existing literature on information<br />
sharing, Phase I of the development database confirmed the<br />
significant potential that exists for technology to enhance sharing.<br />
However, notably the technology augmented existing practices<br />
and relationships between municipal employees and the agency.<br />
3.2 Phase II<br />
3.2.1 Overview<br />
The two goals of the second phase of the project is to expand the<br />
website’s functionality as well as opening the system to the<br />
general public. Preliminary development of this phase is<br />
complete, and a beta version was distributed to test users in July<br />
2012. In order to enable broad participation but also ensure data<br />
quality, this phase of the database will accommodate several<br />
distinct user levels.<br />
3.2.2 Development Process<br />
The first stage of the development process included outreach to<br />
the target constituencies for the “crowd”: municipal staff, public<br />
agencies, academics, researchers, the development industry, and<br />
journalists. Six semi-structured interviews were completed with<br />
municipal staff and the development industry, and public agencies<br />
and researchers were consulted. The outreach included questions<br />
soliciting feedback about the existing system, specific<br />
development attributes they desired, and requirements for data<br />
quality. Municipal staff expressed an interest in using the system<br />
to answer citizen information requests. Therefore fields were<br />
added for project website URLs, as well as for sales and listing<br />
agents. We also designed the system so each municipality could<br />
link to only the projects in their jurisdiction.<br />
The development community expressed an interest in entering<br />
information about projects for marketing purposes, using existing<br />
data for market research purposes, as well as to identify projects<br />
for business-to-business marketing purposes. As a result of this<br />
feedback we created a field for the lead developer.<br />
For the next stage of system development, the results from the<br />
outreach as well as MAPC’s internal data needs were used to<br />
develop a list of database attributes, as well as wireframe<br />
diagrams illustrating the revised system functionality and layout.<br />
3.2.3 Website Functionality<br />
The first version of the development database included the ability<br />
to view all projects contained with a municipality, and view and<br />
edit the detailed attributes for a project. The second phase features
expanded functionality in three areas: database navigation, data<br />
access, and data structure.<br />
Additional webpages were added to improve the database<br />
navigation and usefulness. These changes include a (1) search<br />
page, including a map or table of results, (2) dynamic reports<br />
summarizing the total number and size of projects that meet<br />
specific search criteria, and (3) a project detail and editing page.<br />
The search and dynamic reports features include searching by<br />
municipality, by project size and status, as well as for projects<br />
permitted under specific regulations.<br />
Phase II of the database will also allow users to extract<br />
information for the entire region of for certain specific search<br />
criteria. This feature will allow downloading data in tabular<br />
(CSV) and spatial (KML) formats.<br />
Finally, the data structure of the database has also been modified.<br />
In addition to identifying a project’s point location, the website<br />
will assign one or more affected land parcels. The website will<br />
also collect and display a larger set of project attributes than the<br />
first version, including information about developers, designers,<br />
and contractors, which may prompt more inputs from the real<br />
estate development community.<br />
3.2.4 User Model<br />
The second phase of the development database will introduce user<br />
levels allowing different types of users to participate in the<br />
project.<br />
o The public will have read-only access to the data, as well as<br />
some limited search and downloading functionality.<br />
o Registered users will be able to set a preferred municipality,<br />
download data more easily, and enter new projects or edit the<br />
attributes of existing projects. However, these contributions<br />
will be moderated.<br />
o Approved users will include municipal staff or other<br />
municipal representative (such as a citizen serving on a local<br />
board or commission) will be able to edit projects in their<br />
municipality, as well as moderate the contributions of all<br />
registered users for their town.<br />
To incentivize participation, the project team is considering<br />
integrating game-like elements and mechanics. These might<br />
include a “leaderboard” listing users who make the most<br />
contributions, “badges” to encourage users to perform certain<br />
actions such as editing several projects or providing different<br />
types of information.<br />
4. CONCLUSION<br />
Despite rapid advances in web-based technologies for creating<br />
and sharing geographic information, significant barriers remain<br />
for developing spatial information. In particular, regional planning<br />
in the United States often requires obtaining information from<br />
many independent municipalities. This project represents an<br />
innovative hybrid approach to solve this problem for one class of<br />
spatial information, development projects. MAPC continues to<br />
463<br />
develop relationships with municipal staff, which may include<br />
occasional requests to view and update municipal data and<br />
interactions which may lead to formalized sharing practices. The<br />
development database will also seek to use a crowdsourcing<br />
methodology to enable members of the general public with a<br />
particular interest in urban development to contribute and use<br />
development data. Phase I of the project demonstrates the<br />
potential for new technologies to significantly enhance the volume<br />
and accuracy of information sharing in favorable<br />
interorganizational and policy contexts.<br />
5. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS<br />
The other MAPC staff involved in the project includes Barry<br />
Fradkin and Meghna Dutta. The project is funded by the Boston<br />
Metropolitan Planning Organization and a Sustainable<br />
Communities Regional Planning Grant from the U.S. Department<br />
of Housing and Urban Development.<br />
6. REFERENCES<br />
[1] Azad, B., and Wiggins, L., "Dynamics of Inter-<br />
Organizational Geographic Data Sharing: A Conceptual<br />
Framework for Research", in (Onsrud, H.J., and Rushton, G.,<br />
'eds.'): Sharing Geographic Information, Rutgers Center for<br />
Urban Policy Research, New Brunswick, New Jersey, 1995<br />
[2] Nedovic-Budic, Z., and Warnecke, L., "Gis Database<br />
Development and Exchange: Interaction Mechanisms and<br />
Motivations", Spatial Data Infrastructures in Context: North<br />
and South, 2011, pp. 69.<br />
[3] Pardo, T.A., and Tayi, G.K., "Interorganizational<br />
Information Integration: A Key Enabler for Digital<br />
Government", Government Information Quarterly, 24(4),<br />
2007, pp. 691-715.<br />
[4] Gil-Garcia, J.R., Chun, S.A., and Janssen, M., "Government<br />
Information Sharing and Integration: Combining the Social<br />
and the Technical", Information Polity, 14(1), 2009, pp. 1-<br />
10.<br />
[5] Landsbergen Jr, D., and Wolken Jr, G., "Realizing the<br />
Promise: Government Information Systems and the Fourth<br />
Generation of Information Technology", Public<br />
Administration Review, 61(2), 2001, pp. 206-220.<br />
[6] Malone, T., Laubacher, R., and Dellarocas, C., "The<br />
Collective Intelligence Genome", Sloan Management<br />
Review, 51(3), 2010, pp. 21-31.<br />
[7] Goodchild, M.F., "Citizens as Sensors: The World of<br />
Volunteered Geography", GeoJournal, 69(4), 2007, pp. 211-<br />
221.<br />
[8] Linders, D., "We-Government: An Anatomy of Citizen<br />
Coproduction in the Information Age", Digital Government<br />
Society Dg.o 11, 2011
Drivers for Public Sector Contests<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
This study investigates the use of technology-enabled open<br />
innovation practices in public sector agencies. It draws on<br />
theories from the corporate sector and empirical data collected<br />
from government agencies in the U.S. federal government. Based<br />
on preliminary insights from public managers responsible for the<br />
design of challenges and prizes as an innovative form of open<br />
innovation we derive an open innovation research framework. The<br />
main factors influencing the decision to adopt an open innovation<br />
approach in the public sector include organizational, project, and<br />
individual level factors.<br />
Categories and Subject Descriptors<br />
K.4.3 [Organizational Impacts]: Computer-Supported<br />
Collaborative Work<br />
General Terms<br />
Management, Theory<br />
Keywords<br />
Open Innovation, Distributed Innovation, Public Sector<br />
1. INTRODUCTION<br />
In recent years we have witnessed a shift in the innovation<br />
landscape of organizations from closed to more open models<br />
which embrace input into processes, design elements, or<br />
innovative campaigns from the organization’s stakeholders. This<br />
emerging trend is enabled by the internet and social media which<br />
allow the easy flow of information and connection to widely<br />
dispersed experts and enthusiasts [2]. Originating as a private<br />
sector practice, government agencies have begun to embrace this<br />
open approach to problem solving. In the US Federal government,<br />
Challenges and Prizes were introduced as a tool to help agencies<br />
find cost-effective and innovative solutions to the nation’s<br />
problems. In a memo issued from the White House Office of<br />
Management and Budget (OMB) in March 2010 [6] executive<br />
departments and agencies were specifically encouraged to<br />
increase their capacity to support, design and manage prizes,<br />
whether acting alone or in collaboration with external partners.<br />
The memo also articulated the administration’s intention to make<br />
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for<br />
personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are<br />
not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies<br />
bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for<br />
components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored.<br />
Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to<br />
post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission<br />
and/or a fee.<br />
ICEGOV '12, October 22 - 25 2012, Albany, NY, United States, NY, USA<br />
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1200-4/12/10…$15.00.<br />
Claudia Louis<br />
Syracuse University<br />
School of Information Studies<br />
315-443-4508<br />
calouis@syr.edu<br />
464<br />
a web-based platform (Challenge.gov) available to support the<br />
practice.<br />
As an emerging area in e-government research, there are many<br />
unanswered questions concerning the use of the web and social<br />
media for innovation practices in government agencies. This<br />
study draws on private sector theories, combined with empirical<br />
data collected from government agencies to investigate the<br />
following research questions: i) why do public sector agencies<br />
decide to use technology-enabled open innovation practices as<br />
opposed to traditional methods? ii) Why are there variations<br />
among the patterns of use by various agencies? Investigation will<br />
focus on the use of a web-based crowdsourcing platform in US<br />
Federal Government agencies which solicits citizen participation<br />
in solving problems through the use of contests and challenges.<br />
The outcome is a multi-level framework to represent the<br />
organizational determinants of an open approach to problem<br />
solving in the public sector.<br />
2. OPEN INNOVATION AND<br />
CROWDSOURCING<br />
Openness in innovation refers to the practice of embracing outside<br />
participation as well as sharing with others on the outside [3].<br />
Crowdsourcing is a subset of open innovation, and refers to the<br />
practice of outsourcing to crowds. Organizations make the details<br />
of their problems publicly available, and invite potential solvers to<br />
submit solutions. An example of such activity is the initiative by<br />
LEGO to get ideas for new models by soliciting submissions from<br />
customers, with payment of financial rewards for viable<br />
submissions. Likewise the shirt retailer Threadless sells<br />
merchandise designed based on customer submissions [1].<br />
While some advocate the transferring of private sector innovation<br />
theories to the public sector, the unique attributes of public sector<br />
organizations cannot be ignored. For example the bureaucratic<br />
nature with hierarchical structures, strict rules, and conventional<br />
work patterns sometimes make it difficult to try out<br />
unconventional or risky ideas [5]. However that does not diminish<br />
the potential contribution of open innovation practices to public<br />
sector operations.<br />
3. METHOD<br />
The investigation took the form of a multiple case study<br />
examining 28 open innovation projects utilizing the challenges<br />
and prizes format. Cases were selected across 17 agencies and<br />
based on the category of the challenge project. Stratified<br />
purposeful sampling was used to ensure proportional distribution<br />
in each of the four categories identified from earlier analysis of<br />
the Challenge.gov website.
For each case, semi-structured interviews were conducted with<br />
one or two persons responsible for the administration of the<br />
project. Qualitative interviews were used because they provided<br />
an opportunity to understand people within their social and<br />
cultural context. Interviews elicited responses about the i) the<br />
decision to use the challenge format ii) organizational processes<br />
surrounding the use of this approach iii) outcomes and<br />
implementation of submissions and iv) lessons learned and<br />
recommendations for public managers. Some preliminary<br />
qualitative analysis has been conducted on the interview data<br />
which will be followed by a combination of more in-depth<br />
qualitative and content analysis. A combination of deductive and<br />
inductive methods has been employed to identify the main<br />
enablers and barriers to practicing open innovation activities.<br />
4. CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK<br />
Organizations who decide to invest in open innovation activities<br />
are sometimes hindered from profiting from these activities due to<br />
certain risks and barriers which they face [4]. In an attempt to<br />
develop a framework for investigating open innovation in the<br />
public sector, we present factors at three distinct levels:<br />
organizational, individual, and project level. At each specific level<br />
a number of factors have been selected based on prominence in<br />
the literature, applicability to the public sector, preliminary<br />
analysis of interview data. At the organizational level the factors<br />
major influencing factors are organization commitment,<br />
management support, and origin of initiative (top-down or<br />
bottom-up). At the project level we examine nature of problem<br />
faced, and presence of a project champion. At the individual level<br />
we examine employee attitudes (Not invented here syndrome) and<br />
perceptions of benefits. At this point the framework is still<br />
emerging and subject to change after more in-depth analysis.<br />
5. FINDINGS<br />
The conceptual framework represents determinants which have so<br />
far been found to influence the decision of an agency to use an<br />
open innovation approach to solve a problem. Preliminary<br />
qualitative analysis of interview data provided support for some of<br />
the factors suggested in the literature such as management<br />
support, organization commitment, employee attitudes, and<br />
perception of benefits. The remaining determinants emerged<br />
inductively from the data: origin of initiative (top-down vs<br />
bottom-up), nature of the problem, and presence of a project<br />
champion. For example one participant stated that “we did it<br />
because it was suggested from the top”, while another indicated<br />
that one of the keys to running an effective challenge was the<br />
presence of a “project champion”. The literature suggested the<br />
presence of bureaucracy and red-tape to be a barrier for<br />
government agencies. Some of the participants who identified<br />
themselves as early adopters indicated that it was extremely<br />
difficult to navigate the necessary legal authority before the<br />
passage of the America Competes Act in 2010. Many admitted<br />
465<br />
that the guidelines and legal authority has significantly reducing<br />
the legal burden for agencies. Other barriers emerging from the<br />
data included legal barriers in selecting judges outside the public<br />
sector, and some technical restrictions of the software platform.<br />
The data provided support for an earlier categorization of the type<br />
of project listed on the challenge.gov website. The four categories<br />
emerging from the process were: i) creativity contests aimed at<br />
public awareness initiatives ii) software applications (apps) and<br />
tools for service provision iii) generating research and ideas and<br />
iv) technical solutions. For example one participant stated that<br />
their agency decided to do only apps challenges because they had<br />
just released a larger amount of public data. Another indicated<br />
that they only did video contests because they “did not have much<br />
experience in running challenges”. Further, there appears to be a<br />
relationship between the category of project undertaken and<br />
mission and strategic plan of the organization. For example,<br />
organizations with public engagement or outreach as part of their<br />
mission had a greater tendency to do video/poster contests and<br />
app challenges. Agencies with a more technical mission tended to<br />
have more of the technical solutions. The different categories of<br />
challenge also varied in level of skill required to solve and the size<br />
of the prize purse attached.<br />
6. OUTLOOK<br />
Factors emerging from the conceptual framework can provide<br />
some guidance to agencies working on current and future<br />
implementations, as well as help them learn from the mistakes and<br />
successes of early adopters. Overall more research is needed on<br />
the viability of open innovation as a public sector practice.<br />
7. REFERENCES<br />
[1] Bughin, J., Chui, M., & Johnson, B. (2008). The next step in<br />
open innovation. The McKinsey Quarterly, June 2008<br />
[2] Chesbrough, H. W. (2003). A Better Way to Innovate.<br />
Harvard Business Review, 81(7), 12-13.<br />
[3] Chesbrough, H. W. (2011). Bringing Open Innovation to<br />
Services. MIT Sloan Management Review, 52(2), 85-90.<br />
[4] Enkel, E., Gassmann, O., & Chesbrough, H. (2009). Open<br />
R&D and open innovation: exploring the phenomenon. R&D<br />
Management, 39(4), 311-316.<br />
[5] Vigoda-Gadot, E., Shoham, A., Schwabsky, N., & Ruvio , A.<br />
(2005). Public sector innovation for the managerial and the<br />
post-managerial era: Promises and realities in a globalizing<br />
public administration. International Public Management<br />
Journal, 8(1), 57-81.<br />
[6] White House (2010). Guidance on the Use of Challenges and<br />
Prizes to Promote Open Government, Memorandum for the<br />
Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies, March 8
ABSTRACT<br />
Rwanda was characterized by divisionism, where one part of<br />
Rwandan (Tutsi) was excluded. In 1994 tutsi genocide more than<br />
1 million people were killed, mutilated and injured.<br />
Based on the analysis of field data collected through interviews,<br />
this research provided to decision makers a web portal solution to<br />
address the reconciliation challenges in Rwanda.<br />
The findings show that one of the benefits of implementing ereconciliation<br />
web portal will be to get easily the information<br />
related to reconciliation there will be other benefits, like avoiding<br />
history distortion, it will show negative impact of genocide, and it<br />
will be the best way to help Rwandans and international<br />
community to learn about the genocide. Although a number of<br />
challenges have been found, the main challenge would be the lack<br />
of internet access; other challenges include: the authenticity of<br />
information and the collection of information to be posted on the<br />
web portal. To address those challenges e-reconciliation can be<br />
accessible via mobile phone as the majority of Rwandan has<br />
access to mobile phone. The information posted on ereconciliation<br />
web portal must have references recognized and the<br />
decision makers have to delegate who will manage the posted<br />
information.<br />
Categories and Subject Descriptors<br />
K.4.0 [COMPUTERS AND SOCIETY]: General<br />
General Terms<br />
Human Factors<br />
1. INTRODUCTION<br />
Rwanda a landlocked country situated in central Africa was<br />
characterized by divisionism, where one part of Rwandan (Tutsi)<br />
was discriminated. In 1994 tutsi genocide more than 1 million<br />
people were killed, mutilated and injured.<br />
The Rwandan government is trying to build up the society and<br />
create stability. The main goal of government now is the process<br />
of reconciliation.<br />
Information relevant to reconciliation of Rwandan is not<br />
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for<br />
personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are<br />
not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies<br />
bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for<br />
components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored.<br />
Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to<br />
post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission<br />
and/or a fee.<br />
ICEGOV '12, October 22 - 25 2012, Albany, NY, USA<br />
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1200-4/12/10...$15.00<br />
E-Reconciliation in Rwanda<br />
Bagambiki Erika<br />
National Bank of Rwanda<br />
P. O. Box 531 Kigali Rwanda<br />
Phone: +250 788643998<br />
viterika@yahoo.fr<br />
466<br />
centralized or coordinated. The research proposed to decision<br />
makers an ICT Solution which will help to integrate the relevant<br />
information that pertain to reconciliation in Rwanda and offer<br />
them in a web portal.<br />
2. METHODS<br />
The research used an electronic survey for the following groups to<br />
assess the reconciliation gaps and challenges:<br />
• GAERG: Association bringing together former students<br />
who survived the genocide of Tutsis in 1994.<br />
• IBUKA: Preserve the memory of the 1994 genocide of<br />
Tutsi, support survivors in overcoming its continuing<br />
effects, and work to prevent further genocide.<br />
• CNLG: National Commission for the Fight against<br />
Genocide.<br />
• Prisoners: Prisoners who killed people during the<br />
genocide<br />
• Burial Sites Managers: Managers for different memorial<br />
sites for victims of the genocide in Rwanda<br />
• NURC: National Unity and Reconciliation Commission<br />
3. AIM<br />
The aim of the research was to analyze the reconciliation of<br />
Rwandan, how ICTs can help in Rwanda’s reconciliation efforts<br />
and arrive at a more significant result.<br />
4. RESULTS<br />
For all groups, Access to information related to reconciliation of<br />
Rwandan takes time; the problem resides on access from different<br />
sources.
Figure 1. Comparative analysis on the Results of the<br />
question about access of information related to<br />
reconciliation of Rwanda<br />
Getting an e-reconciliation web portal will help to get easily the<br />
information, it will avoid the history distortion; it will Show<br />
negative impact of Genocide, etc.<br />
Figure 2. Comparative analysis on the results of the question<br />
about benefits of e-reconciliation web portal<br />
E-reconciliation web portal will face some challenges according<br />
to the result from questionnaire by different groups. The main<br />
challenges will be the lack of internet access, authenticity of<br />
information and the collection of information.<br />
Figure 3. Comparative analysis on the Results of the question<br />
about challenges of implementing e-reconciliation web portal<br />
5. CONCLUSION<br />
To achieve the reconciliation of Rwandans, ICT can play a very<br />
important role in a society where people can more easily<br />
communicate, understand the current situation, visualize the<br />
implications of their actions and understand each other’s point of<br />
view.<br />
The following are the recommendations to successful implement<br />
the e-reconciliation web-portal:<br />
• The Fiber optics are being installed in country wide,<br />
when this project will be finished the challenge of lack<br />
467<br />
of Internet will be reduced. Until the majority of<br />
Rwandans have access to internet there are other<br />
solutions to the lack of internet like using mobile phone<br />
as the majorities have mobile phones.<br />
• The people who will post information on ereconciliation<br />
web portal have to make the references<br />
recognized; this will answer the challenge of<br />
authenticity of information on e-reconciliation web<br />
portal<br />
• The decision makers will have to put clear methodology<br />
of collection of information to be posted on ereconciliation<br />
web portal and to delegate who will<br />
manage the posted information in order to avoid the<br />
challenge of collecting information to be posted on the<br />
web portal.<br />
Figure 5.1.The proposed e-reconciliation web portal solution<br />
and its accessibility
Electronic Participation System: The Nigerian Perspective<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
The emergence of e-Governance has transformed the way<br />
Governments carry out their businesses using Information &<br />
Communication Technology (ICT). The application of egovernance<br />
can be characterized in three major areas, namely<br />
Communication, citizen participation, and monitoring and<br />
evaluation of government projects.<br />
This paper, titled ‘Electronic Participation System: The Nigerian<br />
Perspective’ will show case an innovation being introduced to<br />
project monitoring and citizenry inclusion at Federal Government<br />
level. This will bring transparency, effective reporting by<br />
supervising Ministries, enhanced communication, citizen<br />
participation and project monitoring, and ultimately good<br />
governance and elimination of corruption.<br />
Categories and Subject Descriptors<br />
D.2.11 Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), C.0 System<br />
Application Architecture, J.3 Cellular Computing, B.7.2 Verify<br />
and K.4.1 – Fifth Generation Project<br />
General Terms<br />
Management, Performance, and Verification.<br />
Keywords<br />
Electronic Participation; e-Government; Citizen; Innovation;<br />
Project monitoring; Grassroots; ICT; mobile phones.<br />
1. INTRODUCTION<br />
The Nigerian Government has since recognized the need to evolve<br />
itself through reforms and modernization of its processes using<br />
information technology otherwise known as electronic<br />
Governance. The Electronic Government focuses on the Back-<br />
Office processes and operations, while the electronic Governance<br />
focuses on the coordination, interoperability between three tiers of<br />
Government and citizens’ inclusion.<br />
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for<br />
personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are<br />
not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies<br />
bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for<br />
components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored.<br />
Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to<br />
post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission<br />
and/or a fee.<br />
ICEGOV '12, October 22 - 25 2012, Albany, NY, USA<br />
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1200-4/12/10...$15.00<br />
Ibrahim Aliyu<br />
Federal Secretariat, Shehu Shagari<br />
Complex, Abuja. Nigeria<br />
(234) 805-318-0580; (234) 802-417-6068<br />
i_aliyu@yahoo.co.uk<br />
468<br />
It is against this background that the Office of the Secretary to the<br />
Government of the Federation (OSGF) under “The Presidency”<br />
reviewed the critical pillar of a successful e-<br />
Government/Governance, namely:<br />
i. Citizen Centricity: This is about being citizen focused<br />
by all service providers for effective service delivery.<br />
This brought about the Service Charter in the public<br />
service, by putting in place a structure for effective<br />
transformation and citizen centricity campaign.<br />
ii. Standardisation of Common infrastructure: This will<br />
facilitate data sharing or reuse at least within the<br />
Government structure.<br />
iii. Governance: Coordination and interoperability in<br />
government facilitate the provision of effective and<br />
efficient service delivery by government. The Nigerian<br />
Government has since noted the importance of<br />
Information Technology (IT) or “e” for the coordination<br />
and interoperability among Ministries, Departments and<br />
Agencies.<br />
iv. New Organisational Model: the quest for innovation and<br />
Citizen-Centric Government Services as fundamental to<br />
effective and efficient e-Governance. Hence, innovation<br />
such as electronic Participation System.<br />
v. Social/Citizens inclusion: The concept of e-Governance<br />
is not only the provision of online services, but also<br />
bridging the gap between Government and its citizenry<br />
in such a way that trust and accountability will be built,<br />
and consequently all citizen will participate in<br />
governance. Therefore, as a first step, it was realized<br />
that the easiest way for the citizens inclusion is through<br />
programmes and project monitoring.<br />
2. ELECTRONIC PARTICIPATION<br />
SYSTEM<br />
The e-Participation System is a software application that will<br />
provide a platform for Government to interface with the Nigerian<br />
public through ‘Short Message Service’ (SMS) using the mobile<br />
phones for the purpose of monitoring or tracking implementation<br />
of Government Projects. Study indicates that over 99 million<br />
Nigerian have access to mobile phones, therefore making the<br />
OSGF to contemplate taking that advantage of the mobile phones<br />
technology and internet facility to connect to its citizenry. It is<br />
expected that such feedback will enable Government to monitor<br />
projects’ progress, completed project performance, ongoing
projects and their on-site images. The system will also provide<br />
additional avenue for Citizens to forward suggestions or request<br />
for the development projects required in their locality to the<br />
Government.<br />
It was expected that, when implemented successfully at the<br />
Federal Government level, the project will ultimately be deployed<br />
at the federal level and for Federal projects, but will consequently<br />
be integrated with the States Government.<br />
2.1 E-Participation System Stakeholders<br />
All Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) at the Federal<br />
Government that execute any Federal Government project will be<br />
considered as stakeholders while the Office of the Secretary to the<br />
Government of the Federation will serve as the driver of this<br />
important e-Government Project.<br />
2.2 Objective of the E-Participation System<br />
1. Provide a Software Application that will provide<br />
interface with the Grassroots through SMS on the GSM<br />
phones and using internet facility for the purpose of<br />
monitoring and tracking Government Project<br />
Implementations.<br />
2. Provide a means for Government to monitor progress on<br />
ongoing projects, completed projects, images and all<br />
information on Projects.<br />
3. Provide a means for Government to keep track of<br />
feedback from the general public on ongoing/completed<br />
projects.<br />
4. Provide a means for the general public to submit request<br />
for developmental projects to the Government.<br />
2.3 PRIVATE SECTOR ENGAGEMENT<br />
The Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation<br />
of Nigeria, having conceived the project, engaged the services of a<br />
private sector company in the design, development and the<br />
implementation of the system while riding on the Networking and<br />
communication infrastructure provided by another Government<br />
outfit.<br />
2.4 PROJECT STATUS<br />
The project had reached an advance stage, these stages are as<br />
followings;<br />
• E-participation application has been fully developed,<br />
tested and ready for deployment<br />
• Hosting arrangements in placed.<br />
• Data collection and collation about the approved<br />
Federal Projects for the database is in progress.<br />
• A GSM Service Provider was chosen as the network<br />
operator for the SMS, for the pilot stage of the project.<br />
469<br />
GSM<br />
SERVICE<br />
PROVIDE<br />
R<br />
Mobile<br />
Network<br />
Server<br />
Figure 1. e-Participation System Overview Application<br />
Server<br />
Internet<br />
OSGF<br />
Console<br />
3. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS<br />
I wish to thank the Presidency: Office of the Secretary to the<br />
Government of the Federation (OSGF), Nigeria for the confidence<br />
and support given to the ICT Team from the conception of this<br />
project. My gratitude goes to the Director, Planning, Research and<br />
Statistics of the OSGF and entire ICT Team for the cooperation<br />
and support demonstrated on the course of conceptualization of<br />
this project to its implementation.<br />
.
Enterprise Systems and Government Organizational<br />
Changes: A Socio-Materiality Analysis<br />
Loni Hagen<br />
Department of Informatics<br />
SUNY at Albany<br />
1400 Washington Ave<br />
Albany, NY 12222<br />
(518) 442 3300<br />
lkim3@albany.edu<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
Advocates of Enterprise Systems argue that such systems promise<br />
many advantages to government organizations, such as enhancing<br />
performance, transparency, accountability and efficiency.<br />
However, the fulfillment of these promises is not easy to establish.<br />
The socio-materiality framework provides a useful way to<br />
evaluate Enterprise System implementation by investigating<br />
technology use in everyday practice over time.<br />
This study of the usage of the On-Nara system (a Korean<br />
government Enterprise System) suggests that particular structures<br />
of technology use develop in relation with institutional conditions,<br />
and responsibilities of users, as well as associated technologies in<br />
use. We argue that an Enterprise System can bring unintended<br />
(not necessarily negative) micro-level organizational changes.<br />
Further, we found that initially inflexible Enterprise Systems gain<br />
flexibility when used in combination with other internetconnected<br />
technologies.<br />
Categories and Subject Descriptors<br />
K.6.1 [Computing Milieux]: Project and People Management –<br />
Systems Analysis and Design<br />
General Terms<br />
Management, Human Factors, Theory<br />
Keywords<br />
Socio-Materiality, Practice Theory, Electronic Government,<br />
Public Management, Enterprise System, Materiality, IT Impact,<br />
Organizational Changes<br />
1. INTRODUCTION<br />
The socio-materiality framework was developed to examine the<br />
interaction between technology and users after systems go-live.<br />
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for<br />
personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are<br />
not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies<br />
bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for<br />
components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored.<br />
Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to<br />
post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission<br />
and/or a fee.<br />
ICEGOV '12, October 22 - 25 2012, Albany, NY, United States, NY, USA<br />
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1200-4/12/10…$15.00.<br />
470<br />
Donghee Sinn<br />
Department of Information Studies<br />
SUNY at Albany<br />
1400 Washington Ave<br />
Albany, NY 12222<br />
(518) 442 3300<br />
dsinn@albany.edu<br />
We choose the Korean National Police Agency as an empirical<br />
setting for a case study of the On-Nara System, an Enterprise<br />
System that the Korean Government developed to transform the<br />
way the government works.<br />
In this study, we aimed to learn: (1) What material capabilities of<br />
technology do users adopt and creatively shape in a particular<br />
organizational context?; (2) What are the changes in the users’<br />
routines after the introduction of the technology in this<br />
organization?; and (3) How do the System’s provisions and<br />
features for the goals of improving efficiency and transparency<br />
appear to be used?<br />
Going beyond the question of how a technology is appropriated in<br />
specific environments, we endeavor to understand the process of<br />
human interaction with technology wherein the socio-materiality<br />
of the human-technology nexus is constituted, and recursively<br />
reconstituted, as an emergent structure of technology-in-use.<br />
2. THEORETICAL FOUNDATION:<br />
SOCIO-MATERIALITY FRAMEWORK<br />
Wanda Orlikowski developed the socio-materiality framework to<br />
support the argument that technological materiality is inextricably<br />
bound up with everyday life [4]. The socio-materiality approach<br />
reconfigures the notion of “agency,” as a capacity realized<br />
through associations and networks of humans and materials as<br />
well as organizations, rather than simply inherent in human beings<br />
[3].<br />
The Socio-materiality view posits that humans and technologies<br />
are inseparably entangled with each other in association with<br />
organizational realities that agents build and change [3][4]. In<br />
organizational practices, the need to accomplish task goals with<br />
the available technologies can result in adjustments of routines.<br />
This explains why improvised usage of technical features can<br />
override the originally intended purposes [5]. While<br />
acknowledging that technological properties have inscribed in<br />
them the designers’ intentions and knowledge at the time of<br />
development, this view focuses on the selection and modification<br />
of particular technological capabilities by users [1].<br />
This approach is especially useful for examining internetconnected<br />
technologies where relationships between use and<br />
properties are complicated and constantly changing as new<br />
artifacts and configurations are connected to current technologies<br />
[2]. Nowadays, internet-connected technologies, including<br />
Enterprise Systems, are omnipresent in governments. One of the
key challenges of Enterprise Systems resides in their tight<br />
integration with the business process. We believe that the sociomateriality<br />
framework can aid the understanding of the dynamic<br />
and emergent nature of contemporary organizing involving the<br />
introduction of Enterprise Systems and internet-connected<br />
technologies.<br />
3. RESEARCH DESIGN OF THE STUDY<br />
In order to learn about organizational changes derived from<br />
technology, we interviewed users of the On-Nara system. We<br />
recruited interview subjects selectively among people in<br />
administrative positions in the Korean National Police Agency<br />
who have used On-Nara extensively. There were pre-screening<br />
processes to identify the most appropriate samples and finally<br />
nine phone interviews (four from the Headquarters and five from<br />
local police stations) were conducted. Interview questions were<br />
developed based on conditions (facility, interpretive scheme, and<br />
norm) of enactment which are borrowed from the practice lens<br />
proposed by Orlikowski [2].<br />
3.1 Research Setting: Government<br />
Organizations and an Enterprise System<br />
The On-Nara system was launched in 2007 with extensive<br />
supports from the Korean Ministry of Public Administration and<br />
Security. By 2011, 100% of central, provincial, and metropolitancity<br />
governments used On-Nara. On-Nara is expected to enable<br />
nationally standardized (a) online knowledge transfer, (b)<br />
document management, (c) policy analysis and performance<br />
management, and (d) preservation of decision making histories.<br />
There are six functionalities provided to users in On-Nara: Record<br />
Management, Memo Report, Task Management, Meeting<br />
Management, Order Management, and Schedule Management.<br />
4. FINDINGS<br />
A variety of technology mediated practices emerged, which<br />
depended on individual technological efficacy, knowledge of and<br />
interests in technologies, institutional conditions, and other<br />
technologies at hand. The On-Nara system was used creatively to<br />
improve individual or group productivity, and to collect feedback<br />
from colleagues. Distinctive new practices observed are described<br />
briefly below.<br />
First, users who see using On-Nara as constraining their legacy<br />
practices, tend to work around it. For instance, when users<br />
perceive that the level of transparency required in On-Nara as<br />
burdensome, they would instead use the messenger function from<br />
the Police Integrated Portal System (IPOS) for corresponding to<br />
each other (Interview #4, #6). Second, users improvise<br />
technological capabilities from certain functions in On-Nara that<br />
they find helpful for attaining their task goals. The Memo Report<br />
was initially developed for brief reports to superiors. But it was<br />
also creatively utilized for receiving opinions from colleagues<br />
who would be interested in or knowledgeable about a matter<br />
471<br />
(usually for policy preparation or project planning) prior to<br />
official review (Interview #1, #2, #3, #6). Third, enactment of On-<br />
Nara is deeply intertwined with other technologies in use.<br />
Functions of some systems (such as the Police Knowledge<br />
Management System) overlap with those of On-Nara, which<br />
creates less utilization of such functions in On-Nara. For example,<br />
the Police Knowledge Management System is popularly used by<br />
police officers to acquire business knowledge including<br />
instructions, manuals, professional reports, and official<br />
government reports. On-Nara came into use after this system, and<br />
one of the original intentions of the On-Nara system, enabling online<br />
knowledge transfer, does not seem to have been effectively<br />
achieved. This suggests that when there is an existing system that<br />
works efficiently, people will tend to continue to use it, even if a<br />
similar function is available in a new system.<br />
5. CONCLUSION<br />
Using a socio-materiality framework, we identified multiple<br />
emergent practices of technological usage. We identified<br />
unintended changes in user routine that were induced by the<br />
enactment of the On-Nara system. This study illustrates how an<br />
Enterprise System can result in unintended micro-level<br />
organizational changes.<br />
The socio-materiality view posits that non-human factors, along<br />
with human agents, play consequential roles in the production of<br />
social life. Our study of On-Nara-in-Practice confirm that the<br />
technological context in which a new Enterprise System is<br />
embedded (e.g. IPOS in the Korean National Police Agency) is<br />
crucial in shaping the structures of technology use. We further<br />
note that a relatively inflexible Enterprise System can become<br />
more flexible as human enact it recursively in relation with other<br />
internet-connected technologies.<br />
6. REFERENCES<br />
[1] Harrison, T., Pardo, T., Gil-Garcia, J., Thompson, F., and<br />
Juraga, D. Geographic information technologies,<br />
structuration theory, and the World Trade Center crisis.<br />
Journal of the American Society for Information Science &<br />
Technology, 58(14). 2240–2254.<br />
[2] Orlikowski, W.J. Using Technology and constituting<br />
structures: A practice lens for studying technology in<br />
organizations. Organization Science, 11(4). 404–428.<br />
[3] Orlikowski, W.J. Sociomaterial practices: Exploring<br />
technology at work. Organization Studies, 28(9). 1435–1448.<br />
[4] Orlikowski, W.J. The Sociomateriality of organisational life:<br />
Considering technology in management research. Cambridge<br />
Journal of Economics, 34(1). 125–141.<br />
[5] Schultze, U. and Orlikowski, W.J. A practice perspective on<br />
technology-mediated network relations: The use of Internetbased<br />
self-serve technologies. Information Systems Research.<br />
15(1). 87–106.
Evaluation of E-Governance Projects of Nepal<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
Nepal is a South Asian nation located between China and India.<br />
Internal conflict of more than 15 years has driven back the<br />
country in terms of infrastructure, education, health and overall<br />
national development. However, a peace process has concluded<br />
the conflict and Nepal is now making a slow transition to peace.<br />
And in an effort to modernize itself, the government of Nepal has<br />
formulated an e-governance master plan, or eGMP. The paper<br />
aims to evaluate the major e-governance projects running under<br />
the eGMP. The analysis is based on the basis of more than 20<br />
years of experience as a senior officer of government of Nepal<br />
and long time experience of e-governance initiations at the central<br />
level.<br />
Categories and Subject Descriptors<br />
J.1.4 [Computer Application]: Administrative Data Processing -<br />
Government<br />
General Terms<br />
Management<br />
Keywords<br />
Electronic Governance, Projects, Nepal, Evaluation<br />
1. INTRODUCTION<br />
Many countries around the world are establishing the egovernment<br />
to change their national administrative system for<br />
greater work efficiency. Through this, governments aim to<br />
provide administrative services in a prompt and convenient<br />
manner to their people and seek to enhance their national<br />
competitiveness.<br />
The government of Nepal pursues similar aims; with the eGMP, it<br />
expects to overcome Nepal’s geographical adversities, promote<br />
infrastructure, basic services, and achieve a new round of socioeconomic<br />
development. To achieve these aims, the government<br />
set-up a High Level Commission for Information Technology<br />
(HLCIT), in 2003, and introduced several IT policies. Nepal<br />
Government, along with HLCIT, established the e-government<br />
master plan (eGMP) in 2006. The project period was set for five<br />
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for<br />
personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are<br />
not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies<br />
bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for<br />
components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored.<br />
Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to<br />
post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission<br />
and/or a fee.<br />
ICEGOV '12, October 22 - 25 2012, Albany, NY, USA<br />
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1200-4/12/10...$15.00<br />
Ganesh Prasad Adhikari<br />
NID, Ministry of Home Affairs<br />
Singhdurbar, Kathmandu, Nepal<br />
00977-01-4377974<br />
ganesh.adhk@gmail.com<br />
472<br />
years-from 2007 to 2011.<br />
2. MAJOR ACTIVITIES UNDER EGMP<br />
The Nepal Government has introduced Information and<br />
Communication Technology Development (ICTD) as a part of the<br />
eGMP. It is aimed at the Nepalese living in the hilly and<br />
mountainous regions of the country. They comprise 52% of the<br />
total population and their progress has been severely affected by<br />
geographic adversities of the regions they live in. The program<br />
aims to provide them better access to information related to<br />
market, job opportunities, health, education and policies, by<br />
establishing proper ICT facilities and internet connectivity.<br />
The project was estimated to cost US$ 31.2 million and was<br />
financed by the following organizations:<br />
i) Asian Development Bank (ADB): US$ 25 million<br />
ii) Nepal Government: US$ 6.2 million through taxes, duties, and<br />
contingencies.<br />
The project comprises of the four components: (1) rural ecommunities,<br />
(2) government network, (3) e-government<br />
applications, and (4) human resources development for egovernance.<br />
The main activities under the above three<br />
components are as follows.<br />
3. PART ONE: RURAL E COMMUNITY<br />
In this phase, the government plans to modernize the rural areas<br />
by improving rural connectivity using the wireless broadband<br />
networks. This objective will be completed in four different<br />
phases. Firstly, wireless broadband networks will be established in<br />
38 out of 75 districts in the country. The installation will be done<br />
in a phased manner and the selected 38 districts will be spread<br />
across all the major geographic regions of Nepal. Then, Village<br />
Network Portals will be established in 11 districts of the country.<br />
They will have the capacity to work in Nepali, English and local<br />
languages. Thirdly, 114 Telecenters will be established in 38<br />
districts. They will have access to the Village Portals and be<br />
integrated with the rural wireless broadband system. The rural<br />
community will be trained by both private and government<br />
institutions so that they can adapt to this infrastructure.<br />
4. PART TWO: GOVERNMENT<br />
NETWORK<br />
The government plans to establish its ICT network by<br />
strengthening Government Integrated Data Center (GIDC), which<br />
has already been established within the National Information<br />
Technology Center (NITC). With this, a data base will be<br />
established where all e-government applications will be housed.<br />
This can lead to the integration of all the groupware applications<br />
into a single web service with open standards for all ministries<br />
and departments.
5. PART THREE: E GOVERNMENT<br />
APPLICATIONS<br />
Looking at specific interests, the government will focus on<br />
establishing a group of particular e-government applications. It<br />
plans to establish enterprise architecture and develop e-<br />
Government operation policy and guidelines. It will also design<br />
and implement web-based system for the public service<br />
commission, land record management, and vehicle registration<br />
and driving licensing systems.<br />
More importantly, the government plans to establish a national<br />
identification system. Every citizen will get a unique identity<br />
number, and there will be a database to keep the record of each<br />
citizen and share among stakeholders. This will be achieved by<br />
generation of a unique ID number, registration in the national<br />
database, verification with biometric features, printing biometric<br />
smart National ID card and issuance of the card to the people.<br />
6. PART FOUR: HUMAN RESOURCE<br />
DEVELOPMENT FOR E GOVERNANCE<br />
In this section, the government aims to build awareness and skills<br />
of the key stakeholders in e-Governance, establish computer<br />
laboratories for training, and develop a better curriculum for the<br />
same purpose. The latter will be done with research and<br />
collaboration with universities.<br />
7. IMPLEMENTATION SCHEDULE<br />
According to the project implementation schedule prepared by<br />
ADB on September 2008, finalizing the bidding documents of all<br />
the above mentioned projects should start on 29 September 2009<br />
and finish on 11 February 2009. Likewise the procurement of all<br />
projects should start on 14 th December and finish on 16 June<br />
2009. The design, supply, installations, testing and commissioning<br />
of the projects under part two and three should start on 01 January<br />
2009 and should finish on 14 th October 2010. It means<br />
commissioning of the most of the projects should finish by the<br />
October 2010.<br />
8. DEVELOPMENT REVIEW AND<br />
CURRENT STATUS OF PROJECTS<br />
According to the Asian Development Bank, as of 30 November<br />
2010, the project’s physical progress is estimated at about 30%,<br />
cumulative contract awards and disbursements were $.2.4 million<br />
and 0.3 million respectively out of the total 25 million budget.<br />
Not even a single project has been completed on time and not one<br />
project has commissioned according to the scheduled plan.<br />
According to the revised action plan, the remaining projects<br />
should have been completed by 31 st January 2011. As of March<br />
2012, the status of the project is still the same as on December<br />
2010, when the new action plan was formed. Significant progress<br />
has been achieved in only one field: Price Waterhouse Coopers<br />
(PWC) has won the contract to design, develop and facilitate<br />
Government Enterprise Architecture.<br />
9. REASONS FOR THE POOR STATUS OF<br />
E-GOVERNANCE PROJECTS<br />
In spite of the strong need for the nation, priority of the<br />
government and good support from the donor agency, the progress<br />
473<br />
of all the projects under ICTD program are very slow. The<br />
responsible reasons for the slowness are found to be as follows.<br />
The analysis is on the basis of the experience as a senior officer<br />
actively involving in e-governance programs since long and the<br />
review of the concerning literature. The problems have been listed<br />
on the basis of priority.<br />
i) Political Instability<br />
ii) Reluctance of conservative government officials to adapt to the<br />
new system<br />
iii) Lack of ICT Education among government officers and people<br />
iv) Poor Infrastructure and Connectivity<br />
v) Lack of sufficient electrical power supply in the nation.<br />
10. CONCLUSION<br />
Nepal, a politically unstable South Asian country, has initiated an<br />
ICT development program under the e-governance master plan of<br />
Nepal. And for this project, it has signed an agreement with the<br />
Asian Development Bank which contributed US$ 25 million, and<br />
formulated an action plan to complete eight projects focused on<br />
government efficiency, modernization of rural areas, and<br />
mobilization of the country’s existing human resources.<br />
However, the progress of the projects has been very slow and the<br />
deadline for commission, which was 14 th October 2010, was<br />
passed. Another action plan shifted the deadline to 31 st January<br />
2011 but again, no significant progress has been made till date.<br />
The main factors widely attributed for this are the factors that<br />
affect most third world nations: lack of political stability, lack of<br />
basic infrastructure like electrical facilities and connectivity, lack<br />
of education, and the reluctance of government officials and the<br />
people to adapt to a new system. Therefore, even though the<br />
bureaucracy has given a lot of priority to this project, based on<br />
current projections, its future looks grim.<br />
11. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS<br />
My sincere and respectful thanks go to my friends and officers<br />
involving in the national e governance campaign. I am grateful to<br />
the officers and team of Asian Development Bank (ADB)<br />
involved with ICTD project.<br />
12. REFERENCES<br />
[1] Brush up Online, HLCIT Dissolve : A regressive step,<br />
December 2011<br />
[2] Government of Nepal, E-Government Master Plan<br />
Consulting report, Kathmandu, Nepal, 2006<br />
[3] Government of Nepal, Information and Communication<br />
Development project (ICTD), September 2008<br />
[4] Ganesh Prasad Adhikari, National ID project of Nepal:<br />
future challenges, ACM Press, 2011<br />
[5] Nepal Telecom Authority, MIS report., December 2011<br />
[6] Ramro.org, Panel directs ministry not to dissolve HLCIT,<br />
nepali-news-ekantipur-en&news=344753, December 2011
Exploiting the FLOSS Paradigm in Collaborative<br />
e-Learning – Application to e-Government<br />
Sara Fernandes 1,2 , Antonio Cerone 1<br />
1 International Institute for Software Technology<br />
United Nations University<br />
P.O. Box 3058, Macao SAR, China<br />
+853 2871-2930<br />
{sara.fernandes, antonio}@iist.unu.edu<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
Modern societies face high demands for skilled professionals, able<br />
to successfully design, deploy and utilize complex Information<br />
Technology (IT) –enabled socio-technical systems at everincreasing<br />
levels of reliability and security. Contrary to traditional<br />
education practices, the high-level training required to fulfill this<br />
demand should rely on the principle that the learners are<br />
themselves responsible for their learning process, that they have<br />
control over this process, and that the process aims at developing<br />
cross-disciplinary and problem-driven competences, not only at<br />
acquiring content knowledge. However, such training requires the<br />
presence of a highly interactive, problem-oriented environment<br />
for technology-supported learning (or e-learning). This poster<br />
presents a doctoral research project, which aims at designing,<br />
validating and monitoring a collaborative e-learning environment<br />
based on the principles of Free/Libre Open Source Software<br />
(FLOSS). In order to validate its outcomes, the project will rely<br />
on two real-life professional training programs: in Software<br />
Engineering for software managers and in e-Government for<br />
public managers. The poster presents the objectives, research<br />
methodology and expected results from this project.<br />
Categories and Subject Descriptors<br />
J.1 [Administrative Data Processing]: Education, Government;<br />
K.3.1 [Computer Uses in Education]: Computer-Assisted<br />
Instruction (CAI); Computer-Managed Instruction (CMI)<br />
General Terms<br />
Design, Experimentation, Human Factors<br />
Keywords<br />
Education; Training; e-Learning; FLOSS; e-Government<br />
1. INTRODUCTION<br />
In Information Society (IS), the creation, distribution, diffusion,<br />
integration, use, and manipulation of information is a significant<br />
economic, political and cultural activity [1]. A major goal is<br />
creative and innovative use of IT to gain competitive advantage<br />
[1], for instance to improve the lives of citizens or to develop new<br />
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for<br />
personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are<br />
not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies<br />
bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for<br />
components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored.<br />
Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to<br />
post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission<br />
and/or a fee.<br />
ICEGOV '12, October 22 - 25 2012, Albany, NY, United States, NY, USA<br />
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1200-4/12/10…$15.00.<br />
474<br />
Luis Soares Barbosa 2<br />
2 HASLab / INESC TEC<br />
University of Minho<br />
Campus de Gualtar, 4710 – 057, Braga, Portugal<br />
+351 25 360 - 4430<br />
lsb@di.uminho.pt<br />
economic opportunities. However, while IS relies on the diffusion<br />
of IT and the presence of a ubiquitous technological infrastructure<br />
[2], developing and utilizing such infrastructure and a whole range<br />
of components and services deployed on it, requires competent<br />
developers, managers and users. To this end, new educational<br />
methods, suited to the needs of IS, are needed.<br />
Contrary to traditional face-to-face teaching and learning, such<br />
methods should make use of IT to facilitate access to training and<br />
education, and to enhance the learning experience. In addition, the<br />
new educational methods should stress the learner's responsibility<br />
and control over his or her learning process, encourage the<br />
development of cross-cutting competences rather than mere<br />
acquisition of content knowledge, and offer highly interactive,<br />
problem-oriented environments to facilitate the process. Such<br />
principles have been already practiced for years by the FLOSS<br />
(Free/Libre Open Source Software) movement.<br />
This poster presents a research project, which aims at developing<br />
an innovative, light, adaptable and effective high-level e-learning<br />
environment based on the principles and tools underpinning the<br />
FLOSS paradigm. E-learning refers to the use of web-based<br />
technologies to facilitate the teaching and learning process and<br />
access to educational content. In particular, e-learning frees the<br />
learners from the limitations of time and space, allowing them to<br />
learn at their own place and pace [3]. Along its complex history,<br />
marked by the increased availability of computing resources and<br />
debates over the nature of knowledge and information, FLOSS<br />
changed the way societies think about software and introduced a<br />
cultural phenomenon underpinned by technological development,<br />
with the aim of contributing to public good through community<br />
work. FLOSS plays an increasing role in e-learning.<br />
The principles underlying the project are in line with the current<br />
thinking about education, which recognizes that fundamentally<br />
learning and development result from participation of students in<br />
social interactions and culturally-rich activities with other<br />
students, and that IT has the potential to mediate learning<br />
experiences and to support networked collaborative learning.<br />
The rest of this poster is structured as follows. Section 2 presents<br />
the research problem. Section 3 introduces the methodology and<br />
expected results. The final Section 4 explains the expected<br />
contribution of the project to e-Government education [4].<br />
2. RESEARCH PROBLEM<br />
The project aims to address three research questions: 1) What<br />
requirements should be fulfilled by a collaborative e-learning<br />
environment? 2) How is FLOSS, its principles, practices and tools<br />
applicable to collaborative e-learning environment? 3) How to<br />
validate that the proposed environment satisfies IS training needs?
Following the research objectives, obtained results will be<br />
validated through their contribution to professional training of<br />
Government Chief Information Officers (GCIOs).<br />
3. METHODOLOGY<br />
To address these questions, a research methodology has been<br />
proposed comprising the following steps (see Figure 1):<br />
1) Collaborative e-Learning Review – literature and project<br />
review to determine the state-of-the-art and state-of-practice<br />
in collaborative e-learning.<br />
2) Collaborative e-Learning Requirements – based on the<br />
review (1), synthesizing the key functional and nonfunctional<br />
requirements for collaborative e-learning.<br />
3) FLOSS Review – reviewing FLOSS-related literature and<br />
projects to determine the state-of-the-art and state-of-practice<br />
in the area.<br />
4) FLOSS Practice Assessment – based on the review (3),<br />
assessing existing educational practices within FLOSS to<br />
identify the emerging teaching and learning patterns.<br />
5) FLOSS Contributions – based on the FLOSS review (3) and<br />
assessment (4), identifying relevant FLOSS principles and<br />
practices that could be used in collaborative e-learning.<br />
Collaborative<br />
e-Learning Review<br />
Collaborative<br />
e-Learning Requirements<br />
FLOSS<br />
Review<br />
FLOSS<br />
Practice Assessment<br />
6) Collaborative e-Learning Solution – based on requirements<br />
for collaborative e-learning (2) and contributions by FLOSS<br />
(5), building FLOSS-based collaborative e-learning solution.<br />
7) Collaborative e-Learning Testing – testing the solution (6)<br />
using professional training program in Software Engineering.<br />
8) Collaborative e-Learning Validation – validating the tested<br />
(7) solution (6) through professional training program in e-<br />
Government; the program is explained in Section 4.<br />
The research is expected to produce the following contributions:<br />
1) Collaborative e-Learning – complete specifications of an<br />
innovative collaborative e-learning environment implementing<br />
peer-to-peer learning adopted from the FLOSS paradigm; 2) Peerto-Peer<br />
Learning Patterns – learning patterns discovered from the<br />
common practices in the FLOSS communities, contributing to<br />
peer-to-peer learning; and 3) Collaborative e-learning assessment<br />
– assessment model and guidelines to evaluate collaborative elearning,<br />
applied to the environment produced by this research.<br />
Figure 1: Peer-Production Approaches to e-Learning Research Methodology<br />
4. APPLICATION TO E-GOVERNMENT<br />
In the public sector, collaborative e-learning can be used for<br />
various purposes: 1) to share best practices between government<br />
agencies [5]; 2) to train civil servants on specific competencies<br />
and teamwork required in their jobs, for example building<br />
awareness on sustainable development issues among local<br />
government officials [6]; 3) to develop training for small and<br />
medium-size enterprises (SMEs) on how to engage in G2B<br />
services [3]; etc. As a result, a real-life e-government training<br />
program will be used to validate the proposed collaborative elearning<br />
solution, targeting IT competency and experience-sharing<br />
needs of public managers who utilize IT in citizen-focused<br />
government programs. In particular, training for Government<br />
Chief Information Officers, with its strong requirements for<br />
experience-sharing and network-building, will be targeted.<br />
5. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS<br />
This work is funded partly by UNU-IIST and Macau Foundation<br />
through the PPAeL project, by European Regional Development<br />
Fund through COMPETE programme and by the Portuguese<br />
Foundation for Science and Technology through the FCOMP-01-<br />
0124-FEDER-007254 project. The authors wish to thank Elsa<br />
Estevez and Tomasz Janowski for their comments on earlier<br />
475<br />
FLOSS<br />
Contributions<br />
Collaborative<br />
e-Learning Solution<br />
Collaborative<br />
e-Learning Validation<br />
Collaborative<br />
e-Learning Testing<br />
versions of this paper. Also, the first author wishes to thank<br />
anonymous reviewers for valuable comments concerning her PhD<br />
research.<br />
6. REFERENCES<br />
[1] Wikipedia, Information Society, available at<br />
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_society<br />
[2] Steinfield, C., and Salvaggio, J. Towards a Definition of the<br />
Information Society, in “The Information Society: Economic,<br />
Social, And Structural Issues”, edited by J. Salvaggio (1989).<br />
[3] Shyu, Stacy Huey-Pyng, Huang, Jen-Hung. (2011).<br />
Elucidating usage of e-government learning: A perspective<br />
of the extended technology acceptance model, Government<br />
Information Quarterly, vol. 28, no.4, pp.491-502.<br />
[4] Janowski, T, Estevez, E., and Ojo, A., "Conceptualizing<br />
Electronic Governance Education", 45th Hawaii International<br />
Conference on System Science (HICSS-45), Grand Wailea,<br />
Maui, Hawaii, IEEE Computer Society.<br />
[5] CIO Council, e-Training White Paper, EGOV Initiative, Best<br />
Practices Committee, available at http://www.cio.gov/<br />
Documents/etraining_white_paper.pdf.
[6] ICLEI, Electronic Distance Training on Sustainability in<br />
African Local Governments, available at http://www.iclei-<br />
476<br />
europe.org/products-activities?cmd=view&aid=27
From Inter-Agency Information Sharing to Open Data:<br />
A Case Study of Taiwan E-Government<br />
Tung-Mou Yang<br />
Department of Library and Information Science, National Taiwan University<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
Cross-boundary information sharing has been a thriving research<br />
field in e-Government which continues drawing researchers from<br />
various disciplines. Recently, open data has become an important<br />
policy among the government administrations around the world.<br />
Open data initiatives can be considered one type of crossboundary<br />
information sharing between government agencies and<br />
the public including businesses, nonprofit organizations, and<br />
individuals. While extensive research has been conducted in<br />
interagency information sharing, the proposed research intends to<br />
explore the open data initiatives in the context of Taiwan e-<br />
Government. The result of the research can be compared with<br />
those in interagency information sharing and also contribute to the<br />
current open data literature from an international perspective.<br />
Categories and Subject Descriptors<br />
H.4.2 [Information Systems Applications]: Type of Systems –<br />
e-Government Applications<br />
General Terms<br />
Management, Performance, Human Factors, Theory<br />
Keywords<br />
Information Sharing, Open Data, Electronic Government, Taiwan<br />
1. INTRODUCTION<br />
Cross-boundary information sharing in the public sector plays an<br />
important role to help government agencies act more efficiently<br />
and effectively [1-3]. Through interagency information sharing,<br />
government agencies can provide more integrated, accurate, and<br />
innovative services to the public [4]. Researchers have studied<br />
cross-boundary information sharing from different perspectives to<br />
understand its complexity. The following section presents some<br />
brief discussions.<br />
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for<br />
personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are<br />
not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies<br />
bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for<br />
components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored.<br />
Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to<br />
post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission<br />
and/or a fee.<br />
ICEGOV '12, October 22 - 25 2012, Albany, NY, United States, NY, USA<br />
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1200-4/12/10…$15.00.<br />
No. 1, Sec. 4, Roosevelt Rd., Taipei, 10617 Taiwan (R.O.C.)<br />
+886.2.3366.2970<br />
tmyang@ntu.edu.tw<br />
477<br />
2. RECENT RESEARCH IN CROSS-<br />
BOUNDARY INFORMATION SHARING<br />
In recent research, the purposes of cross-boundary information<br />
sharing are explored, and the shared information across<br />
government agencies can be initially categorized into five major<br />
types [5]. The identified five major types are data-oriented<br />
information, value-added information, administration-oriented<br />
information, administration-oriented knowledge, and domainoriented<br />
knowledge. Each type of shared information has<br />
respective influences on the information-sharing behaviors and<br />
intentions of government agencies while some information is<br />
easier to be prepared and shared, and some may be highly related<br />
to privacy and confidentiality.<br />
In order to understand the interactions of government agencies in<br />
information-sharing initiatives, a framework of boundary is<br />
proposed to identify various boundaries among government<br />
agencies from two dimensions, the vertical and horizontal<br />
dimensions [6]. The identified boundaries are hierarchical,<br />
departmental, personal, geographic, development level, process,<br />
and sectoral boundaries. The involved organizations are not<br />
limited to government agencies and public organizations.<br />
Organizations in the private sector such as banks are included.<br />
Researchers also investigate how information is shared across the<br />
boundaries of government agencies along with the development of<br />
information communication technologies [7]. Several frameworks<br />
are proposed to perceive how government agencies, influenced by<br />
various determinants, may adopt different kinds of ICT enabled<br />
approaches to share information in different circumstances<br />
In addition, there are multi-faceted factors such as barriers and<br />
enablers that bring either positive or negative impacts on<br />
information-sharing initiatives among government agencies.<br />
Different perspectives including technological, organizational,<br />
sociological, ideological, and political contexts are discussed<br />
extensively in the literature to explore the complexity of crossboundary<br />
information sharing in the public sector [1-3, 8].<br />
Furthermore, cross-boundary information sharing is usually<br />
defined as the collaboration and interconnection of different<br />
information systems or telecommunication technologies to share<br />
data between entities such as groups, departments, and<br />
organizations [9]. Gil-Garcia at al. [1] also indicate that crossboundary<br />
information sharing activities can be considered as IT<br />
projects and usually lead to organizational structure changing and<br />
business process reengineering. By using Delone and Mclean’s<br />
[10] information systems success model, Yang [4] develops a<br />
preliminary and enhanced model to discuss how government
agencies evaluate the effectiveness of cross-boundary information<br />
sharing in the public sector.<br />
3. CROSS-BOUNDARY INFORMATION<br />
SHARING AND OPEN DATA<br />
Overall, cross-boundary information sharing has been a thriving<br />
research field in e-Government and continues drawing researchers<br />
from various disciplines. The current research in literature mainly<br />
focuses on interagency information sharing. However, as<br />
researchers indicate, government agencies also share information<br />
to private enterprises or non-profit organizations, and a sectoral<br />
boundary is observed [6]. In addition, in recent years, open<br />
government has become an important policy among the<br />
government administrations around the world. In the<br />
memorandum on transparency and open government, Obama [11],<br />
the president of the United States, suggests that government<br />
should be transparent, participatory, and collaborative. He<br />
believes that information maintained by government is national<br />
asset. While consistent with law and policy, each government<br />
agency should disclose its possessed information in forms that the<br />
public can access and use. New information communication<br />
technologies should also be employed by government agencies to<br />
help put information online for the public. He also stresses that<br />
government agencies should cooperate with each other and with<br />
nonprofit organizations, businesses, and individuals to have the<br />
public engage in the work of government. Through public<br />
engagement, the efficiency and effectiveness of government can<br />
be enhanced and the quality of decision making can be improved<br />
by collective expertise and knowledge [11].<br />
Therefore, cross-boundary information sharing is not limited to<br />
government agencies. Under the consent of current law and<br />
regulation, government agencies are encouraged to provide their<br />
possessed data to the public for innovative and value-added<br />
purposes by using the collective intelligence and creativity. While<br />
highly related to open data initiatives, cross-boundary information<br />
sharing in e-Government should not include only government<br />
agencies but also the general public should be counted.<br />
4. THE PROPOSED RESEARCH<br />
While open data initiatives can be considered one type of crossboundary<br />
information sharing between government agencies and<br />
the public including businesses, nonprofit organizations, and<br />
individuals, the aforementioned research in the current<br />
information-sharing literature can be applied to open data<br />
initiatives to provide insights. For instance, what are the factors to<br />
influence government agencies’ intentions to participate in open<br />
data projects and to share data to the public? Whether the<br />
initiatives of interagency information sharing and the initiatives of<br />
open data share the same influential factors? In addition, open<br />
data are posted online and shared by using the newest ICTs. It is<br />
interesting to discuss whether the traditional IS theoretical<br />
frameworks such as TAM, UTATA, and IS Success theory can be<br />
applied to provide insights? It is also interesting to explore the<br />
information seeking behaviors of the public. When the public tries<br />
to retrieve governmental open data, what are the factors to<br />
influence its behaviors?<br />
By using case study methodology, the researcher of the proposed<br />
research is interested in investigating the current open data<br />
initiatives in Taiwan e-Government. Specifically, the following<br />
research questions will be explored:<br />
478<br />
1) In the setting of open data in e-Government, how are open<br />
data initiatives carried out by the Taiwanese governmental<br />
agencies?<br />
2) What are the critical factors that influence the open data<br />
initiatives in Taiwan?<br />
3) What is the nature of the impact of the factors on the open<br />
data initiatives?<br />
4) How do government agencies and the public evaluate the<br />
effectiveness of open data initiatives?<br />
The result of this exploratory research will be compared with the<br />
research result in cross-boundary information sharing among<br />
government agencies. Lastly, the research can also contribute to<br />
the current open data literature from an international perspective.<br />
5. REFERENCES<br />
[1] Gil-Garcia, J.R., I. Chengalur-Smith, and P. Duchessi,<br />
Collaborative e-Government: impediments and benefits of<br />
information-sharing projects in the public sector. European<br />
Journal of Information Systems, 2007. 16(2): p. 121-133.<br />
[2] Pardo, T.A. and G.K. Tayi, Interorganizational information<br />
integration: A key enabler for digital government.<br />
Government Information Quarterly, 2007. 24(4): p. 691-715.<br />
[3] Zhang, J. and S.S. Dawes, Expectations and perceptions of<br />
benefits, barriers, and success in public sector knowledge<br />
networks. Public Performance & Management Review, 2006.<br />
29(4): p. 433-466.<br />
[4] Yang, T.-M., Extending current theories of cross-boundary<br />
information sharing and integration: A case study of Taiwan<br />
e-Government, 2011, University at Albany, State University<br />
of New York: Albany, NY, USA.<br />
[5] Yang, T.-M. and Y.-J. Wu. Identifying the information types<br />
and the purposes of cross-boundary information sharing. in<br />
American Society for Public Administration Annual<br />
Conference, Public Administration without Borders. 2011.<br />
Balimore, Maryland, USA.<br />
[6] Yang, T.-M., L. Zheng, and T.A. Pardo, The boundaries of<br />
information sharing and integration: A case study of Taiwan<br />
e-Government. Government Information Quarterly, 2012.<br />
29(1): p. S51-S60.<br />
[7] Yang, T.-M. and T.A. Pardo. How is information shared<br />
across boundaries? in Hawaii International Conference on<br />
System Sciences. 2011. Koloa, Kauai, Hawaii, USA: IEEE<br />
Computer Society.<br />
[8] Gil-Garcia, J.R. and T.A. Pardo, E-Government success<br />
factors: Mapping practical tools to theoretical foundations.<br />
Government Information Quarterly, 2005. 22(2): p. 187-216.<br />
[9] Barki, H. and A. Pinsonneault, A Model of Organizational<br />
Integration, Implementation Effort, and Performance<br />
Organization Science, 2005. 16(2): p. 165-179.<br />
[10] DeLone, W.H. and E.R. McLean, The DeLone and McLean<br />
model of information systems success: A ten-year update.<br />
Journal of Management information systems, 2003. 19(4): p.<br />
9-30.<br />
[11] Obama, B. Memorandum on Transparency and Open<br />
Government. 2009 [cited 2012 March 3]; Available from:<br />
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Transparencyan<br />
dOpenGovernment.
479
From International Open Government Dataset Search to<br />
Discovery: A Semantic Web Service Approach<br />
Eric Rozell, John Erickson and Jim Hendler<br />
Tetherless World Constellation<br />
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute<br />
110 8 th St, Troy, NY USA<br />
rozele@rpi.edu, erickj4@rpi.edu, hendler@cs.rpi.edu<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
In this poster, we will present the International Open Government<br />
Dataset Search (IOGDS). IOGDS is a faceted browsing interface<br />
for searching over more than one million open government<br />
datasets from around the world. We will present ongoing research<br />
and development towards the improved discovery and access to<br />
open government data. IOGDS has been designed around S2S, a<br />
framework for constructing user interfaces over Semantic Web<br />
services. We will discuss how the Web service abstraction layer<br />
in the S2S framework can be extended to support the use of<br />
external vocabularies to aid in the discovery of open government<br />
datasets. We will also discuss how the S2S framework can<br />
provide localization and context for non-expert users to improve<br />
the accessibility of open government data.<br />
Categories and Subject Descriptors<br />
H.3.4 [Information Storage and Retrieval]: Systems and<br />
Software – Semantic Web; H.5.2 [Information Interfaces and<br />
Presentation]: User Interfaces<br />
General Terms<br />
Management, Design, Standardization<br />
Keywords<br />
Linked Data, Service Middleware, Access and Accessibility,<br />
Open Government<br />
1. INTRODUCTION<br />
The International Open Government Dataset Search (IOGDS) is<br />
an ongoing project of the Tetherless World Constellation at<br />
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. IOGDS is an aggregated catalog<br />
of 1,028,054 datasets (and counting) from 43 countries and<br />
international organizations in 24 languages. The aggregated<br />
catalog uses a Resource Description Framework (RDF)<br />
vocabulary and a provenance-capturing data conversion tool to<br />
integrate datasets from various government data catalogs. IOGDS<br />
uses a graph-based query language, SPARQL [1], to request<br />
datasets using a variety of facets.<br />
We have constructed a faceted browsing interface in order to<br />
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for<br />
personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are<br />
not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies<br />
bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for<br />
components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored.<br />
Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to<br />
post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission<br />
and/or a fee.<br />
ICEGOV '12, October 22 - 25 2012, Albany, NY, United States, NY, USA<br />
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1200-4/12/10…$15.00.<br />
480<br />
facilitate non-expert users in the discovery of open government<br />
datasets. The interface allows end-users to filter dataset results by<br />
keyword terms from titles and descriptions of datasets; data<br />
catalogs from which the datasets originated; countries of origin<br />
for the data catalogs; agencies responsible for the datasets; and<br />
category tags for the datasets. Figure 1 gives a snapshot of the<br />
current faceted browsing interface for IOGDS.<br />
This faceted browsing interface is developed with the S2S<br />
framework. S2S leverages semantically annotated Web services<br />
to perform the query operations required to implement faceted<br />
browsers and other user interface (UI) paradigms. For IOGDS,<br />
we have developed an OpenSearch 1 service that transforms simple<br />
HTTP requests into complex SPARQL queries over the integrated<br />
government data catalogs. S2S provides an abstract layer to make<br />
Web service requests; these requests can be adapted to numerous<br />
underlying Web service approaches (e.g., OpenSearch). A more<br />
detailed discussion of the IOGDS stack can be found in [2].<br />
In this paper, we discuss some of the current avenues of research<br />
and development for improving the discovery and accessibility of<br />
open government datasets using the S2S framework.<br />
2. TOWARD IMPROVED DISCOVERY<br />
AND ACCESS TO GOVERNMENT DATA<br />
S2S provides two useful capabilities for improving the discovery<br />
and accessibility of open government data: (1) a Web service<br />
abstraction layer that “grounds” semantic requests into specific<br />
Web service requests and (2) a presentation framework that<br />
renders results from Web service queries. The former can be used<br />
to enable the use of external vocabularies (mapped in some way to<br />
local vocabularies) for constraining dataset searches. The latter<br />
can be used to localize Web service responses or to make<br />
additional requests that will help contextualize the search.<br />
2.1 S2S Web Service Abstraction Layer for<br />
Linked Data Facets<br />
A semantic request to S2S specifies the URI of a search service,<br />
the URI of a query operation, and the URI of a set of inputs used<br />
in the operation. The Web service abstraction layer in S2S<br />
transforms these abstract requests into requests for specific to a<br />
type of Web service (e.g., OpenSearch, WSDL). We can also<br />
transform inputs from one vocabulary into another vocabulary,<br />
based on mappings between the two. This effectively increases<br />
the possible facets available to slice-and-dice the data becomes<br />
1 OpenSearch Specification, http://www.opensearch.org
more and more valuable with the growing amounts of linked data<br />
and mappings between linked data resources on the Web.<br />
As a concrete example, consider the faceted browsing interface<br />
for IOGDS. One of the facets for IOGDS is the country of origin<br />
for the data catalog. However, consider a case where a user is<br />
interested in continent of origin for a dataset instead of country of<br />
origin. IOGDS use DBPedia 2 URIs in its country of origin<br />
metadata for dataset catalogs. An external source of continental<br />
data, with mappings from continents to DBPedia URIs for<br />
countries on those continents, can be used to populate a facet for<br />
continents. The Web service abstraction layer in S2S handles the<br />
transformation (using vocabulary mappings) from continents to<br />
countries.<br />
We have implemented this behavior in an ad hoc way for a<br />
biological and chemical oceanography data catalog [3]. We used<br />
mappings from catalog specific dataset parameters to an external<br />
source of parameter categories. This enabled a more abstract<br />
facet for data products that could be used by a broader community<br />
of users. We are currently creating a generic architecture that<br />
supports “facet mappings” at the abstract Web service layer in<br />
S2S.<br />
2.2 S2S Presentation Framework for<br />
Localization and Context<br />
S2S provides a presentation framework for developing UI<br />
widgets. Widgets can be created to support facet constraint and<br />
presentation of results in a UI. There are a number of ways to<br />
leverage this presentation framework to improve the accessibility<br />
of government dataset search interfaces such as IOGDS.<br />
One of those options is to provide a widget that performs<br />
localization of the information based on settings in the browser.<br />
Going back to the countries facet example, before a user is<br />
presented with facet options in the countries facet, the localization<br />
widget could make a request to DBPedia to retrieve a humanreadable<br />
label for the user’s localization settings. As such, an<br />
English user would see “United States” in the countries facet, and<br />
a French user would be presented with “États-Unis.” This same<br />
sort of localization could occur in other facets, such as dataset<br />
categories, assuming there was some external source of this<br />
localization data. Localization at the UI layer can reduce<br />
redundancy in required metadata for open government datasets by<br />
leveraging the vast corpus of linked data already available on the<br />
Web. It also adds value to dataset catalog service providers who<br />
adopt localizable vocabularies (with little added effort).<br />
Another option is to use the presentation framework to provide<br />
different kinds of context for the search. For instance, instead of<br />
presenting the countries facet as a list of options, the information<br />
could be presented as a heat map where countries with available<br />
datasets are highlighted more brightly. There are numerous ways<br />
presentation “widgets” can be designed to help contextualize the<br />
search experience. Providing this kind of context will enable<br />
users to gain broader insights about open government data in<br />
addition to enabling the discovery of individual datasets.<br />
2 DBPedia, http://dbpedia.org/<br />
481<br />
Figure 1: A screenshot of the IOGDS faceted browsing<br />
interface. In this example, the user first constrained his<br />
search with the term “asthma”, and is presented with a<br />
variety of facet values representing the remaining results.<br />
3. CONCLUSION<br />
We have discussed some of the current directions in IOGDS to<br />
help improve discovery and accessibility of open government<br />
datasets. Documentation on S2S framework can be found on the<br />
Web at http://tw.rpi.edu/web/project/sesf/workinggroups/s2s.<br />
You can also try out the IOGDS faceted browsing interface at<br />
http://logd.tw.rpi.edu/demo/international_dataset_catalog_search.<br />
4. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS<br />
The work on the S2S Framework has been supported by the<br />
Semantic eScience Framework project in the Tetherless World<br />
Constellation at RPI, NSF Office of Cyberinfrastructure award<br />
number OCI-0943761. Partial funding for the work on IOGDS<br />
has been provided by a gift from Microsoft Research to the<br />
Tetherless World Constellation at RPI.<br />
5. REFERENCES<br />
[1] E. Prud’hommeaux and A. Seaborne, SPARQL Query<br />
Language for RDF, W3C Recommendation, 15 Jan. 2008.<br />
http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-sparql-query/<br />
[2] J. Erickson, E. Rozell, Y. Shi, J. Zheng, L. Ding, J. Hendler.<br />
2011. TWC International Open Government Dataset Catalog.<br />
In Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on<br />
Semantic Systems (I-Semantics '11), Chiara Ghidini, Axel-<br />
Cyrille Ngonga Ngomo, Stefanie Lindstaedt, and Tassilo<br />
Pellegrini (Eds.). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 227-229.<br />
[3] Rozell, E., Wang, H., West, P., Zednik, S., Fox, P. (2011),<br />
Configurable User Interface Framework for Data Discovery<br />
in Cross-Disciplinary and Citizen Science, Abstract<br />
EGU2012-12859 presented at General Assembly 2012, EGU,<br />
Vienna, Austria, 22-27 April
482
Implementation of Integrated Tax System COTS product<br />
Uyanga Sambuu<br />
Department of Information System,<br />
National University of Mongolia<br />
Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia<br />
976-99114369<br />
uyanga@num.edu.mn<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
This paper tries to address a number of issues, problems and<br />
challenges currently facing while implementing ITS COTS<br />
solution in the Mongolian Tax Administration (MTA). The paper<br />
describes the gap between expectation of MTA towards positive<br />
impact of improved Tax Information system through COTS<br />
product and the real situation of the implementation of the product<br />
as well as serious risks confronting the new Tax Information<br />
System that is currently under replacement.<br />
Categories and Subject Descriptors<br />
H.4.0 [Information Systems Application]: General –<br />
Information System, Data processing and exchange.<br />
General Terms<br />
Management<br />
Keywords<br />
Tax Information System, e-Government Service, Integrated Tax<br />
System Commercial Off-The-Shelf, COTS, Tax Administration<br />
Information System, Mongolian Tax Administration<br />
1. IMPLEMENTATION PROGRESS OF ITS<br />
COTS IN MONGOLIA<br />
The use of the Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) to implement<br />
technical solutions is becoming increasingly popular in<br />
government such as education, defense, taxation, customs,<br />
healthcare and others, as well as in commercial sectors such as<br />
telecommunication, insurance, banking and financial services.<br />
Selecting and implementing a COTS product represents a<br />
significant investment and partnership with a software vendor. To<br />
realize return on this investment, IT managers must consider at<br />
least four criteria in selecting a product [1]:<br />
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for<br />
personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are<br />
not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies<br />
bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for<br />
components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored.<br />
Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to<br />
post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission<br />
and/or a fee.<br />
ICEGOV '12, October 22 - 25 2012, Albany, NY, USA<br />
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1200-4/12/10...$15.00<br />
Zolbayar Chuluunbat<br />
Governance Assistance Project,<br />
General Department of Taxation,<br />
Ulaanbaatar-210646, Mongolia<br />
976-91019908<br />
zolbayar@mta.mn<br />
483<br />
Esbold Unurkhaan<br />
Computer Science and Management<br />
School<br />
Mongolian State Technical University<br />
Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia<br />
976-99091335<br />
esbold@mstu.edu.mn<br />
• Functionality. How well do the COTS products meet the<br />
business and user requirements as defined in the requirements<br />
phase?<br />
• Architecture. How closely do the COTS products meet the<br />
technical requirements and align with the organization’s<br />
technical architecture and policy?<br />
• Lifecycle costs. What are the complete lifecycle costs of<br />
implementing and operating the COTS product?<br />
• Vendor. How stable are the vendor and product line?<br />
The Government of Mongolia also has made significant progress<br />
in implementing e-governance programs specifically encourages<br />
the enhancement of MTA’s operational processes and information<br />
technology. To this end the MTA started replacing current inhouse<br />
developed tax information system with COTS Solution<br />
within “Supply, Customization, Installation, Commissioning and<br />
Support of Tax Administration Information System” sub-project<br />
of the World Bank funded Governance Assistance Project since<br />
April 2011.<br />
The selected system is a Tax ITS COTS solution and therefore all<br />
functionality is provided out-of-the-box and ready for<br />
configuration. It allows the Client to have a total taxpayercentered<br />
view, improve services to taxpayers and the efficiency of<br />
administrations. Configuration can therefore be linked to a<br />
specific module or function in a layer with minimal impact on<br />
other areas of the system [3].<br />
Hence the decision to select the Tax ITS COTS was made as such<br />
based on assumption that new Tax Administration Information<br />
System (TAIS) can improve the effectiveness of the MTA through<br />
the availability of more accurate and timely information and the<br />
use of risk management tools to select taxpayers for audit<br />
purposes, and increase the quality of the services provided to<br />
taxpayers’ thus facilitating the taxpayers’ voluntary compliance.<br />
It has been over a year now, but to date the expected results have<br />
not been reached, for which explanation are provided in following<br />
sections.<br />
2. FINDINGS AND LESSONS LEARNED<br />
The contract period with the Supplier of COTS Product is for 16<br />
months, unfortunately the contract now has fallen much behind<br />
the schedule and TAIS now remains at risk of failure in spite of<br />
repeated actions of the MTA, the Client to mitigate the risks. As<br />
an organization, which intended to acquire COTS Product, the<br />
Client clearly defined its business needs and requirements
properly and completely. All procurement procedures to select the<br />
vendor was followed. So question arises “what went wrong?”.<br />
This can be assessed by both Supplier and Client’s point of view.<br />
Now it appears that following major points on which the Client<br />
failed and should have given careful consideration on the<br />
selection of the best vendor:<br />
1. Obtain hands-on experience with the system by organizing<br />
study tour or visit another organization that is operating the<br />
same COTS prior to Contract award to the Supplier;<br />
2. Obtained sufficient successful track records to confirm the<br />
maturity of the product;<br />
3. Establish comprehensive performance measures (including<br />
cost, time spent on each activity, etc.) and implement the<br />
COTS;<br />
4. Exercise a close, continuous, and active partnership among<br />
the COTS provider, and other stakeholders to achieve the<br />
maximum benefits from using COTS products.<br />
From the Supplier’s side the following drawbacks occur on which<br />
an immediate action to overcome is required:<br />
1. While the new software development methodology (called<br />
SCRUM) being used by the Supplier is acceptable, it has not<br />
been correctly followed to date;<br />
2. In particular, development is done in a series of “Sprints”<br />
that add functionality and features to the TRIPS product<br />
being developed. The active participation of the Client’s staff<br />
in the development of “User Stories” for each Sprint has<br />
been lacking due to the Supplier’s limitation to invole the<br />
Client and most importantly these User Stories are<br />
deliverables that have not been submitted to the Client as<br />
required in the Project Plan [4];<br />
3. There is no obvious link to TAIS Contract’s Requirements as<br />
of yet in the SCRUM Methodology so it is difficult for the<br />
Client to understand how the COTS will satisfy these<br />
requirements.<br />
4. Lack of expertise of the Supplier’s team with the COTS<br />
system, and insufficient on-site presence of technical experts;<br />
484<br />
5. Communication between GDT and DJV remains less than<br />
satisfactory;<br />
3 CONCLUSION<br />
ITS COTS products started to get market traction<br />
approximately 10 years ago. There are drawbacks and<br />
benefits in implementing ITS COTS Product [5]. With the<br />
current contract with the Supplier of the COTS product, the<br />
Client now sees more drawbacks because of the Supplier’s<br />
methodology working “behind the scene” without involving<br />
the Client to fit its requirements with ITS COTS Product.<br />
To put everything on right track, the both parties should<br />
strictly understand that the COTS Product Implementation<br />
and its sustainment require a close, continuous, and active<br />
partnership among the customer, COTS provider, and user. It<br />
concerns the need for the customer, COTS provide, and user<br />
to be prepared to cost, schedule, performance, and operations<br />
and maintenance concepts to achieve the maximum benefits<br />
from using COTS products. Knowledge Transfer is key to<br />
TAIS being a sustainable solution for the Client and can be<br />
achieved through continuous cooperation.<br />
4 REFERENCES<br />
[1] C. Todd Couts., Patrick F. Gerdes., “Integrating COTS<br />
Software: Lessons from a Large Healthcare Organization”,<br />
IEEE Computer Society, 2009<br />
[2] Uyanga, S., Zolbayar, Ch., Modernization of Tax<br />
Information System for Improved E-Government Services,<br />
ICEGOV 2010, Beijing, Conference Proceedings, pp 183-<br />
187, 2011<br />
[3] Document of the World Bank. Governance Assistance<br />
Project. Report (Aug. 2012), 16-20.<br />
[4] Project Plan for “Supply, Customization, Installation,<br />
Commissioning and Support of Tax Administration<br />
Information System”, 2012<br />
[5] Carol Sledge, David Carney, “SEI Monographs on the Use of<br />
Commercial Software in Government Systems: Case Study:<br />
Evaluating COTS Products for DoD Information Systems”,<br />
Carnegie Mellon, Software Engineering Institute, 1998
Information Sharing in Inter-departmental Collaboration: A<br />
Conceptual Framework for Local Government Authorities<br />
Alinaghi Ziaee Bigdeli<br />
Brunel University<br />
Kingston Lane, UB8 3PH<br />
Uxbridge, United Kingdom<br />
cspgaaz@brunel.ac.uk<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
This research attempts to develop a socio-technical framework for<br />
Inter-departmental Electronic Information Sharing (EIS) in Local<br />
Government Authorities (LGAs).<br />
Categories and Subject Descriptors<br />
H.0 INFORMATION SYSTEMS GENERAL<br />
General Terms<br />
Management, Security, Human Factors, Standardization<br />
1. INTRODUCTION<br />
Decision-making over adopting Inter-Organisational Information<br />
Systems (IOIS) that facilitate information sharing in an electronic<br />
manner has become in the centre of attention of researchers and<br />
practitioners in the field of information systems. It can be argued<br />
that a conceptual framework that examines EIS in LGAs is very<br />
limited. Several drawbacks can be identified regarding the<br />
existing frameworks as they: (1) mainly focus on either<br />
organisational or technological side of EIS, and do not look at the<br />
effort from a socio-technical perspective, (2) concern mainly<br />
about sharing information in Federal/Central governments, (3) do<br />
not map the influential factors on different stages of decisionmaking<br />
phases and (4) do not prioritise the influential factors<br />
based on their importance on different stages of decision-making<br />
process.<br />
2. EIS CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK<br />
2.1 Factors Influencing EIS in LGAs<br />
In this section, it is attempted to provide a rich and broad picture<br />
of five main areas influencing any IOS initiative (i.e. EIS) based<br />
on the procedural framework of Inter-organisational Systems’<br />
adoption proposed by Kurnia and Johnston [1]; (a) External<br />
Environment, (b) Capability of Organisation, (c) Technology<br />
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for<br />
personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are<br />
not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies<br />
bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for<br />
components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored.<br />
Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to<br />
post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission<br />
and/or a fee.<br />
ICEGOV '12, October 22 - 25 2012, Albany, NY, USA<br />
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1200-4/12/10...$15.00<br />
Muhammad Kamal<br />
Brunel University<br />
Kingston Lane, UB8 3PH<br />
Uxbridge, United Kingdom<br />
Muhammad.Kamal@<br />
brunel.ac.uk<br />
485<br />
Sergio de Cesare<br />
Brunel University<br />
Kingston Lane, UB8 3PH<br />
Uxbridge, United Kingdom<br />
Sergio.deCesare@brunel.ac.uk<br />
Environment, (d) EIS Characteristics, and (e) Inter-departmental<br />
Environment. First factor group, External Environment, proposes<br />
that certain conditions outside the focal organisation may affect<br />
the decision to adopt any inter-organisational collaboration.<br />
Regarding EIS in LGAs, these factors include any pressure from<br />
outside the specific local authority (e.g. from the Central<br />
Government) that influence the department’s decision on sharing<br />
information electronically. Second factor group, Capability of<br />
Organisation, observes the capability of the focal organisation in<br />
adopting those innovations that require collaboration among its<br />
sections and departments. Third group of factor, Nature of<br />
Technology, considers all technological factors which require the<br />
establishment of any IOIS. It can be argued that LGAs suffer from<br />
what may be termed as “IT lag time” that means there is a large<br />
gap between the adoption of new technologies and its acceptance<br />
and reutilisation across the entire organisation. Forth group of<br />
factor, EIS characteristic, refers to all attributes of electronic<br />
information sharing such as benefits and costs that influence the<br />
decision over sharing information. In addition to these four areas,<br />
the decision over EIS incorporates extra influences arising from<br />
complex and dynamic interaction among different departments<br />
and their suppliers, known as Inter-departmental Environment.<br />
Nevertheless, these factors have yet to be evaluated through real<br />
and practical cases and therefore the researchers propose the<br />
following research proposition for further investigation:<br />
Research Proposition A – Proposed Factors Influencing EIS:<br />
The proposed factors may influence the decision-making on EIS in<br />
inter-departmental collaboration in LGAs.<br />
2.2 Investigating the Phases of Participation<br />
Rogers [2] indicates that an adoption process is the process in<br />
which an individual or agency first, experiences the knowledge of<br />
innovation, second, alters the attitudes towards that innovation,<br />
third, makes decision to adopt or reject, and last, implements and<br />
confirms the decision. Regarding inter-departmental information<br />
sharing in LGAs, it would be vital to clarify the stages in which<br />
each department goes through prior to information sharing effort.<br />
These stages that lead to institutionalisation of EIS within LGAs<br />
might be conceptualised as temporal consequences in which the<br />
agencies pass through from the initiation phase to sustainability.<br />
After analysing innovation adoption literature on private and<br />
public sector, the researchers propose five phases of decisionmaking<br />
for EIS; (a) Incentive that refers to the state when a<br />
department within an LGA is asked or wishes to share information<br />
electronically with another department, (b) Conception that<br />
signifies a plan of action that the agency should pursue. In the
context of EIS, this phase may consist of a set of questions to be<br />
answered by the LGA department prior to sharing information.<br />
(c) Proposal that indicates the formal proposition for adopting any<br />
kind of innovation within an organisation. In the context of EIS,<br />
the proposal can be done through any kind of protocol or set of<br />
agreed principles on sharing personal or confidential information,<br />
(d) Participation Decision that refers to the actual phase in which<br />
the department takes the decision on adopting the specific<br />
innovation. Regarding the EIS initiative, a final decision should<br />
be made when the department has passed through all the above<br />
stages; and (e) Sustainability that refers to the stage in which an<br />
organisation begins to realise the need for strategic changes<br />
towards the use of innovation.<br />
Research Proposition B – EIS Participation Lifecycle: The<br />
departments within an LGA might pass through numerous phases<br />
prior to final decision on EIS with other departments.<br />
2.3 Mapping Factors on Participation Phases<br />
It is worth examining the mapping of EIS participation factors on<br />
participation phases in LGAs. The actual mapping would be<br />
carried out after conducting the empirical research and we<br />
propose the following research proposition to be investigated:<br />
Research Proposition C – Mapping EIS Factors on the<br />
participation Phases: The factors influencing EIS participation in<br />
inter-departmental collaboration in LGA can be mapped on<br />
different phases of participation to support the decision-making<br />
processes of EIS.<br />
2.4 Investigating the Prioritisation of Factors<br />
It should be indicated that prioritisation of factors and identifying<br />
which factor(s) is more important should take into account as it<br />
enables the organisation to improve the procedure of decisionmaking<br />
[3, 4]. Saaty [5] argued that the development of<br />
prioritisation is strongly reliant on the judgement of individuals<br />
within the organisation who involve in the phenomenon.<br />
However, because of the different roles, responsibilities, attitudes,<br />
and backgrounds within the organisation, the individuals may<br />
present different judgement on the prioritisation of factors.<br />
Therefore, to a great extent, prioritisation of factors may<br />
determine whether or not inter-department information sharing<br />
effort would have a constructive result(s). Thus the following<br />
research proposition can be proposed for further investigation:<br />
Research Proposition D – Prioritisation of Factors influencing<br />
EIS: Prioritisation of the factors in each participation phase can<br />
improve the decision-making process of EIS in LGAs.<br />
The arguments reported in previous sections (Section 2.1 to<br />
Section 2.4) prove that the role of factors, participation phases,<br />
mapping of factors on participation phases, and prioritisation of<br />
factors on the participation phases based on their importance<br />
should take into consideration prior to EIS in LGAs. The<br />
researcher proposes that the research propositions (RP-A to RP-D)<br />
should be examined jointly. In doing so, a detailed conceptual<br />
framework for EIS in LGAs is proposed in Figure 2.<br />
3. RESEARCH METHOD<br />
An interpretive, exploratory case study approach will be<br />
employed in order to investigate and analyse the research<br />
propositions. The reason for selecting this approach is that we<br />
486<br />
seek to understand the human thoughts on EIS efforts within the<br />
social and organisational context surrounding the initiative since<br />
the social world cannot be reduced to isolated variables.<br />
Moreover, For the purpose of this study, semi-structured interview<br />
will be utilised as the main data collection technique. Prior to the<br />
interviews, some structured questions to be used as the interview<br />
agenda and some open-ended questions will be prepared.<br />
Political Pressure<br />
(F1)<br />
Inter-‐Org. Leadership<br />
(F5)<br />
IT Capabilities (F9)<br />
Factors Influencing Participation in EIS (RI – A) Participation Phases<br />
(RI – B)<br />
External Environment<br />
Cost of Sharing<br />
Information (F13)<br />
Business Process<br />
Compatibility (F16)<br />
Economic Pressure (F2)<br />
Return on Investment<br />
(F6)<br />
Data Security and Privacy<br />
(F10)<br />
Capacity of Organisation<br />
Technology Environment<br />
EIS Characteristic<br />
Benefits of Sharing<br />
Information (F14)<br />
Legislation and Policy<br />
Principals (F3)<br />
Network Collaboration<br />
Culture (F7)<br />
Information Quality<br />
(F11)<br />
Inter-‐departmental Environment<br />
Inter-‐Departmental Trust<br />
(F17)<br />
Risk of Sharing<br />
Information (F15)<br />
Critical Mass (F18)<br />
Factors Incentive Conception Proposal Participation<br />
Decision<br />
F1<br />
F2<br />
F3<br />
F4<br />
…<br />
F18<br />
Community Pressure<br />
(F4)<br />
Organisation Size (F8)<br />
Technical<br />
Interoperability (F12)<br />
MAPPING FACTORS INFLUENCING PARTICIPATION IN EIS<br />
ON PARTICIPATION LIFECYCLE PHASES (RP – C)<br />
PRIORITISING THE IMPORTANCE OF FACTORS ON<br />
PARTICIPATION LIFECYCLE PHASES (RP – D)<br />
Sustainability<br />
Factors Incentive Conception Proposal Participation<br />
Sustainability<br />
Decision<br />
F1<br />
F2<br />
F3<br />
F4<br />
…<br />
F18<br />
Phase 1<br />
Incentive<br />
Phase 2<br />
Conception<br />
Phase 3<br />
Proposal<br />
Phase 4<br />
Participation Decision<br />
Phase 5<br />
Sustainability<br />
Figure 2: Conceptual Framework for EIS Participation in LGAs<br />
4. REFERENCES<br />
[1] KURNIA, S. AND JOHNSTON, R.B. 2000. The need for a<br />
processual view of inter-organizational systems adoption. The<br />
Journal of Strategic Information Systems 9, 295-319.<br />
[2] ROGERS, E.M. 1995. Diffusion of innovations. Free Pr, .<br />
[3] HUANG, S.M., CHANG, I.C., LI, S.H. AND LIN, M.T. 2004.<br />
Assessing risk in ERP projects: identify and prioritize the factors.<br />
Industrial Management & Data Systems 104, 681-688.<br />
[4] SALMERON, J.L. AND HERRERO, I. 2005. An AHP-based<br />
methodology to rank critical success factors of executive<br />
information systems. Computer Standards & Interfaces 28, 1-12.<br />
[5] SAATY, T.L. 1986. Axiomatic foundation of the analytic<br />
hierarchy process. Management science 841-855.
Interagency Collaboration in Providing Public Services in<br />
Russia: a Legal Perspective<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
This paper analyzes the legal aspects of sharing interagency<br />
information in order to provide electronic public services in<br />
Russia. Normative acts describing the provision process for 644<br />
federal public services were analyzed. The goals implemented in<br />
the research were twofold: first, to identify and second, to<br />
prioritize those services that require interagency collaboration.<br />
Recommendations based on Russian experience in developing an<br />
incremental legal framework for providing public services are<br />
formulated as well.<br />
Categories and Subject Descriptors<br />
J.1. [ADMINISTRATIVE DATA PROCESSING]: Government<br />
General Terms<br />
Management, Legal Aspects<br />
Keywords<br />
Public Services Provision, Single Window, Interagency<br />
Information Sharing, Administrative Regulation<br />
1. INTRODUCTION<br />
In 2004 the Russian government launched a Federal Program “the<br />
Public Administration Reform” to make the governing process<br />
centered around citizens’ needs. The key goal of public<br />
administration reform in Russia is to improve the quality of the<br />
public services provided. To achieve this goal, the federal<br />
government used two technological solutions launched in 2009 to<br />
implement interoperability among federal agencies. This enables<br />
citizens with a single window to access public services [1]. The<br />
Interagency Electronic Exchange System (IEES) is a transport<br />
layer for exchange of electronic documents on federal and<br />
regional levels of government. The federal one-stop shop eservices<br />
portal www.gosuslugi.ru serves as a single window to<br />
access all public services online. Unfortunately, technological<br />
solutions did not make the lives of the citizens easier in their<br />
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for<br />
personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are<br />
not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies<br />
bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for<br />
components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored.<br />
Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to<br />
post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission<br />
and/or a fee.<br />
ICEGOV '12, October 22 - 25 2012, Albany, NY, United States, NY, USA<br />
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1200-4/12/10…$15.00.<br />
Evgeny Styrin and Andrey Zhulin<br />
National Research University<br />
Higher School of Economics<br />
101000 Moscow<br />
str. Myasnitskaya 20<br />
+7 495 621 39 87<br />
estyrin@hse.ru, a.zhulin@hse.ru<br />
487<br />
interaction with federal public agencies. The process of obtaining<br />
services continues to be provided mostly in paper form. The goal<br />
of this paper is to outline bottlenecks mostly in legal and partly in<br />
organizational issues that the Russian federal public agencies face<br />
in implementing the electronic public services provision online.<br />
To this end, we analyzed 644 administrative regulations that are<br />
agency normative acts describing service standards and<br />
peculiarities of the provision process<br />
2. EVOLUTION OF THE PUBLIC<br />
SERVICES LEGAL FRAMEWORK IN<br />
RUSSIA<br />
Government Order № 1555 (2009) established a clear plan for<br />
transforming public services maturity from a public information<br />
paper publication to an online transaction, with service processing<br />
traces and results easily obtained in electronic form by citizens.<br />
However, Federal Law № 210 “About public and municipal<br />
services provision in the Russian Federation” (2010) plays a key<br />
role. It states that every public service must have administrative<br />
regulation that states the citizens’ rights to control and claim<br />
public service provision and quality results (timeliness, payment<br />
method and size, and grounds for refusal).<br />
3. RESEARCH METHODS<br />
All the data about public services were taken from an official<br />
information system called the Public and Municipal Services<br />
Register (PMSR). Documents were analyzed for each service<br />
input and output. By input documents we mean all the necessary<br />
(according to administrative regulation) documents a citizen or<br />
organization must have to successfully initiate or apply for a<br />
service. By output documents we mean the results of providing<br />
the service (passport, license, permission, etc.).<br />
To understand whether a service is eligible for interagency<br />
collaboration (we will call it “a complex service”) we classified<br />
the documents needed to apply for the service: personal<br />
documents (e.g., a citizen’s ID, passport, military status<br />
documents, school diplomas, property rights references, social<br />
security card, and individual taxpayer number), documents<br />
provided by the agency to which the citizen applies for the<br />
service, documents provided from other agencies, and auxiliary<br />
documents (required only as a part of an application package for<br />
some other service). According to our definition, a complex<br />
service for at least one input document needs at least one<br />
interaction with one or several other agencies for at least one type<br />
of citizen – a services user. We underscore that the complexity of
public services depends on the citizen’s social status when he or<br />
she applies for it. For example, to obtain a passport for a sailor<br />
necessitates going through different procedures in the Federal<br />
Migration Service than would be done for a pensioner. We define<br />
auxiliary services as those services that result in producing<br />
exceptional auxiliary documents.<br />
4. RESEARCH FINDINGS<br />
Among the 644 federal public services analyzed in our research,<br />
the need to apply for interagency information sharing was found<br />
in 364 services (56.5%). In 82 public services (12.7%) we found<br />
that it was necessity to perform interactions between authorities at<br />
different government levels (federal and regional). There are 237<br />
federal public services that request payment confirmation (it is<br />
considered as a separate document) (36.8%). An overall document<br />
exchange among federal agencies is necessary in 408 out of 644<br />
public services. There are 305 documents, which, according to<br />
Federal Law №210, must be exchanged among the agencies<br />
without the citizen’s participation. Next, we will present the 5<br />
most popular documents used in the exchange process among<br />
Russian federal agencies to provide public services.<br />
Table 1. Popularity of documents used in the interagency<br />
information exchange<br />
Agency Name of the document Rating<br />
Ownership<br />
by citizens<br />
in paper<br />
form<br />
2012. This will remain a challenge for the agencies due to the lack<br />
of resources. That is why we propose an incremental strategy or a<br />
“citizen’s value proposition” business model for the Russian<br />
Government [2]. This requires the step-by-step involvement of<br />
public services and their related input as well as interagency<br />
collaboration with output documents. In this model the public<br />
services have either a new design or the existing public services<br />
have been redesigned. In this way, needed changes in the legal<br />
framework have been made and the needs of specific groups of<br />
citizens have been met.<br />
In the first stage we propose to integrate only complex services<br />
owned exclusively by federal agencies without the participation of<br />
third party organizations. This means excluding citizens’ personal<br />
storage (paper documents with photo ids issued by the agency<br />
processing the application) and auxiliary documents from the<br />
interagency exchange. In other words, we propose to concentrate<br />
on 17% of the documents (51 documents) that are eligible for the<br />
interagency sharing process. The burden of providing such<br />
documents in paper form to citizens is insignificant but they<br />
would benefit from faster, more tangible outcomes with electronic<br />
information sharing and would trust the project more. Incremental<br />
strategy works because many governmental information systems<br />
either do not always contain the right information or any<br />
information about the citizen. We recommend that federal<br />
agencies “clean up” their e-records as fast as possible by<br />
improving the quality and quantity of citizens’ personal data.<br />
Federal<br />
Tax<br />
Service<br />
Registry<br />
Office<br />
Individual entrepreneur<br />
or legal entity (company)<br />
registration certificate<br />
Reference from the joint<br />
national Registry on<br />
property rights and deals<br />
118<br />
93<br />
Yes<br />
No<br />
o<br />
6. CONCLUSIONS<br />
The interagency information sharing process is aimed at providing<br />
high-quality public services in Russia. To that end, public<br />
managers should take the following actions in an international<br />
context:<br />
Constantly modify an agency’s legal base by formalizing services provision<br />
with it<br />
processes and resolving legislative lockups and impasses;<br />
Federal<br />
Tax<br />
Service<br />
Federal<br />
Tax<br />
Service<br />
Federal<br />
Tax<br />
Service<br />
Documents confirming<br />
registration at tax offices<br />
Reference from the joint<br />
registry of legal entities<br />
(companies) and<br />
individual entrepreneurs<br />
Accounting and financial<br />
reports<br />
72<br />
45<br />
23<br />
o<br />
Yes<br />
o<br />
No o<br />
Yes o<br />
Formalize all difficult cases in an exchange of documents and manage them<br />
in a joint data base with the help of professional experts;<br />
Define which documents and citizens’ personal data are to be shared with<br />
other agencies through IEES;<br />
Improve the quality of data bases containing citizens’ personal data relevant<br />
to agency activities. Keep e-records of all the documents ever issued to the<br />
citizens;<br />
Establish clear requirements regarding the form and number of documents<br />
(paper or electronic) of a service that citizens can initiate by themselves;<br />
It is important to mention that among the 305 documents o that Avoid are multiple responsibilities and clarify the redistribution of powers in<br />
involved in an interagency exchange, 254 of them, according service to ownership and the delivery of results.<br />
the current legal framework in Russia, are possessed in o paper Increase ICT literacy and information system usage skills on a permanent<br />
form by citizens. In other words, citizens need to make basis. a<br />
preliminary visit to the proper authority before applying for a<br />
service with regard to only 51 out of 305 documents.<br />
7. REFERENCES<br />
There are only 4 complex services that need to share more than 10<br />
documents and about 70 services that need to share 3 to 6<br />
documents among the agencies. The remaining services need to<br />
exchange only 1-2 documents among the agencies.<br />
[1] Bent, S., Kernaghan K., Marson D. Innovations and Good<br />
Practices in Single Window Service, Citizen-Centered<br />
Service Network, Canadian Center for Management<br />
Development, 1999.<br />
5. INTERAGENCY COLLABORATION<br />
[2] Joha A., Janssen M., Types of Shared Services Business<br />
Models in Public Administration. In Proceedings of the 12th<br />
TRANSITION PROCESS IN RUSSIA<br />
Annual International Conference on Digital Government<br />
Federal Law №210 requires the agencies not to ask for any paper<br />
documents from public service applicants starting from July 1,<br />
Research (DG.O 2011) (Univ. of Maryland, College Park,<br />
MD, USA, June 12-15, 2011), ACM, 2011, 26-3<br />
488
489
Monitoring Methods of e-Governance Development<br />
Assessment: Comparative Analysis of International and<br />
Russian Experience<br />
Lyudmila Bershadskaya, Andrei Chugunov, Dmitrii Trutnev<br />
eGovernment Center<br />
National Research University of Information Technologies, Mechanics and Optics (NRU ITMO)<br />
V.O., Birzhevaya line, 14, office 270; 199034, St.Petersburg, Russia; +7812-457-1796<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
In this paper the analysis of e-governance monitoring methods is<br />
given. The article includes international measurement techniques<br />
description.The authors introduce expert poll methodology for egovernance<br />
development assessment and the results of it’s<br />
application in Russia.<br />
Categories and Subject Descriptors<br />
K.4 Computers and Society; K.6 Management of Computing and<br />
Information Systems; H.1 Models and Principles; H.4.2<br />
[Information Systems Applications]: Type of systems –<br />
e-government applications<br />
General Terms<br />
Research framework, e-government, e-governance<br />
Keywords<br />
e-governance, e-government, monitoring, assessment, expert poll<br />
1. INTRODUCTION<br />
The global practice contains plenty of monitoring and assessment<br />
systems of e-governance development focused both on<br />
quantitative and quality characteristics of the research theme.<br />
Nevertheless not all methods and assessment criteria can be<br />
applied to the analysis of the experience of a certain country.<br />
The study of global experience in this field allows to define<br />
e-government rankings, e-services assessment methodology, the<br />
foresight techniques. The UN e-Government Development Index<br />
(3 evaluation directions, 53 indicators) and Waseda University<br />
World e-Government Ranking (7 evaluation directions, 20<br />
indicators) are examined in the poster [1, 2].<br />
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for<br />
personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are<br />
not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies<br />
bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for<br />
components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored.<br />
Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to<br />
post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission<br />
and/or a fee.<br />
ICEGOV '12, October 22 - 25 2012, Albany, NY, USA<br />
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1200-4/12/10...$15.00<br />
{analytics, chugunov, trutnev}@egov-center.ru<br />
490<br />
2. INTERNATIONAL EXPERIENCE<br />
OF E-GOVERNANCE ASSESSMENT<br />
Each of the described methods has several levels of assessment.<br />
The table below (Table 1) provides the results of this comparison<br />
based on 3-level measurement system (the number in the second<br />
column indicates the level of assessment occupied by Waseda’s<br />
Level 1 measurement in the ranking of the UN).<br />
Table 1. Assessment level comparison between<br />
Waseda University Ranking and UN e-Government<br />
Development Index<br />
Waseda Univ.<br />
World<br />
e-Gov Ranking<br />
Network<br />
Preparedness /<br />
Infrastructure<br />
Management<br />
Optimization /<br />
Efficiency<br />
Required<br />
Interface-<br />
Functioning<br />
Applications<br />
National Portal-<br />
Homepage<br />
Government<br />
CIO<br />
Level<br />
UN e-Government Development<br />
Index<br />
1 Telecommunication Infrastructure<br />
Component<br />
0 No<br />
0 Partly compatible with Online Services<br />
Component Class C (One-stop-shop for<br />
online services, Downloadable forms,<br />
Online forms, Job opportunities, Online<br />
transactions)<br />
3 Online Services Component Class A<br />
(Existence of a one-stop-shop national<br />
portal)<br />
3 Online Services Component Class A<br />
(Chief Information Officer (CIO), or<br />
similar officer with a leadership role, to<br />
manage national cross-agency e-gov.<br />
programmes/projects<br />
0 No<br />
e-Government<br />
Promotion<br />
e-Participation / 2 Online Services Component Class D<br />
Digital<br />
(Citizen participation /<br />
Inclusion<br />
interconnectedness)<br />
N/a 1 Human Capital Component<br />
International indices allow the cross-country comparisons<br />
conducting, however, it can not be used to analyze the situation in<br />
the specific country. In this connection the system of indicators to<br />
measure the level of electronic services development in the<br />
European Union (the development of Capgemini) should be
noted. The list of basic e-services (12 - for people, 8 - for<br />
business) allows to assess the level of services providing in the<br />
EU countries. It is based on a 5-level scale: the lack (0) and the<br />
availability of services by improvement.<br />
There is not established system of monitoring the e-governance<br />
development currently in Russia, which allows you to evaluate<br />
this phenomenon not only from the quantitative, statistical<br />
characteristics, but also from the perspective of improving the<br />
quality of services provided.<br />
3. EXPERT POLL APPLICATION FOR<br />
THE ANALYSIS OF E-GOVERNMENT<br />
E-Government Center NRU ITMO has launched a set of<br />
sociological researches dedicated to the challenges of<br />
e-government development in Russia and solution approach<br />
thereof. The purpose of expert poll held in autumn 2011 was to<br />
study the difficulties of e-government development identification<br />
and to make recommendations for the best results of<br />
e-government implementation. During the research 66 experts<br />
were interviewed. Three areas have been studied in frame of the<br />
research: e-government development issues, its solutions and<br />
preferable communication channels.<br />
In the course of the study, experts have proposed various solutions<br />
to e-government development issues, based on their experience<br />
(Table 2).<br />
Table 2. Experts’ solutions<br />
for e-government development problems (Russia)<br />
No Issue Solution<br />
1 Unachievable<br />
deadlines for goals<br />
(3,8 points)<br />
2 Lack of e-legislation<br />
development<br />
coordination<br />
(3,8 points)<br />
3 The practice of egovernment<br />
development doesn’t<br />
match development<br />
standards of large<br />
information systems<br />
(3,7 points)<br />
� Targeting must comply with the SMART<br />
criteria (Specific, Measurable, Achievable,<br />
Realistic, Timely)<br />
� The need to create a separate authority<br />
with responsibility for e-government and<br />
information society development and<br />
regulatory base formation<br />
� Coordinated, coherent and consistent state<br />
policy conducting with vertically<br />
integrated control system<br />
� 4 major components of online service<br />
providing standardization on the base of egovernment<br />
architecture<br />
� Usage of positive international experience<br />
The authors of the poster have tried to present a research<br />
technique based on the results of reflection on the variety of the<br />
best state-of-practice methods in a unified scheme (Fig. 1). The<br />
authors recognized the need to shift the research focus from<br />
simple components of assessment to complex ones. The existing<br />
monitoring methodology proves the necessity of scientific<br />
foresight application. In this regard, the experience of the<br />
European foresight, which identified priorities for the ICT<br />
program of the EU countries, could be useful. The integration<br />
between e-government development and administration reform is<br />
an important task in current situation [3].<br />
The authors believe that the research methodology and tools<br />
should be developed not only for Russia but for the post-Soviet<br />
countries - in particular the Commonwealth of the Independent<br />
State (CIS).<br />
491<br />
QUANTITATIVE<br />
METHODS<br />
Integral indicators<br />
(indexes & rankings)<br />
Web-monitoring<br />
methods<br />
Statistical reports<br />
Public opinion poll<br />
EXPERT<br />
POLL<br />
FORESIGHT<br />
QUALITY<br />
METHODS<br />
Reviews Recommendations Forecasts<br />
Test purchase<br />
Content analysis<br />
methods<br />
Focus groups<br />
Web-portal analysis<br />
(content, usability…)<br />
Figure 1. E-government development<br />
and Information Society monitoring methods<br />
4. CONCLUSIONS<br />
1. Countries with the high level of quantitative indicators’<br />
development (IT infrastructure, Human capital) can get higher<br />
positions in the UN e-Government development Index. On the<br />
contrary, the group of top leader countries consists of states with<br />
highly developed quantity indicators (management optimization<br />
etc.). Positions of countries in each rating differ because of the<br />
disparity of indicators’ weight and analysis focus. For instance,<br />
Human capital component doesn’t fit in Waseda methods of<br />
estimation. This component is traditionally high in Russian<br />
Federation. This fact explains the lower position of Russia in this<br />
ranking.<br />
2. In case of building a system of assessing the level of egovernment<br />
in a particular country the technique of the EU<br />
online services evaluation is appropriate to use (in adapted form).<br />
It should be noted that the basis of this method is approved the<br />
enlarged list of priority e-services.<br />
3. The authors proposed the assessment methodology which can<br />
be used to measure the e-governance development in other<br />
countries. The authors believe that expert polls conduction,<br />
standing in line with the global research practices, provides the<br />
qualitative assessment, reasonable forecasts and recommendations<br />
for e-governance evaluation in the country.<br />
REFERENCES<br />
[1] United Nations e-Government Surveys. [E-source]:<br />
http://www.unpan.org/Home/tabid/1243/language/Library/M<br />
ajorPublications/UNEGovernmentSurvey/tabid/646/<br />
language/en-US/Default.aspx<br />
[2] The 2012 Waseda University World e-Government Ranking.<br />
[E-source] http://www.e-gov.waseda.ac.jp/ranking.htm<br />
[3] Ojo, A., Janowski, T. Integrating Electronic Government and<br />
Public Administration Reform Strategies: Method and<br />
Experience. In Global Strategy and Practice of<br />
E-Governance: Examples from Around the World. Eds.<br />
Danilo Piaggesi, Kristian Sund, Walter Castelnovo. 2011,<br />
102-123.
Moroccan E-Government Ten Years Evolutions<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
While the Northern Africa region performed better in the 2010<br />
UN E-Government Survey with 0.3692, Morocco take just<br />
0.3287. Morocco leads the region with the highest internet and<br />
infrastructure telecommunication ratio per 100 inhabitants.<br />
The aim of this paper is to outline the historical evolution of egovernment<br />
in Morocco and the effort make by Government to<br />
develop the Digital government, a court description of Morocco<br />
digital plan 2013 initiate by the actual government to lead and<br />
empower society through the utilization of ICT.<br />
Categories and Subject Descriptors<br />
H.4.2 [Information Systems Application]: Type of Systems<br />
General Terms<br />
Measurement<br />
Keywords<br />
Moroccan e-Government, Maturity Models<br />
1. INTRODUCTION<br />
The e-government is defined as the use of information and<br />
communication technologies in its relationship with the<br />
administered, employees and partners is the major difficult project<br />
to implement. The e-government in Morocco follows the<br />
experience of other countries in Europe and America. The egovernment<br />
implementation in Morocco is based on seven major<br />
functions: information accessibility, flexibility of utilization,<br />
democratization of information, connected agencies, system<br />
interoperability, security and privacy protection; and services<br />
based on citizen and business lifecycle events.<br />
The workflow of this implementation is based on 4 steps:<br />
o The inventory of procedures and administrative forms;<br />
o The simplification of those administrative procedures;<br />
o The vulgarization of simplified administrative procedures<br />
through web site to inform citizens and gather their remarks.<br />
o The management of those procedures through ICT based on<br />
roles definition (RACI Models)<br />
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for<br />
personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are<br />
not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies<br />
bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for<br />
components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored.<br />
Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to<br />
post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission<br />
and/or a fee.<br />
ICEGOV '12, October 22 - 25 2012, Albany, NY, United States, NY, USA<br />
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1200-4/12/10…$15.00.<br />
Mohamed Mohyi Eddine EL AICHI<br />
Isert, ENSIAS, University Mohamed V<br />
BO BOX 713, Agdal Rabat<br />
Morocco<br />
661 199076. 212<br />
melaichi@intelcom.co.ma<br />
492<br />
This study presents Moroccan E-Government ten years evolution<br />
in order to present weakness of the actual models and how will<br />
improve it. The first section presents the first phase of Egovernment<br />
in Morocco. The second section presents the Morocco<br />
Numeric 2013 Vision. The third section presents the weakness of<br />
actual plan and how can it improve. The conclusion presents the<br />
need of government maturity adoption to insure the government<br />
transformation.<br />
2. THE LAST TEN YEARS E-<br />
GOVERNMENT IN MORROCO<br />
The Electronic Administration project in Morocco starts at the<br />
earliest of 1999 by defining more than ten years program through<br />
four phases: 1) 1999-2003: Brainstorming and analyzing; 2) 2004-<br />
2005: Training and planning; 3) 2006-2008: Governance<br />
implementation, and 4) 2009-2012: Government transformation.<br />
The goals of this project were: 1) to develop information systems<br />
development to increase productivity and performance, 2)<br />
strengthening communication between government agencies to<br />
improve decision-making process, 3) to improve service to<br />
citizens and business: quality, proximity, accessibility, ease and<br />
cost, and 4) strengthening the integrity and transparency<br />
in relations with users.<br />
Moroccan Government adopts Gartner E-government Maturity<br />
Models defined on 2000 as result of Brainstorming and analyzing<br />
phase. This model focuses on citizen-centric and grounds on<br />
technology, organizational and managerial feasibility stage.<br />
Technically the Moroccan government sites are heterogeneous;<br />
they are built based ASP.Net (majority), JSP, PHP and static<br />
pages. Some web site use Open Source CMS or commercials<br />
solutions to manage content, the others update directly on pages or<br />
through customized development. In terms of design, much of the<br />
government sites doing well. Unfortunately, it seems that<br />
ergonomics has been forgotten in favor of good design: font’s too<br />
small, truncated text, navigation menus are difficult to find or use,<br />
see some of the items blank or incomplete. The transactional<br />
services are limited in majority to online request where citizen or<br />
business can fill forms and wait for call or must be present in<br />
government agencies to accomplish its request.<br />
The portal maroc.ma, supposed as consolidate web site or unique<br />
web site access, presents more weakness. The design is not<br />
attractive. The website is built using static pages and few<br />
dynamics pages. It’s an institutional web site without online<br />
public services integration and contains the same content picked<br />
from other government web site (kingdom work, primary minister<br />
work, etc.). The public service web site ‘service-public.ma’ offers
the description of procedure for more than 70 public’s services.<br />
The evolution of this site must be to transform those procedures to<br />
transactional application forms and template to download.<br />
To encourage public service to empower its organization,<br />
Moroccan government had launch since 2005 e-government<br />
awards “e-mtiaz” for excellence in e-government to incite public<br />
service to implant or develop more e-service. This program is<br />
replaced in 2008 by new vision morocco digital 2013 after failed<br />
to create integrate services.<br />
After ten years, the e-government implantation was not a success<br />
story. It’s important to note that after this long period, the<br />
transformation through ICT presents multiple problems and<br />
majority of project consume budget, time and effort without reach<br />
the real result. Some announced project failed. Public service in<br />
Morocco doesn’t have attractive content, service and interface to<br />
be classed as 100 solicited web site in Morocco and less that 16<br />
services were operational and were applied to business to<br />
simplified government relationship and check.<br />
3. MOROCCO DIGITAL PLAN 2013:<br />
TARGETS AND SERVICES<br />
Morocco digital plan was built around a clear vision and<br />
ambitions for Morocco. The aim is to use the e-Government<br />
projects to modernize the government and local governments to<br />
serve citizens and businesses. It uses ICT to reconfigure the<br />
process in depth, making them effective and efficiency, fully<br />
geared to serve citizens and business. The goal for 2011 is to<br />
complete commitment from other emerging countries and by<br />
2013, to be at their level of utilization of e-government services.<br />
To achieve those objectives, four key indicators have been<br />
identified: 1) United Nations readiness ranking evolution from 0,2<br />
to 0,8, 2) E-government project evolution from 16 services to 89,<br />
3) Growth of IT business turnover more than 100 million, and 4)<br />
Ranked e-government site in top 100 are more than 5.<br />
3.1 Public Services<br />
Morocco Digital 2013 aims to offer a panoply of services required<br />
by citizen and business lifecycle evolution. The complete list is<br />
available and other resource relying to e-government in Morocco<br />
at www.egov.ma. This section presents a selection of services<br />
offered to citizens and businesses.<br />
3.1.1 Citizen Services<br />
Public Service Description<br />
Electronic National Manual service to store citizen data<br />
Identity Card<br />
Biometric Passport This service offers the possibility to<br />
www.passeport.ma track the evolution of the biometric<br />
passport request.<br />
e-justice, @dala This service offers a database of the<br />
law in morocco from 1912. The<br />
database is not updated.<br />
Citizen Unique This project aims to identify Citizen<br />
identification for all integrated services<br />
Marital status This services aims to provide<br />
administrative paper to citizen<br />
E-Consulat<br />
This service aims to answer Moroccan<br />
reside in foreign countries requests<br />
E-Tax<br />
This service aims to provide a web site<br />
to pay local tax on line<br />
493<br />
3.1.2 Business Services<br />
Public Service Description<br />
Simple IS, Simple Tax Service declaration for<br />
TVA<br />
Business<br />
B@DR Custom online service<br />
CNSS<br />
Online service to declare<br />
employees social subscription<br />
Business<br />
This project aims to get Business<br />
identification unique identification<br />
Entrepreneurship This services aims to provide an<br />
online service to declare business<br />
3.2 E-Participation Web Site<br />
The objective of e-participation initiative is to improve citizen<br />
access to public services information and their participation in<br />
decision making.<br />
Moroccan government launches several initiatives, including:<br />
o Fikra: The Suggestion Box to Administration Improvement<br />
o Laws Commenting: Citizens may comment laws<br />
o Satisfaction survey and suggestion box on the government<br />
o Department websites starts providing forms to measure user<br />
satisfaction or get feedback.<br />
4. MOROCCO DIGITAL 2013 AND T-GOV<br />
Moroccan government through its program to transform the<br />
society as digital communities is a challenge. To success this<br />
ambition Moroccan government had invest in infrastructure and<br />
promote more oriented service like biometric passport, driver<br />
license and digital national card. This investment take morocco at<br />
the range 126 with 0,32 in the UN e-Government survey in 2010<br />
earning 14 places. Take a good place is the goal of the Morocco<br />
Digital 2013, Moroccan government must think more how to<br />
transform its structure to insure the real integrated government.<br />
Like other developing countries, Moroccan E-gov encountered the<br />
problem of how to manage efficiency the cost associated with its<br />
IT, how success the integration of the offered services. The next<br />
step is to rethink this plan by integrating the KPI attached to<br />
return on investment and mange citizen differently. Some projects<br />
must be split to smaller project to earn on realization visibility.<br />
Moroccan government must also prioritized project like Unique<br />
Citizen or Business Identification and Inter-government Buses.<br />
5. CONCLUSION<br />
By adopting the Morocco digital 2013, Moroccan Government<br />
decide to improve its performance and empower citizen and<br />
business through the integration of ICT. The adoption of ICT is<br />
the first step in restyling Moroccan government. By the way, the<br />
Moroccan government must rethinking its offer through adopting<br />
IT Service management as repository to manage its offer, to align<br />
with the citizen and business needs and to readapt a maturity<br />
models that improve public services life cycle according a<br />
government enterprise architecture.<br />
6. REFERENCES<br />
[1] United Nations E-Government Survey 2010.<br />
[2] United Nations E-Government Survey 2008.<br />
[3] Kim, H. (2009), Maturity Model based on quality concept of<br />
Enterprise Information Architecture.
[4] Stratégie Nationale pour la Société de l’Information et de<br />
l’Économie Numérique.<br />
494
Opportunities for Improving eGovernment: Using<br />
Language Technology in Workflow Management<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
Workflow management deals with a fair amount of free text –<br />
scanned paper documents, web input forms, e-mail, input from<br />
mobile devices as well as texts from government agencies to<br />
citizens. The free-text input is intended for a human reader. Still,<br />
in eGovernment settings we would like to process such input<br />
before, while and after handling officers read it. This paper<br />
presents some examples on how language technology can increase<br />
efficiency and quality of workflow management.<br />
Categories and Subject Descriptors<br />
H.4.1 [Information Systems Applications]: Workflow<br />
management; H.5.2 [User Interfaces]: Natural language; I.2.7<br />
[Natural Language Processing]: Text analysis<br />
General Terms<br />
Algorithms, Human Factors, Languages.<br />
Keywords<br />
Workflow management, document analysis, language technology.<br />
1. INTRODUCTION<br />
The citizens’ communication with government agencies are today<br />
to a large extent text-based, although telephone, and face-to-face<br />
meetings are still used. The approaches to communication differ at<br />
least within the Swedish government, which is the area of our<br />
research. Some agencies have chosen to prioritize some specific<br />
communication channel (e.g. telephone, or the web), some other<br />
agencies has opened up all different channels for communication<br />
including social media (e.g. Facebook). Nevertheless, most of this<br />
communication is text-based, and in some way most of the<br />
information that should be saved and archived has to be<br />
transformed to written text, which means opportunities for<br />
automatic text analysis using language technology [6].<br />
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for<br />
personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are<br />
not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies<br />
bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for<br />
components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored.<br />
Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to<br />
post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission<br />
and/or a fee.<br />
ICEGOV '12, October 22 - 25 2012, Albany, NY, USA<br />
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1200-4/12/10...$15.00<br />
Ola Knutsson, Eriks Sneiders, Alyaa Alfalahi<br />
Department of Computer and System Sciences<br />
Stockholm University<br />
Forum 100, SE-164 40 Kista, Sweden<br />
+46 8 16 16 84<br />
{knutsson, eriks, alyalfa}@dsv.su.se<br />
495<br />
This paper is about using language technology in governments’<br />
workflow processes, and how the technology could be used with<br />
Workflow Management Systems (WfMS), and similar systems<br />
relevant in the citizen-government interaction and communication<br />
loop. The aim is to increase efficiency and quality. Efficiency is<br />
for instance about using internal resources better, and to give<br />
citizens decisions faster. Quality includes to use handling officers’<br />
competencies in a better way, or to get better knowledge of the<br />
context for a case, even including what happens outside the<br />
government agency, including what people think about the<br />
specific government agency, and its services. The quality aspects<br />
could to a large extent be described as improvement of the<br />
government’s business intelligence.<br />
What is Language technology? “The goal of this new field is to<br />
get computers to perform useful tasks involving human language,<br />
tasks like enabling human-machine communication, improving<br />
human-human communication, or simply doing useful processing<br />
of text or speech.“ [6] Although the field has always been<br />
followed by too high expectations of “linguistic intelligence”, the<br />
practical use of natural language processing has always been<br />
there. The frontiers of practical use of LT are constantly moving.<br />
No one could have missed the great improvement of statistical<br />
machine translation the last years.<br />
A workflow management system is used for the management of<br />
business processes [2]. Workflow management systems are used<br />
in many organizations, and the market is big. There exist a huge<br />
number of workflow management systems, with several systems<br />
from the large software developers, but also many in-house<br />
developed systems. Services based on language technology could<br />
be applied before, during and after the workflow processes. In the<br />
following section we will look into phases in the workflow where<br />
language technology have been applied in previous research. Our<br />
approach is to analyze where in the workflow language<br />
technology could be used, and not on what current workflow<br />
management systems allow.<br />
2. USING LANGUAGE TECHNOLOGY IN<br />
WORKFLOW MANAGEMENT<br />
The use of language technology has been studied in areas useful<br />
in workflow management for quite a long time now (cf. [1]). The<br />
research topics range from Optical Character Recognition, which<br />
is important in the process of digitalization, to different levels of<br />
document understanding [4]. In the following we have identified
how language technology has been or could be used in relation to<br />
some but not all of the processes in workflow management.<br />
In a Workflow Management System (WfMS), the triage and<br />
routing of cases/tasks are an important part, and automatic means<br />
could be used to make this step more efficient. If the case or the<br />
carrier of the case includes accessible text, language technology<br />
could improve this process, by routing the task to a handling<br />
officer who knows the area of the task, this could be done using<br />
text categorization. An experiment with document routing was<br />
carried out by [10]. They used a very limited part of the textual<br />
resources, such as references and subject lines, in their<br />
experiment.<br />
When looking at businesses outside government, “trouble tickets”<br />
have been analyzed [11]. One could see the use of the same<br />
techniques within a government agency, here the “trouble tickets”<br />
could for instance concern reports from the citizens about<br />
“problems” in their neighborhood, which then could be mined<br />
about problem areas of a specific kind in the whole community. In<br />
the paper by Ku et al [8] information extraction was used on<br />
police reports, newspaper articles, and victims’ and witnesses’<br />
reports. This is an interesting example of how a system could<br />
combine extracting information from sources on the “inside”<br />
(police reports, victims’ and witnesses’ reports) with the outside<br />
world (newspaper articles), and how the extraction of people,<br />
places, vehicle names and other entities from both sides could<br />
give a broader picture of an event.<br />
E-mail is a common channel to contact an organization and to<br />
initiate a case. Knutsson et al. [7] discusses the benefits of<br />
automated e-mail answering in large organizations, as well as a<br />
number of tools and techniques useful for e-mail processing in<br />
eGovernment settings. Most early e-mail answering systems used<br />
machine learning and pursued the task of text classification.<br />
Similar to the text classification task is matching incoming e-mail<br />
messages to a list of frequently asked questions (FAQs). Iwai et<br />
al. [5] makes an observation that 30-40% of an e-mail flow<br />
addresses often reoccurring topics, and presents a system for<br />
developing an FAQ list and matching these FAQs to future emails.<br />
Question-answering systems answer single-sentence questions. In<br />
closed domains dealing with one or few subjects, automated FAQ<br />
retrieval has proved practical. Recently, template based<br />
techniques have gained more attention. Samarakoon et al. [9]<br />
presents a help-desk application where each FAQ is associated<br />
with hand-written text patterns that match future queries.<br />
Statistical n-gram matching and ranking algorithms are applied. A<br />
more “intelligent” alternative to FAQ retrieval are chatbots alias<br />
conversational agents alias dialogue systems; these systems<br />
maintain a dialog with the user. Deryugina [3] lists a number of<br />
chatbot applications in customer care, which is relevant for<br />
eGovernment.<br />
3. CONCLUSIONS<br />
In this paper we have discussed the use of language technology in<br />
several different areas of workflow management. Language<br />
technology could increase efficiency by task routing and<br />
automatic answering, and some of the techniques even prevent<br />
some of the citizens’ cases from becoming part of the workflow.<br />
The use of language technology in business intelligence might<br />
increase quality by giving organizations a better picture of the<br />
496<br />
information on the inside, but also what is going on outside the<br />
government agency.<br />
4. REFERENCES<br />
[1] Abecker, A., Bernardi, A., Maus, H., Sintek, M. and Wenzel,<br />
C. Information supply for business processes: coupling<br />
workflow with document analysis and information retrieval.<br />
Knowledge-Based Systems, 13 (2000), 271-284.<br />
[2] Bae, H., Hu, W., Yoo, W. S., Kwak, B. K., Kim, Y., and<br />
Park, Y. Document configuration control processes captured<br />
in a workflow. Comput. Ind. 53, 2 (February 2004), 117-131.<br />
[3] Deryugina, O.V. Chatterbots. Scientific and Technical<br />
Information Processing, 37, 2 (2010), 143–147.<br />
[4] Esposito, F., Ferilli, S., Teresa M.A. Basile, T.M.A., and Di<br />
Mauro, N. (2008). Machine Learning for Digital Document<br />
Processing: from Layout Analysis to Metadata Extraction,<br />
Studies in Computational Intelligence (SCI) 90 (2008), 105–<br />
138.<br />
[5] Iwai, K., Iida, K., Akiyoshi, M., and Komoda, N. (2010). A<br />
help desk support system with filtering and reusing e-mails,"<br />
In Proceedings of the 8th IEEE International Conference on<br />
Industrial Informatics (INDIN 2010),(Osaka, Japan, 13-16<br />
July, 2010), 321-325.<br />
[6] Jurafsky, D. and Martin, J. H. Speech and Language<br />
Processing: An Introduction to Natural Language<br />
Processing, Computational Linguistics, and Speech<br />
Recognition, Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ, 2008.<br />
[7] Knutsson, O., Pargman, T. C., Dalianis, H., Rosell, M., and<br />
Sneiders, E. Increasing the Efficiency and Quality of E-mail<br />
Communication in eGovernment Using Language<br />
Technology. In Proceedings of the IFIP e-government<br />
conference (EGOV 2010), (Lausanne, Switzerland, August<br />
29-September 2, 2010). Trauner Verlag, Linz, Austria, 45-<br />
52.<br />
[8] Ku, C. H., Iriberri, A., and Leroy, G. Natural Language<br />
Processing and e-Government: Crime Information Extraction<br />
from Heterogeneous Data Sources. In Proceedings of the 9th<br />
Annual International Digital Government Research<br />
Conference, (Montreal, Canada, 2008).<br />
[9] Samarakoon, L.; Kumarawadu, S.; Pulasinghe, K. Automated<br />
question answering for customer helpdesk applications. In<br />
Proceedings of 6th IEEE International Conference on<br />
Industrial and Information Systems (ICIIS 2011), (Kandy, Sri<br />
Lanka, 16-19 August 2011) IEEE, 328-333,<br />
[10] Soares, C. and Calejo, M. Intelligent Document Routing as a<br />
First Step towards Workflow Automation: A Case Study<br />
Implemented in SQL. ISoLA (1) 2010: pp. 276-284.<br />
[11] Temprado, Y., Molinero, F. J., Garcia, C. and Gomez, J.<br />
Knowledge Discovery from Trouble Ticketing Reports in a<br />
Large Telecommunication Company. In Proceedings of the<br />
2008 International Conference on Computational<br />
Intelligence for Modelling Control & Automation (CIMCA<br />
'08). IEEE Computer Society, Washington, DC, USA, 37-4
Prioritization and Geo-Spatiotemporal Hotspot Detection of<br />
Forest Loss Hotspot Using NDVI as a Response Variable<br />
Koli Rajesh E., Rao Anil G., Rane Gauri M.<br />
JalaSRI, M. J. College,<br />
Jalgaon(MH)-425002, India<br />
rek.jalasri@gmail.com, raoag_jal@rediffmail.com,<br />
gmr.jalasri@gmail.com<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
Forest loss is spatial and temporal issue of concern for any<br />
governance. Due to limitation of man power, money or resources<br />
the issue requires first to point out most critical area i.e. Geospatiotemporal<br />
hotspot and then prioritize it so the most needed<br />
area always concern first.Geo-spatiotemporal hotspot detection is<br />
a scan statistical process that identifies a region exhibiting<br />
characteristics of interest (unusual, anomaly, outbreak, critical<br />
resources area) over the period. The hotspot detection is a<br />
statistical process. It requires geospatial dataset as an input which<br />
includes two variables for hotspot detection, Size or Population<br />
and Response or Cases. In deforestation hotspot detection, size<br />
variable is a total area of forest while response variable is a<br />
deforested area. In this paper we figure out deforestation hotspot<br />
using Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) as a<br />
response variable. The paper presents and elaborates algorithm<br />
that causes use of NDVI as a response variable. This paper<br />
discusses the multi-criteria or multi-indicator ranking methods<br />
using Partially Order Set (POSET) which uses as a prioritization<br />
tool.<br />
Categories and Subject Descriptors<br />
H.3.3 [Information Search and Retrieval]: Clustering, G.3<br />
[PROBABILITY AND STATISTICS]: Statistical Software,<br />
Markov Processes, Distribution Functions<br />
General Terms<br />
Measurement, Documentation, Performance, Experimentation,<br />
Theory, and Verification<br />
Keywords<br />
NDVI, Hotspot detection, PULSE, Remote Sensing, Geo-<br />
Spatiotemporal, POSET, Prioritization<br />
1. INTRODUCTION<br />
The forest loss or deforestation is very important concern of every<br />
government and the issue is spatial and temporal. Detection of<br />
deforestation within the forest is very difficult job for manual<br />
survey. Tracking of different time series data and do analysis on it<br />
is not possible manually. NDVI is a very reliable and more<br />
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Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to<br />
post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission<br />
and/or a fee.<br />
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Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1200-4/12/10…$15.00.<br />
497<br />
Joshi Manish R.<br />
Department of Computer Science<br />
North Maharashtra University,<br />
Jalgaon(MH)-425002,India<br />
joshmanish@gmail.com<br />
accurate process of detecting deforestation. Using NDVI data we<br />
can generate input data for hotspot detection where total area of<br />
forest per unit is a size variable and forest loss area is a response<br />
variable for the hotspot detection.<br />
The Land Use Land Cover (LULC) is currently used to determine<br />
the forest area and forest loss area. Both the methods of LULC i.e.<br />
supervised classification and unsupervised classification ignores<br />
the very small patches of forest loss within the forest area and<br />
very small patches of forest with in the waste land area, whereas<br />
NDVI can give more exact measurements.<br />
Many times due to the limitation of man power and resources to<br />
handle situation of hotspot zone for concerned problem ranking<br />
and prioritization of the hotspot zone are needed. Also concern<br />
issue always has multiple indicators to consider. For example<br />
forest loss due to low rainfall, human population, forest,<br />
encroachment etc. So the multi-criteria ranking and prioritization<br />
toolbox is used as a decision support tool in this paper.<br />
As a case study we represent hotspot identification for<br />
deforestation in Satpuda hill region of Maharashtra State in India.<br />
The case study uses LISS III satellite images of December -2007<br />
to calculate forest loss using NDVI.<br />
The remaining paper is organized as follows. Section 2 provides<br />
general background information of geospatial hotspot detection,<br />
its software tools, NDVI, prioritization and its software tools. The<br />
steps for using NDVI as a response variable in hotspot detection<br />
are presented in section 3. Section 3 delineates the methodology<br />
used to obtain the data with the help of NDVI and the process of<br />
hotspot detection and prioritization. A case study of identification<br />
of deforestation hotspot is presented in section 4. The conclusions<br />
are presented in section 5.<br />
2. BACKGROUND<br />
2.1. Geospatial Hotspot Detection<br />
A scan statistic is commonly used in geospatial hotspot detection.<br />
A geospatial region is tessellated into ‘cells’. Data from the region<br />
in the form of responses from individual cells are available. One is<br />
interested in identifying a cellular zone, if one exists, with<br />
unusually elevated response compared with the rest of the cells.<br />
Such a zone is called a hotspot. Hotspot detection has become a<br />
popular area of research after Kulldorff et al. (1998) have<br />
developed the SaTScan software system for detection and<br />
evaluation of disease clusters. Later this software is used for other<br />
applications also. Besides SaTScan, PULSE [3] is also used for<br />
hotspot detection.
2.2 Multi-Criteria Prioritization<br />
Dr. Bruggemann and Dr. G. P. Patil [4] discussed the method of<br />
ranking a finite collection of objects when a suit of indicator<br />
available for each member of the collection. The method<br />
represents the objects in POSET. The pictorial format of the<br />
POSET is a HASSE diagram and from HASSE diagram we can<br />
study the collection of all rankings that are compatible with the<br />
partial order (linear extensions). Finally using the cumulative rank<br />
frequency (CRF) and Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) the<br />
rank can be calculated.<br />
Using theory explained in the book “Ranking and Prioritization<br />
for Multi-indicator Systems Introduction to Partial Order<br />
Applications”, Rainer Brüggemann and Ganapati P. Patil,<br />
Environmental and Ecological Statistics, 2011, Volume 5,<br />
JalaSRI, Jalgaon, Maharashtra, Indian has developed software<br />
RAPID-2 for multi-criteria ranking and prioritization. RAPID-2<br />
has used in the case study.<br />
3. METHODOLOGY<br />
The overall process of generating data using NDVI determining<br />
geo-spatiotemporal hotspot and then prioritization is described in<br />
this section using block diagram.<br />
Satellite<br />
image like<br />
LISS III<br />
image<br />
Prioritization<br />
using RAPID-<br />
2<br />
Processed<br />
Image<br />
NDVI Classification<br />
using<br />
ERDAS<br />
module<br />
Hotspot<br />
Detection &<br />
presentation<br />
of it<br />
Tabulate<br />
data<br />
Figure 1: Block diagram of method<br />
NDVI<br />
Distribution<br />
Raster<br />
of NDVI<br />
Image<br />
data in the<br />
admin<br />
unit/cell<br />
Over-lapped<br />
image by<br />
admin unit<br />
4. A CASE STUDY<br />
The NDVI model is created using model maker tool of the<br />
ERDAS software. The output of the model is also raster file but<br />
only contain the vegetation pixels. The image 1 shows NDVI of<br />
2007 image where middle area of forest shows good vegetation.<br />
We are using PULSE software to find elevated cluster for<br />
deforestation. The result of PULSE for NDVI data is shown in<br />
image-2.<br />
Image 1: NDVI Image of Satpuda Forest Including 45 Beats<br />
498<br />
Image 2: Hotspot detected by PULSE for NDVI data<br />
Summary of result of PULSE for NDVI data:<br />
Hotspot Zone including beat IDs: 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 26<br />
Log likelihood ratio: 24.02, p-Value: 0.001<br />
The prioritization of objects in the forest loss hotspot can do with<br />
any related indicators. In this case study we used NDVI area,<br />
barren land area, and population pressure. The Figure 3 shows<br />
HASSE diagram for the data.<br />
Figure 3: HASSE diagram with High to Low order and table<br />
of average heights.<br />
The figure 3 shows table of result of the Bubley Dyer MCMC<br />
Simulation. The figure 3 clearly shows the object 26 is heights<br />
ranking.<br />
5. CONCLUSION<br />
We propose to use NDVI to automatically generate realistic data<br />
of deforestation. With the help of a case study of Satpuda hilly<br />
region deforestation, we listed out steps that would generate<br />
deforestation data from a satellite image. We also describe in<br />
detail the NDVI model developed and used to obtain the actual<br />
information about deforestation. We discussed hotspot detection<br />
software PULSE. The identified hotspots are presented and<br />
analyzed. We prioritized the hotspot cells using RAPID software.<br />
This NDVI based data generation process, geo-spatiotemporal<br />
hotspot detection and prioritization tool would eliminate the<br />
laborious task of collecting data and it would help in proper<br />
governance.<br />
6. REFERENCES<br />
[1] Andrew T. Hudak, Carol A. Wessman, Deforestation in<br />
Mwanza District, Malawi, from 1981 to 1992, as determined<br />
from Landsat MSS imagery, Applied Geography 20 (2000)<br />
155–175<br />
[2] Duczmal L, Kulldorff M, Huang L. (2006). Evaluation of<br />
spatial scan statistics for irregular shaped clusters. Journal of<br />
Computational and Graphical Statistics 15,428-442.<br />
[3] Patil, G.P., Joshi, S.W., and Koli, R.E. (2009b). PULSE,<br />
Progressive Upper Level Set Scan Statistic for Geospatial<br />
Hotspot Detection, Environmental and Ecological Statistics,<br />
Springer, 149—181.
[4] R.Bruggemann and Ganapati P. Patil(2010). Multicriteria<br />
prioritization and partial order in environmental sciences,<br />
Environmental and Ecological Statistics, Volume 17,<br />
Number 4, Pages 383-410<br />
499<br />
[5] Zuzana mašková, and Jan Květ, Normalized difference<br />
vegetation index (NDVI) in the management of mountain<br />
meadows, Boreal environment research 13: 417–432
Quality Assurance Case Study of an ICT Supported<br />
Legally Binding Election in Austria<br />
Klaus John<br />
Vienna University of Technology,<br />
Research Group for Industrial<br />
Software (INSO), Austria<br />
klaus.john@inso.tuwien.ac.at<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
The use of new technologies in established procedures such as<br />
electronic elections is often an underestimated task. More<br />
technology does not mean more quality. The challenge of quality<br />
assurance is described in this paper focusing on an ICT supported<br />
legally binding election in Austria.<br />
1. INTRODUCTION<br />
In recent years, the use of Information and Communication<br />
Technology (ICT) in administrative procedures, also called egovernment<br />
has gained much attention in efforts to modernize<br />
government. One task of the IT-strategy of the Austrian federal<br />
computing centre (Bundesrechenzentrum GmbH) is the egovernment<br />
realization of electronic elations and ICT supported<br />
elections. [1] In an IT-strategy the targets for a computing centre<br />
(state owned or private) are documented and shape a roadmap<br />
where to go and what to do on a generic level with the idea of<br />
target achievements. Any IT-strategy will influence Quality<br />
Management (QM) and QM includes the process Quality<br />
Assurance (QA). QA as a control process for e-government<br />
projects, influences the quality output of e-government projects,<br />
and is closely linked via QM with the IT-strategy. This paper will<br />
show how ICT supported elections demand special continuous<br />
quality management and improvement processes, which are on a<br />
high level part of the IT-strategy.<br />
2. IMPLEMENTATION OF THE<br />
AUSTRIAN E-VOTING PROJECT<br />
The Austrian Federation of Student´s election (Hochschülerinnen-<br />
und Hochschülerschaftswahlen) is a legally binding election<br />
which takes place every two years. The election is regulated by<br />
legislation passed in the Austrian national parliament. The voting<br />
period is three days long during which students at all universities<br />
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for<br />
personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are<br />
not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies<br />
bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for<br />
components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored.<br />
Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to<br />
post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission<br />
and/or a fee.<br />
ICEGOV '12, October 22 - 25 2012, Albany, NY, USA<br />
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1200-4/12/10...$15.00<br />
Andreas Ehringfeld<br />
Vienna University of Technology,<br />
Research Group for Industrial<br />
Software (INSO), Austria<br />
andreas.ehringfeld@<br />
inso.tuwien.ac.at<br />
500<br />
Gerald Fischer<br />
Vienna University of Technology,<br />
Research Group for Industrial<br />
Software (INSO), Austria<br />
gerald.fischer@<br />
inso.tuwien.ac.at<br />
in Austria can cast their votes. Prior to the 2009 election, on-site<br />
paper-based voting was the only voting channel.<br />
In the 2009 Austrian student union election, e-voting was invented<br />
as an additional voting channel. Furthermore attempts were made<br />
to avoid problems of poorly specified requirements and standards<br />
documents, and the inability to carry out meaningful verification<br />
by defining requirements by law and by using current<br />
international security standards like Rec(2004)11 as a benchmark<br />
in the certification process of the e-voting system. The timeline,<br />
activities, and responsibilities of the election are defined in the<br />
Austrian Federation of Students’ law [2] and election regulations<br />
[3], which are still in effect at present. The legal framework<br />
stipulates, among other aspects, that the election system has to be<br />
approved by the Austrian data protection commission.<br />
Furthermore a certification process based on Common Criteria<br />
and the recommendations in Rec (2004) 11 has to be passed.<br />
The e-voting software (as well as the documentation, development<br />
process descriptions, architecture, security descriptions, threat<br />
analysis, technical descriptions and source code) was audited<br />
between December 2008 and March 2009. The technical<br />
infrastructure was operated at two different locations by the<br />
Austrian Federal Computing Centre. The e-voting system was<br />
classified as a highly critical system and was subject to special<br />
security mechanisms within the Federal Computing Centre.<br />
3. QUALITY MANAGEMENT<br />
The time for implementation and testing of the election system<br />
was limited, deadlines could not be postponed, the human<br />
resources were limited and the budget was fixed.<br />
For the election a new electronic administration system had to be<br />
developed. The administration system should support the election<br />
commissions in their work by automatically creating the electoral<br />
roll for the electronic and paper based election, the definition files<br />
for the e-voting system and all the print outs of the ballot sheets,<br />
the results, the letters to the candidate to inform them about their<br />
mandate and much more. The administration system had to be<br />
developed and tested in the timeframe of the project.<br />
Facing the typical challenges of IT projects the project´s<br />
conception was to follow an agile software development<br />
approach. The programming and testing intervals were very short<br />
to maximize implementation progress and fulfil quality
equirements. A direct communication between the programming<br />
and the test team was established and ICT was used for<br />
transparency and reproducibility, e.g. platforms like Bugzilla were<br />
used for bug tracking. For the testing this approach brought the<br />
project team in the comfortable situation where they concentrated<br />
all test resources on workflow tests for the administration<br />
software. The project did not concentrate on single functionality<br />
but looked at complete processes as workflows which were<br />
walked through in the same way as election commissions<br />
administrate their election. To identify bugs even before the<br />
workflow tests and therefore increase efficiency of the<br />
development process document tests were performed and every<br />
developer had to test her or his software parts. Executed test case<br />
results are divided into business process, usability after WAI and<br />
security test cases. All results of a test execution at a certain date<br />
are displayed by the amount of found or not found bugs (number<br />
of defects or none defects) and their attribute (business process,<br />
usability and security). The idea was to create a simple table<br />
where execution date, number of found defects or executable<br />
business process test cases are documented. According to the test<br />
strategy it was not always necessary to test a new release with all<br />
business process test cases. With every new release the test team<br />
analysed new functionality or changes and discussed which test<br />
cases are relevant.<br />
Evaluation of the project´s test strategy can be described as the<br />
following. Document tests have been implemented for assuring<br />
that the requirements have been translated into good system<br />
specification. Developers executed developer’s tests to check<br />
functionality, specialists performed workflow tests to verify all<br />
processes and the operation team tested the technical<br />
infrastructure.<br />
4. ELECTION<br />
230.479 students were eligible to vote at the 21 Austrian<br />
universities where the federation of students’ elections 2009 took<br />
place. A total 375 races had to be decided, consisting of 21<br />
university body elections and 354 study body elections. 2,411<br />
candidates campaigned for 1,633 mandates. The electronic voting<br />
ended technically successful on Friday, May 22nd 2009, at 6:00 h<br />
pm. Until then 2,161 students participated in the elections. [4]<br />
The project´s test approach turned out to be very efficient and<br />
effective, however, only focusing on the technical level. Due to a<br />
process error based misleading communication one ballot sheet<br />
included an incorrect name of a political party. Furthermore<br />
certain electronic ballot sheets did not include the short names of<br />
political parties at all. The problem was an outsourcing of tasks<br />
from the election commission to a technical operation team<br />
combined with special designed e-voting processes between all<br />
parties. After re-analysing the results from the electronic election<br />
a certain risk level must have caused the critical situation. The<br />
process and communication error was not discovered as there was<br />
a separation into technical and workflow testing, where the<br />
operation team tested their processes and simulated the activities<br />
of the election commission but they could not test integration into<br />
the election system. On the other side there was training for the<br />
election commission where they tested their activities and actions<br />
(workflows) but the operation of the e-voting system was only<br />
501<br />
simulated. There was a lack of communication in the workflows<br />
between the operation team and the election commission.<br />
As a result of these issues on December 13 2011 the Austrian<br />
Supreme Court decided that e-voting at the student union election<br />
did not fulfil all requirements of the law. They concluded that<br />
election commissions must be able to verify the correctness of the<br />
main steps of the voting phase and vote counting without the help<br />
of any expert. This includes not only the detection of possible<br />
manipulations but also the errorless realization. The decision<br />
focuses on the use of an e-voting system but for sure also effects<br />
the use of any electronic system for elections like administration<br />
software.<br />
5. CONCLUSION<br />
The paper has shown that the challenge of quality assurance of egovernment<br />
such as ICT supported elections lies not only in<br />
fulfilling various standards or technical correctness of software,<br />
but also in process management and IT-strategies at all<br />
stakeholders. When establishing new technologies also workflows<br />
change’s which have to be considered, evaluated and tested. The<br />
case study has shown the need of process oriented approaches<br />
when redesigning election administration by ICT support.<br />
Furthermore this demands an overall IT strategy where quality<br />
management is one part of it. Nevertheless, also due to the<br />
decision of the Austrian Supreme Court, the election commission<br />
should never lose control of process execution and process<br />
control. Furthermore the authors believe that to gain trust the<br />
challenge is to implement a QM process for the election system<br />
where everyone – especially election commission and eligible<br />
voters – has online access to the documented test cases and get the<br />
possibility to test the software by their own. Transparency in the<br />
QM process might lead to accuracy, correctness and to more trust.<br />
We would call this a QM-trust-box.<br />
6. REFERENCES<br />
[1] Federal Computing Centre, BRZ, e-government IT-strategy,<br />
http://www.brz.gv.at/Portal.Node/brz/public/content/unterne<br />
hmen/struktur/unternehmensbereiche/10052.html#E-<br />
Government, Feb. 2012.<br />
[2] Austrian Government (no date): Hochschülerinnen- und<br />
Hochschülerschaftsgesetz 1998 (HSG 1998) [Federation of<br />
Students law]. http://www.bmwf.gv.at/startseite/<br />
hochschulen/universitaeten/gesetze/studienrecht/hsg_1998/<br />
[3] Austrian Government (no date): Hochschülerinnen- und<br />
Hochschülerschaftswahlordnung 2005 (HSWO 2005)<br />
[Election Regulations]. http://www.bmwf.gv.at/startseite/<br />
hochschulen/universitaeten/gesetze/studienrecht/hswo_2005<br />
[4] Andreas Ehringfeld, Larissa Naber, Thomas Grechenig,<br />
Robert Krimmer, Markus Traxl, Gerald Fischer: Analysis of<br />
Recommendation Rec(2004)11 Based on the Experiences of<br />
Specific Attacks Against the First Legally Binding<br />
Implementation of E-Voting in Austria. Electronic Voting<br />
2010, EVOTE 2010, 4th International Conference, July 21st<br />
- 24th, 2010, Austria
Quality Assurance Model for e-Governance Projects: A<br />
Case Study on e-Counseling<br />
Rama Krushna Das<br />
National Informatics Centre<br />
Berhampur 760 004, India<br />
+91–94370-64536<br />
ramdash@yahoo.com<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
Ensuring quality for any software application, especially in the<br />
domain of e-Governance is a challenging task. This is because a<br />
slight mistake will not only jeopardize sensitive functions of a<br />
government but can adversely affect a large section of the society<br />
and may lead to aversion in the minds of the public towards use of<br />
ICT in governmental functions. Several standards have been<br />
followed in software development but quality assurance has<br />
remained as an active area of research especially for the e-<br />
Governance applications. In this paper we investigate certain<br />
quality parameters which are relevant to e-Governance<br />
applications and propose a quality assurance model which can be<br />
followed while developing different applications. As a proof-ofconcept<br />
we have considered a very successful project called “e-<br />
Counseling” which was implemented in one of the backward<br />
states of India to facilitate student admission to different<br />
professional courses. The project not only helped in streamlining<br />
student admission but helped students in rural areas living at<br />
remote locations of the state of Orissa to participate in the<br />
admission process without having to travel long distances. Initial<br />
criticism because of unsatisfactory performance led to the present<br />
study to come up with a quality assurance model which can be<br />
followed for the success of the project.<br />
Categories and Subject Descriptors<br />
H.3.5 [Information Storage and Retrieval] Online Information<br />
Services - Data sharing, Web-based services: J.1 [Administrative<br />
Data Processing]: Business, Government.<br />
General Terms<br />
Experimentation, Human Factors<br />
Keywords<br />
Quality Assurance, e-Governance, e-Counseling.<br />
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for<br />
personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are<br />
not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies<br />
bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for<br />
components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored.<br />
Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to<br />
post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission<br />
and/or a fee.<br />
ICEGOV '12, October 22 - 25 2012, Albany, NY, USA<br />
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1200-4/12/10...$15.00<br />
Manas Ranjan Patra<br />
Berhampur University<br />
Berhampur 760 007, India<br />
+91–94371-45430<br />
mrpatra12@gmail.com<br />
502<br />
1. INTRODUCTION<br />
Pabitrananda Patnaik<br />
National Informatics Centre<br />
Bbhubaneswar 751 001, India<br />
+91–94370-03107<br />
ppabitra@hotmail.com<br />
The characteristics of software such as invisibility, complexity<br />
and flexibility force the developers to make changes even after the<br />
software is implemented. This adversely affects the usability of<br />
software. Therefore, appropriate measures must be taken<br />
throughout the development life cycle in order to minimize the<br />
possibility of errors. Quality Assurance is an umbrella activity<br />
which is to be applied throughout the life cycle of software<br />
engineering process [1][2].<br />
In the present work, a Quality Assurance model is developed and<br />
experimented with a tightly time scheduled, zero error tolerance<br />
and highly sensitive citizen centric e-Governance application<br />
called “e-Counseling”. The model shows the role of different<br />
stakeholders responsible for the success of the project. We call<br />
this as an “Analyst-Developer-User-Manager” model wherein<br />
each stakeholder needs to perform his/her task which is welldefined.<br />
This can assure the expected quality of the software and<br />
contribute towards the success of the project.<br />
2. e-COUNSELING<br />
e-Counseling is an application which is introduced in the state of<br />
Orissa to streamline admission into different professional courses<br />
and help the students to participate in the admission process<br />
without traveling long distances to a centralized student<br />
counseling center, especially from rural areas. The project was<br />
spearheaded by NIC, a central government department under the<br />
Ministry of IT. This not only helped in reducing student<br />
movements but increased transparency and better monitoring of<br />
the entire admission process [7]. Initially the project was<br />
subjected to criticism as it could not deliver due to bugs in the<br />
software and procedural problems which were not properly<br />
defined. This led to our present study on quality assurance.<br />
3. QUALITY ASSURANCE MODEL<br />
This paper emphasizes on the stages of ensuring quality at<br />
different stages of work execution of e-Governance applications<br />
in which the developers and users are involved.<br />
Stage – 1: The detailed process has to be defined. The analysis,<br />
logic development, implementation strategy, maintenance strategy<br />
and all other process related activities are to be defined very<br />
clearly. At this stage Analyst is involved to define the complete<br />
process.
Stage – 2: Here the actual software is developed, tested and put in<br />
use. The Developers are associated with this stage and they may<br />
develop in any platform according to the requirement, but, they<br />
must have the required skill to develop error free software.<br />
Stage – 3: Supply of data by the user department must be 100%<br />
error free. This is possible only when the User is associated with<br />
the system and supply accurate data.<br />
Stage – 4: It is observed in many e-Governance projects that, the<br />
success of the project lies on the managerial capability of the<br />
Project Manager. Whenever inadvertent errors and problems crop<br />
in during the project life cycle the managerial capability to handle<br />
the situation is highly essential.<br />
This model can be referred as Analyst-Developer-User-Manager<br />
model because of the involvement of four different stake holders<br />
at different stages of the project execution.<br />
3.1 Process Quality<br />
The allotment of seats are done based on the student performance<br />
in the entrance test, his/her preferences, category to he/she<br />
belongs, and the availability of seats under a particular category.<br />
The allotment of seat in a course is based on a first/best fit<br />
strategy depending on the candidate’s choice.<br />
3.2 Software Quality<br />
Software quality depends on the understanding of the requirement<br />
by the Analyst and Developer. The people involved in software<br />
development should have both technical and domain knowledge,<br />
so as to minimize error. The following Software Quality Metrics<br />
[8] are associated at this stage.<br />
Correctness : The extent to which the software satisfies the user<br />
requirement = (No. of requirements fulfilled) / (Total no. of<br />
requirements) * 100<br />
Reliability : The extent to which the software can function<br />
without failure = (Mean Time to Failure) / (Total Run Time) *<br />
100<br />
Efficiency : The output to given input = (Space or time usage) /<br />
(Total Space or Time) * 100<br />
Integrity : Extent to which the software can ensure accuracy and<br />
consistency = (No. of successful attempts) / (Total no. of<br />
attempts) * 100<br />
Usability : Efforts required to operate the software = (Total time<br />
taken to handle the software) / (Total development time) * 100<br />
Maintainability : The efforts required to trace and fix the error =<br />
(Time taken to fix the error) / (Total development time) * 100<br />
Testability : The efforts required to test the software with all its<br />
functionalities = (Time taken for testing the functionality) / (Total<br />
development time) * 100<br />
Flexibility : The efforts required for modifying an operational<br />
software = (Time taken to modify the program) / (Total<br />
development time) * 100<br />
Portability : Transferability of the software from one environment<br />
to another = (No. of successful ports) / (Total no. of ports) * 100<br />
Reusability : The degree to which the software programs can be<br />
reused in other applications = (No. of reusable functions) / (Total<br />
no. of functions) * 100<br />
503<br />
Interoperability : The efforts required to couple the components of<br />
one software with another = (Time required for coupling) /<br />
(Installation Time) * 100.<br />
3.3 Data Quality<br />
Data Quality is one of the major components for successful<br />
implementation of a project. A small mistake in seat allotment for<br />
one candidate can have ripple effect. Therefore quality of data<br />
plays a crucial role. Several metrics like Accuracy, Completeness,<br />
Relevance, Reliability, Accessibility, and Presentation can be used<br />
to control the data quality.<br />
3.4 Managerial Quality<br />
The success of the project depends on the Project Manager and<br />
User Manager who handles the data. For e-Governance<br />
applications there are lot of stake holders involved in a project. In<br />
e-Counseling the stakeholders are State Government, Institutions,<br />
Vendors, Developers, Media and the Citizens. Therefore, their<br />
skill, knowledge, ethics, responsibility and mentality can affect<br />
the success of the project. Some of the quality metrics with<br />
respect to the skill of a manger are Defects Handling, Time<br />
Management, Cost Management, Change Management,<br />
Manpower Risk Management, Ethics of the Stake Holder.<br />
4. KEY FINDINGS OF THE PAPER<br />
Quality Metrics associated with each stage of the Quality<br />
Assurance Model were found and the degree of quality achieved<br />
by using this model is determined. Most of the metrics are<br />
qualitative and some are quantitative. The Quality Importance<br />
Factor (Fi) is taken on a 10 points scale (0 to 10) and the Quality<br />
Achievement factor (Ai) is taken as Very Low for 0 – 10%, Low<br />
for 10 – 25%, Moderate for 25 – 50%, High for 50 – 75% and<br />
Very High for 75 – 100%. The Quality Assurance Metrics with<br />
Quality Importance and Quality Achievement Factors are<br />
computed for the e-Counseling project during 2011.<br />
5. CONCLUSION<br />
In this work we have proposed a Quality Assurance model which<br />
was followed in the implementation of a very sensitive application<br />
called “e-Counseling”. It not only streamlined the cumbersome<br />
admission process but could build confidence in the minds of the<br />
parents and students to use the e-counseling system<br />
enthusiastically.<br />
6. REFERENCES<br />
[1] IEEE Standard for Software Quality Assurance Plans, IEEE<br />
Std 730-1998 (Revision of IEEE Std 730-1989).<br />
[2] Michalis, X., Software Metrics and Measurements, In<br />
“Encyclopedia of E-Commerce, E-Government and Mobile<br />
Commerce”, Mehdi Khosrow-Pour (Ed.), Idea Group<br />
Publishing, ISBN: 1-59140-799-0, 2006, 1029-1036.
Regulation Room: Moving Towards Civic Participation 2.0<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
Rulemaking is one of the U.S. government’s most important<br />
policymaking methods. Although broad transparency and<br />
participation rights are part of its legal structure, significant<br />
barriers prevent effective engagement by many groups of<br />
interested citizens. RegulationRoom, an experimental opengovernment<br />
partnership between academic researchers and<br />
government agencies, is a socio-technical participation system<br />
that uses multiple methods to alert and effectively engage new<br />
voices in rulemaking.<br />
Categories and Subject Descriptors<br />
H.5.2. [User Interfaces] – User-Centered Design; J.1<br />
ADMINISTRATIVE DATA PROCESSING – Government;<br />
H.5.3 [Information Interfaces and Presentation]: Group and<br />
Organization Interfaces—Asynchronous Interaction<br />
General Terms<br />
Design, Experimentation, Human Factors, Theory, Legal Aspects<br />
Keywords<br />
E-Rulemaking, Open Government, Web 2.0, Government-<br />
Academic Partnerships<br />
1. INTRODUCTION<br />
Here we present RegulationRoom, (http://regulationroom.org/), an<br />
experimental online public participation platform, which is the<br />
U.S. Department of Transportation’s (USDOT) Open Government<br />
Flagship Initiative. RegulationRoom is unique in being a<br />
systematic effort to discover how to use information and<br />
communication technologies (ICTs) to alert and engage citizens<br />
effectively in the formation of complex government policy. We<br />
focus on rulemaking, the process federal agencies use to make<br />
new health, safety, environmental, and other regulations.<br />
The project is a unique collaboration between academic<br />
researchers of the Cornell eRulemaking Initiative (CeRI) and the<br />
government. CeRI owns, designs, operates, and controls<br />
RegulationRoom, but also works closely with USDOT to identify<br />
suitable “live” rulemakings for the site [2]. Agency officials work<br />
with CeRI before the public comment period opens, and help<br />
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for<br />
personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are<br />
not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies<br />
bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for<br />
components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored.<br />
Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to<br />
post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission<br />
and/or a fee.<br />
ICEGOV '12, October 22 - 25 2012, Albany, NY, United States, NY, USA<br />
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1200-4/12/10…$15.00.<br />
Josiah Heidt and Jackeline Solivan<br />
Law School<br />
Cornell University<br />
Ithaca, New York USA<br />
jbh249@cornell.edu, jks38@cornell.edu<br />
504<br />
evaluate success after it closes. This collaboration allows us to<br />
field test design and operational strategies for eliciting and<br />
supporting participation by individuals who have not previously<br />
commented in a federal rulemaking. CeRI involves researchers<br />
from communications, computing, conflict resolution, information<br />
science, law, legal informatics, and political science. This type of<br />
interdisciplinary approach has been recognized as important to<br />
designing successful online participation systems. [7, 8].<br />
Researchers agree that first generation e-rulemaking systems have<br />
not produced significantly broader, meaningful public<br />
participation. [1, 8]. RegulationRoom is a second-generation erulemaking<br />
system that uses Web 2.0, ICTs, and human<br />
facilitative moderation to support effective public participation.<br />
2. OUR GOAL<br />
After examining the unsuccessful history of conventional<br />
rulemaking and first-generation e-rulemaking systems<br />
(Rulemaking 1.0), we hypothesized that a successful public<br />
participation system must address three barriers to citizen<br />
engagement. The first barrier is lack of awareness that<br />
rulemakings of interest are going on. The second barrier is<br />
information overload from voluminous and complex rulemaking<br />
materials. Rulemaking documents are generally 50–100 pages<br />
long and are written at a graduate-school level of English. The<br />
third barrier is unfamiliarity with how to effectively participate in<br />
the rulemaking process. Many individuals do not know that<br />
participation in this process is not like voting. Effective<br />
participation requires informed participation and includes giving<br />
reasons, alternatives, data, or otherwise substantiated claims.<br />
Our goal with RegulationRoom is to address and remediate these<br />
three barriers in order to create high quality, efficient, and<br />
effective e-government participation. RegulationRoom employs<br />
Web 2.0 technology and other ICTs, a combination of social and<br />
conventional media, purposeful site design and presentation of<br />
information, and human facilitative moderation.<br />
3. OUR PROJECT<br />
3.1 Combating Lack of Awareness<br />
USDOT conducts several hundred rulemakings annually, most of<br />
which affect only limited industry groups who already participate<br />
effectively in the rulemaking process. Rulemakings hosted on<br />
RegulationRoom are carefully selected because they directly<br />
affect individuals or groups unlikely to meaningfully engage in<br />
the conventional process.<br />
Once a rule is chosen, the process of remediating public<br />
unawareness begins long before the comment period opens. First,<br />
we create a communications outreach plan: After defining the<br />
kinds of stakeholders we want to alert, we try to discover where,<br />
and how, these target groups get information. We identify
membership associations, recreational and trade publications, and<br />
influential individuals such as bloggers, and reach out to them<br />
through email, phone, and online communications. We develop a<br />
list of keywords and phrases to use on social media (1)<br />
proactively in daily tweeting and Facebook posting; (2) reactively<br />
by setting up continuous automated searches and responding with<br />
comments or tweets when the rule or its subjects appears on news<br />
sites, blogs, or Twitter; and, most recently; (3) in Facebook and<br />
Google ads. RegulationRoom has a presence on Facebook, and<br />
the site itself is designed to encourage users to “share” both issue<br />
posts and individual comments. We coordinate media outreach<br />
with USDOT’s communications office, and try to persuade<br />
conventional and online media to publicize the rulemaking and<br />
the availability of RegulationRoom. We have found that print<br />
coverage can be surprisingly effective in driving online<br />
participation [3].<br />
Registered users receive a welcome email, as well as a notice<br />
whenever someone replies to their comments. We email them<br />
periodically during the comment period to provide updates and<br />
encourage further participation, and after the comment period<br />
closes to report on how the rulemaking concluded to close the<br />
participation feedback loop – an important step often omitted in<br />
public participation projects [4].<br />
3.2 Managing Information Overload<br />
The other, equally challenging, “cognitive victory” required for<br />
effective participation [6] is presenting the vast information of a<br />
rulemaking in a way that makes it cognitively manageable for<br />
people without legal or technical expertise.<br />
Because of both length and readability level, having users<br />
comment directly on the NPRM text was infeasible. Our solution<br />
utilizes several information design strategies:<br />
o Triage: identifying and fore-grounding the information users<br />
will most likely be interested in and need, and packaging this<br />
information in thematic segments (6–10 “issue posts”) of<br />
manageable length;<br />
o Translation: using relatively simple vocabulary and sentence<br />
structure;<br />
o “Layering”: heavily using hyperlinks to allow users, at their<br />
choice, to go deeper (e.g., to relevant sections of primary<br />
documents; to statutory text or background information) or to<br />
find help (e.g., glossary and brief explanation tooltips)<br />
Through layering, all information in the NPRM and<br />
supporting documents is available on the site, but in a form<br />
that gives users control and is less likely to overwhelm; and<br />
o Indexing: all the issue post topics are visible and accessible<br />
from a navigational index; within each post, every<br />
commentable section has a title, all of which are visible and<br />
accessible from an index at the top of the post. (The latter<br />
was a simple but effective solution to the problem we<br />
observed in early rules that users tended to attach comments<br />
to the first section, regardless of content.)<br />
The other essential component of managing information overload<br />
for inexperienced commenters is human facilitative moderation.<br />
Neutral moderators encourage a “knowledge building<br />
community” that supports maximum learning of, participation in,<br />
and access to the rulemaking process. The moderator<br />
505<br />
interventions include: (1) recognizing when users are missing, or<br />
misunderstanding, important information and helping them<br />
acquire it; (2) encouraging more knowledgeable or engaged users<br />
to go more deeply into the agency’s analysis; and (3) pointing out<br />
other issues, and other comments, that are related to the<br />
commenter’s apparent interests or concerns.<br />
3.3 Remediating Unfamiliarity with the<br />
Process<br />
Educational materials on the site include “Learn More” pages that<br />
use graphics and simple language to explain the rulemaking<br />
process and effective commenting. Users can also watch a short<br />
video explaining rulemaking. However, consistent with general<br />
website use patterns, these educational aids are used only<br />
sporadically [3]. The principal strategy for increasing rulemaking<br />
“participation literacy” is tacit rather than overt: human<br />
moderators who mentor effective commenting using facilitative<br />
moderation. Law students in an e-government clinic are trained in<br />
the conflict resolution techniques of content- and process-based<br />
group facilitation [5], and they moderate asynchronously under<br />
the supervision of senior researchers.<br />
4. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS<br />
This material is based upon work supported by the National<br />
Science Foundation under Grant No. NSF IIS-1111176. Any<br />
opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations<br />
expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not<br />
necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.<br />
5. REFERENCES<br />
[1] Coglianese, C. Citizen participation in rulemaking: past,<br />
present, and future. Duke Law J 55, 943–968, 2006.<br />
[2] Farina, C. R., Newhart, M. J., Cardie, C., Cosley, D., and<br />
Cornell eRulemaking Initiative. Rulemaking 2.0. Miami Law<br />
Rev. 65, 395–448, 2011.<br />
[3] Farina, C. R., Miller, P., Newhart, M.J., Cardie, C., Cosley,<br />
D., Vernon, R. Rulemaking in 140 characters or less: social<br />
networking and public participation in rulemaking. Pace Law<br />
Rev. 31, 382-463, 2011.<br />
[4] Johnston, P. Open Government: Assessing the Obama<br />
Administration’s Efforts to Make Government Transparency<br />
a Reality, [online],<br />
http://www.cisco.com/web/about/ac79/docs/pov/Open_and_<br />
Transparent_Government_Formatted_120209FINAL.pdf,<br />
2009.<br />
[5] Kaner, S., Lind, L., Toldi, C., Fisk, S., and Berger, D.<br />
Facilitator’s Guide to Participatory Decision-Making. John<br />
Wiley & Sons, Inc., San Francisco, CA, 2007.<br />
[6] Lupia, A. Deliberation disconnected: What it takes to<br />
improve civic competence, Law and Contemporary<br />
Problems, Vol. 65 No. 3, 133–150, 2002.<br />
[7] Preece, J. Online communities: Designing Usability,<br />
Supporting Sociability, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Wiley,<br />
Chichester, UK, 2000.<br />
[8] CSFFR. Achieving the potential: the future of federal erulemaking.<br />
Technical report, Committee on the Status &<br />
Future of Federal e-Rulemaking/American Bar Association,<br />
Washington, DC, 2009.
Revival of Farming Community with M-Agriculture<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
This paper is aimed at developing an architecture which drives<br />
scalable, replicable and commercially successful Farmer<br />
Information Services. It aims at building services that impact<br />
farmer’s income and productivity by reducing multiple<br />
distribution channels. Using 360 degrees of communication<br />
systems makes this system a unique system.<br />
Categories and Subject Descriptors<br />
Agriculture information systems, mobile technologies, supply<br />
chain management, customer relationship management<br />
General Terms<br />
Economics, Reliability, Experimentation, Human Factors.<br />
Keywords<br />
Agriculture, Mobile Devices, M-Agriculture, E-Agriculture, Egovernment,<br />
Farmer.<br />
1. INTRODUCTION<br />
As the famous saying goes “Any sufficiently advanced technology<br />
is indistinguishable from magic” – a Law of prediction by Arthur<br />
C Clarke, innovations in our agriculture information system can<br />
create magic and wonders in lives of farmers and in turn in the<br />
lives of general public. Agriculture is the basic contributor to<br />
many countries GDP since several decades. But of late its<br />
contribution is declining. For example share of agriculture and<br />
allied activities came down from 35% in the early 1980s to about<br />
32% in the early 1990s nose-dived in the reform era – down to<br />
25% in 2000-01 in India. The rate of decline in agriculture’s share<br />
was even faster in the second phase of reform. Between 2000-01<br />
and 2010-11, the share was down by a huge 11 percentage point.<br />
Nearly half of the farmers in India are in debts and funds flow<br />
from the government towards agriculture is declining . At the<br />
same time inflation is going up day by day, common man is not<br />
able to afford a basic meal. Under these circumstances it is highly<br />
recommended to introduce proposed e-agriculture model as part<br />
of e-government services which will help farmer as well as<br />
common man to buy and sell farm produce at reasonable price.<br />
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for<br />
personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are<br />
not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies<br />
bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for<br />
components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored.<br />
Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to<br />
post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission<br />
and/or a fee.<br />
ICEGOV '12, October 22 - 25 2012, Albany, NY, USA<br />
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1200-4/12/10...$15.00<br />
Swapna Veldanda<br />
ERP Product Specialist,CSC<br />
sveldanda@gmail.com<br />
506<br />
2. INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY<br />
REVOLUTION IN AGRICULTURE<br />
The greatest impact of IT has been its ability to create linkages,<br />
not its ability to process internal data into information. Network<br />
integration allows departments/organizations to share information<br />
and interact electronically across organizational boundaries. These<br />
systems enable stakeholders in the redesign of their key business<br />
process there by enhancing productivity, quality, speed,<br />
flexibility, at the same time it is also wise to consider and address<br />
network issues like Security, Customer care, Services pricing<br />
calculations, Fee and tax collection and Partnership accounting.<br />
2.1 Customization and personalization<br />
The key to this system’s effectiveness is that it is “plug and play”<br />
– our overriding objective is to remove complexity, allowing<br />
service developers to focus their efforts on the service elements of<br />
the transaction, rather than the technological elements.<br />
This adaptability is particularly important in the world of<br />
agriculture, where the differences from community to community<br />
can be quite pronounced, both in terms of the services being<br />
provided (large versus small or urban versus rural, for example)<br />
and the level of technological sophistication.<br />
2.2 Transition in Agriculture Systems<br />
In many countries at least 50% of the farms produce is either<br />
going waste or the farmers are selling at a cheaper price. At the<br />
same time public is buying farms produce at astronomical prices<br />
because of inflated prices by distributers. With this neither the<br />
farmers are gaining nor the public. And it is resulting in<br />
discouragement among farmers towards agriculture. The solution<br />
lies in minimizing the cost so as to guarantee equitable access and<br />
affordability. Countries should look at ways of harmonizing costs<br />
and discuss with private sector. There has been progress in this<br />
direction in some Asian countries, like India, where the<br />
government has involved the private sector in investing in making<br />
the mobile based services more affordable. Following picture<br />
shows how the transformation took place from traditional<br />
agriculture system to distributed connection model.
Fig 1 : Agriculture Revolution<br />
3. PROPOSED AGRICULTURE SYSTEM<br />
Proposed Agriculture Information System works based on the<br />
following steps explained. It helps in providing flexibility,<br />
accessibility and adaptability to all stakeholders of agriculture<br />
sector, viz., common people who will buy farm produce, farmers,<br />
vendors who will be selling raw material for farming.<br />
Agriculture System will enable all these stake holders to register<br />
in portal either through internet or through mobile. Once<br />
registration is done required information will be accessible and<br />
SMS facility can be used for PULL and PUSH.<br />
• Stakeholders (Customers, Farmers, Vendors, Service<br />
providers) will register in portal<br />
• Portal is integrated with various services and SMS is<br />
sent to the concerned users based on service requested.<br />
• Based on interactive SMS facility consumer can place<br />
order, and farmers can sell products to the users directly<br />
without distributors.<br />
Fig 2: Proposed Agriculture system<br />
Following are the prospective services which can be provided<br />
through the system:<br />
• Direct interaction with End users: Elimination of<br />
distribution channels helps farmers and consumers in<br />
getting right product and the right price.<br />
• Agriculture Education: Advice, education, and<br />
awareness: applications that enable provision of<br />
information to farmers and extensionists about good<br />
practices, crop varieties, and pest or disease<br />
management. This information can be sent to mobiles as<br />
an SMS based on the request.<br />
• Commodity prices, market information, and trading<br />
transactions: applications that prices in regional<br />
markets to inform decision making throughout<br />
agricultural value chains.<br />
• Data collection: applications that enable collection of<br />
data into central repositories, potentially from large<br />
geographic regions.<br />
507<br />
• Pest and disease outbreak warning and tracking:<br />
applications that send and receive data on outbreaks.<br />
• Financial services: applications that enable provision of<br />
microloans, banking services, and micro-insurance for<br />
crops and livestock.<br />
• Geographical Information System: Weather forecasts,<br />
alerts about draught, impact of bad weather etc., can be<br />
circulated to the target groups.<br />
Table1: SWOT Analysis of Agriculture Information<br />
System<br />
4. CONCLUSION<br />
Unlocking productivity potential, improving supply chain<br />
demand, refining customer relationship management while<br />
helping to manage improvised production with information on<br />
weather forecast, market trends, soil based information, cost of<br />
raw material etc., will help in bringing the past glory in farming<br />
community. No more impact of floods, no more suicides of<br />
farmers. These developments, coupled with the rapid advances<br />
that are being made in human computer interfaces, are likely to<br />
make it ubiquitous, enabling access to dramatically increased<br />
amounts of data, tools for analysis, and decision support systems.<br />
As regards the systems they can be said to have more and more<br />
functions, which is ensured by the high level of integration. The<br />
wider than earlier application and innovative spread of the wired<br />
and the Mobile Internet are primarily limited by economic and<br />
social factors. Enhancements in agriculture system will help in<br />
envisioning and fulfilling dreams of farming community and<br />
achieving economic balanced society.<br />
5. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS<br />
I am thankful to ICEGOV for providing an opportunity to publish<br />
my thoughts on improving the lives of farming community.
Social Media Usage Guidelines for the Government of the<br />
United Arab Emirates<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
In this poster, we present the experience of Emirates eGovernment<br />
in designing social media usage guidelines for government<br />
organizations in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). We highlight<br />
the local context by focusing on social media adoption by the<br />
government and citizens, and describe the process we followed<br />
when designing the guidelines and the key policy issues we<br />
covered in the document. We conclude with a set of<br />
recommendations for other government agencies planning to go<br />
through a similar process.<br />
Categories and Subject Descriptors<br />
K.5.2 [Legal Aspects of Computing]: Government Issues –<br />
Regulation.<br />
General Terms<br />
Legal Aspects<br />
Keywords<br />
Social Media, e-Government, United Arab Emirates<br />
1. INTRODUCTION<br />
In an attempt to clearly describe the growing impact of social<br />
media and Web 2.0 technologies on the government sector, this<br />
technology revolution is described as one of the “four new forces<br />
that enable the transformation of government” in addition to<br />
demographic, social, and business revolutions [11]. The<br />
interactive and pervasive nature of social media, and its instant<br />
capabilities, can create new ways of “democratic participation,<br />
pressures for new institutional structures, processes and<br />
frameworks for open and transparent government on an<br />
unprecedented scale” [1]. A similar conclusion was provided by<br />
[8], who discussed how social media can promote citizen<br />
participation in governments’ decision making and process design<br />
and help improve democratic practices in general.<br />
But the growing use of social media raises many challenges<br />
related to governing its use and the related legal impacts. Most of<br />
the laws that govern the use of social media in the US government<br />
were written prior to its existence [2]. According to [5], any social<br />
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for<br />
personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are<br />
not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies<br />
bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for<br />
components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored.<br />
Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to<br />
post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission<br />
and/or a fee.<br />
ICEGOV '12, October 22 - 25 2012, Albany, NY, USA<br />
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1200-4/12/10...$15.00<br />
Elbadawi, Ibrahim<br />
Telecommunications Regulatory Authority<br />
Dubai, United Arab Emirates<br />
Ibrahim.elbadawi@gia.gov.ae<br />
508<br />
media policy should cover eight essential elements: employee<br />
access, account management, acceptable use, employee conduct,<br />
content, security, legal issues, and citizen conduct. Motivated by<br />
similar needs, the eGovernment and Information Sector within the<br />
Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (the government body<br />
responsible for the federal eGovernment program; website<br />
http://www.emiratesegov.ae) has developed comprehensive social<br />
media usage guidelines for all government entities in the UAE [4].<br />
1.1 eGovernment in the UAE<br />
The UAE is a federation of seven emirates with a federal<br />
government of over 50 entities, most of which provide public<br />
services, and a local government within each of the seven emirates<br />
[3]. The eGovernment program in the UAE has achieved<br />
remarkable success in enabling the technology-based transformation<br />
of public services. According to [10], the UAE is ranked 6 th globally<br />
in the eParticipation Index, 7 th in the Online Service Index, and 28 th<br />
in the eGovernment Development Index.<br />
1.2 Social Media in the UAE<br />
Social media is widely adopted among citizens of the UAE;<br />
40.6% of its population has active Facebook accounts, which is<br />
the highest rate among all Arab countries [7].<br />
Government agencies and officials are increasingly establishing<br />
their presence on one or more social media sites. His Highness<br />
Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and<br />
Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, offers a role<br />
model for government officials. He is very popular on Facebook,<br />
Twitter, and YouTube and he uses these channels to continuously<br />
communicate with the public and consult them on new ideas and<br />
initiatives. Government employees in the UAE consider social<br />
networking among the top technologies that could increase the<br />
level of collaboration across the government [9].<br />
The UAE is considered among the developing countries that have<br />
managed to catch up with the developed countries as e-Leaders<br />
with the use of consultation tools, including social media [10].<br />
2. SOCIAL MEDIA USAGE GUIDELINES<br />
In this section, we illustrate the process used to design the UAE<br />
government’s social media usage guidelines, describe the key<br />
policy issues covered in the guidelines, and provide a set of<br />
recommendations for other government organizations planning to<br />
develop a similar document.<br />
2.1 The Design Process<br />
The policy guidelines document was prepared collaboratively<br />
between May 2010 and March 2011 by a task force that brought<br />
together representatives of the government sector, academic
sector, private sector, and civil society. Emirates eGovernment<br />
and Dubai School of Government lead the work, which was<br />
kicked off by a discussion forum and policy roundtable [4]. The<br />
result of the roundtable discussion was a draft document with a<br />
list of the policy issues that participants agreed should be covered<br />
by the final guidelines document. The work continued with<br />
intensive research until the document was finalized and officially<br />
launched. During this research period, the task force continued its<br />
discussion via online platforms, as well as offline meetings when<br />
needed.<br />
2.2 Key Policy Elements of the Usage<br />
Guidelines Document<br />
The social media usage guidelines aimed to provide government<br />
entities with policy guidelines on how to use social media tools in<br />
“responsible, safe and effective manners to communicate with<br />
their clients and public and engage them in designing/delivering<br />
government programs and services” [4]. To achieve this goal, and<br />
as a result of the policy design process described above, the<br />
guidelines covered the following eight policy issues, which are<br />
aligned to a great extent with the eight issues recommended by<br />
[6]:<br />
o Access to social media sites: guidelines to help government<br />
agency leaders decide whether to allow their employees to<br />
access social media sites during working hours. The general<br />
recommendation was in favor of granting this access, as it’s<br />
essential for enabling transformation towards social agency.<br />
o Account management: detailed the overall process from<br />
account creation until deletion/deactivation; differentiated<br />
between personal, professional, and official accounts.<br />
o Content management: compared the key characteristics of<br />
publishing/managing content on social and traditional media.<br />
Listed skills and qualifications required for editors and<br />
managers of social media content, and offered a set of<br />
strategies for government agencies to consider when<br />
moderating discussion on social media and managing usergenerated<br />
content.<br />
o Employee conduct and acceptable use: the guidelines<br />
aligned the government employees’ social media code of<br />
conduct with existing human resources rules and regulations.<br />
o Citizen code of conduct: a list of issues to be covered by any<br />
policy statement to be published on their social media<br />
accounts as a participation policy for the public.<br />
o Privacy: in the absence of a law dedicated to online privacy in<br />
the UAE, a set of policy guidelines offered to help government<br />
agencies minimize potential privacy breaches.<br />
o Security: the guidelines elaborated a set of security threats<br />
related to social media, such as social engineering, and<br />
suggested actions to take in addition to the standard<br />
Information Technology most organizations use to reduce<br />
their vulnerability to these threats.<br />
o Other legal issues: copyright and intellectual property<br />
ownership; concerns about these issues are mainly caused by<br />
the ease of copying and sharing others’ content on social<br />
media sites.<br />
2.3 Recommendations<br />
Building on the experience we gained during the process of<br />
designing this social media usage guidelines document and the<br />
lessons we learned, we recommend that other government<br />
509<br />
agencies planning to develop a similar policy document consider<br />
these points:<br />
o Clearly identify your goals for designing the policy.<br />
o Study and analyze your context.<br />
o Collaborate with other stakeholders inside and outside the<br />
government sector.<br />
o Balance the organizational and personal aspects of social<br />
media.<br />
o Focus on the policy aspects of social media as compared to the<br />
technological aspects.<br />
3. CONCLUSION<br />
In this poster, we presented the UAE government’s experience of<br />
developing government-wide social media usage guidelines. We<br />
described the process of the policy design, the key policy issues<br />
covered, and concluded by providing a set of recommendations<br />
for other government organizations planning to go through a<br />
similar process.<br />
4. REFERENCES<br />
[1] Bertot, J. C., Jaeger, P. T., Munson, S., and Glaisyer, T.<br />
Engaging the public in open government: The policy and<br />
government application of social media technology for<br />
government transparency. IEEE Computer, 43, 11 (Nov.<br />
2010), 53-59.<br />
[2] Bertot, J., Hansen, D., and Jaeger, P. Government policies on<br />
the use of social media: legislating for change. In<br />
Proceedings of the 12th annual international conference on<br />
digital government research (Dg.o '11) (College Park, MD,<br />
USA, June 12-15, 2011). ACM Press, New York, NY, 2011,<br />
131-140.<br />
[3] Elbadawi, Ibrahim. Cloud computing for e-government in<br />
UAE: opportunities, challenges and service models. In<br />
Proceedings of the 5 th international conference on theory and<br />
practice of electronic governance (ICEGOV '10) (Tallinn,<br />
Estonia, September 26-28, 2011). ACM Press, New York,<br />
NY, 2011, 387-388.<br />
[4] Emirates eGovernment. 2010. Retrieved June 17, 2012 from<br />
http://www.emiratesegov.ae/web/guest/articleDetails?articleI<br />
d=329912.<br />
[5] Gharawi, M., Helbig, N., Hradinova J., and Werthmuller, D.<br />
An exploratory study of social media adoption in<br />
government. In Proceedings of the 4 th international<br />
conference on theory and practice of electronic governance<br />
(ICEGOV '10) (Beijing, China, October 25-28, 2010). ACM<br />
Press, New York, NY, 2010, 359-360.<br />
[6] Hrdinova, J., Helbig, N., and Peters, C. Designing Social<br />
Media Policy for Government: Eight Essential Elements.<br />
Center for Technology in Government, University at Albany-<br />
SUNY, NY, 2010.<br />
[7] Mourtada, R. and Salem, F. Social Media in the Arab World:<br />
Influencing Societal and Cultural Change? Technical Report.<br />
Dubai School of Government, 2012.<br />
[8] Noveck, B. Wiki Government: How Technology can Make<br />
Government Better, Democracy Stronger, and Citizens More<br />
Powerful. Brookings Institution Press, Washington D.C.,<br />
2009.
[9] Salem, F. and Jarrar, Y. Cross Agency Collaboration in the<br />
UAE Government, the Role of Trust and Impact of<br />
Technology. Technical Report. Dubai School of Government,<br />
2009.<br />
[10] United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs.<br />
United Nations E-Government Survey 2012: e-Government<br />
for the People. Technical Report. New York, United Nations<br />
Publications, 2012.<br />
[11] World Economic Forum. The Global Agenda 2009. Geneva,<br />
Switzerland, 2009.<br />
510
System For Measuring e-Gov: A Multi-stakeholder<br />
Approach<br />
Camilo Cristancho Mantilla<br />
Externado University of Colombia<br />
St. 12 # 1-17 east. Bogota, Colombia<br />
+ 34 622 444607<br />
camilo.cristancho@uexternado.edu.co<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
This paper describes a model for measuring e-government (e-gov)<br />
performance, which intends to integrate a multi-stakeholder<br />
approach within a contextual appraisal. Basically, it measures<br />
capacities (readiness) of public agencies to implement e-gov<br />
strategy, and results (use and performance) of citizens, businesses<br />
and civil servants.<br />
Categories and Subject Descriptors<br />
K.4 [Computers and Society]: Public Policy<br />
General Terms<br />
Documentation<br />
Keywords<br />
E-gov, e-government measurement, e-services<br />
1. INTRODUCTION<br />
In 2009 the District Systems Commission (DSC), responsible for<br />
IT public policy in the Mayoralty of Bogota - Colombia,<br />
established an action plan for implementing the e-gov and digital<br />
city strategy. This Plan defined 12 macro-projects which integrate<br />
71 single projects related to IT, formulated by all the government<br />
offices in the city.<br />
To control the advancement and effectiveness of this initiative,<br />
DSC required a tool to monitor and measures the development<br />
and results of e-gov and digital city actions. Considering this<br />
need, the Externado University of Colombia developed a<br />
monitoring and measurement system of e-gov and smart city<br />
(SMECI by its acronym in Spanish).<br />
2. MODEL DESCRIPTION<br />
2.1 Objectives<br />
The objective of SMECI is to monitor performance and results of<br />
projects related to Bogota’s e-government and digital city<br />
strategy.<br />
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for<br />
personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are<br />
not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies<br />
bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for<br />
components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored.<br />
Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to<br />
post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission<br />
and/or a fee.<br />
ICEGOV '12, October 22 - 25 2012, Albany, NY, USA<br />
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1200-4/12/10...$15.00<br />
511<br />
Juan Carlos Noriega Silva<br />
Externado University of Colombia<br />
St. 12 # 1-17 east. Bogota, Colombia<br />
+57 1 3537000 ext. 11-59<br />
juanc.noriega@uexternado.edu.co<br />
The model intends to measure and describe 1. Who uses egovernment<br />
services in Bogota, 2. How is e-gov used in the<br />
district?, and 3. To what extent do citizen perspectives vary on<br />
their evaluation of e-gov experiences?<br />
Furthermore, it aims to identify the most relevant factors that<br />
explain the differences in usage, performance and readiness<br />
levels, answering 1. Which attributes of citizen are related with<br />
the best experiences in using Bogotá's e-services? And 2. What<br />
practices of local government agencies determine differences in<br />
usage/performance/readiness levels?<br />
2.2 Methodological Approach<br />
On one hand SMECI takes information of indirect sources,<br />
obtained from reports of e-gov strategy and information society<br />
indicators of Bogota and its localities. On the other hand, it takes<br />
information of direct sources, obtained from internal and external<br />
users of e-services provided by Bogota’s Mayoralty entities. This<br />
information is captured through user surveys filled out by people<br />
who interact with the district public bodies (civil servants, citizens<br />
and businesses).<br />
2.3 Measurement Framework<br />
The model focuses on users and context, considering the elements<br />
of the e-gov strategy. It is divided into supply and demand<br />
components and internal and external actors of e-gov as shown in<br />
Table 1.<br />
Table 1. Contents of the e-gov measurement framework<br />
Side Supply Demand<br />
Internal<br />
Bogota's<br />
Administration<br />
External<br />
Government<br />
Private Sector<br />
Civil Society<br />
Quadrant II<br />
Evaluation of G2G,<br />
G2B and G2C.<br />
Entities as providers.<br />
Institutional readiness.<br />
Quadrant III<br />
Service and<br />
infrastructure<br />
Institutional Conditions<br />
Quadrant I<br />
Demand G2G -<br />
Entities as users.<br />
Characterization<br />
of internal users.<br />
Quadrant IV<br />
Characterization<br />
of External Client<br />
The first component of model (Quadrant I), incorporates products<br />
and services provided in G2G relationships. It refers to<br />
information and resources exchanged by public employees or<br />
local government offices. It involves the internal use of e- services<br />
in interactions, processes and services between government<br />
offices and the characterization of government officers and
internal users. The evaluation includes characterization of civil<br />
servants' skills and attitudes, as well as specific conditions that<br />
determine their performance in providing e-services. It’s centered<br />
on surveys oriented to civil servants as users of e-gov services.<br />
This evaluation intends to identify cross-agency interaction needs<br />
through an estimation of the information and requirements<br />
received in agencies, in order to detect priorities and restrictions<br />
in information flow processes.<br />
The second component of model (Quadrant II), incorporates the<br />
supply side of product and services provided in G2G, G2C and<br />
G2B relationships. Its purpose is to gauge these services, on four<br />
dimensions: e-gov performance models used in international<br />
practices, national and district plans of e-gov, user expectations,<br />
macro-projects and projects of each singular entity. A first<br />
dimension considers common and international evaluation models<br />
in order to make comparisons between different administrations<br />
and to take elements of analysis previously tested. The second,<br />
adapts the local context policies to delimit expectations of<br />
District and National authorities. Accordingly, SMECI uses<br />
guidelines established in the Online Government Manual and the<br />
Monitoring Guide of advancement in the stages of e-government.<br />
In the third dimension performance is measured by all key<br />
stakeholders (civil servants, citizens and businesses). This<br />
measurement is based on subjective evaluation of the services in<br />
the case of citizen’s surveys, and the effectiveness in the case of<br />
public servants. The survey also includes use and appropriation<br />
categories in the case of public servants. The fourth dimension is<br />
oriented to control the internal performance by looking at the<br />
achievement of goals and advancements in projects. This<br />
dimension also includes internal indicators that agencies consider<br />
pertinent to measure the e-gov and digital city macro-projects.<br />
The third component of model (Quadrant III) proposes a<br />
characterization centered on particular conditions of city to<br />
provide ICT products and services, and normative frameworks<br />
which regulate relations between public and private actors. This<br />
categorization is made through objective observations, from<br />
national or international statistics, and expert evaluations. It<br />
involves external provision of ICT infrastructure and services<br />
from private sector and institutional conditions from the National<br />
government context. To do so, in this component are monitored<br />
changes and cross-case variations in IT services, ICT<br />
infrastructure and external institutional conditions.<br />
The fourth component (Quadrant IV) is proposed to characterize<br />
the demand of external actors, evaluating socio-demographic<br />
characteristics, as well as access and abilities for using ICTs. This<br />
measurement allows understanding differences between<br />
communities about needs, services and channels used by<br />
population groups in their relationship with government.<br />
3. CONCLUSION<br />
E-Gov studies focus mainly on supply-side evaluation given the<br />
difficulty of involving user surveys or other sophisticated<br />
measurement tools which are complex and need expensive data<br />
512<br />
collection and analysis. However, understanding the particular<br />
success factors and leveraging points of e-gov performance in<br />
contexts with heterogeneous institutional and organizational<br />
conditions and IT environments, is a central matter for success in<br />
implementation. This implies that countries with higher diversity<br />
in conditions of government offices need to assume higher costs<br />
in monitoring the context and conditions that enable e-gov<br />
development.<br />
The model developed by the Externado University of Colombia<br />
uses a multi-stakeholder evaluation, responding to the following<br />
particularities and challenges of Bogota: 1. Limited information<br />
on citizen preferences for government services. 2. Dynamic<br />
business needs in a complex regulatory and policy context, and<br />
3.A unique model for public employment dependent on external<br />
contracting of the public workforce.<br />
The SMECI articulates programs and projects of the Mayoralty’s<br />
agencies, based on the operative and legal framework. On the one<br />
hand, the model focuses on macro-projects, formulated to ensure<br />
the strategic alignment between IT projects executed by Bogota’s<br />
Mayoralty agencies and the entire e-gov strategy of Bogota, as<br />
mentioned before. On the other hand, the model bases its<br />
measurement on the compliance of obligations established in<br />
norms and policies of the national and district level. In this way,<br />
this model also takes into account the normative development<br />
generated within the whole-of-government of Colombia.<br />
The model was designed for a comprehensive evaluation which<br />
includes readiness, ongoing service and cutting edge innovations<br />
in e-services and systems integration of the Mayoralty, in order to<br />
attend the differing levels of maturity in the government offices<br />
within Bogota and their interaction with government bodies in the<br />
National and local level.<br />
4. REFERENCES<br />
[1] Ana Waksberg-Guerrini & Eduard Aibar. Toward a Network<br />
Government. A Critical Analysis of Current Assessment<br />
Methods for eGov. (2007) Accessed at:<br />
http://eprints.uoc.edu/research/bitstream/10363/521/1/waksb<br />
erg_aibar.pdf<br />
[2] Deloitte Consultants & Indigov. Study on User Satisfaction<br />
and Impact in the EU 27. (2009). Accessed at:<br />
http://business.motorola.com/americalatina/rankingciudadesd<br />
igitales/index.html<br />
[3] Partership on measuring ICT for development. Accessed at:<br />
http://www.uis.unesco.org/Communication/Documents/Core<br />
_ICT_Indicators_2010.pdf<br />
[4] Programa Gobierno en Línea y Universidad de los Andes.<br />
Metodología de Monitoreo y Evaluación de Gobierno en<br />
línea. (2009). Accessed at:<br />
http://programa.gobiernoenlinea.gov.co/documentos.shtml?a<br />
pc=e1a1--&s=e&m=b&cmd[17]=c-1-<br />
'300'&als[MIGA____]=Metodolog%EDas
The Digital Divide’s Devaluing of Local E-Government<br />
Richard Huff<br />
Virginia Commonwealth University<br />
923 W. Franklin Street<br />
P.O. Box 842028<br />
00-1-804-827-1430<br />
rrhuff@vcu.edu<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
Despite an abundance of literature on the potential of egovernment<br />
to improve service delivery and alter the relationship<br />
between citizens and government, few scholars have addressed<br />
perhaps the most obvious barrier: the digital divide. This proposed<br />
research highlights the importance of understanding the<br />
complexity of technology and the digital divide as well as users<br />
themselves before implementing solutions.<br />
Keywords<br />
Digital divide, e-government demand, evaluation, user-centered<br />
1. INTRODUCTION<br />
Government today faces the challenge of using 21st<br />
century technologies and strategies to address last century’s<br />
problems. The allure of new tools coupled with extant social and<br />
economic problems has sometimes resulted in the elevated<br />
expectation of information technology. As a result, many have<br />
positioned e-government and its transformative potential as a<br />
solution for more transparent government. Despite the worthiness<br />
of that goal, its long-term agenda should not obfuscate the reality<br />
of today which is that transactional forms of e-government remain<br />
difficult to achieve.<br />
At the local level, e-government efforts have stagnated<br />
in their evolutionary tracks [3], and public officials face the<br />
challenge of assessing e-government demand, not just supply.<br />
Questions aimed at whether governments are ready to supply<br />
citizens with new tools miss the second half of the equation,<br />
which is, do citizens even want e-government and can they use it?<br />
[1]. Much of the academic literature to date has focused on<br />
supply-side factors and few scholars have emphasized the<br />
limitations posed by the digital divide [8][20]. A lack of<br />
alignment between supply and demand may result in wasted<br />
investments, ineffective services and the unintended consequence<br />
of lower levels of trust between citizens and government--just the<br />
opposite e-government’s intent [8].<br />
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for<br />
personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are<br />
not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies<br />
bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for<br />
components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored.<br />
Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to<br />
post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission<br />
and/or a fee.<br />
ICEGOV '12, October 22 - 25 2012, Albany, NY, USA<br />
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1200-4/12/10...$15.00<br />
513<br />
Liana Kleeman<br />
Virginia Commonwealth University<br />
921 W. Franklin Street<br />
P.O. Box 842028<br />
00-1-804-827-2168<br />
lmkleeman@vcu.edu<br />
2. DEMAND-SIDE CONSIDERATIONS<br />
Before designing or implementing e-government tools,<br />
administrators must first understand the macro context (including<br />
social, political and economic influences on individuals’<br />
relationships with technology) as well as users. Without<br />
recognizing the complexity and multi-dimensionality of<br />
technology, the digital divide and users themselves, e-government<br />
will miss the mark.<br />
3.1 Understanding technology & the digital<br />
divide<br />
Technology is a vague term with seemingly limitless<br />
meanings. It almost seems that as technology becomes more<br />
pervasive in the digital age, the less it is understood. Specifically,<br />
those who use technology multiple times a day on multiple<br />
devices and for multiple purposes often assume that everyone else<br />
is accessing and using technology in similar ways, or, at least, can<br />
do so if they choose.<br />
Orlikowski [16][17] advocates for a reconstruction of<br />
the concept of technology, one that is multi-dimensional,<br />
emergent and accounts for the reality that technology is<br />
“continually socially and physically constructed” [16][17].<br />
Orlikowski’s [16][17] structurational theory of technology reveals<br />
the shortcomings of a techno-centric approach to e-government<br />
and instead, emphasizes the intersectionality of technology with<br />
human agents and organizational structures. A narrow focus on<br />
just one element will result in an overly simplistic rendering of<br />
new technologies and their potential impact.<br />
Just as the notion of technology is complex, so, too, is<br />
the digital divide. Importantly, the digital divide is not a<br />
technology problem; rather, it is a social and economic problem<br />
with a technological component. Similar to Orlikowski’s claim<br />
that technology is dependent on human interaction and<br />
organizational structures, the digital divide stems from a<br />
compounding of systemic social and economic issues.<br />
Despite national statistics that suggest all demographic<br />
groups are increasingly going online today, they are not doing so<br />
at equal rates [15]. The digital divide extends beyond simplistic<br />
notions of technology haves and have not’s to include whether<br />
people can participate and prosper in the digital age [6]. At a<br />
micro level, individuals must have access to new technologies and<br />
the skills to use them in meaningful ways, yet at a macro level,<br />
they must be able to participate in society, socially, economically<br />
and politically [14]. The divide may best be viewed as a
continuum in which individuals must gain additional access and<br />
skills to take advantage of new opportunities afforded by<br />
technology. Schradie’s [22] work confirms, however, that<br />
disparities may persist even once groups are online. In looking at<br />
who produces content (i.e., the opposite of passive information<br />
consumption), she finds that only one-fifth of people actually<br />
contribute online, and that they tend to be those with higher<br />
educational levels. In fact, people are four times more likely to<br />
produce content yesterday if they have a college level education<br />
versus a high school degree [22]. Importantly, the digital divide is<br />
not a static problem but, instead, constantly evolves and amplifies.<br />
Technology-based initiatives can reinforce existing inequities if<br />
not implemented strategically and if larger social and economic<br />
forces are overlooked [11]. As quickly as technology changes, so,<br />
too, does the digital divide, constraining not only individuals but<br />
entire communities and geographic regions.<br />
Hilbert [9] suggests a lack of understanding of the<br />
digital divide may result ineffective and wasted efforts. He posits<br />
that interpretations of the divide are as diverse as the impacts<br />
organizations seek and encourages the development of a larger<br />
framework for comparing and contrasting definitions. Definitions<br />
of the digital divide may vary depending on organizations’ views<br />
of who is affected (e.g., individuals, communities), their<br />
characteristics (e.g., income, age), the level of digital<br />
sophistication (e.g., basic access or effective adoption) and the<br />
type of technology (e.g., mobile, computers) [9]. In effect, with<br />
various definitions of the digital divide possible, one organization<br />
may believe the divide is shrinking while another may view it as<br />
widening [9].<br />
Lastly, it is important to briefly note Goldfinch’s [5]<br />
work which demonstrates varying interpretations of e-government<br />
based upon the position and knowledge of government<br />
employees. Goldfinch [5] employs agency theory to explore why<br />
certain principals and actors approach e-government differently<br />
and how these diverse outlooks, approaches and understandings<br />
can undermine the effectiveness of efforts. For example, managers<br />
tend to take an entrepreneurial approach to technology and are<br />
more heavily influenced by bureaucratic structures, while IT<br />
professionals tend to focus on the technology itself absent the<br />
larger contexts and strategies [5].<br />
3.2. Understanding users of e-government<br />
Once government administrators understand the<br />
connections and disconnects among their conceptions of egovernment,<br />
technology and the digital divide, they must then<br />
commit to understanding users. A user-centric approach shifts the<br />
focus to the needs and wants of citizens and allows them to drive<br />
e-government development [26]. According to a report of the<br />
OECD [18], this shift away from technology toward citizens<br />
began in mid-2000’s; however, it is questionable as to what extent<br />
change has actually occurred [1][24].<br />
Understanding the user requires the recognition that<br />
user groups are diverse, not homogenous [8]. Ferro and Molinari<br />
[4] suggest that government tends to categorize users by degrees<br />
of access, skills and motivation, all of which are elements akin to<br />
the digital divide. Without a shared understanding of all<br />
stakeholders’ “interests, perspectives, value dimensions and<br />
benefits,” up-take, or e-government adoption, will be limited [21].<br />
Furthermore, a failure to recognize that many users cannot access<br />
e-government, know how to use e-government or prefer more<br />
traditional communication channels weakens the success of e-<br />
514<br />
government efforts and may prop up a new “e-aristocracy”<br />
marked by elite individuals obtaining greater power [19]. Brewer,<br />
Neubauer and Geiselhart [2] suggest administrators have a<br />
responsibility to actively shape e-government based on<br />
democratic values to narrow gaps between the “information elite”<br />
and the “information poor.” Not addressing this gap may prove<br />
detrimental to goals of efficiency since those who depend on<br />
government the most often have the least access.<br />
3.3 Evaluating demand<br />
Lastly, governments serious about digital inclusion must<br />
commit to measuring demand. Despite the importance of egovernment<br />
assessments, there has been a general lack of<br />
evaluation and measurement [4]. Even at the federal level,<br />
agencies have developed plans and good practices in adherence to<br />
the Open Government Initiative but do not specifically address the<br />
impact of these efforts [12]. In the 2011 ICMA survey [10], 14%<br />
of local governments claim that a lack of demand poses a barrier<br />
to e-government efforts, but there is no indication of how demand<br />
was measured, if at all. An earlier ICMA survey reveals few local<br />
governments surveyed their citizens to better understand demand,<br />
and it appears measurements often fail to assess the complexities<br />
of demand-side factors [23]. Evaluations of the digital divide also<br />
fall short. With broadband adoption data primarily stemming from<br />
non-transparent businesses, knowledge at the local level remains<br />
limited. Today, local governments have a basic understanding of<br />
access and subscription rates but little more, e.g., how people use<br />
technology and for what purposes.<br />
Governments must understand why people use egovernment<br />
as well as why they do not. Given the rate that<br />
technology changes, citizen feedback is especially important to<br />
ensure offerings align with preferences and are utilized [25]. An<br />
absence of feedback loops places the alignment of supply and<br />
demand in jeopardy and threatens government’s ability to adapt as<br />
users’ needs change [25]. Measurements may include evaluations<br />
of user satisfaction, awareness of services, access to technology,<br />
skill levels, trust and preference of communication channels;<br />
further, assessments should move beyond outputs to include<br />
outcomes [25][13]. As budgets constrict government faces<br />
increasing pressure to justify expenditures and demonstrate a<br />
return on investment; therefore, evaluation remains critical to<br />
designing and sustaining e-government efforts [18].<br />
5. CONCLUSION<br />
With little written on the interdependence of egovernment<br />
and the digital divide, and a profound lack of data on<br />
technology adoption and use at the local level, this proposed study<br />
will contribute knowledge about how local governments deploy egovernment<br />
in the absence of good information.<br />
REFERENCES<br />
[1] Bertot, J.C., & Jaeger, P.T. (2006). User-centered egovernment:<br />
Challenges and benefits for government<br />
websites. Government Information Quarterly, 23, 163-168.<br />
[2] Brewer, G.A., Neubauer, B.J., & Geiselhart, K. Designing<br />
and implementing e-government systems: Critical<br />
implications for public administration and democracy.<br />
Administration and Society, 38(4), 472-499.
[3] Coursey, D., & Norris, D.F. (2008). Models of egovernment:<br />
Are they correct? An empirical assessment.<br />
Public Administration Review, 68(3), 523-536.<br />
[4] Ferro, E., & Molinari, F. (2010). Making sense of egovernment<br />
2.0 strategies: “no citizens, no party.” eJournal<br />
of E-Government and E-Democracy, 2(1), 56-68.<br />
[5] Goldfinch, S. (2007). Pessimism, computer failure and<br />
information systems development in the public sector. Public<br />
Administration Review, 67(5): 917-929.<br />
[6] Gordo, B. (2008). Disconnected: A community and<br />
technology needs assessment of the Southeast Los Angeles<br />
Region (SELA). Retrieved from Academia.edu:<br />
http://bit.ly/Al3j51<br />
[7] Green, L. (2001). Technoculture: From alphabet to cybersex.<br />
St. Leonards, N.S.W: Allen & Unwin.<br />
[8] Helbig, N., Gil-Garcia, J.R., & Ferro, E. (2009).<br />
Understanding the complexity of e-government: Implications<br />
from the digital divide literature. Government Information<br />
Quarterly, 26(1), 89-87.<br />
[9] Hilbert, M. (2011). The end justifies the definition: The<br />
manifold outlooks on the digital divide and their practical<br />
usefulness for policy-making. Telecommunications Policy,<br />
35, 715-736.<br />
[10] ICMA. (2011). Electronic government 2011. Retrieved from<br />
the ICMA website: http://bit.ly/Hrgpok<br />
[11] Kvasny, L. (2006). Cultural (re)production of digital<br />
inequality in a US community technology initiative.<br />
Information, Communication & Society, 9(2), 160-181.<br />
[12] Nabatchi, T. (2012). A manager’s guide to evaluating citizen<br />
participation. Retrieved from the IBM Center for the<br />
Business of Government website: http://bit.ly/At8mkm<br />
[13] Milliard, J. (2008). E-Government measurement for policy<br />
makers. European Journal of e-Practice. Retrieved from<br />
http://www.epractice.eu/files/4.3.pdf<br />
[14] Mossberger, K., Tolbert, C.J., & Stansbury, M. (2003).<br />
Virtual inequality: Beyond the digital divide. Washington,<br />
DC: Georgetown University Press.<br />
[15] National Telecommunications and Information<br />
Administration (NTIA). (2011). Digital nation: Expanding<br />
515<br />
Internet usage. Retrieved from the NTIA website:<br />
http://1.usa.gov/xOqiUJ<br />
[16] Orlikowski, W.J. (2000). Using technology and constituting<br />
structures: A practice lens for studying technology in<br />
organizations. Organization Science, 11(4), 404-428.<br />
[17] Orlikowski, W.J. (1992). The duality of technology:<br />
Rethinking the concept of technology in organizations.<br />
Organization Science, 3(3), 398-427.<br />
[18] Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development<br />
(OECD). (2009). Rethinking e-government services: Usercentered<br />
approaches. Retrieved from the OECD website:<br />
http://bit.ly/2XRQ3A<br />
[19] Pena-Lopez, I. (2011). The disempowering goverati: Earistocrats<br />
or the delusion of e-democracy. eJournal of E-<br />
Government and E-Democracy, 3(1), 1-21.<br />
[20] Reddick, C.G. (2005). Citizen interaction with e-government:<br />
From the streets to the servers? Government Information<br />
Quarterly, 22(1), 38-57.<br />
[21] Rowley, J. (2011). E-government stakeholders—Who are<br />
they and what do they want? International Journal of<br />
Information Management, 31(1), 53-62.<br />
[22] Schradie, J. (2011). The digital production gap: The digital<br />
divide and Web 2.0 collide. Poetics, 39(2), 145-168.<br />
[23] Shareef, M.A., Kumar, V., Kumar, U., & Dwivedi, Y.K.<br />
(2011). E-government adoption model (GAM): Differing<br />
service maturity levels. Government Information Quarterly,<br />
28(1), 17-35.<br />
[24] Van Dijk, J., Peters, O., & Ebbers, W. (2008). Explaining the<br />
acceptance and use of government internet services: A<br />
multivariate analysis of 2006 survey data in the Netherlands.<br />
Lecture Notes in Computer Sciences, 4084, 269-280.<br />
[25] Verdegem, P., & Verleye, G. (2009). User-centered egovernment<br />
in practice: A comprehensive model for<br />
measuring user satisfaction. Government Information<br />
Quarterly, 26(3), 487-497.<br />
[26] Wang, Yih-Jeou. (2009). Rethinking e-government services:<br />
User-centered approaches. Retrieved from the Organisation<br />
for Economic Co-operation and Development website:<br />
http://bit.ly/2XRQ3A
The Importance of Electronic Accessibility in Brazilian<br />
Juridical Electronic Process<br />
Adriana Simeão Ferreira<br />
IBDE<br />
Rua D. Nelson de Sá Earp, 95<br />
Gr.301 Petrópolis- RJ- Brazil<br />
+55-69-8112-4467<br />
adrisimeao@hotmail.com<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
This article aims at proposing the implementation of accessibility<br />
requirements in the pilot project of electronic process in the<br />
Brazilian Labor Judiciary Branch through analysis and research of<br />
disabled Brazilians’ reality, regarding the access to electronic<br />
means and mobile devices, observing, above all, international and<br />
domestic access standards. In addition to studying the reality of<br />
persons with disabilities, this paper aims at drawing some<br />
guidelines for implementation of this electronic accessibility<br />
requirements in the process of the Brazilian Labor Judiciary<br />
Branch.<br />
Categories and Subject Descriptors<br />
K.4.3 [ Computer and Society ]: Organizational Impacts –<br />
Automation, Computer-Supported Collaborative Work,<br />
Reegineering; K.J.1 [ Computer Aplications ]: Administrative<br />
Data Processing – Government;<br />
General Terms<br />
Management, Experimentation, Human Factors, Standardization,<br />
Theory, Legal Aspects.<br />
Keywords<br />
Labor Justice, Accessibility, Process, Strategic Management,<br />
Public Sector.<br />
1. INTRODUCTION<br />
In December 2006, after enacting the Law nº 11,419, which<br />
created the Brazilian Juridical Electronic Process, Brazil has taken<br />
a step forward into implementing the juridical electronic process.<br />
From that time on, Brazilian courts began to seek technological<br />
improvements in its infrastructure. After a short period of time,<br />
besides several innovations brought in, the Brazilian Judiciary<br />
Power, in June 2011, officially ushered in the Juridical Electronic<br />
Process Project (PJe).<br />
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personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are<br />
not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies<br />
bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for<br />
components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored.<br />
Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to<br />
post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission<br />
and/or a fee.<br />
ICEGOV '12, October 22 - 25 2012, Albany, NY, USA<br />
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1200-4/12/10...$15.00<br />
Daniel Gonçalves de Melo<br />
TRT 14<br />
Rua Almirante Barroso,600<br />
Porto Velho – RO<br />
+55-69-81124467<br />
Melodg@uol.com.br<br />
516<br />
Leondeniz Freitas<br />
TRT 9 Região<br />
Alameda Dr. Carlos de Carvalho, 528,<br />
Centro; Curitiba - PR<br />
+55-69-81124467<br />
leondenizfreitas@trt9.jus.br<br />
This project is a computer system developed by the National<br />
Council of Justice, in partnership with other courts, in order to<br />
build an “Electronic” Judiciary. The idea was to gather the efforts<br />
of Brazilian courts towards adopting a unique solution for<br />
electronic process. With the PJe, not only magistrates, but also<br />
civil servants and other participants in procedural phases shall<br />
exert juridical acts directly in the system, by fully electronic<br />
means, as well as following all juridical phases of a process.<br />
Nowadays, initial versions of the System are being implemented<br />
in five regions of Brazil. However, after practicing the first<br />
juridical acts and developing the System, pundits have<br />
acknowledged a dire need for adapting the PJe to accessibility<br />
principles.<br />
To talk about accessibility is to speak of equality and parity as<br />
well. The accessibility movement, whether the architectural,<br />
digital or of attitude, impels the diminishing of barriers imposed<br />
by a peculiar characteristic of such individuals. Accessibility, to<br />
persons with disabilities, represents the right of no impediments<br />
when it comes to architecture, communication, physical access,<br />
equipments, adequate content programmes and presentation of<br />
alternative information files. The goal is to provide unrestricted<br />
and wide access to such people. To evaluate and measure the<br />
importance of accessibility in the current context is not an easy<br />
task. For the broadness of this subject, we deem it as a principle<br />
that should be unwaveringly followed, once it should be the basis<br />
of any rule or standard related to human dignity. Accessibility is<br />
not limited to just allowing persons with disabilities (or with<br />
reduced capability) to take part in activities which include the use<br />
of products, services and information, but also to provide them an<br />
opportunity of inclusion and extension of such rights, to all social<br />
classes.<br />
Every action aiming at accessibility is very important.<br />
Nevertheless, given the progress of information and<br />
communication technologies, electronic accessibility has become<br />
a fundamental tool for developing any application in technological<br />
fields, especially in Brazil, where recent data (year 2010) from the<br />
Statistics and Geographical Brazilian Institute (IBGE) appoints<br />
that 45,6 millions of people have some sort of disability, which<br />
accounts for 23.91% of the Brazilian population. From that<br />
amount, 12,7 millions (6.7% of the whole population) have at<br />
least a severe kind of deficiency. In these numbers one may also<br />
find persons with disabilities in risk situations, such as extreme<br />
poverty, abandonment and social isolation.
In Brazil, electronic accessibility has been the subject of laws, and<br />
the Federal Government has been implementing several projects<br />
for installing it in Brazilian courts. However, the Judiciary Power<br />
still needs proper actions pertaining to accessibility, especially<br />
when it comes to electronic accessibility.<br />
Furthermore, despite the efforts made by the federal government,<br />
there are still numerous websites and technological systems of<br />
municipal governments and courts which do not yet abide by the<br />
criteria established in international norms of accessibility or even<br />
in the Brazilian accessibility model [1], the E-mag (Government<br />
Electronic Accessibility Model). Besides, the UN Convention on<br />
the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, ratified as a constitutional<br />
rule in Brazil (by the 186/2008 decree), determines, in the article<br />
9, that States Parties shall take appropriate measures to ensure to<br />
persons with disabilities access, on an equal basis with others, to<br />
information and communications technologies and systems, which<br />
includes the Electronic Process.<br />
2. CRITERIA FOR ACCESSIBILITY IN<br />
THE PROJECT OF JURIDICAL<br />
BRAZILIAN ELECTRONIC PROCESS<br />
The central element of this approach is exactly how to implement<br />
the changes in the right time and how to fully carry out the<br />
project, following accessibility standards, whether it be the model<br />
used by the Federal Government, or the international one. In this<br />
context, the Superior Council of Labor Justice has been gathering<br />
efforts in order to guide the criteria for implementation. However,<br />
it is worth to point out the following guidelines:<br />
1) The project shall be in full conformity with the UN<br />
Convention, particularly with its article 9, and with the<br />
186/2008 decree;<br />
2) The project shall make compatible the usability patterns<br />
with the ones of accessibility, in a way that each pattern<br />
does not rule out another. Also, the accessibility and<br />
usability’s integration shall be searched, because not yoking<br />
such concepts might result in different barriers to the users;<br />
3) Court Accessibilities Commissions shall be created,in order<br />
to continuously monitor and supervise the project<br />
development;<br />
4) The approached pattern shall include electronic accessibility<br />
to persons with all sorts of disabilities, in a way that web<br />
patterns shall merge fully with accessibility guidelines;<br />
517<br />
5) To advance with internal norms form the Courts: there<br />
should be internal norms which deal specifically with<br />
Electronic Process;<br />
6) To implement the electronic process aligned with the court’s<br />
Strategic planning: this alignment will be essential in order<br />
to minimize the risks of implementing and maintaining the<br />
technological environment of this new tool, especially<br />
because the electronic process involves direct consequences<br />
to society. Also, it is important to prioritize the Courts’<br />
strategies, by implementing an IT governance plan, in order<br />
to strengthen the Information Technologies sector.<br />
3. CONCLUSION<br />
For these reasons, it is clear that implementing accessibilities<br />
requirements in the electronic process is essential to reap a<br />
successful project, given that the number of persons with<br />
disabilities is approximately of 45 millions of people. Therefore,<br />
according to what has been verified in the studied cases, it is of<br />
good advice to adopt planning criteria in the implementation<br />
project, by using models of electronic governance which pertains<br />
the project’s development. It is also imperative to underscore that<br />
the development of juridical electronic process that upholds<br />
accessibilities requirements shall be crucial to the development of<br />
Justice in the Amazon, where some Brazilian Courts are located in<br />
the Amazon and it is very complicated to get to.<br />
Therefore, at the current stage in which the project stands, it is<br />
still possible for the Labor Courts Administration to take efficient<br />
measures in the administrative, juridical and structural spheres, in<br />
order to ensure the implementation of a fair electronic process that<br />
encourages social equality and provides an effectively accessible<br />
tool of electronic justice to persons with disabilities.<br />
4. REFERENCES<br />
[1] Government of Brazil, Acessed on 2 april 2012 at<br />
http://www.governoeletronico.gov.br/acoes-e-projetos/e-<br />
MAG<br />
[2] Kurbalija J. and Gelbstein E 2005. Internet Governance<br />
Issues and Actors and Divisions. Diplofoundation and global<br />
knowledge Partnership<br />
[3] Superior Council of Labor Justice, Acessed on 3 april 2012<br />
at http://www.csjt.jus.br/pje-jt
The Use of Mobile and Wireless Technology and Food<br />
Quality Control in China<br />
Shuhua Monica Liu<br />
Fudan University<br />
No 220, Handan Road,<br />
Yangpu District, Shanghai,<br />
PRC<br />
86-21-55665676<br />
shuhua.monica.liu@gm<br />
ail.com<br />
Qianli Yuan<br />
Fudan University<br />
No 220, Handan Road,<br />
Yangpu District, Shanghai,<br />
PRC<br />
86-21-55665676<br />
qianliyuan1990@gmail.<br />
com<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
The surge of product quality and safety control issue has become<br />
one of the top concerns country wide in recent years. Citizens,<br />
academics and nonprofit organizations urged government<br />
agencies to further refine product quality supervision strategies.<br />
The purpose of this paper focuses on interaction between ICT and<br />
production control, supply, and inspection system.<br />
Categories and Subject Descriptors<br />
H.4.1 [Information systems]: Information systems applications –<br />
Office automation<br />
General Terms<br />
Management, Performance, Human Factors, Standardization<br />
Keywords<br />
Food Safety, Monitoring technology, Mobile and wireless<br />
technology<br />
1. INTRODUCTION<br />
This paper focuses on role and function of mobile technologies in<br />
quality control in China in the past two decades.<br />
1) What mobile tools are employed in quality control systems<br />
in China in the past two decades?<br />
2) What roles are mobile technologies playing in the quality<br />
control and food safety watch system?<br />
2. MOBILE AND WIRELESS<br />
TECHNOLOGIES IN FOOD SAFETY<br />
CONTROL<br />
Major wireless ICTs in quality control system are Wireless Net<br />
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personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are<br />
not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies<br />
bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for<br />
components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored.<br />
Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to<br />
post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission<br />
and/or a fee.<br />
ICEGOV '12, October 22 - 25 2012, Albany, NY, USA<br />
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1200-4/12/10...$15.00<br />
518<br />
Danyao Li<br />
Fudan University<br />
No 220, Handan Road,<br />
Yangpu District, Shanghai,<br />
PRC<br />
86-21-55665676<br />
danielle.lee.33@hotmail<br />
.com<br />
Lei Zheng<br />
Fudan University<br />
No 220, Handan Road,<br />
Yangpu District, Shanghai,<br />
PRC<br />
86-21-55665676<br />
zhengl@fudan.edu.cn<br />
work, Radio Frequency Identification, Geographic Information<br />
System [1, 2]. Notable advantages of wireless ICT are:<br />
1) Low cost and consistent monitoring, collection and<br />
distribution of accurate product related data<br />
2) Flexibility for product life cycle information transmission<br />
3) Provide a solid base for production strategy adjustment<br />
However, some issues are still a great concern for wireless<br />
systems employment.<br />
1) System reliability, data accuracy, privacy and standard<br />
2) Overwhelming/unstructured data without proper analysis<br />
3) Integration with existing legacy system<br />
4) Commitment of private enterprises<br />
3. RESEARCH DESIGN AND<br />
METHODOLOGY<br />
3.1 Theoretical Framework: Structuration<br />
Theory and Grounded Approach<br />
Structuration theory’s principal is to connect human actions with a<br />
structural explanation in social analysis [3]. It has been widely<br />
applied to research of ICT and its influence on institutional<br />
environments and individual behavior related.<br />
Data analysis is guided by grounded theory. It is to bridge the gap<br />
between theoretically uninformed empirical research and<br />
empirically uninformed theory [4].<br />
3.2 Data Collection<br />
A total of 264 papers and reports meet the criteria of our selection<br />
from mainly two sources:<br />
1) Academic papers in China National Knowledge Infrastructure<br />
and Google Scholar<br />
2) Official reports from database of government agencies and<br />
international organizations<br />
3.3 Multifaceted Coding Methods<br />
We conducted a multifaceted coding on papers and reports<br />
selected based on following aspects in quality control.<br />
1) The specific mobile/wireless ICT used
2) The areas to which mobile and wireless ICT was applied<br />
3) The goals and functions for adopting mobile wireless ICT<br />
4) Impacts and challenges generated by using mobile and<br />
wireless ICT<br />
4. FINDINGS<br />
The 11th five-year plan released by China General Administration<br />
of Quality Supervision, Inspection, and Quarantine demonstrated<br />
Specific<br />
processes<br />
Production<br />
safety<br />
5. DISCUSSIONS<br />
5.1 Micro-level Impacts<br />
1) It helps to refine quality control working procedures and<br />
improve decision making quality and accuracy<br />
2) It empowers FDA officials to take a more proactive role<br />
3) It also helps to efficiently prevent corruptions associated<br />
with loose inspection and quality control.<br />
However, low technical operation capability and capability,<br />
especially the latter one, are two major obstacles for application.<br />
5.2 Intermediary Level Impacts<br />
1) Accurate data accumulated enable private vendors and FDA<br />
to optimize supply chain and decision making.<br />
2) A flatter hierarchy in government is slowly emerging.<br />
3) Communication barriers between agents start breaking.<br />
4) Collaboration between private food suppliers and the FDA<br />
in China is greatly enhanced.<br />
5.3 Macro-level Impacts<br />
1) FDA control began to return with actual data pointing to the<br />
origin of problems and entities for accountability<br />
2) Local FDAs are collaborating to launch a national project<br />
for authentic data to punish vendors’ illegal actions.<br />
3) Public employees' lack of capacity and willingness for<br />
information processing and sharing<br />
4) Food vendors’ low motivation to install inspection system<br />
due to high cost and resistance to share with FDA key data.<br />
that China’s FDA invested heavily in national food quality control<br />
infrastructure. The pilot project called “Golden in 2006 Quality”,<br />
consists of one network, including all equipments and network<br />
platforms; one database, “Quality Supervision Administration<br />
Database”; three systems, Quality Supervision, Inspection and<br />
Management System, Administrative Licensing and Management<br />
System, Quality Inspection Information Service System. We<br />
present our findings on the use of mobile ICT for food and drug<br />
safety management in Table 1.<br />
5) Lack of legal and regulatory environment for food quality<br />
Table 1: Major mobile and wireless technologies used for food quality control<br />
Mobile ICT involved Purpose Actual Impact<br />
RFID; Wireless sensor<br />
system; coding techniques;<br />
Supply chain RFID; ZIGbee; GIS; GPS;<br />
RS etc<br />
Monitoring<br />
and Tracing<br />
Emergency<br />
management<br />
Collect and manage data on production<br />
environment and individual identifier<br />
Optimize business flows in supply chain;<br />
improve transportation efficiency;<br />
supervise and inspect product quality<br />
GPRS; RFID; GPS; GIS; Supervise products in the market;<br />
Consumer inquiry of product data<br />
ArcGIS server Food and Drug emergency data<br />
collection, analysis and application<br />
519<br />
Visual presentation of production environment<br />
on GIS; RFID system for product information<br />
collection, identification and retrieval<br />
“3S” system for vehicle tracking and<br />
dispatching; In-transit merchandise inspection<br />
and management with RFID<br />
Data inquiry on the entire production process in<br />
the central database with PDA<br />
Backtrack product information in the case of<br />
emergencies<br />
control to punish private vendors' wrongdoings<br />
6. CONCLUSION<br />
In this paper, we reviewed academic papers and reports published<br />
to understand roles and impacts of mobile and wireless<br />
technology in food quality control in China. More progress on<br />
three levels is still required before mobile and wireless ICT can<br />
unleash its full potential in quality control system.<br />
7. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS<br />
We want to thank multiple funding agencies for their generous<br />
support on the research: China National Social Science<br />
Foundation (Project ID: KRB3056068), Shanghai Pujiang<br />
Program (Project ID: KBH3056609), New Faculty Member Startup<br />
Programs, China Ministry of Education (Project ID:<br />
JJH3056008), Fudan 985 Program (Project ID: 2011SHKXZD013)<br />
8. REFERENCES<br />
[1] N. Wang, N. Zhang, M. Wang “Wireless sensors in<br />
agriculture and food industry, Recent development and future<br />
perspective” Computers and Electronics in Agriculture 50<br />
(2006) 1–14<br />
[2] P. Kumar, H. Reinitz, J. Simunovic, K.Sandeep, P. Franzon<br />
“Overview of RFID technology and its applications in the<br />
food industry” Journal Of Food Science Vol. 74, Nr. 8, 2009<br />
[3] A. Giddens (1979) New rules of sociological method<br />
London: Hutchinson.<br />
[4] Frank, Dirk and Riedl, Peter “Theoretical foundations of<br />
contemporary qualitative market research” Forum:<br />
Qualitative Social Research, 2004, 5(2), ART, 30.
The Use of Recursive Bisection in the Mapping of Sample<br />
New York State Electoral Districts<br />
David Molik<br />
Tetherless World Constellation<br />
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute<br />
110 8 th Street, Troy, NY 12180<br />
+1 (716) 982-5235<br />
molikd@rpi.edu<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
In this paper, we describe the use of open, linked data with the<br />
utilization of recursive bisection in the mapping of sample New<br />
York State Electoral Districts. The use of data in a novel way<br />
provides a solution to complications caused from the creation of<br />
electoral districts.<br />
Categories and Subject Descriptors<br />
J.1 [COMPUTER APPLICATIONS]: Administrative Data<br />
Processing – Government.<br />
General Terms<br />
Algorithms, Management, Design<br />
Keywords<br />
Data integration, open data, electoral districts<br />
1. INTRODUCTION<br />
The emergence of large data sets that are formed through the<br />
mining of the World Wide Web provides an opportunity for many<br />
people such as politicians, social scientists, and economists to<br />
correlate and visualize this data for its benefit to society and the<br />
growth of knowledge around the world. The creation of such<br />
analytical tools from this linkage of data is what this research<br />
project has done using the latest practices in linked and open data.<br />
In the State of New York Electoral state senate electoral districts<br />
have been created through a political process. This process has<br />
been referred to as gerrymandering. The District Mapping<br />
algorithm used is an alternative to the more political process.<br />
Vickers [1] describes complications in electoral district creation in<br />
the Prevention of Gerrymandering, especially in the areas of<br />
disproportionate representation of political parties among its<br />
constituents. We have designed a general approach to the<br />
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personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are<br />
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components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored.<br />
Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to<br />
post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission<br />
and/or a fee.<br />
ICEGOV '12, October 22 - 25 2012, Albany, NY, USA<br />
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1200-4/12/10...$15.00<br />
520<br />
Michelle Sharer<br />
Tetherless World Constellation<br />
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute<br />
110 8 th Street ,Troy, NY 12180<br />
+1 (518) 276-4384<br />
sharem@rpi.edu<br />
construction of electoral districts by leveraging the use of a<br />
recursive bisection mapping algorithm and varied granularities of<br />
Economic, Voter Registration, and Racial data. The initial demo 1<br />
utilizes New York State, statewide voter registration data that it<br />
combines with a linked data approach to public record data.<br />
Minority data is kept by all county governments in New York<br />
State and is also accounted for in the mapping. This algorithm<br />
system seemingly removes the need for gerrymandering. Political<br />
scientists, politicians, and economists predicting electoral polls<br />
and assessing the importance of why such relationships exist<br />
between race, voting, and the economy can use the demo, as an<br />
analytical tool.<br />
Figure 1. A visual on how<br />
data is brought together<br />
Figure 2. Shows the early use of recursive<br />
bisection on a abstract square state<br />
1 Published demo: http://aquarius.tw.rpi.edu/projects/districts/
2. OVERVIEW OF DISTRICT MAPPING<br />
The mapping of the Sample Electoral Districts in New York State<br />
creates a number of districts on coordinate plain by taking into<br />
account a number of user controllable weights on variables. As<br />
shown in Figure 1 various data are collated and mapped to create<br />
districts. The mapping algorithm requires that the data that is<br />
being used have the ability to be in a coordinate plain. The<br />
original data that was being used contained 13 million data points,<br />
in which the location was an Address. Dan Goldberg provides a<br />
service, geocoding, which is able to convert the data from<br />
addresses to latitude and longitude. We expounded on the data by<br />
later adding, racial make up, economic factors and assessed house<br />
values.<br />
The mapping uses a Recursive Bisection algorithm, which creates<br />
rectangles on a coordinate plain according to user-weighted<br />
variables. Recursive Bisection is a graph, in the demo the graph is<br />
a set of data points on a coordinate plain, portioning method in<br />
which equal points are assigned to either side of a bisector, in the<br />
demo we modify the algorithm to take into account minority and<br />
political affiliation. A total of two and half million plus data<br />
points are used to construct this mapping. Which is lower than the<br />
total amount of registered voters because of diminishing returns<br />
from using more data points. The Recursive Bisection Algorithm<br />
being used in the Mapping uses the address of registered New<br />
York State voters; the addresses are converted into a Latitude and<br />
Longitude format that is used in a coordinate system. Each<br />
coordinate has a certain amount of data connected to it. Including<br />
County data on racial makeup of the county, GDP Per Capita and<br />
unemployment the point itself stores the political affiliation and<br />
cost of the house, if available.<br />
Figure 3. An early user interface utilizing Google Maps<br />
The output is then shown in an interface like that in Figure 3.<br />
Data for a district is outputted when a user clicks on a district.<br />
Allowing for the user to explore what the algorithm has created.<br />
To evaluate the demo, according to the United States census there<br />
are roughly 19.5 million citizens of New York State. The Demo<br />
uses about 13 million data points. Which would mean the<br />
majority of all New York State citizens are taken into account<br />
even with migration. The Algorithm produces only rectangular<br />
shapes, which may fail to take into account political and natural<br />
barriers. However, because the algorithm group’s data points<br />
together these shapes usually avoid doing so. The rectangular<br />
shapes may be very oblong, but this is not necessarily good or<br />
521<br />
bad, for example, many of the runs of the algorithm produced a<br />
long, slender district in the north east portion of New York, which<br />
may seemingly be a obstruction to proper political management,<br />
until the geographic location of the northern portion of the<br />
Hudson and Champlain Valley’s are taken into account.<br />
3. DATA<br />
Economic, Voter Registration, and Minority data are accessible at<br />
varying granularities for the State of New York. The mapping of<br />
Electoral Districts utilizes voter registration data collected from<br />
the New York State Board of Elections. The address of registered<br />
voters in the state of New York were transformed to latitude and<br />
longitude points by Dan Goldberg 2 at the Spatial Sciences<br />
Institute, USC Dana and David Dornsife College of Letters arts<br />
and Sciences, University of Southern California. Economic data is<br />
also utilized in the mapping an index is created from the county<br />
unemployment and GDP Per Capita. The US census has the data<br />
for governments minority data, it also has political boundaries and<br />
shape files. This creates areas where the racial makeup of a point<br />
can be guessed. These averages can later be taken into account.<br />
4. CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE WORK<br />
We demonstrated an open data approach to creating Electoral<br />
Districts by using Recursive Bisection in Mapping. Data points<br />
where the registered voters of New York. Economic and Racial<br />
Data added to scope of controllable variables in the Mapping<br />
A number of extensions to the mapping algorithm and the sources<br />
of data used are ongoing. The leveraging of semantic<br />
technologies, such as a owl ontology and storage of the voter<br />
registration data. Average personal and business income and<br />
religious affiliation would increase the base of data being drawn<br />
on. If the mapping toke into account current political boundaries it<br />
would be further improved, this could be done using census<br />
boundaries and shape files for towns and counties.<br />
5. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS<br />
The authors would like to thank Jim Hendler, Tetherless World<br />
Constellation at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Dan Goldberg 3 ,<br />
University of Southern California, and Francine Berman,<br />
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Aaron Tobais, Rensselaer<br />
Polytechnic Institute.<br />
6. REFERENCES<br />
[1] Vickrey, William. On the Prevention of Gerrymandering.<br />
Poltical Science Quarterly, 76, 1 (Mar. 1961), 1<br />
2 https://webgis.usc.edu/<br />
3 Dan W. Goldberg PHD, Spatial Sciences Institute, University of<br />
Southern California, dwgoldbe@usc.edu
Toward Interoperable Government - A Case of Bangladesh<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
Despite several efforts of the Government, Bangladesh is far away<br />
to integrate and interconnect various public agencies, their<br />
processes and applications. So people and public agencies are<br />
affected by inconsistent public services/reports/documents. This<br />
article addresses the initiatives and progresses to integrate systems<br />
so that future e-government programs could be scaled up to<br />
achieve interoperability.<br />
Categories and Subject Descriptors<br />
D.2.12 [Interoperability]: Integration Different Public<br />
Information Systems – Data Mapping<br />
General Terms<br />
Management, Measurement, Documentation, Performance,<br />
Design, Economics, Trust, Reliability, Security, Human Factors,<br />
Standardization, Legal Aspects, Verification<br />
Keywords<br />
Interoperability, Integrity, eGovernment, Information Systems,<br />
eGIF, Public eService, Digital Bangladesh<br />
1. INTRODUCTION<br />
In Bangladesh, as of today each of the public agencies has been<br />
exercising to establish separate information systems for their own<br />
needs. Different public agencies developed their database systems<br />
aimed at strengthening public service delivery and creating<br />
accountability of services. But there was hardly any<br />
interoperability guideline or common promises among those<br />
systems. Consequently the efforts of the potential public agencies<br />
resulted developing several duplicate infrastructures and<br />
processes, and gradually it becomes more complex and expensive<br />
to achieve interoperability.<br />
2. INTEROPERABILITY<br />
Interoperability refers to the technical ability of communications<br />
among different systems to maintain interrelationships among<br />
systems and or processes. Pardo and Burke [5] articulated that<br />
Government interoperability is the combination of policy,<br />
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for<br />
personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are<br />
not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies<br />
bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for<br />
components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored.<br />
Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to<br />
post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission<br />
and/or a fee.<br />
ICEGOV '12, October 22 - 25 2012, Albany, NY, United States, NY, USA<br />
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1200-4/12/10…$15.00.<br />
M. Shakhawat Hossain Bhuiyan<br />
Economic Relations Division, Government of Bangladesh<br />
+880-1552-370267<br />
shbhuiyan@hotmail.com<br />
522<br />
management, and technology capabilities needed by a network of<br />
organizations to deliver coordinated services [3]. The e-<br />
Government Interoperability Framework (eGIF) sets out<br />
government’s technical policies, architectural design and<br />
standards as well as specifications of services and guidelines in<br />
order to facilitate interoperability and integration across the public<br />
sector agencies. The UNDP eGovernment interoperability guide<br />
(2007) identifies seven key principles (e.g. interoperability,<br />
scalability, reusability, open standards, market support, security,<br />
privacy etc.) that are roughly used as the criteria for choosing the<br />
standards in developing those eGIFs, The guide also recognizes<br />
three key dimensions (or domains) of interoperability-<br />
organizational, semantic (or informational) and technical.<br />
3. MAJOR PUBLIC DATABASES<br />
In spite of several contemporary policies and initiatives, there is<br />
still absence of a standard database management guideline among<br />
the service provider, which precludes interoperable public eservice<br />
development. At present, there are several important<br />
public databases as described below:<br />
3.1 National Voter ID<br />
The largest Government database in Bangladesh is Voter ID<br />
database (about 86 million voters), also referred to as future<br />
National ID database which is maintained by Bangladesh Election<br />
Commission (BEC). Obviously, this is not a complete National ID<br />
database as it excludes the citizens under 18 years, the minimum<br />
age to become an eligible voter. On the other hand, the BEC did<br />
not verify information when its database was prepared. It has<br />
included in the database whatever information was given by an<br />
individual. The voter ID card has been helping in disciplined and<br />
organized vote casting during last few national elections.<br />
3.2 Birth Registration<br />
The second largest public database is the Birth Registration<br />
Information System (BRIS) which was established recently. The<br />
birth information is stored on the centralized database server and<br />
the framework has been designed so that it is interoperable with<br />
other databases and information systems of the country. For<br />
example, The Birth Registration Number (BRN) is 17 digits and<br />
similar to National ID Number.<br />
3.3 Machine Readable Passport (MRP)<br />
Bangladesh recently established Machine Readable Passport<br />
(MRP) and Machine Readable Visa (MRV) elevating the<br />
country’s passport and visa system to an international standard in<br />
order to comply with the International Civil Aviation<br />
Organization (ICAO) requirements.
3.4 Driving License<br />
Driving License database is also one of the large public databases<br />
in Bangladesh owned by Bangladesh Road Transport Authority<br />
(BRTA). Recently BRTA has undertaken a project titled<br />
“Installation and Commissioning of High Security Driving<br />
License System” and introduced Smart Card Driving licenses to<br />
prevent the use of fake licenses. The license will have chips<br />
storing a driver's biometric data e.g. photograph, fingerprints, and<br />
signature among other details. The technology of the new license<br />
will be similar to that of the MRP.<br />
3.5 Tax Identification Number (TIN)<br />
The National Board of Revenue (NBR) has a database of more<br />
than 2.6 million Tax Identification Number (TIN) holders. The<br />
existing TIN is a manual registration program that suffers from<br />
many defects including representation errors, duplicate numbers,<br />
incomplete database and inconvenience of a decentralized<br />
registration procedure [4]. It becomes difficult for the officials to<br />
find out fake TIN holders while many people possess several<br />
TINs. Now NBR is in the process of replacing this TIN by a<br />
nationally unique number which will be linked to the national ID<br />
Number to verify the identity of TIN holders.<br />
3.6 Government Forms and Inconsistency<br />
Each of the above systems owned by different agencies and they<br />
have some common and very basic information regarding citizens.<br />
A closer observation of the publicly used government forms<br />
reflects that data inputs (like citizen’s name, parent’s name,<br />
address, place of birth, date of birth, etc.) by different systems are<br />
scarcely follows any specific standard. As a result, it is hard to<br />
maintain integration and interoperability among these systems and<br />
very often the systems produce inconsistent public documents as<br />
outputs causing sufferings to the general mass people.<br />
4. ADOPTING E-GIF IN BANGLADESH<br />
The first formal interoperability initiative was circulated among<br />
public agencies through a seminar titled “e-Governance<br />
interoperability framework for Bangladesh” for e-Governance<br />
focal points and ICT officials in the year 2008. Based on<br />
participants’ recommendations all government offices have to use<br />
Unicode-compliant NIKOSH font (Bengali language) in preparing<br />
public documents. Other initiatives are depicted below:<br />
4.1 Technical Interoperability Initiatives<br />
In 2008, an eGIF team developed a comparative analytical report<br />
on interoperability system among (i) Birth Registration<br />
Information System (BRIS), (ii) project on Electoral Role with<br />
Photograph (PRP) and (iii) database of Machine readable Passport<br />
(MRP). The team proposed a Citizen Core Data Structure (CCDS)<br />
to avoid duplication of work, enhance the sharing of information<br />
and increase the authenticity of public services. In July 2011,<br />
Cabinet Division finalized and released a CCDS Version 1.0 [1]<br />
and confirmed that 11 (eleven) Mandatory fields must be filled<br />
by the citizen while another 6 (six) optional fields may be<br />
essential based on respective public agency requirements. The<br />
mandatory fields are: citizen ID, Name (Bengali and English),<br />
523<br />
parent’s information (Bengali and English), date of birth, place of<br />
birth, present address, permanent address, gender, marital status,<br />
religion, profession and optional fields are: blood group,<br />
nationality, Educational qualification, disability, biometric<br />
information (digital picture, facial biometric, finger print, eye<br />
iris). The metadata definition of the CDS elements contains field<br />
level, field size and description which are believed to ensure<br />
country-wide e-governance applications interoperability.<br />
Furthermore, the Digital Certificate Interoperability Guideline [2]<br />
represents the initiatives to perform a secure e-business and etransactions<br />
with international standard.<br />
4.2 Organizational Interoperability Initiatives<br />
The National Identity Registration Authority (NIRA)’2008<br />
mandated to provide 18 services to citizens e.g. passport issue,<br />
opening bank account etc. It has introduced biometric Voter ID<br />
cards which are definitely an initial step towards a future unified<br />
national electronic ID system. Very recently, BEC has finalized a<br />
policy to allow verification of information provided in the<br />
national Identity (NID). The NBR and BEC have signed an<br />
agreement to share data of the NID card holders and TIN holders<br />
by cross checking which facilitates online verification of Identity<br />
to prevent tax evasion and deception [4].<br />
5. CONCLUSIONS/ RECOMMENDATIONS<br />
All the documents regarding interoperability initiatives (e.g.<br />
CCDS, policies, guidelines, acts, rules and regulations, etc.)<br />
should be available in a central website where experts can easily<br />
access to review and may contribute in government’s efforts while<br />
developing an effective eGIF for the country. Simplification of all<br />
government forms are essential in the way that common data<br />
fields should be in the same format for all public information<br />
systems. Government should have clear direction what document<br />
will get the precedence (e.g. national ID or birth certificate) for<br />
identity verification to avoid ambiguity.<br />
6. REFERENCES<br />
[1] Cabinet (2012). Citizen Core Data Structure (CCDS).<br />
Cabinet Division, Government of Bangladesh. Accessed<br />
from `http://www.cabinet.gov.bd/<br />
[2] CCA (2012). Digital Certificate Interoperability Guideline.<br />
Office of the Controller of Certifying Authorities (CCA),<br />
Ministry of ICT. Accessed from www.cca.gov.bd/<br />
[3] CTG (2012). Improving Government Interoperability,<br />
http://www.ctg.albany.edu/publications/reports/improving_g<br />
overnment_interoperability?chapter=1<br />
[4] NBR (2012). Outline of Modernization Plan (2011-2016).<br />
National Board of Revenue (NBR), Government of<br />
Bangladesh. Accessed from: http://www.nbrbd.org/index.html<br />
[5] Pardo, T.A. & Burke, G. B. (2008). Improving Government<br />
Interoperability: a capability framework for government<br />
managers, Center for Technology in Government, University<br />
of Albany, New York.
Trust Issues in the E-Government Implementation in Nepal<br />
Garima Dhakal<br />
Kathmandu University<br />
Dhulikhel, Kavre, Nepal<br />
dhakal.gareema@gmail.com<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
This paper discusses trust as one of the primary challenges in the<br />
implementation of e-government in Nepal. We bring into focus<br />
the trust issues through field visits and experimentation of dummy<br />
portal among ICT literate youths. The user level trust concerns are<br />
identified and trust parameters are categorized accordingly. We<br />
introduce a trust framework that shows the relationship between<br />
three domains: i) Service Provider, ii) Service Recipient and iii)<br />
ICT; and explains the role of Law in the framework. The trust<br />
framework aims to mitigate citizens’ mistrust in e-government<br />
and to increase user participation in the system. Hence, we<br />
recommend phase-wise implementation of e-government so that<br />
entire trust framework could be addressed in each phase.<br />
Categories and Subject Descriptors<br />
J.4 [Computer Applications]: Social and Behavioral Sciences –<br />
sociology, psychology.<br />
General Terms<br />
Management, Experimentation, Human Factors<br />
Keywords<br />
Trust parameters, E-government, Nepal<br />
1. INTRODUCTION<br />
The current focus of the Government of Nepal mostly lies in the<br />
development of necessary infrastructure for the e-government<br />
implementation. In this context, we argue that for a sustainable<br />
and effective use of e-government services for information<br />
exchange, interaction and transaction, it is necessary to address<br />
different trust issues prevailing among the citizens. We explore<br />
trust issues from socio-technical approach, keeping into focus the<br />
acceptance and adoption of e-government services. Hence, we<br />
believe that increased trust corresponds to increased user<br />
participation in the e-government system.<br />
Trust issues on e-government implementations have received<br />
significant interest from researchers and implementers; some<br />
examples include [3-5]. Trust issues related to technological [3] as<br />
well as social [4] and user perspectives [5] have been explored.<br />
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for<br />
personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are<br />
not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies<br />
bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for<br />
components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored.<br />
Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to<br />
post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission<br />
and/or a fee.<br />
ICEGOV '12, October 22 - 25 2012, Albany, NY, USA<br />
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1200-4/12/10...$15.00<br />
Prajwal Amatya<br />
Kathmandu University<br />
Dhulikhel, Kavre, Nepal<br />
prajwalamatya@gmail.com<br />
524<br />
Bal Krishna Bal<br />
Kathmandu University<br />
Dhulikhel, Kavre, Nepal<br />
bal@ku.edu.np<br />
Even though research like [1] has been done to understand the<br />
challenges of e-government implementation in Nepal, the research<br />
on trust still remains an important and largely unexplored issue. In<br />
[6] authors assess level of trust on government and on internet and<br />
explain the use of social media to increase trust and adoption of egovernment<br />
in Nepal. While, we introduce trust parameters and<br />
trust framework to address citizens’ mistrust in e-government. In<br />
this work, we seek an insight to the following research questions.<br />
o What are the trust issues prevalent in the e-government<br />
implementation in Nepal?<br />
o How can we address the trust issues in the context of Nepal?<br />
To find out the answers, we look into the global trust issues in egovernment<br />
implementations and then examine the relevance of<br />
these issues in the context of Nepal thus developing our own<br />
cases. We have formed the trust parameters put forward by<br />
Belanger and Carter [2] as the guidelines for understanding<br />
citizens’ trust in e-government. Belanger and Carter [2] categorize<br />
trust into four parameters: “Trust of the Government”- citizen’s<br />
attitude and perception towards government’s capabilities in<br />
providing the electronic services, “Trust of the Internet”-<br />
concerns of privacy and security over exchanging personal data<br />
and information through the internet, “Disposition to Trust” –<br />
general acceptance and adoption of technology especially when<br />
people start to learn and use new system, and “Perceived Risk” –<br />
uncertainties that is beyond the control of users.<br />
2. METHODOLOGY<br />
The e-government implementation in Nepal of late has been<br />
focusing in making the Government to Government (G2G)<br />
electronic network better equipped. Very few government<br />
websites are actually providing electronic service to the citizens<br />
and these too are limited to downloading the application forms.<br />
Hence, we have developed our own dummy e-government portal.<br />
The portal consists of frequently sought government services like<br />
issuance of national identity card, passport and driving license,<br />
and one relatively new concept of e-polling. We have also created<br />
two types of roles in the system- user as general citizen and user<br />
as government official.<br />
We have conducted field visits and carried out experiments in four<br />
different sites of Nepal, namely, Hetauda, Narayanghat,<br />
Bhairahawa, and Pokhara. In addition to the observations of user<br />
behavior, we have gathered feedbacks from the participants in the<br />
form of interview and focus group discussion in order to<br />
understand different trust concerns they have come up while using<br />
the dummy portal. The number of participants is altogether 339,<br />
out of which 202 are males and 137 females. The participants<br />
have fairly good knowledge on Information and Communication<br />
Technology (ICT) and they come from different socio-cultural
and socio-economic backgrounds. Their age group varies from<br />
late teens to early twenties.<br />
3. FINDINGS<br />
Trust concerns or issues over e-government implementation in<br />
Nepal can primarily be grouped into nine categories as follows:<br />
1) Reliability concerns on services such as electricity and<br />
internet.<br />
2) Usability concerns owing to low digital literacy.<br />
3) Privacy and Security concerns regarding online transactions<br />
and exchange of documents online.<br />
4) Authenticity concerns about service providers and validity<br />
of submitted data online.<br />
5) Concerns over Government readiness in terms of trained<br />
and competent human resources for providing electronic<br />
services.<br />
6) Legal concerns about online procedures.<br />
7) Transparency concerns about the status and progress<br />
notification of requested services.<br />
8) Technology acceptance and their reliance on word-of-mouth<br />
marketing from family, friends and relatives to use new<br />
services.<br />
9) Affordability concerns leading to non-uniform use of egovernment<br />
services thus creating ignorance and<br />
consequently distrust to e-government services in general.<br />
Figure 1. Trust Framework in the E-Government<br />
Implementation in Nepal<br />
In order to address different trust concerns raised above, we<br />
present the trust framework in Figure 1. The trust framework<br />
categorizes trust parameters into three domains (service provider,<br />
service recipient and ICT) and shows the relationship between<br />
them in establishing trust among the citizens. In the given trust<br />
framework, service providers are the organizations or authorities<br />
responsible for delivering electronic services to citizens. Service<br />
recipients are the individuals and different organizations seeking<br />
e-government services. ICT is the bridge to connect both service<br />
providers and service recipients. Each of these interlinked<br />
domains has similar intensity to trust. Effective implementation<br />
of law is the grounding body to facilitate communication and<br />
information exchange between service provider and service<br />
recipient.<br />
525<br />
4. CONCLUSION<br />
The trust framework shown in Figure 1 forms a basis to address<br />
citizens’ trust concerns and thus increase user participation in the<br />
e-government system. Therefore, entire trust framework needs to<br />
be incorporated in each implementation of e-government. Keeping<br />
into consideration the nation’s limited resources, phase-wise<br />
implementations of e-government seem to be the most suitable<br />
and feasible approach that will eventually gain trust from citizens.<br />
For instance, e-government service could be initially implemented<br />
in selected urban population, which will serve as beta release of<br />
the system. The service can then be expanded mitigating the<br />
different problems coming up during implementation. On the<br />
other hand, e-government procedure may be automated<br />
eventually. For example, to start with, the verification process of<br />
the information passed to the e-applications may be done using<br />
traditional paper-based procedures. Gradually, every material<br />
required for verification would then be fed in to the automated<br />
system.<br />
5. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS<br />
This work has been partially supported by the University Grants<br />
Commission, Nepal. We would like to thank Mr. Rajendra Man<br />
Banepali for his efforts in developing the e-government dummy<br />
portal for this research. Our sincere thanks also go to Dr. Sanat<br />
Kumar Bista for his kind guidance and reviews of the work.<br />
6. REFERENCES<br />
[1] Adhikari, P.G. National ID Project of Nepal: Future<br />
Challenges. In Proceedings of the 5 th International<br />
Conference on Theory and Practice of Electronic<br />
Governance (ICEGOV ’11) (Tallinn, Estonia, September 26-<br />
28, 2011). ACM Press, New York, NY, 2011, 379-380.<br />
[2] Belanger, F. and Carter, L. Trust and risk in e-government<br />
adoption. Journal of Strategic Information Systems, 17, 2<br />
(June 2008), 165-176.<br />
[3] Berdykhanova, D., Dehghantanha, A., and Hariraj, K. Trust<br />
Challenges and Issues of E-Government: E-Tax Prospective.<br />
In 2010 International Symposium on Information Technology<br />
(ITSim 2010) (Kwala Lumpur, Malaysia, June 15-17, 2010).<br />
IEEE, 2010, 1015-1019.<br />
[4] Colesca, E. S., Understanding Trust in e-Government.<br />
Inzinerine Ekonomika- Engineering Economics, 3 (June<br />
2009), 7-15.<br />
[5] Kumar, V., Mukherji, B., Butt, I., and Persaud, A. Factors for<br />
Successful e-Government Adoption: a Conceptual<br />
Framework. Electronic Journal of e-Government, 5, 1<br />
(August 2007), 63-76.<br />
[6] Shah, P. B. and Lim, N. Using Social Media to Increase E-<br />
Government Adoption in Developing Countries. In<br />
Proceedings of the 5 th International Conference on Theory<br />
and Practice of Electronic Governance (ICEGOV ’11)<br />
(Tallinn, Estonia, September 26-28, 2011). ACM Press, New<br />
York, NY, 2011, 205-213.
eGovernance Implementation Model for Public Sector<br />
Innovation<br />
M. Irfanullah Arfeen<br />
Department of Management Sciences<br />
Virtual University of Pakistan<br />
Islamabad, 44000, Pakistan<br />
Telephone number: +92-300-8508918<br />
m.irfanullah@vu.edu.pk<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
This study examines the process of innovation in the Federal<br />
Government Agencies of Pakistan to enhance the efficiency and<br />
effectiveness of public services. Research objective of this study<br />
is to provide an eGovernance Implementation Model of how<br />
innovation in the public sector is carried out. The Government of<br />
Pakistan initiated many eGovernance initiatives to improve<br />
public access to information and satisfy the citizens but not able<br />
to get the desire results due to deficiency of ICT skilled<br />
manpower and infrastructure. The study concludes that<br />
innovation in government is to bring in changes to the culture in<br />
the organization, the way a decision is made. This research<br />
constitutes an important contribution towards public sector<br />
innovation e.g. eGovernance.<br />
Categories and Subject Descriptors<br />
K.6 [Management of Computing and Information Systems]:<br />
General – Performance and usage measurement, Data<br />
processing.<br />
Keywords<br />
e-Governance, e, ICT policy, innovation, public sector.<br />
1. INTRODUCTION<br />
e-Governance is defined as the use of ICT to narrow the digital<br />
divide, promote effective governance and advance sustainable<br />
development (UNCTAD, 2009). e-Governance initiatives have<br />
produced favorable impacts on delivery of public services,<br />
however in developing countries like Pakistan its overall impact<br />
has remained limited, due to a plethora of constraints and slow<br />
pace of their implementation. Citizens want public services to be<br />
effective and they should have access to correct and often<br />
detailed information.<br />
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for<br />
personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies<br />
are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that<br />
copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights<br />
for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be<br />
honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to<br />
republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior<br />
specific permission and/or a fee.<br />
ICEGOV '12, October 22 - 25 2012, Albany, NY, USA<br />
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1200-4/12/10...$15.00<br />
526<br />
Nawar Khan<br />
National University of Sciences and Technology<br />
(NUST)<br />
EME college, Rawalpindi, 46000, Pakistan<br />
Telephone Number: +92-51- 56132627<br />
Nwr_khan@yahoo.com<br />
This paper develops an eGovernance implementation model for<br />
Pakistan. For this purpose, majority of the fieldwork was<br />
conducted at federal, provincial and district level in Pakistan<br />
with remaining extiensive research work done in United<br />
Kingdom to examine experiences of eGovernance initiatives.<br />
The adoption of eGovernance in Pakistan was instigated on a big<br />
scale. Every government agency was instructed to propose its<br />
own eGovernance projects. This was headline-grabbing<br />
initiative, which is common in the government agencies. The<br />
government of Pakistan was very enthusiastic; numerous core<br />
ICT strategies and vision statement were formulated and various<br />
layers of eGovernance working groups were setup with the<br />
allocation of a substantial budget.<br />
eGovernance offers a new way forward, helping improve<br />
government processes, connect citizens, and build interactions<br />
with and within civil society. According to the United Nations e-<br />
Government Survey, measured for 192 countries, Pakistan’s<br />
ranking of 137 in 2003, improved in 2005 and 2008 (with<br />
rankings of 136 and 131 respectively (Figure 1). However, in<br />
2010 its ranking dropped dramatically by 15 ranks to 146. The<br />
majority of the high scorers in the 2010 e-Government<br />
development index are South Korea, United States and Canada,<br />
all high-income countries, who have the financial resources to<br />
expand and rollout advanced eGovernance initiatives, as well as<br />
to create a favorable environment for citizen engagement and<br />
empowerment. Meanwhile emerging economies such as China<br />
and India rank 72 and 119 respectively while even Bangladesh<br />
has a 12 point lead over Pakistan.<br />
Figure 1. United Nations e-Government Development Index<br />
for Pakistan Source: UN e-Government Survey from 2003 –<br />
2010<br />
Rank 2010<br />
Rank 2008<br />
Rank 2005<br />
Rank 2003<br />
Pakistan<br />
120 125 130 135 140 145 150<br />
Pakistan
Figure – 2: eGovernment Implementation Model<br />
2. E-GOVERNANCE IMPLEMENTATION<br />
MODEL FOR PAKISTAN<br />
How to the government agencies adopt eGovernance in order to<br />
achieve better success. This study now proposes an eGovernance<br />
implementation model which is based on the empirical findings.<br />
First, the presence of strong leader is required for overcome the<br />
resistance and inertia in the government agencies. In a country<br />
like Pakistan where there is a federal government, centralized<br />
eGovernance with hybrid approach is favourable as<br />
implementation easier to manage and align. eGovernance<br />
initiatives failed due to poor goal definition and poor alignment of<br />
actions to goals. In relation to the above point, there is a strong<br />
urgency for government to exercise innovation in policy. Unclear<br />
objectives of eGovernance implementation lead to an eventual<br />
failure. eGovernance initiatives especially on a large scale must be<br />
initiated when there is a problem or anticipated problem that<br />
needs a solution. It should not be based on outside influence that<br />
pushes a government to blindly imitate. eGovernance initiatives to<br />
solve the internal problem tends to have small scale impact.<br />
Questions must be asked such as does (Pakistan) really need<br />
eGovernance initiatives and why?<br />
3. CONCLUSION<br />
This study developed the eGovernance Implementation Model<br />
which highlighted the priority areas for the government to<br />
consider the aspect of policy. The validation of model foresees<br />
that model will be implemented in the near future. eGovernance<br />
portals that are not available in the national and local languages<br />
527<br />
(speaking by significant majority groups) are not going to be used<br />
by a critical mass of citizens: one can only assume that much, or<br />
even the vast majority of the population may be unable to<br />
comprehend the information and services provided (Davison et<br />
al., 2005). Indeed there is also evidence that e-Governance is for<br />
the educated minority in developing countries like Pakistan. This<br />
would be truly unfortunate situation, since it is often the less<br />
educated that have most to gain from online initiatives that<br />
empower them to make decision based on what is in their best<br />
interest, and would stand in stark contrast to the presumably<br />
universal principle of government: serving all citizens.<br />
4. REFERENCES<br />
[1] UNKB - Nations e-Government Development Knowledge<br />
Base (2010), “e-Government Survey 2010’, from<br />
http://www2.unpan.org/egovkb/profilecountry.aspx?ID=128<br />
[2] UNCTAD (2009), Information Economy Report 2009,<br />
Trends and Outlook in Turbulent Times, United Nations<br />
publication, New York and Geneva.<br />
[3] Davison, R.M., Wagner, C. and Ma, L.C.K. (2005), “From<br />
government to e-government: a transition model”, Journal of<br />
Information Technology & People, Vol. 18, No. 3, pp. 280-<br />
299.<br />
[4] United Nations (2008), e-Government Survey 2008 From E-<br />
Government to Connected Government, Department of<br />
Economic and Social Affairs, Division of Public<br />
Administration and Development Management, New York.
Tutorials
Tutorial: Digital Curation for Public Sector Professionals<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
This tutorial will expose government professionals to the<br />
foundations, considerations and functions of digital curation.<br />
Governance activities at all levels are increasingly carried out<br />
through digital information. Democratic processes, operational<br />
efficiencies, accountability, compliance with records laws, and<br />
active engagement with citizen all require professionals in the<br />
public sector to serve as responsible stewards of digital<br />
information. Despite the great relevance of digital curation<br />
concepts, skills and innovations to government, public sector<br />
professionals may often be unaware of these connections. This<br />
two-hour ICEGOV tutorial is an effort to address this gap by<br />
exposing public servants to the latest digital curation concepts,<br />
research and tools.<br />
Categories and Subject Descriptors<br />
H.3.7 [Information Storage and Retrieval]: Digital Libraries –<br />
collection, dissemination, systems issues.<br />
General Terms<br />
Professional Development, Digital Curation, Electronic<br />
Governance.<br />
Keywords<br />
Continuing education, digital information, public sector,<br />
government<br />
1. INTRODUCTION<br />
Governance activities at all levels are increasingly carried out<br />
through digital information. Democratic processes, operational<br />
efficiencies, accountability, compliance with records laws, and<br />
active engagement with citizen all require professionals in the<br />
public sector to serve as responsible stewards of digital<br />
information.<br />
Despite the great relevance of digital curation concepts, skills and<br />
innovations to government, our experience has been that public<br />
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for<br />
personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are<br />
not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies<br />
bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for<br />
components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored.<br />
Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to<br />
post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission<br />
and/or a fee.<br />
ICEGOV '12, October 22 - 25 2012, Albany, NY, USA<br />
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1200-4/12/10...$15.00<br />
Christopher A. Lee and Helen Tibbo<br />
School of Information and Library Science<br />
University of North Carolina<br />
216 Lenoir Drive, CB #3360<br />
1-(919)-962-8366<br />
callee, tibbo@email.unc.edu<br />
528<br />
sector professionals are often unaware of these connections. The<br />
ICEGOV tutorial is an effort to address this gap, by briefly<br />
exposing public servants to the latest digital curation literature,<br />
research and tools. It builds on various previous educational<br />
activities, including the ESOPI projects, in which we have<br />
developed a specialized dual-degree curriculum – between the<br />
School of Information and Library Science (SILS) and the School<br />
of Government SOG) – at the University of North Carolina and<br />
associated practical engagement work experiences for publicsector<br />
professionals.<br />
2. DIGITAL CURATION AS AN ARENA<br />
OF PREFESSIONAL ACTIVITY<br />
Within the past few decades, individuals engaged in many<br />
seemingly disparate streams of activity have increasingly come to<br />
recognize that they share a common set of challenges and<br />
opportunities related to caring for digital information. The term<br />
“digital curation” has recently come into use, referring to<br />
“stewardship that provides for the reproducibility and re-use of<br />
authentic digital data and other digital assets” [17]. Digital<br />
curation is not simply the responsibility of professionals working<br />
in collecting institutions (e.g. libraries, archives and museums) but<br />
is instead an endeavor shared by numerous actors with an interest<br />
in stewardship of digital information. In the public sector, this<br />
includes a variety of information professionals, public officials,<br />
agency employees, contractors and private citizens.<br />
While the notion of shared responsibility for government<br />
information certainly is not new, the discussion of curation in this<br />
context is relatively recent. In the 1980s and 1990s, use of the<br />
phrase “data curation” emerged in literature related to the<br />
management of scientific data. Two reports in 2003 brought<br />
further attention to the idea of data curation within the context of<br />
e-science and cyberinfrastructure [9][10].<br />
The phrase “digital curation” has more recent origins. In 2001, the<br />
Digital Preservation Coalition and British National Space Centre<br />
held a seminar called “Digital Curation: Digital Archives,<br />
Libraries and E-science.” The following year, the Joint<br />
Information Systems Committee (JISC) in the UK issued an<br />
“Invitation to tender: requirements and feasibility study on<br />
preservation of e-prints,” which resulted in the formation of the<br />
Digital Curation Centre (DCC) in 2004. In 2006, the Institute for<br />
Museum and Library Services (IMLS) – building on the 21st<br />
Century Librarian program that it began in 2003 – called for grant<br />
proposals to develop educational programs in digital curation and<br />
has funded several programs as a result of this call [14].
Digital curation has served as an umbrella concept that spans a<br />
diversity of professions, institutions and sectors. “Digital<br />
curation” is less wedded to specific institution types than phrases<br />
such as “digital archives” or “digital libraries.” It also reflects a<br />
tendency toward increasing convergence across different types of<br />
institutions, which is driven in large part by technological changes<br />
and considerations [12].<br />
Digital curation is a recent (and useful) phrase to designate a set<br />
of opportunities for cross-institutional and cross-disciplinary<br />
engagement that have been evolving for decades. We believe that<br />
individuals in the public sector can benefit from a better<br />
understanding of advances in digital curation. Conversely, we<br />
believe that experts in electronic governance have a great deal to<br />
contribute to the evolving dialogue around digital curation. It is<br />
our hope that this ICEGOV tutorial will help to catalyze such<br />
connections.<br />
3. BACKGROUND TO THIS TUTORIAL<br />
Over the past decade, we have developed and administered a wide<br />
range of professional educational offerings in digital curation.<br />
Tibbo hosted the Humanities Advanced Technology and<br />
Information Institute week-long digitization workshops in March<br />
2002, May 2003, and May 2004[1]. Since 2006, we have<br />
administered several digital curation education and professional<br />
engagement projects funded by the Institute for Museum and<br />
Library Services (IMLS): (1) Preserving Access to Our Digital<br />
Future: Building an International Digital Curation Curriculum<br />
(DigCCurr) [2], (2) DigCCurr II [3], (3) Educating Stewards of<br />
Public Information for the 21st Century (ESOPI-21) [4], (4)<br />
Closing the Digital Curation Gap (CDCG) [5], and Educating<br />
Stewards of the Public Information Infrastructure (ESOPI 2 ) [6].<br />
These projects have generated a detailed curriculum framework<br />
[7], course modules, full graduate courses [8], week-long<br />
continuing education institutes for professionals [9] and numerous<br />
practical engagement opportunities through paid fellowships. 1 In<br />
April 2010, the SILS faculty approved a new Graduate Certificate<br />
in Digital Curation [11].<br />
As part of the DigCCurr II project, we have offered a week-long<br />
digital curation institute for working professionals every year<br />
since 2009 [8]. The first three years of the institute were<br />
supported through funds from the IMLS. This year’s institute<br />
(2012) was funded solely through participant registration fees.<br />
The Royal Library of Denmark asked us to offer the institute for<br />
them in Copenhagen, which we administered in June 2012.<br />
This ICEGOV tutorial also builds upon "An Introduction to<br />
Digital Curation for Public Records Professionals," a workshop<br />
that we offered at the joint annual meeting of the National<br />
Association of Government Archives and Records Administrators<br />
1 DigCCurr and ESOPI Fellows have had field placement in<br />
institutions including the National Archives and Records<br />
Administration (NARA); the North Carolina State Archives; the<br />
town of Chapel Hill, NC; Orange County, NC; NC Live; UNC-<br />
CH’s University Archives; the Odum Institute for Research in<br />
Social Science, and the Environmental Finance Center of the<br />
UNC School of Government.<br />
529<br />
(NAGARA) and Council of State Archivists (CoSA) on July 16<br />
2011 in Nashville, Tennessee.<br />
4. OUTLINE AND CONTENT<br />
Digital curation brings a wide array of opportunities and<br />
challenges. Opportunities include wider access, integrated access,<br />
representation of a wider range of human experience, persistence<br />
through redundant copying, economies of scale, and enrollment of<br />
collective expertise. Challenges include bit rot, obsolescence,<br />
social inertia, technology monitoring, limited intellectual control,<br />
complex access environments, and various barriers to conveying<br />
meaning over time.<br />
Digital resources are composed of interacting components that can<br />
be considered and accessed at different levels of representation<br />
(e.g. bitstream, through a filesystem; files as rendered through<br />
specific applications; records composed of multiple files; abstract<br />
“works”; larger aggregations such as web sites) [21]. Accessing<br />
and using a document stored as a digital object, requires the<br />
coordinated operation of various hardware and software<br />
components (e.g. storage medium, peripheral devices, operating<br />
system, device drivers, application software). To ensure integrity<br />
and future use, digital curation requires numerous decisions<br />
regarding treatment at multiple levels of representation.<br />
The challenges associated with digital curation are not only<br />
technical but also institutional, economic and political. In order<br />
for digital collections to be sustainable over time, the actors<br />
responsible for curation must continuously have appropriate<br />
expertise, resources, and a political/institutional mandate to carry<br />
out the work required. Given the cost and complexity of digital<br />
curation, as well as the potential to exploit the rich sets of<br />
relationships across individual collections, coordination of work<br />
across social boundaries is also important.<br />
When acquiring, managing and providing access to materials,<br />
professionals must consider various norms, laws, codes of ethics,<br />
policies, procedures, and personal values. As they address<br />
curation of digital information, they are increasingly discovering<br />
“policy vacuums” [18] in which there is no existing guidance on<br />
new issues, and “latent ambiguities” [19] 2 in established guidance.<br />
Digital curation requires clear articulation of policies, procedures,<br />
and practices in ways that were not previously necessary.<br />
In order to address the above considerations, the ICEGOV tutorial<br />
will be composed of the following components:<br />
• Welcome, introductions and logistics<br />
• Overview of digital curation definition, scope and main<br />
functions<br />
• Trustworthiness and assessment<br />
• The many levels of representation in digital materials –<br />
implications for curation<br />
• Lifelong learning for digital curation<br />
The content of this tutorial will address various elements of all<br />
four areas of the “Lifecycle of Electronic Governance Initiatives”<br />
identified in the ICEGOV call: planning, architecture,<br />
implementation and operations. The tutorial is designed to expose<br />
participants to a wide range of professional and strategic issues<br />
2 Lessig borrows the term “latent ambiguity” from [20].
ut also provide sufficient detail on several topics to (1) leave<br />
participants with concrete ideas about next steps in their own<br />
work and (2) demonstrate the implications of the main ideas<br />
through specific characteristics of associated technologies.<br />
After completing the tutorial, participants should be able to:<br />
• Identify and understand the main functions of digital<br />
curation and essential transition points in the life of<br />
digital objects<br />
• Understand the collaborative nature of digital curation<br />
work and the interdependencies among various<br />
professionals and stakeholders<br />
• Identify particular aspects of current digital curation<br />
activities that are relevant to their work<br />
• Understand and be able to interact with digital<br />
information at multiple levels of representation<br />
• Be able to identify appropriate continuing education<br />
opportunities.<br />
5. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS<br />
Materials for this workshop have been developed through support<br />
of a series of grants from the Institute for Museum and Library<br />
Services (Grant Awards #RE-05-08-0060-08, # RE-05-09-0085-<br />
09, and # RE-05-11-0076) and the Andrew W. Mellon<br />
Foundation.<br />
6. REFERENCES<br />
[1] Digitization for Cultural Heritage Information Professionals,<br />
2002-2004. UNC-Chapel Hill.<br />
http://sils.unc.edu/news/2003/DigitizationWorkshop;<br />
http://sils.unc.edu/news/2004/DigitizationWorkshop.<br />
[2] DigCCurr I: Preserving Access to Our Digital Future: Building<br />
an International Digital Curation Curriculum.<br />
http://ils.unc.edu/digccurr.<br />
[3] DigCCurr II: Extending an International Digital Curation<br />
Curriculum to Doctoral Students and Practitioners.<br />
http://ils.unc.edu/digccurr/aboutII.html.<br />
[4] Educating Stewards of Public Information in the 21 st Century.<br />
(ESOPI). http://ils.unc.edu/esopi21/index.html.<br />
[5] Closing the Digital Curation Gap.<br />
http://digitalcurationexchange.org/cdcg/?q=about.<br />
[6] Educating Stewards of the Public Information Infrastructure.<br />
(ESOPI 2 ). http://ils.unc.edu/esopi21/index.html.<br />
[7] DigCCurr. DigCCurr Matrix of Digital Curation Knowledge<br />
and Competencies. http://ils.unc.edu/digccurr/digccurrmatrix.html;<br />
DigCCurr High-Level Categories of Digital<br />
530<br />
Curation Functions. http://ils.unc.edu/digccurr/digccurr-functcategories.pdf.<br />
[8] DigCCurr Professional Institute: Curation Practices for the<br />
Digital Object Lifecycle.<br />
http://ils.unc.edu/digccurr/institute.html.<br />
[9] Atkins, D.E., et al. 2003. Revolutionizing Science and<br />
Engineering through Cyberinfrastructure: Report of the<br />
National Science Foundation Blue-Ribbon Advisory Panel on<br />
Cyberinfrastructure. National Science Foundation,<br />
Washington, DC.<br />
[10] Lord, P. and Macdonald A. 2003. E-Science Curation Report:<br />
Data Curation for E-Science in the UK: An Audit to Establish<br />
Requirements for Future Curation and Provision. JISC<br />
Committee for the Support of Research, London.<br />
[11] SILS, UNC-CH Digital Curation Certificate.<br />
http://sils.unc.edu/programs/certificates/digital_curation<br />
[12] Tibbo H.R. and Lee C.A. 2010. Convergence through<br />
Capabilities: Digital Curation Education for Libraries,<br />
Archives and Museums. In Archiving 2010: Final Program<br />
and Proceedings, June 1-4, 2010, Den Haag, The<br />
Netherlands. Society for Imaging Science and Technology,<br />
Springfield, VA, 53-57.<br />
[13] Beagire, Neil and Pothen, P. 2001. The Digital Curation:<br />
Digital Archives, Libraries and E-Science Seminar. Ariadne<br />
30, http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue30/digital-curation/.<br />
[14] Ray, J. 2009. Sharks, Digital Curation, and the Education of<br />
Information Professionals. Museum Management and<br />
Curatorship 24, no. 4, 357-68.<br />
[17] Lee, C.A. and Tibbo H.R. 2007. Digital Curation and Trusted<br />
Repositories: Steps Toward Success. Journal of Digital<br />
Information 8, no. 2.<br />
[18] Moor, J.H. 1985. What Is Computer Ethics? Metaphilosophy<br />
16, no. 4, 266-75.<br />
[19] Lessig L. 2006. Code: Version 2.0. Basic Books, New York,<br />
NY, 25-28, 155-277.<br />
[20] Williston, S. 1957. A Treatise on the Law of Contracts, 3rd<br />
ed., ed. by Walter H.E. Jaeger. N (Baker, Voorhis, Mount<br />
Kisco, NY, 627, 898.<br />
[21] Lee, C. A. Forthcoming. Digital Curation as Communication<br />
Mediation. In Handbook of Technical Communication, edited<br />
by Alexander Mehler, Laurent Romary, and Dafydd Gibbon.<br />
Mouton De Gruyter.
Use of Agent-Based Modeling for e-Governance Research<br />
Yushim Kim<br />
Arizona State University<br />
411 N. Central Ave. Ste. 400<br />
Phoenix, AZ 85004<br />
1-602-496-1157<br />
ykim@asu.edu<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
This tutorial focuses on the basic functionalities of an emerging<br />
simulation modeling technique (i.e., agent-based modeling), the<br />
use of the tool for modeling a managerial issue, and the analysis<br />
of simulation data for electronic governance (e-governance)<br />
research. It also articulates potential questions that may be raised<br />
in each step of modeling. The tutorial ends with perspectives on<br />
critical subjects in ABM.<br />
Categories and Subject Descriptors<br />
I.6.5 [Simulation and Modeling]: Model Development<br />
General Terms<br />
Management, Performance<br />
Keywords<br />
Agent-Based Modeling, e-Governance<br />
1. INTRODUCTION<br />
The idea that the world we inhabit is complex is not new, and the<br />
problems policy makers and public managers deal with are quite<br />
challenging. Leveraging upon advances in information and<br />
technology, electronic governance (e-governance) initiatives have<br />
been proposed to provide better approaches to some of the<br />
complexities that public managers are confronting. However, even<br />
our most current knowledge is often limited in conceptualizing,<br />
capturing, and analyzing the world and its problems in a way that<br />
is useful for decision makers.<br />
Modeling and simulation approaches are useful for researchers,<br />
policy makers, and stakeholders in thinking through, defining, and<br />
analyzing the world, system, or problems that concern the world<br />
or a system. Computational tools and approaches can aid in<br />
crystalizing the thought process related to complex problems [1].<br />
This tutorial aims to help those who are interested in approaching<br />
e-governance topics with simulation using computational tools by<br />
articulating the basic steps required. The steps are discussed using<br />
the example of a public service delivery model.<br />
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ICEGOV '12, October 22 - 25 2012, Albany, NY, USA<br />
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1200-4/12/10...$15.00<br />
Callie McGraw<br />
Arizona State University<br />
411 N. Central Ave. Ste. 400<br />
Phoenix, AZ 85004<br />
1-623-363-6275<br />
callie.mcgraw@asu.edu<br />
531<br />
2. LEARNING OBJECTIVE<br />
The objective of this tutorial is to introduce a way for researchers<br />
and practitioners in e-governance to interact with an agent-based<br />
modeling approach in order to better understand complex<br />
problems and systems that they deal with. Attention is given to a<br />
specific topic in public management on which the authors have<br />
worked (i.e., fraud detection in public service deliveries) so the<br />
audience can easily contextualize this approach. The expected<br />
learning outcome is an increase in e-governance researchers’<br />
interest in computational modeling.<br />
3. AGENT-BASED MODELING (ABM)<br />
3.1 Why ABM?<br />
ABM has been popularized among social science disciplines with<br />
the explosion of computational technologies. From a social<br />
science research point of view, one of the most significant<br />
features of ABM is not that researchers can work with a primitive<br />
data type—numbers and characters—that is similar to other<br />
computer programming languages, but that ABM allows<br />
researchers to define other types of entities (e.g., individuals,<br />
schools, or stores) and the interactions that are relevant to one’s<br />
own context. This provides a unique opportunity to introduce not<br />
only individuals but also important entities and objects necessary<br />
for an autonomous decision-making unit in social simulations.<br />
With ABM, researchers can frame their problems within large,<br />
dynamic social processes. In doing so, they must carefully<br />
consider social actors, interactions, interdependencies, and<br />
processes among heterogeneous decision-making units. If<br />
properly done, this can enhance the fidelity of simulation models<br />
and aid in understanding the nature of complex social problems.<br />
3.2 What is ABM?<br />
Artificial worlds built as simulation models whose dynamics can<br />
be observed, tested, and retested serve as flexible research and<br />
decision support platforms. ABM has the unique benefit of<br />
enabling the investigation of mechanisms at micro-levels that can<br />
lead to dynamic patterns of social systems at the macro-level.<br />
Thus, the goal of this approach is often stated as exploring social<br />
processes and mechanisms—the rules, interactions, and<br />
feedback—that can lead to aggregate systemic patterns.<br />
Conceptually, ABM requires two components: agents and<br />
interaction rules. ABM consists of ‘agents’ who can make<br />
autonomous and adaptive decisions using local information and<br />
‘rules’ that elicit social mechanisms and processes. ABM can<br />
accommodate heterogeneous agent types and asymmetries in<br />
social systems, and can be easily scaled to a larger system with<br />
many agents.
ABM is known as a bottom-up simulation approach [2] and relies<br />
heavily upon lower-level actors’ perspective within systems rather<br />
than on higher-level observers’ perspective, which differentiates it<br />
from other existing analytical or simulation approaches for social<br />
inquiry [3].<br />
3.3 Toolkits<br />
Several ABM simulation toolkits have been developed by various<br />
organizations and institutions. This includes, but is not limited to,<br />
Swam, Mason, RePast, and NetLogo. In the Wikipedia list, there<br />
are more than 70 ABM toolkits, packages, and libraries listed that<br />
researchers can easily access. These toolkits provide basic<br />
functionality with convenience in building an ABM and useful<br />
demonstration models such as Schelling’s segregation and<br />
innovation diffusion model. This tutorial does not provide<br />
recommendations on which tool to choose. See Gilbert (2008) for<br />
a comparison of the major toolkits [4].<br />
4. MODEL DEVELOPMENT<br />
When one decides to build an ABM, the first questions are related<br />
to where to start and what steps to follow. This tutorial answers<br />
those questions using an example.<br />
4.1 A Public Service Delivery Example<br />
Public service delivery programs (e.g., food stamps and WIC)<br />
currently consist of somewhat goal-congruent players, such as<br />
program recipients, vendors, and state and local agencies.<br />
Vendors are private entities, and the delivery of public services to<br />
program recipients has been contracted out to those private<br />
entities. A common issue observed in this mode of public service<br />
delivery is illegal activities being committed by some of the<br />
players. One of the government’s critical functions has been to<br />
monitor and regulate rule-violating activities in these programs.<br />
Despite well-established government information systems in these<br />
programs, the actual processes of illegal exchange among some<br />
players are largely hidden from the governing authority. Existing<br />
fraud detection techniques are useful in detecting abnormalities<br />
mainly after illegal activities are committed, and the techniques<br />
are also fairly well known to potential rule violators in the<br />
programs. Thus, the utility of the existing techniques are limited.<br />
A prototype ABM was built to represent a public service delivery<br />
program in the U.S. [5]. The model aimed to analyze the process<br />
of rule-breaking and emerging statistical and spatial patterns of<br />
fraud from such a process in public service delivery so that public<br />
managers can have better insights on fraud detection and control.<br />
Figure 1 presents a snapshot of the model. The following section<br />
describes the steps taken and the questions that were/can be<br />
raised.<br />
Figure 1. Public Service Delivery Model Interface<br />
532<br />
4.2 Steps To Follow<br />
Step 1: Assess the research question.<br />
A model is a working representation of some real world processes<br />
that a researcher aims to understand. There are many purposes of<br />
building simulation models. For example, Yucel and Dallen<br />
(2009) provided an overview of the types of models built to<br />
support policy-making: analytical models, advisory models,<br />
strategic models, mediation models, participatory models, and<br />
discussion models [6]. ABM can also be seen based on objectives<br />
that are tightly linked to the research questions. Therefore, the<br />
first step involves developing the research question and<br />
considering how ABM can be a useful approach for<br />
answering/solving/investigating the research question.<br />
For example, the ABM of public service deliveries was built as an<br />
analytical model. Analytical models “act as a tool to develop<br />
insight about dynamic phenomena being studied. These models<br />
aim to represent the system as it is. In that sense, a good<br />
representation of the 'real system' is the main concern in building<br />
this kind of model” [6]. The objective in our example is to<br />
examine how fraud patterns in public service deliveries emerge<br />
from some players’ decisions and behaviors. Thus, a<br />
representation of the program that includes heterogeneous,<br />
congruent players and their behaviors is crucial for the model.<br />
Standard analytical techniques are not well equipped for<br />
understanding and exploring the adaptive decisions and behaviors<br />
of heterogeneous entities, so ABM is a valuable alternative. Thus,<br />
the questions that can be asked at this stage are as follows:<br />
- Is it difficult to answer the research question using<br />
standard approaches?<br />
- Can ABM be a useful alternative, or supplement, to<br />
standard approaches?<br />
- What is the objective of building an ABM?<br />
Step 2: Develop a conceptual model that describes a system and<br />
the processes that are relevant to the research question.<br />
A conceptual model is a description of real world systems or<br />
processes in a textual or graphical format. Usually the model<br />
specifies interdependencies among actors or the basic structure<br />
within a system of interest and describes the decision-making,<br />
interaction, and action rules among actors.<br />
In the example, the basic relationship between key actors in public<br />
service deliveries is elicited to represent the business processes of<br />
a state’s public health service delivery program. In other words,<br />
the way in which business flows in such a program can provide<br />
information on how public services are delivered to program<br />
recipients through vendors and what governing authorities do in<br />
the process.<br />
While the business process describes routine activities of the<br />
program, it does not provide sufficient information about how or<br />
why actors engage in certain decision-making processes. Nor does<br />
it provide information about interactions, such as 1) how program<br />
recipients choose a store to receive public services and 2)<br />
how/why some recipients and vendors engage in illegal benefit<br />
exchanges. For the former, existing consumers’ store choice<br />
literature was used to model program recipients’ choice on which<br />
vendor to utilize. For the latter, two sources of information were<br />
used: criminology theories, such as crime opportunity theories,
and the experience of a state program’s vendor specialists. Some<br />
of the questions addressed included:<br />
- What are the boundaries of the system under<br />
investigation?<br />
- Who should be considered as key actors?<br />
- What attributes of the actors need to be included?<br />
- What interdependencies and interactions must be<br />
specified and how?<br />
- Which theories and information should be relied upon?<br />
- What temporal unit (e.g. months or years) should<br />
simulation steps reflect?<br />
- Should physical geography be explicitly accounted for?<br />
Step 3: Build a prototype model that implements the conceptual<br />
model.<br />
Once a conceptual model is specified, a prototype model is built<br />
using object-oriented programming languages or existing ABM<br />
toolkits. Building a prototype model implies that the model<br />
requires a computational format so that it is given input at the<br />
beginning and can produce output as it runs. This is the stage that<br />
requires programming skills. Building an ABM that is as simple<br />
as possible is the most important consideration in this stage.<br />
Complexity can always be added later.<br />
The ABM of public service deliveries was originally built in<br />
MASON and later replicated in NetLogo. While both toolkits<br />
were designed in a java platform, the NetLogo language is slightly<br />
different from the java used for MASON. Some questions that<br />
might be considered at this point include:<br />
- Which programming language or simulation toolkit<br />
might be chosen given the level of programming skills<br />
and technical capability required for the research (e.g.,<br />
importing spatial data)?<br />
- Are there any existing models that can be examined for<br />
the research?<br />
- How can useful sources and potential answers for<br />
programming questions be found?<br />
- What are reasonable ways to set up initial parameters?<br />
- How are variability and uncertainty incorporated?<br />
- At what step should the ABM simulation stop?<br />
Step 4: Carefully examine how the model behaves and experiment<br />
with some extreme scenarios.<br />
Many ABM toolkits provide a real time visualization capability.<br />
This helps researchers easily and instantly examine the behavior<br />
of agents and the system. Extreme values of some parameters can<br />
also be tested.<br />
Both MASON and NetLogo provide such functionality in the<br />
ABM of public service deliveries. Some example questions<br />
include:<br />
- How can changes in the key attributes of agents (e.g., a<br />
propensity toward risk behavior) using color schemes<br />
and texts be observed?<br />
533<br />
- How does one examine whether programmed codes<br />
perform as they were intended?<br />
- Which behavior of the system needs to be closely<br />
monitored?<br />
Step 5: Analyze the simulation data.<br />
ABM produces a large set of data on variables and interactions of<br />
interest to the researcher. The size of the dataset is ultimately a<br />
function of the researcher’s question and decision on what<br />
information needs to be extracted from the simulation. For<br />
example, the level of fraudulent vendors identified in the<br />
simulation steps can be reported, but is dependent upon the<br />
experimental conditions and decision rules tested.<br />
The analysis of simulation data is not different from the analysis<br />
of empirical data, so statistical tools and techniques can be useful<br />
for simulation data analysis. In addition, existing analytical<br />
packages such as R can be directly linked to the ABM using<br />
NetLogo, which allows a real time statistical analysis of<br />
simulation data during the simulation. The following questions<br />
should be addressed:<br />
- What information needs to be extracted?<br />
- Should the ABM simulation output be extracted at the<br />
individual agent level or aggregate system level?<br />
- How many simulation runs are appropriate?<br />
- What methods and techniques are appropriate for the<br />
analysis of the simulation data?<br />
5. DISCUSSION<br />
There are several issues surrounding the use of ABM as a research<br />
tool for social and policy issues. Among them, this tutorial<br />
focuses on providing perspectives on questions that audiences<br />
often ask: How do we know whether ABM is built without<br />
programming errors? How do we know whether ABM says<br />
anything about the real system? Where do the data come from?<br />
The first is a question of verification, the second is a question of<br />
validation, and the third requires answering the relationship<br />
between ABM and empirics.<br />
5.1 Verifying and Validating ABM<br />
Conventionally, “verification in modeling” is used to refer to the<br />
process of debugging programming errors, whereas validation<br />
requires some processes to establish the predictive power of the<br />
model against real world situations. However, the verification and<br />
validation of ABM has been a controversial topic and there is no<br />
easy answer. In recent years, the artificial social systems and<br />
simulation community has been interested in “model replication”<br />
as a process of verifying and validating ABM [7].<br />
The ABM of public service deliveries was technically verified by<br />
replicating the same model using a different programming toolkit<br />
by an author who has no experience with the actual delivery<br />
program [8] and partly validated against empirical data that were<br />
reported in government documents [9, 10]. This does not mean<br />
that the model was verified or validated in the same sense that<br />
researchers use in standard analytical approaches. It is largely a<br />
process of building confidence on how the model behaves<br />
compared to what is known.
5.2 Relation to Empirics<br />
“Where did you get data?” is often asked when a prototype ABM<br />
is presented. This introduces some consideration about what one<br />
really means by data: Are data a matrix with numerical data<br />
points in Excel spreadsheets? Does one consider what is reported<br />
in research articles as data? Are stories or interviews data?<br />
ABM is “a computation method that enables a researcher to<br />
create, analyze, and experiment with models composed of agents<br />
that interact within an environment” [4, p.2]. Usually, the process<br />
of building an ABM is informed by existing knowledge in the<br />
form of literature, theories, empirical observations, and stories. If<br />
one considers these forms of knowledge as data, then this is where<br />
the data of ABM originates.<br />
If others consider only a numerical representation of the world<br />
using standardized scales and procedures as data, ABM can<br />
certainly work with empirical datasets. For example, GIS data can<br />
be imported to set up artificial landscapes. Census data can be<br />
utilized to represent characteristics of the population in cities or<br />
regions. An example of this approach can be found in the Network<br />
Dynamics and Simulation Science Laboratory’s information<br />
integration platform [11].<br />
However, these are not the only methods that one can utilize to<br />
make sense of ABM’s relation to empirics. ABM studies have<br />
generated new propositions and hypotheses on complex<br />
phenomena, which can be empirically tested in real world<br />
settings. In other words, ABM can be situated in large research<br />
cycles in order to improve our current understanding of complex<br />
social matters. Figure 2 presents this within a research cycle,<br />
showing how ABM can be related to empirical approaches,<br />
studies and data.<br />
Figure 2. Research Cycle<br />
5.3 Conclusion<br />
Depending upon the level of understanding about the real system<br />
one wants to simulate, ABM can be designed for a variety of uses,<br />
such as a hypothesis generator, mediator (e.g., microscope), or<br />
predictor (e.g., calculator). According to the most recent survey of<br />
279 ABM studies published in the 1998-2008 period, a majority<br />
(60%) were built as a mediator, and the remaining ABMs were<br />
built for hypothesis generation [12]. Surprisingly, no study has<br />
used ABM as a predictor. This finding suggests that a prototype<br />
ABM for thought experiments would be extremely useful and that<br />
534<br />
we can gain crucial insights on various social and policy problems<br />
using such a prototype.<br />
This tutorial introduces ABM as a tool that is particularly<br />
appropriate for thought experiments related to policy and<br />
managerial issues in the e-governance community.<br />
6. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS<br />
This work was funded by the National Research Foundation of<br />
Korea Grant (NRF-2010-330-B00262).<br />
7. REFERENCES<br />
[1] Sterman, J. D. Business Dynamics: Systems Thinking and<br />
Modeling for a Complex World. Irwin McGraw-Hill, Boston,<br />
2000.<br />
[2] Miller, J. H. and Page, S. E. Complex Adaptive Systems.<br />
Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2007.<br />
[3] Gilbert, N. Agent-Based Models. Sage Publications, LA,<br />
2008.<br />
[4] Gilbert, N., & Troitzsch, K. Simulation for the Social<br />
Scientist, Open University Press, 2005.<br />
[5] Kim, Y. Analysis for Adaptive Complex Public Enterprises.<br />
Doctoral Dissertation, The Ohio State University, Columbus,<br />
OH, 2006.<br />
[6] Yucel, G., & van Daalen, E. An objective-based perspective<br />
on assessment of model-supported policy processes. Journal<br />
of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation 12(4), 3-29.<br />
2009.<br />
[7] Wilensky, U., & Rand, W. Making models match:<br />
Replicating an agent-based model. Journal of Artificial<br />
Societies and Social Simulation, 10, 2, 2007.<br />
[8] Zhong, W., & Kim, Y. Using model replication to improve<br />
the reliability of agent-based models. In S. K. Chai, J. J.<br />
Salerno, & P. L. Mabry (Eds.), Advances in Social<br />
Computing (pp. 118-127), New York: Springer, 2010.<br />
[9] Kim, Y., & Xiao, N. FraudSim: Simulating fraud in a public<br />
delivery program. In L. Liu & J. Eck (Eds.), Artificial Crime<br />
Analysis Systems: Using Computer Simulations and<br />
Geographic Information Systems (pp. 319-338). Hershey,<br />
PA: IGI Global, 2008.<br />
[10] Kim, Y. Simulating a fraud mechanism in public service<br />
delivery, In A. Desai (Ed.), Simulations for Policy Inquiry,<br />
New York: Springer, 2012.<br />
[11] Barrett, C. L., Eubank, S. Marathe, A., Marathe, M. V., Pan,<br />
Z., & Swarup, S. Information integration to support modelbased<br />
policy informatics. The Innovation Journal, 16(1),<br />
2011.<br />
[12] Heath, B., Hill, R., & Ciarallo, F. A survey of agent-based<br />
modeling practices (January 1998 to July 2008). Journal of<br />
Artificial Society and Social Simulation, 12(4), 9, 2009.
Adhikari, Ganesh Prasad ................ 472<br />
Agrawal, Sandeep ........................... 458<br />
Almazan, Rodrigo Sandoval ......... 109<br />
Andersen, David F. ............................ 1<br />
Al-Khalifa, Hend S. ........................ 243<br />
Al-Rajebah, Nora I. ....................... 243<br />
Al-Razgan, Muna S. ...................... 243<br />
Alfalahi, Alyaa .............................. 495<br />
Aliyu, Ibrahim ............................... 468<br />
Almasoud, Ameera M. ................... 243<br />
Akilli, H. Serkan .............................. 71<br />
Amatya, Prajwal ............................ 524<br />
Andreasson, Kim ............................ 430<br />
Anrique, Roberto ............................ 440<br />
Arcelus, Josune ................................ 83<br />
Arfeen, M. Irfanullah .................... 526<br />
Armenia, Stefano ............................. 62<br />
Awoleye, O. Michael ..................... 236<br />
Awotwi, Johanna E. ....................... 369<br />
Azanzi, Fidèl Jiomekong ............... 406<br />
Babaoglu, Cenay ............................. 71<br />
Bal, Bal Krishna ............................ 524<br />
Barbosa, Luis Soares ..................... 474<br />
Belachew, Mesfin ........................... 210<br />
Bershadskaya, Lyudmila ......... 79, 490<br />
Bertot, John Carlo ........................... 87<br />
Bhuiyan, M. Shakhawat Hossain .. 522<br />
Bigdeli, Alinaghi Ziaee .................. 485<br />
Bloniarz, Peter ............................... 123<br />
Bokhari, Hasnain ........................... 158<br />
Brena, Ramón ................................ 166<br />
Breslin, John .................................. 389<br />
Broto, Laurent ............................... 406<br />
Burov, Vasiliy ................................ 450<br />
Cardona, Diego .............................. 188<br />
Cellary, Wojciech .......................... 332<br />
Cerone, Antonio ............................ 474<br />
Author Index<br />
Chen, Qian ...................................... 267<br />
Chesñevar, Carlos ......................... 166<br />
Cho, JooWon ................................. 452<br />
Choenni, Sunil ................................... 5<br />
Choi, John (Jong Uk) ..................... 452<br />
Chugunov, Andrei .................... 79, 490<br />
Chuluunbat, Zolbayar .................... 483<br />
Codagnone, Cristiano ..................... 287<br />
Colaco, Jessica ................................. 18<br />
Concha, Gastón .............................. 440<br />
Conradie, Peter ................................... 5<br />
Coughlan, Chris .............................. 389<br />
Criado, J. Ignacio ............................. 75<br />
da Silva, Miguel Mira ..................... 320<br />
de Cesare, Sergio ........................... 485<br />
de Melo, Daniel Gonçalves ............ 516<br />
de Souza, Cesar A ........................... 419<br />
Daniel, Vanessa Marques ............... 385<br />
Das, Abhishek ................................ 458<br />
Das, Rama Krushna ................ 402, 502<br />
Demircioglu, Mehmet Akif .............. 71<br />
Deosthali, Kanchan ....................... 202<br />
Dhakal, Garima ............................... 524<br />
Dika, Agni ...................................... 324<br />
Ehringfeld, Andreas ....................... 500<br />
El Aichi, Mohamed Mohyi Eddine . 492<br />
Elbadawi, Ibrahim .......................... 508<br />
Eom, Seok-Jin ................................. 105<br />
Erickson, John ................................. 480<br />
Erika, Bagambiki ............................ 466<br />
Estevez, Elsa .................................. 166<br />
Faniran, Sanjo ............................... 184<br />
Fernandes, Sara .............................. 474<br />
Ferreira, Adriana Simeão .............. 516<br />
Fischer, Gerald .............................. 500<br />
Freitas, Leondeniz ......................... 516<br />
Gharawi, Mohammed .................... 113<br />
Gil-Garcia, J. Ramon ............... 30, 426<br />
Goldstein, Ira ................................. 350<br />
Goodspeed, Robert ......................... 460<br />
Gorham, Ursula ............................... 87<br />
Gronau, Norbert ............................. 346<br />
Grönlund, Åke ............................... 297<br />
Gu, Lihong ...................................... 95<br />
Hagen, Loni .................................... 470<br />
Hagimont, Daniel .......................... 406<br />
Heidt, Josiah .................................. 504<br />
Heine, Moreen .............................. 346<br />
Hendler, Jim ................................. 480<br />
Huff, Richard ................................ 513<br />
Huffman, Amy .............................. 379<br />
Hrdinova, Jana ................................... 1<br />
Islam, M. Sirajul ............................. 297<br />
Jaeger, Paul T. ................................ 87<br />
Janssen, Marijn .............................. 216<br />
Johannessen, Marius Rohde ............. 48<br />
John, Klaus ................................... 500<br />
Joshi, Manish R. ............................. 497<br />
Kamal, Muhammad ........................ 485<br />
Kesan, Jay P. ................................ 147<br />
Khan, Mustafa ............................... 158<br />
Khan, Nawar ................................. 526<br />
Kim, B. Joon ..................................... 34<br />
Kim, Dong Hwa ............................ 452<br />
Kim, Jun Houng ............................. 105<br />
Kim, Soonhee ................................. 44<br />
Kim, Taesung ................................ 279<br />
Kim, Yushim .................................. 531<br />
Kleeman, Liana ............................. 513<br />
Kleinschmit, Stephen W. .................. 34<br />
Koli, Rajesh E. ............................... 497<br />
Konstantinos Tarabanis .................. 132<br />
Knutsson, Ola ................................. 495<br />
Krumova, Milena .......................... 301
Larson, Elizabeth ............................. 87<br />
Lau, Gloria T. ....................... 147, 175<br />
Law, Kincho H. ..................... 147, 175<br />
Lee, Christopher A. ................ 171, 528<br />
Lee, Hyejung ................................ 279<br />
Lee, Jooho ....................................... 44<br />
Lee, Jungwoo ................................. 279<br />
Lee, Mi Yeon ................................. 105<br />
Lessa, Lemma ................................. 210<br />
Leyva, Nancy Karina Saucedo ....... 426<br />
Li, Danyao ..................................... 518<br />
Liang, Xiao ................................... 248<br />
Lincoln, Ruth ................................... 87<br />
Liu, Shuhua Monica ..................... 518<br />
Liu, Xinping ................................... 258<br />
López-Bachiller, Jorge ................... 188<br />
Louis, Claudia ................................ 464<br />
Luna-Reyes, Luis F. ..................... 1, 30<br />
Luna, Dolores E. .............................. 30<br />
Macadar, Marie Anne ..................... 385<br />
Maguitman, Ana ............................ 166<br />
Maheshwari, Devender ................. 216<br />
Mantilla, Camilo Cristancho .......... 511<br />
Matheus, Ricardo .................... 22, 419<br />
Mathur, Kapil ................................. 458<br />
McGraw, Callie .............................. 531<br />
Millard, Jeremy ............................. 430<br />
Misra, Goldi .................................. 458<br />
Misra, Harekrishna ......................... 354<br />
Misuraca, Gianluca .................. 62, 287<br />
Molik, David ................................. 520<br />
Mulligan, Brendan .......................... 389<br />
Mureddu, Francesco ......................... 62<br />
Mutuku, Leonida N. ........................ 18<br />
Navarrete, Celene .......................... 109<br />
Negash, Solomon .......................... 210<br />
O’Donoghue, Padraic ..................... 389<br />
Odongo, Agnes Owuato ................ 192<br />
Ojuloge, Blessing ........................... 236<br />
Olaniyan, Kayode .......................... 184<br />
Osimo, David ................................... 62<br />
Outsetari, Vasiliki ........................... 132<br />
Padhy, Rabi Prasad ........................ 402<br />
Pardo, Theresa A. ....... 1, 113, 123, 310<br />
Paszkiewicz, Zbigniew .................. 332<br />
Patarakin, Evgeny ........................... 450<br />
Patnaik, Pabitrananda ...................... 502<br />
Patra, Manas Ranjan ............... 402, 502<br />
Pawar, Sucheta ............................... 458<br />
Peres, Marco .................................... 67<br />
Pereira, Gabriela Viale .................... 385<br />
Pereira, Ruben ................................ 320<br />
Pimiento, Johanna ............................. 14<br />
Porwol, Lukasz ............................... 389<br />
Potnis, Devendra ........................... 202<br />
Prandini, Marco ................................ 58<br />
Prieto, Lydia Marleny ....................... 14<br />
Proske, Niels ................................. 346<br />
Puron-Cid, Gabriel ......................... 336<br />
Quintero, Johanna Pimiento ........... 206<br />
Ramilli, Marco ................................. 58<br />
Rane, Gauri M. ................................ 497<br />
Rao, Anil G., .................................. 497<br />
Reardon, Timothy .......................... 460<br />
Rexha, Blerim ............................... 324<br />
Rexhepi, Artan ............................... 324<br />
Reynoso, Juan M. Gomez .............. 109<br />
Ribeiro, Manuella Maia ........... 22, 419<br />
Rodríguez, Ana Carolina .................. 14<br />
Rojas-Romero, Yaneileth ................. 30<br />
Rorissa, Abebe ............................... 456<br />
Rozell, Eric .................................... 480<br />
Saenz-Core, Javier ........................ 188<br />
Sambuu, Uyanga .................... 454, 483<br />
Sandoval-Almazan, Rodrigo .... 30, 426<br />
Savoldelli, Alberto ......................... 287<br />
Sayogo, Djoko Sigit .................. 1, 123<br />
Schläpfer, Michael ......................... 410<br />
Sharer, Michelle ............................. 520<br />
Sharma, Mona ............................... 364<br />
Siddiquee, Noore Alam ................. 271<br />
Silva, Diana Parra .......................... 206<br />
Silva, Juan Carlos Noriega ............ 511<br />
Sinn, Donghee ................................ 470<br />
Siyanbola, Willie O. ....................... 236<br />
Snaprud, Mikael ............................. 430<br />
Sneiders, Eriks ............................... 495<br />
Solivan, Jackeline .......................... 504<br />
Spanring, Christian ........................ 460<br />
Steibel, Fabro .................................. 38<br />
Strang, Carl ..................................... 350<br />
Styrin, Evgeny ............................... 487<br />
Suárez, Paula ................................... 67<br />
Taduri, Siddharth ............................ 147<br />
Taewoo Nam .................................. 310<br />
Tambouris, Efthimios .................... 132<br />
Tayi, Giri Kumar .............................. 1<br />
Taylor, Natalie Greene .................... 87<br />
Tchuente, Maurice ........................ 406<br />
Tibbo, Helen R. ..................... 171, 528<br />
Trutnev, Dmitrii ...................... 79, 490<br />
Tudevdagva, Uranchimeg ............. 454<br />
Unurkhaan, Esbold ........................ 483<br />
Vaz, José Carlos ...................... 22, 419<br />
Veldanda, Swapna ......................... 506<br />
Volkamer, Melanie ........................ 410<br />
Xu, Huina ..................................... 267<br />
Wayne L. Myers ............................ 226<br />
Wang, Fang ...................................... 95<br />
Widyaningsih, Yekti ...................... 226<br />
Yang, Tung-Mou ................... 143, 477<br />
Yarmakhov, Boris .......................... 450<br />
Yoo, Chang Hun ............................ 452<br />
Yuan, Qianli .................................. 518<br />
Zheng, Lei .............. 258, 262, 393, 518<br />
Zheng, Tuo .................................... 393<br />
Zhang, Jing ........................................ 1<br />
Zhulin, Andrey .............................. 487
ACM INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS SERIES,<br />
ACM PRESS