An Overview of Modern Technologies Applications in Indian Libraries (Brief Communication)

India is one of the oldest civilizations with a kaleidoscopic variety and rich cultural heritage. It has achieved multi-faccted socio-economic progress during the last 47 years of its independence. This article reports on a survey of the usage of modern technologies (e.g. photocopiers, microfilming, computers, facsimile transmission, audio-visual, online searching and CD-ROMs) in Indian libraries. These libraries include university, engineering, scientific, medical, government and public libraries. The study used a questionnaire, personal visits to many libraries and interviews. The paper examines the impact of modern technologies on these libraries. It concludes with a summary of the problems faced by the librarians in adopting the modern technologies and suggests measures for implementation of modern technologies.     

Solving reference questions in the Caribbean: the university of the West Indies (Trinidad) experience

Abstract

India is one of the oldest civilizations with a kaleidoscopic variety and rich cultural heritage. It has achieved multi-faccted socio-economic progress during the last 47 years of its independence. This article reports on a survey of the usage of modern technologies (e.g. photocopiers, microfilming, computers, facsimile transmission, audio-visual, online searching and CD-ROMs) in Indian libraries. These libraries include university, engineering, scientific, medical, government and public libraries. The study used a questionnaire, personal visits to many libraries and interviews. The paper examines the impact of modern technologies on these libraries. It concludes with a summary of the problems faced by the librarians in adopting the modern technologies and suggests measures for implementation of modern technologies.     

Type,tweet, tap,and pass: How smart city technology is creating a transactional citizen

In the current push for smart city programs around the world, there is a significant focus on enabling transactions between citizen and government. Though traditionally there have always been transactional elements between government and citizen, for example payment of taxes in exchange for services, or voting in exchange for representation, the rise of modern smartphone and smart city technologies have further enabled micro-transactions between citizen, government, and information broker. We conceptualize how the modern smart city, as both envisaged and enacted, incorporates the citizen not necessarily as a whole actor, but as a series of micro-transactions encoded on the real-time landscape of the city. This transactional citizen becomes counted by smart city sensors and integrated into smart city decision-making through the use of certain preferred platforms. To approach this shift from traditional forms of citizen/city interaction towards micro-transactions, we conceptualize four broad modes of transaction; type (intentional contribution), tweet (intermediated by third party), tap (convened or requested transaction), and pass (ambient transaction based on movement). These four modes are used to frame critical questions of how citizens interact with government in the emerging age of the smart city, and how these interactions impact the relationship between citizen and government, introducing new avenues for private sector influence.     

A taxonomy for planning and designing smart mobility services

The development of smart mobility initiatives requires specialized and contextualized policies addressing the needs and interests of many stakeholders involved. Since the development of such policies is challenging, there is a need to learn from the experience of many cities around the world offering efficient and successfully adopted smart mobility services. However, in practice, the information provided about such initiatives is shallow and unstructured. To address this issue, we study the state of the art in mobility services, reviewing scientific publications and 42 smart mobility services delivered by nine smart cities around the world, and we propose a taxonomy for planning and designing smart mobility services. The taxonomy provides a common vocabulary to discuss and share information about such services. It comprises eight dimensions: type of services, maturity level, users, applied technologies, delivery channels, benefits, beneficiaries, and common functionality. The contribution of the proposed taxonomy is to serve as a tool for guiding policy makers by identifying a spectrum of mobility services that can be provided, to whom, what technologies can be used to deliver them, and what is the delivered public value so to justify their implementation. In addition, the taxonomy can also assist researchers in further developing the domain. By identifying common functionality, it could also help Information Technology (IT) teams in building and maintaining smart mobility services. Finally, we further discuss usage scenarios of the taxonomy by policy makers, IT staff and researchers.     

Access to Australian Government information: A decade of change 1997–2007

Australia has a well-established history of access to government information and publications by citizens, much of it through libraries. The changes in the 1990s and 2000s with the move to electronic publishing and Internet access have led to significant changes in the accessibility of information. In 1997, the Australian Government framework for electronic delivery of information service was established by the report Management of Government Information as a National Strategic Resource. Since this report, there has been a rapid increase in the availability of government information, including government publications. There has also been an increased demand for public libraries to support access. The paper reviews establishment of the initial framework and changes in the past decade. Trends in production of government information, citizens' use of electronic Australian Government publications, satisfaction with online government services, and implications for libraries are analyzed.     

Are Mauritians ready for e-Government services?

Mauritius, a country that represents one of the leading advocates of e-Governance in Sub-Saharan Africa, has taken significant action to improve e-readiness dimensions and as such ranks high in terms of e-readiness index with respect to other Sub-Saharan African countries, based on the United Nations Global e-Government Readiness index. A close look at the usage rate of e-Government services such as online application, however, reveals that it is very low while online transaction is still rhetoric. This paper therefore assesses whether the high e-readiness index gives a true indication of the citizens' e-readiness using available secondary data sources. It further explores the factors facilitating and inhibiting citizens' e-readiness through the administration of a survey questionnaire. The main findings reveal that the barriers inhibiting citizens' e-readiness are resistance to change, absence of opportunities for e-participation and e-consultation, and lack of awareness. The main facilitators of citizens' e-readiness emanating from the analysis are awareness campaigns which tease out the advantages of online public services compared to traditional methods of service delivery, building of trust in government, and managing change.     

Examining citizens' perceived value of internet of things technologies in facilitating public sector services engagement

With the advancement of disruptive new technologies, there has been a considerable focus on personalisation as an important component in nurturing users' engagement. In the context of smart cities, Internet of Things (IoT) offer a unique opportunity to help empower citizens and improve societies' engagement with their governments at both micro and macro levels. This study aims to examine the role of perceived value of IoT in improving citizens' engagement with public services. A survey of 313 citizens in the UK, engaging in various public services, enabled through IoT, found that the perceived value of IoT is strongly influenced by empowerment, perceived usefulness and privacy related issues resulting in significantly affecting their continuous use intentions. The study offers valuable insights into the importance of perceived value of IoT-enabled services, while at the same time, providing an intersectional perspective of UK citizens towards the use of disruptive new technologies in the public sector.     

A path-dependence perspective on the adoption of Internet of Things: Evidence from early adopters of smart and connected sensors in the United States

As an integral part of the Internet of Things (IoT), smart and connected sensors are emerging information and communication technologies that collect and transmit real-time data from various urban domains to inform decision-making. While smart sensors and IoT technologies have great potential to transform public service provision, their adoption in the public sector seems to be slow and incremental. Using cross-sectional data of 65 large and mid-sized cities in the United States, we examine what affects local governments' adoption of smart and connected sensors. We propose a path-dependence explanation for the incremental adoption and test if a local government's sensor adoption behavior is shaped by its existing policy priorities and managerial practices in related fields. Our results show that local governments' early adoption of smart sensors is likely to stem from their needs in specific policy domains. We also find that a local government's historical paths on urban sustainability and data-driven decision-making practices can predict its trajectory of sensor deployment, in terms of the scope and the integration of smart sensors across different urban domains. Surprisingly, a local government's e-government progressiveness is not a significant predictor. Our results confirm the incremental change in smart sensor adoption and provide implications for local governments' IoT planning.     

A validation of the modified democratic e-governance website evaluation model

The recent global pandemic has highlighted the importance of efficient communication between the government and its citizens through online platforms. While approximately 90% of governments around the world have opened up their websites to provide government information and public services, many have been criticized for their quality issues. The unsatisfactory upkeep of government websites may be due to the lack of adequate guidelines and evaluation tools for public managers, which would enable them to achieve the superior goals of e-government initiatives. We posit that evaluating government websites should be done with a formative and theory-based approach instead of summative or conclusion-based ones, as a government website is a long-term mechanism to achieve the objectives of e-government programs. Accordingly, this study empirically tests the Democratic E-governance Website Evaluation Model (DEWEM) that was conceptually created by Lee-Geiller and Lee (2019). Through a series of measurement development procedures, the results present a more concise, refined and validated model consisting of 25 items under 5 factors, whose associations to the outcome of democratic e-governance were statistically significant. The validated DEWEM also shows significant correlations with citizens' satisfaction and intention to use the website. This study advances the body of evaluation research for government websites and provides public managers with credible and useful guidelines for improving their websites.     

Public value creation in digital government

Public value theory offers innovative ways to plan, design, and implement digital government initiatives. The theory has gained the attention of researchers due to its powerful proposition that shifts the focus of public sector management from internal efficiency to value creation processes that occur outside the organization. While public value creation has become the expectation that digital government initiatives have to fulfil, there is lack of theoretical clarity on what public value means and on how digital technologies can contribute to its creation. The special issue presents a collection of six papers that provide new insights on how digital technologies support public value creation. Building on their contributions, the editorial note conceptualizes the realm of public value creation by highlighting: (1) the integrated nature of public value creation supported by digital government implementations rather than enhancing the values provided by individual technologies or innovations, (2) how the outcome of public value creation is reflected in the combined consumption of the various services enabled by technologies and (3) how public value creation is enabled by organizational capabilities and configurations.     

Being smart: Emerging technologies and innovation in the public sector

Smart government is used to characterize activities that creatively invest in emergent technologies coupled with innovative strategies to achieve more agile and resilient government structures and governance infrastructures. However, there is no consensus in terms of what this term includes and how it is related to emergent technologies and innovation in the public sector. This introductory paper provides readers with ways to think about smart government and summarizes findings from twelve articles included in this special issue. These articles, which are the best papers of the 6th International Conference on the Theory and Practice of Electronic Governance (ICEGOV2012), contribute to emerging understanding of being smart in government settings. The articles span a great diversity of related topics such as smart cities, open government, and participation mechanisms. Collectively, the articles provide perspectives on the nature of smart governments and illustrate exemplar practices and initiatives on how governments are opening up and transforming service delivery to become smarter. The special issue in its entirety contributes to understanding governance structures, technical infrastructures, and other requirements geared toward supporting the operations of smarter governments around the world.     

Using government websites to enhance democratic E-governance: A conceptual model for evaluation

The last few decades have witnessed unprecedented transformations in every sector of society, resulting from the explosive advancement of information and communication technologies. This drastic development has raised the hopes of citizens for better lives, in both developing and advanced countries, urging innovation in government to make it more competent. Due to e-business revolutions, governments around the world have applied similar principles and technologies to government by opening their websites for more efficient publication of information and more effective delivery of public services. While a government website is an important venue for citizens to participate in public affairs and decision-making processes, early e-government practices tended to overlook democratic purposes by focusing on the features of e-business and information systems. There have been increasing criticisms that e-government system design has focused mainly on the provider's perspectives. Reflecting on the theoretical implications of this, we argue that a government website should facilitate democratic processes involving not only information sharing and delivery of better public services, but also deliberation and coproduction. The purpose of this study is to probe into multidimensional features that enable government websites to fulfill their promises. Developing an integrative model for evaluating a government website, namely the Democratic E-governance Website Evaluation Model, we conducted a qualitative meta-analysis of four strands of literature: information systems, business, public administration, and democratic theory. Our study contributes to the literature by extending the purview of e-government website analysis beyond the question of citizens' acceptance and towards the issue of their engagement, bringing a stimulating view of citizens as active agents in governance, and it provides a holistic model for public authorities to improve their websites to facilitate democratic e-governance that helps to create more effective public outcomes.     

An integrative public IoT framework for smart government

The Internet of Things (IoT) has gained significant importance in science and management and holds great value creation potential for public services. A pressing issue in this regard is how governments and public organizations can adapt their traditional structures and processes to the innovative field of the IoT to create public value. Previous research fails to provide a holistic explanation to this research question. Its technological background and predominant consideration in technology-based research areas has led to a one-sided understanding of the IoT concept that neglects its value-adding aspects. To fill in this research gap, this study presents an integrative public IoT framework for smart government, consolidating insights from IoT literature and related fields of research, complementing the so far predominant technology perspective of IoT with important business-related or value-adding aspects. In doing so, it enhances our understanding of public management-specific key dimensions and aspects of the IoT, serving as a holistic guidance for future research as well as practical implementation and application.     

IoT and AI for Smart Government: A Research Agenda

The Internet of things (IoT) is the network of objects/things that contain electronics, software, sensors, and actuators, which allows these things to connect, interact, and exchange data. The users, sensors, and networks generate huge amounts of data from which governments can develop applications and gain knowledge using Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques. Thus, IoT and AI can enable the development of valuable services for citizens, businesses, and public agencies, in multiple domains, such as transportation, energy, healthcare, education, and public safety. This guest editorial for the special issue on IoT and AI for Smart Government, identifies the challenges involved in implementing and adopting these technologies in the public sector, and proposes a comprehensive research framework, which includes both IoT and AI elements for smart government transformation. Subsequently, the editorial provides a brief introduction of the six papers in this special issue. Finally, an agenda for future research on IoT and AI for smart government is presented, based on the proposed framework and gaps in existing literature, supported by the papers that were submitted to this special issue. The agenda comprises four directions i.e., conducting domain-specific studies, going beyond adoption studies to examine implementation and evaluation of these technologies, focusing on specific challenges and thus quick wins, and expanding the existing set of research methods and theoretical foundations used.     

Under big brother's watchful eye: Cross-country attitudes toward facial recognition technology

Governments around the world are adopting facial recognition technology (FRT) to improve public services and law enforcement. Past research has shown that such applications may result in discriminatory effects and threaten privacy. This study shines light on the question of what drives public opinion regarding FRT in different socio-political contexts. Based on an online survey and semi-structured interviews, this study finds that citizens in China, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States differ in their acceptance of the official public use of FRT. China has the highest approval rates, Germany and the US have the lowest, and the UK lies in the middle. Our results show that people are generally more willing to accept FRT in public spheres when they trust government institutions, believe the technology should be managed by the central government, and have an affinity for technology. People's awareness of a country's previous history of surveillance further shapes their perceptions of FRT. Across all four countries, we also show that privacy concerns, especially of FRT compromising one's privacy, have the biggest influence on respondents' attitudes. Expanding on existing research into FRT acceptance and usage, our results suggest that policymakers urgently need to address the current regulatory vacuum.     

E-Government evaluation of delivering public services to citizens among cities in the Yangtze River Delta

Delivering public services to citizens via the Internet is the basic goal of E-government. Although websites are becoming essential elements of public e-services in local public administration in China, little is known about their efficiency and effectiveness. The objective of this paper is to evaluate the actual status of Web-enabled public services to citizens in municipal e-government implementation in the Yangtze River Delta. Eight categories of public services to citizens delivered through the Internet have been identified in the websites of the 14 local municipal governments. These public services include birth, marriage, domicile register, education, social security, public utility, health and traffic. Using the methodology of service maturity, this study evaluates the quality and usage of public e-services to citizens in the Yangtze River Delta. The results of this study show that almost all city governments are shifting from the traditional bureaucratic paradigm to the e-government public service paradigm, albeit with significant differences in public e-services level in these cities. At present, e-government public services to citizens in almost all the cities studied are mostly limited to on-line presentations of government information with a low degree of development of interaction and on-line transaction. The municipal governments and policymakers in the near future will have to strengthen the interactivity of their websites with citizens and improve the on-line transaction level in order to deliver citizen-centric public e-services.     

E-Government evaluation of delivering public services to citizens among cities in the Yangtze River Delta

Delivering public services to citizens via the Internet is the basic goal of E-government. Although websites are becoming essential elements of public e-services in local public administration in China, little is known about their efficiency and effectiveness. The objective of this paper is to evaluate the actual status of Web-enabled public services to citizens in municipal e-government implementation in the Yangtze River Delta. Eight categories of public services to citizens delivered through the Internet have been identified in the websites of the 14 local municipal governments. These public services include birth, marriage, domicile register, education, social security, public utility, health and traffic. Using the methodology of service maturity, this study evaluates the quality and usage of public e-services to citizens in the Yangtze River Delta. The results of this study show that almost all city governments are shifting from the traditional bureaucratic paradigm to the e-government public service paradigm, albeit with significant differences in public e-services level in these cities. At present, e-government public services to citizens in almost all the cities studied are mostly limited to on-line presentations of government information with a low degree of development of interaction and on-line transaction. The municipal governments and policymakers in the near future will have to strengthen the interactivity of their websites with citizens and improve the on-line transaction level in order to deliver citizen-centric public e-services.     

E-government developments on delivering public services among EU cities

Since the late 1990s, governments at all levels have launched electronic government projects aimed at providing electronic information and services to citizens and businesses. Although Web sites are becoming essential elements of modern public administration, little is known about their effectiveness. The objective of this paper is to study the quality and usage of public e-services to citizens in Europe.According to the results of this study, e-government seems to be following a more or less predictable development pattern ranging from a stage in which interaction is limited to what is shown on the screen to stages in which there is two-way communication and service and financial transactions can be completed with a satisfactory level of protection of personal privacy. At present, e-government in almost all the cities studied is merely an extension of the government, with potential benefits in speed and accessibility 24/7. Despite the limited degree of development observed, online access has advantages that are impossible to replicate offline. Even though few expect e-government to completely replace traditional methods of information, e-government is becoming a powerful tool of transformation that has become embedded in the culture and in the agenda of the public sector.     

Smart cities & citizen discontent: A systematic review of the literature

Governments across the world are experimenting with smart city technologies but recent studies suggest that not all citizens support this development. However, a comprehensive understanding of citizen discontent with the smart city is missing. This study systematically reviews academic research addressing citizen discontent with the smart city. Based on a set of 58 articles, two perspectives on citizens' discontent are identified. One perspective focuses on active discontent: citizens are dissatisfied with the technology, democratic process, and societal impact of the smart city and show different types of behavior to express their discontentment. The other perspective emphasizes passive discontent: citizen discontent does not manifest itself due to citizens' lack of awareness and skills and the absence of channels to express their discontentment. Both perspectives on discontent suggest different government responses respectively to overcome citizen discontent through ‘the right technologies’, ‘the right rules’, and ‘the right information’, or to stimulate critical citizenship through ‘the right to smart city education and empowerment’ and the ‘right to participate and challenge’. Based on our findings, a fine-grained understanding of attitudes and behavior, and government actions to address citizen discontent is developed.     

Responding to information needs of the citizens through e-government portals and online services in India

Providing government information, services, products and transactions electronically has the potential benefit of accessibility for a wider audience, political and administrative transparency, and improved service delivery. By using e-government websites, citizens can conveniently access government information and services and gain greater opportunities to participate in democratic processes. The present study aims to evaluate National Portal of India, which provides single window access to 601 e-government portals and websites in India. A total of 1576 online services are provided by these portals responding to information needs of the citizens. Ranking of the state and union territory portals has been done based on the number of online services they provide. The paper also focuses on the digitization of documents, acts, rules and schemes of central and state government departments and their availability and accessibility through government portals.