The digital cage: Administrative exclusion through information architecture – The case of the Dutch civil registry's master data management system

This article analyses the unintended consequences of master data management systems in the administrative state for the access of citizens to public services and benefits. We analyse the case of the Dutch civil registry, in which hundreds of (semi-)public organisations use the information from the civil registry to determine whether people are eligible for their services. We use the framework of administrative burdens and administrative exclusion to show that this system turns the consequences of mutations in registration into a black box, produces legal contamination by forcing its own address definition upon user organisations, reduces the discretionary space of street-level bureaucrats to handle social complexity and unintended consequences of the system, and creates a behavioural incentive in which municipalities are pushed into the role of enforcers rather than registers. The result is a ‘digital cage’: an exclusionary infrastructure that hinges on information architecture instead of Weberian rules and procedures. These findings increase our understanding of master data management systems, emphasise the importance of understanding information architecture as an ethical issue, and help us develop a new vocabulary for understanding and studying administrative burdens as part of a bureaucratic infrastructure.     

Close encounters of the digital kind: A research agenda for the digitalization of public services

This paper contributes to e-government research by presenting a review and discussion on how digitalization of public services has affected the interaction between citizens and government. We argue for a conceptualization and critical reflection on the nature of the underlying interaction between citizens and public officials - the public encounter - that digital public services are developed to support. We apply a qualitative and hermeneutic approach and illustrate that digital public services change public encounters concerning when, where, and how interactions occur, what each actor does, and the skills required of them. By relating these changes to emerging digital technologies (e.g. data mining, machine learning, sensor technology, and service automation), we illustrate that while these new technologies carry the potential to further digitalize service provision and fulfill the democratic goals of digital government, authorities can apply the same technology to restrict, control, and surveil citizens. Based on a critical discussion on what digitalization might entail for society, we identify problem areas arising from this development and propose a research agenda for understanding this phenomenon further. We raise questions and ethical concerns regarding accountability and reskilling of citizens and public officials as public service provision becomes citizen self-service.     

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.     

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.     

Automated decision-making and good administration: Views from inside the government machinery

Use of semi- and fully automated, administrative decision-making in public administration is increasing. Despite this increase, few studies have explicitly analysed its relation to good administration. Good administration is regulations and norms aimed at securing the correctness of administrative decisions as well as the legitimacy of these and is often associated with underlying values such as transparency, equality of treatment and accountability. Based on a thematic analysis of qualitative interviews with 43 key public administration stakeholders in a wide array of policy areas in Denmark, insiders of government machinery are shown to perceive relations between automated decision-making and good administration as manifold. Automated, administrative decision-making is articulated as providing both opportunities for supporting good administration and undermining good administration. Six values of good administration particularly related to automated, administrative decision-making are identified: Carefulness; Respecting-individual-rights; Professionalism; Trustworthiness; Responsiveness and Empowerment. Put simply, risks to good administration can be expected to occur if administrative bodies apply automated, administrative decision-making, while opportunities must be actively nurtured through managerial attention. Despite popular conceptions of the threat of “robotic government”, the conclusions of this study indicate a need for a more pragmatic view of relations of automated, administrative decision-making and good administration balanced between outright techno-optimism and techno-pessimism.     

Benefits sought by citizens and channel attitudes for multichannel payment services: Evidence from Italy

Together with the digitalization of government services, a considerable amount of countries, and Italy in particular among them, are considering the introduction of several online and offline access point to its services in order to increase the penetration of provision systems not requiring an interaction at the PA office. This study, through a two-step empirical exercise run in Italy, intends to understand the benefits sought by citizens and the channel attitudes in order to understand whether and how this orientation by policy makers, with respect to payment services, may be effective. Thanks to a suited sampling, the study sets the basis for a segmentation of the citizens in terms of benefits sought and discusses the channel attitudes within each segment identified. By analyzing the characteristics of the segments, the study presents implications for policy makers and public servants and provides a conceptual background for grounding further research on multichannel service provision.     

论区域信息服务均等化的实现机制-以宁波市数字图书馆服务为例

从城乡公共服务均等化的视角,重新审视和整合公共图书馆、高校图书馆、科研机构图书馆等不同类型图书馆的资源。以宁波市数字图书馆为案例,论述如何通过建立由政府主导、跨系统组成的区域图书馆联盟并将其作为服务主体,形成宽覆盖、高效率、低成本的信息服务均等化机制。     

公共图书馆：政府信息公开的合作伙伴

《政府信息公开条例》的实施以及现代化信息技术的发展使公共图书馆成为向公众提供政府信息、技术设备支持以及培养信息素养的重要媒介,同时也成了政府信息服务、电子政务发展的后备力量.在政府信息服务过程中,公共图书馆应该在政府信息的托存与传递、组织与整合、教育与培训以及公共危机信息等各领域搭建起政府与民众之间的桥梁,为提高我国行政透明度和保障公民权利做出最大贡献.     

Can social media increase government responsiveness? A case study of Seoul,Korea

Despite the expectation that social media use in the public sector contributes to enhancing government responsiveness to citizens, few empirical studies exist on whether social media use actually leads to more responsive public administration in practice and how social media are used by governments to build citizen-centric governance. The purpose of this study is to examine what roles are played by mayors and public officials in social media networks to increase government responsiveness. Thus, we adopt social network analysis (SNA) to the Twitter network of public services as well as carry out a case study on interactions among the mayor, local government, and citizens via Twitter in Seoul, Korea. The research findings show that the mayor of Seoul plays the most important role as a bridging hub in the Twitter network. Specifically, the mayor serves as a bridge between different clusters of citizens and public officials as well as a hub for the most connected users in the network. The mayor's role as a bridging hub in the Twitter network contributes to enhancing government responsiveness by making possible to overcome the disconnection between citizens and the local government, and information asymmetry among the mayor, public officials, and citizens.     

Collaborative accountability for sustainable public health: A Korean perspective on the effective use of ICT-based health risk communication

The sustainability of public health practices requires collaboration between the government and its citizens. On the government's side, social media can provide a conduit for communicating health risk information in an effective and timely fashion, while also engaging citizens in informed decision-making. On the citizen's side, information communication technology (ICT)-based practices cannot function unless citizens recognize and act on their responsibility to actively engage with government social media platforms. Despite an increasing interest in understanding the adoption of ICT practices and e-government services for health risk communication, there remains a crucial need for a comprehensive framework to explain which factors determine citizen use of digital government resources. The purpose of this study is to investigate how to increase government accountability for motivating citizens to engage in ICT-based health risk communication, thereby attaining sustainable public health practices through collaborative governance.By integrating trust and health risk information into the e-government adoption model (GAM), this research examines factors that influence citizens' likelihood of using government social media resources. Survey data from 700 Korean citizens were analyzed using structural equation modeling. The results indicated that individuals with higher social media competency are more likely to (a) seek risk information through social media and (b) perceive the government's social media sites as easy to use. Consistent with the GAM, intentions to use the government's social media sites for information and interactions appear to increase as citizens perceive more value in using them regarding information quality, ease of use, functional benefit, and security. Furthermore, perceived trust in the government's social media resources appears to function as a mediator of this process. Initial trust in the government is an important determinant of perceptions of its digital resources. Citizens who trust the government tend to evaluate new initiatives positively and are more likely to accept and make use of them.The results of this study can inform policy design and implementation by elucidating the mechanisms that determine citizens' adoption and usage of digital government services. Theoretically, this work expands the GAM to include health risk communication and adds empirical evidence to the small yet growing body of knowledge of e-government initiatives. These findings also highlight the importance of public trust in the government, as this encourages citizens to seek health risk information and assistance from the government. Overall, the data and model generated in this investigation represent an important step toward the successful and sustainable modernization of public services.     

Transparency and accountability in digital public services: Learning from the Brazilian cases

The transparency and accountability of systems and algorithms aims to protect the user against undesirable or harmful results and to ensure the application of laws appropriate to digital environments. Thus, the objective of this study is to evaluate the transparency and accountability provided to citizens in three of the main digital public services (e-services) offered by the federal administration of Brazil (ComprasNet, Sisu and Naturalizar-se) locally recognized for their significant relevance and stage of development and use. Services were evaluated from eight perspectives: accessibility; awareness; access and repair; accountability; explanation; origin of data, privacy and fairness; auditing; validation, accuracy and testing. Adopting a qualitative approach through comparative case studies, this research contributes to information practices theory (construction of a model for assessing transparency and accountability in digital public services). The results obtained show the need to inform the user of possible bias and damage arising from these systems, which are not readily perceived; just as the need to clarify the benefits that arise from the collection of private data are not. This shows that computational models can be distorted as a result of biases contained in their input data, or algorithms. This paper contributes through an innovative combination of dimensions, as a tool to evaluate transparency and accountability of government 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.     

Narrowing the Gap:

The traditional library organization for over forty years has been divided into technical services and public services. The age of automation, however, is bringing these two areas much closer together, and in some large academic libraries, the technical services librarian and the public services librarian are the same person. The work done in serials acquisitions and collection development is now available online in many libraries. Several libraries also have automated serials control and cataloging capabilities. With the advent of online access to serials, reference, interlibrary loan and library instruction services have simplified the work demands for the reference librarian. This conclusion suggests that cooperation between technical services and public services is the logical solution to provide the best possible service to the library patron.     

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.     

Identifying the crucial factors of e-government success from the perspective of Australian citizens living with disability using a public value approach

The prevalence of disability across the globe is substantial and is predicted to increase as the population ages. As of 2022, almost one in six citizens in Australia has a disability, with most relying on e-government services to support aspects of their daily living. To cope with the growing service demands, the government is using e-government services as a “default” means to deliver government policy outcomes that create public value for citizens living with disability. It is therefore critical that e-government succeed, as failure to provide adequate services to citizens living with disability can lead to measurable economic and social consequences. This study aims to identify the factors that influence e-government success from the perspective of citizens living with disability, using a public value approach. The study examines twenty cases representing citizens living with disability in Australia, analysed through the ‘lived’ experience of these citizens using e-government.     

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.     

Automating Veterans Administration libraries: I. National planning and development

The Veterans Administration Library Network (VALNET) needed an automated library system that could interface with the agency's national automation activities. The Library Special Interest Users Group was established to oversee the selection of appropriate automated systems. The Massachusetts General Hospital Utility Multi-Programming System (MUMPS) computer language and VA FILEMAN, a database management system, are being used to create new library software, which will be in the public domain.     

Proactivity in digital public services: A conceptual analysis

Public organizations are looking for new ways to use digital technologies to increase the efficiency of their internal processes and improve their interactions with clients, whether citizens or businesses. In response, scholars suggest that public organizations be proactive in digital public services such that the organizations approach their clients, rather than the other way around. In the most extreme form of proactivity, clients do not have to do anything to receive a public service. Although various examples of proactive public services are in use, how proactivity changes the conceptual understanding of digital public services remains unclear. Therefore, we derive the changes that proactivity causes in a conceptualization of digital public service by means of a conceptual analysis through the lens of a seminal theoretical work on proactivity. The results indicate that proactivity can ensure equal accessibility to a subset of public services, rely on more comprehensive integration of IT systems on the back end, and change how value is co-created in the service process. We formulate the changes as propositions that future work can investigate empirically and discuss proactive digital public services as a way to reduce clients' administrative burden. We contribute to theory by clarifying the conceptual changes in digital public services that proactivity invokes and call for joint research by scholars of public administration, information systems, and service management to relate the research streams of administrative burden and proactive digital public service.     

Customer agility and responsiveness through big data analytics for public value creation: A case study of Houston 311 on-demand services

A theoretical framework for big data analytics-enabled customer agility and responsiveness was developed from extant IS research. In on-demand service environments, customer agility involves dynamic capabilities in sensing and responding to citizens. Using this framework, a case study examined a large city government's 311 on-demand services which had leveraged big data analytics. While we found the localized big data analytics use by some of the 22 departments for enhanced customer agility and on-demand 311 services, city-wide systemic change in on-demand service delivery through big data analytics use was not evident. From the case study we identified key institutional mechanisms for linking customer agility to public value creation through 311 services. We posit how systemic use of big data analytics embedded into critical processes enables the government to co-create public values with citizens through 311 on-demand services, indicating the importance of creating a culture of analytics driven by strong political leadership.