Applying neural networks analysis to assess digital government evolution

There are diverse measurement systems to assess the advance of digital government, but all are based on the evolutionary perspective. This view consists on a linear, progressive and add-on evolution of digital government, emphasizes the critical role of technology, and the learning sharing or imitation among governments. Official websites and portals have been subject of various studies using multiple metrics and indicators. The existing measurement approaches and traditional estimations present different limitations for assessing the complex characterization of digital government evolution overtime. Up-to-day there is no agreement of what constitute the proper approach to assess digital government evolution and more sophisticate techniques need to be developed to capture a more realistic metric of digital government advance. This article challenges the assumptions of the evolutionary perspective and argues in favor of the potential of the computational tools for the evaluation of these assessment tools of digital government performance. In particular, the technique of neural networks analysis and self-organized maps have the potential to describe the multi-parametric characterization of multiple metrics and indicators of this phenomenon and its evolution overtime. A database of a digital government ranking of Mexican states during the period 2009–2015 is used as a case study. This computational technique was useful data mining and visualization tool of patterns and profiles of digital government performance overtime. The procedure automatically arranges the available data into clusters of characteristics that subsequently are illustrated using visualizations through bi-dimensional maps to analyze the evolution of digital government advance. The results indicate that the evolutionary assumptions do not hold across states in Mexico and the dimensions of information, participation and transaction are relevant for improving digital government evolution overtime. Several theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

Overcoming barriers to digital government: mapping the strategies of digital champions

Previous research has identified a variety of barriers to digital government, and regularly emphasizes the importance of individuals that navigate institutional contexts and strategically pursue digital government solutions. This exploratory analysis investigates how these individuals understand barriers to digital government and the strategies that they apply to overcome them. Using interviews with digital champions in the U.S government, we extract the tactics employed to overcome these barriers including storytelling, community building, external validation, orientation towards citizen perspectives and a reliance on external peer networks. Results highlight the interconnected nature of barriers and the non-linear quality of strategies, and allow the construction of a theoretical model for structural and cultural barriers and strategies as experienced by digital champions. This model highlights the perceived efficacy and impact of cultural strategies, and the association of these strategies with external peer networks and citizens, and a tension in how digital champions describe actors and approaches introduced from the private sector.     

User experience of government documents: A framework for informing design decisions

People still use documents in many everyday government processes. From tax payments to passport requests, citizens have to interact with low-interactivity information artifacts such as reports, maps and datasets, among many others. Despite efforts to improve information delivery in the public sector, effective information usage remains a critical topic of action and research. The user experience of government documents has rarely been assessed, despite them being regularly published and frequently used. Considering this, the two following research questions arise: 1) How can government documents be classified (or grouped) in terms of user experience? 2) How can the user experience of government documents be monitored over time in order to inform design decisions? Working with a public agency in Chile, we develop and test a classification and monitoring framework based on two online surveys (N?=?338 and N?=?298). We then propose a framework for understanding user experience of government documents in these three dimensions: interaction goal, volume of information and ease of understanding. Using a graphical representation to classify user experience provides greater visibility of the current status of information produced by a public organization. Furthermore, by monitoring the user experience of a government document at different times, organizations can understand the effect of their design decisions and improve their service quality by implementing user-centered processes.     

A stigma power perspective on digital government service avoidance

The digital-by-default policy for government services implemented in many European countries can pose challenges to marginalized citizens, such as people with disabilities. Prior research on electronic inclusion and the digital divide has mainly considered technology-related concerns, such as Internet anxiety, preventing people with disabilities from using digital government services. Yet, these concerns may insufficiently account for the fact that people with disabilities may suspect that governments provide new services only to reduce costs and forgo the need for more meaningful social change. Therefore, we draw from stigma power theory to understand how perceptions of stereotyping and discrimination contribute to the avoidance of digital government services among people with disabilities. Our results indicate that overcoming underutilization of digital government services among people with disabilities requires a holistic approach by addressing technology-related as well as stigma-related concerns.     

Transforming the communication between citizens and government through AI-guided chatbots

Driven by ‘success stories’ reported by private sector firms, government agencies have also started adopting various Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies in diverse domains (e.g. health, taxation, and education); however, extensive research is required in order to exploit the full potential of AI in the public sector, and leverage various AI technologies to address important problems/needs. This paper makes a contribution in this direction: it presents a novel approach, as well as the architecture of an ICT platform supporting it, for the advanced exploitation of a specific AI technology, namely chatbots, in the public sector in order to address a crucial issue: the improvement of communication between government and citizens (which has for long time been problematic). The proposed approach builds on natural language processing, machine learning and data mining technologies, and leverages existing data of various forms (such as documents containing legislation and directives, structured data from government agencies' operational systems, social media data, etc.), in order to develop a new digital channel of communication between citizens and government. Making use of appropriately structured and semantically annotated data, this channel enables ‘richer’ and more expressive interaction of citizens with government in everyday language, facilitating and advancing both information seeking and conducting of transactions. Compared to existing digital channels, the proposed approach is appropriate for a wider range of citizens' interactions, with higher levels of complexity, ambiguity and uncertainty. In close co-operation with three Greek government agencies (the Ministry of Finance, a social security organization, and a big local government organization), this approach has been validated through a series of application scenarios.     

Designing boundary resources in digital government platforms for collaborative service innovation

On the path to creating digital platforms, governments are opening organizational boundaries to cultivate cross-agency collaboration in public service innovation. This collaborative innovation takes place in the context of paradoxical tensions between openness and closeness, stability and flexibility, and generativity and control. The concept of boundary resources provides an instrument to balance these platform design paradoxes. Yet, little is known about designing boundary resources in digital government platforms. We contextualize the concept of boundary resources in digital government platforms to develop design theories. These design theories guide an action design research, where a national tax service platform was redesigned to enable cross-agency collaboration for service innovation. Design knowledge was thus generated into three design principles for the design of boundary resources in government platforms. These principles help in making design decisions by which government platform owners use different boundary resources to address the three paradoxes. We suggest that government platform owners cultivate collaborative platform ecosystems and define unified data standards to address the openness, design data modularity and interfaces for resourcing complementors, and use data relationships and accessibility as control points for securing the platform.     

Towards a comprehensive understanding of digital government success: Integrating implementation and adoption factors

When analyzing the causes that lead to digital government success or failure, state of the art research is often divided into two main areas: (1) implementation of these initiatives by government agencies and (2) their adoption by citizens, as some of the most important users. Each of these two perspectives has its own concepts, measurements, and theoretical models. This separation becomes significant when trying to have a comprehensive understanding of digital government success and when facing practical problems since factors affecting both governments and citizens contribute to the success or failure of digital government initiatives. Therefore, this paper proposes a comprehensive digital government success model that attempts to integrate implementation and adoption perspectives. In addition, based on data from the 32 states of Mexico, the paper provides an illustrative example of how the proposed model could be used.     

Understanding the complexity of electronic government: Implications from the digital divide literature

Theoretically and practically E-Government and the digital divide are intertwined social phenomena. Using sophisticated information technologies (IT) in government has little social value if citizens are not able to use services or interact in political processes in meaningful ways. Similarly, understanding the development and use of IT in government without incorporating a demand perspective would potentially lead to partial explanations of a complex social reality. This article argues that studies about E-Government and the digital divide, which have been relatively disconnected research areas, have important parallels and potential intersections. These parallels may be useful in understanding E-Government projects and policies in a more comprehensive way and, consequently, for developing effective digital strategies. The paper reviews trajectories in E-Government and digital divide research and suggests potential implications drawn from the digital divide literature for E-Government research and practice, including model and theory development, understanding users, and some determinants of demand.     

Design principles for creating digital transparency in government

Under pressure to fight corruption, hold public officials accountable, and build trust with citizens, many governments pursue the quest for greater transparency. They publish data about their internal operations, externalize decision-making processes, establish digital inquiry lines to public officials, and employ other forms of transparency using digital means. Despite the presence of many transparency-enhancing digital tools, putting such tools together to achieve the desired level of digital transparency, to design entire government systems for digital transparency, remains challenging. Design principles and other design guides are lacking in this area. This article aims to fill this gap. We identify a set of barriers to digital transparency in government, define 16 design principles to overcome such barriers, and evaluate these principles using three case studies from different countries. Some principles apply to projects, others to systems, yet others to entire organizations. To achieve digital transparency, before building and deploying digital solutions, government organizations should build technological and institutional foundations and use such foundations to organize themselves for transparency. The proposed design principles can help develop and apply such foundations.     

Public value creation through voluntary business to government information sharing enabled by digital infrastructure innovations: a framework for analysis

Public value creation is traditionally considered as the citizens' collective expectations with respect to government and public services. Recent e-government literature indicates that what exactly constitutes public value in digital government is still debated. Whereas previous research acknowledges aspects such as co-production and the orchestration role of government in the context of public value creation, there is only a limited understanding of how public value is created by the interactions between government and business actors, and the role digital technologies play in that process. Furthermore, so far, research into public value creation processes is limited to specific services that aim to meet a specific goal; for a more complete view, an integrative perspective is required to address the multiplicity of goals. Societal challenges including climate change, sustainability, and the transition towards circularity will require governments to play a crucial role. Businesses are also transforming their vision by adding societal goals to their economic objectives and contributing to these societal challenges. This necessitates even more the need to explicitly consider the role of business in public value creation processes. In this paper we argue that there is a need to understand public value creation as an interactive process, involving both government and business actors. In this process, voluntary information sharing enabled by digital infrastructures has the potential to contribute to the value creation processes, but the increased complexity of digital technologies obscures the effects they can have on value creation. Therefore, we develop a framework that allows to reason about public value creation as an interactive process, involving government and businesses, facilitated by voluntary information sharing. The framework also allows to reason about how the technological design choices of the underlying digital infrastructure influence this value creation process. For the framework development, we use an in-depth case study from the domain of international trade. We analyze the interactions between customs authorities and supply chain actors for jointly creating public value related to revenue collection, as well as safety and security of goods entering the European Union, using business data made available via a global blockchain-enabled infrastructure. In future research, the framework that we developed can be used to analyze more complex cases with additional public value aspects, such as sustainability and circularity.     

Unpacking the role of technology,leadership, governance and collaborative capacities in inter-agency collaborations

Inter-agency collaboration is increasingly important for digital government. Using collaborative governance frameworks and comparative case study of three cases of digital government in the Mexican states of Mexico, Puebla, and Yucatan, we extend current understanding of key determinants of effective inter-agency collaborations in digital government settings. In particular, our research question is as follows: how do leadership, governance, technology, and collaborative capacity and competencies contribute to effective collaboration? Our results indicate that all four components are important, but in different ways. Laws and regulations appear to play an important role supporting governance of the inter-agency networks in our three cases. In addition, multi-level leadership, formal governance, implementation flexibility, the role of technology as a social actor in itself, and trust building based on expertise seem to be particularly salient.     

Government Digital Transformation: Understanding the Role of Government Social Media

Government social media has been integrated as part of the government administrative tools to improve public service and promote public goals. However, the current government information literature is limited to understanding government social media adoption and its purpose for political marketing. The present study seeks to understand the role of government social media in promoting government digital initiatives (i.e., government-backed digital currency). The study validated the inter-relationships between government social media effort, privacy concerns, trust in technology, reachability, and citizens' participation in government-initiated digital innovations. A total of 505 responses from Chinese citizens were collected through an online self-administered questionnaire survey, and the data was submitted to a two-stage Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling-Artificial Neural Network analysis. The analytic results revealed that privacy concerns, trust in technology, and reachability positively influence digital participation. In addition, the information quality and perception of trust in government social media have significant positive influences on government social media engagement. The study provides strategic practical suggestions to government agencies in effectively utilizing social media as a communication platform to foster citizens' participation in government's digital initiatives.     

Open government data and the private sector: An empirical view on business models and value creation

The release of government data in an open format is broadly expected to generate innovation and economic value. However, despite the emerging public notoriety of this issue, literature is still scarce regarding the commercial application of open government data. The main goal of this study is to understand how firms use open government data to create value. More specifically, we aim to identify what types of use are currently in place and which industries are more prominent in exploiting open government data. Building on the analysis of a dataset of 178 firms that use open government data across various industries in the U.S. we find twelve different atomic models. Additionally, our findings suggest that the way in which open government is used to create value is contingent to the firms' activities. Supported by robust empirical data, we anticipate that our research produces practical insights to entrepreneurs as well as firm managers in deriving value from public datasets, and equip government officials with relevant evidence for advocacy and policy-making.     

Towards a multidimensional model for evaluating electronic government: Proposing a more comprehensive and integrative perspective

The use of information and communication technologies has been a key strategy for government reform. It offers diverse benefits, ranging from efficiency and effectiveness to transparency and greater democratic participation. Governments in many parts of the world have invested vast resources into electronic government projects with the expectation of achieving these and other outcomes. However, the results in many cases are limited and there is no comprehensive way to evaluate these initiatives at the aggregate level. A method for measuring and evaluating electronic government that identifies its advances and problems is needed. Previous efforts to do so are limited in terms of scope and dimensions being considered. Based on a review of current literature and the analysis of international best practices, this paper proposes a multidimensional model for measuring and evaluating electronic government. It also includes examples, a proposal of how to operationalize it, and several recommendations for practical use.     

Citizen preferences and government chatbot social characteristics: Evidence from a discrete choice experiment

Government chatbots have become increasingly popular as artificial-intelligence-based tools to improve communication between the government and its citizens. This study explores the interaction mode design of a trustworthy government chatbot, which involves multiple social characteristics from the user-centric perspective. A discrete choice experiment was conducted in the context of Chinese government chatbots to examine the effects of various social characteristics on citizen preferences. Participants utilized a crowdsourcing survey platform to report their preferences for interaction processes designed with distinct sets of social characteristics. Valid data were obtained from 371 participants and analyzed using a multinomial logit model. The results indicate that (in order from highest to lowest impact) emotional intelligence, proactivity, identity consistency, and conscientiousness significantly influence the citizens' preferences. Identity consistency has a negative effect, whereas the other factors all have positive impacts. It was also determined that some of these correlations are influenced by the participants' individual characteristics, such as age, gender, and prior experience with chatbots. This work provides empirical evidence for the relative importance of social characteristics and their impacts on user perception, expands the service dimension scope of information provision/communication (one of five categories of digital interaction), and facilitates the identification and operationalization of the social characteristics. We provide a theoretical framework to understand the interaction model design of a trustworthy government chatbot and also offer practical recommendations for government chatbot designers and policy implications.     

Implications of legal and organizational issues for urban digital government development

This paper discusses implications of the convergence of legal and organizational issues in the context of developing and implementing digital government projects in large urban settings. By the convergence of legal and organizational issues we refer to two important aspects of urban government: (1) the close relationship between legal/policy structures and the way government is organized and functions, and (2) the way the legal/policy elements interact with organizational dynamics and work cultures to influence digital government projects (and government activities generally). It is our contention that convergence in the organizational and legal/policy context is a powerful determinant of how these projects develop and how likely they are to succeed. Therefore the understanding of this convergence and related dynamics is critically important to planning and designing both policy to promote digital government and particular digital government projects themselves. Illustrations of this convergence and its consequences are presented. They are based on research involving two digital government projects in urban settings: development of a management information system for homeless shelter administration and a developing a system for sharing information among New York City agencies.     

Federal government information policy and public policy analysis: A brief overview

The information policy of the federal government of the United States has been evolving for well over 200 years, with antecedents in the British, colonial, and Confederation experiences. Having a variety of themes, (e.g., accountability, records management, accessibility, security, and privacy), it is a policy of complexity, both in terms of interrelationships among its themes and political dynamics, which is to acknowledge that all three branches have contributed to its substance, and that balance among competing forces has been neither easily realized nor maintained. Moreover, it concerns values of particular importance for a democracy, such as realizing a government that is accountable to the citizenry and protects the security of the nation. It continues to evolve, adjust, and change due to a variety of factors, new political environments and information technology being among the foremost. Policy analysis, discussed here in several dimensions, may be applied to understand not only information policy of the past and the present, but also what might be modified, adjusted, or created anew for the future. Ultimately, in all instances of policy analysis application, the end result, hopefully, will be more informed decision making.     

Toward a typology of government social media communication: Democratic goals,symbolic acts and self-presentation

Social media have provided new environments for both individuals and organizations to communicate. The literature on government use of social media has noted that these platforms provide a variety of democratic functions for government institutions, in their ability to increase transparency and citizen participation. However, there is less recognition and understanding in this context about the symbolic and presentational content governments communicate on social media. This is the case despite the fact that social media are tools for self-presentation, the exchange of symbolic content, and marketing. We have conducted a literature review from diverse sources, including e-government, business, human-computer interaction, social psychology and human communication to develop a typology of government communication on social media. We present a classification scheme with 12 specific categories and discuss the potential purposes of these various types of communication. Via empirical content analysis, we code a total of 2893 Facebook posts of local governments across the U.S., in a pilot and in a confirmatory study. This analysis allows us to better understand the categories of communication and the extent of their presence. Although we find that most content on local government Facebook pages falls into the category of democratic information provision, almost half of all messages refer to symbolic and presentational types of information exchanges. We illustrate our results with examples, and present a discussion of these findings with implications for practitioners and future research.     

From citizens to government policy-makers: Social media data analysis

People are more and more using social media to express themselves about the different services that their governments are delivering. They can either provide positive or negative comments on government services. Hence, it becomes important for policy-makers to have the necessary tools to extract this valuable knowledge in a comprehensive way and that they may consider in their decision-making processes. This paper provides a generic framework, based on semantic analysis of text, to extract valuable data from social media in order to provide new information for government policy-makers. The proposed framework is based on a text semantic analysis tool that collects data from social networks and extracts valuable data to be presented to government policy-makers. The proposed framework is applied to analyze Facebook posts from a page that is managed by citizens in Tunisia. This page aims to report various problems and issues occurring in Tunisian cities.