The forgotten promise of e-government maturity: Assessing responsiveness in the digital public sector

Assessing e-government responsiveness is one of the major gaps in the currently dominant e-government maturity models. While we have a relatively large pool of models focusing on technological and organizational integration from a supply side perspective, measures of responsiveness of e-government systems from a user perspective are still lacking. Replicating a study from New Zealand and Australia, this study explores the response time and quality of e-mail response in Danish local and central governments (N = 175). Despite that Denmark is high ranking in international benchmark studies, we find that one third of central government agencies did not respond at all, and close to 80% of the ministries provided none or incomplete answers. Local government responds faster and provides answers that are more complete and accurate than those provided by central government. Implications for e-government are discussed.     

The evolution of the policy objectives of South Korea's Broadband Convergence Network from 2004 to 2007

The purpose of this study is to explore the South Korean government's policy objectives for the Broadband Convergence Network (BcN) between 2004 and 2007. The BcN is envisioned as conduit for broadband content and applications. This paper uses generativity as a conceptual framework to determine whether the objectives for the BcN, based on a content analysis of policy documents and interviews with experts, empowered the network to sustain a generative critical information infrastructure. This study is designed to be useful for executives in the private sector, officials in government and academics in university settings who are interested in drawing insights from Korean experience to inform their own work.     

Understanding the dynamics in e-Participation initiatives: Looking through the genre and stakeholder lenses

Conventionally, e-Participation initiatives are considered to be successful only if users use these services. While the growing body of e-Participation literature has listed and studied challenges and barriers to achieving this end, conceptual clarity on why such projects are considered as failures is yet to be achieved. We argue that this is due to the inadequate understanding of the complex stakeholder dynamics of an e-Participation project. In this paper, we seek to address this knowledge gap by proposing that using stakeholder theory complemented by genre theory provides an interpretive lens to understand the complexities in the development and use of such projects. To illustrate our proposed lens, we apply it to analyze an e-Participation project in Norway at its development and use phases. Our findings indicate that a key factor that influences the success of e-Participation initiatives is high saliency of at least one stakeholder group at various phases of the initiatives. The saliency of stakeholders changes over the life of a project and hence the salient stakeholder also varies. Consequently, it is not essential for the same stakeholder group to be salient throughout, only that some stakeholders remain salient. Our interpretive lens also extends the discourse on stakeholder theory. In traditional management literature stakeholder theory is meant as a tool to identify stakeholders' groups to which management or owner of an organization should pay attention. We show that it is also useful to identify which stakeholder groups will act to protect their interests. Based on our findings, we propose insights into studying and developing e-Participation projects.     

Borrowing demand at local public libraries in Sweden

This research explored the determinants of borrowing demand for print books and media at local public libraries in Sweden for the period of 1995–2007. The role of the Swedish local public libraries seemed to have fundamentally changed during the period analyzed. They have had an increasingly important role to play in equalizing income opportunities. This was only the case for the working part of the population, however. Those outside the labor force, as well as the unemployed—had substantially lower borrowing demand for both print books and media. This fact appears to be one of the more demanding challenges facing Swedish public libraries today, together with the fact that while children are the most frequent borrowers, they become the least frequent borrowers of all age groups when they turn into teens.     

Demand articulation in emerging technologies: Intermediary user organisations as co-producers?

User involvement is assumed to be beneficial to innovation processes. Intermediary user organisations contribute to articulating societal demands for innovations. However, the learning processes inside these organisations are still not understood well. Therefore, this paper empirically investigates intermediaries using an event history approach. It yields characteristic learning mechanisms, e.g. concerning the management of expectations or actively building a case. If intermediaries overcome challenges regarding positioning, representation and the level of proactivity, they can play a precarious role in demand articulation in the context of new technologies.     

Do RFIDs (radio frequency identifier devices) provide new ethical dilemmas for librarians and information professionals?

This paper provides an analysis of the current and potential ethical implications of RFID technology for the library and information professions. These issues are analysed as a series of ethical dilemmas, or hard-to-resolve competing ethical obligations, which the librarian has in relationship to information objects, library users and the wider social and political environment or state. A process model of the library is used as a framework for the discussion to illustrate the relationship between the different participants in the library system and it is argued that ethical analysis should involve the identification of future developments as well as current issues. The analysis shows that RFIDs do currently pose some dilemmas for librarians in terms of the conflicts between efficient service, privacy of users and an obligation to protect the safety of society as a whole, and that these are likely to become more problematic as the technology develops. This paper is part 2 of a series of papers on RFIDs and the library and information professions.     

Conserving indigenous knowledge as the key to the current and future use of traditional vegetables

Indigenous knowledge erodes rapidly. When the loss of this knowledge negatively affects the lives and health of traditionally living rural communities, a drive to conserve indigenous knowledge becomes vital. This article argues that the transfer of indigenous knowledge on traditional vegetables will ensure the availability and utilisation of this important food source for resource-poor rural communities. Data collected on the present use of traditional vegetables at a rural Xhosa village in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa documented indigenous practices of traditional vegetable use and measured attitudes and perceptions of young women. Findings revealed that although traditional vegetables are readily available, there is a decline in the use of traditional vegetables in this village. Since the loss of associated indigenous knowledge is a reality, and in view of the negative attitude towards traditional vegetables, future use of this valuable food source is threatened. The transfer of the associated indigenous knowledge holds the key to the potential future use of traditional vegetables. Altered perceptions of traditional vegetables are crucial for the conservation of the associated indigenous knowledge. As a result awareness campaigns to promote the use of traditional vegetables, related nutritional education, including proper cooking and preservation techniques are necessary.     

Customer acceptance of IPTV service quality

The purpose of this article is to provide insights into the effects of Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) service quality and reveal mediation effects in the process of forming the repurchase intention. This study incorporates additional theoretical construct, perceived enjoyment, to reflect IPTV characteristics using extended technology acceptance model (TAM). This study empirically investigated a research model and conducted a survey of IPTV service users. The results of this study are as follows. First, IPTV service quality is summarized as design, security, and customer service, which is supported by second-order factor analysis. Service quality had an influence on perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, and perceived enjoyment. Second, perceived ease of use had a significant effect on perceived enjoyment, and perceived usefulness also had an effect on repurchase intention. Third, attitude, trust, and satisfaction had a positive effect on repurchase intention. To reveal the impact on repurchase intention of the IPTV service quality, this study proposes customer acceptance on IPTV service based on a modified TAM.     

Collaborative management of business metadata

Legal provisions, cross-company data exchange and intra-company reporting or planning procedures require comprehensively, timely, unambiguously and understandably specified business objects (e.g. materials, customers, and suppliers). On the one hand, this business metadata has to cover miscellaneous regional peculiarities in order to enable business activities anywhere in the world. On the other hand, data structures need to be standardized throughout the entire company in order to be able to perform global spend analysis, for example. In addition, business objects should adapt to new market conditions or regulatory requirements as quickly and consistently as possible. Centrally organized corporate metadata managers (e.g. within a central IT department) are hardly able to meet all these demands. They should be supported by key users from several business divisions and regions, who contribute expert knowledge. However, despite the advantages regarding high metadata quality on a corporate level, a collaborative metadata management approach of this kind has to ensure low effort for knowledge contributors as in most cases these regional or divisional experts do not benefit from metadata quality themselves. Therefore, the paper at hand identifies requirements to be met by a business metadata repository, which is a tool that can effectively support collaborative management of business metadata. In addition, the paper presents the results of an evaluation of these requirements with business experts from various companies and of scenario tests with a wiki-based prototype at the company Bayer CropScience AG. The evaluation shows two things: First, collaboration is a success factor when it comes to establishing effective business metadata management and integrating metadata with enterprise systems, and second, semantic wikis are well suited to realizing business metadata repositories.