Measuring E-government Efficiency: The Opinions of Public Administrators and Other Stakeholders PDF
Preview Measuring E-government Efficiency: The Opinions of Public Administrators and Other Stakeholders
Public Administration and Information Technology 5 Manuel Pedro Rodríguez-Bolívar Editor Measuring E-government Effi ciency The Opinions of Public Administrators and Other Stakeholders Public Administration and Information Technology Volume 5 Series Editor Christopher G. Reddick, San Antonio, TX, USA For further volumes: http://www.springer.com/series/10796 Manuel Pedro Rodríguez-Bolívar Editor Measuring E-government Effi ciency The Opinions of Public Administrators and Other Stakeholders Editor Manuel Pedro Rodríguez-Bolívar Department of Accounting and Finance University of Granada Granada , Spain ISBN 978-1-4614-9981-7 ISBN 978-1-4614-9982-4 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-4614-9982-4 Springer New York Heidelberg Dordrecht London Library of Congress Control Number: 2014933676 © Springer Science+Business Media New York 2014 T his work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifi cally the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfi lms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. Exempted from this legal reservation are brief excerpts in connection with reviews or scholarly analysis or material supplied specifi cally for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work. Duplication of this publication or parts thereof is permitted only under the provisions of the Copyright Law of the Publisher’s location, in its current version, and permission for use must always be obtained from Springer. Permissions for use may be obtained through RightsLink at the Copyright Clearance Center. Violations are liable to prosecution under the respective Copyright Law. T he use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specifi c statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. While the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication, neither the authors nor the editors nor the publisher can accept any legal responsibility for any errors or omissions that may be made. The publisher makes no warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein. Printed on acid-free paper Springer is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com) Foreword Twenty Years and Keep Going: Can e-Government Effi ciency Be Questioned? e-Government development has been traditionally based on government strategies, which have been realized by respective program and project planning and manage- ment. The overall process is being performed under the responsibility of the govern- ments, which have specifi ed quite similar targets for public sector’s modernization: cost and time savings from public transactions; the development of an effective and effi cient, friendly, and accountable public administration. Although these common targets have been updated since the fi rst e-Government defi nition (i.e., open and personalized government have been introduced quite recently), public sector’s effectiveness and effi ciency were grounded from the beginning and are still two of the most important objectives in e-Government strategies. A ccording to the World Bank (2012), government effectiveness refl ects percep- tions of the quality of public services, the quality of the civil service and the degree of its independence from political pressures, the quality of policy formulation and implementation, and the credibility of the government’s commitment to such poli- cies. Findings from this World Bank report illustrate unexpectedly low values even recently in many of the examined cases. On the other hand, government effi ciency concerns public sector performance or productivity rates and it is mainly associated with public spending effects to socioeconomic indicators, such as education enrol- ment ratios or infant mortality (Hauner and Kyobe 2008). This International Monetary Fund (IMF) study returns that the higher the public spending relative to gross domestic product (GDP), the lower the public sector’s effi ciency. To this end, e-Government effi ciency can be considered the performance of e-Government proj- ects or deliverables, as well as public sector’s performance improvement from e-Government implementation. v vi Foreword The retaining of effi ciency’s challenge generates various questions to e-G overnment scholars: H asn’t public sector achieved in becoming effi cient enough in the digital era ? What do we expect from public sector effi ciency ? And i s effi ciency a dynamic factor, such as “satisfaction” or “adoption,” which can either evolve or decline ? To this end, this book collection questioned various scholars and profes- sionals, and various prestigious outcomes have been delivered, which among others illustrate that: (cid:129) Effi ciency is a complex factor, which affects e-Government project’s success and stakeholders’ expectations. (cid:129) Various effi ciency measurement methods can address project and stakeholders’ demands. (cid:129) Effi ciency’s increment improves stakeholders’ relationships. T aking into account this book’s fi ndings, it remains extremely important to real- ize that despite the abovementioned ambitious and heavy-funded planning, even recently less than an average of 10 % of public services are being offered online at an international level (Anthopoulos et al. 2007; World Bank 2012); European states have not achieved delivering their common 20 e-services nor cross-border public services (European Commission 2013); less than 45 % of the existing public ser- vices can be offered online, while citizens still appear reluctant against e-G overnment services mainly compared to e-banking services (European Commission 2013). However, low e-service delivery and respective adoption is only one dimension of e-Government and respective government effi ciency. Some other crucial fi ndings concern bureaucracy’s elimination: Bovens and Zouridis (2002) identifi ed the screen-level bureaucracy as information-based decision-making routines, which enables bureaucratic procedures even in the digital era. These bureaucratic processes can defi nitely affect public sector effi ciency and decline e-Government efforts. Moreover, Bekkers and Homburg (2007) depict four e-Government myths, one of which addresses the expected rapid government transition to an information revo- lution. This myth can be related to a mistaken stakeholders’ understating and, in this context, rational planning and strong management can enable quicker migration as this book’s section 3 presents. However, rational planning is considered to be a second myth (Bekkers and Homburg 2007), which appears when standardization and interoperability in the public sector are not enhanced. To this end, this book’s section 2 illustrates exemplars that meet these public sector’s prerequisites while they enable tracking of stakeholders’ needs. All the above text documents the signifi cant contribution of this book: public sec- tor’s effi ciency and effectiveness are still far behind the expected values despite e-Government projects’ implementation for more than 20 years. To this end, this book views effi ciency from the lens of e-Government projects’ performance, while chap- ters’ contributors defi ne methods to measure effi ciency from this perspective. These methods can address the reasons that obstruct administration’s productivity growth. Foreword vii Moreover, existing myths regarding e-Government low contribution to public sector’s effi ciency are addressed by chapters’ contributors both via meeting end users’ expec- tations and via exemplars, which deliver important experiences to e-Government domain. Thessaly , Greece Leonidas Anthopoulos References Anthopoulos L, Siozos P, Tsoukalas IA (2007) Applying participatory design and collaboration in digital public services for discovering and re-designing e- Government services. Govern Inform Q 22(2):353–376 Bekkers V, Homburg V (2007) The myths of e-Government: looking beyond the assumptions of a new and better government. Inform Soc 23(5):373–382. doi:10.1080/01972240701572913 B ovens M, Zouridis S (2002) From street level to system level bureaucracies: how information and communication technology is transforming administrative discretion and constitutional con- trol. Public Adm Rev 62(2):174–184. doi:10.1111/0033-3352.00168 European Commission (2013) Public services online: ‘digital by default or by detour?’ http:// ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda . Accessed Dec 2013 Hauner D, Kyobe A (2008) Determinants of government effi ciency: International Monetary Fund (IMF) Working Paper. http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2008/wp08228.pdf . Accessed Dec 2013 The World Bank (2012) The worldwide governance indicators (WGI) [online]. http://info.world- bank.org/governance/wgi/index.aspx#home . Accessed Dec 2012 Pref ace In recent decades, governments around the world have been faced with rapidly growing challenges on how to make public service and administration transparent, effective, and effi cient. Increasingly connected citizens and stakeholders are demanding that governments be more transparent and deliver services more rapidly and effi ciently. The implementation of the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in public administrations, which has been called widely as “e-Government,” has become a central part of the process of the modernization of public administration, allowing a strategic and intensive use of ICT, both in the internal relations of public administrations and in terms of the relationship with citizens and with companies in the private sector. A lthough there is a large amount of research on e-Government, these studies have sought to highlight the possibilities of e-Government implementations and to show different experiences about e-Government projects. Nonetheless, these e-G overnment implementations are usually not justifi ed from an effi cient analysis point of view by both governments and researchers, and it is diffi cult to know if these implementations are meeting stakeholders’ demands regarding information transparency, rendering of online public services, or citizens’ participation in public sector management. The edited volume M easuring e-Government Effi ciency. The Opinions of Public Administrators and Other Stakeholders enhances our understanding of how e- Government implementations are impacting on the effi ciency of government in improving their transparency and in providing public services. By focusing on e-Government effi ciency, this edited volume fi lls the knowledge gap in the effi - ciency of e-Government projects, analyzing if public managers, policy-makers, and other stakeholders think that e-Government policies have improved their manage- ment and decision-making process through the engagement of the citizenry or else they are only a procedural improvement through the introduction of new ways of delivering public services or disclosing public sector information. ix
Description:The list of books you might like
