Citation
Irani, Z. (2013), "Transforming government: people, process, and policy", Transforming Government: People, Process and Policy, Vol. 7 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/TG-08-2013-0026
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Transforming government: people, process, and policy
Article Type: Editorial From: Transforming Government: People, Process and Policy, Volume 7, Issue 4
It gives me great pleasure to welcome you to the fourth issue of the seventh volume of Transforming Government: People, Process, and Policy. This issue is dedicated to the publication of papers researching on e-government, inter-organisational interaction in public and private sector, e-participation in local government and EU, and civic participation in government policymaking. Over the years, the constant update of the journals scope to advocate theoretical as well as empirical research has led to an increase in quality of submissions (in regular and special issues). The research presented in this issue of TGPPP is exploratory in nature and provides a rich contextual background into e-government. Especially, the four papers in this issue, which provide TGPPP readers with a flavour of e-government by recording different e-government efforts and initiatives from three different regions (i.e. Sweden, USA, and Greece). These papers outline up-to-date innovative ideas in the field of e-government and offer our readers with a detailed insight to pragmatic ideas in e-government implementation. TGPPP readers could thus anticipate similar quality research papers on a regular basis in future issues.
This issue commences with a research paper by Ulf Melin and Karin Axelsson entitled “Inter-organizational interaction in public and private sectors – a comparative study. This research presents a comparison between inter-organizational (IO) interaction and inter-organizational information systems (IOS) to support IO interaction in public and private sectors. The authors explain that this research is a response to the shortage of research focusing on comparative (inter sector) studies. The research design of this study is qualitative and interpretive and by doing so, the authors conducted from a comparative study of two case organisations both from public and private sector in Sweden. The empirical data have been analysed using theory as an analysis lens, i.e. central IO concepts from industrial markets (Håkansson and Snehota, 1995). This is in line with a strategy to use theory as a part of an iterative process of data collection and analysis. The cases included in this article represent organisations that have performed extensive work with IO dimensions (e.g. IO interaction and IOS). The research findings highlight several similarities concerning interaction in relations between organisations in the two sectors. There are also differences depending on the level of analysis (empirical level vs analytical level). The study also exhibits the need to be explicit when considering organisational values, end-customers or client/citizen values and the type of objects that are exchanged in the interaction. Lastly, the study demonstrates some clear benefits from using the international/industrial marketing and purchasing (IMP) approach when structuring, describing and analysing interactions (of the relationship characteristics and the relationship dimensions) – regardless of focused sector.
Following is another research paper on e-participation by Christopher G. Reddick and Donald F. Norris, entitled “E-participation in local governments: an examination of political-managerial support and impacts. A number of research studies support the position that when organisational leadership shows their support for technology and change, IT implementations are more likely to be successful (Reddick and Frank, 2007; Macintosh and Whyte, 2008; Fan, 2011). To further expand this stance, the authors put forward two research questions for further investigation, such as:
RQ1. What factors explain higher levels of elected and top appointed officials support for e-participation in local governments?
RQ2. What factors explain positive impacts of e-participation in local governments?
The authors utilised a national survey of e-participation among US local governments, which examines factors that predict greater political-managerial support for e-participation and factors associated with positive impacts form e-participation. Of the 2,287 surveys posted, 684 local governments responded to the survey, with a response rate of 29.9 per cent. This response rate is consistent with other surveys recently conducted by the ICMA at around 30 per cent, although lower than the response rate of 36.8 per cent for the 2006 survey. To better understand what motivates elected and appointed officials to support the adoption of e-participation activities at the local level, the authors examined variables that are often found in the literature to be associated with elected and top appointed officials support for e-participation and factors that are associated with positive impacts from e-participation. This research also found that demand was the most important factor predicting political-managerial support for e-participation and impacts.
Thereafter, TGPPP offers a research paper by Dimitra Karantzeni and Dimitris Gouscos, entitled “eParticipation in the EU: re-focusing on social media and young citizens for reinforcing European identity. As reflected from the title, the authors seek to research the key role of e-participation and social media in the construction and diffusion of what constitutes a European identity for European citizens, as a valuable means of acculturalisation, through the creation of a common sense of belonging and self-identifying with the European ideals. The authors argue that the partial success of current EU institutions communication strategy and e-participation initiatives could be attributed to a communication void between the means presently used and the preferences of targeted audiences. The authors further state that the communication void is confirmed by combining empirical data with EU e-participation initiatives addressing young people, young citizens involvement in EU affairs, the penetration of social media on young citizen groups and the social media presence of EU political entities. Such empirical data could be augmented with more thorough statistics, and supervised across time to identify advancements and changing. The authors, therefore, propose that the focus for e-participation instruments be redirected to social media due to their comparative advantages as regards their great visibility, their level of penetration into current social groups and their potential to target specific audiences and becoming an integral part of these audiences everyday life. This paper stresses the young citizen groups, considering them as a hopeful audience for the success of EU e-participation initiatives. This approach is deemed to contribute to refining e-participation ventures in terms of their actual appeal to young citizens and contribution to the construction and diffusion of a European identity.
Finally, we have Cynthia R. Farina, Dmitry Epstein, Josiah B. Heidt and Mary J. Newhart presenting their case study based research paper, entitled “Regulation Room: getting ‘more, better’ civic participation in complex government policymaking. This research reported in this paper addresses:
What capacities are required for effective civic engagement in rulemaking and similar complex public policymaking processes?
How these capacities can be nurtured and supported by an online participation system?
In the context of this research, rulemaking is the process that agencies use to make new health, safety, social and economic regulations. It is considered as one of the US Governments most important policymaking methods and has long been a target for e-government efforts. Even though broad transparency and participation rights are part of its legal structure, the authors argue that substantial barriers (e.g. social, psychological and/or procedural (rather than technological) in nature) inhibit effective engagement by many citizens. The research findings recommend that effectively designing and deploying technology, even though necessary, is merely one dimension of realising broader and better online community participation. Moreover, the findings also suggest that effective e-participation systems must be prepared to address a set of barriers that impede many citizens significant participation in complex policy-making processes. This research also recommends the need for re-conceptualising the value of broad civic participation to the policy-making processes and for distinguishing that new commenters participate with policy issues in a different way than experienced insiders.
We hope you will find this issue interesting and though provoking, and hope to receive your valuable contributions for the forthcoming issue.
Zahir Irani
Editor
Muhammad Kamal
Editorial Assistant
References
Fan, Q. (2011), “An evaluation analysis of e-government development by local authorities in Australia, International Journal of Public Administration, Vol. 34, pp. 926–934
Hakansson, H. and Snehota, I. (1995), Developing Relationships in Business Networks, Routledge, London
Macintosh, A. and Whyte, A. (2008), “Towards an evaluation framework for eParticipation, Transforming Government: People, Process and Policy, Vol. 2 No. 1, pp. 16–30
Reddick, C.G. and Frank, H.A. (2007), “E-government and its influence on managerial effectiveness: a survey of Florida and Texas city managers, Financial Accountability & Management, Vol. 23 No. 1, pp. 1–26