The emergence of the blockchain phenomenon affects various aspects of human life. Public sector reforms are also influenced by this trend. E-government leaders around the world are tentatively ...beginning to grasp the potential of blockchain and other distributed ledger technologies, especially with regard to their promise to provide more decentralized information management solutions in government and make public digital platforms more transparent and efficient. Software developers around the world have come up with a range of digital solutions to accelerate these reforms. Given the multidimensional nature of e-government, it is interesting to understand in which areas blockchain has the potential to promote innovation, what processes and procedures can be automated using blockchain technology, and what illustrative examples of government efficiency can be observed in this area.
•Blockchain provides more decentralized systems for public information management.•Public information processes could be automated through blockchain in e-government.•Blockchain allows automating e-healthcare, e-migration, e-city and e-army systems.•Regulatory issues and risk of information leaks are key challenges for automation.
There is a substantial literature on e-government that discusses information and communication technology (ICT) as an instrument for reducing the role of bureaucracy in government organizations. The ...purpose of this paper is to offer a critical discussion of this literature and to provide a complementary argument which favors the use of ICT in the public sector to support the operations of bureaucratic organizations. Based on the findings of a case study – of the Venice Municipality in Italy – the paper discusses how ICT can be used to support rather than eliminate bureaucracy. Using the concepts of e-bureaucracy and functional simplification and closure, the paper proposes evidence and support for the argument that bureaucracy should be preserved and enhanced where e-government policies are concerned. Functional simplification and closure are very valuable concepts for explaining why this should be a viable approach.
•We discuss how ICT affects the operation of public sector bureaucracies;•We propose a framework (functional simplification and closure) to study ICT impacts on bureaucratic rationalisation;•We discuss the case of the Municipality of Venice in the light of the proposed framework;•We discuss the condition under which ICT has positive impacts on bureaucratic procedures and hence on public sector delivery.
The purpose of this paper is to offer a critical discussion of information system adoption in the public sector (often referred to as e-government) and to contribute to the debate by offering a ...public value perspective. The paper points to the public value paradigm as an alternative approach to studying ICT-enabled public sector reforms. This paradigm, we argue, proposes an alternative way of framing the nature of the problems faced when ICT enabled public sector reforms are initiated and studied. The public value perspective proposes a new and richer context in which to study and research these phenomena. It also calls for the redefinition of the ways we assess e-government in the context of public sector reforms. It is therefore seen as vital to evaluate the socio-political impact of ICT adoption in the public sector.
► Information systems have impacts which go far beyond those which have been discussed in the NPM. ► NPM does not account for the social and political impacts of ICT enabled public sector reform. ► Public value provides an alternative approach which directly challenges the NPM paradigm. ► Public value proposes a new and richer approach for studying and researching ICT in the public sector. ► New e-government indicators are needed to account for public value creation.
Management control systems are used in private sector in assisting management to achieve the goals of the organizations. In the 1980s the performance of public organizations in industrial economies ...has been the target of severe questioning and the main reason for such questioning is the comparisons with private sector standards of returns on investment and it turned public sector organizations from service orientation to commercial orientation. In this context the practitioners started to adopt new management approaches as the basis for improving performance in the public sector. This new management approach or management control systems in the public sector creates the changes to the structures and processes of public sector organizations with the objective of getting them to run better. The introduction of this new management approach in the public sector was to promote a culture of performance. The present study is an effort to understand the role of management control systems in the worldwide public sector reforms agendas by illustrating literatures from various parts of the world.
In 2013, the Australian Public Service was subject to a process of governance, accountability and performance reform. The implications of these reforms for micro-level practices are unknown. The ...authors' empirical findings show that the reforms developed in three stages, each of which has significant implications for embedding performance measurement and risk management within a broader management control system.
Following on from the success of the editors' previous book, New Public Management: The Transformation of Ideas and Practice, which examined the public reform process up to the end of the last ...decade, this new volume draws on the previous knowledge both theoretically and empirically. It examines and debates the post-new public management reform development in Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Australia and New Zealand. The ideal follow-up to the previous volume, this book includes many of the same contributors in addition to some fresh voices, and is a must for anyone looking for an integrated framework of analysis. Comprehensive and analytical, it is an important contribution to the study of public administration and particularly to the reform of public management.
Tom Christensen is from the University of Oslo and Per Lægreid is from the University of Bergen, both in Norway.
Contents: Preface; Introduction - theoretical approach and research questions, Tom Christensen and Per Lægreid; Still fragmented government or reassertion of the centre?, Tom Christensen, Amund Lie and Per Lægreid; Reform design and performance in Australia and New Zealand, John Halligan; Types of state organisations: arguments, doctrines and changes beyond new public management, Paul G. Roness; Convergence and standardization in telecommunications regulation: trajectories of change and reform in the Asian Pacific regulatory state, Martin Painter; Organizing immigration - a comparison of New Zealand and Norway , Tom Christensen, Per Lægreid and Richard Norman; Central banking reform across the world: only by night are all cats grey, Martin Marcussen; Quests for transparency: signs of a new institutional era in the health care field, Maria Blomgren and Kirstin Sahlin-Andersson; Public-private partnerships: a comparative perspective on Victoria and Denmark, Carsten Greve and Graeme Hodge; (The difficult art of) outsourcing welfare services: experiences from Sweden and New Zealand, Anders Forssell and Lars Norén; New public management and the ghost of Max Weber: exorcised or still haunting?, Robert Gregory; Bibliography; Index.
The slowing of public sector hiring has been a tool for sector downsizing and one of the markers of the reform trajectory in public administration in Egypt. The effect of this long-term and ...non-confrontational approach to downsizing on the workforce of the public sector is captured in this article using a unique national panel dataset. The analysis shows that the share of public sector employment has declined in a pattern punctuated by a number of critical junctures that shaped the trajectory of the adoption of New Public Management (NPM)-inspired policies. The data shows that the sector workforce is becoming more educated, older, and slightly more feminized. Despite the specificity of the context of Egypt, the analysis furthers the study of public sector reform trajectories and the complexity of the contextualization of NPM-inspired policies in countries with a socialist legacy in the global South.
This article presents solutions to deal with the shortage of higher education courses in public sector accounting (PSA) and the gap between what is taught and what is required. The authors explain ...how courses can be made to be more relevant to the field's needs in order to avoid a lack of qualified personnel plaguing public administrations with the inability to address challenges. The authors recommend establishing degree courses in public sector accounting, as well as including some public sector accounting in public administration courses.
Local health contracts are defined as public sector instruments promoting regional health agencies’ implementation of regional health projects in consultation with their partners. Deployed in the ...particular context of the French central government’s local reforms, these contractual mechanisms have significantly altered decentralised public services’ work organisation. The present article leverages Abbott’s studies to analyse how the restructuring of the French state’s territorial entities affects the activities of officers responsible for signing and operationalising local health contracts. Rooted in a field survey of officers working out of three regional health agencies’ central and local sites, the analysis reveals that changes in working arrangements (tasks, timing, power) differ depending on officers’ intervention levels and target audiences.
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