The article is devoted to the understanding of digital government transformation (DGT) as key to improving public administration and governance. The paper complements the debate regarding DGT ...rationale in public administration, providing theoretical and empirical analysis of its socio-economic impact and performance in governance. The empirical part is based on two regression analyses exploring indicators of DGT and public administration performance. The article concludes that (1) DGT is understood as innovation, but innovation in the public sector is also commonly associated with DGT, (2) this innovation helps to reshape the governance to match the society's needs, (3) the policy-based approach to DGT is not enough explanation of its rationale and efficiency, and (4) there are certain improvements in the socio-economic sphere that are related to DGT and thus help one understand its meaning for the contemporary world.
Computational algorithms and automated decision making systems that include them offer potential to improve public policy and organizations. But computational algorithms based on biased data encode ...those biases into algorithms, models and their outputs. Systemic racism is institutionalized bias with respect to race, ethnicity and related attributes. Such bias is located in data that encode the results and outputs of decisions that have been discriminatory, in procedures and processes that may intentionally or unintentionally disadvantage people based on race, and in policies that may discriminate by race. Computational algorithms may exacerbate systemic racism if they are not designed, developed, and used–that is, enacted–with attention to identifying and remedying bias specific to race. Advancing social equity in digital governance requires systematic, ongoing efforts to assure that automated decision making systems, and their enactment in complex public organizational arrangements, are free from bias.
•Computational algorithms are powerful tools but may replicate biases.•Biases, including systemic racism, in underlying data bias algorithms•Automated decision making systems that discriminate harm people.•Careful scrutiny of data, processes, variables and algorithms may reduce bias.
The notion of adaptive governance was originally created to capture forms of collaboration in socio-ecological systems that can respond to rapid changes in the environment. However, such a notion ...also has a great potential to be transferred and understood in the digital government context, where there is an increasing need to establish forms of collaboration that can respond to swift changes in the environment related to technology and citizen demands. Drawing on the analysis of four cases of IT-related project collaboration, we put forward that the degree of sharing of decision-making power and of accountability between government and non-government actors is critical to developing different types of adaptive governance. Findings show that the distribution of decision-making power and of accountability can be decoupled, resulting in three types of adaptive governance – namely polycentric, agile, and organic governance. We contribute to research by detailing and empirically testing the notion of adaptive governance in a digital government context, and to practice by highlighting the role of the distribution of decision-making power and of accountability in devising adaptive governance strategies.
•The promising notion of adaptive governance requires refinement and empirical testing.•We investigate adaptive governance in the context of digital government.•We focus on the distribution of decision-making power and of accountability.•We propose a typology of adaptive governance based on four empirical case analyses.•The typology includes polycentric, agile, and organic governance.
Different definitions, frameworks and dimensions have been proposed in the literature to identify the best pathways for the development of government websites. Using these frameworks, several ...measurements and rankings to assess digital government success have been developed. Although these models have helped to understand the influence of many critical factors on the successful application of ICT in government, it is necessary to understand the empirical validity of these frameworks and dimensions. Some authors have proposed factor analysis techniques as a useful tool for this task. Using data from a ranking of state government portals in Mexico during the period 2009-2015, we conducted a principal component analysis (PCA) to evaluate the dimensions of the evolutionary model proposed in the ranking. Results ratify most of the original dimensions of the evaluated instrument, but allow reducing the number of questions and obtain more robust estimations. Also, the new reduced instrument is validated using data collected in 2016 and 2017. Based on the analysis, we provide a set of practical recommendations for improving measurement methodologies and the assessment of digital government services in general.
•We explore the empirical consistency of conceptual categories used to measure government portals functionality.•We use data from a Mexican ranking of government portals.•We found 22 factors in 5 main categories: Information, Interaction, Transaction, Integration and Participation.•We found internal inconsistencies among concepts and categories that may be useful to improve the ranking.•This method can be used to other popular digital government rankings.
In an era of wicked social problems, a smarter, more responsive, more efficient governance structure is necessary to take advantage of the enormous capability of the public to congregate, interact, ...and collaborate in finding solutions to intricate sociotechnical challenges. The bedrock for such a structure is open and shared information; the key to opening and sharing information lies in interagency information sharing and integration. With the objective to supplement previous research based on rich qualitative data, this study systematically identifies and tests some important determinants of the success of inter-organizational collaboration and information sharing initiatives through quantitative empirical analysis. Based on a national survey of government managers from two policy domains (criminal justice and public health) in the United States, this study found four statistically significant predictors of inter-organizational information sharing success. From those, we found compatibility of technical infrastructure and formally assigned project managers as the two most important predictors explaining the success of inter-organizational information sharing initiatives.
Regional eco-innovation can change the extensive development mode and promote the sustainable development of the economy and society. In the background of digital government construction, the ...external environment of regional eco-innovation has changed. In this study, the panel data of 125 prefecture-level cities in China from 2013 to 2020 are used to construct a fixed-effect model for empirical analysis by sorting out the relationships among digital government, regional eco-innovation, and dual environmental regulation. The following conclusions are drawn: First, digital government mainly promotes the improvement of regional eco-innovation through digital society and digital citizenship. Second, formal and informal environmental regulations have remarkable positive effects on regional eco-innovation. Third, informal environmental regulation has a positive moderating effect on digital administration and regional eco-innovation and a positive moderating effect on digital citizenship and regional eco-innovation. Fourth, formal environmental regulation cannot moderate the relationship between digital government and regional eco-innovation. This study can give priority to promoting the digital government to serve and play a role in ecological governance and environmental information disclosure, so as to provide policy opinions for the government when issuing documents supporting the improvement of regional eco-innovation, and promote the realization of a more reasonable allocation of innovation resources.
•Digital government can promotes regional eco-innovation through digital society and digital citizenship.•Formal and informal environmental regulations have remarkable positive effects on regional eco-innovation.•Informal environmental regulation has positive moderating effect on digital administration, digital citizenship and regional eco-innovation.•Formal environmental regulation cannot moderate the relationship between digital government and regional eco-innovation.
Governments have made significant investments to deliver information and services to governmental institutions, citizens, and businesses through e-services. The re-adoption of such governmental ...services has been focused on in various studies. However, this study focuses on the post-adoption of digital government services and information system quality. Therefore, evaluating the digital government portal services from the user's perspective is important. This study proposes an expanded conceptual framework that includes confirmation of expectation and perceived functional benefits as mediating variables based on continuance literature and information systems’ performance. Online and offline surveys were conducted to get the responses of emigrants in the Republic of Korea to assess the proposed relationship among the variables. Overall, 371 samples were collected and analyzed. The regression and mediation analyses were performed using the Macro PROCESS model. The results indicate that confirmation of expectation and perceived functional benefits significantly predict the foreigners’ continuance intention as Korean digital government websites users. The study also confirms the direct and indirect impacts of digital government services quality factors on continuance intention through perceived functional benefits. However, it does not find evidence for the influence of confirmation of expectation as a mediator. The research concludes with positive implications for academicians, governmental policymakers, and the overall body of knowledge.
Points for practitioners
The results of this study indicate that government officials should concentrate on technical features and psychological characteristics to understand people's intention for e-service continuance. The relation of digital government facilities with perceived functional benefits enables lawmakers to establish responsive and quick service portal systems. Besides, the government can help users by providing 24-hour customer support, electronic assistance desks, and users’ manuals to increase the consistent use and efficiency of government systems.
This article aims to describe the concept of digital government and the control of Digital Government in Thai public services. Digital government is the administration of government agencies based on ...information technology and linking operations on the Internet. The Thai Government clearly operates under the Digital Government Administration and Services Act in 2019s. Digital technology applied in government agency includes Mobile Applications, Cloud Computing, and Big Data. The benefits of digital technology not only enhance the capacity of Government but also upgrade public services to be more efficient, convenient, faster and more modern. The development of public services through the digital government concept must be done in parallel with the upgrade of the digital structure and digital culture. Most importantly, the state must be aware of the digital divide. All of them are essential in the development of digital government to bring about the potential of New Public Service which improve the quality of people life and progress of the country.
A growing body of literature shows that despite the significant benefits of artificial intelligence (AI), its adoption has many unknowns and challenges. However, theoretical studies dominate this ...topic. Completing the recent works, this article aims to identify challenges faced by public organizations when adopting AI based on the PRISMA Framework and an empirical assessment of these challenges in the opinion of public managers using survey research. The adopted research procedure is also an added value because it could be replicated in other context scenarios. To achieve this paper's aim, the Systematic Literature Review (SLR) and survey research among authorities in 414 Polish cities were carried out. As a result, a list of 15 challenges and preventive activities proposed by researchers to prevent these challenges have been identified. Empirical verification of identified challenges allows us to determine which of them limit AI adoption to the greatest extent in public managers' opinion. These include a lack of strategy or plans to initial adoption / continued usage of AI; no ensuring that AI is used in line with human values; employees' insufficient knowledge of how to use AI; insufficient AI policies, laws, and regulations; and different expectations of stakeholders and partners about AI. These findings could help practitioners to prioritize AI adoption activities and add value to digital government theory.
•Empirical examination of AI adoption challenges is possible based on the opinion of public managers.•Public managers in Polish cities pay the greatest attention to challenges of an organizational and social nature.•The challenges related to financial resources are not a significant obstacle for Polish public managers.•There are interactions between challenges and their indirect impact on effective AI adoption.•Public policies determine the level of AI adoption and implementation in the public sector.
This study explores the relationship between government and citizen in the digital age and proposes a specific path to realise the value co-creation of government and citizen in the digital age. ...Quantitative analysis of 40 policy texts on "digital government construction" of 30 provincial and municipal governments in China before November 2022 was conducted using NVivo12. The case of Minsheng Cloud revealed that provincial and municipal government departments have not paid sufficient attention to citizen participation. Furthermore, citizens' participation ability and enthusiasm are not high. The study found that in the process of strengthening the construction of digital government, "government optimization", "citizen participation", "governance guarantee", "data governance" and "government digitization" are the key elements. We discuss the feasibility, necessity and coupling of the value co-creation theory to establish the benign interaction between government and citizens and realise co-creation. We find that the "DART" model can be co-created based on value, and that the continuous Improving the four aspects of "dialogue", "access", "transparency" and "risk assessment" will undoubtedly help realise the value co-creation of government and citizens in the digital era, and form a governance pattern of co-construction and sharing. It is therefore of great significance to promote the government's digital construction and digital governance capability to accelerate the construction of digital China and promote the modernisation of the national governance system and governance capability.
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