Albert Meijer

New Media and the Coproduction of Safety An Empirical Analysis of Dutch Practices

The new media have been argued to strengthen the coproduction of safety by reducing the costs of interactions between government and citizens and providing new communicative potential. Does that lead to relevant additional input from citizens in police work? Or are preexisting interactions reproduced online? This empirical study of police practices in the Netherlands shows that new media indeed strengthen the coproduction of safety by enabling the police to reach more citizens and contact them 24/7. The police build new connections to citizens: mediated citizen networks form an important addition to offline networks. The costs are reduced most in a situation where new media replace face-to-face contacts between police and citizens, that is, in the coproduction of police patrol work. The article concludes that new media support the trend of responsibilization: the police use new media to build virtual networks with citizens and engage them anywhere and anytime in the coproduction of safety.

Open government: connecting vision and voice:

The term open government is often used to describe initiatives of putting government information on the Internet. This conceptualization is too restricted since open government is not only about openness in informational terms (vision) but also about openness in interactive terms (voice). On the basis of an analysis of 103 articles, this article provides insight into the concepts of openness, transparency and participation, their interactions, and the manner in which they have been discussed in the literature. This analysis shows the differences and similarities between economic, political science and legal perspectives on open government and argues that a multidisciplinary approach needs to be taken. The authors conclude that open government is much too important to leave it to the ‘techies’: scientists and practitioners with backgrounds in law, economics, political science and public administration should also get involved to build sound connections between vision and voice that facilitate active citizenship. Points for practitioners This article provides guidelines for the realization of open government: (1) design open government for synergistic or complementary relationships between transparency and participation, (2) design open government for a diverse population, (3) design open government for direct and indirect effects, (4) design open government acknowledging a variety in desirables and (5) design for continuous learning about effects and side-effects. The authors emphasize that a diversified approach to the design of open government will be more fruitful in the long run than merely understanding it in terms of making information publicly available.

Understanding modern transparency

Proponents and opponents fiercely debate whether computer-mediated transparency has a positive effect on trust in the public sector. This article enhances our understanding of transparency by presenting three perspectives: a premodern, modern and post-modern perspective, and analyzing the basic assumptions of these perspectives about transparency. The analysis shows that the proponents of computer-mediated transparency have a modern perspective on societal change: computer-mediated transparency gives people better information and thus contributes to the rationalization of society. Opponents argue from a premodern perspective that unidirectional, structured and decontextualized forms of transparency will result in a loss of societal trust. Postmodernists focus on the esthetics of transparency and argue for varied and diverse forms of computer-mediated transparency. The value of these three perspectives is illustrated by using them to analyze debates about the need for making school performance in the Netherlands transparent. On the basis of this analysis, the author argues for diversity in systems of transparency to maximize effects on societal trust. Points for practitioners This article evaluates transparency through the Internet from different perspectives. Premodernists see computer-mediated transparency as a threat to traditional mechanisms of trust such as face-to-face contacts, modernists praise computer-mediated transparency for its contribution to trust by providing objective information to the general public and postmodernists value the esthetic value of computer-mediated transparency. The ambivalent relation between trust and openness is at the heart of debates about the new transparency. This article argues that it is imperative that we understand these controversies, and debate which forms of computer-mediated transparency we want in the public sector.

Governing the smart city: a review of the literature on smart urban governance

Academic attention to smart cities and their governance is growing rapidly, but the fragmentation in approaches makes for a confusing debate. This article brings some structure to the debate by analyzing a corpus of 51 publications and mapping their variation. The analysis shows that publications differ in their emphasis on (1) smart technology, smart people or smart collaboration as the defining features of smart cities, (2) a transformative or incremental perspective on changes in urban governance, (3) better outcomes or a more open process as the legitimacy claim for smart city governance. We argue for a comprehensive perspective: smart city governance is about crafting new forms of human collaboration through the use of ICTs to obtain better outcomes and more open governance processes. Research into smart city governance could benefit from previous studies into success and failure factors for e-government and build upon sophisticated theories of socio-technical change. This article highlights that smart city governance is not a technological issue: we should study smart city governance as a complex process of institutional change and acknowledge the political nature of appealing visions of socio-technical governance. Points for practitioners The study provides practitioners with an in-depth understanding of current debates about smart city governance. The article highlights that governing a smart city is about crafting new forms of human collaboration through the use of information and communication technologies. City managers should realize that technology by itself will not make a city smarter: building a smart city requires a political understanding of technology, a process approach to manage the emerging smart city and a focus on both economic gains and other public values.

Social media strategies: Understanding the differences between North American police departments

Within a short timeframe, social media have become to be widely used in government organizations. Social media gurus assume that the transformational capacities of social media result in similar communication strategies in different organizations. According to them, government is transforming into a user-generated state. This paper investigates this claim empirically by testing the claim of convergence in social media practices in three North-American police departments (Boston, Washington DC and Toronto). The research shows that the social media strategies are widely different: the Boston Police Department has developed a ‘push strategy’ while the Metropolitan Police Department in DC has developed a ‘push and pull strategy and the Toronto Police Service a ‘networking strategy’. The paper concludes that a combination of contextual and path-dependency factors accounts for differences in the emerging social media strategies of government organizations. Social media have a logic of their own but this logic only manifests itself if it lands on fertile soil in a government bureaucracy.

Alignment 2.0: Strategic use of new internet technologies in government

This paper challenges the view that strategies for using Web 2.0 should primarily be based upon technological characteristics. The value of the organizational strategic alignment approach for developing specific operational Web 2.0 strategies for government organizations is explored both theoretically and empirically. On the basis of a review of the literature we conclude that there are no a priori reasons why the idea of a fit between IT strategy and business strategic orientation cannot be applied to the development of operational Web 2.0 strategies for government organizations. The empirical exploration based on intervention research at the Dutch Department of Education results in the identification of five configurations: organizational transparency, organizational interactions, policy sector transparency, policy sector interactions and process and policy innovation. These configurations are logically consistent with the strategic orientations of the three directorates of the Department of Education. This overview does not pretend to be exhaustive but validates the idea that an alignment approach leads to differences in operational strategies. The configuration approach provides organizations with useful a starting point for developing their Web 2.0 strategies.

Young people, the Internet and political participation : findings of a web survey in Italy, Spain and The Netherlands

Do young people participate in politics? Some claim that young people are not as much involved in politics as their parents were, others argue that young people are interested in politics but in a different way than previous generations. The Internet is said to play an important role in ‘new politics’. This raises the question whether the Internet triggers new forms of political participation by young people. We use the results of a large scale web questionnaire, among 2,163 students in three countries (Italy, Spain and the Netherlands) to answer this question. We conclude that the Internet reinvigorates political participation but does not trigger a shift from ‘old’ to ‘new’ politics. Traditional politics has managed to rethink its communication formats and therefore plays an important role in political participation by young people on the Internet.

Publishing public performance results on the Internet. Do stakeholders use the Internet to hold Dutch public service organizations to account

Abstract This paper analyzes the relation between publishing public performance results on the Internet, stakeholder accountability, and the effectiveness and legitimacy of Dutch public service organizations. The empirical research focuses on Web sites with performance results of schools and hospitals. These results are published on the Internet by ‘third parties’ (government organizations, associations of public service organizations, and newspapers). Publications of performance results stimulate schools and hospitals to score better on performance indicators because they feel the ‘public eyes’ on them. However, the risk of a ‘performance paradox’ and adverse effects is great since strategic behavior may lead to higher scores but not improve the effectiveness of these organizations. The research provides moderate support for negative effects on the legitimacy of schools and hospitals which may be attributed to the sole use of the Internet as a medium for access to information and negligence of its communicative potential.

E-governance innovation: Barriers and strategies

Various models have been developed to explain the adoption of e-government but systematic research on barriers to e-governance is lacking. On the basis of the literature, this paper develops a theoretical model of e-governance innovation that highlights (1) phases in the innovation process, (2) government and citizen barriers and (3) structural and cultural barriers. Fixing problems and framing stories are presented as the two principal strategies for tackling the various barriers throughout the innovation process. This model is explored in a case study of a technological system for collaboration between police and citizens in The Netherlands. The case shows the value of the model and highlights that e-governance innovation is about designing comprehensive strategies of fixing and framing to tackle the variety of barriers. More specifically, the research highlights that government officials and citizens are not motivated by the promise of technology but by frames that connect technological opportunities to the production of public value.

Conditional Approval and Approval Under Exceptional Circumstances as Regulatory Instruments for Stimulating Responsible Drug Innovation in Europe

The need for fast drug innovation and the public demand for risk‐free drugs creates a dilemma for regulatory authorities: less restrictive procedures involve uncertainties about benefit/risk profiles of new drugs. The European Union has introduced two instruments that regulate early market access: conditional approvals (CAs) and approvals under exceptional circumstances (ECs). We have studied whether these instruments compromise the safety of new drugs and whether they lead to earlier access to innovative drugs. Our study shows that neither of these regulatory pathways accelerates the approval process for innovative drugs. However, the CA pathway shortens the clinical development period. Approvals under ECs are associated with longer clinical development periods, but this regulatory pathway may open up opportunities for specific drugs to be admitted into the market because less comprehensive data are required. Despite the fact that these advanced approvals are based on limited safety databases, there are no special safety issues associated with using these pathways.