Basilio Acerete

E-government developments on delivering public services among EU cities

Abstract Since the late 1990s, governments at all levels have launched electronic government projects aimed at providing electronic information and services to citizens and businesses. Although Web sites are becoming essential elements of modern public administration, little is known about their effectiveness. The objective of this paper is to study the quality and usage of public e-services to citizens in Europe. According to the results of this study, e-government seems to be following a more or less predictable development pattern ranging from a stage in which interaction is limited to what is shown on the screen to stages in which there is two-way communication and service and financial transactions can be completed with a satisfactory level of protection of personal privacy. At present, e-government in almost all the cities studied is merely an extension of the government, with potential benefits in speed and accessibility 24/7. Despite the limited degree of development observed, online access has advantages that are impossible to replicate offline. Even though few expect e-government to completely replace traditional methods of information, e-government is becoming a powerful tool of transformation that has become embedded in the culture and in the agenda of the public sector.

What is Driving the Increasing Presence of Citizen Participation Initiatives

Nowadays there is an imperative for governments to be more responsive to community needs, and public sector modernisation programmes are introducing opportunities for citizen participation. We look at citizen participation initiatives through the lenses of institutional and stakeholder theories. Using survey data and exogenous variables we analyse experiences in thirty OECD and MERCOSUR local governments. We find that the possible gains in legitimacy and trust explain the efforts made towards citizen participation. In addition, the different levels of commitment towards meaningful citizen participation suggest that factors such as power and urgency can be complementary to legitimacy when analysing citizen participation.

Taking its toll: The private financing of roads in Spain

The article analyses the cost of using private finance to build, finance and maintain toll roads in Spain. Spain is the primary exponent of private finance for roads in Europe, where the case rested on the lack of public finance, in contrast to the UK that has stressed value for money. The evidence shows that more than half of the toll charge represents the cost of finance; the cost of private finance is nearly double the cost of public finance; and financing is underpinned by various forms of public support creating risks for the taxpayers.

New development: New global health care PPP developments—a critique of the success story

Health care public–private partnerships (PPPs), where clinical services as well as infrastructure are delivered by the private sector, are coming under the spotlight as governments seek to achieve value for money in health budgets. Existing examples have been widely reported as successful. However, this article urges caution as a closer look at the evidence shows that handing over control of service delivery to the private sector is difficult to monitor and evaluate, carries cost implications which remain largely unquantified and can create additional risk.

Citizen Participation in German and Spanish Local Governments: A Comparative Study

In recent decades, citizens have become more and more disenchanted with the traditional institutions of representative government, detached from political parties, and disillusioned with old forms of civic engagement and participation. This has favored a renewed interest in citizen engagement and citizen participation and a growing re-emergence in academic and political discourse of ideas and values of community, localism, and citizen participation. This article analyzes the main objectives and the actual implementation of citizen participation initiatives in the local governments of two European Continental countries, Germany and Spain. The aim is to find out the factors that affect the possible decoupling between the objectives and the “real” uses of citizen participation. Our results show that most local governments in these two countries are using citizen participation only to increase the level of perceived legitimacy or to comply minimally with legal requirements, without really taking advantage of citizen participation to enhance decision-making processes. These findings confirm that institutional theory becomes the rationale to explain the implementation of citizen participation in these two European Continental countries.

Making Concessions: Political, Commercial and Regulatory Tensions in Accounting for European Roads PPPs

Abstract Governments increasingly use private finance to fund roads infrastructure. In particular the European Commission has promoted the use of public private partnerships (PPPs) to deliver the projects forming the trans‐European Network. This use of private finance raises important questions about how public monies and assets are accounted for. The paper examines, first, accounting in both public and private sectors for roads PPPs in Spain and the UK, countries which not only have considerable experience in the use of private finance for the provision of roads but also act as exemplars of a number of differences which may be significant from an international perspective in terms of financial reporting and economic outcomes. Second, it examines the tensions between national, European Union and international accounting pronouncements. Our findings suggest that the business environment has influenced the development of accounting policy. In Spain a powerful toll sector presence within the legal framework has led to substantial variations, having real economic impact. In the UK, the accounting regulator has prevailed over political concerns. For European public sector accounting, conflict remains between political choice and technical accounting. These findings may have global relevance, as the adoption of international accounting pronouncements will not remove these conflicts.

The Effect of New Legislation on the Disclosure of Performance Indicators: The Case of Spanish Local Governments

This article analyzes the effect of new accounting legislation on the disclosure of performance indicators in the financial statements of Spanish local governments. Based on agency and institutional theories, the article also assesses whether the disclosure of performance indicators is used to make the monitoring of local government performance easier for stakeholders or merely to project an image of good management. The results show that the enactment of new legislation has only led to a partial implementation, most local governments disclosing financial and budgetary indicators but very few providing indicators related to the performance of public services. The institutional theory (symbolic value) seems to be the rationale that best explains this pattern of disclosure.

Perceptions About the Effectiveness of E-Participation: A Multistakeholder Perspective

Local authorities increasingly need to demonstrate the legitimacy of their decisions and to develop effective and appropriate forms of citizen engagement. Previous literature has highlighted many advantages of citizen engagement, but has also acknowledged that authentic public participation is rarely found. This chapter uses different sets of empirical data reflecting the opinions of different stakeholders about e-participation initiatives. We aim to analyze whether citizens are familiar with e-participation tools, what citizens and organizers think about the effectiveness of citizen participation, and, finally, whether there is a perceived effectiveness gap between online and offline (traditional) forms of participation. Results show that, despite a high rate of Internet use, the level of use of e-participation among citizens is quite low. Nevertheless, the opinions of citizens and public sector managers regarding e-participation tend to be positive. As regards perceived effectiveness, some differences exist between citizens’ and managers’ perceptions. Citizens feel that e-participation is less costly and at least as good as offline participation, but it seems that greater changes are achieved through offline participation. Managers tend to agree that online participation is better in reaching a higher number of potential participants, and also in its immediateness and in the lower effort required, whereas offline participation is thought to be better at building social capital.

E-Participation and Climate Change: Are Local Governments Actively Promoting Responsible Behaviors and Offering Opportunities for Citizen Involvement?

Citizens are demanding greater transparency and accountability from their governments, and seek to participate in shaping the policies that affect their lives. The diffusion of the Internet has raised expectations that electronic tools may increase citizen participation in government decision-making and stop the decline of trust in political institutions. This paper brings together two relevant topics, e-participation and climate change, analyzing the websites of the environment departments of European local governments that have signed the Aalborg+10 commitments, to establish to what extent European local governments are making use of the Internet to promote e-participation and environmental-friendly behaviors among their citizens. Our results show that the developments on e-participation are higher in those areas just giving information than in the areas related to interactivity. The Internet as a tool to revitalize the public sphere is still limited to those countries with higher levels of transparency and a culture of citizen engagement.

Public-Private Partnership in Spanish Local Governments

As in other European Union countries, Spanish local governments, by law and according to their population size, provide a number of basic services, which include the local police service, fire-fighting, refuse collection, street cleaning, land use control, urban transportation, social services, leisure and cultural activities, public works and town planning, slaughterhouses, central markets, housing, etc. Only the larger Spanish municipalities participate in the delivery of services such as education or health, which are under regional government responsibility. The vast majority of Spanish municipalities are very small. Recently, some Autonomous Communities have been establishing supra-municipal or district authorities (Comarcas), grouping several municipalities in order to manage the delivery of common local services.Public-private partnership initiatives were introduced into Spain by the Municipal Services Act of 1955, which allows the provision of local services by private operators. This act was updated by the Public Contracting Act of 1995, which was recently amended to bring it into line with EU legislation. Spanish local governments have traditionally provided services using almost all PPP methods, such as local government corporations, concessions or franchises, lease of assets with or without additional investment, public-private ventures, associations with other local governments, public entities and non-profit organisations.The results of our work on local service provision, set out in this paper, show a higher degree of PPP initiatives in medium-sized Spanish cities than in the rest. We find no statistical differences in the levels of efficiency observed in public and private urban transport operators. Finally, we observe both a need to update car park concessions in Spanish local administrations, incorporating mechanisms to increase efficiency, and an absence of homogeneity in these concessions because there is no unit that advises public authorities.