David Valle-Cruz

The effects of technology use on efficiency, transparency, and corruption in municipal governments: preliminary results from a citizen perspective

The idea that government transparency is directly related to the use of technology was boosted when Barack Obamas Transparency Memorandum was published in 2009. According to this view, the implementation of information technologies in government has significant effects on efficiency, transparency, and corruption, among other variables. However, it is not clear if citizens perceive these effects. Based on a pilot survey conducted in 2014, this study systematically examines the role of technology use and its effects on transparency, efficiency, and corruption in a Mexican municipal government. Our preliminary analysis suggests five distinctive variables within the technology use construct (ICT interaction; use of social media; use of chat, e-mail, and kiosks; mobile technology and security; and artificial intelligence and free Internet). Overall, the results seem to indicate that interactions between citizens and governments supported by emergent technologies improve citizens perceptions of transparency and efficiency. In contrast, we could not find supporting evidence regarding the effect of technology use on citizens perceptions of corruption.

Dynamic Interaction Between Emerging Technologies and Organizational Factors in Government Agencies

This study is based on the conceptualization of Electronic Government (E-Government) as the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) applied in Government. However there is a lack of studies on areas of emerging technologies. In particular, this research is situated in the field of E-Government, often called digital government or virtual government. The research is based on the dynamic interaction between emerging technologies and organizational factors in governmental agencies of a developing country, in order to answer two questions: What emerging technology factors mediated by organizational variables of government agencies facilitate transparency and efficiency, and reduce corruption in governments? How do these technological, organizational factors interact and affect transparency, efficiency and corruption? with the perspective of the Technology Enactment Theory. Methodology is based on two study cases of the State of Mexico. Preliminary results have found an existing lack of studies in the area of emergent technologies in government, and citizens’ perception based on EGovernment tools that could be useful to improve government services.

E-gov 4.0: a literature review towards the new government

E-government (E-Gov) has evolved along side Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) and different models have been developed to understand this field. At the same time web mobile technology (MT) with artificial intelligence (AI) have been improving the services that government agencies (GA) provide to citizens and businesses. The purpose of this poster is to link both trends by a bibliometric study and to suggest a new concept for electronic government (E-Gov 4.0).

Understanding Network Links in Twitter: A Mexican Case Study

Social media platforms have been widely spread across by politicians and public officials. Recent studies have focused on content analysis looking for sentiment analysis, other scholars work has been oriented on the descriptive use and adoption of Online Social Media (OSM). Finally, the last trend has tried to understand content analysis by wording. There is a lack of research about network links, their quality and the users that are part of such network. The purpose of this research is to assess Twitter network links from a case study. We analyzed a sample of 1,592 tweets using the Netlytic Web tool to extract five different clusters and classified the links into four categories: supporters, citizens, journalists and government officials. This research presents two contributions: 1) the links analysis perspective of social media; 2) the methodology to assess the impact of online social media and government promotion.

Open Innovation, Living Labs and Public Officials: The Case of "Mapaton" in Mexico

Public officials around the world are aware that solutions on public problems need a closer relation to citizens. The era of a government in isolation that has all the answers is ending. More and more co-production, collaboration and peer production concepts are emerging on public management conversations. But there is very little evidence of these joint projects using technology. Open innovation in governments is a recent research field in Mexico. This paper reports the case of the use of open innovation in Mexico Citys transportation system, named Mapaton (large map), using gamification to engage citizens in order to map transportation routes using a smartphone App. With the model Open Innovation Process Phases proposed by Mergel, we interviewed six persons --public officials, citizens, academics -- from the Mapaton coordinator team. We found that an innovation process is an iterative work and requires a preliminary stage of building trust between governments and citizens. Also the result of this research argues that this combined effort will change.

Open Justice in Latin America: Judiciary Websites Under Scrutiny

1. ABSTRACT Information technology has reached the judiciary branch, we know very little about the impact, challenges and pitfalls of this new adoption. The purpose of this paper is to explore this impact on a different government branch: the judiciary. And focus on the open justice new field of research using some metrics approach at the website portals in the Latin America region. An assessment mode we tested on this region, which has been developed by Sandoval & Gil-García [14] has been used to assess a sample of 25 countries during the month of July, 2015. Findings reveal a great disparity among the different countries in the region and their initial stage of becoming part of the open justice trend.

Social Media in Local Governments in Mexico: A Diffusion Innovation Trend and Lessons

Academic research about how local governments use social media platforms are scarce. Most of the research is focused on services, comparative perspectives, or assessment. Little is known about the impact of Twitter and Facebook on communication means or strategic use for promoting a conversation with citizens. Despite these facts, the majority of local governments implement social media into their web sites and communications without any strategy or knowledge about their advantages or perils. Also scholars are blind-folded of what kind of research has to be done on social media and governments to understand this phenomenon and capitalize its use on public service. The purpose of this chapter is to identify new trends and lessons on social media use in local governments. Analyzing a data collection of Twitter and Facebook from the 32 Mexican local governments from 2010 to 2014, we discovered a behavior pattern very similar to the diffusion and innovation theory proposed by Rogers (Diffusion of innovations. Simon and Schuster, New York, 1995). We analyzed our data from this focus and provide five lessons to understand local governments’ use of social media.

Social media governments from innovators to laggards: the case of Mexican local governments with diffusion of innovations theory

The majority of local governments implement social media into their web sites and means of communications without any strategy or knowledge about their advantages or perils. Academic research about how local governments use social media platforms is scarce. Most of the research is focused on services, comparative perspectives or assessment of e-government. Local governments are blind-folded on where they efforts will arrive. The purpose of this research is to provide some direction to the implementation of technology in governments. Based on the diffusion of innovations theory proposed by Rogers we analyze data of Twitter and Facebook accounts from 32 Mexican local governments from 2010 to 2014 and place them on each category. According to this theory and our sample, just one local government could be considered an innovator, four local governments considered early adopters, eleven are considered early majority, other eleven are considered late majority and five of them are considered as laggards. This will be an example of how social media adoption has been implemented on government actions.

Facebook impact and sentiment analysis on political campaigns

The use of social media platforms in political campaigns has widely been studied. Many scholars have provided evidence about the impact of Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. So far; some of them have argued on the uselessness of these technologies about changing vote decisions, candidates perception or political information efficacy. Most recently, the sentiment analysis has provided new paths to understand the link between the social media technology and voters. This paper analyzes data collected from Facebooks posts (4128 posts) and their emoticons - love, hate, anger, likes, etc. - that reveals some kind of sentiment from the users in a local government campaign in the central State of Mexico, which took place in June 2017. Findings show that political parties have a large impact with few posts, but in general, this paper reveals that voters perception of candidates in Facebook is bad for the winner political party, since despite of this situation, the political party with the best sentiment impact, could not win the elections.

Towards an understanding of artificial intelligence in government

The purpose of this paper is to conceptualize Artificial Intelligence and applications used by the government through a meta-analysis to identify definitions, techniques, and applications for government. We found that Artificial Intelligence is useful for the decision-making process, cost reduction, changes in the environment, biomedics, disaster prevention and response, education, and personalize services among other applications.