Ida Lindgren

Electronic services in the public sector : A conceptual framework

Electronic services provided by governmental organizations, here referred to as public e-services, are frequently discussed in the e-government literature. There is, however, little consensus on th ...

Exploring the importance of citizen participation and involvement in e‐government projects: Practice, incentives, and organization

Purpose – The purpose of this research is to investigate if, and in that case, how and what the e-government field can learn from user participation concepts and theories in general IS research. We ...

National patterns of teamwork during an emergency management simulation

As a means to facilitate coordination of international relief teams during sudden onset disasters, the UN has formed a structure called the On Site Operations Coordination Center (OSOCC). The main objective of the OSOCC is to help local authorities re-establish control in the affected area. As with any command and control operation where people from different parts of the world are involved, multiculturalism can become an issue. Differences in values, norms and attitudes can create problems in communication, planning and execution of the operation. We use the C3Fire microworld and the Schwartz Value Survey as our main instruments to study cultural influences on command and control decision making in simulated OSOCC. The C3Fire microworld has been used extensively in empirical research on command and control. Results show that culturally-driven differences in planning and allocation of roles/responsibilities can pose potential barriers to efficient decision making in command and control.

A case study of information and communication technology in emergency management training

This paper addresses the roles of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in training for effective emergency management and inter-organisational coordination. Collocation can encourage the ...

Emerging forms of inter-organizational and cross-sector collaborations in e-government initiatives : Implications for participative development of information systems

Purpose – This study aims to explore recent public sector trends, inter-organizational and cross-sectorcollaborations, and analyzes these in terms of implications for participative development of i ...

Time to Refuel the Conceptual Discussion on Public e-Services – Revisiting How e-Services Are Manifested in Practice

There are various models and frameworks describing the nature of e-services in the public sector. Many of these models are based on previous conceptualizations and have evolved over time, but are first and foremost conceptual creations with weak empirical grounding. In the meantime, practitioners in the field have continued to further develop e-services, and new advancements in technology have enabled new solutions for e-services. In the light of advancements in practice, and the limitations seen in current conceptual work concerning public e-services, we identify a need to refuel the conceptual discussion on e-services in the public sector by empirically investigating how e-services can be manifested in practice. The aim of this paper is to illustrate the possible variations of e-services in practice, and to discuss this variation in relation to the conceptual representation of the phenomenon. Based on qualitative interviews with employees involved with e-service development and provision at a large governmental agency, we illustrate that an ‘e-service’ can take on many different forms within an organization; ranging from downloadable forms, to complicated self-service systems that require expertise knowledge and IT-systems with specific processing capacity. The notion that all services mediated through a website can be understood under one general umbrella term, without further categorization, needs to be challenged.

Studying the Effects of Peer-to-Peer Sharing Economy Platforms on Society

Peer-to-peer sharing economy platforms potentially have big effects on values in society. Policymakers need to develop governance arrangements to benefit from the positive effects, while simultaneously mitigate the negative effects. This requires having a structured overview of the effects of these platforms on the diversity of values that are involved. Currently no theoretical overview of these effects on values is available. The objective of this article is to structure the research into the effects of sharing economy platforms. We use a theoretical mapping that was developed by using a Grounded Theory approach. By positioning the literature onto the map, we derived an overview of the extend in which each effected value has been studied so far. Based on this mapping, we propose five research themes into specific effects of peer-to-peer sharing economy platforms: social values, consumer and societal risks, working conditions and labor market dynamics, environmental sustainability and innovation.

Open Innovation Contests for Improving Healthcare --- An Explorative Case Study Focusing on Challenges in a Testbed Initiative

Working with innovation is important in several sectors and industries. One emerging arena for innovation is the arrangements of innovation contests. The aim of the paper is to describe and characterize an open innovation contest for improving healthcare, and to address the challenges involved. The research is a qualitative, explorative and interpretive case study of a Swedish region providing publicly funded healthcare. The conclusions show the need to generate and analyze data from actors with several perspectives in the contest. Challenges identified include defining and precisely expressing the problem, separating and delimiting the different problems and achieving a joint view. Other challenges were identifying and attracting knowledgeable participants, to consider incentives, and communicating the contest. In the collaboration stage, challenges involved the contest design, enabling knowledge sharing, managing various agendas, and being open-minded to new ideas; and finally, assessing whether the problem is suitable for open innovation contests at all.

Stakeholder Involvement in Public e-Service Development : Broadening the Scope of User Involvement

This paper investigates if user involvement (UI) theory and theory on stakeholder theory (ST) can be merged to form a new theoretical entity that can inform whose voice should be heard in public e-service development. The investigation is based on a hermeneutic literature review and analysis. The result is a merger of ideas on who should be involved (extracted from stakeholder theory) with ideas on why this involvement should be organized (extracted from the user involvement literature). The paper presents research in progress, meaning that the merger presented is not particularly advanced. Still, this merger of ideas is substantial and important as it could function as the fundament for a more elaborate understanding of how to determine who should be involved in public e-service development. Involving the ‘right’ actors is believed to lead to higher quality in public e-services; therefore, advancement in our knowledge on how to identify these actors and finding better ways of involving these actors is needed.

Coordinating Public E-services - Investigating Mechanisms and Practices in a Government Agency

Coordination is a critical enabler when creating and managing coherent, integrated, secure and smart public electronic services (e-services) as a part of digitalization. With an increased demand for such services, coordination as an internal organizational phenomenon is becoming increasingly important. Based on a qualitative case study, and informed by coordination theory, this paper investigates two different theoretical views applied on internal e-service coordination within a government agency in Sweden. At the outset, the agency is seeking one generic way to coordinate the current heterogeneous and fragmented internal e-service landscape in a more efficient way. Hence, our aim also includes investigating the prerequisites and potential for this type of coordination. We conduct this study in two stages. First, we apply a well-established theoretical lens from organizational theory on a set of coordination efforts, thereby perceiving coordination as a planned and anticipated activity based on a fixed set of mechanisms. Second, we apply a lens of coordinating as emergent practice, which allows for an in-depth investigation of more flexible and dynamic aspects of coordinating activities in daily work. By combining these two views, we argue that this approach can facilitate and increase understanding of the dynamics and flexibility needed to understand the type of coordination needed in public e-service contexts. This can also imply that there is no single best practice or ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach to internal e-service coordination. Instead, organizations need to acknowledge the need for multi-dimensional views revealing the inherent complexity of coordination; as planned as well as emerging activities.