Jeffrey Roy

E-governance and smart communities: a social learning challenge

The new information and communications technologies (NICT) and globalization have brought forth a period of great change. Globalization has triggered more intense economic and political interdependencies and has challenged fundamental assumptions about sovereignty and the role of the nation-state. As networks increasingly take hold and reshape the way people live, communicate, and work, the question of what kind of governance people will need in the new millennium is raised. Some elements of answers have been put forward under the general rubric of e-governance. It suggests a more community-based model of governance with greater connectivity being facilitated by new technology. Application of NICT locally leads to economic, social, and political transformations encapsulated by the new smart community movement. This article provides some preliminary mapping of how the collective intelligence of the communities would operate and how the new governance structures would work.

E-Governance & government on-line in Canada: Partnerships, people & prospects

Abstract The objective of this paper is to examine the capacity of the Canadian federal government to effectively harness information technology (IT) as an enabling force in its efforts to meet the present and emerging challenges of a digital age. The main thesis of this paper is that this necessary transformation in public sector governance and accountability is likely to be blocked by an administrative culture that may be ill suited for a digital world. In terms of how governments respond, our two sets of explanatory factors will be determinant. First, partnerships, and the emergence of new collaborative dialogues within government, between governments, and across sectors are a critical dimension. The second, and quite related variable lies in the necessary leadership of people –new skill sets, and new leaders will be required to both empower knowledge workers and defend experimental action. Yet, it is not only the skills composition of workers altering in a digital era, but rather the broader transformations of both everyday and organizational life that are also at play. In this sense, digital government must reposition itself to become an engaged and constructive partner in shaping the new governance patterns that will otherwise render it rudderless. Government must produce a new “culture” in order to harness the enormous potential of digital government.

Investigating Political Polarization on Twitter: A Canadian Perspective

This article investigates political polarization in social media by undertaking social network analysis of a sample of 5,918 tweets posted by 1,492 Twitter users during the 2011 Canadian Federal Election. On the one hand, we observed a clustering effect around shared political views among supporters of the same party in the Twitter communication network, suggesting that there are pockets of political polarization on Twitter. At the same time, there was evidence of cross-ideological connections and exchanges, which may facilitate open, cross-party, and cross-ideological discourse, and ignite wider debate and learning as they are observed by nonaffiliated voters and the media at large. However, what appeared to be far less likely was any increased willingness or tendency for committed partisans to shift their allegiances as a result of their Twitter engagements, and we postulate that Twitter usage at present is likely to further embed partisan loyalties during electoral periods rather than loosen them; a dynamic that would seemingly contribute to political polarization.

E-service delivery and new governance capacities: 'Service Canada' as a case study

The internet has given rise to online service delivery (or e-service) in the public and private sectors alike. The purpose of this paper is to provide a critical assessment of both the Canadian federal governments e-service experience to date and the prospects of success for Service Canada – the latter being a new entity for citizen-centred service delivery in a multichannel environment. Our primary interest lies in better understanding the governance dimensions to this transformation and the extent to which these dimensions are well aligned. The Service Canada experience to date illustrates the governance complexities surrounding the introduction and pursuit of e-services in a public sector context. More than a technological challenge, the online delivery channels must coexist in a multichannel world where the interface between government as a service provider and the citizen as the customer is driving a more ambitious restructuring of roles and relationships.

Rethinking Government-Public Relationships in a Digital World

Abstract Many have argued that new electronic technologies have the potential to transform how governments relate to users of public services. This article explores the limits of e-government as it is being conceived by testing it against three service recipient models: customer, client, and citizen. We argue that despite the opportunities that electronically-based service transformations present for enhancing democratic citizen engagement and the power of clients, the market-inspired customer image is likely to emerge as the most powerful way in which service recipients are characterized and addressed. The business architecture of e-government being installed today in the pursuit of better customer relationship management may also represent a decreasingly attractive medium for client empowerment and democratic interactions between service recipients and government.

Business perceptions and satisfaction with e-government: Findings from a Canadian survey

Abstract This paper examines business perceptions and satisfaction with e-government. Survey data is analyzed from businesses across Canada to determine their use of e-government and their perceived satisfaction with this technology for public service delivery. There are three research questions of this paper: 1) Are there significant differences for businesses that use the internet to contact government compared to those that do not? 2) Is there is a relationship between having a more positive perception overall by business of government and e-government satisfaction? and 3) Is there a relationship between businesses having input into regulatory changes, essentially being inclusive of business in the regulatory process, and e-government satisfaction? The results from the statistical models indicated that all three questions were confirmed. The findings of this study imply that governments should try to understand the business environment. A more positive attitude by business towards government, and being more inclusive of business in regulatory changes, leads to greater e-government satisfaction.

Introduction: E-government

The emergence of e-government may not be a natural evolution of existing public sector structures and processes, although the degree to which it is not drives much debate. Meaningful research on this topic could thus be helpful in providing a basis for more clarity, insight, and understanding of this important topic. The aim of this special issue on e-government is, as a result, to generate new and relevant scholarly contributions on the transformation at work in the public sector today, due to the growing online patterns of socioeconomic and political activity shaping individual and organizational behavior around the world.The emergence of e-government may not be a natural evolution of existing public sector structures and processes, although the degree to which it is not drives much debate. Meaningful research on this topic could thus be helpful in providing a basis for more clarity, insight, and understanding of this important topic. The aim of this special issue on e-government is, as a result, to generate new and relevant scholarly contributions on the transformation at work in the public sector today, due to the growing online patterns of socioeconomic and political activity shaping individual and organizational behavior around the world.

Open Data and Open Governance in Canada: A Critical Examination of New Opportunities and Old Tensions

As governments develop open data strategies, such efforts reflect the advent of the Internet, the digitization of government, and the emergence of meta-data as a wider socio-economic and societal transformational. Within this context the purpose of this article is twofold. First, we seek to both situate and examine the evolution and effectiveness of open data strategies in the Canadian public sector, with a particular focus on municipal governments that have led this movement. Secondly, we delve more deeply into—if and how, open data can facilitate more open and innovative forms of governance enjoining an outward-oriented public sector (across all government levels) with an empowered and participative society. This latter vantage point includes four main and inter-related dimensions: (i) conceptualizing public value and public engagement; (ii) media relations—across traditional intermediaries and channels and new social media; (iii) political culture and the politics of privacy in an increasingly data-centric world; and (iv) federated architectures and the alignment of localized, sub-national, and national strategies and governance mechanisms. This article demonstrates how each of these dimensions includes important determinants of not only open data’s immediate impacts but also its catalytic ability to forge wider and collective innovation and more holistic governance renewal.

12 Canada’s Technology Triangle

A short distance west of Toronto, Ontario, one finds what has come to be called ‘Canada’s Technology Triangle’ (CTT). The Triangle is an established system of four networked municipalities — Cambridge, Kitchener, Waterloo and Guelph which together comprise one of Canada’s most thriving socio-economic regions as supported by a range of indicators such as regional employment, new firm creation and regional growth rates (Smith 1996).

Building shared accountability into service transformation partnerships

Governments at all levels in Canada have entered into partnerships with the industry to effect user-focused, cross-agency service integration and multichannel service delivery. This article examines the problem of developing shared accountability mechanisms for public-private service transformation partnerships, which satisfy the demands of new business relationships and traditional democratic governance values. It first explores the widening canvas of collaborative information technology-driven partnerships and then draws on the emerging shared accountability literature and practices to set out five conditions which should be met in the establishment of a shared accountability regime for such partnerships. These criteria statements are used to analyse the accountability provisions of a new partnership between Service BC (the lead service delivery entity for the British Columbia government) and a consortium led by IBM Canada. The most significant shortcoming would appear to be its very limited public dimension. The article ends with a discussion of how that problem might be addressed.