Noella Edelmann

Collaboration for Open Innovation Processes in Public Administrations

In Government 2.0, public value no longer needs to be provided by government alone but can be provided by any combination of public agencies, the private sector, civil society organizations or citizens. The ubiquitous presence of ICT, citizens’ digital literacy, and their potential willingness to participate online can efficiently enable collaborative production. Models for the inclusion of external stakeholders in public value production can increase the degree of public sector innovation and improve the outcomes of such processes. Governments can use the most valuable resource they have, the citizens, by establishing opportunities for civil society and businesses to engage in an open government.

Exit the E-government Ivory Tower: A Training Strategy -- A Case Study from Austria

The national Austrian e-government curriculum aims to train government and public administration staff at all organisational levels, so the training plan needs to be developed on the basis of the national e-government aims and adapted according to the target groups, the contents and teaching modalities. This paper presents the implementation of the e-government curriculum in Austria that began in 2006 and continues today. Based on a case study approach, the paper looks at the issues important in the implementation of a nationwide e-government strategy and training programme. The Austrian e-government curriculum is considered in terms of its strengths and the aims achieved, but also the limitations, weaknesses and mistakes made. It concludes that countries wanting to implement a nation-wide e-government strategy, regardless of whether they are an emerging nation or a highly-advanced country, need to support their e-government strategy with an e-government training plan.

How online lurking contributes value to E-participation: A conceptual approach to evaluating the role of lurkers in e-participation

This conceptual paper looks at the online behavior known as lurking, the value of lurking and how it contributes to e-participation and innovation in public administrations. Online lurking is often defined using negative terms, but it is argued in this paper that positive definitions may be more appropriate and using Takahashis definition of “active lurkers” can show how online participation that is not visible may have an impact in online participation and e-participation by engaging in activities such as listening, acting as an audience, using, propagating and sharing knowledge. This works represents a contribution to a more differentiated understanding of online participation. It aims to show that lurking represents many online behaviors that may not always be visible, but are important in online contexts, as they represent participants who are active and may contribute valuable and innovative information. The role and value of lurkers is considered in general for online participation and specifically for e-participation and public administration.

Lurking in online participation and e-participation

This PhD aims to contribute to the body of knowledge on online participation, addressing in particular the online behaviors known as lurking. Lurking is probably the most common online behavior, so it is important to understand what lurking is, how it is defined, its value and impact. A literature review shows the many definitions of lurking, and that the definition chosen impacts how online research is interpreted. The results from an e-participation case study, reveal that online lurking can be understood as a valuable online behaviour, and that Takahashi and Yamasakis definition in particular helps to view lurkers as active participants in a network or system and may be the best way to evaluate the role and impact lurkers have in e-participation.

Motivational Factors in Open Access Publishing. Developing a Methodology for Evaluating Users’ Perspective of the OA Journal JeDEM

Watch the VIDEO of the presentation. JeDEM, the Journal of E-democracy and Open Government (jedem.org), was first published in 2009 as an initiative of the Centre for E-Governance. It is an open access e-journal (that follows the green open access road) with a focus on topics such as e-democracy, e-participation, open government and open access. The journal follows the green open access road, and it is indexed with EBSCO [1] , DOAJ [2] , Google Scholar and the Public Knowledge Project metadata harvester [3] . With a wide range of subjects and research fields, articles cover diverse topics so publishing in JeDEM attracts a wide range of authors and readers from different disciplines. While the effects and impact of open access publishing have been studied, there is less research on the motivational factors of publishing in open access e-journals (such as JeDEM) that focus on a user perspective (see e.g. Nicholas et al 2015; Jamali, Nicholas, and Herman 2016). A review of JeDEM by Quality Open Access Market (QOAM) [4] in 2016 provides an external evaluation of JeDEM, but in this contribution, we wish to present and to discuss a research design to assess the users’ perspectives and motivational factors for publishing open access whilst also considering different user types and disciplines. A workshop held at CEDEM16 (Conference for E-Democracy and Open Government 2016 [5] , see Lampoltshammer, Edelmann, und Schossboeck, 2016)), shed some light on the most important topics for researchers in open access publishing. The results of this workshop revealed some motivations for publishing open access. Another workshop will be held at CeDEM Asia 2016 (Conference for E-Democracy and Open Government Asia 2016) [6] , with the aim of uncovering further motivational factors and understanding them from a comparative perspective. Comparing the results of both workshops and a literature review regarding motivational factors for open access publishing will form the basis for developing and choosing the questions for a quantitative study (online survey) to be sent out to all users of JeDEM by summer 2017. Conferences in the area of open access will be used to discuss the methodology and set-up of this questionnaire. Registered and potential users will be encouraged to answer the survey, also to find out about their use of the features of the journal (e.g. commenting articles) and how such features contribute to the concept of open science and scholarly communication. By assessing the user perspective of our open access journal, we seek to answer questions such as: Can we distinguish differences in motivation for publishing in open access across user types and disciplines? What differences can be determined? How can users be classified according to their motivations and does it make sense to consider user types and motivations for management activities of an open access journal? What type of users are JeDEM users? What are users’ opinion on different aspects of open access publishing and its further development, e.g. open peer review etc. and how do user opinions differ across the disciplines or countries? How can results help other e-publishers or editors in the area of open access and contribute to the field of scholarly communication? As an ongoing research project, we will be looking forward for feedback and recommendations about how to develop the user survey and our activities for the journal. [1] EBSCO Information Services www.ebsco.com [2] DOAJ Directory of Open Access Journals https://doaj.org/ [3] https://pkp.sfu.ca/ojs/ [4] https://www.qoam.eu/ [5] www.donau-uni.ac.at/cedem16 [6] www.donau-uni.ac.at/cedemasia2016

e-Government Readiness, Strategy and Two Different User Groups - in Austria

This paper offers a description of the e-Government Strategy in Austria and its e-Government readiness, and looks at how two different user groups are experiencing e-Government in Austria. Studies conducted show that adolescent citizens are more optimistic and enthusiastic about the possibilities offered whilst the municipalities are more skeptical. The Austrian e-Government strategy, the decisionmakers and IT solution providers must understand the needs of all stakeholders and provide viable solutions accordingly.