Sonia Royo

E‐government and the transformation of public administrations in EU countries: Beyond NPM or just a second wave of reforms?

The adoption of web-based technologies to deliver government services has become a global trend in public administration. E-government inherits the administrative reform policies inspired by New Public Management (NPM) reforms implemented throughout the EU over the past twenty years. However, e-government aims at going beyond NPM reforms, since its goal is to transform the relationships between the public sector and society and to explore new channels of service delivery. The construction and management of websites is becoming an essential element of modern public administration, but little is known about how these initiatives are being implemented. Given the substantial investment in time and other resources in governmental online initiatives, it is essential to begin to evaluate governmental Web site initiatives in terms of quality and effectiveness. The objective of this paper is to study the development of e-government initiatives at regional and local level in the EU through the opinion of those agents directly involved in the projects.

Is E-Government Promoting Convergence Towards More Accountable Local Governments?

ABSTRACT This article analyzes how extensively European Union local governments are using their websites to disseminate financial information in order to evaluate whether electronic-government (e-government) is promoting convergence towards more accountable local governments. We also posit and test various hypotheses about the influence of internal and contextual factors on Internet financial reporting (IFR) practices. Results show that the public administration style, the size of the city, and the audit of financial information by private firms are significant explanatory factors of IFR practices. Our findings also suggest that multilateral organizations are overly optimistic about the possible convergence in transparency and financial accountability through the use of common modes of IFR. That is, the introduction of information and communication technologies without the corresponding institutional reform is leading to limited success of IFR.

E‐government evolution in EU local governments: a comparative perspective

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe an empirical study of the advances and trends of e‐government in transparency, openness and hence accountability in European Union (EU) local governments to determine the extent to which the internet promotes the convergence towards more transparent and accountable government. The paper also tests the extent to which different factors related to the implementation of information and communication technologies (ICTs), the number of inhabitants and the type of public administration style have influenced e‐government developments in the cities studied.Design/methodology/approach – A comprehensive content analysis of 75 local government web sites was conducted using a 73‐item evaluation questionnaire. The evaluations were performed in 2004 and 2007 and 15 EU countries were covered (five per country). To analyse the evolution of e‐government, several techniques were used: tests of difference of means, multidimensional scaling and cluster analysis. The contribu...

IS E-GOVERNMENT LEADING TO MORE ACCOUNTABLE AND TRANSPARENT LOCAL GOVERNMENTS? AN OVERALL VIEW

This paper seeks to assess to what extent e-government enables accountability and transparency in EU local governments. It also provides an overall view about how local governments are implementing ICTs initiatives to bring citizens closer to governments. Although the mere capacity of the Internet for the dissemination of information improves accountability and makes benchmarking easier, our results show that the expected benefits are far from being achieved because e-government projects are still in the early stages. The results also show that, at present, ICTs have not had a dramatic impact on EU local government accountability.

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.

Facebook Practices in Western European Municipalities: An Empirical Analysis of Activity and Citizens’ Engagement

The objective of this article is to provide an initial assessment of Facebook use by Western European municipalities considering two aspects: citizens’ engagement and municipalities’ activity. Data on 75 local governments in 15 countries were collected and tested for both government use and citizens’ engagement. Findings show that the use of Facebook by Western European local governments has become commonplace. The audiences of the official Facebook pages are rather high, but citizen engagement in general is low. Activity levels by municipalities and engagement levels by citizens in general terms are not statistically related to municipality characteristics, Facebook page metrics, or the technological readiness of the population. It seems that channel activity is more a decision on the part of local governments than a consequence of citizen demand. This article proposes a methodology that can be used in future research to measure citizen engagement on social media (SM) platforms. Furthermore, this research highlights the importance that local governments attach to clearly establishing the main purpose of their SM accounts to avoid frustration on the part of citizens that can lead to distrust and reduce the chances that citizens will invest their resources, time, and knowledge in participation.

The unpromising quality and evolution of Spanish public hospital web sites

Purpose – The objective of this paper is twofold: first to determine to what extent Spanish public hospitals are using their web sites to provide useful information to users and to improve hospital‐patient relationships, and second to determine which factors have an influence on web site adoption and level of development over time.Design/methodology/approach – The web sites of public hospitals were searched for and analysed in 2005 and 2008. Their contents and features were scored using an 86‐item checklist. Several hypotheses were proposed regarding the influence of internal and external factors on web site adoption and level of development. Logit and linear regressions were conducted to test the proposed hypotheses.Findings – Half of the Spanish public hospitals do not have a web site. The hospital web sites were acceptable in the information dimension but should improve their interactive features, as well as their navigation and usability. No significant improvements were observed during the period ana...

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.

Crowdsourcing as a tool for e-participation: two experiences regarding CO2 emissions at municipal level

Public administrations need to find innovative approaches to solving changing problems and to fulfilling their duties. Crowdsourcing in local governments could be defined as the use of new technologies in order to take advantage of citizen knowledge to find solutions to municipal problems. This paper analyzes two experiences of crowdsourcing at local level, and the opinions of the citizens and managers involved, to provide an initial assessment of its effectiveness and suggest avenues for improvement. Engaging citizens in e-participation initiatives is a challenge but, for public sector crowdsourcing initiatives, intrinsic motivation and intangible rewards seem to be enough to motivate participants. Results show that managers find citizens’ propositions viable, but publishing the final results and indicating how the ideas selected will be further developed are pending tasks. Caution is needed as failure to deliver the benefits deemed essential by citizens can make them even more reluctant to engage.

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.