Citizen participation in public administration: investigating open government for social innovation

In recent years, public sector organizations have increasingly focused on citizen contribution by adopting instruments known from open innovation. By collaborating with the periphery and leveraging external knowledge, government institutions initiate social innovation and stimulate a positive change for society. This article examines the involvement of citizens in an ideation platform initiated by a local government and investigates the motivations affecting participation intensity. Drawing on self‐determination theory, we analyze what motivates citizens to participate in an open government platform and how these motivations influence participation quantity. Based on a survey among platform users and the analysis of usage data from the platform operator, we find that motivations of citizen participation in public administration greatly vary across forms of participation. Whereas, intrinsic motivation is positively associated with producing and consuming platform content, external and introjected regulation negatively relate to individuals’ active contribution. At the same time, external regulation is positively associated with evaluation behavior.     

Circulation of loyalty: Relationships between mobile instant messenger and offline character emoticon store

Mobile instant messenger (mIM) service providers are extending their online services to the offline platform. Asia's largest mIM service providers, LINE and Kakao, are brining life to its signature characters such that they appear not only on the text screen but also on offline character flagship stores. This study investigates mIM users' motives in visiting the store and identifies the role of mIM characters in facilitating users' loyalty toward the mIM service provider. To comprehensively understand users' motivations in visiting the offline flagship store, the study conducted a focus group interview and used the confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to identify seven key motivations. The empirical findings are drawn from 332 Korean respondents that use the mIM service and have experience in visiting the character flagship store. The study finds that users who actively use mIM services and emoticons are likely to visit the store due to the identified factors. A virtuous cycle of loyalty from online to the offline platform, and vice versa was also found. Findings of this study confirm that mIM character flagship stores are a strategic way for mIM service providers to communicate with users and create their unique brand identity.     

Universal service issues in converging communications environments: the case of the UK

Convergent trends in telecommunications and broadcasting technologies and markets have called forth a re-examination of universal service provision in the communications sector and present an opportunity to update and re-formulate its provision. In the UK, proposed changes announced in the 2000 UK Communications White Paper and subsequent 2003 Communications Act, whilst still emphasising the importance of guaranteeing universal access to stipulated key public services and content across communications, suggest a closer relationship between economic and content regulation will be developed. This paper argues that whilst it is important to consider issues of economic efficiency in the communications sector, this should neither obscure nor compromise the need to create progressive, socially responsible, universal service reflective of the requirements of 21st century users. Crucial to the delivery of such a system in the UK is an actively supportive government policy backdrop and the development of the new convergent regulator the Office of Communications as an effective regulatory force.     

Between a rock and a hard place: Recession and telecoms taxation

Excessive taxation in the telecoms services sector is rarely found in developed economies as it hinders high technology investments, confines innovation and eventually impedes economic growth. Recession eventually complicates this process. In this paper the repercussions of multi-layer service taxation on the Greek mobile sector during the last five years are studied. It is found that public revenues, companies and subscribers would significantly benefit from a direct decrease of the special levy imposed on the use of mobile services today. An econometric model that links the consumption propensity of mobile voice service usage with the disposable income of the users and the price of the product is applied. The results of this research indicate that the adoption of high sector specific service taxes with the objective of increasing government revenues creates an economic distortion that lowers service usage, shrinks sector revenues, and, ultimately, jeopardizes the competitiveness of the mobile telecommunications sector.     

CONTRACTING FOR GOVERNMENT SERVICES: THEORY AND EVIDENCE FROM U.S. CITIES*

Local governments can provide services with their own employees or by contracting with private or public sector providers. We develop a model of this ‘make‐or‐buy’ choice that highlights the trade‐off between productive efficiency and the costs of contract administration. We construct a dataset of service provision choices by U.S. cities and identify a range of service and city characteristics as significant determinants of contracting decisions. Our analysis suggests an important role for economic efficiency concerns, as well as politics, in contracting for government services.     

How advanced are Italian regions in terms of public e-services? The construction of a composite indicator to analyze patterns of innovation diffusion in the public sector

This paper applies an open and transparent methodology to construct a composite indicator for the analysis of the diffusion of ICT in the public sector and the development of public e-services across Italian regions. This methodology, based on OECD/EC-JRC Handbook and incorporating experts′ opinion into a Data Envelopment Analysis, will allow us to define a ranking of Italian regions in terms of ICT adoption and of e-service development. Data are obtained by merging four different surveys carried out by Between Co. (2010–2011) and Istat – Italy′s National Bureau of Statistics (2009). We add to extant empirical literature in three ways. First, we offer a comprehensive measurement of advances in digital government that is not circumscribed to a single domain (e.g. administrative procedures of public administrations) but is rather aimed to capture a wide spectrum of public e-services (e-government, e-education, Intelligent Transport Systems, e-health). Second, we tackle a major drawback of existing statistics and benchmarking studies which are largely based on the count of services provided online, by including more sophisticated indicators on the quality of services offered and on back office changes. The results – both in terms of scores and regional rankings – highlight the presence of different patterns of adoption and use of public e-services at the local level. Third, we offer a rich account of the extreme heterogeneity of public e-service development and of the underlying technological and organizational change at the sub-national level, and hence provide a basis for the differentiating policy measures across regions.     

AI governance in the public sector: Three tales from the frontiers of automated decision-making in democratic settings

The rush to understand new socio-economic contexts created by the wide adoption of AI is justified by its far-ranging consequences, spanning almost every walk of life. Yet, the public sector's predicament is a tragic double bind: its obligations to protect citizens from potential algorithmic harms are at odds with the temptation to increase its own efficiency - or in other words - to govern algorithms, while governing by algorithms. Whether such dual role is even possible, has been a matter of debate, the challenge stemming from algorithms' intrinsic properties, that make them distinct from other digital solutions, long embraced by the governments, create externalities that rule-based programming lacks. As the pressures to deploy automated decision making systems in the public sector become prevalent, this paper aims to examine how the use of AI in the public sector in relation to existing data governance regimes and national regulatory practices can be intensifying existing power asymmetries. To this end, investigating the legal and policy instruments associated with the use of AI for strenghtening the immigration process control system in Canada; “optimising” the employment services” in Poland, and personalising the digital service experience in Finland, the paper advocates for the need of a common framework to evaluate the potential impact of the use of AI in the public sector. In this regard, it discusses the specific effects of automated decision support systems on public services and the growing expectations for governments to play a more prevalent role in the digital society and to ensure that the potential of technology is harnessed, while negative effects are controlled and possibly avoided. This is of particular importance in light of the current COVID-19 emergency crisis where AI and the underpinning regulatory framework of data ecosystems, have become crucial policy issues as more and more innovations are based on large scale data collections from digital devices, and the real-time accessibility of information and services, contact and relationships between institutions and citizens could strengthen – or undermine - trust in governance systems and democracy.     

Simple money-based tests for choosing between private and public delivery: a discussion of the issues

The decision when to provide services by the public sector and when to use the private sector is a fundamental one. The economic literature emphasises that the efficiency of the mechanisms of delivery will depend on the contractual nature of what can be achieved by the parties and the political economy forces. Totally separate from this literature, however, governments have tried to implement practical and simple tests to indicate when to use private and when to use public delivery methods. The aim of this paper is to address some of the issues associated with simple money-based tests.     

中国医疗卫生改革何处去——“甩包袱”式市场化改革的资源集聚效应与改进

本文归纳了中国医疗卫生服务领域市场化改革的基本特征——"甩包袱"式的市场化,并分析了此条件下医疗卫生资源在城乡之间、预防和治疗、低价药品和高价药品之间的分布状况。结论认为,"甩包袱"式的市场化条件下,医疗卫生资源会越来越向城市聚集、向疾病治疗聚集、向高价药品聚集,相反农村地区会缺医少药、预防体系薄弱、低价药品匮乏。接着,本文分析了医疗卫生服务的基本性质和公众对其改革的期望目标,指出"甩包袱式"的市场化改革只能解决"寡"的问题,而不能解决"均"的问题。本文建议继续市场化改革,但政府必须鼓励医疗服务竞争、打击垄断、维护好市场秩序,并承担起公共卫生和最低层次基本医疗服务的责任。     

Telecommunications development in Israel: The growth of public services and lessons from developing countries

The article begins with a discussion of the importance of the public services sector in the development of a modern economy, with specific reference to the organization and growth of public services in Israel. While the telecommunications sector is becoming increasingly important in national economies, it is often mismanaged in developing countries and its profits are used to subsidize other areas of the economy, particularly the postal services, which are run at a loss. The author analyses the various reasons for the lack of effective telecommunications policies in developing countries, and concludes with a series of recommendations for Israel which arise from that analysis.     

Diffusion and usage of public e-services in Europe: An assessment of country level indicators and drivers

We analyze the state of the art of indicators on e-government, e-health, e-procurement and e-participation. We survey the main methodological properties of these indicators, and highlight their heuristic potential. Further, we address empirically the issue of the explanation of the availability scores, i.e. how the supply of the various e-services in each country is affected by political, institutional and socio-economic differences, and is followed by actual usage. The econometric analysis uncovers the importance of broadband penetration and higher education as drivers for most of the types of e-services and users (citizens and businesses). Moreover, a corruption-free and agile public sector proves to be an important pre-condition for more effective supply and usage. Despite data limitations and the complexity of the underlying diffusion phenomena, our study is the first truly longitudinal contribution aimed at disentangling the common drivers of such an important phenomenon – the e-services availability and usage across European countries. As such, this work appears useful to inform the policy debate and practice, in a phase characterized by a prospective reorientation of the public e-services provision and policy agenda.     

加拿大电力管理可鉴之处

介绍了加拿大电力事业有关情况.加拿大电力管理具有"政企分开、各省办电、公私结合、服务客户"的特点,市电力公司大部分为私营企业,自负盈亏.农电企业是民办私营,都是自主经营、自负盈亏、自我约束、自我发展的经济实体和市场经济竞争的主体.加拿大电力强调供电可靠性、依法管理和为用户服务.     

Student perceptions and performance in online and offline collaboration in an interior design studio

Competence in collaboration is one of the critical abilities that interior design majors are expected to develop during the course of their education; however, few students are competent to collaborate with others online. The purposes of this study were to identify student perceptions and performance in online collaboration compared to those of offline collaboration and to explore the way students collaborate online. A total of 29 junior interior design students participated in the study. After finishing each online and offline collaborative project, they completed a survey. The findings show that students are more satisfied with offline collaboration and perceive offline collaboration as more effective than online collaboration; however, no significant difference was apparent in student performance online and offline. In addition, the findings show the need to provide appropriate online interface for design collaborations. This paper includes lessons learned and recommendations to promote both online and offline collaboration in a design studio.     

Which one is more valuable in coordinating the online and offline distribution? Service support or online price coordination

Nowadays effective mechanisms to coordinate the online and offline distribution become increasingly important in the business market. In this research, we first propose two mechanisms (i.e. the offline service to the retailer and the online price coordination) for the manufacturer and the retailer to employ. Our results show that the online price coordination does help coordinate the online and offline distribution and bring higher profits to the manufacturer-retailer supply chain and thus both the manufacturer and the retailer, while the offline service to the retailer does not; comparing to the offline service to the retailer, the online price coordination is a better strategy to be utilized to alleviate the online to offline competition. Furthermore, we investigate if a novel coordination mechanism, which combines the offline service to the retailer with the online price coordination, can help coordinate the online and offline distribution better and becomes the optimal coordination mechanism. Surprisingly, our results show that compared to both the offline service to the retailer and the online price coordination, this combination coordination mechanism does show a dominant competitive advantage to bring highest profits to all parties.     

Internet Car Retailing

We investigate the effect of Internet car referral services on dealer pricing of automobiles in California. Customers of an online service pay on average 2% less for their car ($450 for the average car). 25% of the savings come from purchasing at low-price dealerships affiliated with the online service. The remaining 75% stem from information provision by the online service, bargaining by the service on behalf of consumers, and cost efficiencies. A consumer receiving the mean online price does better than 65% of offline consumers, conditional on the car being purchased.     

“另类”甲骨文

在貌似大者恒大的企业级软件市场上,甲骨文一直是个让人又爱又恨的矛盾集合体。大环境的风向已然变了,这艘巨轮准备如何应对？     

The potential of internet technologies: insights from the public sector

The objective of this paper is to examine the implications of the internet for public sector organisations. Although there are considerable barriers to the full implementation of internet technologies, the findings illustrate that the internet presents public sector organisations with the potential to enhance the ways in which they fulfil the needs of users of their products and services.     

Understanding What Has Been Happening to the Public-Sector Pay Premium in Great Britain: A Distributional Approach Based on the Labour Force Survey

This article investigates what has been happening to the public-sector wage differential in Great Britain over the period 1994–2017. The evidence indicates that apart from men in the lower part of the pay distribution, the public-sector pay premium has declined for all public-sector workers. This decline has coincided with a decline in the overall pay gap, which is associated with changes in the composition of public- and private-sector workforces. As the relative pay disadvantage experienced by public-sector workers at the top of the pay distribution has worsened over time this must raise serious concerns about the ability of the public sector to recruit and retain the staff it needs to deliver public services.     

Friending the taxman: On the use of social networking services for government eID in Europe

The provision of identities online continues to be a fiercely debated topic in policy circles, with proposals emerging for public sector organizations to leverage pre-existing social networking services for their own identity management purposes. Within the broader context of private sector organizations springing up as identity providers, this article explores — from a socio-legal perspective — the merits and drawbacks of using social networking services for government eID in Europe. It then reviews the present and future European policy environment concerning official use of social networking credentials. We focus specifically on legislative measures currently being proposed in the EU to facilitate the Identification, Authentication and Signature policy, within the scope of the ongoing Electronic Signatures Directive revision process and the launch of the proposed Electronic Trust Services Regulation.     

Public Policies for the Preservation of Capital in Older Areas

This paper provides a framework for considering approaches to the preservation of older neighborhoods. Particular attention is paid to the role of financial institutions in the dynamics of neighborhood change and to public/private collaborative efforts to stem decline. In general, public policie to preserve neighborhoods must be comprehensive in nature and require a variety of tools to take into account the unique aspects of a neighborhood's environment. To create or maintain a stable neighborhood environment, however, there are no alternatives to an overall approach which embodies local governments, the private sector, and private citizens. Any other approach may provide short-run gains that will not create the dynamics necessary for long-term stability.