Designing e-government services: Key service attributes and citizens’ preference structures

Advances in Internet technologies have led to the popularity of technology-based self-services, with the design of such services becoming increasingly important. Using technology-based services in the public sector as the setting, we identified the key service attributes driving adoption and use of transactional e-government services, and citizens’ preference structures across these attributes. After identifying four key attributes, i.e., usability, computer resource requirement, technical support provision and security provision, we conducted a Web-based survey and a conjoint experiment among 2465 citizens. In a two-stage Web-based survey, citizens reported their perceptions about a smartcard technology for transactional e-government services before use, and their use and satisfaction 4 months later. Results showed that the key attributes (noted above) influenced citizens’ intentions, subsequent use and satisfaction. In the conjoint experiment, citizens reported their preferences for key service attributes for two transactional e-government services. Further, a cluster analysis uncovered four distinct citizen segments, i.e., balanced, usability-focused, risk-conscious and resource-conservative, that can inform efforts in designing e-government services. A post hoc analysis confirmed the appropriateness of the market segmentation in understanding citizens’ adoption and use of transactional e-government services.     

Practice Variation in Public Sector Internal Auditing: An Institutional Analysis

This article aims to analyze the rise of practice variations in public sector internal auditing (IA), giving special attention to the role of agents’ embeddedness in multiple institutional arrangements. IA's trends of development and the characteristics of the public sector context, in fact, make IA inherently subject to multiple institutional forces that interact with the system of values and beliefs of individual internal auditors. The empirical analysis, which relies on case study methodology, highlights the inherent tensions associated with the changing role of IA and shows how different types of IA developed in three case settings, shaped by the agents’ embeddedness in different institutional fields. This article provides a more comprehensive approach to the study of IA adoption and development in public sector organizations than previous literature, and it highlights the relevance of the interplay between actors’ contemporary embeddedness in professional systems and the focal social system as a relevant source of practice variation. In this respect, the case of IA can contribute to previous studies of practice variation in the field of management accounting, shedding some light on the types of tensions that emerge when persons with mixed professional identities are involved in a field.     

Entrepreneurship in the public sector: a framework of analysis in European local governments

In this paper we explore the potential role of entrepreneurship in public sector organizations. At first, we present a review of the entrepreneurship theme in the political science and public management research streams, comparing these ideas with the mainstream business literature on entrepreneurship. Thereafter, we illustrate empirically how Stevenson's classical framework of entrepreneurship can be applied in a European local government context to explain the recent initiatives to compete for and utilize European Union structural funds. The empirical basis of the study is comprised of ten in-depth case studies of local government organizations, five in the UK and five in Italy. Finally, we propose five distinct types of entrepreneurial agents in the public sector: professional politician; spin-off creator; business entrepreneur in politics; career-driven public officer; and politically ambitious public officer.     

基于公众角度的电子政务价值评估方法的研究

随着全球化和信息化的深入发展,推动政府信息化,积极发展电子政务,构建电子政府已经成为一个不可逆转的世界潮流,而电子政务绩效评估体系的不健全,客观上制约了电子政务的进一步深入发展。为合理解决这一问题,以经济学作为电子政务价值评估的基础,以条件价值评估的方法,站在公众角度,提出了一种基于公众的电子政务价值评估方法。     

Concordat or contract

The New Labour Government in England is seeking to promote public/private partnerships in health and social care as a key component of its political project. This article reports the findings from the first phase of an ongoing qualitative research study exploring the relationship between a private sector company and their public sector partners at four study sites. These findings indicate that organizations within the NHS do not view the development of public/private partnerships as a priority and furthermore currently have a limited ability to engage in strategic planning with the private sector. The findings are explored in the broader context of the evolution of ‘managed competition’ in health care systems and the role of partnership in that process.     

Placing the Effect? Gleaning Insights into the Relationship between Citizens’ Use of E-Government and Trust in Government

The effects of e-government on citizens’ trust in government are unclear. This study intends to address this lack of clarity by proposing a novel conceptual framework that can be used to explicate the processes tying e-government use to trust in government. This framework is centred upon citizens’ propensity to trust, perceptions of public sector performance, and trust in government. Citizens’ use of e-government is then argued to strengthen relationships in this framework. The validity of this framework is tested using data collected in 2012 from citizens of Seoul, South Korea. In general, the results offer partial support for the proposed framework. However, the strength of e-government’s influence decreases with more frequent use of information coming from government websites. Implications for effective practice are discussed.     

The Face-to-Face Delivery of Downsizing Decisions in UK Public Sector Organizations: The envoy role

In the wake of current UK public sector retrenchment, this article introduces a role that may be important to successful restructuring management, referred to here as the ‘downsizing envoy’. It involves delivering the news of downsizing decisions, face to face, with the victims and then dealing with the repercussions. After a review of the relevant, but limited, literature the findings are presented from interviews with twenty-four envoys drawn from public sector organizations. They indicate that the envoy role is emotionally demanding and that the public sector context invokes additional pressures that may not occur in other sectors.     

Struts框架应用研究

文章将Struts框架应用于电子政务系统,此系统遵循J2EE规范和MVC设计模式,并且采用了可重用的设计思想和一些组件技术,具有跨平台、低成本、开发高效快捷、可裁剪和移植性强等优点,解决了目前电子政务系统推广普及的一些瓶颈问题。     

公共部门人力资源管理中的问题及对策

以政府为核心的公共部门,不仅可以为大众提供优质公共产品和公共服务,还对社会稳定和经济进步起到至关重要的作用。为了更好地推动国内经济社会的积极发展,必须使公共部门人员的自身价值得到最大程度的发挥。这就需要做好公共部门的人员资源管理,提高他们工作效率和服务质量。为了更好地促进国内社会公共部门人力资源管理发展,论文分析了公共部门人力资源管理中存在的问题,对如何改善提高公共部门人力资源管理提出相应解决方案。     

Decentralization,the New Public Management,and The Changing Role of The Public Sector In Africa

The role of the public sector in most countries around the world is changing both with respect to public service delivery and the stimulation of economic progress. That change, which was occasioned by the need for policy reform, has resulted in what is now termed ‘the new public management’, reflecting a movement away from the old values and norms of public sector administration. This article examines and analyses the concept of decentralization and its relevance to the changing role of the public sector, within the context of ‘the new public management’. and with special reference to Africa. The perspective of the article assumes that the new public management provides an appropriate framework for responding to the efficient delivery of public services in Africa.     

A study of government 2.0 implementation in Indonesia

Web 2.0 has brought innovations in digital government, namely, government 2.0. Social media, as one part of Web 2.0, could potentially support fuller participation and public interaction. Social media enjoys a very high level of acceptance by individual users and government agencies around the world. Web 2.0 and social media usage in the public sector still needs to be tested from the perspective of not only the government but also the community as the recipient of services. Therefore, this study aims to answer the following research questions: How effective has government 2.0 implementation been in Indonesia? Is there a correlation between e-government management and government 2.0 implementation? We adopted the sophistication index (SI) by Bonson et al. (2012) [1] to answer the first research questions. The SI examined the presence of Web 2.0 features and social media applications on these government institutions’ websites. As to answer the second research question, we conducted parametric statistical tests to assess how e-government implementation, based on the Indonesian E-Government Rating (PEGI) score, has influenced the effectiveness of government 2.0 use by government institutions in Indonesia. We observed the websites and social media accounts of 116 Indonesian government institutions. According to the evaluation of Web 2.0 and social media use, the average SI score is 42%. These results indicate that, in general, government institutions in Indonesia have used Web 2.0 and social media features, although the adoption rate has not been equal. The correlations between the PEGI scores and SI values also suggest a positive relationship between the effectiveness of e-government implementation and the effectiveness of government institutions. Therefore, government institutions that have been effective in implementing e-government have also been effective in implementing government 2.0.     

Strategy work in the public sector—A balancing act of competing discourses

This study uses the concept of interpretative repertoires, i.e., localized discourses, to examine how facts are constructed about strategic work in a central government agency. It analyzes strategic work in relation to the public sector context and draws attention to power struggles among different discourses in this context. The identified repertoires can be related to wider public sector management discourses that civil servants need to balance in their strategic work. These discourses can both enable and constrain strategy work, and we conclude that strategy in the public sector needs to be understood in relation to these discourses.     

Differences in leadership behaviour and influence between public and private organizations in Greece

This paper aims at comparing certain managerial aspects which seem to affect and account for the differences in organizational performance between public and private organizations in Greece.

By presenting empirical evidence concerning leadership behaviour and influence in both types of organizations, it becomes apparent that leadership quality is not necessarily the problem in public organizations. A number of leadership substitutes and neutralizers such as bureaucratic controls, external political influence and the limited positive reward power which leaders seem to possess have to be removed in order to enhance the role of leadership in public sector organizations.     

Implementing Change in Public Organizations: The relationship between leadership and affective commitment to change in a public sector context

We propose and test a theoretical framework concerning the relationship between transformational leadership behaviour and affective commitment to change in a public sector context. We apply change management theory to explain how direct supervisors contribute to processes of organizational change, thereby increasing affective commitment to change among employees. While the change leadership literature emphasizes the role of executive managers during change, we conclude that the transformational leadership behaviour of direct supervisors is an important contribution to the successful implementation of change. Furthermore, the results show how the specific context of public organizations determines the transformational leadership behaviour of direct supervisors.     

Using the Harvard HRM model to conceptualise the impact of changes to supervision upon HRM outcomes for different types of Australian public sector employees

Within the Australian context of a shortage of skilled professionals, this article uses the Harvard model of human resources management (HRM) to conceptualise how changes in stakeholder interests coupled with changes to situational factors affect public sector HRM policy choices that in turn affect HRM outcomes for different types of public sector employees. The findings obtained using path analysis suggest that the proposed model explained almost 50% for nurses and less than 14% for police officers. In the case of nurses, the strong significant relationship between HRM inputs and outputs may provide a further plausible explanation for one of the long-term consequences of new public management – namely, the inability to retain skilled employees (especially those in the health sector) across numerous OECD countries. The implication of these findings is that the present public sector HRM policy choice should be re-examined because of its impact on HRM outcomes. Moreover, public sector employees should not be regarded as one uniform group that responds alike to the same policy. Whilst the merits of pursuing a strong auditing focus may have benefited organisations financially, the benefits can only remain if public sector employees, including professionals, are prepared to work under those conditions. The inability to retain nurses in numerous countries, coupled with past studies that have identified (poor) management as a contributing factor, suggests that past HRM policy choices may have to be replaced by new HRM policy choices that focus on employees' perceptions of well-being. However, more studies using different types of professionals are required to confirm the generalisability of these findings.     

Factors affecting the use of e-government in the telecommunications industry of spain

e-Government has become one of the most important keywords for the public sector reform with proponents claiming that it guarantees transparency; Accountability; Interface with citizen; Business; And other local and national administrations. Few, if any, studies have investigated the factors that might contribute to the integration or implementation of e-Government in business; Particularly SMEs. This paper examines the relative importance and significance of company size; Business performance and three types of information communication technology on the use of e-Government through an empirical investigation of 321 businesses in the Spanish Telecommunication sector using a multinomial logistic regression. The main conclusions are that there is a significant lack of use of the internet for e-Government by SMEs and that any use of e-Government is significantly affected by the size of business and the extent of use of information communication technology within the business. Although the targets set by the Eu for e-government might be achieved it is unlikely that many businesses will take advantage     

Towards a theory of the labor market with a public sector

The object is to specify and analyze equilibrium in a labor market with frictions when there is a significant public sector. In the vast majority of equilibrium studies on labor markets, a public sector has been ruled out by assumption. This seems a strange oversight as about 17% of workers in the US are public sector workers, whereas in western Europe, approximately 22% of workers work in the public sector. The goal in this study is to provide answers to such questions as: what happens to private sector wages if the public sector is increased? If the Government increases the number of public sector jobs, does this crowd out private sector jobs? When will private sector wages be greater (less) than the public sector wage? Reasonably complete answers to these questions (and others) are provided within the context of the model developed.     

网络民主兴起背景下我国电子政务发展的具体路径

随着网络民主的兴起和发展，电子政务建设和发展便有了一种价值指引和实践导向。网络民主兴起的背景下，我国电子政务发展的具体路径：期望能够凭借现代技术激发公众的主体意识，提供更多的人性化服务，与政府有序地进行互动，政府具备快速回应能力，以及政务进一步公开，实现公民监督公共权力的运作，促进政府科学行政和依法行政等。     

A multiregional planning and forecasting model with special regard to the public sector

Despite the magnitude of the public sector and its rapid growth most multiregional economic models are lacking public sector content. The present paper aims at incorporating some of the roles of the public sector in the regional development. It is done within the framework of a multiregional optimization model for the allocation of private and public investment, production, employment (and population) over economic sectors and regions. By choosing appropriate objective functions, the model may be used for either planning or forecasting purposes. In the model the focus is on the public sector as a service and provision body and as a provider of public infrastructure. Its role as an agent for transfer payments is not stressed. The capacities of the model are illustrated by means of an example concerning Swedish regional development 1977–1983.     

政府会计国际比较:发现与启示

文章首先从会计确认和计量、财务报告、预算报告等方面,比较了盎格鲁-撒克逊国家和欧洲大陆国家的地方政府会计体系,发现国际背景下公共会计系统的主要特征仍然是会计多样性;接着从法律体系、公共部门组织、公共财务报告的特定目标、会计职业界的兴趣和构成等方面分析了会计多样性的原因和本质;最后,基于我国公共管理领域改革的现状,就如何建立并完善我国的公共部门会计体系提出建议。