eJournal of eDemocracy and Open Government最新文献

{"title":"Open Judiciary in a Closed Society","authors":"M. Gechlik, Di Dai, J. Beck","doi":"10.4018/978-1-5225-9860-2.ch054","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-5225-9860-2.ch054","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter examines the open government initiative and the application of open government principles to the court system in China in order to illustrate what “open judiciary”—and, ultimately, an “open state”—looks like in a relatively closed society. The authors present a comprehensive background of China's open government initiative and related court reform efforts, along with critical analysis of trends in “Guiding Cases” (“GCs”), de facto binding precedents released by the Supreme People's Court (SPC) of China, and subsequent cases (“SCs”) that cite GCs. Drawing on these theoretical and empirical studies, the authors discuss the prospects of leveraging China's open government and open judiciary efforts to develop an open state in the country and identify key factors for promoting open judiciary in other closed societies around the world.","PeriodicalId":36678,"journal":{"name":"eJournal of eDemocracy and Open Government","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82704888","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"E-State","authors":"Nnanyelugo Aham-Anyanwu, Honglei Li","doi":"10.4018/978-1-5225-9860-2.ch073","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-5225-9860-2.ch073","url":null,"abstract":"Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is known to facilitate governance and citizen participation in States' decision making processes. However, e-governance researchers have argued that beyond the current use of ICT to facilitate already existing means of governance lays the possibility of its use to fundamentally revolutionise public administration. There is the ideation and aspiration for ICT-based States (E-states) which exist without governments, and whose citizens can self-organise and self-govern without the need for institutions. This is a conceptual paper which discusses the viability and prospects of this aspiration. The study reviews literature in the areas of politics, public administration and Information Technology in the context of governance and public administration. This study ultimately argues that the possibility of establishing an E-state will be dependent on changing existing political ideologies and systems of governance to anarchism. As it is, ICT cannot be a substitute for governments and certain governmental institutions but can only help them.","PeriodicalId":36678,"journal":{"name":"eJournal of eDemocracy and Open Government","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84534418","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Web Accessibility and Transparency for Accountability","authors":"M. Angélico, Amélia Silva, S. Teixeira, Telma Maia, A. Silva","doi":"10.4018/978-1-5225-9860-2.ch074","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-5225-9860-2.ch074","url":null,"abstract":"Local government is a political power close to citizens and constitutes a mainstay of democracy. Because of their mission, the guidelines promoted by local government must be embedded in strategies of accountability and public communication. In that sense, it is worthwhile to ask if “local government accountability is being an inclusive concept?” In Portugal, transparency of municipalities is being accessed through the Municipality Transparency Index (MTI). The study aim was to investigate whatever MTI measures accessibility. This study examined the availability of local government information on the website for a sample of 86 Portuguese municipalities and presented the results of a quantitative evaluation of the web accessibility based on W3C guidelines, using an automated tool. Based on the main concepts of transparency and accessibility, it explored static association between MTI and web accessibility. This study contributed to the discussion about transparency as a social value and is of great importance for local policy makers and civic movements in favor of disabled people.","PeriodicalId":36678,"journal":{"name":"eJournal of eDemocracy and Open Government","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84201994","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Information Management and Strategic Communication for Institutional Change in Ethiopia","authors":"Nigussie Meshesha Mitike","doi":"10.4018/978-1-5225-9860-2.ch059","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-5225-9860-2.ch059","url":null,"abstract":"The growing need for institutional effectiveness and efficiency in meeting institutionally set objectives cannot be seen independent of information management and strategic communication. As a result, information management and strategic communication practices have become quite useful to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of institutions. To find out the information management and strategic communication situation in the Southern Nations, Nationalities and People's Regional state (SNNPRs) in Ethiopia, primary data were collected from nine zonal departments in selected three most populated zones namely Sidama, Gedeo and Hadiya among the 13 zones in the regional state. The study of the information management and strategic communication activities in the three zones was believed to indicate the overall performance in the public administration practices of the region where the three zones alone comprised almost 40% from 15 million population of the regional state. As part of the study, some secondary sources were also used and relevant literature was reviewed. Then, the data were classified using sex, age, qualification and experience, and also analyzed using frequency, percentage, mean value, standard deviation, T-test and correlation analysis. Based on the analysis, it was found out that the information management and strategic communication practice was less effective due to its intuitional placement where the section was given no or little importance in the institutional administration. Besides, it was found out that most of the challenges and problems related to Business Processing and Reengineering (BPR) implementation for institutional change in the state were quite related to the marginalization of information management and communication practices along with the inadequacy of finance and office equipment, and poor office situations like in the case of Gedeo zone. Actually there was better institutional change/reform in the public administration practices of Hadiya zone than the rest two zones. There was a strong correlation among the zones in information exchange level and challenges of BPR implementation. There was, indeed, about 63% success story in reducing process time, and more than 50% in reducing cost and about 50% success in proper use of resources and creating accountability in Hadiya zone though much more is expected. Sidama and Gedeo zones seem to have by far low successes in BPR implementation.","PeriodicalId":36678,"journal":{"name":"eJournal of eDemocracy and Open Government","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86628553","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Not Forgetting the Public Servants","authors":"Ronald Woods","doi":"10.4018/978-1-5225-9860-2.ch015","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-5225-9860-2.ch015","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter draws attention to the importance of the public service as a key agent in the implementation of subnational governance and development initiatives. A framework for teaching-learning and capacity-building more broadly is provided that builds on a model of decentralization implementation. This gives rise to a program of training that focuses on helping public servants: to improve their understandings of decentralization and on the country and its goals; to consider the design of the system of multi-level governance; to focus on both central and local capacity; and to adopt flexibility, supported by feedback mechanisms, in the process of decentralization. Each element is discussed in some detail, and illustrated by means of examples from the author's experience as an educator in Australia as well as contributor to initiatives in countries adopting federal systems of government, including Nepal, Indonesia, and Pakistan.","PeriodicalId":36678,"journal":{"name":"eJournal of eDemocracy and Open Government","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"72436716","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Commercialization of Local Public Services","authors":"Beatriz Cuadrado-Ballesteros, Isabel‐María García‐Sánchez, Jennifer Martínez‐Ferrero","doi":"10.4018/978-1-4666-9803-1.CH007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-4666-9803-1.CH007","url":null,"abstract":"The most important reason to decentralise the public services delivery is to make the citizens' needs better known by the local governments, so it follows to act more efficiently to their satisfaction. Nonetheless it has been found an opportunistic use of these agencies to avoid legal limits on indebtedness imposed on sub-national administrations, generating fiscal illusion. Accordingly, the aim of this study is to analyse the effect of the functional decentralisation processes on public revenues and financing. The results show that the use of decentralisation process, especially companies are created by left-wing political parties in order to raise more income from commercialization of public services. It was also found that these practices are strongly linked to the municipality's fiscal pressure.","PeriodicalId":36678,"journal":{"name":"eJournal of eDemocracy and Open Government","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84619435","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Evidence of an Open Government Data Portal Impact on the Public Sphere","authors":"Rui Pedro Lourenço","doi":"10.4018/978-1-5225-9860-2.ch033","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-5225-9860-2.ch033","url":null,"abstract":"Data portals are being created as part of open government strategies to increase transparency. But although the potential of the internet to increase transparency (as data disclosure) has been widely considered in the literature, there is no reported evidence of any of the released data actually being used by their ultimate recipients (citizens) for public accountability purposes. This descriptive research effort aims to find evidence of the impact of open government portals, asserting whether data is indeed being used and for what purposes. One contract portal was selected and Google Search was used to find portal references on the internet. A qualitative content analysis approach was adopted, whereby references were examined with respect to its main purpose and data usage. Evidence was found of contract data being used, among others, to identify possible situations of corruption, nepotism and misusage of public resources, support argumentation on public policy debates and, in general, to hold public officials accountable in the public sphere through ‘blame and shame' sanctions.","PeriodicalId":36678,"journal":{"name":"eJournal of eDemocracy and Open Government","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83368086","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Reflecting on the Success of Open Data","authors":"Peter A. Johnson","doi":"10.4018/978-1-5225-9860-2.ch107","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-5225-9860-2.ch107","url":null,"abstract":"Despite the high level of interest in open data, little research has evaluated how municipal government evaluates the success of their open data programs. This research presents results from interviews with eight Canadian municipal governments that point to two approaches to evaluation: internal and external. Internal evaluation looks for use within the data generating government, and for support from management and council. External evaluation tracks use by external entities, including citizens, private sector, or other government agencies. Three findings of this work provide guidance for the development of open data evaluation metrics. First, approaches to tracking can be both passive, via web metrics, and active, via outreach activities to users. Second, value of open data must be broadly defined, and extend beyond economic valuations. Lastly, internal support from management or council and the contributions of many organization employees towards the production of open data are important forms of self-evaluation of open data programs.","PeriodicalId":36678,"journal":{"name":"eJournal of eDemocracy and Open Government","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80727725","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Enhancing Citizens' Participation via Recommender Systems","authors":"Luis Terán","doi":"10.4018/978-1-4666-8430-0.CH006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-4666-8430-0.CH006","url":null,"abstract":"With the introduction of Web 2.0, which includes users as content generators, finding relevant information is even more complex. To tackle this problem of information overload, a number of different techniques have been introduced, including search engines, Semantic Web, and recommender systems, among others. The use of recommender systems for e-Government is a research topic that is intended to improve the interaction among public administrations, citizens, and the private sector through reducing information overload on e-Government services. In this chapter, the use of recommender systems on eParticipation is presented. A brief description of the eGovernment Framework used and the participation levels that are proposed to enhance participation. The highest level of participation is known as eEmpowerment, where the decision-making is placed on the side of citizens. Finally, a set of examples for the different eParticipation types is presented to illustrate the use of recommender systems.","PeriodicalId":36678,"journal":{"name":"eJournal of eDemocracy and Open Government","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76545821","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Collaborative Governance and the Implementation of Fiscal Responsibility Frameworks","authors":"Sonia D. Gatchair","doi":"10.4018/978-1-5225-1645-3.CH021","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-5225-1645-3.CH021","url":null,"abstract":"Local governments, like their central government counterparts, must demonstrate increased fiscal responsibility. Although the Jamaican finance ministry has overall responsibility for direction and control of fiscal management at all levels of government, successful implementation cannot be achieved solely by the finance ministry's efforts, but requires the inputs of other actors, including central government, local authorities, the private sector, and civil society groups. This chapter examines the strategic use of collaborations among local authorities and other stakeholders in the implementation of fiscal management policies, in particular revenue-raising efforts in Jamaica, a small island state. The study examines relationships/partnerships (collaborative governance) focusing on the actors, structure, and processes in the implementation of fiscal policy reforms in local authorities. It finds that deliberate efforts must be made to manage complexity arising from overlapping networks with unclear boundaries and fluidity in participation and leadership.","PeriodicalId":36678,"journal":{"name":"eJournal of eDemocracy and Open Government","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77343736","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}