Publications

Electronic Government leads to technology-enabled transformation of government organizations, and consequently of their relationships with citizens, businesses and other arms of government. Developing countries can greatly benefit from Electronic Government development, in terms of increasing the capacity of government organizations to meet tremendous socio-economic needs. However, they also face common challenges: weak implementation, delivery and coordination; policy-strategy and strategy-implementation gaps; insufficient human capacity; lack of research to precede project implementations; etc. This paper proposes a rigorous Electronic Government Development Framework (EGOV.*) to address some of these challenges. The framework enables systematic construction of Electronic Government for a given Public Administration (PA) in terms of: (1) establishing the readiness of the PA for ICT-enabled transformation; (2) determining state-of-the-art in Electronic Government practices and solutions around the world, as relevant to the PA; (3) building a PA-wide vision and strategy towards the development of high-quality Electronic Government; (4) constructing a government program to implement this strategy; (5) building human capacity within the PA, covering leadership, management and technical skills, to be able to execute and benefit from this program; and (6) establishing a Resource Center for Electronic Government on the basis of existing institutions, particularly government and academia, and raising the capacity of this Center to execute the program. The framework has been applied in three countries - one completed, one ongoing, and one to start.

Information sharing (IS) is a key capability required for one-stop and networked government, responding to a variety of intra-organizational, inter-organizational, or cross-national needs like sharing service-related information between parties involved in the delivery of seamless services, sharing information on available resources to enable whole-of-government response to emergencies, etc. Despite its importance, the IS capability is not common for governments due to various technical, organizational, cultural, and other barriers which are generally difficult to address by individual agencies. However, developing such capabilities is a challenging task which requires government-wide coordination, explicit policies and strategies, and concrete implementation frameworks. At the same time, reconciling existing theoretical frameworks with the IS practice can be difficult due to the differences in conceptions and abstraction levels. In order to address such difficulties, this chapter proposes a conceptual framework to guide the development of Government Information Sharing (GIS) policies, strategies, and implementations. By integrating theoretical frameworks and the GIS practice, the framework adopts a holistic view on the GIS problem, highlights the main areas for policy intervention, and provides policy makers and government managers with conceptual clarity on the GIS problem.

The success of the electronic governance (EGOV) benchmarking has been limited so far. Lacking a theory to integrate existing conceptualizations has made the acquisition and sharing of knowledge produced by different benchmarking exercises difficult. In order to address this problem, this paper: 1) explains the nature of the EGOV benchmarking activity though a well-established theoretical framework - Activity Theory, 2) applies the framework to carry out a mapping between a number of existing EGOV benchmarking conceptualizations, 3) develops an unified conceptualization based on these mappings and 4) validates the resulting model though a real-life national EGOV strategy development project. The use of the Activity Theory in the paper has enabled defining and relating initial dimensions of the EGOV benchmarking activity, and mapping the dimensions present in existing conceptualizations. This not only created a unifying theoretical basis for conceptualizing the EGOV benchmarking activity but allowed learning from and integrating existing conceptualizations. The work impacts on the EGOV benchmarking practice by enabling a logical design of the activity, and contextually correct understanding of existing EGOV benchmarking results with respect to their intended usage.

The 5th International Conference on Theory and Practice of Electronic Governance, ICEGOV2011, took place in Tallinn, Estonia from the 26th to the 28th of October 2011, under the patronage of the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communication of the Republic of Estonia. The conference was co-organized by: e-Governance Academy in close partnership with Enterprise Estonia, Estonia; and Center for Technology in Government, University at Albany, State University of New York, USA. Part of the ICEGOV conference series, ICEGOV2011 was supported by the series coordinator – UNU-IIST (United Nations University – International Institute for Software Technology) Center for Electronic Governance, Macao SAR, China. The conference took place in the framework of the Nordic IT Week and various ICEGOV2011-collocated events were organized as part of this framework on the 29th of September 2011.

The paper presents a measurement framework for assessing the e-Governance maturity level of countries through the analysis of municipal websites. The paper also introduces the results of a survey carried out to apply and validate the framework. Applied to municipal websites of different countries, the framework considers websites content and design. For each country, the sample included three websites of local governments belonging to regions with low, medium and high population, respectively. The country measure was calculated based on the average obtained by the municipal websites adjusted by a correction factor based on the compliance of general features. The numerical values obtained by countries allow comparing their degree of e-Governance maturity and ranking them accordingly. The contribution of this paper is to present a novel approach for assessing e-Governance maturity of countries based on analyzing how electronic public services are delivered through municipal websites to citizens living in different populated areas.

The paper presents the development of a dependable messaging infrastructure for Electronic Government. Based on a few simple concepts like messages, members and channels, the infrastructure was developed to facilitate the exchange of messages by government agencies in a dependable and automated way. The dependability requirement was addressed on various levels: design, development and application. Considering design, the infrastructure comprises a small core offering plain messaging services, a repository of extensions to provide additional services, and a development framework to rigorously specify, implement and verify messaging extensions. Considering development, the infrastructure was build through rigorous use of modeling and analysis in various development stages. Considering applications, government agencies can use the infrastructure to exchange messages through carefully managed logical communication channels and the prudent use of necessary extensions, including extensions to implement required security measures. The paper presents the development and explains why the outcome satisfies the dependability requirement.

The availability of domain frameworks to enable rapid development of Electronic Public Services (EPS) is essential to meet the increasing demand for mature EPS by various government stakeholders. This paper presents a composite domain framework comprising frameworks to build the Front-Office and Back-Office parts of an EPS. The framework supports a set of domain requirements obtained through a detailed analysis of over 30 concrete public services. After presenting these requirements, the framework is described in four stages - architecture, design, implementation and instantiation - all using UML to capture the artifacts built during development. We also illustrate the application of the framework through a case study in developing an Electronic Licensing Service by means of framework instantiation. We conclude with some comments on the complexity, flexibility and performance of the framework. This work was carried out as part of the e-Macao Project to build a foundation for e-Government in Macao, funded by the Government of Macao SAR.

Responding to the issues of complexity, relevance, cost and risk of Electronic Governance (EGOV), we witness a specialization of the roles responsible for EGOV development and operation, professionalization of the personnel playing such roles, and utilization of the EGOV services and information to fulfill citizen needs. In order to build competencies required by such (managerial, professional, technician and user) roles, education becomes a key success factor, and a growing variety of EGOV learning opportunities emerges. However, lacking conceptual underpinnings for EGOV education, the discovery, analysis and integration of such opportunities is difficult. To address this need, the paper develops a theoretical construct for EGOV education; applies six measures to this construct: who - learners, why - roles, what - competencies, how - programs, where - schools, and when - prerequisites; and validates it through a landscaping exercise focusing on EGOV university programs. 

 Social media is one of Web 2.0 tools that governments are adopting for interacting with citizens. Through their use, citizens are able to share their views, react to issues of their concern and form opinion. However, despite the infusion of such tools in citizens’ lives, governments face several challenges to fully benefit from their adoption. One technical challenge is the lack of automated intelligent tools for processing citizens’ opinion in government social media. This paper presents a project - DECIDE 2.0, focusing on the provision of a framework, including a software tool, for overcoming such challenge.  The aim of the project is to combine context-based search and argumentation in a collaborative framework for managing (retrieving and publishing) service- and policy-related information in government-use social media tools. For developing the framework, the research work is underpinned by artificial intelligence and software engineering techniques. The developed framework will be applied for the qualitative and quantitative assessment of citizens’ opinion on a specific policy issue. A pilot test of the framework is planned to be carried out in collaboration with a local government. The project is executed by two universities in Argentina and Mexico.

 Web 2.0 technologies allow a massive number of people to talk to government and governments increasingly want to hear from public. However, the available technology and automated tools enabling policy makers to make sense of large-scale data shared online are limited. This paper presents a research project called Supporting Collaborative Deliberation: Designing Consultation Portals for Deliberative Practices in Brazil (SCD-Brazil). The project aims at investigating how governments can make sense of large scale number of policy inputs received from citizens with the aid of online consultations forums. Based on the analysis of four government-run online consultation forums from Brazil, this research explores the use of technology in visualizing large-scale argumentation data for policy purposes, suggesting challenges and opportunities in promoting Internet-based policy forums to mediate how government and citizens make sense of democracy.

There are several well-established surveys on e-government. These surveys employ different assessment models for e-readiness, digital divide and other relevant factors, leading to varying conclusions on the global state of e-government. This paper presents a comparative study of 11 international surveys on egovernment between 2001 and 2004. It identifies a common set of ‘core indicators’ for assessing e-readiness and suggests ways to determine the weights for them. The paper also introduces the concept of a ‘target eready state’ and examines how it may provide a scale for determining the progress of individual countries.

Electronic Government (e-Government) provides a means to good and better government facilitating citizen engagement, effective service delivery and improved efficiency in government functions. E-Government’s potential for contributing to good government is dependent on strong e-Leadership that is formalized in executive IT leaders and Government Chief Information Officers (GCIOs). After presenting the motivation for e-Leadership and GCIOs, the paper introduces the evolving role of GCIOs and discusses main issues for defining a GCIO system, such as readiness assessment, legal and regulatory framework, institutions, and GCIO education and development. The experience of five countries in establishing a GCIO system is presented, analyzing the regulatory framework, capacity-building programs and organizational support defined as part of such systems. Based on country experiences and the importance of national mechanisms and policies to coordinate efforts of CIOs in government through cross agency institutions and programs, the paper proposes a framework for instituting a GCIO system. The main contribution of the paper is a step by step approach for developing a GCIO system in the public sector.

This paper presents generic domain models to underpin the development of Electronic Public Services (EPS) – from conceptual models, through requirements and architecture, to implementation models. The conceptual model follows the analysis of 25 concrete business licensing and 6 social welfare services delivered by governments to businesses and citizens respectively. Based on this model, we characterize generic business licensing and social welfare services and, following the Governance Enterprise Architecture, synthesize a generic process for delivering Authorization and Certification classes of public services. From the generic process, requirements are obtained and the architecture is defined to support these requirements. The architecture comprises three categories of components – Front-Office, Mid-Office and Back-Office. We present the static and behavioral view of this architecture and show how it supports the variability in the development of concrete e-Licensing or e-Welfare EPS through: concrete process specification at the Mid-Office, binding of specialized tasks to automation support at the Back-Office, and general use of configuration files. Finally, we discuss an Enterprise Application Framework as a particular implementation of the architecture based on open standards, and describe the use of the framework for rapid development of EPS based on concrete project experience. This work was carried out in the context of the e-Macao Project, a two year project funded by the Government of Macao SAR to build a foundation for Electronic Government in Macao.

Electronic Governance for Sustainable Development (EGOV4SD) refers to the use of Information Technology (IT) to transform the working of government and its interaction with the public while advancing socio-economic development and protecting natural resources for future generations. Although significant efforts are dedicated to EGOV and SD individually, research at the intersection of both domains is scarce and a systematic EGOV4SD research framework is yet to emerge. In order to contribute to the development of such a framework and in particular to identify how EGOV initiatives contribute to the SD goals in the current government practice, this paper presents and analyzes ten case studies of existing EGOV initiatives with explicit SD objectives. Based on the EGOV4SD assessment framework, each case study is characterized by its context (who, where and when), problem (what), solution (how) and contribution – how the solution addresses the problem (why). The analysis identified the list of SD problems addressed by the case studies and the list of EGOV solutions applied to address such goals, and correlated both lists across the case studies to find out typical problem-solution patterns applied in the EGOV4SD practice today.      

Effective Information Technology (IT) leadership is critical for achieving a good alignment between business needs and IT means of an organization. In the public sector, IT leadership is increasingly realized through the Government Chief Information Officer (GCIO) function, typically established by governments based on local circumstances and emerging needs. This makes peer-learning about the working of such systems and their transfer between different government contexts challenging. To address this concern, the authors introduced earlier a GCIO System - a set of inter-related activities to guide governments in gradually establishing, operating and sustaining the GCIO function. Based on a common conceptual model of the GCIO function, this paper defines a methodology for conducting the readiness assessment part of the GCIO System. The methodology comprises a set of assessment areas and a step-wise process to conduct assessment in these areas. The paper also shares the experience in applying this methodology in practice, and proposes how the assessment could inform the execution of other activities of the GCIO System.

 The ability of governments to develop and effectively manage knowledge assets is now considered a critical capability for electronic governance. Good Knowledge Management (KM) practices in government are usually driven by clear vision and objectives which are part of KM strategies. Developing such government-wide KM vision and objectives requires inputs from individual government agencies and other stakeholders on their needs and priorities (so-called demand-side). However, while there is significant literature on models and tools for measuring KM capabilities (so-called supply-side) and impact of KM practices, very few scholarly work is available on assessment of specific KM needs of individual agencies or other stakeholders. This paper presents an Integrated KM Assessment Model which measures both the demand and supply sides of KM in government. The model was used for assessing the KM needs and capabilities of government agencies in Macao SAR as part of a study for determining the readiness of government as a whole for KM. Results from our study show that innovation in government operations is considered by agencies to be the most KM demanded area, while KM capability for task-specific activities was found to be the weakest KM capability area. In addition, document-intensive and high-volume transaction agencies, such as educational, financial, electronic data interchange agencies have relatively higher KM awareness and capability.

Las metodologías de desarrollo ágil se basan fundamentalmente en la colaboración con los usuarios de software durante todo el proceso de desarrollo, la facilidad para adaptar el producto a cambios en requerimientos y en la entrega incremental del producto. Basadas en el Manifiesto Ágil, han sido aceptadas y son utilizadas con éxito en proyectos donde los requerimientos detallados son inicialmente desconocidos y se van construyendo durante el proceso de desarrollo a partir de interacciones con los usuarios y de la retroalimentación obtenida a partir de las mismas. En este trabajo se propone un framework de evaluación para las metodologías ágiles de desarrollo, y se aplica a dos de ellas – Scrum y eXtreme Programming (XP). La definición de este framework cuantitavio es novedosa, especialmente porque permite evaluar en cuánto las metodologías ágiles satisfacen los principios básicos definidos por el Manifiesto Ágil. Su utilización es recomendada al momento de decidir una metodología a adoptar.

The paper presents some challenges to Seamless e-Government, and proposes a technical solution – Government-Enterprise Ecosystem Gateway (G-EEG)to address them. G-EEG is a framework through which multi-organizational processes and applications can dynamically build, apply and evolve complex communication structures to asynchronously exchange messages in specific application contexts, e.g. to deliver seamless public services. In addition to basic messaging, G-EEG supports high-level messaging functions through dynamically-enabled horizontal (process-independent) or vertical (process-dependent) extensions. A number of extensions are described as solutions to the challenges for seamless e-Government. Currently a research prototype, G-EEG is specified formally and implemented using open standards

Recognized as a critical factor for the whole-of-government capability, many governments have initiated Enterprise Architectures (EA) programs. However, while there is no shortage of EA frameworks, the understanding of what makes EA practice effective in a government enterprise is limited. This paper presents the results of empirical research aimed at determining the key factors for raising the maturity of the Government Enterprise Architecture (GEA) practice, part of an effort to guide policy-makers of a particular government on how to develop GEA capabilities in its agencies. By analyzing data from a survey involving 33 agencies, the relative importance of factors like top management commitment, participation of business units and effectiveness of project governance structures on the maturity of the GEA practice was determined. The results confirm that management commitment and participation of business units are critical factors, which in turn are influenced by the perceived usefulness of the GEA efforts.

Information sharing is a key capability required for one-stop and networked government. The capability enables sharing service-related information between government agencies involved in the delivery of one-stop seamless services, sharing resource-related information to facilitate whole-of-government response to emergencies, etc. As this capability is not common in traditional public administration and management, information sharing initiatives must overcome a range of technical, organizational, cultural and other barriers, which are generally difficult to overcome by individual agencies. Instead, information sharing is best addressed through the whole-of-government approach, driven by explicit information sharing policies and strategies in government. However, defining such policies is challenging. While information sharing theories identify multiple dimensions of the problem - technical, intra- and inter-organizational and political, the practice of information sharing focuses on principles, barriers, enablers, information lifecycles, organizational roles and other elements of information sharing agreements between agencies, most of which cut across different dimensions of the problem. This paper proposes a conceptual model to describe government information sharing initiatives. By integrating theoretical frameworks (e.g. multiple dimensions) and the information sharing practice (e.g. cross-agency agreements), the model provides a holistic view on the problem and highlights the main areas for policy intervention.