Government Information Quarterly最新文献

The transition from a linear economy towards a circular economy (CE), based on reusing, repairing, refurbishing, and recycling existing materials and products, is one of the key priorities in pursuing Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), where governments play a fundamental role, with the support of digital technologies.

Despite the increasing global policy focus on CE, research on the role of digital government in initiating, implementing, and consolidating a transition towards a circular economy is surprisingly scarce and fragmented, and a systematic effort in digital government research is yet to emerge.

To tackle this issue, this article sets out to answer the research question: what is the role of digital government in the transition towards a circular economy? Driven by this research question, we conduct a review on 88 empirical studies in the Information Systems (IS) and digital government fields and discuss existing research foci and gaps in relation to the types of digital technologies used, the types of stakeholders involved, the stages of the product life cycle, and the type of resources that governments draw on to advance the circular economy transition. In addition, we identify two types of transition styles, based on an analysis of the types of roles taken by the government in two cases of transition towards a circular economy.

Based on these findings, we provide two contributions to establishing a new line of research in digital government and the circular economy: an analytical framework, including a static view, a longitudinal view, and a transition style view of the role of digital government in the circular economy transition; and a research agenda that builds on our framework, to guide future research on the role of digital government in the circular economy transition.

Since the popularization of social media (SM) platforms, researchers have been trying to use their data to predict electoral results. Previous surveys point out that the most used approach is based on volume and sentiment analysis of posts on Twitter. However, they are almost unanimous in presenting that the results are not better than chance. In this context, this study aims to investigate the feasibility of predicting electoral results based only on Twitter, discover the main issues, and draw guidelines for future alternative directions. For this, we reviewed the evolution of election polling and predictions, including the “polling crises” of 1936 and 1948, and their similarities with current approaches. We also built on the official SM platforms' documentation and on our experience collecting and analyzing large-scale data from many SM platforms. Lastly, we analyzed nine reviews on predicting elections with SM data from 2013 to 2021. We observed that, contrary to initial expectations, most of the current research with Twitter has been unable to solve many of the challenges encountered since initial studies, and also shares many of the characteristics of unsuccessful straw polls performed before 1936. We illustrate that by highlighting the impracticability of polling over Twitter due to several biases and technical barriers, the need for external data, the high dependency on the arbitrary decisions of researchers, and the constant change in platforms' scenarios, that may invalidate specific models. Lastly, we indicate some of the possible future directions, such as a focus on creating repeatable processes; the use of SM data as part of statistical models, instead of polling; diversifying the input data sources, including multiple SM platforms and non-SM data such as polls and economic indicators; using machine learning for regression of the vote share, rather than for sentiment analysis; and dealing with the uncertainty of the highly divergent polling results.

Open government data have the potential to facilitate democratic debate and collaboration between government and citizens. This assumes that citizens can effectively use data. However, not all citizens possess these skills. Building on the Empowered Deliberative Democracy Framework, this study examined how open data work - a variety of interventions and activities facilitated by intermediaries - can foster inclusive democratic processes at the local level by using a living lab methodology. Our living lab took place in a vulnerable neighborhood in a city in the Netherlands. Our findings demonstrate that open data work for empowered deliberative democracy requires enhancing the community's awareness and capacity for interpreting and using data about local problems and enabling them to engage in a process of joint learning and deliberation with data intermediaries, government, and other stakeholders.

Governments are increasingly using digital platforms to integrate citizens in public service delivery. However, research indicates that digital co-production initiatives are not reaching all groups of society equally. We investigate the role of gender and platform design on the intention to participate in co-production by conducting a pre-registered survey experiment with a sample of individuals in Zurich (Switzerland). By drawing on social identity theory, research on gender-inclusive language, and the design of web interfaces, we developed and tested five different designs of a digital platform run by the city of Zurich, which differ in visual and verbal elements. We show how small design modifications on the user interface are increasing women's intentions to use the platform and propose the best gender-neutral option. Our results expand and update the empirical evidence on digital inequalities in citizen co-production and provide insights for public service producers who strive to increase the participation of specific social groups and develop more inclusive platform designs.

This study examines the democratic risks and coping strategies related to ICT-enabled co-production. The article turns to the scholarship on polycentric governance and outlines three potential sources of institutional misfit relevant for practicing democracy in multi-centered sites of service provision: limited jurisdictional integrity, plural solidarities, and “liquid authority.” The empirical inquiry explores these points of misfit across three arenas of ICT-based co-production in Estonia. While the instances of co-production investigated resemble sites of polycentric governance, these tend to be unaccompanied by institutional arrangements able to address the democratic challenges that stem from multi-centered spaces. The findings offer evidence for the potential of ICT-enabled co-production to significantly alter the existing order of public governance while institutional innovations able to reconcile polycentricity with democracy are failing to keep pace.

Participatory approaches including co-design are seen as a means to address some of the challenges digital government poses for people with disability, such as unequal access and poor technological design. Yet co-design principles are rarely practiced in a meaningful way for people with disability, resulting in digital government systems that are obstructive and inaccessible to many. This paper explores the opportunities and challenges of disability inclusion through a qualitative case study of participatory digital government in Australia. It centres on the case of “Nadia”, an artificially intelligent virtual assistant created in 2016 through a co-design approach that ultimately ended in failure, as the project never progressed beyond the design stage. Based on research involving interviews with technology developers, government representatives, and people with disability who had input into the design of Nadia, the article makes three main contributions. First, it clarifies conceptually the importance of inclusion as a process, rather than an outcome, of digital government, reframing design as a matter of inclusion. Second, in examining why the project failed, the paper identifies aspects of digital government culture, organization, and practice that impede disability co-design, namely, a lack of institutionalized support and resistance to sharing power. Third, it highlights disability as an area for exploring new possibilities with technology and its limitations, showing the significant role that disabled people play in shaping technology and its advancements.

Open government and open (government) data are seen as tools to create new opportunities, eliminate or at least reduce information inequalities and improve public services. More than a decade of these efforts has provided much experience, practices, and perspectives to learn how to better deal with them. This paper focuses on benchmarking of open data initiatives over the years and attempts to identify patterns observed among European countries that could lead to disparities in the development, growth, and sustainability of open data ecosystems. To do this, we studied benchmarks and indices published over the last years (57 editions of 8 artifacts) and conducted a comparative case study of eight European countries, identifying patterns among them considering different potentially relevant contexts such as e-government, open government data, open data indices and rankings, and others relevant for the country under consideration. Using a Delphi method, we reached a consensus within a panel of experts and validated a final list of 94 patterns, including their frequency of occurrence among studied countries and their effects on the respective countries. Finally, we took a closer look at the developments in identified contexts over the years and defined 21 recommendations for more resilient and sustainable open government data initiatives and ecosystems and future steps in this area.

By utilizing the properties of quantum mechanics, quantum computers have the potential to factor a key pair of a large prime number and break some of the core cryptographic primitives that most information infrastructures depend on. This means that today's widely used cryptographic algorithms can soon become unsafe and need to be modified with quantum-safe (QS) cryptography. While much work is still needed in developing QS cryptographic algorithms, the institutional, organizational, and policy aspects of transitioning the current infrastructures have received less attention. This paper provides an empirical analysis of QS transition challenges and policy recommendations for moving to a QS situation. We analyzed the data collected through interviews with experts and practitioners from the Dutch government. The results reveal that institutional, organizational and policy aspects of QS transitions are interconnected, and solutions for QS transitions are scattered. Consequently, organizations may face a Catch-22 loop without further actionable approaches and planning for QS transitions.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has the potential to improve public governance, but the use of AI in public organizations remains limited. In this qualitative study, we explore how public organizations strategically manage the adoption of AI. Managing AI adoption in the public sector is complex because of the inherent tension between public organizations' identity, characterized by formal and rigid structures, and the demands of AI innovation that require experimentation and flexibility. Our findings show that public organizations navigate this tension either by creating separate departments for data science teams, or by integrating data science teams into already existing operational departments. The case studies reveal that separation improves the technical expertise and capabilities of the organization, whereas integration improves the alignment between AI and primary processes. The findings also show that both approaches are characterized by different AI adoption barriers. We empirically identify the processes and routines public organizations develop to overcome these barriers.

Community resilience refers to collective efforts to help improve response and recovery for the entire community in response to disasters. Municipalities that provide information and services to residents through digital platforms have more options for meeting citizen needs during crises. In this study, we examine the provision of digital services by rural municipalities in Maine, USA during the COVID-19 pandemic. Building on an inventory of 100 municipal websites and interviews with 20 municipal officials, we assessed the prevalence of 20 digital services, associations between municipality characteristics and digital services, and factors that spur changes in digital services. We discovered that many rural communities use digital platforms, and provide digital information, digital transactions and opportunities for digital democracy. While we found positive associations between greater levels of digital services, larger community populations, and more representative forms of government, we learned that a range of technological and cultural barriers also determine the degree to which a municipality engages with and adapts their digital services. Our findings establish a link between municipal digital services and rural resilience, confirm prior trends observed in larger and more urban local governments, and encourage future work on relatively under-studied rural areas.