Suchergebnisse

Governments are increasingly negotiating the adoption of civic technologies to improve government functioning and to better connect with citizens. Despite the benefits of civic technology to make government more efficient, effective, and transparent, there are many challenges and even unintended outcomes to civic technology adoption. This exploratory paper presents a conceptual argument using two types of civic technology; open data and smart city infrastructure, as examples where their procurement by government can disintermediate government from citizen. This disintermediation can have both positive and negative outcomes for different parties. Four mechanisms that drive this disintermediation are discussed, including the use of legal frameworks, jumping of scales, conversion of public to private goods, and the creation of standards. These mechanisms can serve to shift the role of government from a service provider to a more background role as a data custodian or regulator, opening many opportunities for other actors, including private sector to assume critical roles in service provision.

Governments are increasingly negotiating the adoption of civic technologies to improve government functioning and to better connect with citizens. Despite the benefits of civic technology to make government more efficient, effective, and transparent, there are many challenges and even unintended outcomes to civic technology adoption. This exploratory paper presents a conceptual argument using two types of civic technology; open data and smart city infrastructure, as examples where their procurement by government can disintermediate government from citizen. This disintermediation can have both positive and negative outcomes for different parties. Four mechanisms that drive this disintermediation are discussed, including the use of legal frameworks, jumping of scales, conversion of public to private goods, and the creation of standards. These mechanisms can serve to shift the role of government from a service provider to a more background role as a data custodian or regulator, opening many opportunities for other actors, including private sector to assume critical roles in service provision.

The purpose of this study is to challenge the discourse that underage drinking is inevitably 'deviant'. Rather than imposing an adultist lens, the article draws upon focus‐group interviews with 14–15 year olds. The meaningful role of drinking is explored, along with the capability of peer cultures to manage some alcohol‐related 'risks'. The data suggest that the prioritisation of adultist constructs over teenage subject experiences appears somewhat misplaced since teenage norms are not complete subversions of the adult world. Apparent transgression is better understood as alternative socialisation, since teenage peer groups creatively reproduce the wider culture.

This article discusses the use of rule‐base technology in the administration of legislation. It first looks at determinative processes, the management of assessments of entitlement and obligations that form much of the operational work for many government agencies. It examines existing problems that agencies experience when attempting to secure accurate and consistent primary decision‐making when administering complex legislation. It also examines the way in which traditional techniques for administering legislation constrain the service delivery methods open to an agency. It suggests that rule‐base systems are a peculiarly appropriate technology for improving these determinative processes. It then argues that the use of rule‐base systems offers two main benefits to agencies. They can improve the quality of primary decision‐making and they can provide a means for dramatically widening the range of service delivery options open to an agency. Finally, the article argues that, until agencies have applications that are capable of automating complex transactions, such as the determination of entitlements, they will not be able to achieve large‐scale benefits from electronic service delivery.