Suchergebnisse

Was machen, wie arbeiten und welche Entscheidungen treffen öffentliche Organisationen und aus welchem Grund? Die Nachfrage nach öffentlichen Dokumenten und Informationen ist in den letzten Jahren erheblich gestiegen. Immer mehr Bürger:innen fordern Einsicht in politisch-administrative Vorgänge und Entscheidungsprozesse. Digitale Informationsplattformen können eine wichtige Rolle dabei spielen, diesem Ruf nach besserer staatlicher Transparenz entgegenzukommen. Sie bieten eine Möglichkeit, öffentliche Informationen und Dokumente einfach online zugänglich zu machen, und Bürger:innen dabei zu unterstützen, gewünschte Informationen zu erlangen. Dies kann dazu beitragen, das Vertrauen der Bevölkerung in die Regierung zu stärken sowie die Interaktion zwischen den beiden Akteuren zu fördern. In diesem Artikel wollen wir die Nachfrage nach öffentlichen Informationen besser verstehen und untersuchen die Anfragen der Bürger:innen, die über die österreichische Informationsfreiheitsplattform FragdenStaat gestellt werden. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, welche Themen für Bürger:innen besonders interessant sind, an wen die Anfragen adressiert sind und wie öffentliche Organisationen auf die Anfragen reagieren.

Les graves problèmes budgétaires, la comparabilité insuffisante des informations financières et les demandes croissantes d'un renforcement de l'imputabilité obligent les gouvernements nationaux et les organisations internationales à modifier leurs régimes comptables actuels et à évoluer vers un système de pratiques comptables normalisées. Étant donné que les normes comptables internationales du secteur public n'ont pas suffi à pousser l'Europe vers l'harmonisation comptable ces dernières années, la Commission européenne vise actuellement à suggérer l'adoption de normes comptables européennes pour le secteur public. Sur la base d'une enquête multinationale menée auprès d'experts budgétaires, le présent article examine les perceptions des experts budgétaires à l'égard de l'adoption des normes comptables européennes pour le secteur public. Les résultats comparent les attitudes à l'égard des nouvelles pratiques comptables et les attentes en matière de réforme des normes comptables européennes pour le secteur public sur une base comparative, et établissent un lien avec le système comptable national actuel et les facteurs contextuels. Les résultats empiriques indiquent une grande variation entre les pays en termes d'attentes concernant la réforme des normes comptables européennes pour le secteur public. L'étude se termine par une analyse des implications des résultats pour la recherche comptable internationale, l'harmonisation comptable et le développement d'un système comptable européen. Remarques à l'intention des praticiens À ce stade précoce du développement des normes comptables européennes pour le secteur public, il peut être utile pour les praticiens et les professionnels de comprendre les facteurs associés à la décision des pays de les adopter. La présente étude considère les coûts des technologies de l'information comme un obstacle potentiel à la mise en œuvre des normes comptables européennes pour le secteur public. Les politiciens et les normalisateurs pourraient en tenir compte lors de l'élaboration des normes comptables européennes pour le secteur public. En outre, cet article révèle qu'encourager l'introduction volontaire de la comptabilité d'exercice dans la première étape du développement des normes comptables européennes pour le secteur public pourrait être l'approche appropriée de la Commission européenne.

AbstractGovernment organizations increasingly use crowdsourcing platforms to interact with citizens and integrate their requests in designing and delivering public services. Drawing on attribution theory, this study asks how the causal attributions of the government response to a citizen request affect continued participation in crowdsourcing platforms. To test our hypotheses, we use a 7‐year dataset of both online requests from citizens to government and government responses to citizen requests. We focus on citizen requests that are denied by government, and find that the reasoning for denying a request is related with continued participation behavior. Citizens are less willing to collaborate further with government via the platform, when their requests are denied although the locus of causality is with the government. This study contributes to research on the role of responsiveness in digital interaction between citizens and government and highlights the importance of rationale transparency to sustain citizen participation.

The open government paradigm implies public processes are becoming more transparent, public information is available online, and citizens and non‐governmental organizations are encouraged to interact with public administration through new platform‐based forms of participation and collaboration. Though these governmental efforts to open up organizational procedures to the public are meant to strengthen the relationship between citizens and the government, empirical evidence is currently sparse and mixed. This article argues that positive impacts of openness depend on citizens' democratic capacity defined as individual sense of empowerment to influence governmental systems. By matching individual survey data from the European Social Survey with secondary institutional data the authors investigate the relationship between individual and structural level variables. Findings indicate that structural openness is, in general, positively associated with higher trust. Further, the effect of openness on public trust is partially mediated by an individual's perception that they have meaningful opportunities for political participation.

AbstractThe open government paradigm implies that public processes are becoming more transparent, public information is available online, and citizens and nongovernmental organizations are encouraged to interact with public administration through new platform‐based forms of participation and collaboration. Though these governmental efforts to open up organizational procedures to the public are meant to strengthen the relationship between citizens and the government, empirical evidence is currently sparse and mixed. This article argues that positive impacts of openness depend on citizen's democratic capacity defined as the individual sense of empowerment to influence governmental systems. By matching individual survey data from the European Social Survey with secondary institutional data, the authors investigate the relationship between individual‐ and structural‐level variables. Findings indicate that structural openness is, in general, positively associated with higher trust. Further, the effect of openness on public trust is partially mediated by an individual's perception that they have meaningful opportunities for political participation.

Severe fiscal problems, the insufficient comparability of financial information and increasing demands for better accountability require national governments and international organizations to change their current accounting regimes and to move towards a system of standardized accounting practices. As the International Public Sector Accounting Standards have insufficiently moved Europe towards accounting harmonization in recent years, the European Commission currently aims to suggest the adoption of European Public Sector Accounting Standards. Based on a multinational survey among budget experts, the current article investigates budget experts' perceptions towards adopting the European Public Sector Accounting Standards. The findings compare attitudes towards new accounting practices and European Public Sector Accounting Standards reform expectations on a comparative basis, and relate them to the current national accounting system and contextual factors. Empirical results indicate great variation in terms of European Public Sector Accounting Standards reform expectations across countries. The study concludes with discussing the implications of the findings for international accounting research, accounting harmonization and the development of a European accounting system. Points for practitioners In this early stage of European Public Sector Accounting Standards development, understanding the factors associated with a country's decision to adopt them could be helpful for practitioners and professionals. The current study identifies information technology costs as a potential barrier to implementing the European Public Sector Accounting Standards. Politicians and standard setters might take this into account while developing the European Public Sector Accounting Standards. Furthermore, this article reveals that encouraging the voluntary introduction of accrual accounting in the first stage of European Public Sector Accounting Standards development might be the appropriate approach of the European Commission.

Severe fiscal problems, the insufficient comparability of financial information and increasing demands for better accountability require national governments and international organizations to change their current accounting regimes and to move towards a system of standardized accounting practices. As the International Public Sector Accounting Standards have insufficiently moved Europe towards accounting harmonization in recent years, the European Commission currently aims to suggest the adoption of European Public Sector Accounting Standards. Based on a multinational survey among budget experts, the current article investigates budget experts perceptions towards adopting the European Public Sector Accounting Standards. The findings compare attitudes towards new accounting practices and European Public Sector Accounting Standards reform expectations on a comparative basis, and relate them to the current national accounting system and contextual factors. Empirical results indicate great variation in terms of European Public Sector Accounting Standards reform expectations across countries. The study concludes with discussing the implications of the findings for international accounting research, accounting harmonization and the development of a European accounting system. ; Refereed/Peer-reviewed ; (VLID)5344155 ; Version of record

The development of International Public Sector Accounting Standards (IPSASs) aims at harmonizing public sector accounting at an international level. IPSASs are intended to generate more comparable financial information across national boundaries and minimize differences in countries generally accepted domestic accounting principles. Despite the various advantages of adopting IPSASs, the new accounting standards have been accompanied by critiques in terms of implementation costs, lack of pressure, and alignment with public sector specialties. In addition, many countries have refused to adapt their governmental accounting systems to IPSASs. In the last two decades, a plethora of studies has investigated the evolution of an internationally comparable accrualbased accounting system. This article provides a systematic review of this research. First, it identifies existing knowledge of research on IPSASs, resulting in a sample of 80 journal articles. Second, it structures research on IPSASs with an empirical focus in three main research areas: (a) antecedents of IPSAS adoption; (b) implementation of accrual accounting based on IPSASs; and (c) outcomes of IPSAS adoption. Third, it discusses the shortcomings and gaps in the existing research and develops an agenda for future research. ; (VLID)5634810 ; Version of record

Purpose
Governments all over the world have implemented citizensourcing initiatives to integrate citizens into decision-making processes. A more participative decision-making process is associated with an open government and assumed to benefit public service quality and interactive value creation. The purpose of this paper is to highlight the outcomes of open government initiatives and ask to what extent open government participation is related to perceived outcomes of open government.


Design/methodology/approach
Data conducted from a survey among users of a citizensourcing platform and platform data are used to perform non-parametric analyses and examine the relationship between platform participation and perceived outcomes of open government.


Findings
The findings of this paper suggest that active platform usage positively relates to several outcomes perceived by citizens, such as improved information flow, increased trust in and satisfaction with local government. In contrast, repetitive participation does not significantly relate to users' outcome evaluation.


Practical implications
This study suggests public managers to provide possibilities for citizen participation and interaction with government such as citizensourcing initiatives. In particular, it recommends promoting participants' platform activity, as proactive platform participation has positive effects on perceived outcomes of open government.


Originality/value
Previous literature discussed what it needs to realize a transparent and participatory government. First empirical studies deal with government institutions' reasons to promote exchange with citizens, and investigate citizens' motivation to participate in citizensourcing activities, but have disregarded the consequences of open government so far. This study thus provides first insights into the outcomes of open government, as perceived by the users.

Citizen engagement is seen as a way to address a range of societal challenges, fiscal constraints, as well as wicked problems, and increasing public participation in political decisions could help to address low levels of trust in politicians and decreasing satisfaction with political parties. This paper examines the perceived impacts of an experiment by the Austrian People's Party which, in response to reaching a historic low in the polls, opened up its manifesto process to public participation via digital technology. Analysis of survey data from participants found that self-efficacy is positively associated with participation intensity but negatively related to satisfaction. In contrast, collective efficacy is related to positive perceptions of public participation in party politics but does not influence levels of individual participation. Future research is needed to explore the outcomes of political innovations that use digital technologies to enable public participation on voting behaviour, party membership and attitudes to representative democracy.

Part 1: General E-Government and Open Government ; International audience ; Local governments have increasingly been applying an open and collaborative approach towards public management during the last years. Accordingly, they aim at increasing accessibility by releasing public data and providing participative decision-making arenas. 'Open government' has also been implemented in Austrian municipalities. This paper takes stock of the current status of open government implementation in Austria by analyzing survey data from city managers. Findings indicate that Austrian municipalities choose releasing public data over involving citizens in decision-making. Although public managers seem to value the principles of an open government, a successful implementation of open government is hampered by resource constraints.

This article develops and tests a model to explain web-based and mobile devices usage by citizens to interact with their local government. By employing literature from diverse fields of information systems research, the authors derive an integrated model that investigates citizen participation on a city improvement platform. The model proposes three overall influences on platform activity: technological influences (perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness), motivational influences (intrinsic motivation and prosocial motivation), and socio-demographic influences (gender, age, education), and is tested among two groups of users (i.e. web page and mobile app users). Empirical results show that platform activity of both web and mobile users is mainly driven by intrinsic and prosocial motivation. Whereas perceived usefulness is positively associated with platform behavior of web users, TAM variables have not effect on mobile users' activity. While gender and age play a role regarding web activity, age and education influence mobile participation.