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Governments around the world are pressed to develop innovative solutions for the wicked problems they are facing. To develop these solutions, the public innovation capacity—defined as the capacity to develop and realize new ideas for societal problems—is of crucial importance. This article builds a model of the public innovation capacity on the basis of innovation systems theory and the literature on public innovation. Five functions—mobilizing, improvising, vitalizing, balancing, and coordinating—are identified and operationalized to construct a self-assessment survey instrument for governments. This instrument in tested by using it to self-assess the public innovation capacity of a Dutch municipality. This test highlights the validity of the instrument and shows that it helps to identify weaknesses in the public innovation capacity. This measurement can form the basis for a reflection on the government organization's public innovation capacity as a basis for interventions to improve this capacity.

Smart cities are presented as both inevitable and benign futures: the technological development is unstoppable and will bring us wealthier, safer and more sustainable cities. Putting technology to use, however, is never entirely a matter of engineering but of strategic, political and value-laden choices. This article combines the literature on technology in the public sector and on (urban) governance to develop a public governance perspective on smart cities. The central theoretical concept "datapolis" highlights how the construction of smart cities can be understood in term of "actors," "rules," and "games" of urban governance. The theoretical analysis results in the identification of three types of actors (state, market, and civil society), three governance challenges (balancing perceptions, guaranteeing checks and balances and building upon different forms of knowing), and five governance games (the politics of data collection, data storage, data usage, data visualization and data access). The governance of smart cities is re-conceptualized as the socio-technical structures that emerge from the governance games. The governance challenge is to develop legitimate rules for perceptions, power relations and decisions in smart cities.

This article contributes to the growing body of literature on government transparency by developing a model for studying the construction of transparency in interactions between governments and stakeholders. Building on theories about complex decision making, a heuristic model is developed that consists of a strategic, a cognitive, and an institutional perspective. To test the model's value, it is applied to two empirical cases: Dutch schools and the Council of the European Union. Applying the model to the school case provides insights into the connection between the introduction of transparency and the transformation in arrangements for safeguarding school quality. The case of the Council of the European Union highlights the role of transparency in the transformation of the council from a supranational to an intergovernmental body. The article concludes that the heuristic model, together with in‐depth, longitudinal case studies, helps us understand government transparency in relation to broader transformations in the public sector.

Social interactions in every domain of human activity are transformed through the use of new media. This study provides a preliminary assessment of the value of new media for co-production between government and (communities of) citizens. This article analyzes innovative practices in the Netherlands of new media usage to support the coproduction of safety and to facilitate the coproduction public service support. The results of the qualitative research show that both forms of coproduction provide value to governments and citizens but they differ in their value for strengthening citizen communities. Individualized and community coproduction are identified as different outcomes of socio-technological trajectories.

This paper starts with the observation that liberal and discursive perspectives have been dominant in academic analyses of the role of technology in the future of democracy. The perspective of democracy as a participatory practice is largely ignored by academic investigations of electronic democracy. This paper argues that new technologies increasingly enable citizens to organize their own forms of public value production in a Do It Yourself (DIY) State: governance without government. The DIY State should not be seen as utopia. Although the DIY State may reflect the hippy ideal of a supportive community, it could also take the form of a 'jungle' where only the fittest survive. A further understanding of this form of democracy, of the way it is affected by new technologies, and of the remaining role for government, is needed to inform public debate and practices.

Transparency of government inspections enables citizens to pressure companies and public organizations into behaving according to their demands. This paper reports an empirical study into the effects of the increased transparency of inspection services on civic competence. Civic competence is defined as a citizen's ability to accomplish public tasks. The study indicates that, although citizens make little use of inspection data and civic competence is not strengthened, transparency does stimulate organizations to score better on performance indicators and comply with legislation. (Paper presented at European Conference on E-Government (ECEG2005), Antwerp, June 2005.)

Paper presented at the Bi-annual European Conference on ICT, the Knowledge Society and Changes in Work, The Hague, June 2005.

This paper explores the question which consequences the use of geographical information systems (GISs) may have for public accountability. Empirical data from a Delphi-survey were used for this exploration. Respondents were asked to reflect on the consequences of GISs for the availability of data for accountability. Based on their answers four hypotheses were formulated. The first hypothesis states that the use of a GIS leads to an increased focus on up-to-date data at the expense of historical data. Important data for accountability will sometimes not be retained. The second hypothesis states that the use of a GIS leads to an increased need to maintain about how, when and by whom data have been generated. This need may not be sufficiently met. In a process of accountability, data from a GIS may then be difficult to interpret or cannot be trusted. The third hypothesis states that a GIS increases the possibility to look at the data in different ways. In processes of accountability fora may ask governmental organizations to substantiate the choice fora certain perspective. The last hypothesis states that the use of a GIS leads to better access to the data. Therefore, data from a GIS may play a more important role in a process of accountability. These hypotheses require further attention to gain a better understanding of long-term public accountability in an information age.

Electronic records of government organizations are becoming increasingly important for accountability. Managing electronic records, however, proves to be difficult since information and communication technologies confront organizations with various opportunities and risks. In this paper the findings of an international expert survey on electronic records management are presented. These findings identify opportunities and risks for e-mail systems, database management systems, office systems, web technology systems and smart systems. They also point to five crucial questions that must be addressed in order to guarantee the availability of electronic records for accountability.

In evaluating government actions accountability fora depend on public records. ICTs can - depending on how they are used - positively or negatively affect the availability of records for accountability. Dominant trends in the effect of ICTs on records management are (1) the mixing of 'on the record' and 'off the record' communication, (2) the shift of control over information to the individual, (3) the focus on present rather than on historic information, (4) the interlinking of information managed by several organizations, and (5) the integration of procedures into computer systems. These trends indicate that the introduction of ICTs challenges the existing balance between organizational values (e.g. formality and informality, central control and individual autonomy). Electronic records management is therefore about finding an organizational design which balances values to fit the organization's accountability situation.

Open government data are claimed to contribute to transparency, citizen participation, collaboration, economic and public service development. From an innovation perspective, we explore the current gap between the promise and practice of open government data. Based on Strategic Niche Management (SNM), we identify different phases in the open data innovation process. This study uses a living lab in a province in the Netherlands to stimulate the provision and use of open data for collaborative processes and analyses the mechanisms that condition the success of this innovation process. The results based on six interventions over a period of two years show that our interventions stimulated the use of open data and raised awareness within government, but that various mechanisms inhibited the realization of the ambitions of open government data. We conclude that the challenge of open government data as an innovation lies in finding a way to scale up the provision of open data: innovation niches are established but "regime changes" do not take place. Scaling up open government data use requires strong managerial commitment and changes in the wider organizational landscape such as constructing formal and informal rules and technological developments that stimulate debate about open data practices.

Abstract: The rapid deployment of technology in urban settings drastically changes the way urban safety is being governed. This article investigates smart governance of urban safety empirically through an in-depth case study of a project to improve the safety of a street in the Dutch city of Eindhoven. This collaboration between the city government, technology producers, knowledge institutes and owners of bars and restaurants entails the use of new technologies – noise detection, twitter analyses, data analysis, light interventions, gaming – for instantaneous monitoring and intervention. We analyze these smart governance practices from a socio-technological perspective. On the basis of our analysis, we qualify the case as a quantified street: enormous amounts of data are being collected to strengthen the governance of urban safety. The governance analysis showed that these actors shared the idea that more information results in better governance. External funding facilitated collaboration since money was no longer a scarce resource and technology became a 'lens' for building a shared understanding of the street. The relative absence of rules created the room for building innovative practices. In the conclusion, we raise questions concerning the strong focus on information as the key to a safer street and present an agenda for further research into the smart governance of urban safety.

Within a short timeframe, social media have become to be widely used in government organizations. Social media gurus assume that the transformational capacities of social media result in similar communication strategies in different organizations. According to them, government is transforming into a user-generated state. This paper investigates this claim empirically by testing the claim of convergence in social media practices in three North-American police departments (Boston, Washington DC and Toronto). The research shows that the social media strategies are widely different: the Boston Police Department has developed a 'push strategy' while the Metropolitan Police Department in DC has developed a 'push and pull strategy and the Toronto Police Service a 'networking strategy'. The paper concludes that a combination of contextual and path-dependency factors accounts for differences in the emerging social media strategies of government organizations. Social media have a logic of their own but this logic only manifests itself if it lands on fertile soil in a government bureaucracy.