Digital government are transforming governmental structures and institutions. The common institutional arrangement of a multi-level government system (MLG) clearly affected by the increased use of digital government systems within public administration. This is a hierarchical structure structuring powers and resources in which digital government has to be embedded. The outcomes of digitalization in such settings can be different. This argument builds on two previous implementation studies that open for this argument. These studies are here used as illustrations for the theoretical embedding of how digitalization can glue levels of government together. The conclusion is that digital government systems, if used smartly, can function as glue between the levels of government in an MLG system.
All forms of e-government are integrated in an organizational structure defined by the institutional arrangements of the specific state. Thus when using e-government applications to make the government smarter it has to be contextualized in the specific structure of government. A common institutional arrangement is to divide governments into different levels – a multi-level government system. This paper focus on how e-government can be a smart tool for such integration and bridging over levels of government. Based on two case studies of implementation of welfare policies in Sweden. Implementation of public policies is here seen as a process of translation. The analysis elaborates on how e-government can be smart tool to translate policies from one national decisions into local practices. The concluding argument is that digitalization, if used smartly, can function as glue between the levels of government. in a multi-level government system.
Research has shown that Quality of Government (QoG) mainly is generated and sustained on the output-side of the political system (Rothstein 2009; Rotberg 2014). Thus the public administration and services are critical for the experience of government as trustworthy. The emerging use of digital tools for information and interaction among governments and other actors, from citizens to firms and even other states, are brought together in the concept e-government (Heeks & Bailur, 2009; Bannister & Connonly, 2012). A specific type of e-government services is the automation of decision making in public administration. It is a growing application especially for standardized services provided to citizens. Such digital systems can for example be used to calculate and evaluate applications and makes decisions based on how legislations, rules and local arrangements are designed into the system. This paper outlines and discusses five challenges regarding how impartiality and other public values are re-framed into the design of automated public services. These are the challenges of system design to integrate impartiality, how human public servants act in relation to digital automated public administration, how to keep personal(ized) services impartial, challenges of identification and cyber-security, and finally implications on policy design of impartial e-services. The ambition is to tentatively form a framework for extended empirical studies on how automated e-government services can contribute to QoG. ; work in progress that is under consideration for publication in international journal, please contact author befor refeering to this paper.
AbstractDigital technology is frequently used in the delivery of public services. Since not everyone has the skills or digital access required to use such digital services, street‐level bureaucrats must find new ways to support citizens to be able to enhance digital inclusion. In most public settings, these new practices of digital support need to be developed in parallel with the street‐level bureaucrats' ordinary assignments. This article analyses the development of street‐level bureaucrats' entrepreneurial and innovative practices in promoting digital inclusion in two spheres: conventional welfare service provision and in a project‐based welfare service provision initiative explicitly intended to enhance digital inclusion. The article builds on qualitative case studies in municipalities in Sweden and demonstrates that there are more openings for innovative, entrepreneurial solutions among street‐level bureaucrats in the more project‐based setting than in the conventional welfare services. This implies that context matters for street‐level entrepreneurial approaches.
The increasing use of automated systems for decision-making and decision support in public administration is forming new practices and challenging public values since public services must be impartially accessible and designed for everyone. New robotistic process automation (RPA) systems are generally designed based on back-office structures. This requires clients to submit relevant data correctly in order for these services to function. However, not all potential or intended users of these services have the competence and the capacity to submit accurate data in the correct way. Front-line case workers at public agencies play critical roles in supporting those who have problems using the services due to the aforementioned accessibility requirements and thereby work in bridging digital divides. This article analyses strategies used by front-line case workers to complement RPA and improve the inclusion of all clients in the services. It builds on qualitative case studies at two Swedish authorities, including in-depth interviews and observations. The study shows that the discretion of the front-line case workers is limited by the RPA systems, and they also have limited discretion to support clients in their use of the digital services. Instead, they develop strategies in line with more service- and socially-oriented values; duty-oriented values are integrated into the RPA. The analysis shows the importance of forming new support structures for inclusion when public services are automated to maintain the core public values of inclusion and democratic legitimacy.
In advanced, digitalized democratic communities the demands for literacy are a prerequisite for engagement and inclusion, at the same time different forms of divides are omnipresent. By providing access and qualified support to all citizens, public libraries play a central function in the building of democratic and inclusive local communities, being increasingly relied upon by governments to deliver access and support for e-services. Based on a case study of community library services in Sweden, Östergötland, this paper aims to study digital inclusion as reflected in daily practices through the perspective of librarians. In this paper we argue that while advancing digitalisation involves opening of new access and engagement opportunities through empowering digital tools and Internet, it also involves different challenges of exclusion for those who cannot use, choose not to use or have other needs
Purpose This paper aims to identify and elaborate on the various interpretations and implications of e-government as a process of public policy-making and as an act of information systems (IS) project management. The paper contributes to the search for a theoretical conceptualization by bridging policy project management and policy-making in public sector organizations at a crossroad of e-government to improve sustainable e-government research.
Design/methodology/approach The research design of this paper focus on a model balancing the two research fields; public policy-making and analysis, and project management in the IS field. Through this model, four critical aspects of the processes are identified: objective, incentives/motivation, input/trigger and coordinative actor. These critical aspects are illustrated through findings from four case studies that are re-analyzed here. The cases show how the conceptual model through different dimensions can balance the two perspectives to reach a more sustainable outcome of e-government.
Findings The paper shows that the two perspectives on e-government – public policy-making and project management – can be balanced and thereby reach a more sustainable outcome at this crossroad. The case studies re-visited in this paper are compared and serves as illustrations of these perspectives and different configurations of them in search for the crossroad.
Research limitations/implications A main contribution of the paper is that e-government projects should be studied in, and taking both public policy-making and IS project management into account to be sustainable and successful. Even if the case studies have been conducted in Sweden, the conceptual results in this paper can be analytically generalized into other setting. However, there is a need for more comparative and conceptual studies in the field of e-government to shed light on the multi-faceted crossroads illustrated in this paper.
Practical implications The paper offers new insights on how to integrate, bridge and even balance the two aspects of e-government policy aspects and projects management to achieve more sustainable and successful e-government.
Originality/value The paper contributes to the literature by shedding light on the crossroad of policy aspects and IS project management approaches in the e-government field. The paper points at the need to further develop the understanding and design of e-government at the crossroad of information system models and political science concepts.
This article focuses on Midwives4All, an e-diplomacy campaign launched by the Swedish MFA in 2015. The campaign aims to spread knowledge about the benefits of midwives and evidence-based midwifery. Within the campaign, the Swedish MFA, and in particular its Communications Department (UD-KOM), combines e-diplomacy and networking and the campaign has become one key activity within the Swedish feminist foreign policy. It is organizing diplomacy in new ways that regards both choices of channels and the networking with inter- and nongovernmental organizations. The limited impacts of the campaign are seen as consequences of the peripheral status of the issue and the lack of systematic structures for e-diplomacy so far. In spite of this the case indicates that e-diplomacy has the potential to raise and empower both new actor groups and new issues on the diplomatic agenda. \
Strategies and policies to bridge identified and potential digital divides is a core challenge when forming an inclusive and participatory digital democracy and society. In line with the progress and development of digital technologies and applications governments have to address digital divides. This project discusses how social and digital divides have been addressed in a project called "The Digital media bus in Östergötland". This project builds on the library buses that have has been running in the region for long a long time. The libraries in Sweden also have to address digital inclusion and implement strategies towards increased use of and knowledge about information technologies. This analysis builds on an action research approach. The analyse here are focusing on the implementation, project management and how the project has addressed digital inclusion. Finally, we end up discussing the diversity of digital inclusion, elaborating on the meanings of digital divides and digital diversity.
This article focuses on Midwives4All, an e-diplomacy campaign launched by the Swedish MFA in 2015. The campaign aims to spread knowledge about the benefits of midwives and evidence-based midwifery. Within the campaign, the Swedish MFA, and in particular its Communications Department (UD-KOM), combines e-diplomacy and networking and the campaign has become one key activity within the Swedish feminist foreign policy. It is organizing diplomacy in new ways that regards both choices of channels and the networking with inter- and nongovernmental organizations. The limited impacts of the campaign are seen as consequences of the peripheral status of the issue and the lack of systematic structures for e-diplomacy so far. In spite of this the case indicates that e-diplomacy has the potential to raise and empower both new actor groups and new issues on the diplomatic agenda.
Housing plays an important role in the development of welfare policies and also often in achieving sustainability goals. There exists, however, implementation gaps between policies and practices in urban development and housing. Here it should be possible to draw lessons from policy implementations in the past. In this article we explore the strategies of the Swedish central government in implementing a social housing policy in the mid-20th century. The policy was successfully implemented in that it resulted in the rapid expansion and modernisation of the Swedish apartment stock in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and acute housingshortages and poor housing standards were overcome. The main lesson learned from the Swedish case study is the critical role of the central government in implementation through the strategic coordination of policy aims, instruments, stakeholders and interests throughout the implementation process. Although the central government could have used hard, almost authoritarian policy instruments to force the realisation of the new policy, it mainly used soft policy tools and focused on coordination. In the contemporary networked governance setting, the central government, like no other player, still has the potential to guide and coordinate implementation processes for the realization of sustainable housing visions.
When explaining social development and changes in public administration, institutional change is a typical focus. Institutional analysis can combine the analyses of changes on the basis of formal legal and informal arrangements; it commonly shows that institutions lead to inertia where changes over time are concerned. Political aims are a guide to how organizations are designed and governed. When goals and earlier decisions clearly guide change, path dependence is a fundamental concept when explaining change. However, this analysis shows how and when quality registers appeared as an answer to changes in institutional arrangements in Swedish public healthcare. Through three phases, cumulative processes have been visible and the processes have been followed by an improved and increased usage of quality registers and other quality systems. This analysis shows that institutional development can be path-dependent in relation to methods and means. Despite changing goals over time, quality registers as a policy tool have been path-dependent and stayed firm. Thus, it is important to see also organisational methods as a development path that can be used to implement even new policy aims.
There is an increased use of public e-services integrating citizens into public administration through electronic interfaces. On-line interaction among public organizations and citizens is one core relation in e-government that hereby becomes embedded into daily practices. A safe entry into e-governmental systems is essential for security and trust in the e-governmental systems and schools as well as public services in general. This paper addresses how electronic identification has been used for access to public e-services in schools in a Swedish municipality. This paper draws on a case study of use of ICT platforms in education administration in order to study the implementation of secure login process and factors that may have implications upon trust in-and legitimacy of public e-services at local e-government level. Besides describing the implementation process and analyzing security and organizational arrangements connected to the use of the platform, the paper address the argument that secure identification tools are essential for increased use of e-services and lead to greater legitimacy of the public (e)services. The analysis focuses on information security, organization set-up and potential development of the platforms, contributing with empirical findings and conceptual applications. A key finding was that the organization of identification and access to public e-services seemed highly dependent of the organizational structure of the public schools. The more general implication of the findings was that safe and well organized identification systems that were considered as trustworthy and useful among citizens were essential for increased use of the services and legitimate public e-services in general.
