Search

The article aims to investigate how key e-Governance dimensions related to openness, such as transparency and accountability, which are a necessary condition for reaching a high maturity of e-Government, may not be sufficient for open government. For this purpose, an interpretative framework to identify country attitudes towards Open Government is proposed and it is applied to two cases drawn from different legal, cultural and organisational backgrounds. Among the key findings of the article, the 'attitudes mapping' resulting from the application of the interpretative framework to the case studies points out the key role of different governance traditions in the path towards open government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes an interpretative framework which aims to provide a systemic perspective and an instrument to elicit the links between Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) and governance, outlining the various challenges that this poses. In particular, it discusses the multiple dimensions of governance and identifies the public value drivers underpinning the conceptual and measurement framework proposed. In doing so the paper focuses on the 'openness' of governance mechanisms through its interoperability dimension. It considers state-of-the-art contributions at both academic and practitioner level and it also looks at how the proposed framework can be applied to the evaluation of two case studies at cross-border, and national-city level in Europe. Interoperability in fact is predominantly seen as an instrument for enabling cross-border collaboration between public administrations within and between different Member States. Many initiatives and projects have been promoted and carried out during the last decade resulting in a growing number of potentially reusable best practices and benchmarks. Nevertheless, the complexity and volume of resulting project outcomes represent a challenge for effective exploitation of the results in other initiatives and intervention contexts. Moreover, despite the recognition of interoperability as a multi-faceted concept (i.e. technological, organizational, and semantic), it seems to be mainly the technological aspects of interoperability that emerge from the available project results. The paper concludes outlining indications for future research and in particular on interoperability as a key driver for ICT-enabled governance. Interoperability is found to play a strategic role in the delivery of e-Government services to local and national communities within the EU. Moreover, its significance is expected to increase over the next few years, especially in terms of how it supports emerging city governance models and acts as the backbone of communications at a pan-European, national and local level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the European academic and institutional debate, interoperability is predominantly seen as a means to enable public administrations to collaborate within Members State and across borders. The article presents a conceptual framework for ICT-enabled governance and analyses the role of interoperability in this regard. The article makes a specific reference to the exploratory research project carried out by the Information Society Unit of the Institute for Prospective Technological Studies (IPTS) of the European Commission's Joint Research Centre on emerging ICT-enabled governance models in EU cities (EXPGOV). The aim of this project is to study the interplay between ICTs and governance processes at city level and formulate an interdisciplinary framework to assess the various dynamics emerging from the application of ICT-enabled service innovations in European cities. In this regard, the conceptual framework proposed in this article results from an action research perspective and investigation of e-governance experiences carried out in Europe. It aims to elicit the main value drivers that should orient how interoperable systems are implemented, considering the reciprocal influences that occur between these systems and different governance models in their specific context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]