Editorial

Citation

Irani, Z. and Dwivedi, Y. (2012), "Editorial", Transforming Government: People, Process and Policy, Vol. 6 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/tg.2012.32606baa.001

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: Transforming Government: People, Process and Policy, Volume 6, Issue 2

It gives me great pleasure to welcome you to the second issue of the sixth volume of Transforming Government: People, Process, and Policy. The research presented in the papers are exploratory in nature and deal with contemporary public and private sector services’ themes from a multiplicity of perspectives. Providing a mixture of hypothetical and practical contributions to the literature. Over the years, the constant update of the journal’s scope to advocate theory and practice has led to an increase in quality of submissions. For example, the topics covered within this issue focus on the accountability in public services by employing state-of-the-art information and communication technology (ICT), establishing public private partnership (PPP) in infrastructure by using a unique data set on private participation in infrastructure (PPI), classifying the best practices with a framework including technology, supply, demand, and spatial impact scale, assessing the internal efficacy of public policies designed to stimulate voluntary inter-municipal partnerships, and comparing inter-organizational (IO) interaction and inter-organizational information systems (IOS) to support IO interaction in public and private sectors. These topics are devoted to address the challenges and issues of public services and public and private partnerships.

This issue commences with the research presented by Subhajyoti Ray. The author argues that there are several cases where the lack of accountability of service providers is prevalent. To tackle this concern, the author proposes a framework for accountability in public services by strengthening traditional accountability relationships among citizens, political authority and service provider by deploying pertinent ICT. In doing so, the author analyses a case of “public grievance redressal system” in India that is entirely facilitated by ICT. This paper presents the key processes followed by this system and in addition, evaluates the performance of this system utilising quantitative data. The author through this case analysis identified some key technical and business characteristics of ICT applications that sought to improve accountability. Based on this analysis, the traditional accountability relationship is then placed within an ICT framework to suggest how accountability can be reinforced in public services. The proposed framework is based on analysis of a single case and therefore cannot be claimed to be comprehensive. However, this research does have some practical implications, i.e. the proposed framework provides an analytical tool for e-government practitioners to design ICT interventions for accountability. The author asserts that many mechanisms of enforcing accountability have been tried in the past but with little sustainable success. However, this paper proposes a different method of addressing the problem of poor accountability in public services by highlighting the role of ICT.

Then, Chandan Sharma’s research analyzes those factors that determine PPP in infrastructure by using a unique data set on PPI. This research primarily focuses on developing countries, as these countries are in need of PPP arrangement more urgently than any other region. To pursue this research and for analysis purposes, the author utilised a range of advanced panel estimators, namely Random-Poisson, negative binomial, random-generalized least square (GLS), random-tobit, zero-inflated Poisson (ZIP), to overcome the potential data related problems and for the robustness check of the estimated results. The author claims that the large size and relatively higher income markets attract more PPP projects. The empirical evidence also suggests that macroeconomic stability, quality of regulation and governance are important factors in determining PPP in the infrastructure. Surprisingly, however, the evidence fails to provide any strong support for the role of political factors and budget constraint in the process. The findings of this research will help the policymakers of developing countries in framing up such policies, so as to encourage more private firms to engage in infrastructure building through PPP. The author claims that this research is the first attempt of its kind to investigate the determinants of PPP in the context of developing countries.

The latter research study is followed by a research paper by Tommi Inkinen. In this paper, the author classifies the best practices selected by the “Finnish Government Information Society Policy Programme” with a framework that includes four segments: technology, supply, demand, and spatial impact scale. These segments are elemental parts of service development processes, the best of which are classified into seven distinct categories: telecommunications, citizen readiness, education and research, working life, public sector electronic services, social and health care, and electronic commerce. To validate the best practices, the author focused on analysing through their project descriptions. The data are classified with textual content analysis into categories that were further analyzed numerically. The tools of statistical analysis included cross-tabulations and χ² tests. From the findings, the author asserts that there are differentiations among the best practices. The majority of service development concerns applications and software. However, physical infrastructure development was also present in the largest cities. Public sector organizations produced more than half of all of the best practices selected. PPPs were also common, and the majority of service development was targeted to the national level. The best practices that were analyzed during the research process, illustrated the view of the Finnish Government Information Society Policy Programme. Consequently, the analysis highlights the values of the policy program. The data includes only a small segment of on-going development activity and represents a case study and therefore it is limited to a Finnish and Nordic context. The author claims that this research utilises a unique primary data set and the overall findings reflect the originality of the study and clearly provide sufficient grounds to consider electronic service development.

The aforementioned research is then followed by another essential research by Maddalena Sorrentino and Massimo Simonetta. From an organisational perspectrive, the authors in this research seek to assess the internal efficacy of public policies designed to stimulate voluntary inter-municipal partnerships. In particular, this research sets out to assess the capacity of such incentive-based policies to push the councils in the direction desired by the legislator, i.e. service sharing and joint policymaking. An exploratory qualitative case study based approach has been adopted. Primary data were collected from semi-structured interviews with administrators and public managers. The primary data were analysed along with secondary data on the inter-municipal partnerships established in the important Italian region of Lombardy. The authors in this paper question the assumption that access to additional resources is enough to induce the councils to collaborate in service sharing and joint policymaking. While, on the one side, the councils’ organisational and managerial limitations condition their willingness and capacity to forge long-term relationships, on the other, the pressure on councils tasked with partnership implementation (especially the aggregation leaders) and the effort to ensure the orchestration of the activities and joint decision-making lead them to opt for the less structured forms of cooperation (e.g. bilateral agreements). Unlike the mainstream studies on local partnerships, this research paper addresses the policies that incentivise the setting up and development of such initiatives. The authors further develop the use of a model that policymakers will find a valuable aid in predicting agency responses to external mandates and in identifying the different types of potential implementation pitfalls.

Finally Xiaonan Zhang presents the use of geographic information system in local government’s modernisation – a case study from the Northwest of England. Despite a number of studies that have demonstrated the potential of geographic information sharing and analysis in enabling the delivery of modernised e-government services, there is a growing need for an evaluation of the use of GIS in local governments. The purpose of the paper is to explore the possibilities in this regard by establishing an evaluative framework based on e-government development models. The framework is considered as useful in evaluating the development and use of GIS in local governments under the e-government banner. The results illustrate a wider use of GIS in local governments in the Northwest of England and its close connection with the e-government strategy. The study also indicates many local governments are still facing social, technological and organisational challenges in different stages of the development of advanced GIS use.

We hope you will find this issue interesting and thought provoking, and hope to receive your valuable contributions for the forthcoming issue.

Zahir IraniEditor

Yogesh DwivediEditorial Assistant