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Blighted and vacant properties represent a persistent and costly problem for cities and local governments throughout the USA. The purpose of this paper is to identify data needs and requirements for value creation in the context of urban blight. The main assumption is that sharing and opening data through a robust and effective code enforcement program will facilitate more informed management, mitigation and remediation of blighted and vacant properties. Code enforcement programs must be grounded on organizational and technical infrastructures that enable data sharing and value creation for the city and the communities that share its space.

In this paper, the information needs and realities of a city’s code enforcement environment are described, based on data gathered through a series of workshops and focus groups with a range of stakeholders, which included city government departments, police, fire, bank representatives, realtors and community groups.

The analysis reveals key data elements that could potentially help to build a code enforcement program to better manage the cycles and costs of urban blight. Although some of these data elements already exist, and are public, they are not easily accessible to key stakeholders. The paper ends with sets of short-term and long-term recommendations for establishing an information-sharing infrastructure, which would serve as the main conduit for exchanging code enforcement data among a number of city government departments and the public that may play a role in managing urban blight and its consequences.

In this paper, the authors are connecting extant literature on sharing and opening data with literature on the creation of public value. They argue that sharing and opening government data constitute effective ways of managing the costs and cycles of urban blight while creating value. As a result of an initial assessment of data and information requirements, the authors also point to specific data and its potential value from stakeholder perspective.

Collaborations between public administrations and private sector represent a specific challenge to manage contractual and organizational relationships among partners with different goals, working cultures, norms, rules and processes. Therefore, the main research question of this paper is: What are the antecedents of effective collaboration in public-private IT outsourcing relations? Thus, the purpose of this paper is to identify the determinants of collaborative interface characteristics as scaffolding structures to manage public-private IT outsourcing relations effectively.

Two cases of public-private IT outsourcing relationships in Mexico were used to compare and contrast the main antecedents of collaborative interface characteristics. Case selection was based on the success in each case, as perceived by the collaborating members involved. A successful case and a less successful case of application development for the provision of public services from two state administrations in Mexico were chosen. Data gathering took place via face-to-face interviews.

The quality of the organizational interface depends on the interactions between exchange of knowledge and mutual trust, along with the commitment between partners. Trust, commitment and knowledge sharing interacted to enhance interface characteristics that have an impact on public and political values.

This paper used and extended an outsourcing technology enactment model to emphasize the quality of organizational interfaces as a main antecedent for the success of public-private IT outsourcing relations.

Effectively designing work practices and contracts implies the development of flexible contracts, objects and routines to adjust project requirements to fulfill better public-private goals. Such flexible contracts and practices are only possible in a trusting environment where participants shape their mutual understanding of the project.

The paper contributes to the literature on public-private IT outsourcing relationships by offering a theoretical framework on key antecedents and processes of success of these relationships.

Information technology (IT) constitutes an important driver for innovation in the public sector. However, taking advantage of IT to innovate requires the existence of other organizational and institutional capabilities within the public organization. Using absorptive capability theory, the purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between principles for IT governance and dynamic capabilities across semi-urban (between 10,000 and 149,000 inhabitants), urban (between 150,000 and 600,000 inhabitants) and metropolitan (more than 600,000 inhabitants ) municipal governments in Mexico.

This study reports on three workshops involving 34 chief information officers (CIOs) from semi-urban, urban and metropolitan municipalities. The workshop agenda included a series of brainstorming exercises to discuss – among other topics – the capabilities required for digital government innovation. The capabilities collected during the workshops were codified by the authors based on their relationship to the six IT governance standardized principles and the four dynamic capabilities identified in the literature. The authors used descriptive and correlation analyses to show the importance of governance principles and dynamic capabilities for innovation, as well as the relationships between those two dimensions, in each type of municipality.

This study shows that specific IT governance principles may enhance innovation capabilities linked with knowledge acquisition, assimilation, transformation and exploitation. Moreover, the ways in which IT governance principles support innovation are linked to size, resources and complexity of the local government. In conclusion, this study discusses the primary IT policy implications to improve possibilities to innovate in the public sector.

Although researchers and practitioners agree that following principles of good governance may enhance performance and innovation in the provision of public services, the link between the principles of IT governance and capabilities to spur innovation has not yet been fully established in the literature. Thus, in this study, empirical evidence of this linkage is provided.

In this paper, the authors compare the open government data (OGD) ecosystems of Mexico, Russia and the USA in an effort to extract some of the major points of similarity and differentiation between these countries and to trace how variations in these ecosystems may be related to context-specific historical problems and politics, particularly with regard to the possibility of sustained and institutionalized practice.

The authors take a comparative approach, using a set of concepts commonly applied to the three countries to analyze similarities and differences within this group. The authors gathered textual data and information, the searches for relevant documents guided by a set of concepts or criteria that are frequently used in studies of government’s open data readiness assessment.

The authors conclude by focusing on the very different national exigencies that have given rise to open data ecosystems in the three countries, the variations in policy vehicles and implementation schemes that have instantiated open data practices within the three ecosystems and the common challenges that each country faces in institutionalizing OGD programs beyond the tenures of their current executives.

OGD is an information policy with near global relevance and increasing application. Practitioners and scholars alike have used the concept of an “ecosystem” to guide their approach to implementing this policy and to theorizing its scope and benefits. The international comparison is original and adds to the current understanding of an ecosystem approach to OGD.

The authors propose a conceptual model that explains how interorganizational relations in public-private IT outsourcing (ITO) may enhance public value in public administrations through process improvement.

The research design is based on the development of a theoretical framework based on the integration of transaction cost theory (TCT) and the resource-based view (RBV), and empirical interview data from IT managers in state and local governments in Mexico.

First, public-private ITO does produce specific process improvements in Mexico's public administration given its specific institutional context. Second, public value depends on the alignment between the characteristics of IT project activities and the attributes of outsourcing as a mode of governance. Third, process improvements moderate this relation. Fourth, relevant process improvements are identified on an empirical basis, showing the importance of institutional conditions in the determination of public value through interorganizational relationships in the public sector.

The authors suggest new roles for public managers as orchestrators of interorganizational relations, and specify the orientation relevant process improvements could take in a specific institutional context.

Through this study, it is possible to gain both theoretical and practical understanding of process improvements in public administrations to enhance public value.

The purpose of this article is to propose a theoretical model explaining information technology outsourcing performance in the public sector as well as a set of empirically testable propositions to improve the understanding of key determinants of success.

Based on Fountain ' s technology enactment framework, the authors integrated inter-organizational factors, such as trust, knowledge sharing, and quality of outsourcing interfaces, in the model and added organizational culture alignment between service providers and public administration to enhance Fountain ' s original framework.

The authors proposed 17 empirically testable propositions to establish the relationships between key variables in IT outsourcing projects in the public sector.

The proposed model provides guidance for future research aimed at advancing knowledge of IT outsourcing.

The contribution lies in the development of specific variables, such as trust, knowledge, and organizational culture, which are related to building an outsourcing relationship and are used as determinants of the quality of organizational interfaces between public bureaucracies and IT outsourcing providers.

The purpose of this paper (editorial) is to introduce a collection of “best papers,” selected from the 11th International Conference on Digital Government Research (dg.o, 2010), that are devoted to the technical, managerial, social and policy challenges and issues of collaborative e‐government. It provides a conceptual model for collaborative e‐government that may be used to explain the motivations and findings behind these studies.

The paper outlines a conceptual model of collaborative e‐government using value‐driven, citizen‐driven, cost‐driven and technology‐driven forces that tie together various e‐government collaboration projects. A brief survey of government collaboration projects is presented and a set of research questions on collaborative e‐government are formulated.

The conceptual model of e‐government collaboration forces provides a framework that encompasses the research questions, topics and themes addressed in various digital government papers, especially those in this issue.

The paper introduces and summarizes seven research papers relative to the theme of e‐government collaborations, identifying a set of research challenges, opportunities, and unique solutions drawing on past experiences.

The purpose of this article is to show the importance of joint actions and institutions for collaboration (IFCs) in the development and performance of information technology (IT) business clusters in the context of Mexico.

A review of the literature suggests the types of linkages that the clusters must develop to be successful in the context of emerging countries. Two IT clusters in the region of Puebla and Jalisco are compared to highlight the factors that differentiate successful and less successful clusters in this type of environment.

The presence of an IFC, such as the Jalisco Institute of Information Technology in Jalisco, is a determinant factor of the performance of the IT cluster there, contrary to Puebla. A model of dynamic interactions in clusters is proposed as a result of the analysis of the two cases.

Our analysis included clusters from IT industry in Mexico. It needs to be extended to more clusters, more industries and other emerging countries settings for the sake of comparison and generalization.

In the context of the relative scarcity of formal institutions in emerging country settings, the purposive collaboration of both private and public sectors in IFCs is necessary to ensure a long-standing development and performance of business clusters.

In this article, we show the specific role of institutional arrangements in cluster development and performance in emerging countries, which has seldom been investigated both theoretically and empirically.

Many governments are working toward a vision of government-wide transformation that strives to achieve an open, transparent and accountable government while providing responsive services. The purpose of this paper is to clarify the concept of transparency-by-design to advance open government.

The opening of data, the deployment of tools and instruments to engage the public, collaboration among public organizations and between governments and the public are important drivers for open government. The authors review transparency-by-design concepts.

To successfully achieve open government, fundamental changes in practice and new research on governments as open systems are needed. In particular, the creation of “transparency-by-design” is a key aspect in which transparency is a key system development requirement, and the systems ensure that data are disclosed to the public for creating transparency.

Although transparency-by-design is an intuitive concept, more research is needed in what constitutes information and communication technology-mediated transparency and how it can be realized.

Governments should embrace transparency-by-design to open more data sets and come closer to achieving open government.

Transparency-by-design is a new concept that has not given any attention yet in the literature.