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This paper aims to examine the mediating role of occupational stress in addressing the missing link between organisational intelligence (OI) traits and digital government service quality and propose relevant strategies in sustaining the digital government service quality whilst enhancing the psychological well-being of the service providers.

This paper utilises a triangulation design approach to interpret the findings of the study and propose pertinent strategies. Firstly, we examined the mediating role of occupational stress in addressing the link between OI traits, and digital government service quality. Next, we examined the priority factors of OI traits and occupational stress to sustain the quality of digital government services via the Importance-Performance Map Analysis (IPMA). These findings were cross-examined with the code’s percentage generated from participants’ open-ended survey feedback on aspects that requires improvement in sustaining service quality.

In principle, occupational stress mediates the relationship between OI traits at the third-order component level and digital service quality. Analysis at the lower component level shows that the mediation effect of occupational stress is only significant in the presence of employee-oriented OI traits and “Alignment and Congruence”. Accordingly, the IPMA exhibited the importance of “Job engagement”, “Alignment and Congruence” and “Occupational Stress” in sustaining service quality. Conversely, code’s percentage analysis demonstrated the role of other insignificant traits such as “Leadership” and Appetite for Change and Knowledge Deployment’ in ensuring the sustainability of digital service quality.

By integrating the Organisational Model of Stress with Public Service-Dominant Logic, this paper rejuvenates the stressors utilised in a traditional work setup and widens the perspective of individual job performance to organisational level performance, to reflect the context of today’s public service delivery. We triangulated the outcome from mediation analysis, IPMA as well as open-ended feedback analysis and propose prioritisation on the aspects of “Employee-oriented traits”, “Psychological Well-being”, “Alignment and Congruence”, “Leadership” and “Appetite for Change and Knowledge Deployment” aspects for sustaining digital government service quality. Considering the significance of occupational stress in sustaining service quality in both quantitative and qualitative analysis, this paper also takes the approach of proposing a stress intervention program at the individual and organisational levels to manage the psychological well-being of the service providers.

This study aims to conduct performance and clustering analyses with the help of Digital Government Reference Library (DGRL) v16.6 database examining the role of emerging technologies (ETs) in public services delivery.

VOSviewer and SciMAT techniques were used for clustering and mapping the use of ETs in the public services delivery. Collecting documents from the DGRL v16.6 database, the paper uses text mining analysis for identifying key terms and trends in e-Government research regarding ETs and public services.

The analysis indicates that all ETs are strongly linked to each other, except for blockchain technologies (due to its disruptive nature), which indicate that ETs can be, therefore, seen as accumulative knowledge. In addition, on the whole, findings identify four stages in the evolution of ETs and their application to public services: the “electronic administration” stage, the “technological baseline” stage, the “managerial” stage and the “disruptive technological” stage.

The output of the present research will help to orient policymakers in the implementation and use of ETs, evaluating the influence of these technologies on public services.

The research helps researchers to track research trends and uncover new paths on ETs and its implementation in public services.

Recent research has focused on the need of implementing ETs for improving public services, which could help cities to improve the citizens’ quality of life in urban areas. This paper contributes to expanding the knowledge about ETs and its implementation in public services, identifying trends and networks in the research about these issues.

This study conducts an analysis of the interplay between governance quality, environmental expenditure of the government, and pollution emissions (measured as CO2 emissions) within the BRIC economies.

Utilizing the FMOLS model and marginal effects, we investigate the influence of governance quality and environmental expenditure on environmental quality (CO2 emissions) over the period 1996–2020. We took data for Brazil, Russia, India and China. We excluded South Africa due to its due to its small economic size relative to other BRIC economies, sluggish industrial growth and deteriorating foreign trade which gives contrast outliers to our data.

Results indicate that government investments in environmental protection contribute to a reduction in CO2 emissions. However, the effectiveness of these expenditures is contingent upon the quality of governance. This underscores the significance of robust governance for realizing meaningful reductions in air pollution through environmental spending. Further, increase in GDP per capita and the industrial sector's share of GDP are associated with a significant rise in CO2 emissions across BRIC economies. Conversely, FDI and trade openness exhibit a negative impact on CO2 emissions, with this effect gaining greater resilience when accounting for governance factors.

Like any other studies, the present study also suffers from some limitations. First, besides air quality, environmental quality encompasses multiple dimensions and various characteristics such as water purity, noise pollution, open space access, visual effects of buildings etc. But the present study included only CO2 (air quality) as a proxy of environmental quality due to various problems of data and methods. Second, CO2 (carbon dioxide) emission, which is the dependent variable in our model, is actually influenced by various quantitative and qualitative (both natural and man-made) factors. We included only nine independent variables. However, we could not include many variables due to lack of consistent data. Third, this study included only four countries – Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC) and excluded South Africa which is a member of the BRICS block due to its economic size, sluggish industrial growth and deteriorating foreign trade which gives contrast outliers to our data set of the four BRIC countries. Therefore, the future research may be carried out by addressing those issues for better understanding of the environmental problems, governance and policies thereon.

(i) Establish environmental governance committees – The four BRIC countries including South Africa should form a committee comprising government, civil society, and private sector representatives for comprehensive oversight and collaboration in environmental governance. (ii) Invest in capacity building for environmental institutions – Allocate resources to enhance environmental institutions' capacity through training, data improvement, and enforcement strengthening. (iii) Implement green procurement policies – Encourage green procurement in government agencies to drive demand for eco-friendly products and services, promoting sustainable practices. (iv) Incentivize green technology development – Offer tax credits or subsidies to stimulate green technology adoption, including renewable energy and sustainable agriculture. (v) Promote sustainable urban development – Prioritize sustainable urban strategies like public transportation investment and green space promotion to mitigate urbanizations' environmental impacts. (vi) Enhance cross-border cooperation – Foster collaboration on transboundary environmental issues among four BRIC nations including South Africa, including joint research and policy responses. (vii) Promote green finance and investment – Mobilize green finance to support sustainable development projects through instruments like green investment funds and bonds.

This study distinguishes itself by offering a unique analysis of both individual and combined effects of governance and environmental expenditure on environmental quality. Additionally, it encompasses various dimensions of governance, an aspect rarely explored in the BRIC countries.

The paper explores how local authorities, particularly under the Open Government Partnership (OGP), respond to e-governance challenges in Georgia.

A weighted scoring system is adopted to assess e-governance in six OGP local authorities (Akhaltsikhe, Khoni, Kutaisi, Ozurgeti, Rustavi, and Tbilisi) in four areas, including access to information, digital service delivery, data management, and citizen engagement. Moreover, website analysis with a focus on transparency and citizen engagement supplements the evaluation.

The findings illustrate that the six local authorities have made certain accomplishments in e-governance and taken steps towards open government; however, these efforts lack coordination and systematic planning. Tbilisi embraces open governance principles with comprehensive action plans, strong transparency commitment, and engaging digital platforms. Kutaisi demonstrates notable progress with user-friendly digital platforms and a streamlined open data portal, emphasizing transparency. Rustavi shows significant development in digital service delivery and citizen engagement and a reputation as a transparent local government. Akhaltsikhe faces challenges in electronic service delivery and citizen engagement. Ozurgeti also encounters obstacles in information disclosure and electronic service delivery, while Khoni lags in information accessibility and citizen engagement.

This research is novel in studying the level of e-government among OGP local members in Georgia by a scoring system. The analysis will empower the government to proactively modify and adjust the situation on a regional scale, aligning with the challenges inherent in the country’s unique experiences.

The association between e-government and trust in government has been extensively examined, even though empirical works have returned conflicting conclusions about this association. This study aims to revisit the relationship between e-government and trust in government using macrolevel data from Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) member countries. It also addresses whether or not e-government should contribute to the quality of governance to improve trust in government.

Archival data from 36 OECD members over five years (2012–2015) were used to achieve the study objectives.

Results indicate that e-government does not directly affect trust in government, although there is an indirect association.

This implies that e-government systems will not significantly impact trust in government unless they contribute to the quality of governance that offers a basis for granting trust in government. Accordingly, value creation, including trust, should be considered during the design of e-government systems to achieve the desired outcomes.

In today’s digital economy, it is very important to cultivate digital professionals with advanced interdisciplinary skills. The purpose of this paper is that universities play a vital role in this effort, and research teams need to use the synergistic effect of various educational methods to improve the quality and efficiency of personnel training. For these teams, a powerful evaluation mechanism is very important to improve their innovation ability and the overall level of talents they cultivate. The policy of “selecting the best through public bidding” not only meets the multi-dimensional evaluation needs of contemporary research, but also conforms to the current atmosphere of evaluating scientific and technological talents.

Nonetheless, since its adoption, several challenges have emerged, including flawed project management systems, a mismatch between listed needs and actual core technological needs and a low rate of conversion of scientific achievements into practical outcomes. These issues are often traced back to overly simplistic evaluation methods for research teams. This paper reviews the literature on the “Open Bidding for Selecting the Best Candidates” policy and related evaluation mechanisms for research teams, identifying methodological shortcomings, a gap in exploring team collaboration and an oversight in team selection criteria.

It proposes a theoretical framework for the evaluation and selection mechanisms of research teams under the “Open Bidding for Selecting the Best Candidates” model, offering a solid foundation for further in-depth studies in this area.

Research progress on the Evaluation Mechanism of Scientific Research Teams in the Digital Economy Era from the Perspective of “Open Bidding for Selecting the Best Candidates.”

Benchmarking e-government and digital society developments using relevant indicators provides crucial insights into what aspects to consider while building a resilient digital society in which digital public services are delivered effectively and sustainably. The purpose of this paper is to analyse selected indices and indicators over the years and provide findings and recommendations on what indicators contribute most to the development.

A mixed research approach was used to conduct the research and collect, analyse and interpret data. A qualitative analysis involving the search, decomposition and comparison approaches to identify e-government and digital society reports, indices, rankings and indicators was followed by a quantitative analysis comprising of regression and cluster analyses.

The findings revealed that changes in the mix of indicators used by e-government and digital society indices can be attributed to advances in ICT and channels through which people communicate and receive information. The authors found that digital and telecommunication infrastructures and the quality of their parameters such as broadband have the biggest influence on progress of the e-government and digital societies developments and contribute most to clustering of the EU member states into groups.

The paper provides insights into how the structures of related indices changed over the years and how different indicators contribute to benchmarking of e-government and digital society developments by means of their weights. It provides governments with recommendations on which indicators to focus most.

Asian countries have had persistent unemployment levels. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of government spending on unemployment. Furthermore, this paper investigates the moderating role of institutional quality on the government spending–unemployment nexus.

Using data from 35 Asian countries from 2000 to 2022, the dynamic ordinary least squares and fully modified ordinary least squares technique is used to tackle with aforementioned issue. In addition, pooled mean group estimation is applied to verify the robustness of the findings.

The results show that an increase in government expenditure and better institutions reduce the unemployment rate. Interestingly, the negative impact of government expenditure on unemployment will enhance and intensify with better institutional quality. Furthermore, trade openness and foreign direct investment decrease unemployment in Asian countries. The results are robust to various specifications.

Findings from this study provide important implications for governments. Governments should use public expenditure efficiently and enhance and improve institutional quality to reduce unemployment.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this study pioneers the investigation of the moderating role of institutional quality in the relationship between government expenditure and unemployment in Asian countries.

This paper contributes to the field of public services’ performance measurement systems by proposing a benchmarking-based methodology that improves the effective use of big and open data in analyzing and evaluating efficiency, for supporting internal decision-making processes of public entities.

The proposed methodology uses data envelopment analysis in combination with a multivariate outlier detection algorithm—local outlier factor—to ensure the proper exploitation of the data available for efficiency evaluation in the presence of the multidimensional datasets with anomalous values that often characterize big and open data. An empirical implementation of the proposed methodology was conducted on waste management services provided in Italy.

The paper addresses the problem of misleading targets for entities that are erroneously deemed inefficient when applying data envelopment analysis to real-life datasets containing outliers. The proposed approach makes big and open data useful in evaluating relative efficiency, and it supports the development of performance-based strategies and policies by public entities from a data-driven public sector perspective.

Few empirical studies have explored how to make the use of big and open data more feasible for performance measurement systems in the public sector, addressing the challenges related to data quality and the need for analytical tools readily usable from a managerial perspective, given the poor diffusion of technical skills in public organizations. The paper fills this research gap by proposing a methodology that allows for exploiting the opportunities offered by big and open data for supporting internal decision-making processes within the public services context.

The objective of this research is to methodically categorize the various types of Open Government Data (OGD) stakeholders, and to elucidate the intricate network relationships among OGD stakeholders, along with the underlying mechanisms that shape their formation.

To comprehend the collaboration mechanism of stakeholders in the OGD ecosystem, the authors constructed an OGD multi-stakeholder relationship network by using data from the Shandong Province Data Application Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition. Based on the structural social capital theory and exponential random graph model (ERGM), an analytical framework was established to explore the formation mechanism of the collaborative network of OGD multi-stakeholder.

The results indicate that multi-stakeholder collaboration among government, enterprises and the public is crucial for achieving OGD goals. Organizing OGD competitions serves as an effective mechanism for solidifying and maintaining relationships among OGD stakeholder groups. Degree centrality and structural parameters reveal a Matthew effect within the connection process of the OGD ecosystem's collaborative network. Additionally, there is evidence of agglomeration and transferability within the network's structure.

This study contributes to the understanding regarding the formation mechanism of OGD stakeholders. The findings have implications for developing multi-stakeholder relationship networks of OGD and driving OGD initiatives.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/OIR-06-2023-0284