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A quick search of the headlines of major newspapers reveals a treasure trove of technology procurement gone wrong. While the private sector seems to adopt and implement new technology seamlessly and quickly to deliver for customers, the government struggles to accomplish technology purchases and integrations with the same ease. As governments in the United States are looking to retain their current workforce and attract the next generation of workers, the technological capabilities and ethos of governments will be paramount. With nearly every industry being transformed by technology and Generation T being the first generation to have an ingrained “technology first” mindset, the ability of governments to attract these workers depends, in large part, on the ability to transform their government technology culture, policies, and practices.

In this chapter, the authors examine the administrative branch and observe two key components at the root of most technology failures: poor organizational structure in the bureaucracy and the lack of an empowered Chief Information/Technology Officer. Building upon case studies from Massachusetts and California, this chapter looks at the factors related to failure or success to understand the technology procurement culture. The chapter concludes by presenting four key “best practice” principles of public policy and administration that can be implemented by almost any governmental entity to improve their acquisition and implementation of technology.

Imagine that someone working for your company in the year 2010 sent you a postcard that arrived in 1994. Instead of technology news or stock tips, the message described changes in state or federal governments. How can you use the information to prepare your business? Managers should take the following four scenarios of governments of the future very seriously. One reason is that authorities are betting that all of these scenarios will come true — in at least some of the fifty states. Another reason is that the state governments can exert a powerful impact on corporate prospects.

Drawing upon recent interests in Michel Foucault’s anti-essentialist conception of the state, I provide an analysis of state power in colonial slave societies that is attentive to the ongoing processes of “statification” and governmentalization of the state. This approach represents an alternative to classic state theory, which seems inadequate to describe the diverse political context of Caribbean colonial slave societies.

I apply the Foucauldian conception of the state to the empirical case of the Danish West Indies in the second half of the 18th century. Here, I focus on the problem of public order and its formation in relation to growing concerns over general economic, social, demographic, and political risks that the institution of slavery posed to colonial society. I argue that the slave laws of the 18th century can be seen as a governmental strategy to manage the risks of slavery by constituting a public order that would be subject to policing by the state. I also argue, however, that the specific circumstances of colonial slavery shaped the regulative practices toward the necessities of a flexible, adjustable, responsive government. I suggest that this should be interpreted as a governmental strategy calibrated to the realities of the specificities of colonial rule, rather than simply a reflection of incoherence and incompetence on the part of colonial authorities. The larger argument is that actual state practices have to be seen as results of problems of government in a given context, and as a function of the dynamic and reciprocal processes of government.

This special “Anbar Abstracts” issue of the International Journal of Public Sector Management is split into six sections covering abstracts under the following headings: Culture, Strategy and Organizational Structure; Leadership, Management Styles and Decision Making; Personnel and HR Management; Training and Development; Information Technology; Marketing and Customer Service Strategy.

In recent years accounting standard setters and professional bodies have issued directives aimed at improving the transparency and accessibility of financial reports compiled by government agencies. This study examines the availability and accessibility of local government financial reports on the Internet for a sample of 300 U.S. municipalities of varying size. Results indicate that provision of financial reports is more prominent among larger cities. Cities with higher income per capita and higher levels of accounting disclosure are also more likely to provide financial reports on the Internet. The accessibility of the financial data reported on the Internet is positively related to the number of residents, resident income per capita, and level of debt and financial position of the municipality.

The study investigates the use of early forms of environmental accounting in the implementation of environmental strategies in the Grand Duchy of Tuscany between the 16th and 17th centuries.

The study adopts the Foucauldian concept of raison d’État to shed light on the ways in which environmental accounting practices were used by Tuscan Grand Dukes to form a detailed knowledge of the territory to be governed and act accordingly.

Financial and non-financial information relating to environmental issues enabled the Grand Dukes to “visualise” the territory to be managed as an enclosed disciplinary space whereby the conduct of people living therein could be decisively influenced. Accounting practices as a tool for the implementation of environmental strategies did not merely aim to protect the environment but were a means to reinforce the power of the State.

The paper can inform future works that investigate the ways in which environmental policies and accounting are used to pursue far-reaching governmental goals. It encourages scholars to examine further the origins of environmental accounting and its early forms.

The study documents how environmental strategies and the related use of accounting can have a significant influence on how individuals are allowed to conduct themselves. It also shows that environmental accounting practices can be an important tool in a State’s machinery of power.

The study offers a novel perspective on the use of environmental accounting information as a tool in the exercise of State power. It explores explicitly the interrelations between accounting, sustainability and power. It also adds new evidence to historical research that has engaged with early forms of environmental accounting.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of the intermediary in delivering public services from government departments to different stakeholders (business and citizens) and to highlight the challenges that face the development of e‐government services in the context of Madinah City, in Saudi Arabia.

The paper uses a broad literature review to identify significant factors that contribute to e‐government adoption and diffusion success. These factors are then used as a basis for analyzing the findings from a case study that focuses on the concept of intermediaries for e‐government service delivery in Saudi Arabia. To investigate a less‐recognized phenomenon, such as the use of intermediaries in e‐government contexts, the authors adopt a qualitative case study approach to gain further understating. This method allowed examining the phenomenon in its natural settings through employing multiple methods of data collection. Further, it gave the researchers enough room to get a closer look at the reasons behind introducing the intermediary concept in the e‐government context and provided considerable flexibility during interviews and observations.

The results of this paper indicate that digital divide and poor infrastructure to conduct payments (secure transactions) for e‐government services was hindering citizens' adoption of e‐services in Saudi Arabia. Thus, the intermediary concept was facilitating citizens' access to e‐government services and helping to reduce the digital divide in Saudi Arabia. The findings also show that intermediaries helped in increasing the availability of e‐government services. Additionally, this paper finds that trust between the service provider (government) and service requester (citizens and businesses) is an important factor that influences not only e‐government adoption and diffusion, but also the role of electronic intermediary (e‐offices) in facilitating this adoption.

The authors take into account the most salient adoption factors when introducing e‐government systems. Electronic intermediaries may help to enhance the understating and analysis of those adoption factors in government settings and facilitate government departments in realizing the importance of intermediaries' role in e‐government contexts. Furthermore, this paper significantly contributes to the knowledge and practice of e‐government adoption and diffusion and provides sufficient support to decision makers in expediting e‐government adoption and diffusion.

The purpose of this paper is to present an intelligent mobile based emergency response system (MERS) framework, a text information extraction and aggregation algorithm to integrate information from multiple sources in the MERS system, and an ontology‐supported case‐based reasoning system for the MERS system.

The paper explains the components of information extraction and aggregation process, and a CBR‐Ontology approach for the MERS system.

The result of this study will offer a new opportunity to the interaction between government, citizens, responders, and other non‐government agencies in emergency situations, and therefore improve the services of the government in an emergency situation.

The paper indicates the need for usage of mobile technologies to assist the government to get information and make decisions in responding to disasters anytime and anywhere.

This article aims to examine factors associated with new employee turnover in US state governments, where turnover is often highest in organizations. Building on existing studies of high performance work systems (HPWS) turnover, this article develops a set of hypotheses to explain new hire turnover.

The proposed model has been analyzed with a sample of 42 of the 50 US state governments.

Practices associated with HPWS influence turnover of new hires. State governments that operate centralized college recruiting programs, pay higher salaries, offer pay for performance incentives, award group bonuses, invest more in training, and allow job rotation lose significantly fewer new hires.

This study is limited to specific variables collected in an online survey of states' central human resource departments. Future research may want to focus on other levels of government, include additional practices associated with HPWS, and examine measures of government performance.

This study stresses the importance of HPWS and how HRM practices impact new employees' decisions to stay or leave an organization. This information will provide an opportunity for actionable knowledge to be created that may help practitioners design and administer programs to reduce new hire turnover.

This study has extended a well‐developed body of knowledge on HPWS to government. Since most HPWS and turnover studies focus on turnover more broadly and since turnover is often highest among new hires, this research extends the HPWS framework to an important outcome, new hire quit rates.