Editorial

Citation

Irani, Z. (2007), "Editorial", Transforming Government: People, Process and Policy, Vol. 1 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/tg.2007.32601aaa.001

Editorial

Dear Readers,

It gives me great pleasure to welcome you to the first issue of the 1st volume of Transforming Government: People, Process, and Policy. This debut issue involves papers drawn from the editorial board as well as the wider community, which handle electronic Government issues from a variety of perspectives; human, organizational, social and technical, yet while providing the reader with a mixture of theoretical and practical contributions.

Paul Beynon-Davies presents a meta-model for e-government that is built on an analysis of the substantive literature surrounding electronic Government services. Driven by the lack of a holistic conception of e-government, the meta-model takes account of the broad nature of this contemporary socio-technical phenomenon and seeks to provide a provocative analysis. The author argues that this model can be used as a way of portraying numerous definitions surrounding the breadth and depth of the e-government experience (which are often ground in the views and experiences of individuals), a systemic model of e-government that inter-relates aspects of technological innovation with process change in government and as a framework to benchmark the range of e-government experience both within regions of nation-states and between nations internationally. The presented meta-model of e-government contains within it a number of possible business models for the development of e-government – strategies for e-government focused around key business processes and information system provision. In terms of validating the model at a theoretical level, the author conducted an analysis of prominent growth models for e-government. The author then concludes that the proposed meta-model is more encompassing than those currently detailed in the literature. Furthermore, the systemic nature of the model also allows clear relationships to be identified between issues of performance, information, management and changes in government.

Addressing e-participation from a management perspective, Kim Viborg Andersen, Helle Zinner Henriksen and Christine Secher conclude that the administrative costs in transferring e-participation practices and techniques deserve more attention and awareness when considering the full cost implications of e-participation. In their paper, the authors present reflections on managerial challenges when implementing transfer mechanisms for facilitating e-participation. The objective of the paper is to highlight the dilemma of how much to spend on:

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  other activities for citizen involvement; and

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  activities other than citizen involvement to enable improved communication and interaction of citizens.

The authors argue that even though the cost of joining the debate is marginal from the potential citizens' perspective, a general increase in e-participation might lead to increased costs for government and therefore the tax payer. Furthermore, although the marginal costs for citizen involvement might approach zero over time, there are substantial high sunk costs for governmental institutions and thus, raises this as a significant management concern.

In the paper written by Sofiane Sahraoui, it is argued that current trends in e-government development are technology centric, with social and community considerations given less attention which are considered as contributing factors towards the high failure rates of e-governments initiatives, especially in the developing world. With e-inclusion incorrectly considered as a further stage of e-government development and not as a strategy for e-government planning and development, the paper seeks to reconfigure e-government e-inclusion as two parallel processes of government intervention to support a socially inclusive development strategy through a national IT strategy.

A distinction is proposed between mechanistic and organic approaches to e-government the author introduces e-inclusion based on a more “organic” and community-centred approach. The author highlights the importance of adopting a framework for e-inclusion during the strategic planning process for e-government with an objective to increased access opportunities for all. The paper questions a major assumption in the e-government literature, namely that e-inclusion follows e-government. By drawing from the political science literature, it identifies a niche for e-inclusion, which helps reconceptualize it as socially inclusive government rather than a further stage of e-government.

Driven by the need for more insight into the complexity associated with e-procurement process, Ray Hackney, Zahir Irani, Ahmad Ghoneim and Sevgi Ozkan present a case research note for evaluating issues surrounding the implementation of electronic reserve auctions (eRA). Thought it is thought that the use of eRAs would benefit the buyer, the authors argue that it is not only the technology that is a key determinant of success but rather the combination of IT and soft human and organizational aspects involved in IS evaluation. The paper proposes through a case study the need for developing a visual toolset of dynamic simulation models that local authorities and other public sector organisations can use to make informed cost-effective procurement decisions at strategic, tactical and operational levels. This will be made possible through the identification and simulation of weighted criteria supportive of procurement transformations relative to policy driven change pushed through a national mandate. The investigation is thought to propose a set of fundamental scenarios that would enable more effective decision making within an e-procurement process.

In an attempt to identify central research areas in e-government, Hans J. Scholl presents an analysis of the literature surrounding the disciplines contributing to e-government. The central question in the researcher presented by the author focuses on the assumption that the more central the research questions in e-government, the more they need the simultaneous attention and collaborative effort from various disciplines. Another way of looking at is that the more mono-disciplinary the treatment of any research question central to e-government, the more it risks compromising relevancy. The author distinguishes central research areas of e-government based on the centrality principle highlighting that the areas of transformation, integration, participation, and preservation as central areas to e-government. In addition, the author identifies strong drivers in central research towards an integrative interdisciplinary approach.

Lastly, striving to find new methods to minimize the gap between business and IT, Raymond Cheng-Yi Wu uses enterprise architecture to mediate the gap by improving governance, agility and business integrity. The author stresses that all of these issues should be applied to attain e-government transformation and vertical interoperability as well as common services provision. Furthermore, the author introduces the concept of enterprise vertical integration in e-government, which is based on a solution of coherence of approaches, which addresses the e-government enterprise gap and serves as the backbone in vertical integration. The author proposes achieving enterprise vertical integration by applying semantic, service and metadata repositories to a global-local architecture foundation. The vertical integration methodology presented in the paper follows the nature business implementation direction; thus can eliminate the point-to-point integration effort and risk. In addition, it is sought to provide a common service and common information value proposition such as portfolio infrastructure for quick development and policy compliance. The author concludes that the maturity of vertical integration and provision of cross-organizational shared service and information have a better ability to cope with both political and organizational issues and, in eliminating technical integration complexity.

We hope you enjoy reading this inaugural issue of Transforming Government: People, Process, and Policy as much as we enjoyed preparing it for you, and hope to receive your valuable contributions in forthcoming coming issue.

Zahir Irani