Transforming government: people, process, and policy

Citation

Irani, Z. and Ghoneim, A. (2007), "Transforming government: people, process, and policy", Transforming Government: People, Process and Policy, Vol. 1 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/tg.2007.32601daa.001

Transforming government: people, process, and policy

It gives me great pleasure to welcome you to the fourth issue of the first volume of Transforming Government: People, Process, and Policy. This issue includes papers that deal with e-government issues from a variety of perspectives while providing the reader with a mixture of theoretical and practical contributions.

The introduction of e-government and the electronic delivery of services have further expanded government collection of personally-identifiable data. A government's practice in collecting, retaining, and managing personal data about its citizens poses a wide range of privacy concerns. To this end, Kavakli et al., present a methodology for incorporating privacy user requirements into the system design process. Privacy Safeguard (PriS), considers privacy requirements as business goals in the organisational domain and provides a methodological framework for analysing the effect of privacy requirements onto the organisational processes while using specific privacy process patterns. Using these patterns, PriS accelerates the modelling of privacy-related business processes while indicating where the application of privacy implementation techniques is needed, also suggesting a list of specific implementation techniques that can realise privacy-related processes. Therefore, PriS provides an integrated way-of-working from high-level organisational needs to the IT systems that realise them. The authors highlight that privacy enhancing technologies focus on the software implementation, irrespective of the organisational context in which the system is incorporated. They also suggest that understanding the relationship between the user needs in the organisational domain and the capabilities of the supporting software systems is of critical importance. Hence, their proposed PriS methodology provides a set of concepts for modelling privacy requirements in the organisation domain and a systematic way-of-working when translating these requirements into system models.

In the seeming confusion of an e-government atmosphere, thick with hyperbole about public IS-based reform initiatives, the question is how is planning innovations are adopted in public sector agencies and how these impact organizational processes and policy. Kristian Hjort-Madsen investigates the adoption of a new approach for IS planning in government agencies – the use of enterprise architecture. The author applies a neoinstitutional perspective to understand the transformational power of this new paradigm within 12 federal agencies in the USA. A multiple case study of EA planning was undertaken with the US Federal government chosen as the unit of analysis for the study. The reason for this decision was based around the country's early enthusiasm about using IS in government and the early focus on IS planning in the American public sector. The analysis identifies three distinct adoption patterns that illustrate how EA adoption in government is largely based on compliance and imitation namely: Accepters, Improvers and Transformers. The neoinstitutional lens applied in the article generates insights about transformational forces working at the macro and micro levels and helps public organizations better understand and manage the adoption of new IS planning innovations. The basic framework and research approach offered in this paper will be of value to other researchers and senior IS and organizational managers in the public sector responsible for IS planning and its linking to administrative transformation.

In order to increase the efficiency, effectiveness and transparency in managing local governments, Nidal Rashid Sabri and Rania Yaser Jaber attempt to present in their paper an analysis of the major concerns facing the Palestinian local governments. This study examines the completion of the election process in almost all Palestinian municipalities with the aim to examine whether the contribution of community and residents in local government have increased or not during the rule of the elected councils and mayors in Palestinian municipalities, compared to the era of appointed local government. Sabri and Yaser also measured local government performance in Palestine to suggest relevant recommendations to increase efficiency, effectiveness and transparency and accountability in managing in the local governments.

Another objective of the study was to identify major problems, concerns and obstacles facing Palestinian local governments' development. To collect the perception of the municipalities' officials, they developed and deployed a qualitative questionnaire. The analysis showed that the efficiency of local government is still limited in the Palestinian municipalities, including absence of internal audit, written job descriptions for municipalities and the weaknesses of participation of the public. Furthermore, the study pointed out that the major managerial problems are similar to other experiences of emerging countries and that there is a need to open public official sessions of municipal councils, a need for periodical meetings for senior officials with the Mayer of the municipality and a need to conduct annual periodical evaluation for measuring the performance of municipal employees.

The paper presented by Elliman et al., has sought to widen the breadth of the e-government research agenda and to expose critical themes for future research. This paper presents an exploratory research to determine the needs for future eGovernment research. VIEGO – a Virtual Institute for Electronic Government Research used a series of five consultation workshops spread around the UK, to acquire data which were subsequently analysed using a grounded theory approach. Elliman, Irani and Jackson reported that the full achievements of eGovernment have yet to been determined (in their impact). Furthermore, stakeholders are not eager to develop more novel IT but among their primary concerns are the need to understand how to manage constant change, the need for flexibility and the need to coordinate and integrate policy and practice. In addition, it was apparent that the lack of an agreed concept of social value and poor co-ordination are holding back progress. The study concludes that there are still many unanswered questions and that the future research agenda will require a multi-disciplinary approach involving a combination of social, technological and organisational issues.

Lastly, Zoe S. Dimitriades and Theodore Maroudas attempt to contribute to the stream of research on empowerment by investigating the construct of psychological empowerment among Greek public employees. In their paper, they aim to foster the limited amount of empirical research on the concept of empowerment as “experienced” by those working in Public Administration. In doing so, extending the empowerment literature by determining the transferability of Menon's instrument in a Greek public service context, and by examining the relationship between psychological empowerment and internal service climate, defined here as employee quality perceptions of internal service encounters. The study was conducted in the Greek Tax Administration in a mid-sized town in Northern Greece. Dimitriades and Maroudas performed factor, reliability, correlation and regression analyses on the 330 survey questionnaires. Both the exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses faithfully reproduced the three dimensions suggested by Menon – namely perceived control, perceived competence and goal internalization – in a culturally diverse environment compared to the original study. Also, support was provided for the usefulness of the measure in the Greek Tax Administration. In addition, internal service climate was positively associated with psychological empowerment according to expectations. The implications for Greek Public Management are discussed along with direction for future research.

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

Zahir IraniEditor (Zahir.irani@brunel.ac.uk)

Ahmad GhoneimEditorial Assistant