E-Government

From an already established praxis for the field of Information Ethics, the following chapter presents a picture of information flow in a contemporary digital era as symbolized through WikiLeaks, outlining a historical foundation for both WikiLeaks and intercultural information societies. Sketching the development of a theoretical foundation for collaborative information and knowledge studies as exemplified by the wiki phenomenon, a model, as will be argued, that arises from library ethics as much as from media ethics, the following chapter situates the foundation of WikiLeaks within the framework of the wiki model and collaborative information and knowledge studies. Addressing issues of privacy, intellectual freedom and social responsibility, access to information, information literacy, anonymity, transparency and intellectual property as being equally foundational to wiki studies, library ethics, and WikiLeaks, WikiLeaks is herein conceived as inevitably arising from the same historical dialectics as Library Ethics. The wiki collaborative knowledge model is then addressed from a platform of information theory and philosophical ontology, ultimately looking at the wider philosophical consequences of the saturation of information, information control and flow, message and messenger and information as moral entity, surveying the ontology debates between Rafael Capurro and Luciano Floridi, and exploring the implications of information accountability as commentated on by Slavoj Žižek and others.

By looking at the nature of data that may be disclosed by governments, Harlan Yu and David Robinson provide an analytical framework that evinces the ambiguities  underlying the term “open government data.” While agreeing with their core analysis, I contend that the authors ignore the enabling conditions under which transparency may lead to accountability, notably the publicity and political agency conditions. I
argue that the authors also overlook the role of participatory mechanisms as an essential element in unlocking the potential for open data to produce better government decisions and policies. Finally, I conduct an empirical analysis of the publicity and political agency
conditions in countries that have launched open data efforts, highlighting the challenges associated with open data as a path to accountability.

The computer systems of government agencies are notoriously complex. New technologies are piled on older technologies, creating layers that call to mind an archaeological dig. Obsolete programming languages and closed mainframe designs offer barriers to integration with other agency systems. Worldwide, these unwieldy systems waste billions of dollars, keep citizens from receiving services, and even -- as seen in interoperability failures on 9/11 and during Hurricane Katrina -- cost lives. In this book, Alon Peled offers a groundbreaking approach for enabling information sharing among public sector agencies: using selective incentives to "nudge" agencies to exchange information assets. Peled proposes the establishment of a Public Sector Information Exchange (PSIE), through which agencies would trade information.

After describing public sector information sharing failures and the advantages of incentivized sharing, Peled examines the U.S. Open Data program, and the gap between its rhetoric and results. He offers examples of creative public sector information sharing in the United States, Australia, Brazil, the Netherlands, and Iceland. Peled argues that information is a contested commodity, and draws lessons from the trade histories of other contested commodities -- including cadavers for anatomical dissection in nineteenth-century Britain. He explains how agencies can exchange information as a contested commodity through a PSIE program tailored to an individual country's needs, and he describes the legal, economic, and technical foundations of such a program. Touching on issues from data ownership to freedom of information, Peled offers pragmatic advice to politicians, bureaucrats, technologists, and citizens for revitalizing critical information flows.

This research looks to determine the recommended implementation
plan for the Revision & Dissemination of Laws of Fiji from Comparative Case Study of Government Law agencies in Fiji, New Zealand & Australia. The research will mainly focus on the “Adoption and Use of Information Communications Technology” to assist the Law Revision Commission of Fiji in the Consolidation, Amendments, Revision, and Dissemination of the Laws of Fiji. For the first time ever, the Revision of the Laws of Fiji are being done in “digital/electronic” format using the Information Technology platform as compared to the previous “paper-based manual revisions”.

The research study will look at information technology as the efficient and effective “facilitator” and “enabler” of the Law Revision Process that would have otherwise cost the tax payers of Fiji hundreds of thousands of dollars and taken several years to complete. Therefore, the research, after critically analysing the above, would endeavour to recommend an improved and adapted best practice of Using Information Technology to Revise and Disseminate the Laws of Fiji that
can be used by future Law Revision Commissions in Fiji as well as other
jurisdictions in the South Pacific and lay the foundation for future study and research in such area.

The research study will also look at the “value added services” that the use of information technology can bring to the stakeholders in the form of the Law Revision Commission’s Web Site that will contain the Revised and Updated Laws of Fiji, as well as the Revised Laws of Fiji Database on CD/DVD ROM using the “Book on CD Concept”. The Role of Internet is critical for the Dissemination of Laws of Fiji given the geographical separation of its islands and the isolation of its citizens from the mainland. Proper and effective use of Information Communications Technology is crucial to the delivery of the Revised
Laws of Fiji, while automating it at the same time. It will also make the Laws of Fiji accessible to anyone in a simplified user friendly format anywhere in the world in the most cost effective manner.

In a world which is rapidly transforming, the European Union is currently facing hard challenges not easy to deal with. The crisis, whose recovery is taking longer than expected, revealed how arduous is boosting growth and competitiveness and, at the same time, preserving the EU social model, fight inequalities and increase public confidence in institutions. In this context, communication of public authorities has a key role in regaining that trust of citizens and markets that leads to economic growth.
As emphasized by the concept of the workshop, in a world increasingly connected and influenced by intangible aspects it is reasonable to think that among many factors that have contributed to the growth of GDP, and thus to the improvement of the economic situation, the institutional communication may play a role and, as it increasingly exploits digital channels, the relationship between e-government and growth becomes a relevant issue to be deepened. The aim of this preliminary paper is to define the data set that could be used to verify the possible relationship between economic growth and e-government, in particular what we could name as @PPR, i.e. Digital Private-Public Relations. The government actions and exit strategies could impact on citizens and economic and social actors by bridging the gap of digital divide in the public administration and by increasing digital alphabetization of beneficiaries. The data set concerns six countries and the EU average during the crisis period (2008-2013).

It has been claimed that the Web 2.0, the open source movement, and the emerging mode of peer production have inaugurated a new era of debate about openness, participation, and cooperation as bedrocks for rebuilding the civilizations of the modern world. By way of introducing the concept of wikipolitics, this paper examines whether, and if so how, politics and democracies can benefit from this emerging participatory spirit and modern ICTs, and to document possible dangers of such a shift in the democratic process

From an already established praxis for the field of Information Ethics, the following thesis will outline an ethics and a historical foundation for WikiLeaks through the exposition of a four-part history of Information Ethics. It will first trace the historical development of the field of Information Ethics and secondly sketch the development of a theoretical foundation for collaborative information and knowledge studies as exemplified by the wiki phenomenon, a model, as will be argued, that arises from library ethics. Situating the foundation of WikiLeaks within the framework of the wiki model, it will address issues of privacy, intellectual freedom and social responsibility, access to information, information literacy, anonymity, transparency and intellectual property as being similarly foundational to wiki studies, library ethics, and WikiLeaks, and will conceive WikiLeaks as inevitably arising from the same historical dialectics as Library Ethics. The wiki collaborative knowledge model will then be addressed from a platform of information theory and philosophical ontology, ultimately looking at the wider philosophical consequences of the saturation of information, information control and flow, message and messenger and information as moral entity, surveying the ontology debates between Rafael Capurro and Luciano Floridi, and exploring the implications of information accountability as commentated on by Slavoj Žižek and others.

The availability of and access to government information has been a major issue for governments and public administrations as well as citizens and civil organizations worldwide. However, the facilitation of access to information generated and held by government agencies has not always been the case. Instead, there are many incidents through history demonstrating the inherent tendency of governments towards secrecy and opacity of their operations. Nevertheless, access to government information is an institutional right, which constitutes a precondition for the proper exercise of civic rights whereon the democratic governance springs, bears economic benefits for the public administration as well as to whoever deals with public administration, whereas, from the administrative point of view, the reuse of the public information may lead to faster and more efficient administration.
The first legislative document adopted in Europe providing for the access to public documents was the second part of “Freedom of Press Act” titled “On the Public Nature of Official Documents” adopted in 1766 by the Swedish government. However, the universal recognition of access to information as a right came in 1948 when the UN General Assembly adopted the “Universal Declaration of Human Rights”, which in Article 19 provided that “everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; … to seek, receive and impart information and ideas...”. From this point forward, the Right to Information (RTI) movement was born aiming to its recognition as a civil right because it springs from the right to expression under the notion that in order for an individual to be able to freely express ideas, opinions and thoughts, it should be able to freely formulate them, hence to be very well informed.
More recently, another movement made its appearance demanding greater transparency and liberation of data, the open government data (OGD). OGD is a technology-driven movement which relies on the disclosure, accessibility and re-use of government information in any format available and by any means available. Even though the history of OGD is considerably shorter than the RTI’s one, however it has managed to be one of the influential trends within governments and international organizations, as the unstructured government data are considered an unexploited treasure in terms of economic growth and innovation.

Development of e-government policies can be implemented in a systematic and integrated in the activities of local government services, through legislation, standardization, and the necessary guidance. The success of e-ID card policy in Makassar is the joint efforts of government and community support in the success of government programs. The government's efforts in the form of socialization of population and civil records, the role of the executing officers in urban village and sub-district was involved in the data collection using persuasive ways to engage the community in making the e-ID card. Meanwhile, the community support in the form of participation of the community to visit the locations of data collection in urban and active supervision of the media in the city of Makassar.

The value of e-government, services to citizens by public institutions through the internet, is dependent on the mutual adoption of e-government by both the public institution and the citizens. This paper describes a longitudinal study of e-government adoption by municipalities and citizens in Denmark. We studied the e-government initiative Digital Post – encrypted digital communication between municipalities and citizens. Over the three-year adoption period, we found four adoption patterns among municipalities, characterized by a slow, late, gradual or early increase in the use of Digital Post. The adoption patterns among citizens were less distinct. We calculated the realized savings to only 20% of the anticipated savings, leading to a deficit of nearly €5 million in 2013. Municipal funding was reduced according to the anticipated savings. In addition, the variation in adoption by municipal staff explained much more of the variation in the deficit than the variation in adoption by citizens did. We wish to draw attention to the overly optimistic expectations of savings from

The study presented in this article will serve as a
basis for the development of a suitable methodology whose
purpose is to evaluate the quality of Local e-Government online
services. Citizens expect quality public services, and their online
dimension is no exception. The quality of these services should be
analysed and accounted for, in order to maximize and develop
strategies that improve the offered services, increasing the levels
of satisfaction of their recipients. In this sense, this first study
puts forth a systematization of the relevant bibliography,
focusing on the quality of two types of services: traditional and e-
Government. Each methodology was analysed in order to identify
the main quality dimensions used. Up to the present moment, we
were unable to identify a service quality evaluation method
particularly focused on local online e-Governments, and this
justifies the development of an investigation project whose main
purpose is to create such a methodology in this field.

Most  e-governments  have  been  using  the  WCAG  1.0
guidelines  as  reference  to  probe  their  compliance  to
web accessibility principles. This was reflected in their
local  accessibility  policies,  website  design,
maintenance,  and  accessibility  testing  activities.
Recently,  WCAG  2.0  emerged  as  an  ISO/IEC
40500:2012  International  accessibility  standard  that
has been recommended for adoption by the W3C WAI.
This  paper  seeks  to  examine  if  there  is  a  need  for  egovernments  to  reassess  their  web  accessibility
conformance, in light of the latest WCAG 2.0 standard.
A  case  study  related  to  the  21  Dubai  e-government
websites  is  presented  whereby  accessibility  is
evaluated  based  on  the  WCAG  1.0  and  WCAG  2.0
guidelines  and  using  automated  accessibility  testing
tools. We found  that WCAG  2.0  conformance testing
identified  some  notable  accessibility  issues  that  were
not  revealed  by  WCAG  1.0  conformance  testing.
Hence  we  recommend  that  e-governments  should
develop and update their web content and accessibility
policies to conform to the latest WCAG 2.0 guidelines
and  success  criteria.  Additional  implications  for
practice and for academic research are also provided.

Linked Open Data (LOD) has gained significant momentum over the past years as a best practice of promoting the sharing and publi- cation of structured data on the semantic Web. Currently LOD is reach- ing significant adoption also in Public Administrations (PAs), where it is often required to be connected to existing platforms, such as GIS-based data management systems. Bearing on previous experience with the pi- oneering data.cnr.it, through Semantic Scout, as well as the Agency for Digital Italy recommendations for LOD in Italian PA, we are working on the extraction, publication, and exploitation of data from the Geographic Information System of the Municipality of Catania, referred to as SIT (“Sistema Informativo Territoriale”). The goal is to boost the metropolis towards the route of a modern Smart City by providing prototype inte- grated solutions supporting transport, public health, urban decor, and social services, to improve urban life. In particular a mobile application focused on real-time road traffic and public transport management is currently under development to support sustainable mobility and, espe- cially, to aid the response to urban emergencies, from small accidents to more serious disasters. This paper describes the results and lessons learnt from the first work campaign, aiming at analyzing, reengineering, linking, and formalizing the Shape-based geo-data from the SIT.