Suchergebnisse

This position paper belongs to a series of contributions on sustainable public value generation in urban areas. The article looks at how the complex transition process cities will be experiencing in the coming decades may be governed. In particular, the discussion investigates the role played by Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) as well as how the intelligence of smart cities may be oriented towards the generation of sustainable public value. The topic is analysed from a value-oriented perspective and in the light of almost two decades of technology-driven innovation in both the private and the public sector. Two conceptual frameworks are proposed. The first one identifies the main contributions offered by ICTs, namely: the enablement of new production, distribution and governance processes; the transformation of organizational and institutional arrangements; and the information of individual choices and behaviours. The second one highlights the trade-offs to be managed and the principles to be applied for turning city intelligence into sustainable development.

Part 5: Transformation, Values and Change ; International audience ; Over the last decade the diffusion of Information Technologies has represented one of the main drivers of government reform. The adoption process of such technologies has posed significant challenges for public organizations. The aim of this paper is thus to look into the process of organizational change that public agencies have undergone, in order to single out its most salient characteristics, such as understanding changes in the adoption of technologies, in organizational choices, in skill needs and in customer-public administrations relationship. On the one hand, organizations are gradually opening up their institutional boundaries in order to proactively answer to environmental changes. On the other hand, citizens play an increasing role in the context of e-Government, since their suggestions and contributions may considerably influence decisions taken by public administrations. Specifically, we attempt to answer this research question: What are e-Government organizational implications in the back office and in the interaction with citizens due to Information Technologies diffusion? Using data from a survey on 1,206 Italian public administrations, we show how organizational changes are emerging, based on the overcoming of traditional bureaucratic organizational forms. The implications of these findings are also discussed.

One of the main factors contributing to the limited impact of eParticipation projects is the presence of a high level of social complexity that has been identified by Macintosh as one of the five challenges in the implementation of eParticipation practices. How to make sense of social complexity is still an open issue as well as the way governments can take benefit from the wealth of information that is already available on their constituencies' collective behaviour. In this paper, we contend that the presence of a considerable variance in terms of political interests, educational level and technological skills makes it very difficult to design workable and effective systems to support participation. A modular strategy is then recommended requiring policy designers to make a step towards citizens rather than expecting the citizenry to move their content production activity onto the "official" spaces created for ad hoc participation.

One of the main factors contributing to the limited impact of eParticipation projects is the presence of a high level of social complexity that has been identified by Macintosh as one of the five challenges in the implementation of eParticipation practices. How to make sense of social complexity is still an open issue as well as the way governments can take benefit from the wealth of information that is already available on their constituencies' collective behaviour. In this paper, we contend that the presence of a considerable variance in terms of political interests, educational level and technological skills makes it very difficult to design workable and effective systems to support participation. A modular strategy is then recommended requiring policy designers to make a step towards citizens rather than expecting the citizenry to move their content production activity onto the "official" spaces created for ad hoc participation.

International audience ; The paper presents the preliminary results of an exploratory survey conducted by the Information Society Unit of the Institute for Prospective Technological Studies (IPTS) of the European Commission. The main goal of the research is to deepen the understanding of the interplay between ICTs and governance processes at city level in the EU by looking at what new ICT-enabled governance models are emerging in European cities and what are their key socio-economic implications. In this preliminary phase efforts have been directed towards addressing the following research question: what key city governance policy areas ICTs impact most and what governance changes are driven by ICTs? This questions have been investigated through a questionnaire based online survey. The evidence collected provided a comprehensive mapping of the use of ICTs in European cities as well as the views of policy makers, city government officials, practitioners and researchers, on the way ICTs are influencing governance processes. The evidence collected shows that new ICT-enabled governance models are emerging, and it allowed to identify the main dimensions of change, drivers, barriers, enablers and characteristics, as well as opportunities, risks and challenges associated with them.

Part 2: Social Media and E-Participation ; International audience ; Governments have started increasingly using web 2.0 social media as a new channel of interaction with citizens in various phases of public policies lifecycle. In this direction they have started moving from simpler forms of exploitation of these strong bi-directional communication channels to more complex and sophisticated ones. These attempts constitute important innovations for government agencies, so it is necessary to analyse them from this perspective as well. This paper analyzes an advanced form of centralised use of multiple social media by government agencies from this perspective, using the well established Diffusion of Innovations Theory of Rogers. It is based on a pilot application of the above approach for conducting a consultation campaign in multiple social media concerning the large scale application of a telemedicine program of the Piedmont Regional Government, Italy. It has been concluded that this approach has the fundamental preconditions for a wide diffusion (relative advantage, compatibility with existing values and processes, reasonable complexity, trialability and observability), at least in government organizations having a tradition of bi-directional communication with citizens in all phases of policy making, and also some experience in using social media for this purpose.

International audience ; This paper describes a methodology for the systematic exploitation of the emerging web 2.0 social media by government organizations in the processes of public policies formulation, aiming to enhance e-participation, in combination with established simulation modeling techniques and tools. It is based on the concept of 'Policy Gadget' (Padget), which is a micro web application combining a policy message with underlying group knowledge in social media (in the form of content and user activities) and interacting with citizens in popular web 2.0 locations in order to get and convey their input to policy makers. Such 'Padgets' are created by a central platform-toolset and then deployed in many different Web 2.0 media. Citizens input from them will be used in various simulation modeling techniques and tools (such as the 'Systems Dynamics'), which are going to simulate different policy options and estimate their outcomes and effectiveness. A use case scenario of the proposed methodology is presented, which outlines how it can be used in 'real life' public policy design problems.