Politics of E‐Government: E‐Government and the Political Control of Bureaucracy

Abstract

Stuart Bretschneider is associate dean and chair of the Department of Public Administration, Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University. He also holds one of the University's Laura J. and L. Douglas Meredith Professorships for Teaching Excellence. His research focuses on how public organizations make use of information technology and the effects of those technologies on public organizations; how public organizations employ forecasting technology and organize to carry out forecasting activities; and how sector differences affect administrative processes. HeTh is case study reports an innovative e-government experiment by a local government in Seoul, South Korea-Gangnam-gu. A new local political leadership in Gangnam made strategic use of e-government applications to exert greater political control over the local civil service bureaucracy. Th e authors fi nd that e-government applications possess political properties that can be applied eff ectively by the political leadership as instruments to improve control over the government bureaucracy as well as to enhance essential government accountability and transparency. Th e political circumstances underlying e-government development as well as its impact on local government are reported, along with key variables associated with this innovation and directions for future research.

Political Will and Strategic Use of YouTube to Advancing Government Transparency: An Analysis of Jakarta Government-Generated YouTube Videos

“…Bureaucratic reform in the context of government performance and new public management involves transforming government through strategic objectives of cutting the bureaucratic inefficiency and corruption and improving government responsiveness to citizen demands. Empirical studies show that bureaucratic reforms require institutional transformation, such as new transformational leadership [18], strategic use of egovernment (or ICTs in government) and citizen participation [1,3,18]. The literature suggests that bureaucratic reform initiatives need institutional, technological and/or social mechanisms for producing desired outcomes.…”

E-Government Project Obstacles in Pakistan

“…It seems in most developing countries, during the implementation of the e-Government projects, some parliamentary influenced personnel find themselves as a decision-making authority in such projects. They are not ready for which often times, also they do not have sound knowledge for implementing such projects and even no professional or technical expertise [20], [21]. The Government of Pakistan is also facing many issues related to corruption such as sociopolitical issues etc.…”

Assessing Open Government Performance through Three Public Administration Perspectives: Efficiency, Democratic Responsiveness, and Legal-rational Process

“…Other scholars have observed cyclical waves of democratic responsiveness in public administration. According to Frederickson, Johnson, and Wood (2004) Overall, e-governance practice of responsiveness and accountability is not being widely practiced despite extensive use of new e-governance initiatives (West, 2004;Justice, Melitski, and Smith 2006), and this is despite the fact that there is good evidence that e-government can improve accountability and transparency (Ahn and Bretschneider, 2011), thereby improving performance of democratic The four ways are 1) accessing, interpreting, and distributing information; 2) demanding accountability of government directly; 3) supporting and encouraging formal oversight actors; and 4) supporting and encouraging other actors to demand accountability (Van Zyl, 2014). A similar assessment tool for accountability has been proposed by Bovens, Schillemans, and Hart (2010) who present threefold criteria for assessing accountability Ingrams, Assessing Open Government Performance through Three Public Administration Perspectives: Efficiency, Democratic Responsiveness, and Legal-rational Process 121 and responsiveness through a democratic perspective, a constitutional perspective, and a learning perspective.…”

“…It has been connected in empirical studies to trust of government (e.g., Wang, 2002;Alam, Kabir, and Chaudhri, 2014), citizen satisfaction (e.g., Halvorsen, 2003;Kim and Lee, 2012), and accountability (e.g., Ahn and Bretschneider, 2011). At the far end of the open government spectrum of "radical transparency", each stage in government decision-making and implementation is expected to be transparent (Mergel, 2012).…”