Building an Infrastructure to Manage Electronic Services

2001 ◽  
pp. 71-103 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ake Gronlund
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Local Governments ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Central Government ◽  
Service Providers ◽  
European Countries ◽  
Whole Process ◽  
Citizen Interactions ◽  
Stabilizing Factors ◽  
General Technical

For an organization to be able to deliver electronic services efficiently and professionally requires a “service infrastructure” including organizational solutions for logistics and customer (citizen) interactions. This chapter reviews a study covering three years of efforts by nine cities in eight European countries in developing such solutions. Generally, Web projects were seen as technical projects; though in fact issues pertaining to users and organization were most important, they were largely neglected. We found 12 distinct “challenges,” situations where the setting changed and the process was found in a stage of improvisation until new stability was achieved. The challenges fall into four categories, concerning users (4 challenges), organization (6), economy (1) and technology (1). We found that the overall process was largely unstructured and improvised. Stabilizing factors were central government policies (national, European Union), the general technical development, market demands and a cadre of Web agents” fostered within the organizations over years of Web projects. There was typically a missing infrastructure link, a body competent of managing the whole process of bundling services from different service providers and publishing them in a coherent fashion, providing support to service providers during the process of inventing, refining and evaluating services, improving operations and conducting the necessary but typically ignored activities of analysis of service quality and policy making. Our conclusion is that there is a great lack of strategic leadership in the field of electronic services in local governments in Europe. This is a big problem considering the importance of that sector and the challenges it is facing.

European Electronic Service Infrastructure Building - Drifting into the Future?

2011 ◽  
pp. 77-87
Author(s):  
Ake Gronlund
Keyword(s):  
Success Factors ◽  
Central Government ◽  
Service Providers ◽  
European Countries ◽  
Government Policies ◽  
Technical Development ◽  
Whole Process ◽  
Electronic Service ◽  
General Technical ◽  
The Web

Delivery of electronic services requires a service infrastructure including organisational solutions for logistics and client-organisation interactions. We report a study covering three years of efforts by nine cities in eight European countries in developing such solutions. We found twelve distinct “crises,” situations where goals, environment, and actors changed, and the process was found in a stage of improvisation. The overall process was largely unstructured and improvised. Stabilising factors were central government policies (national, EU), the general technical development, and market demands. The Web was in practice a “cuckoo in the nest,” intruding in ever more activities and introducing unexpected new demands. Web projects were seen as technical projects; more important success factors pertaining to users and organisation were largely neglected. There was typically an infrastructure link missing, a body competent of managing the whole process of bundling services from different service providers.

Policy-making at local level: an analysis of Turkish municipalities

2018 ◽  
pp. 105-120
Author(s):  
Ulaş Bayraktar
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Service Provider ◽  
Local Governments ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Central Government ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Policy Cycle ◽  
Legal Reforms ◽  
General Overview ◽  
Radical Transformation

Turkish local governments have undergone a radical transformation since the 1980s. Accompanied by a rhetoric of decentralising and democratising reforms, related legal changes have been criticised in the light of either nationalist or democratic, participatory concerns. At the heart of such important waves of legal reforms lay the municipalities as the main service provider in urban settings. This chapter presents a general overview of the state of policy analysis in Turkish municipalities. It argues that municipalities governed by very strong executives, prioritise populist services delivered through subcontracts and controlled weakly by political and civil actors and arbitrarily by the central government. The classical public policy cycle approach will inform the discussion.

scholarly journals How Human Rights Cross-Pollinate and Take Root: Local Governments and Refugees in Turkey

2021 ◽  
pp. 123-157
Author(s):  
Elif Durmuş
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Local Governments ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Central Government ◽  
Field Research ◽  
Migration Policy ◽  
Human Rights Regime ◽  
Refugee Policies ◽  
Failure To Protect ◽  
Central Government Agencies

AbstractThe human rights regime—as law, institutions and practice—has been facing criticism for decades regarding its effectiveness, particularly in terms of unsatisfactory overall implementation and the failure to protect the most vulnerable who do not enjoy the protection of their States: refugees. Turkey is the country hosting the largest refugee population, with around four million at the end of May 2020 (https://www.unhcr.org/tr/wp-content/uploads/sites/14/2020/06/UNHCR-Turkey-Operational-Update-May-2020.pdf). As an administratively centralised country, Turkey’s migration policy is implemented by central government agencies, but this has not proved sufficient to guarantee the human rights of refugees on the ground. Meanwhile, in connection with urbanisation, decentralisation and globalisation, local governments around the world are receiving increasing attention from migration studies, political science, law, sociology and anthropology. In human rights scholarship, the localisation of human rights and the potential role of local governments have been presented as ways to counter the shortcomings in the effectiveness of the human rights regime and discourse. While local governments may have much untapped potential, a thorough analysis of the inequalities between local governments in terms of access to resources and opportunities is essential. The Turkish local governments which form the basis of this research, operate in a context of legal ambiguity concerning their competences and obligations in the area of migration. They also have to deal with large differences when it comes to resources and workload. In practice, therefore, there is extreme divergence amongst municipalities in the extent to which they engage with refugee policies. This chapter seeks to answer the question why and how certain local governments in Turkey come to proactively engage in policy-making that improves the realisation of refugees’ rights. Exploratory grounded field research among Turkish local governments reveals four main factors that enable and facilitate the engagement of local governments in refugee policies: (1) the capacity of and institutionalisation in local governments; (2) the dissemination of practices and norms surrounding good local migration and rights-based governance through networks; (3) the availability of cooperation and coordination with other actors in the field, and (4) political will. Collectively, these factors illustrate how a new norm—the norm that local governments can and ought to engage in policy-making improving the rights of refugees—is cross-pollinating and taking root among Turkish local governments. This understanding will provide valuable insights into how norms are developed, travel and are institutionalised within social and institutional networks, and how differences in access, capacity, political and cooperative opportunities may facilitate and obscure the path to policies improving human rights on the ground.

The use and non-use of policy appraisal tools in public policy making: an analysis of three European countries and the European Union

2008 ◽  
Vol 41 (4) ◽  
pp. 335-355 ◽  
Author(s):  
Måns Nilsson ◽  
Andrew Jordan ◽  
John Turnpenny ◽  
Julia Hertin ◽  
Björn Nykvist ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
European Union ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
European Countries ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Public Policy Making ◽  
Policy Appraisal

scholarly journals Constitutional basis of Austria’s accession to the European Union

2009 ◽  
pp. 111-119
Author(s):  
E. A. Vodyanitskaya
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
European Union ◽  
Local Governments ◽  
Security Policy ◽  
Central Government ◽  
National Council ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Federal Constitution ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Eu

On 1 January 1995 Austria became a member of the European Union. Austria’s accession to the EU constituted the most important transfer of jurisdiction in the history of the Federal Constitution. On this occasion the Austrian legislature passed an amendment to the Federal Constitution which provides for the participation of Austrian organs in the decision-making process of the European Union. The legal basis of Austria’s membership in the EU is the treaty on accession to the European Union and the special constitutional bill authorizing the competent authorities to ratify the treaty on accession. First of all, provisions on the election of Austrian members to the European Parliament were introduced by the amendment into the Constitution. Secondly, the amendment contains a procedure for participation of the Austrian lands and local governments in the decisions of the European Union. Thirdly, the legislative bodies on the central government level (National Council and Federal Council) are also accorded the right to participate in decision-making of the EU. Finally, a special provision confirming Austria’s participation in the Common Foreign and Security Policy of the Union was introduced.

scholarly journals Local administrative capacity based on the presence of expert staff in municipal city halls and inter-municipal cooperation entities

2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Eva Marín Hlynsdóttir
Keyword(s):  
Local Governments ◽  
Central Government ◽  
Service Providers ◽  
Rural And Remote ◽  
Remote Areas ◽  
Administrative Capacity ◽  
The Past ◽  
Large Bulk ◽  
Rural And Remote Areas ◽  
Set Up

Local government in Iceland has been through extensive functional reforms in the past three decades. Territorial reforms have been less successful even though the central government has openly aimed to enhance the capacity of the local governments. This study aims to estimate the administrative capacity of Icelandic local governments by estimating the level of expertise in the tasks of planning, education and social service. The findings show that there is a considerable difference with respect to size, as municipalities with more than 3,000 citizens have much higher levels of expertise in comparison to smaller municipalities. The municipalities are only partially able to turn to inter-municipal cooperation (IMC) for compensation because the municipalities in more densely populated areas are more likely to set up IMC entities than those in more sparsely populated areas. The municipalities in less populated areas are also more likely to buy their services from private service providers. Moreover, the smallest municipalities have transferred a large bulk of their functions to other municipalities through contracting. The findings suggest that IMCs may not be the best answer for small municipalities, especially those in rural and remote areas.

Open Access in Practice

2020 ◽  
pp. 128-172
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Open Access ◽  
European Commission ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Copyright Law ◽  
European Countries ◽  
The Political ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Specific Policy ◽  
European Institutions

The basic scope of the European Union is the political and economic unification through harmonisation of European Member States' national regulations and associated frameworks. Should the European Union aim to harmonise and unify these national regulations, it is only reasonable to do so through copyright-specific policy provisions implemented by the European countries. The European copyright regime could potentially facilitate open access practice, should this practice be tailored to policy-making actors regarding the European copyright law framework. This chapter examines efforts and initiatives made by the European institutions (e.g., European Commission, European Parliament) in order to construct a coherent copyright framework for the European Union Members.

Local Governments on the Way at the Provision of Gender Equality

2021 ◽  
pp. 485-498
Author(s):  
Zuhal Önez Çetin
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Gender Equality ◽  
Local Governments ◽  
Central Government ◽  
Foreign Affairs ◽  
Women And Girls ◽  
The Republic ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Republic Of Turkey

The provision of gender equality has been a critical agenda for public administrations and organizations. In Turkey, both local governments and central government has been dealing with initiatives towards the provision of equality of man and woman. At that context, Republic of Turkey Ministry of Interior, Foreign Affairs and European Union Department 2010 Circular on “Human Rights of Women and Girls” is an important Circular in terms of local governments and the issue of gender in Turkey. At the study, the local governments' relation with the issue of gender equality has searched. At that framework, firstly, the concepts of gender and gender equality have explained. Secondly, the national documents in related to women in Turkey, and Local Equality Action Plans of six provinces in the context of the Republic of Turkey Ministry of Interior and United Nations Protecting the Human Rights of Women and Girls and Development Joint Program have been explained to search the local governments' relation with the issue of gender, and lastly some practices of local governments have explained on the issue of gender equality.

scholarly journals REVIEW OF IMPLEMENTATION OF GOVERNMENT AUTHORITIES IN POLICY-MAKING IN THE "RELIGIOUS AFFAIRS"

2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 79
Author(s):  
Husnu Abadi ◽  
Efendi Ibnususilo ◽  
Rahdiansyah Rahdiansyah
Keyword(s):  
Local Governments ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Regional Policy ◽  
Central Government ◽  
Physical Development ◽  
Medium Term ◽  
Religious Issues ◽  
The People ◽  
Tacit Consent ◽  
Government District

Government absolute authorities in the religion affairs is the authority of the central government. In the dynamic development of political, many district that produce regional policy with respect to religion or to follow religious aspirations of local people. Some districts in Riau Province, a county division during the reform, including the district are very concerned about the development in the field of religion. In addition to physical development, the county authority also extend its authority in the religion affairs. Regional policy is embodied in the form of local laws, regulations regent, or Medium Term Development Plan (Plan) Government District in Riau Province. This is possible because there are no clear boundaries of understanding in the rule of religion affairs  formulated by the law on local government. The central government, based on this study, it gives tacit consent when local governments do just that, because the rate it is going to add a lot of partners in the central government district. There is no struggle for power between central government and local governments, but the expansion of the district authority in religious issues involved in managing the government's response is a manifestation of the district in the religious aspirations of the people of the area

scholarly journals Samorządowe dochody podatkowe w wybranych państwach Unii Europejskiej

Studia BAS ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (65) ◽  
pp. 251-282
Author(s):  
Monika Korolewska
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Local Governments ◽  
Union Member ◽  
European Countries ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Member States ◽  
Local Taxes ◽  
Tax Revenues ◽  
Local Taxation ◽  
European Union Member States

The article looks at the issue of local taxation in 22 selected European countries, members of OECD, as well as the European Union member states. The author analyses the importance of local taxes for regional and local governments measured by the share of tax revenues received by these governments as a percentage of GDP and percentage of total tax revenues. She also presents the structure of local tax revenues. The study is based on the OECD revenue and taxes in Europe database.

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